One of the most widespread myths associated with Marxism is the idea that Marxism has consistently aimed to smash the current (bourgeois) state and replace it by a "workers' state" based on working class organisations created during a revolution.

This myth is sometimes expressed by those who should know better (i.e. Marxists). According to John Rees (of the British Socialist Workers Party) it has been a "cornerstone of revolutionary theory" that "the soviet is a superior form of democracy because it unifies political and economic power." This "cornerstone" has, apparently, existed "since Marx's writings on the Paris Commune." ["In Defence of October," International Socialism, no. 52, p. 25] In fact, nothing could be further from the truth, as Marx's writings on the Paris Commune prove beyond doubt.

The Paris Commune, as Marx himself noted, was "formed of the municipal councillors, chosen by universal suffrage in the various wards of the town." ["The Civil War in France", Selected Works, p. 287] As Marx made clear, it was definitely not based on delegates from workplaces and so could not unify political and economic power. Indeed, to state that the Paris Commune was a soviet is simply a joke, as is the claim that Marxists supported soviets as revolutionary organs to smash and replace the state from 1871. In fact Marxists did not subscribe to this "cornerstone of revolutionary theory" until 1917 when Lenin argued that the Soviets would be the best means of ensuring a Bolshevik government. Which explains why Lenin's use of the slogan "All Power to the Soviets" and call for the destruction of the bourgeois state came as such a shock to his fellow Marxists. Unsurprisingly, given the long legacy of anarchist calls to smash the state and their vision of a socialist society built from below by workers councils, many Marxists called Lenin an anarchist! Therefore, the idea that Marxists have always supported workers councils' is untrue and any attempt to push this support back to 1871 simply a farcical.

Before 1917, when Lenin claimed to have discovered what had eluded all the previous followers of Marx and Engels (including himself!), it was only anarchists (or those close to them such as the Russian SR-Maximalists) who argued that the future socialist society would be structurally based around the organs working class people themselves created in the process of the class struggle and revolution (see sections H.1.4 and I.2.3). To re-quote Bakunin:

"The future social organisation must be made solely from the bottom up, by the free association or federation of workers, firstly in their unions, then in the communes, regions, nations and finally in a great federation, international and universal." [Michael Bakunin: Selected Writings, pp. 170-2]

So, ironically, the idea of the superiority of workers' councils has existed from around the time of the Paris Commune, but in only in Bakunin's writings and others in the libertarian wing of the First International!

Not all Marxists are as ignorant of their political tradition as Rees. As his fellow party member Chris Harman recognised, "[e]ven the 1905 [Russian] revolution gave only the most embryonic expression of how a workers' state would in fact be organised. The fundamental forms of workers' power — the soviets (workers' councils) — were not recognised." It was "[n]ot until the February revolution [of 1917 that] soviets became central in Lenin's writings and thought." [Party and Class, p. 18 and p. 19]

Before continuing it should be noted that Harman's summary is correct only if we are talking about the Marxist movement. Looking at the wider revolutionary movement, two groups definitely "recognised" the importance of the soviets as a form of working class power. These were the anarchists and the Social-Revolutionary Maximalists, both of whom "espoused views that corresponded almost word for word with Lenin's April 1917 program of 'All power to the soviets.'" The "aims of the revolutionary far left in 1905 . . . Lenin combined in his call for soviet power [in 1917], when he apparently assimilated the anarchist program to secure the support of the masses for the Bolsheviks." [Oskar Anweiler, The Soviets, p. 94 and p. 96] Unsurprisingly, both the anarchists and Maximalists were extremely influential in that paradigm of soviet power and democracy, the Kronstadt commune (see the appendix "What was the Kronstadt Rebellion?" for more details).

Thus, in anarchist circles, the soviets were must definitely "recognised" as the practical confirmation of anarchist ideas of working class self-organisation as being the framework of a socialist society. For example, the syndicalists "regarded the soviets . . . as admirable versions of the bourses du travail, but with a revolutionary function added to suit Russian conditions. Open to all leftist workers regardless of specific political affiliation, the soviets were to act as nonpartisan labour councils improvised 'from below' . . . with the aim of bringing down the old regime." The anarchists of Khleb i Volia "also likened the 1905 Petersburg Soviet — as a nonparty mass organisation — to the central committee of the Paris Commune of 1871." [Paul Avrich, The Russian Anarchists, pp. 80-1] Kropotkin argued that anarchists should take part in the soviets as long as they "are organs of the struggle against the bourgeoisie and the state, and not organs of authority." [quoted by Graham Purchase, Evolution and Revolution, p. 30]

