Proletarian or Marxian theory of revolution is related to Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels and Vladimir Lenin. It is called proletarian revolution because in the Marxian framework the workers or the proletariat in the industrial setting are the base of a revolution. Marx, in the Manifesto of the Communist Party, called for the workers of all countries to unite and bring about a revolution. He felt that the capitalist-industrial setting and its compulsions of profit-making would make the workers or the proletariat conscious of their plight and exploitation by those who own the means of production, the capitalists or the bourgeoisie. Thus, Marx described two classes—the capitalists or the bourgeoisie and the workers or the proletariat as the main classes in capitalist-industrial societies.41 The bourgeoisie being owners of the means of production are the dominant class. The proletariat have nothing except their labour to transact in the market for wages and constitutes the exploited class.
Marx’s contention is that the wages paid to the proletariat is not commensurate to or in proportion of the labour of the proletariat that is used to produce the commodities. Marx by using the concept of surplus value showed that this gap between the labour used to create the value of the commodity and the wages received by the proletariat, constitute the profit or the surplus that the bourgeoisie appropriate. This appropriation constitutes exploitation of the proletariat by the bourgeoisie. This exploitation does not only result in economic and material exploitation but is dehumanizing and leads to alienation. Alienation is a situation where one does not identify oneself with one’s own product of labour, process of production, oneself and nature. Marx found that the culprit of all this, is the private ownership of the means of production rooted in the principle of private property.
If the system of private ownership of the means of production is exploitative, alienating and inhuman, then to restore humanity and remove both exploitation and alienation, a revolution must come to overthrow it. This is the revolution of the workers, because they are the exploited lot, and they possess the revolutionary potential. The alternative system that is instituted after the revolution, is the socialist system based on social ownership of the means of production. How does revolution take place? What are the factors that lead to revolution? Why revolution is at all required? To answer these questions, we may dwell briefly on the nature, factors and requirements of the proletarian revolution. The Marxian framework employs certain concepts to describe the nature of society and social relations that prevail in the capitalist system, factors that lead to social revolution or transformation and its historical necessity.
The Marxian framework uses the concept of historical materialism to describe the process of historical evolution and social transformation. This means that material and economic conditions of society at a particular stage of history, such as the ownership of property (communal, collective or private), technological forces of production (equipments, scientific know how, etc.), organization of labour (slavery, serfdom, wage labour, etc.), affect the structure and development of a society. Marx has used two concepts to understand the nature of social formation or type of society—relations of production and forces of production. Relations of production refers to the relationship with the means of production, e.g., whether owner of means of production or wage earner. Forces of production refer to the powers society uses, such as technological forces and organization of labour, for producing material things required. Primary maxim of historical materialism is that revolutionary transformation takes place when relations of production (property relations) become a drag-on or fetter in further development of the forces of production. For example, within the feudal system, due to technological advancement, scientific knowledge and increased human capacity to produce, forces of production had outlived the prevailing relations of production, i.e., feudal relations of production. Feudal relations became a fetter in further advancement of the newly developed forces of production. As a result, the feudal system is overthrown and bourgeois revolutions such as the English and the French Revolutions took place that brought the capitalist system into being. Similarly, within the capitalist system, forces of production and productive capacity of the society develop and come in contradiction with the existing relation of production, which is private ownership of the means of production. New techniques, innovations, capacity of labour are ready to move out of the private ownership of means of production. There is contradiction between the relations of production and forces of production. How does this contradiction lead to revolution?
Contradiction between relations of production and forces of production manifest in class antagonism between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. Class antagonism is such that while the bourgeoisie wants the status quo, proletariat wants to transform the relations of production. The objective condition in the form of contradiction and class antagonism is there, when the proletariat acquires consciousness of this, they become class-conscious. Class-consciousness is subjective awareness of the objective reality, i.e., proletariat belonging to a class, standing in antagonism to another class, which is maintaining an exploitative system, and by common action this system can be transformed. It is the class-consciousness that brings the proletariat at a revolutionary platform and due to its revolutionary potential a sudden transformation or social revolution takes place. This revolution brings a socialist society and social ownership of the means of production.
