When Marxists talk about revolution, what do they mean, and what does it look like? For Marxists, Revolution and revolutionary spirit are key parts of their very being. The desire to start the global revolution and end capitalism is what drives Marxists. But again, we have to examine what revolution is, and how it is used by different classes.
As you probably already know, revolutions aren’t only a concept within Communism. The entire foundation of capitalism was in revolt against the feudal system previously in place. These bourgeois revolutions, as they are called, were integral to the creation of the system of capitalism, and that’s actually not a bad thing. The system prior to Capitalism, feudalism, is extremely oppressive towards the working class. Think about the difference between today and Medieval Europe. While we have it bad right now, it’s true that, if not for the bourgeois revolutions, many of us would still be peasants working on a lord’s estate.
Real life historical examples of bourgeois revolutions would be the American and French revolutions, which brought two Democracies… kind of. The issue with Bourgeois revolutions is that they are done to place the bourgeois at the head of society. These revolutions aren’t done in the name of the working class, they’re done in the name of capital and the owners of said capital. The French republic devolved into an imperial state led by Napoleon, an emperor, and the American republic is now the home base for the International Bourgeoisie, a section we covered in our guide to the bourgeoisie.
It’s in the interests of the bourgeoisie to keep their class as small as possible, since its power comes from the group’s relative owning power to the working class. The mere act of owning workplaces gives the bourgeoisie an advantage above the working class, and it would be unserious to think that they would willingly give up this advantage. That’s why the working class has to use the same tools that the bourgeoisie used during their revolutions to gain the power they need to actually make the world a better place. The working class needs a revolution.
But what is a working class, or proletarian, revolution? Well, we can look at proletarian uprisings and examine their common points. Lets take, for example, The Russian Revolution, where the Bolsheviks took control of Russia and established the Soviet Union. What set this Revolution apart from other, failed revolutions is that there was, at the time of the real movement, no class collaboration. The Proletariat of the Russian state was able to rise up and take power from the new and weak Russian Bourgeoisie.
This revolution was done through two things, anti-electoralism and organic centralism, two key points of proletarian revolutions. To define these terms, Anti-electoralism is the avoidance of participation in the government of electoral democracies in favor of revolutionary activity. Organic Centralism is the avoidance of bourgeois democratic processes in favor of a political system where the party has control of the government. That party follows a traditional, orthodox Marxist path, lined by doctrinal research and studies to evaluate the current situation and affect real world policy. While there were complications with the Soviet Union, the early stages were explicitly proletarian.
We should talk about the goals of the communist revolution. The objectives of a communist are twofold, the establishment of a global society led by the working class, as well as the conversion of the entire world into the working class. This would mean that, in the final society of communism, everyone would be in the working class, and no one person would be able to own the means of production privately again. This effort requires the shift from the commodity form to a communist production form, something we discussed in an earlier episode.
The obvious answer to the “how” question would be a global communist party that can coordinate, educate, and support the working class in its revolution. A single country’s communist or socialist party misses the point entirely, since the working class has no need for nationalism, as again, nationalism is a tool of the bourgeoisie. Marx speaks of the real movement being that which seeks to abolish the current state of things, meaning that we as Marxists should be focused on abolishing all forms of capitalism. Marx views this movement as a natural progression, through feudalism, capitalism, and finally ending in communism. We should be focusing on a global movement, one that protects every worker.