So, if Marxists did not support workers' councils until 1917, what did Marxists argue should be the framework of a socialist society before this date? To discover this, we must look to Marx and Engels. Once we do, we discover that their works suggest that their vision of socialist transformation was fundamentally based on the bourgeois state, suitably modified and democratised to achieve this task. As such, rather than present the true account of the Marxist theory of the state Lenin interpreted various inexact and ambiguous statements by Marx and Engels (particularly from Marx's defence of the Paris Commune) to justify his own actions in 1917. Whether his 1917 revision of Marxism in favour of workers' councils as the framework of socialism is in keeping with the spirit of Marx is another matter of course. Given that libertarian Marxists (like the council communists) embraced the idea of workers' councils and broke with the Bolsheviks over the issue of whether the councils or the party had power, we can say that perhaps it is not. In this, they express the best in Marx. When faced with the Paris Commune and its libertarian influences he embraced it, distancing himself (for a while at least) with many of his previous ideas.

So what was the original (orthodox) Marxist position? It can be seen from Lenin who, as late December 1916 argued that "Socialists are in favour of utilising the present state and its institutions in the struggle for the emancipation of the working class, maintaining also that the state should be used for a specific form of transition from capitalism to socialism." Lenin attacked Bukharin for "erroneously ascribing this [the anarchist] view to the socialist" when he had stated socialists wanted to "abolish" the state or "blow it up." He called this "transitional form" the dictatorship of the proletariat, "which is also a state." [Collected Works, vol. 23, p. 165] In other words, the socialist party would aim to seize power within the existing state and, after making suitable modifications to it, use it to create socialism. This conquest of state power would be achieved either by insurrection or by the ballot box, the latter being used for political education and struggle under capitalism.

That this position was the orthodox one is hardly surprising, given the actual comments of both Marx and Engels. For example, Engels argued in 1886 while he and Marx saw "the gradual dissolution and ultimate disappearance of that political organisation called the State" as "one of the final results of the future revolution," they "at the same time . . . have always held that . . . the proletarian class will first have to possess itself of the organised political force of the State and with its aid stamp out the resistance of the Capitalist class and re-organise society." The idea that the proletariat needs to "possess" the existing state is made clear when he argues while the anarchists "reverse the matter" by arguing that the revolution "has to begin by abolishing the political organisation of the State," for Marxists "the only organisation the victorious working class finds ready-made for use, is that of the State. It may require adaptation to the new functions. But to destroy that at such a moment, would be to destroy the only organism by means of which the working class can exert its newly conquered power." [Collected Works, vol. 47, p. 10]

Obviously the only institution which the working class "finds ready-made for use" is the bourgeois state, although, as Engels stresses, it "may require adaptation." This schema is repeated five years later, in Engels introduction to Marx's "The Civil War in France." Arguing that the state "is nothing but a machine for the oppression of one class by another" he notes that it is "at best an evil inherited by the proletariat after its victorious struggle for class supremacy, whose worst sides the victorious proletariat, just like the Commune, cannot avoid having to lop off at once as much as possible." [Marx-Engels Selected Works, p. 258] Simply put, if the proletariat creates a new state system to replace the bourgeois one, then how can it be "an evil inherited" by it? If, as Lenin argued, Marx and Engels thought that the working class had to smash the bourgeois state and replace it with a new one, why would it have "to lop off at once as much as possible" from the state it had just "inherited"?

In the same year, Engels repeats this argument in his critique of the draft of the Erfurt program of the German Social Democrats:

"If one thing is certain it is that our Party and the working class can only come to power under the form of a democratic republic. This is even the specific form for the dictatorship of the proletariat, as the Great French Revolution has already shown." [quoted by David W. Lovell, From Marx to Lenin, p. 81]

Clearly Engels does not speak of a "commune-republic" or anything close to a soviet republic, as expressed in Bakunin's work or the libertarian wing of the First International with their ideas of a "trade-union republic" or a free federation of workers' associations. Clearly and explicitly he speaks of the democratic republic, the current state ("an evil inherited by the proletariat") which is to be seized and transformed as in the Paris Commune. Unsurprisingly, when Lenin comes to quote this passage in State and Revolution he immediately tries to obscure its meaning. "Engels," he says, "repeats here in a particularly striking manner the fundamental idea which runs like a red thread through all of Marx's work, namely, that the democratic republic is the nearest approach to the dictatorship of the proletariat." [Essential Works of Lenin, p. 324] However, clearly Engels does not speak of the political form which "is the nearest approach" to the dictatorship, rather he speaks only of "the specific form" of the dictatorship, the "only" form in which "our Party" can come to power.

