Why can't the proletariat take control of the bourgeios state?

[Apoi_Viitor]

? Why can't the proletariat use the bourgeios state (liberal democracy) to achieve its own ends?

[Revolutionair]

Because the bourgeois state is based on exploitation guarded by enforces. The proletariat as a whole can't use the bourgeois state cause there won't be any exploitation to feed the system.
The workers CAN use state power. But they cannot use the modern state. It is inherently capitalist. Maybe Engels can say it in a way it is easier to understand:

The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine, the state of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it proceeds to the taking over of the productive forces, the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The workers remain wage workers - proletarians. The capitalist relationship is not done away with. It is rather brought to a head.
- Friedrich Engels

[Impulse97]

Because, they'll do what ever it takes to keep the proletariat down?

I have high hopes for Democratic Socialism, but they won't get anywhere without a broader support base and class awareness.

[Rusty Shackleford]

you cant really vote in a real revolution.

the bourgeois state was built to serve the interests of the capitalists and capitalism as a whole. bourgeois democracy would degrade a workers government until it returned to a fully capitalist oriented government again.

what the working class must do is smash the bourgeois state and produce a workers state. one that works for the worker and advocates working class power and class interests.

im waiting for the second part to happen in venezuela. chavez can only go so far with bourgeois institutions. having to worry about elected political opposition only serves to stagnate and destroy revolutions.

[Luís Henrique]

? Why can't the proletariat use the bourgeios state (liberal democracy) to achieve its own ends?

"Liberal democracy" is not the "bourgeois State"; it is only one of the possible faces of the bourgeois State. A bourgeois State is not just its face, it is also its bowels - the Army, the police, the political system, the schools and universities, the courts, the bureaucracy, the whole machinery of the State. It is that that is unusable for the proletariat.

Luís Henrique

[Gorilla]

If you get elected to power in say the United States of America, which means both the presidency and supermajorities in both houses of Congress, and say you manage to immediately disentangle from Iraq and Afghanistan, you still become:

CEO of the drug war
proprietor of military bases all around the world
chief of the NSA wiretapping empire
head of all the USA embassies, which spread reaction and dirty tricks all over the world
lead administrator for corporate welfare


As long as you do those things you're pimping for capitalism, and you're required to do those things by law. Want to stop doing them? Realistically, you can't make major changes like that under the present US constitution - the courts will come down on you like a ton of bricks if nothing else. So either you unconstitutionally stop doing things you're supposed to do, or you scrap the constitution and proclaim a new one.

Either way, any road to socialism has to involve smashing the US constitution.

And by the way, you've pissed off thousands of DEA agents, military contractors, spies, corporate officers, etc. They're coming for you. Even if you want a peaceful road to socialism no way they're going to oblige. Nonviolent, constitutional means can be a part of attaining socialism. But things will get unconstitutional and violent sooner or later.

Compare: Chavez vs. Allende

[RATM-Eubie]

I think its simple as a whole the majority is not aware. The majority shares a false consciousness.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

The army will be hostile to you.
The bureaucracy will be hostile to you.
The media will be hostile to you.
The former foreign friends of your nation state will become hostile to you.

And perhaps most importantly:

Salvador Allende. His tragic death should be a reminder to us all of the dangers of trying to bring Socialism to fruition without dismantling the apparatus of the Capitalist state.

[chegitz guevara]

Because every attempt to do so has resulted in a coup d'etat against the workers and their violent suppression.

[graymouser]

1. The form of the bourgeois state protects private property. The actions of a revolutionary government will be illegal under bourgeois law, and you would simply have to do away with probably over 95% of the legal code.

2. In a revolutionary situation, fighting to win on the bourgeoisie's terms would waste momentum that needs to be used to sweep away the whole edifice of capitalist rule. You have to understand that in revolutions, timing is of the essence, and opportunities to act cannot be wasted. If the bourgeoisie can use the contest for elections to win important time and prepare a counterattack, they will.

3. During revolutions, the police and the officer corps of the army typically become breeding grounds of reaction. The revolution needs to disarm them and arm the workers, which means a conclusive defeat for the bourgeois state.

