Marxist Political Theory, Diversity of Tactics, and the Doctrine of the Long Civil War

ABSTRACT

In The Communist Manifesto (1848), Marx and Engels “openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions.” However, by 1872, Marx suggested that in some countries it was possible for workers to “achieve their aims by peaceful means.” Since that time, Marxist political theorists have debated whether a transition to socialism can be achieved by parliamentary means alone or whether the transition to socialism requires the use of illegal or even violent tactics. This paper argues that with the resurgence of a socialist movement in the US, the question of tactics is once again an open debate. For this reason, it is useful to revisit the tactical debates of the Second International, because they are directly relevant to contemporary discussions of socialist strategy and tactics in the US, where tactical positions already run the gamut from parliamentarism to armed self-defense.

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, “Manifesto of the Communist Party [1848],” Marx-Engels Collected Works, Vol. 6 (Marx and Engels 1845–1848) (London, UK: Lawrence & Wishart, 1976), p. 504. See, August H. Nimtz, Jr., Marx and Engels: Their Contribution to the Democratic Breakthrough (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2000).

² Eduard Bernstein, Evolutionary Socialism (New York, NY: Schocken Books, 1961 [1899]), p. 166. See, Manfred B. Steger, The Quest for Evolutionary Socialism: Eduard Bernstein and Social Democracy (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997).

³ See, Jukka Gronow, On the Formation of Marxism: Karl Kautsky’s Theory of Capitalism, the Marxism of the Second International, and Karl Marx’s Critique of Political Economy (Leiden, NL: Brill, 2016).

⁴ Rosa Luxemburg, The Russian Revolution (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1961 [1918]), p. 71. See, Eric D. Weitz, “Rosa Luxemburg Belongs to Us! German Communism and the Luxemburg Legacy,” Central European History 27:1 (1994), pp. 27–64 for a critical analysis of Luxemburg’s theory of democracy.

⁵ Vladimir I. Lenin, “Two Tactics of Social Democracy in the Democratic Revolution [June-July 1905],” Collected Works, Volume 9 (Moscow, RU: Progress Publishers, 1962), p. 23. See, also, August H. Nimtz, Lenin’s Electoral Strategy from 1907 to the October Revolution of 1917: The Ballot, the Streets – or Both (New York, US: Palgrave MacMillan, 2014).

⁶ Marx and Engels, “Manifesto of the Communist Party,” p. 519.

⁷ Karl Marx, “On the Hague Congress [A Correspondent’s Report on a Speech Made at a Meeting in Amsterdam on September 8],” Marx-Engels Collected Works, Vol. 23 (Marx and Engels 1871–1874) (London, UK: Lawrence & Wishart, 1988), p. 254. What is generally omitted from this passage is that Marx continues: “That being true we must also admit that in most countries on the Continent, it is force that must be the lever of our revolutions; it is force which will have to be resorted to for a time in order to establish the rule of the workers.”

⁸ Tom Bottomore (ed.), A Dictionary of Marxist Thought (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983), p. 514 concurs that “the question of whether extensive violence would have to be used to effect a socialist transformation is a perennial one … and has long been one of the principle issues dividing that tradition.”

⁹ Clyde W. Barrow, “Legal and Illegal Tactics in Marxist Political Theory,” in Paul O’Connell and Umut Ozsu (eds), Elgar Handbook on Law and Marxism (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing, Inc, 2020).

¹⁰ See, https://diversityoftactics.org/ for an introduction to the concept of diversity of tactics. See, also, Peter Gelderloos, How Nonviolence Protects the State (Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2007); Peter Gelderloos, The Failure of Nonviolence: From the Arab Spring to Occupy (Seattle, WA: Left Bank Books, 2013).

¹¹ Ozawa Bineshi, “People’s Movement vs ‘Some Peoples’ Movement? Tactical Diversity in Successful Social Movements,” Vancouver Media Co-Op (January 14, 2013), available online at: http://vancouver.mediacoop.ca/blog/bineshii/15604.

