4. Supplementary Explanations by Engels¶
Core Argument¶
Engels’ supplementary writings refine the Marxist theory of the state and revolution, sharpening the polemic against anarchist, Proudhonist, and reformist distortions. In The Housing Question (1872), Engels argued that the housing shortage could be remedied immediately after proletarian revolution by expropriating owners and quartering homeless workers in existing houses—a measure as practicable as similar actions by the present state. Yet he insisted the old bureaucratic apparatus would be unfit to execute proletarian orders. The proletarian “actual seizure” of all instruments of labour stood opposed to Proudhonist “redemption”: the working people remain collective owners and will hardly permit use of houses and factories without compensation for cost, at least during a transitional period. Abolition of property in land does not abolish ground rent but transfers it to society; thus the proletarian state does not preclude rent relations.
In the 1873 controversy with anarchists, Marx stated that workers, in establishing their revolutionary dictatorship, give the state a revolutionary and transient form, rather than “laying down their arms and abolishing the state”. Engels argued that authority and autonomy are relative; the state will disappear after the social revolution, but a revolution is the most authoritarian thing there is—the victorious party must maintain rule by force. The Paris Commune would not have lasted a day without the authority of the armed people; if anything, it made too little use of it.
In his 1875 letter to Bebel, Engels dismissed the “free people’s state” as nonsense. The state is a transitional institution for holding down adversaries by force; as soon as freedom becomes possible, the state ceases to exist. He proposed replacing “state” with Gemeinwesen (community). The Commune was no longer a state in the proper sense, having smashed the bourgeois state machine and suppressed only a minority.
Engels criticised the Erfurt Programme for lacking the demand for a republic, calling the Reichstag “the fig leaf of absolutism”. In Germany, where government is almost omnipotent and representative bodies have no real power, peaceful development is absurd. The proletariat can only come to power in the form of the democratic republic, which is the specific form for the dictatorship of the proletariat. On federal republics, Engels argued the proletariat can only use the one and indivisible republic, upholding democratic centralism with broad local self-government and elected officials.
Engels described the destruction of the old state machine and its replacement with a genuinely democratic one. He noted that superstitious reverence for the state persists among the bourgeoisie and many workers, who see it as the realisation of eternal truth and justice. In reality, the state is a machine for class oppression, no less in a democratic republic than in a monarchy. The victorious proletariat must lop off the state’s worst sides as speedily as possible, until a new generation can discard the entire lumber of the state. The form of oppression makes a difference: a freer form of class struggle assists the proletariat in abolishing classes. On overcoming democracy, Engels explained that “Social-Democrat” is scientifically inexact for a party whose ultimate political aim is to overcome the whole state and democracy as well. Lenin concludes that the abolition of the state means the abolition of democracy; democracy is a state involving the systematic use of force by one class against another, and its withering away will occur when people become accustomed to observing social conditions without violence or subordination.