4. Once it's clear that the revolution is going to win, you're going to have to seize the banks, occupy the factories and close the ports. Think about it: in the US, they'd have more than two months for capital to flee the country, which in modern terms is enough time to leave the workers with only a smoldering wreckage of the means of production.

5. Most importantly, they won't let you win. There are a number of ways this could be forced; the most obvious is the Allende route, where a capital strike and a military coup d'etat simply did in the revolution. But there are other ways; for instance, there's every reason to assume that elections in the United States are rigged to a greater or lesser extent, and the bourgeois parties control the ballot box. They simply wouldn't allow a revolutionary socialist candidate to win the elections; or there are plenty of legal means (disqualification, banning the party, loyalty oaths etc) or extralegal means (assassination, military coup to prevent the inauguration, etc) to stop the accession of a revolutionary socialist government.

Nothing about revolution supports the idea, really.

[MarxSchmarx]

Lest anyone engender doubts about this in light of the theoretical arguments raised above, I think it is also instructive to look at what happened when leftists sought to graft the bourgeois state onto the project of socialism even when they had a "clean slate" (e.g., Russia after the civil war) in terms of devising a state.

What is most remarkable is how little the governing apparatus conjured up by even supposedly dedicated leftists that managed to take state power deviate from those of capitalist states. The corruption of the political class and bureaucracy has also been the primary driver of the restoration of capitalism the world over. I think these examples make a compelling case why the proletariat cannot rely on simply mimicking how the bourgeois state functions to allow socialism to work. The only place the jury is still plausibly out on this is Venezuela (and I remain somewhat pessimistic) - everywhere else this approach has not worked.

[Le Socialiste]

Well, let's look at how that has worked out so far:

Socialist, Communist, even Anarchist (whether or not they remain rooted in Anarchism is debatable) parties and organizations in Europe have been around since the 1800s; however, once those in the "mainstream" began indulging in parliamentary politics, their ideological line grew fuzzy. They were gradually assimilated into the capitalistic state and its support for some semblance of parliamentary democracy, thus co-opting those who argued for a Socialism that would gain power through elections and seats in government. It essentially turned them into proponents for a system that was capitalistic in nature, and would remain as such so long as the ruling capitalist classes recognized its usefulness in fooling the people into believing that elections and party seats were representative of true "democracy". Thus, the party/organization ideological line began to steadily deviate from its original statements of revolutionary action and liberation, proclaiming that its goals were the same - they'd merely discovered a "better" way of achieving their aims. We see the results of this today, especially in Europe. Socialistic parties are fairly widespread (from an American standpoint, at least), yet they by and large support the structural/governmental capitalistic system they once sought to overthrow. They've become opportunists, basically. Simply look at the ruling Socialist Party in Spain (PSOE), which just managed to pass a vote in favor of Spanish military intervention in Libya (http://www1.wsws.org/articles/2011/mar2011/span-m30.shtml), and approved the use of the military in stopping air traffic controllers from carrying on in their strike actions; or Portugal, where "leftists" in the government have sought to implement EU-mandated austerity measures at the expense of the working-class. There's the official "left" opposition parties in Germany and Italy, both of which have called for and supported military intervention in Libya as well, and numerous other examples of such pro-parliamentary/governmental parties, organizations, and federations that have consistently used their place in the state as a means of suppressing popular dissent at home and abroad.

Here in America, one can see the exact same thing in the CPUSA and SPUSA, two parties that largely tow the political line of the Democrats and often support Democratic candidates. Trade unions are known to diffuse working-class actions and militancy, the most recent example being in Wisconsin, where union leaders are urging their members to go back to work and focus on recalling eight Republicans from the state government while encouraging turnout in favor of the Democrats. At the same time, they're rushing to the government table to finalize their contracts with the state; contracts that come down - essentially - as an 8-11% pay decrease for unionized workers. The sad fact is that those parties and organizations that hope to participate in politics within a capitalistic system in order to reform said system are fooling themselves (or hoping to gain power/status, thus making them opportunists).

