The state and revolution

New to Marxism: Session 2 of 6

Socialism is often used to describe many different things: public services, state-owned companies, a more equal capitalism or the bureaucratic regimes that once ruled the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Revolutionary Marxism means something more fundamental.

Socialism begins when the working class takes political power, places the decisive parts of the economy under collective ownership and starts reorganising production to meet human need. It must be built through workers’ democracy—not imposed from above by parliament, a party or a state bureaucracy.

What you will learn

• Why socialism means more than nationalisation, welfare provision or a fairer distribution of income.
• How workers’ councils could create a more extensive form of democracy.
• Why Marxists distinguish the transition to socialism from a worldwide communist society.

Social ownership and democratic planning

Capitalism already organises production socially. A single product can involve raw materials, research, manufacturing, logistics and labour spread across several continents. Yet decisions about this vast cooperation are made by rival corporations and states seeking profit and competitive advantage.

Socialism would bring the decisive parts of the economy into collective ownership. This does not mean dividing large industries into small individual holdings. Nor does it mean leaving them under private ownership while taxing some of the profits. Modern production must remain coordinated on a large scale, but its purpose and control must change.

Nationalisation by a capitalist government is not automatically socialism. A state-owned railway, bank or energy company can still be managed from above, exploit its workforce and serve the needs of the capitalist economy. Social ownership requires workers’ control and democratic accountability. Workers who understand how an industry operates, together with the people who use its products and services, must participate in setting its objectives.

A democratic plan would decide priorities consciously. It could shift resources towards housing, healthcare, education, renewable energy, public transport and the reduction of working time. It could organise a rapid environmental transition while guaranteeing workers new jobs, training and incomes. Instead of asking whether a hospital or railway produces a financial return, society could ask what is needed and how its collective resources can provide it.

Planning would involve choices and disagreements. Democracy would therefore be essential, not decorative. Local, industrial and national bodies would need to share information, propose alternatives and revise decisions in the light of results. A plan cannot anticipate every need from a central office. It would combine society-wide priorities with initiative and decision-making at different levels.

Workers’ power

The capitalist class will not surrender its property and power because socialism has won an argument or an election. It can move investments, close workplaces, organise shortages, control much of the media and draw on the courts, police, civil service and armed forces. Its power is concentrated in institutions that continue to operate when governments change.

For that reason, socialism begins with a revolution: the transfer of political power from one class to another. A revolution is not defined by violence or a single dramatic event. It is a mass process in which the working class develops organisations capable of defeating the old ruling class and running society in its place.

In great strikes and revolutionary crises, workers have repeatedly created councils, assemblies and strike committees. Their delegates can be elected by workplace and community mass meetings, required to report back, bound by collective decisions and recalled when they cease to represent those who elected them.

Such bodies can begin by coordinating a struggle. As a crisis develops, they can take responsibility for food, transport, public safety and production. They can become an alternative authority to the capitalist state. A workers’ government based on these organisations would dismantle the old repressive apparatus, organise the defence of the revolution and place economic power under democratic control.

A different kind of state

Political freedoms and democratic rights won under capitalism matter and must be defended. But even the most democratic capitalist republic leaves decisive power over production and investment in private hands. Parliament sits alongside a permanent state apparatus over which working people have little control.

Every state maintains the rule of a particular class. Marxists describe capitalist class rule as the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, even when its governmental form is parliamentary democracy rather than a personal dictatorship.

After a socialist revolution, the working class would also need a state for a period. It would have to prevent the former ruling class from restoring capitalism, coordinate the transformation of production and help extend the revolution internationally. Marx called this the dictatorship of the proletariat: the political rule of the working-class majority.

The phrase is often misunderstood. It does not mean the dictatorship of one leader, one party or a bureaucracy. It means a workers’ state resting on much wider participation than capitalism permits. Delegates should be accountable and recallable. Officials should receive no material privileges. Workers and the oppressed should have the widest freedom to debate, organise and contest the direction of society. The former capitalist class would be prevented from using accumulated wealth, private control of the media, armed conspiracy or foreign intervention to restore its rule.

