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The Marxist View on the Building of a Classless Society

Without full freedom to organize political groups, tendencies, and parties no full flowering of democratic rights and freedoms -for the toiling masses is possible under the dictatorship of the proletariat. Marx and Lenin's whole critique of the limitations of bourgeois democracy is based on the fact that private property and capitalist exploitation (i.e., social and economic inequality), coupled with the specific class structure of bourgeois society (atomization and alienation of the working class, legislation defending private property, function of the repressive apparatus, etc.), result in the violent restriction of the practical application of democratic rights and the practical enjoyment of democratic freedoms by the big majority of the toiling masses, even in the most democratic bourgeois regimes. The logical conclusion flowing from this critique is that workers democracy must be superior to bourgeois democracy not only in the economic and social sphere-not only in the right to work, to security of existence, to free education, to leisure time, etc., which are obviously very important-but also in the scope and extent of the enjoyment of democratic rights by the workers and all layers of toilers in the political and social sphere. To grant a single party, so-called mass organizations, or "professional associations" ~like writers associations) controlled exclusively by that party a monopoly on access to printing presses, radio, television, and other mass media, to assembly halls, etc., would, in fact, restrict and not extend the democratic rights of the proletariat compared to those enjoyed under bourgeois democracy. The right of the toiling people, including those with dissenting views, to have access to the material means of exercising democratic freedoms (freedom of the press, of assembly, of demonstration, the right to strike, etc.) is essential.

Therefore, an extension of democratic rights for the toilers beyond those already enjoyed under conditions of bourgeois democracy is incompatible with the restriction of the right to form political groupings, tendencies, or parties on programmatic or ideological grounds.

Moreover, self-activity and self-administration by the toiling masses under the dictatorship of the proletariat and in the building of a socialist society will take on many new facets and extend the concepts of "political activity," "political parties," "political programs," and "democratic rights" far beyond anything characteristic of political life under bourgeois democracy. Through media such as television and time-sharing (i.e., telephone access to) computers, contemporary technology makes possible a tremendous leap forward in the interaction between direct and indirect (representative) democracy. Workers in a factory or toilers in a neighborhood can follow "live" speeches by their delegates in local, regional, national, or international congresses and can intervene rapidly to correct false representations of facts or violations of mandates, once a general atmosphere of free political criticism and debate prevails. Millions of toilers can have direct access to an immense mass of information, once capitalist "secrecy" and monopoly on information centralized by computer systems is forbidden or broken. Political instruments like referendums on specific questions could be used to enable the mass of the toilers to decide directly on a whole series of key questions of policy.

Likewise, instruments of direct democracy could be used on a wide scale in the field of planning, to ascertain real consumer wishes not through indirect means (market mechanisms) but through consumer-producers conferences and consumer mass meetings or referendums on the choice of specific models, varieties, and quality grades of consumer goods. Here again, contemporary techniques make all these mechanisms much more realistic and much more applicable to millions of people than was objectively possible in the past.

The building of a classless socialist society is also a gigantic process of remolding all aspects of social life. It involves constant revolutionary change not only in the relations of production, the mode of distribution, the work process, the forms of administration of the economy and society, the customs, habits and ways of thinking of the great majority of people, but also fundamental reconstruction of all living conditions.- reconstruction of cities, reunification of manual and intellectual labor, complete revolution of the education system, restoration and defense of the ecological equilibrium, technological revolutions designed to conserve scarce natural resources, etc.

All these endeavors, for which humanity possesses no blue prints, will give rise to momentous ideological and political debates and struggles. Different political programs arising around these combined issues will play a much greater role than nostalgic references to the bourgeois past or abstract affirmations of the communist ideal. But any restriction of these debates, struggles, and formation of parties under the pretext that this or that platform "objectively" reflects bourgeois or petty-bourgeois pressure and interests and "if logically carried to the end" would lead to the "restoration of capitalism" can only hinder the emergence of majority consensus around the most effective and correct solutions of these burning problems from the point of view of building socialism, i.e., in the class interests of the proletariat itself.

More specifically, it should be pointed out that momentous struggles will continue throughout the process of building a classless society, struggles that concern social evils that are rooted in class society but will not disappear immediately with the elimination of capitalist exploitation or wage-labor. The oppression of women, the oppression of national minorities, and the oppression and alienation of youth are archetypes of such problems, which cannot automatically be subsumed under the general heading "class struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie" except by divorcing the categories "working class" and "bourgeoisie" from their classical Marxist, materialist definitions and foundations, as is done by Maoists and various ultraleftist currents.

Political freedom under workers democracy therefore implies freedom of organization and action for independent women S liberation, national liberation, and youth movements, i.e., movements much broader than the working class in the scientific sense of the word, not to speak of the revolutionary Marxist current within the working class. Revolutionary Marxists will be able to win political leadership within these autonomous movements and to ideologically defeat various utopian or reactionary ideological currents not through administrative or repressive measures but on the contrary by promoting the broadest possible mass democracy within their ranks and by uncompromisingly upholding the right of all tendencies to defend their opinions and platforms before society as a whole.

It should likewise be recognized that the specific form of workers state power implies a unique dialectical combination of centralization and decentralization. The withering away of the state, to be initiated from the inception of the dictatorship of the proletariat, expresses itself through a process of gradual devolution of the right of administration in broad sectors of social activity (health system, education system, postal-.railway-tele-communications systems, etc.), internationally, nationally, regionally, and locally, once the central congress of workers councils (i.e., the proletariat as a class) has by majority vote allocated to each of these sectors that part of human and material resources at the disposal of society as a whole. This again implies specific forms and contents of political debates and struggles which cannot be predicted in advance or in any way reduced to simplistic and mechanical "class criteria."

Finally, in the building of a classless society, the participation of millions of people not only in a more or less passive way through their votes, but also in the actual administration at various levels cannot be reduced to a workerist concept of considering only workers "at the point of production." Lenin said that in a workers state the vast majority of the population would participate directly in the administration of "state functions."

This means that the soviets on which the dictatorship of the proletariat will be based are not factory councils, but bodies of self-organization of the masses in all areas of economic and social life, including factories, commercial units, hospitals, schools, transport and telecommunications centers, and neighborhoods. This is indispensable in order to integrate into the proletariat its most dispersed and often poorest and most oppressed layers, such as women, oppressed nationalities, youth, workers in small shops, old-age pensioners, etc. It is also indispensable for cementing the alliance between the working class and the lower petty bourgeoisie, which is important in reducing the social costs both of a victorious revolution and of the building of socialism.

From the Fourth Interntional's 1985 resolution "Socialist Democracy and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat".