Did Marx change his views after the events of the Commune?

[papaspace]

Did Marx change his views after the events of the Parisian Commune? If so, how?

papaspace

[bricolage]

I think it fundamentally affected his views on the state;

But the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes
If you look at the last chapter of my Eighteenth Brumaire you will find that I say that the next attempt of the French revolution will be no longer, as before, to transfer the bureaucratic-military machine from one hand to another, but to smash it, and this is essential for every real people's revolution on the Continent. And this is what our heroic Party comrades in Paris are attempting.Thus the Commune was conceived as a 'antagonism... against state power' or as he also put it 'a revolution against the state itself'. In this way I think the Commune resulted in Marx fully conceptualising revolution as a movement against state apparatus and for the subordination of state power. This is fundamentally opposed to later ideas of a 'workers state' that still (sadly) hold prominence amongst the 'left'.

[papaspace]

I think it fundamentally affected his views on the state;

...

Thus the Commune was conceived as a 'antagonism... against state power' or as he also put it 'a revolution against the state itself'. In this way I think the Commune resulted in Marx fully conceptualising revolution as a movement against state apparatus and for the subordination of state power. This is fundamentally opposed to later ideas of a 'workers state' that still (sadly) hold prominence amongst the 'left'.

But how did his view of the state CHANGE? I.e., what was it before that it was not any more?

Did he think that the working class COULD simply take over the existing state-machinery, for example, when writing the Communist Manifesto?

Please provide quotes/sources if possible.

[bricolage]

But how did his view of the state CHANGE? I.e., what was it before that it was not any more?

Did he think that the working class COULD simply take over the existing state-machinery, for example, when writing the Communist Manifesto?

Please provide quotes/sources if possible.
Well I supposed it changed in that he hadn't really articulated such views before hand, but no I don't any sources sorry. Most of my knowledge of the Commune is from studying it at University which didn't really focus on Marx except as a theorist of the Commune.

[coda]

some sources:

Marx's writing on Paris Commune

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/ch05.htm

Engles on Paris Commune
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/postscript.htm

[Hit The North]

Well I supposed it changed in that he hadn't really articulated such views before hand,

Except he claims he did in the 18th Brumaire, as you point out below, and this pre-dates the Commune.


Originally posted by bricolage
Thus the Commune was conceived as a 'antagonism... against state power' or as he also put it 'a revolution against the state itself'. In this way I think the Commune resulted in Marx fully conceptualising revolution as a movement against state apparatus and for the subordination of state power. This is fundamentally opposed to later ideas of a 'workers state' that still (sadly) hold prominence amongst the 'left'.
I think you need to work harder to prove all this from Marx's comments. The "bureaucratic-military machine" is a specific reference to the French bourgeois state, not all states. Meanwhile, even a more general claim that the proletariat must smash the existing bourgeois state cannot be read as a rejection of the possibility of a workers state.

EDIT: I suppose if the 'state' is only defined as a political apparatus which stands opposed to the people, then a workers state makes no sense as that can only emerge from the self-rule of the working people. Nevertheless, Marx draws a small sketch in The Civil War in France of how the workers organise themselves as a nation:


Originally written by Karl Marx
In a rough sketch of national organization, which the Commune had no time to develop, it states clearly that the Commune was to be the political form of even the smallest country hamlet, and that in the rural districts the standing army was to be replaced by a national militia, with an extremely short term of service. The rural communities of every district were to administer their common affairs by an assembly of delegates in the central town, and these district assemblies were again to send deputies to the National Delegation in Paris, each delegate to be at any time revocable and bound by the mandat imperatif (formal instructions) of his constituents. The few but important functions which would still remain for a central government were not to be suppressed, as has been intentionally misstated, but were to be discharged by Communal and thereafter responsible agents.

The unity of the nation was not to be broken, but, on the contrary, to be organized by Communal Constitution, and to become a reality by the destruction of the state power which claimed to be the embodiment of that unity independent of, and superior to, the nation itself, from which it was but a parasitic excresence.

While the merely repressive organs of the old governmental power were to be amputated, its legitimate functions were to be wrested from an authority usurping pre-eminence over society itself, and restored to the responsible agents of society. Instead of deciding once in three or six years which member of the ruling class was to misrepresent the people in Parliament, universal suffrage was to serve the people, constituted in Communes, as individual suffrage serves every other employer in the search for the workmen and managers in his business. And it is well-known that companies, like individuals, in matters of real business generally know how to put the right man in the right place, and, if they for once make a mistake, to redress it promptly. On the other hand, nothing could be more foreign to the spirit of the Commune than to supercede universal suffrage by hierarchical investiture. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/ch05.htm

[Jolly Red Giant]

Any Marxist worth his/her salt would take onboard the experiences of the class struggle and refine their outlook accordingly.