Ultimately, the proletariat cannot hope to seize and utilize the structural aspects of the bourgeois state. It is first and foremost an extension of the capitalist, a political arm through which the ruling elites may legitimize their exploitation of labor domestically and abroad. The only route is the dismantlement of the State - some, including myself, would argue completely. The working-class can't use the current state to its advantage because the state is built as a safeguard of the bourgeoisie, and thus will always seek to put the people at a disadvantage. The solution is the complete dissolution of the state in its present form, and to replace it with a workers' and peoples'-based democracy.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

On the back of Le Socialiste's post, i'll just make a couple more points.

1. Le Socialiste is right; our focus, as revolutionary parties, is to bring about revolution. The terms for this are the total collapse of bourgeois ownership of the means of production, the non-collective ownership of private property, as well as the destruction of Capitalist friendly institutions such as the army, the law and myriad of a judicial system and also the expropriation of the land of the economic and political elite - the bourgeoisie. Is it possible to combine the above activities with successful election to, and control over, bourgeois political parliaments? Almost definitely not. As Le Socialiste has noted, and as we should all be aware of, most far-left parties who take the parliamentary road to Socialism end up becoming - indirectly - defenders of Capitalism. They end up losing focus on revolution and working on short-sighted, labourist/unionist style campaigns.

2. We are trying to create a new society that will last and progress indefefinitely. For me, this is key. We want to completely do away with the entire Capitalist system, and establish a post-Capitalist one. We want to make Capitalism as historical as Feudalism. To do this, we cannot follow the electoral path for the same reason I and Le Socialiste have already noted - if we use all our energy trying to beat the bourgeoisie at their own political game, we'll lose focus of the key strategy, the only strategy that matters - the complete destruction of Capitalism.

NB: this is not to say that we should not use part of the framework of Capitalism to advance our own goals and, where necessary/possible, to defend at least the basic rights of the working class (campaigns for the minimum/working wage, right to strike etc), but we should not be deceived into flirting with a pro-electoral strategy. History has shown that this ends up in disaster for the far-left, every time.

[chegitz guevara]

Here in America, one can see the exact same thing in the CPUSA and SPUSA, two parties that largely tow the political line of the Democrats and often support Democratic candidates.

While that statement is true for the CPUSA, it is an utter slander against the SPUSA. Whatever problems our organization may have, support for the Democrats is not one. It is an expellable offense. Our line, while perhaps a little muddy, is a revolutionary proletarian one, and not one that any Democrat could ever accept.

[robbo203]

you cant really vote in a real revolution.

the bourgeois state was built to serve the interests of the capitalists and capitalism as a whole. bourgeois democracy would degrade a workers government until it returned to a fully capitalist oriented government again.

what the working class must do is smash the bourgeois state and produce a workers state. one that works for the worker and advocates working class power and class interests.


The working class is the exploited class in capitalism

A "workers government" implies the existence of the working class

The existence of the working class implies the existence of exploitation and therefore of a capitalist class

Ergo, a workers government is actually a capitalist government parading as a workers government


Like Engels said :

The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine, the state of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it proceeds to the taking over of the productive forces, the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The workers remain wage workers - proletarians. The capitalist relationship is not done away with. It is rather brought to a head.

Socialism Utopian and Scientific

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

Has there ever actually been a real, long-lasting worker's state in recent history? The PRC and USSR both are/were in certain regards still "bourgeois states" even after their revolutions. Hence the later counterrevolution in eastern europe and the entrenched power of state capitalists in china.

Anyway, what happened to Allende is important to remember, but history doesn't always repeat itself. Allende was overthrown in brutal fashion, but the Bush admin failed to take down Chavez or Morales. They have effectively expropriated certain aspects of liberal democracy to use against the Capitalists. Whether that will work forever has yet to be seen, but considering what has happened in countries like China or Russia, it's hard to believe that their model is in any way less sustainable.

[Jose Gracchus]

The compradors and the U.S. attempted (and very nearly succeeded) in deposing Chavez from office in 2002.

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

The compradors and the U.S. attempted (and very nearly succeeded) in deposing Chavez from office in 2002.