¹² Contemporary social movement activists often identify the first statement of diversity of tactics with Malcolm X’s 1964 speech on “The Black Revolution,” where he called for solidarity between organizations practicing armed resistance against racism and organizations committed to nonviolent action (for example, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee or SNCC). Malcolm X argued that: “Our people have made the mistake of confusing the methods with the objectives. As long as we agree on objectives, we should never fall out with each other just because we believe in different methods or tactics or strategy to reach a common goal,” see, George Breitman (ed.), Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements (New York, NY: Grove Press, 1965), pp. 46–49. In the same year, Howard Zinn, who was a member of SNCC’s Board of Advisers, echoed Malcolm’s view in his influential essay on “The Limits of Nonviolence,” Freedomways (Winter 1964), available online at: https://www.crmvet.org/info/nv_zinn.htm. Howard Zinn, Disobedience and Democracy: Nine Fallacies on Law and Order (New York, NY: Random House, 1968) is perhaps the first effort to formalize the concept of diversity of tactics, and to rebut the arguments of legalists, parliamentarists, and proponents of nonviolent direct action.

¹³ Daniel Gaido, “’The American Worker’ and the Theory of Permanent Revolution: Karl Kautsky on Werner Sombart’s Why is There No Socialism in the United States?” Historical Materialism 11:4 (2000), pp. 79–123. For the most extensive analysis and exploration of this concept, see, Richard B. Day and Daniel Gaido (ed.), Witness to Permanent Revolution: The Documentary Record (Leiden, NL: Brill, 2009).

¹⁴ Greg Albo, Sam Gindin, and Leo Panitch, In and Out of Crisis: The Global Financial Meltdown and Left Alternatives (Oakland, CA: Specter PM Press, 2010).

¹⁵ Frank Newport, “Americans’ View of Socialism, Capitalism Are Little Changed,” Gallup (May 6, 2016), available online at: https://news.gallup.com/poll/191354/americans-views-socialism-capitalism-little-changed.aspx.

¹⁶ Frank Newport, “Democrats More Positive About Socialism Than Capitalism,” Gallup (August 13, 2018), available online at: https://news.gallup.com/poll/240725/democrats-positive-socialism-capitalism.aspx.

¹⁷ Andrew Stuttaford, “Better Dead than Read,” Wall Street Journal 7 (July 2018), p. C12.

¹⁸ Daniel Henninger, “Socialism? Yes, Be Afraid,” Wall Street Journal 14 (March 2019), p. A17.

¹⁹ Norman Thomas ran for US President six times consecutively as the nominee of the Socialist Party of America (1928–1948).

²⁰ See, https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/dsausa/pages/1848/attachments/original/1459724900/43_3_winter_2015.pdf?1459724900, p. 10; and https://democraticleft.dsausa.org/files/sites/6/2018/12/DL-Winter-2018.pdf, p. 7.

²¹ Victor Berger was a prominent member of the “right-wing” of the American Socialist Party, who was first elected to the US Congress in 1919. However, he was expelled from his seat by Congress after being convicted of violating the Espionage Act for his opposition to World War I. His conviction was overturned by the US Supreme Court in 1921. See, Sally M. Miller, Victor Berger and the Promise of Constructive Socialism, 1910–1920 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1973).

²² DSA, “Who We Are & What We Do,” available online at: https://www.dsausa.org.

²³ Joseph M. Schwartz, “A History of Democratic Socialists of America, 1971–2017,” available online at: https://www.dsausa.org/about-us/history.

²⁴ Cleve R. Wootson, Jr., “A Protest Movement Shut Down an ICE Facility in Portland – And is Spreading to Other Cities,” The Washington Post (June 25, 2018), available online at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2018/06/25/a-protest-movement-shut-down-an-ice-facility-in-portland-and-is-spreading-to-other-cities/.

²⁵ See, https://workingfamilies.org/.

²⁶ Keila Torres Ocasio, “Former State Sen. Gomes Reclaims Senate Seat,” available online at: https://www.ctpost.com/local/article/Former-state-Sen-Gomes-reclaims-Senate-seat-6099859.php.

²⁷ Associated Press, “Working Families Party Goes Local to Broaden Reach,” (November 19, 2015), available online at: https://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20151120/POLITICS/151129991/new-york-s-working-families-party-goes-local-to-broaden-reach.

²⁸ Alexander Burns and Maggie Haberman, “Working Families Party Endorses Bernie Sanders for President,” The New York Times (December 8, 2015), available online at: https://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/12/08/working-families-party-endorses-bernie-sanders-for-president/.

²⁹ Black Socialists of America #@BlackSocialists.US available online at: https://blacksocialists.us/about. The BSA’s main recommended reading is Frederick Engels, The Principles of Communism (1847), the original first draft of what became The Communist Manifesto (1848), available online at: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm.