This explains Engels 1887 comments that in the USA the workers "next step towards their deliverance" was "the formation of a political workingmen's party, with a platform of its own, and the conquest of the Capitol and the White House for its goal." This new party "like all political parties everywhere . . . aspires to the conquest of political power." Engels then discusses the "electoral battle" going on in America. [Marx & Engels, Basic Writings on Politics and Philosophy, pp. 527-8 and p. 529] Six years previously he had argued along the same lines as regards England, "where the industrial and agricultural working class forms the immense majority of the people, democracy means the dominion of the working class, neither more nor less. Let, then, that working class prepare itself for the task in store for it — the ruling of this great Empire . . . And the best way to do this is to use the power already in their hands, the actual majority they possess . . . to send to Parliament men of their own order." In case this was not clear enough, he lamented that "[e]verywhere the labourer struggles for political power, for direct representation of his class in the legislature — everywhere but in Great Britain." [Collected Works, vol. 24, p. 405]

All of which, of course, fits into Marx's account of the Paris Commune. In that work he stresses that the Commune was formed by elections, by universal suffrage in a democratic republic. Once voted into office, the Commune then smashes the state machine inherited by it from the old state, recognising that "the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes." The "first decree of the Commune . . . was the suppression of the standing army, and the substitution for it of the armed people." Thus the Commune lops off one of the "ubiquitous organs" associated with the "centralised State power" once it had inherited the state via elections. [Marx-Engels Selected Works, p. 285, p. 287 and p. 285]

It is, of course true, that Marx expresses in his defence of the Commune the opinion that new "Communal Constitution" was to become a "reality by the destruction of the State power" yet he immediately argues that "the merely repressive organs of the old government power were to be amputated" and "its legitimate functions were to be wrestles from" it and "restored to the responsible agents of society." [Op. Cit., pp. 288-9] This corresponds to Engels arguments about removing aspects from the state inherited by the proletariat and signifies the "destruction" of the state machinery (its bureaucratic-military aspects) rather than the state itself.

The source of Lenin's restatement of the Marxist theory of the state which came as such a shock to so many Marxists can be found in the nature of the Paris Commune. After all, the major influence in terms of "political vision" of the Commune was anarchism. The "rough sketch of national organisation which the Commune had no time to develop" which Marx praises but does not quote was written by a follower of Proudhon. [Marx, Op. Cit., p. 288] It expounded a clearly federalist and "bottom-up" organisational structure. It clearly implied "the destruction of the State power" rather than seeking to "inherit" it. Based on this libertarian revolt, it is unsurprising that Marx's defence of it took on a libertarian twist. As noted by Bakunin, who argues that its "general effect was so striking that the Marxists themselves, who saw their ideas upset by the uprising, found themselves compelled to take their hats off to it. They went further, and proclaimed that its programme and purpose where their own, in face of the simplest logic . . . This was a truly farcical change of costume, but they were bound to make it, for fear of being overtaken and left behind in the wave of feeling which the rising produced throughout the world." [Michael Bakunin: Selected Writings, p. 261]

This opinion was shared by almost all Marxists before 1917 (including Lenin). As Franz Mehring (considered by many as the best student and commentator of Marx in pre-world war social democracy and a extreme left-winger) argued, the "opinions of The Communist Manifesto could not be reconciled with the praise lavished . . . on the Paris Commune for the vigorous fashion in which it had begun to exterminate the parasitic State." He notes that "both Marx and Engels were well aware of the contradiction" and in the June 1872 preface to their work "they revised their opinions . . . declaring that the workers could not simply lay hold of the ready-made State machinery and wield it for their own purposes. At a later date, and after the death of Marx, Engels was compelled to engage in a struggle against the anarchist tendencies in the working-class movement, and he let this proviso drop and once again took his stand on the basis of the Manifesto." [Karl Marx, p. 453]