The Paris Commune of 1871 and the Russian soviets of 1917 provided incomplete but important examples of this new form of power. In both cases, workers created institutions based on elected delegates, direct accountability and the replacement of a privileged state caste by the active population.

Socialism is not Stalinism

The Russian Revolution began with workers’ councils taking power. But it remained isolated in an economically backward country devastated by war and civil war after revolutions elsewhere were defeated. The working class was greatly weakened. A bureaucracy headed by Stalin took political power away from the soviets, destroyed political opposition and established a system of rule from above.

State ownership and economic planning without workers’ democracy did not make this bureaucratic regime socialist. Workers Power understands Stalinism as a defeat of the workers’ revolution, not its fulfilment or inevitable result.

This history reinforces rather than weakens the Marxist case for workers’ democracy. Without control from below, recallable representatives, freedom of political debate and international revolution, state ownership can become the basis for bureaucratic privilege rather than collective emancipation.

From socialism to communism

A revolution inherits the conditions created by capitalism: unequal development, scarcity, environmental damage, oppressive ideas and a population accustomed to decisions being made by others. These cannot disappear overnight.

Marx described a lower and a higher phase of communist society. Revolutionary Marxists commonly use socialism for the lower, transitional phase and communism for the fully developed classless society.

During the socialist transition, workers would use political power and collective ownership to transform the conditions inherited from capitalism. As production is reorganised, scarcity overcome and revolution spreads internationally, class divisions can disappear. With no exploiting class to suppress and no class antagonisms to manage, the state itself can wither away.

Communism is this worldwide classless society. Production would be organised through free cooperation, with each person contributing according to their ability and receiving according to their need. The aim is not uniformity or permanent state control. It is to create the material and social conditions in which every person can develop their different capacities freely.

Marxism does not provide a detailed blueprint for every institution of a future society. Socialism must be made democratically by millions of people. But it does establish essential principles: working-class self-emancipation, collective ownership, democratic planning, international revolution and the abolition of every form of class rule.

Key terms

• Socialism: the transition from capitalism to communism, based on working-class political power, collective ownership and democratic planning.
• Communism: a worldwide classless society without exploitation or a state standing above society.
• Workers’ control: direct oversight and decision-making by workers over production, management and information.
• Workers’ council: an organisation of elected, accountable and recallable delegates from workplaces, communities or fighting organisations.
• Dictatorship of the proletariat: the political rule of the working-class majority during the transition from capitalism to communism.

Read and discuss

For a group session, everyone should read this guide and at least one of the two short introductory readings.

Start here

• Workers Power, S is for Socialism: the transition to Communism — why socialism is a transition created from the conditions inherited from capitalism (about 6 minutes).
• Workers Power, D is for Democracy and Dictatorship — the difference between a form of government and the class character of a state (about 6 minutes).

Go deeper

• Karl Marx, The Paris Commune — Marx’s account of the political institutions created by Parisian workers in 1871.
• Workers Power, The Russian Revolution of 1917 — how workers’ councils emerged and the Bolsheviks fought for them to take power.

Questions for discussion

1. What distinguishes socialist ownership from nationalisation by a capitalist state?
2. How could democratic planning combine society-wide priorities with local knowledge and initiative?
3. How would a workers’ council differ from parliament?
4. Why would workers need a state after taking power—and why would that state eventually become unnecessary?
5. How did Stalinism contradict the socialist principles described in this guide?
6. Which decisions currently made by employers or unelected officials should be brought under direct democratic control?

Activity: who decides?

Choose one sector—energy, healthcare, housing, food distribution or transport. Make two columns. In the first, list who currently makes the main decisions and the pressures influencing them. In the second, sketch how workers, service users and communities could make those decisions under democratic planning.

Consider what information they would need, which decisions could be local and which would require regional, national or international coordination.