³⁰ “Who We Are,” available online at: https://blacksocialists.us/about.

³¹ See, https://blacksocialists.us/dual-power-map.

³² Conor Friedersdorf, “How to Distinguish Between Antifa, White Supremacists, and Black Lives Matter,” The Atlantic (August 31, 2017), available online at: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/08/drawing-distinctions-antifa-the-alt-right-and-black-lives-matter/538320/.

³³ Ibid.

³⁴ Ibid.

³⁵ John Eligon, “One Slogan, Many Methods: Black Lives Matter Enters Politics,” The New York Times, (November 19, 2015), available online at: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/19/us/one-slogan-many-methods-black-lives-matter-enters-politics.html; Molly McKitterick, “Frustration Lies Behind ‘Black Lives Matter’,” VOA News, (August 12, 2015), available online at: https://www.voanews.com/usa/frustration-lies-behind-black-lives-matter.

³⁶ See, https://blacklivesmatter.com/about/. See, for example, Marc Lamont Hill and Todd Brewster, Nobody: Casualties of America’s War on the Vulnerable, from Ferguson to Flint and Beyond (New York, NY: Atria Books, 2017).

³⁷ DeRay Mckesson, On the Other Side of Freedom: The Case for Hope (New York, NY: Penguin Books, 2019).

³⁸ See, https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/womens-march-protesters-call-end-family-separation-capitol/story?id=56240419.

³⁹ See, https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/04/politics/kavanaugh-protests-us-capitol/index.html. Similarly, the September 1, 2019, Straight Pride Parade in Boston, Massachusetts drew two hundred supporters and six hundred counter-protestors. According to news reports, “some protestors reportedly turned their anger toward the police toward the end of the rally, prompting scuffles, arrests, and the use of pepper spray.” Thirty-six counter-protestors were arrested and charged with disorderly conduct, unlawful possession of a dangerous weapon, and assaulting officers,” see, Josie Harvey, “The Boston Straight Pride Parade Actually Happened and People Were Not Happy,” available online at: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/the-boston-straight-pride-parade-actually-happened-and-people-were-not-happy/ar-AAGGc06.

⁴⁰ Mark Bray, Antifa: The Antifascist Handbook (Brooklyn, NY: Melville House Publishing, 2017), p. xv.

⁴¹ Ibid.

⁴² Ibid., xvi.

⁴³ Ibid., 169.

⁴⁴ Ibid.

⁴⁵ Shane Burley, “Portland Anti-Fascist Coalition Show Us How We Can Defeat the Far Right,” Truthout (August 20, 2019), available online at: https://truthout.org/articles/portland-anti-fascist-coalition-shows-us-how-we-can-defeat-the-far-right/; “UC Berkeley cancels ‘alt-right’ speaker Milo Yiannopoulos as thousands protest,” The Guardian, (February 2, 2017), available online at: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/feb/01/milo-yiannopoulos-uc-berkeley-event-cancelled.

⁴⁶ Erin Goudreau, “Thank Your Local Antifa,” Montana Kaiman (September 4, 2017), available online at: http://www.montanakaimin.com/opinion/thank-your-local-antifa/article_b8f48910-9193-11e7-9c9f-a38a1242910a.html.

⁴⁷ Levi Van Sant, “A Redneck Revolt? Radical Responses to Trumpism in the Rural US,” Open Democracy (April 16, 2018), available at: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/redneck-revolt-radical-responses-to-trumpism-in-rural-us/.

⁴⁸ Kim Kelly, “’If Others Have Rifles, We’ll Have Rifles’: Why US Leftist Groups are Taking Up Arms,” The Guardian (July 22, 2019), available online at: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jul/22/if-others-have-rifles-well-have-rifles-why-leftist-groups-are-taking-up-arms; Maria Aurelio, “Showdown in Portland: The Cops Side with the Fascists (As Usual),” Left Voice (August 19, 2019), available online at: https://www.leftvoice.org/showdown-in-portland-the-cops-side-with-the-fascists-as-usual.

⁴⁹ See, https://www.redneckrevolt.org/contact.

⁵⁰ See, https://www.redneckrevolt.org/about.

⁵¹ Ibid.

⁵² Ibid.

⁵³ Ibid.

⁵⁴ Ibid.