Lenin extending Marxs idea ot revolution made certain additions in the theoretical and practical position. He introduced the idea that revolution may have to be made without waiting for the objective conditions being ripe. The Marxian idea that socialist revolution will be inevitable only when capitalist system has fully developed contradictions, was not applicable in the Russian condition. There was no gestation period for the capitalist system to follow what Marx had predicted. Marx in the Preface to his Capital states that ‘no nation can overleap the natural phases of evolution’.42 The Russian situation, where no capitalist system had developed or bourgeois revolution taken place earlier, demanded overleaping what Marx had cautioned against. The Bolshevik Party led by Lenin seized power in October 1917 overleaping the bourgeois revolution. However, by doing so, Lenin introduced two new theoretical and practical revisions in the Marxian concept of revolution. One was overleaping the bourgeois stage, and to do so it was required to provide an agency that could help overleap. Lenin introduced a second concept, party as vanguard of revolution. The task assigned to the vanguard party was to provide revolutionary leadership to the workers, provide dictatorship of the proletariat and oversee the withering away of the state and help transition from the socialist to the communist stage.
It has been argued that due to Lenin’s revisions and taking over of power without the revolutionary situation being ripe, ‘the Russian Revolution was more a coup d’etat than a popular revolution.’43 Further, in hindsight, one may also argue that even in capitalist countries such as England etc., where Marx had predicted that revolution would take place, no proletarian revolution has taken place. Probing into these posers may be a lengthy task; suffice it to say here that the Marxian position should not be taken to be so rigid that it becomes inapplicable in societies other than where Marx predicted. Lenin’s theoretical and tactical changes were meant to make Marxian analysis usefully applicable in the Russian condition. A similar change was subsequently introduced by Mao Tse-Tung to make the Marxian framework applicable in the condition of China where the proletarian base was absent and peasants could provide the basis.
Mao Tse-Tung used the Marxian framework but expanded the revolutionary base by including peasants and national bourgeoisie in Chinese setting. The proletariat were less, and if revolutionary base was to be strengthened, another class was needed. Mao found that Chinese peasants could provide that base and accordingly he introduced a theoretical and tactical change by taking the peasants as a revolutionary class. Marx had felt that peasants because of their objective condition, i.e., being peasant and placed under the same economic situation, were a class already. However, they would not be able to be aware of this and gain subjective awareness, i.e., they cannot be class-conscious. Hence, they had no revolutionary potential. Leon Trotsky had doubted that peasants could provide a permanent revolutionary alliance though he advocated peasant-worker alliance for overleaping the bourgeois stage and bring about a socialist revolution. Lenin had recognized the importance of peasantry in non-industrialized countries and hinted at alliance between proletariat and peasantry even in Russia. However, it was Mao, who took the peasantry as the main revolutionary class and brought a socialist revolution in China. Mao declared that ‘without the poor peasants there can be no revolution. To reject them is to reject the revolution. To attack them is to attack the revolution.’ Based on this strategy, Mao organized the peasants and led many guerrilla warfare against the imperialist powers in China. By differentiating between antagonist contradiction (between classes as in Marxian analysis) and non-antagonist contradiction (between people after the revolution), Mao advocated the concept of permanent revolution. Mao’s revolutionary base was based on anti-feudal and anti-imperialist sections of Chinese society. As a result, the revolutionary class included, the proletariat, the peasants and the national bourgeoisie (anti-imperialists).
Unlike Aristotles constitutional revolution and Lockes governmental revolution, these thinkers advocated the theory of social revolution. Aristotle advocated Polity as a form of constitution based on the middle class, as a solution for revolution and political instability; Locke favoured political revolution by the emerging capitalist class against the monarchical and aristocratic class that led to emergence of liberal democratic government; proletarian revolution is aimed at bringing a system based on social ownership of means of production. The Marxian theory of revolution has been adapted to different conditions by Lenin and Mao by introducing tactical and organizational changes and redefining the revolutionary class.
Neo-Marxian and New Left thinkers and writers such Gramsci, Althusser and Franz Fanon have advocated broad-basing the revolutionary base by including even the students, peasants, marginal sections of society. These may appear as essential changes one would have to make to apply the Marxian framework in countries where multiple mode of productions—primitive, feudal and semi-capitalist—co-exist.
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