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Western Political Thought

Notes 3. Election of judges.
4. Universal suffrage, exercised freely and frequently.
The Commune was regarded as a working, and not a parliamentary, body exercising legislative
and executive power simultaneously. It would break down the power of the modern state, as
people would be organized on the basis of a decentralized federal system, with dissemination of
power at the broadest and largest levels. Its real strength lay in the fact that it represented the
working class, and was “the product of the struggle of the producing against the appropriating
class, the political form at last discovered under which to work out the economic emancipation of
labour”. Subsequently, in the 1891 edition of the Civil War in France, Engels eulogized the Commune
as the prototype of the dictatorship of the proletariat. This was one of the examples of the different
world-views of Marx and Engels.

The Critique of the Gotha Programme
The Anarchists were critical of Marx for retaining the state after the proletarian revolution, for it would
amount to replacing the old despotic rule with a new one. They regarded the Marxist variant as
essentially authoritarian and highly centralized, stifling voluntarism and individual initiative. The
German Social Democrats, following Ferdinand Lassalle (1825-1864), articulated the possibilities of
using the existing state for the realization of socialism and for the enhancement of human freedom.
They favoured reforms, as opposed to revolution, and believed that the spread of suffrage would
enable the workers to play a decisive role in parliament and the institutions of the state. These demands
were incorporated in the Gotha Programme, which the Social Democratic Party adopted in 1875.
In response to both the Anarchists and the German Social Democrats, Marx wrote the Critique of
the Gotha Programme, in which he emphasized the transitional nature of the dictatorship of the
proletariat. He outlined the two-phased development to full Communism, which could be attained
through a revolutionary transformation of society. “Between the capitalist society and communist
society lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into another. There corresponds
to this also a political transition period in which the state can-be nothing but the revolutionary
dictatorship of the proletariat”.
According to Marx, the first (or the lower) phase would still be “stamped with the marks of the old
society from whose womb it emerges”. The principle of distribution with regard to consumer
goods would still be the principle of performance. In the second phase, production would be
abundant, and distribution would be on the basis of one’s needs. The principle of distribution
would be “from each according to his ability to each according to his needs”. This principle was
initially advanced by Proudhon. Lenin characterized these two phases as “socialism” and
“communism” respectively.
In the second phase, division of labour would be abolished and each individual would devote
himself to a single life task. In the Communist society as portrayed in the German Ideology, Marx
hoped that “each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes”, allowing a person to hunt
in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, “just as he
has a mind to without ever becoming a hunter, fisherman, shepherd, or critic”. Individual and
private ownership of property would cease to exist, and be replaced by social ownership. The anti-
thesis between mental and physical labour would be abolished, for labour would become not only
a means of life, but also a prime want of life. He contrasted the higher form of Communism with
Primitive or crude Communism, the first stage in the process of historical materialism. Primitive
Communism was signified by the necessity of all to labour, a levelling down of all individual
talents, and communal ownership of women, essentially indicating a negation of the human
personality. All these features would be absent in the final Communist society.
Marx did not specify the mechanisms of change from stage I to stage II in the post-revolutionary
phase of human history, leading to serious doubts as to how stage I would develop into stage II,

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