⁵⁵ See, https://www.redneckrevolt.org/principles; See, also, Jules Bentley, “Arming the Left,” Antigravity Magazine (November 2018), pp. 1–10.

⁵⁶ See, https://socialistra.org/chapters/.

⁵⁷ See, https://www.socialistra.org/about.

⁵⁸ Ibid.

⁵⁹ See, https://socialistra.org/chapters/.

⁶⁰ See, https://www.socialistra.org/about.

⁶¹ Ibid.

⁶² See, https://www.socialistra.org/about. The SRA’s introductory reading list consists of Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto; Bhaskar Sunkara, The ABC’s of Socialism (London, UK: Verso, 2016); and Rudolf Rocker, Anarcho-Syndicalism: Theory and Practice (Martin Secker and Warburg, Ltd., 1938).

⁶³ Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, “Address to the Central Authority of the League,” Marx-Engels Collected Works, Vol. 10 (Marx-Engels 1849–1851) (London, UK: Lawrence and Wishart, 1978), pp. 277–87.

⁶⁴ Ibid., 284.

⁶⁵ Ibid.

⁶⁶ Marx and Engels articulate a socialist policy agenda in their ten-point minimum program, which included a heavily graduated or progressive income tax, abolition of the right of inheritance, abolition of child labor, free public schools for all children, the creation of a national bank to direct monetary policy and capital investment, the nationalization of key transportation and communications industries, such as railroads and the postal service, and public investment in new state and cooperative enterprises to facilitate full employment, see, Marx and Engels, “Manifesto of the Communist Party,” p. 505. These demands were soon expanded to include universal male suffrage (at age twenty-one), salaries for members of Parliament so that workers could serve in office, universal arming of the people, free legal services, curtailment of the right of inheritance, the abolition of consumption taxes, nationalization of all roads, railway, and passenger steamship lines, and the complete separation of Church and state in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, “Demands of the Communist Party in Germany,” Marx-Engels Collected Works, Vol. 7 (Marx and Engels 1848), pp. 3–7. The Dictatorship of the Proletariat, would later build on these demands to argue that socialism and democracy are not distinguished by the one being the means and the other the end, but rather “both are means to the same end,” which is “the abolition of every kind of exploitation and oppression, be it directed against a class, a party, a sex, or a race (pp. 5, 4).”

⁶⁷ While opposing opportunism (that is, compromising with the bourgeois democratic party), Marx also emphasized that the workers’ party should not engage in political adventurism by acting prematurely and without the active support of the masses. Thus, he reiterated a principle established in The Communist Manifesto that communists were opposed to plots and conspiracies, which aside from always failing, provide a pretext for government authorities to arrest workers and to suppress their organizations.

⁶⁸ Marx and Engels, “Address to the Central Authority of the League,” p. 286.

⁶⁹ Ibid.

⁷⁰ Ibid., 283.

⁷¹ Ibid.

⁷² This exact quote is inscribed on a sticker sold by the Socialist Rifle Association.

⁷³ “Marx and Engels, “Address to the Central Authority of the League,” p. 283.”

⁷⁴ Marx and Engels, “Address to the Central Authority of the League,” p. 283. Mao Tse-tung, “Problems of War and Strategy (November 1938),” Selected Works, Vol. 2 (Peking, CN: Foreign Languages Press, 1965), p. 225, similarly argues that “political power grows out of the barrel of a gun. … According to the Marxist theory of the state, the army is the chief component of state power. Whoever wants to seize and retain state power must have a strong army.”

⁷⁵ The Invisible Committee,“The Coming Insurrection,” pp. 84–85, available online at: http://tarnac9.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/thecominsur_booklet.pdf.

⁷⁶ Karl Marx, “Notes on Bakunin’s Book Statehood and Anarchy (April 1874-January 1875),” Marx-Engels Collected Works, Vol. 24 (Marx and Engels 1874–1883), p. 517.

⁷⁷ Lars T. Lih, “Democratic Revolution in Permanenz,” Science & Society 76:4 (2012), pp. 433–62.

⁷⁸ Marx and Engels, “Address to the Central Authority of the League,” p. 283. Lenin, “Two Tactics of Social-Democracy in the Democratic Revolution,” pp. 23–24, likewise recognized that a bourgeois democratic revolution “will not weaken but strengthen the domination of the bourgeoisie which at a certain juncture will inevitably go to any length to take away from the Russian proletariat as many of the gains of the revolutionary period as possible.”