[Dave B]

some other quotes;


Marx to Engels 6th September 1870



"this is more necessary than ever, since the whole French Branch (of the international) escapes now to Paris, in order to do there all kinds of follies in the name of the international. They wish to bring down the Provisional government, to establish a Commune de Paris …….."


On Karl's support for the commune with caveats etc;


The Third Address, May, 1871




Yes, gentlemen, the Commune intended to abolish that class property which makes the labor of the many the wealth of the few. It aimed at the expropriation of the expropriators. It wanted to make individual property a truth by transforming the means of production, land, and capital, now chiefly the means of enslaving and exploiting labor, into mere instruments of free and associated labor. But this is communism, "impossible" communism!



The working class did not expect miracles from the Commune. They have no ready-made utopias to introduce par decret du peuple. They know that in order to work out their own emancipation, and along with it that higher form to which present society is irresistably tending by its own economical agencies, they will have to pass through long struggles, through a series of historic processes, transforming circumstances and men.



http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war- (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-)france/ch05.htm

And on a more direct criticism of the commune afterwards

Marx to Domela Nieuwenhuis, In The Hague, London, February 22,
1881



Perhaps you will point to the Paris Commune; but apart from the fact that this was merely the rising of a town under exceptional conditions, the majority of the Commune was in no sense socialist, nor could it be. With a small amount of sound common sense, however, they could have reached a compromise with Versailles useful to the whole mass of the people -- the only thing that could be reached at the time

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1881/letters/81_02_22.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1881/letters/81_02_22.htm)

[bricolage]

Except he claims he did in the 18th Brumaire, as you point out below, and this pre-dates the Commune.
Woops, that was a silly mistake. I have a document with various comments on the Commune and just assumed they were all written at the time (or in reference to the one above) about writings written at the time of, the Commune.


EDIT: I suppose if the 'state' is only defined as a political apparatus which stands opposed to the people, then a workers state makes no sense as that can only emerge from the self-rule of the working people.I think in the Civil War in France Marx displays his most critical views towards the state structure, a political apparatus that is both seperate from and opposed to workers seems quite accurate here. You are right that he gives the Commune as an example of how workers could organise themselves (I'm a bit confused as to why you refer to it as a nation though) and as such the Commune as 'a working, not a parliamentary body', structured along recallable delegates on an average workers wage (although the wages the Commune paid weren't really reflective of this) can be seen as 'the political form at last discovered'. However I'd also agree with Engels that the Commune 'ceased to be a state in the true sense of the term', distancing itself far enough from what is commonly understood to be a state and forging a new form of political organisation.

[Zanthorus]

I don't really think the Commune fundamentally affected anything in Marx's outlook. Most of the basic ideas like recallable delegates and the overthrow of the state beuracracy were present from his 1843 critique of Hegel. If anything, the Paris Commune was less 'libertarian' than Marx's initial vision. In the Hegel critique he has the delegates acting on the instructions of their electors, whereas as far as I can tell the Paris Commune remained a representative body.

[Hit The North]

Originally posted by bricolage
I'm a bit confused as to why you refer to it as a nation though

Because that's the term Marx used:

The unity of the nation was not to be broken, but, on the contrary, to be organized by Communal Constitution, and to become a reality by the destruction of the state power which claimed to be the embodiment of that unity independent of, and superior to, the nation itself, from which it was but a parasitic excresence.

[bricolage]

Because that's the term Marx used:
This is true but I think the quote you refer to is problematic as it was mainly a response to those who viewed the Commune as seeking independence from the rest of France and that it did not want to Communal revolution to extend beyond Paris. Whilst it of course serves a good purpose in stressing that communism in not the movement for self-governance or separation, in many others ways I think it is true that revolution seeks to splintering of the nation. To quote Howard Zinn, 'nations are not communities and never have been', they are a myriad of artifical bonds linking 'conquerors and conquered, masters and slaves, capitalists and workers, dominators and dominated in race and sex', the very essence of class collaboration and social peace embodied, the pacification of struggle. So I do not think workers should organise 'as a nation', rather that it be the movement above and beyond the confines of the nation itself, after all are we not internationalists?

[papaspace]

I don't really think the Commune fundamentally affected anything in Marx's outlook. Most of the basic ideas like recallable delegates and the overthrow of the state beuracracy were present from his 1843 critique of Hegel. If anything, the Paris Commune was less 'libertarian' than Marx's initial vision. In the Hegel critique he has the delegates acting on the instructions of their electors, whereas as far as I can tell the Paris Commune remained a representative body.

How can you explain, then, that beforehand he called upon the proletariat to seize the state and yet he praised the commune for aiming to abolish the state?