The fact that Marx did not mention anything about abolishing the existing state and replacing it with a new one in his contribution to the "Program of the French Workers Party" in 1880 is significant. It said that the that "collective appropriation" of the means of production "can only proceed from a revolutionary action of the class of producers — the proletariat — organised in an independent political party." This would be "pursued by all the means the proletariat has at its disposal including universal suffrage which will thus be transformed from the instrument of deception that it has been until now into an instrument of emancipation." [Collected Works, vol. 24, p. 340] There is nothing about overthrowing the existing state and replacing it with a new state, rather the obvious conclusion which is to be drawn is that universal suffrage was the tool by which the workers would achieve socialism. It does fit in, however, with Marx's comments in 1852 that "Universal Suffrage is the equivalent of political power for the working class of England, where the proletariat forms the large majority of the population . . . Its inevitable result, here, is the political supremacy of the working class." [Op. Cit., vol. 11, pp. 335-6] Or, indeed, Engels similar comments from 1881 quoted above.

It is for this reason that orthodox Marxism up until 1917 held the position that the socialist revolution would be commenced by seizing the existing state (usually by the ballot box, or by insurrection if that was impossible). Martov, the leading left-Menshevik, in his discussion of Lenin's "discovery" of the "real" Marxist theory on the state (in State and Revolution) stresses that the idea that the state should be smashed by the workers who would then "transplant into the structure of society the forms of their own combat organisations" was a libertarian idea, alien to Marx and Engels. While acknowledging that "in our time, working people take to 'the idea of the soviets' after knowing them as combat organisations formed in the process of the class struggle at a sharp revolutionary stage," he distances Marx and Engels quite successfully from such a position. As such, he makes a valid contribution to Marxism and presents a necessary counter-argument to Lenin's claims in State and Revolution (at which point, we are sure, nine out of ten Leninists will dismiss our argument!). [The State and Socialist Revolution, p. 42]

All this may seem a bit academic to many. Does it matter? After all, most Marxists today subscribe to some variation of Lenin's position and so, in some aspects, what Marx and Engels really thought is irrelevant. Indeed, it is likely that Marx, faced with workers' councils as he was with the Commune, would have embraced them (perhaps not, as he was dismissive of similar ideas expressed in the libertarian wing of the First International). What is important is that the idea that Marxists have always subscribed to the idea that a social revolution would be based on the workers' own combat organisations (be they unions, soviets or whatever) is a relatively new one to the ideology. While Bakunin and other anarchists argued for such a revolution, Marx and Engels did not. Given this, the shock which met Lenin's arguments in 1917 can be easily understood.

Rather than being rooted in the Marxist vision of revolution, as it has been in anarchism since the 1860s, workers councils have played, rhetoric aside, the role of fig-leaf for party power (libertarian Marxism being a notable exception). They have been embraced by its Leninist wing purely as a means of ensuring party power. Rather than being seen as the most important gain of a revolution as they allow mass participation, workers' councils have been seen, and used, simply as a means by which the party can seize power. Once this is achieved, the soviets can be marginalised and ignored without affecting the "proletarian" nature of the revolution in the eyes of the party:

"while it is true that Lenin recognised the different functions and democratic raison d'etre for both the soviets and his party, in the last analysis it was the party that was more important than the soviets. In other words, the party was the final repository of working-class sovereignty. Thus, Lenin did not seem to have been reflected on or have been particularly perturbed by the decline of the soviets after 1918." [Samuel Farber, Before Stalinism, p. 212]

This perspective can be traced back to the lack of interest Marx and Engels expressed in the forms which a proletarian revolution would take, as exemplified by Engels comments on having to "lop off" aspects of the state "inherited" by the working class. The idea that the organisations people create in their struggle for freedom may help determine the outcome of the revolution is missing. Rather, the idea that any structure can be appropriated and (after suitable modification) used to rebuild society is clear. This perspective cannot help take emphasis away from the mass working class organisations required to rebuild society in a socialist manner and place it on the group who will "inherit" the state and "lop off" its negative aspects, namely the party and the leaders in charge of both it and the new "workers' state."

This focus towards the party became, under Lenin (and the Bolsheviks in general) a purely instrumental perspective on workers' councils and other organisations. They were of use purely in so far as they allowed the Bolshevik party to take power (indeed Lenin constantly identified workers' power and soviet power with Bolshevik power and as Martin Buber noted, for Lenin "All power to the Soviets!" meant, at bottom, "All power to the Party through the Soviets!"). It can, therefore, be argued that his book State and Revolution was a means to use Marx and Engels to support his new found idea of the soviets as being the basis of creating a Bolshevik government rather than a principled defence of workers' councils as the framework of a socialist revolution. We discuss this issue in the next section.