⁷⁹ Karl Marx, “33 Marx to Henry Mayers Hyndman in London [London December 8, 1880]” Marx-Engels Collected Works, Vol. 46 (Marx and Engels 1880–1883), p. 49. Georges Sorel, Reflections on Violence (New York, NY: Macmillan, 1972 [1906]), p. 153, makes a similar point: “The history of England affords more than one example of a Government giving way when numerous demonstrations against its proposals took place, even though it was strong enough to repel by force any attack on existing institutions. It seems to be an admitted principle of Parliamentary Government that the majority cannot persist in pursuing schemes which give rise to popular demonstrations of too serious a kind.”

⁸⁰ Herbert H. Haines, Black Radicals and the Civil Rights Mainstream, 1954–1970 (Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 1988), pp. 1–10. Similarly, Francis Fox Piven, Challenging Authority: How Ordinary People Change America (Rowman & Littlefield, 2006), pp. 23-25.

⁸¹ Ibid.

⁸² Robert F. Williams, Negros with Guns (NY: Marzani & Munsell, 1962); Robin D.G. Kelly, Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1990); Charles M. Payne, I’ve Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1995); David S. Cecelski and Timothy B. Tyson (eds), Democracy Betrayed: The Wilmington Race Riot of 1898 and Its Legacy (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1998); Akinyele Omowale Umoja, We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Movement (New York, NY: New York University Press, 2013).

⁸³ Zinn, Disobedience and Democracy, p. 37.

⁸⁴ Marx, “On the Hague Congress,” p. 254. What has also been omitted by those who quote this passage is that Marx went on to state: “That being true we must also admit that in most countries on the Continent, it is force that must be the lever of our revolutions; it is force which will have to be resorted to for a time in order to establish the rule of the workers.”

⁸⁵ See, Peter Gay, The Dilemma of Democratic Socialism: Eduard Bernstein’s Challenge to Marx (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1952), p. 7, who argues that the basic dilemma of Bernstein’s political theory is that “a democratic Socialist movement that remains faithful to its principles may never achieve power.” However, Gay went on to argue incorrectly that these “apprehensions were in large measure unfounded” (Ibid., 8).

⁸⁶ Bernstein, Evolutionary Socialism, p. 145. Elsewhere, Bernstein dismisses the right of revolution as a “purely speculative right” (Ibid., 197) and a “meaningless phrase” (Ibid., 218).

⁸⁷ Bernstein, Evolutionary Socialism, pp. xxiv-xxviii, 25, 205. Pierre Birnbaum, “Universal Suffrage, the Vanguard Party, and Mobilization in Marxism,” Government & Opposition 20:1 (1985), pp. 56–58 correctly points out that Engels’ well-known passage from the 1895 Introduction, along with Marx’s 1872 speech at The Hague, are the textual references “from which all ‘revisionist’ interpretations of Marxism are derived.” Similarly, Gronow, On the Formation of Marxism, pp. 159–60.

⁸⁸ Frederick Engels, “Introduction to Karl Marx,s The Class Struggles in France, 1848–1850 (1895),” in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Vol. 27 (London, UK: Lawrence and Wishart, 1990), p. 510.

⁸⁹ Ibid., 515–16.

⁹⁰ Ibid, 516.

⁹¹ Ibid., 517.

⁹² Ibid., 520.

⁹³ Ibid., 517.

⁹⁴ Ibid., 518–19.

⁹⁵ Georges Sorel, Reflections on Violence, p. 54. For example, Bernstein, Evolutionary Socialism, p. 101, states that “one can think of this conquest [of political power] in various ways: by the path of parliamentary struggle, turning the right to vote to good account, or by the path of force by means of a revolution.”

⁹⁶ Engels, “Introduction to Karl Marx,s The Class Struggles in France, 1848–1850 (1895),” p. 521.

⁹⁷ Ibid., 522.

⁹⁸ Frederick Engels, “The Anti-Socialist Law in Germany. – The Situation in Russia (March 30, 1879),” Marx-Engels Collected Works, Vol. 24, p. 251.

