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The Role of the State and Social Democracy

Marxist Theory · 2017-07-07

Core Argument

The central thesis is that the state is not a neutral arbiter standing above society, but an instrument of class rule — specifically, the organised violence of the capitalist class. Alan Woods argues that this truth is systematically obscured by bourgeois democracy, including its Swedish variant, and that the reformist left — particularly social democracy — serves as the principal ideological and organisational defence of this state apparatus. The article insists that the working class cannot simply take over the existing state machinery but must smash it and replace it with a qualitatively different form of power: a workers' democracy based on the model of the Paris Commune and the early Soviets. This is presented not as a sectarian abstraction but as a practical necessity arising from the objective limits of reformism in an era of capitalist crisis.

Theoretical Grounding

The analysis is rooted in the classical Marxist theory of the state as developed by Marx and Engels in The Communist Manifesto, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, and The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, and given its most systematic expression in Lenin's State and Revolution. Woods draws on Engels' definition of the state as a product of irreconcilable class antagonisms, a power "seemingly standing above society" that in reality serves the ruling class. The article also engages critically with anarchist theory, using the Spanish Revolution of 1936 as a case study to argue that anarchism's principled rejection of any state leads in practice to the reconstitution of bourgeois power. The distinction between the early Soviet state — a "semi-state" designed to wither away — and the Stalinist bureaucratic totalitarianism that replaced it is central to the argument, drawing heavily on Trotsky's The Revolution Betrayed. The article sits firmly within the Trotskyist tradition, emphasising the crisis of revolutionary leadership as the decisive obstacle to working-class victory.

Conjunctural Relevance

Written in July 2017, the article addresses a moment when Swedish social democracy — long held up as a model of welfare capitalism — was visibly unravelling. Woods notes that the conditions that allowed Swedish capitalism to grant concessions (a long period of economic growth, a strong labour movement) have passed, and that the future facing the Swedish working class is not one of reforms but counter-reforms. The article cites specific events to demonstrate the class character of the Swedish state: the police attack on an anti-fascist demonstration in Malmö in 2014, the lenient sentences for fascists convicted of violence against left-wing activists (the stabbing of Showan Shattak), and the historical precedent of the Ådalen shootings in 1931, when Swedish soldiers fired on striking workers. The argument is that the "smiling mask" of Swedish bourgeois democracy will be cast aside as the global crisis of capitalism deepens, and that the reformist leaders — far from being a bulwark against reaction — will facilitate this shift. The conjuncture is one of transition from an era of relative class peace to one of intensified class struggle, in which the illusions in democracy will be "knocked out of people's heads by a policeman's truncheon."

Where the Argument Continues

The article is explicitly a preface to a new Swedish edition of Lenin's State and Revolution, and the argument naturally continues in that text. Woods' broader body of work for In Defence of Marxism develops the same themes: the critique of reformism, the theory of the state, and the necessity of building revolutionary parties. Readers should consult:

  • Alan Woods, The History of Philosophy: A Marxist Perspective (for the theoretical foundations of the Marxist method)
  • Leon Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed (for the analysis of bureaucratic degeneration)
  • Leon Trotsky, Terrorism and Communism (for the Marxist defence of revolutionary violence against bourgeois pacifism)
  • The IDOM series on the Spanish Revolution, which develops the critique of anarchism in greater detail
  • Against the Stream episodes on the state and the transition to socialism, which update the analysis for the current period

Connections

This article connects directly to:

  • Lenin, State and Revolution — the text it introduces, and the definitive Marxist work on the state
  • Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State — the anthropological and historical foundation
  • Marx, The Civil War in France — the analysis of the Paris Commune as the prototype of the workers' state
  • Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed — the explanation of Stalinist degeneration
  • Trotsky, How the Revolution Armed — the speech on anarchism quoted in the article
  • The Spanish Revolution (1936-37) — the case study of anarchist failure
  • The Swedish labour movement's history — the Ådalen shootings, the 1980 general strike, and the revolutionary traditions of figures like Anton Nilson

The article should be read alongside contemporary IDOM analyses of social democracy in crisis (e.g., on Syriza, Podemos, and the British Labour Party under Corbyn), which apply the same theoretical framework to different national contexts.

Key Quotes

  1. "Marxism teaches us that the state (that is to say, every state) is an instrument for the oppression of one class by another. The state cannot be neutral."

  2. "Under a regime of formal bourgeois democracy like Sweden, anyone can say (more or less) what they wish, as long as the banks and big monopolies decide what happens. In other words, bourgeois democracy is just another way of expressing the dictatorship of big business."

  3. "The bourgeoisie says: don't touch the state power; it is the sacred hereditary privilege of the educated classes. But the Anarchists say: don't touch it; it is an infernal invention, a diabolical device, don't have anything to do with it. [...] Both say: don't touch it. But we say: don't just touch it, take it in your hands, and set it to work in your own interests."

  4. "A genuine workers' state has nothing in common with the bureaucratic monster that exists today, and even less the one that existed in Stalinist Russia. Lenin was the sworn enemy of bureaucracy. He always emphasised that the proletariat needs only a state that is 'so constituted that it will at once begin to die away and cannot help dying away.'"

  5. "The regime of proletarian dictatorship from its very beginning thus ceases to be a 'state' in the old sense of the word — a special apparatus, that is, for holding in subjection the majority of the people. [...] The state as a bureaucratic apparatus begins to die away the first day of the proletarian dictatorship." (quoting Trotsky)

  6. "The most urgent task of the workers of Sweden is not the overthrow of the state but to fight to win back control of their own organizations."