Of course, they didn't succeed, and the reason was that the people who voted for him protested and were angry that some bourgeois assholes stole their democratically elected President. After that, he went on to win plenty of elections and leftist candidates became increasingly successful throughout latin america.

There's a reason bourgeois liberal democracies like the US, UK and France traditionally preferred tyrannical governments to liberal democracies in the third world. It's very difficult to keep poor, third world countries under the boots of a Western country. Think of it ... Iran, Chile, Guatemala, there are plenty of examples ... America has been more than willing to destroy a democracy if it means saving Capitalism, but always overseas. This is because Western countries are based on the exploitation of undemocratic countries in the third world, and a liberal democracy with the conditions of social and political exploitation by foreign powers often brings some kind of socialist movement into power by electoral means.

Another example of how this is a mistake would be Iraq. Many "Realist" Americans dislike Bush's effort to topple Saddam because it created a highly unstable country where anti-Americans like Muqtada al Sadr, or pro-Iranian forces, have substantial political power.

[Arilou Lalee'lay]

That amounts to also asking what form the dictatorship of the proletariat can take.

I think the main two reasons have been hit on:


I think its simple as a whole the majority is not aware. The majority shares a false consciousness. Also:


There are a number of ways this could be forced; the most obvious is the Allende route, where a capital strike and a military coup d'etat simply did in the revolution. The capital strike mechanism seems to never get enough credit.

A third, less important, reason that almost no one is aware of is that plurality voting effectively locks the democrats and republicans in power forever. Google Schulze voting, Tideman voting, or Condorcet methods to read more on this.

Another reason is the very indirect, non-participatory, arbitrary, structure of modern republics. Chavez has done interesting things on the participatory front.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Shiva hits on an important point.

Chavez has cultivated genuine support, obviously amongst the poorest, but also across the wider working class, because he has won several elections and ruled in some fashion of democracy. Granted, bourgeois democracy, but as leftists, we need to recognise the democracy. Obviously, Chavez is not the Socialist hero some paint him out to be - a radical Democratic Socialist at best, caught between reformist Social Democracy and the revolutionary sentiment of many Chavistas, but if, as genuine revolutionaries ourselves, we could take some of the democratic impetus (in terms of locally driven elections and encouraging workers to take property and factories themselves, rather than have 'red guards' or 'the party' doing so', then we could gain ground ourselves.

[Rodolfo]

First, we should try to define the bourgeois state. The central foundational principle of the capitalist nation-state is that it is a reflection of its economic constituencies. Those who own and control the means of production shape the state in the form that they desire. Bourgeois political parties are organizations composed of blocs of major investors who come together to advance favored candidates in order to control the state. They do this through direct cash contributions and by providing organizational support through the making available of sources of contacts, fundraisers and institutional legitimation. Candidates are invested in. For them electoral success is dependent on establishing the broadest base of elite support. Candidates whom have best *internalized* investor values see their "portfolios" grow exponentially at the expense of candidates who have not internalized these values. So what you have is a filtering system in which only the most indoctrinated and business friendly of the intellectual class advance to state power. The higher you go up the ladder the more you've appealed to elite interests. Representatives of the major investors are also often chosen to fill political appointments after a favored candidate has achieved office. This political-economic model helps explain why the bourgeois state largely functions to serve elite business interests on the domestic and international stages.

How exactly are revolutionaries suppose to use and control this state? They can't. That's why the main struggle has to be in the economic realm. Replace corporations with workers' councils and then you can have a revolutionary workers' state or revolutionary junta (if you're into Durruti). The classic example of a socialist trying to control a bourgeois state is Allende in Chile. Undoubtedly he was a socialist in his own mind but used the police to stop the workers from taking over their places of work and refused to arm the workers. So instead of a revolutionary civil war there was a fascist massacre of the workers. The bourgeois state needs to be smashed and then be replaced by a workers state which exists within a democratic economy. Economic democracy has to come first before political democracy is possible. Figures like Chavez, for example, are certainly progressive but countries like Venezuela are not yet socialist.