⁹⁹ Germany introduced universal suffrage in 1866 and by 1877 the Marxist led Social Democratic Party was winning nearly a half million votes. In 1878, the German Reichstag passed the Anti-Socialist Law, which was extended four times through 1890. The legislation did not outlaw the Social Democratic Party directly, but it was designed to cripple the organization by banning any group or meeting that spread social democratic principles, by outlawing trade unions, and by closing of 45 newspapers. The measures were evaded by having socialist candidates run as independents, by relocating party publications outside of Germany, and by distributing verbatim publications of Reichstag speeches, which were privileged speech with regard to censorship. Despite these restrictions, the party’s vote grew to 1.4 million in 1890, see, Vernon L. Lidtke, The Outlawed Party: Social Democracy in Germany, 1878–1890 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1966).

¹⁰⁰ Engels, “Introduction to Karl Marx,s The Class Struggles in France, 1848–1850 (1895),” p. 515.

¹⁰¹ Ibid., 519.

¹⁰² Georges Sorel, Reflections on Violence, p. 75.

¹⁰³ H. Shurer, “The Russian Revolution of 1905 and the Origins of German Communism,” The Slavonic and East European Review 39:93 (1961), pp. 459–60.

¹⁰⁴ Ibid.

¹⁰⁵ Engels, “Introduction to Karl Marx,s The Class Struggles in France, 1848–1850 (1895),” pp. 517–18.

¹⁰⁶ Cf. Carl von Clausewitz, On War, Michael Howard and Peter Paret (eds), (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976), Book 8.B., p. 605.

¹⁰⁷ Engels, “Introduction to Karl Marx’s The Class Struggles in France, 1848–1850 (1895),” p. 517–18.

¹⁰⁸ Ibid.

¹⁰⁹ Ibid.

¹¹⁰ Ibid., 523.

¹¹¹ Ibid., 179–81.

¹¹² Karl Marx, “The Civil War in France. Address of the General Council of the International Workingmen’s Association,” Marx-Engels Collected Works, Vol. 22 (Marx-Engels 1870–1871) (London, UK: Lawrence and Wishart, 1986), p. 334.

¹¹³ Frederick Engels, “Introduction Karl Marx’s The Civil War in France (1891),” Vol. 27 (Marx-Engels 1870–1871) (London, UK: Lawrence and Wishart, 1990), p. 181.

¹¹⁴ Ibid.

¹¹⁵ Marx, “The Civil War in France. Address of the General Council of the International Workingmen’s Association,” p. 334.

¹¹⁶ Karl Marx, “Second Draft of The Civil War in France,” Marx-Engels Collected Works, Vol. 22, p. 533.

¹¹⁷ Engels, “Introduction Karl Marx’s The Civil War in France (1891),” p. 189.

¹¹⁸ Ibid.

¹¹⁹ Ibid.

¹²⁰ Ibid., 190.

¹²¹ Engels, “Introduction to Karl Marx’s The Civil War in France (1895),” Marx-Engels Collected Works, Vol. 27, p. 512.

¹²² This idea is consistent with Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith (New York, NY: International Publishers, 1971), pp. 110, 229–35, 238–39, who argues that the class war had shifted from a tactical war of manoeuvre to a long-term strategic war of position.

¹²³ Karl Kautsky, The Social Revolution (Chicago, IL: Charles H. Kerr, 1910 [1902]), p. 6.

¹²⁴ Ibid.

¹²⁵ Ibid., 87–88.

¹²⁶ Ibid., 8.

¹²⁷ This concept is similar to the more contemporary social structure of accumulation theory (SSAT) and regulation theory (RT). For a general overview, see, David M. Kotz, “A Comparative Analysis of the Theory of Regulation and the Social Structure of Accumulation Theory,” Science & Society 54:1 (1990), pp. 5–28.

¹²⁸ For example, see G. William Domhoff, The Power Elite and the State: How Policy is Made in America (New York, NY: Aldine de Gruyter, 1990); Karl Kautsky, The Class Struggle, (trans.) by William E. Bohn (New York, NY: W.W. Norton and Co., Inc., 1971), p. 91, argues that “the exploited classes should not overrate the social reforms, and should not imagine that through them the existing conditions can be rendered satisfactory … Nine-tenths of the proposed reforms are not only useless, but positively injurious to the exploited classes.”

¹²⁹ Karl Kautsky, The Social Revolution (Chicago, IL: Charles H. Kerr, 1910 [1902]), pp. 8–9.

¹³⁰ Ibid., 65.

¹³¹ Ibid., 66–67.

¹³² Ibid., 30.

¹³³ Ibid.

¹³⁴ Ibid.

¹³⁵ Ibid., 67.

¹³⁶ Ibid.

¹³⁷ Ibid., 7.

¹³⁸ Sylvia Pankhurst and Emmeline Pankhurst, The Suffragette: The History of the Women’s Militant Suffrage Movement (New York, NY: Sturgis and Walton Co., 1911); Frank Meeres, Suffragettes: How Britain’s Women Fought and Died for the Right to Vote (The Hill, UK: Amberley Publishing, 2009). Similarly, on the transition from nonviolent moral suasion to the tactical use of violence among Northern black abolitionists in the United States, see, Kellie Carter Jackson, Force and Freedom: Black Abolitionists and the Politics of Violence (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019).

¹³⁹ Kautsky, The Social Revolution, p. 35.

¹⁴⁰ Ibid., 36–37.

¹⁴¹ Ibid., 86–87.

¹⁴² Ibid., 69. Also, see, Gronow, On the Formation of Marxism.

¹⁴³ See, Patricia Cayo Sexton, The War On Labor and the Left: Understanding America’s Unique Conservatism (New York, NY: Routledge, 1991). For example, Richard W. Hurd, Assault on Workers’ Rights (Washington, DC: AFL-CIO, 1994) documents “employers’ blatant contempt for the rights of workers” and employers’ “obsession with retaining unilateral and total authority over their employees,” available online at: https://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/laborunions/34/; Julius G. Getman, “Boeing, the IAM, and the NLRB: Why US Labor Law is Failing,” Minnesota Law Review 315 (2014), p. 1652 documents employers successful political efforts to roll back the rights of organized labor and to dismantle “the last remnants of the New Deal legislation that created the NLRB),” available online at: https://scholarship.law.umn.edu/mlr/315.

¹⁴⁴ Kautsky, The Social Revolution, p. 80.

¹⁴⁵ Ibid. p. 80.

¹⁴⁶ Ibid., 83. In the same section, Kautsky states that the pursuit of “social peace inside of the capitalist system is a Utopia.”

¹⁴⁷ Ibid., 80–81.

¹⁴⁸ Ibid.

¹⁴⁹ Ibid., 81–82.

¹⁵⁰ Ibid., 84.

¹⁵¹ Stephen Eric Bronner, “Karl Kautsky and the Twilight of Orthodoxy,” Political Theory 10:4 (1982), pp. 580–605.

¹⁵² Ibid., 90. Kautsky emphasizes that “I am not using the idea of a general strike in the sense that the anarchists and the French trade unionists use the word” (Ibid.).

¹⁵³ Ibid.

¹⁵⁴ Ibid., 95.

¹⁵⁵ Kautsky’s claim presages similar arguments by Jurgen Habermas, Legitimation Crisis (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1975) and Nicos Poulantzas, Political Power and Social Classes (London, UK: Verso, 1978). See, also, James O’Connor, The Meaning of Crisis: A Theoretical Introduction (New York, NY: Basil Blackwell, 1987).

¹⁵⁶ See, Jürgen Habermas, Legitimation Crisis (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1975). Similarly, Sorel, Reflections on Violence, who is convinced that the decadence of the middles classes will necessitate a violent overthrow of capitalism and its governing class.

¹⁵⁷ Kautsky, The Social Revolution, pp. 90–91.

¹⁵⁸ Ibid., 160, 173, 161–62.

¹⁵⁹ Kautsky, Dictatorship of the Proletariat, p. 10.

¹⁶⁰ Gronow, On the Formation of Marxism, p. 159.

¹⁶¹ Kautsky, Dictatorship of the Proletariat, p. 10.

¹⁶² Ibid.

¹⁶³ Ibid., 8.

¹⁶⁴ Sorel, Reflections on Violence, p. 157.

¹⁶⁵ Ibid., Chap. IV on “The Proletarian Strike” and Chap. V on “The Political General Strike.”

¹⁶⁶ Rodney L. Mott, “The Political Theory of Syndicalism,” Political Science Quarterly 37:1 (1922), pp. 25–40; Jack J. Roth, “Revolution and Morale in Modern French Thought: Sorel and the Sorelians,” French Historical Studies 3:2 (1963), pp. 205–23; David Beetham, “Sorel and the Left,” Government and Opposition 4:3 (1969), pp. 308–23.

¹⁶⁷ Sorel, Reflections on Violence, p. 171.

¹⁶⁸ Ibid.

¹⁶⁹ Ibid., 76.

¹⁷⁰ Ibid., 171. In the US, see, William D. Haywood, The General Strike (Chicago, IL: I.W.W. Publishing Bureau, 1911). For a review of this concept, see, Wilfrid Harris Crook, The General Strike (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Pres, 1931).

¹⁷¹ For historical examples, see, Janet L. Polasky, “A Revolution for Socialist Reforms: The Belgian General Strike for Universal Suffrage,” Journal of Contemporary History 27:3 (1992), pp. 449–66; Robert L. Friedheim and James N. Gregory, The Seattle General Strike (Seattle, MA: University of Washington Press, 2018); Carl Winslow, Seattle General Strike: The Forgotten History of Labor’s Most Spectacular Revolt (London, UK: Verso, 2019); Peter Taaffe, 1926 General Strike: Workers Taste Power (London, UK: Socialist Books, 2006); Scott Nearing and Ellen Wilkinson, The British General Strike: An Economic Interpretation of Its Background and Its Significance (New York, NY: Vanguard Books, 1927); Sidney Fine, Sit-Down: The General Motors Strike of 1936–37 (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1969).

¹⁷² Sorel, Reflections on Violence, p. 171.

¹⁷³ Ibid. 71.

¹⁷⁴ Karl Marx, “Critique of the Gotha Program (May 1875),” Marx-Engels Collected Works, Vol. 24 (Marx and Engels 1874–1883) (London, UK: Lawrence and Wishart, 1989), p. 96. Perhaps not coincidentally, Bernstein, Evolutionary Socialism, p. 148 describes Lasalle as “much more logical than we are to-day” and cites him favorably for turning Marx against Marx (Ibid., 27).

¹⁷⁵ Kim Moody, On New Terrain: How Capital is Reshaping the Battleground of Class War (Chicago, IL: Haymarket Books, 2017).

¹⁷⁶ Rosa Luxemburg, The Accumulation of Capital (London, UK: Routledge and Kegan Paul, Ltd. 1951 [1913]).

¹⁷⁷ Ibid., 72.

¹⁷⁸ Rosa Luxemburg, The Mass Strike: The Political Party and the Trade Unions (New York, NY: Harper Torchbooks, 1971 [1906]), p. 11. Bronner, “Karl Kautsky and the Twilight of Orthdoxy,” p. 584 argues that “the failure of the 1848 revolution created a situation in which the bulk of the SPD [in Germany] was concerned with actualizing the political form of a bourgeois state. This constrained their vision and prevented the majority of the party from developing new tactics for extending democracy into civil society or recognizing new offensive forms of proletarian organization such as the mass strike and the soviet.”

¹⁷⁹ Luxemburg, The Mass Strike, p. 72, 17.

¹⁸⁰ Ibid., 29.

¹⁸¹ Ibid, 45.

¹⁸² Ibid., 51.

¹⁸³ Ibid., 66.

¹⁸⁴ Ibid., 70.

¹⁸⁵ Ibid., 45.

¹⁸⁶ Ibid., 72.

¹⁸⁷ Ibid., 72. Charles F. Eliot, “Proletarian Revolution and the Mass Strike,” Southwestern Social Science Quarterly 47:1 (1966), pp. 44–45, observes that Luxemburg blamed the failure of the 1892 Belgian general strike on the “exaggerated legalism” of the Belgian Labor Party and trade union leaders. Elsewhere, Luxemburg, The Mass Strike, p. 49, concludes that “in actual fact we see in Russia that almost every mass strike in the long run leads to an encounter with the armed guardians of the Czarist order, and therein the so-called political strikes exactly resemble the larger economic struggle. The revolution, however, is something other and something more than bloodshed.”

¹⁸⁸ Ralph Miliband, Parliamentary Socialism: A Study in the Politics of Labor (London, UK: Allen & Unwin, 1961); Colin Leys and Leo Panitch, The End of Parliamentary Socialism: From New Left to New Labor (London, UK: Verso, 1997); David Coates (ed.), Paving the Third Way: The Critique of Parliamentary Socialism (London, UK: Merlin, 2003).

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Clyde W. Barrow

Clyde W. Barrow is Chair & Professor of Political Science at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, who specializes in state theory and political economy. His most recent book is Toward a Critical Theory of States (SUNY, 2016).