April 2011 - Centre for Civil Society - University of KwaZulu-Natal

The logic of comrade Nzimande’s argument is clear, it is an argument for
participation in the parliament, government and other state structures in
order to stave off reactionary laws. Of course as Marxists we are not
opposed to participation in the parliament. Also we are the staunchest
defenders of every single reform that can be won through the state
institutions. In fact, Marx and Engels greatly acknowledged the work of the
German Social-Democrats (that is, before the party degenerated) in
parliament. Also the Bolsheviks greatly utilized parliament in their work.
On certain occasions Lenin even made it a principled point to participate
in the Duma and the Duma elections. But for Marx, Engels and Lenin
parliament was not an institution through which the working class could
achieve “hegemony” over the state but exactly the opposite.
For Lenin work in a bourgeois parliament was important because it
provided an opportunity to the Bolsheviks to approach the broader
movement of the masses – who still had illusions in capitalism, its
institutions and their ability to decisively solve their pressing problems – to
shatter their illusions in capitalism with its nation state, private property
etc! But not for a second did it mean that they themselves shared these
illusions.
Firstly, this was because as long as the main economic levers are in private
hands this will not allow for the free development of society according to
the needs of the working class – no matter how much it controls a state –
and, secondly, because the whole nature of the bourgeois state, as a tool
for the oppression of the working class by the capitalists, would not allow
it. After the experience of the Paris Commune, Marx, Engels and Lenin
explained extensively that it was impossible for the proletariat to take
hold of the readymade state apparatus and use it for the benefit of the
revolutionary proletariat:
In his masterpiece “State and the Revolution”, that all communists should
study carefully, Lenin writes:
“The only ‘correction’ Marx thought it necessary to make to the
Communist Manifesto he made on the basis of the revolutionary
experience of the Paris Commune. (…)
“... One thing especially was proved by the Commune, viz., that 'the
working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery
and wield it for its own purposes'.... (…)
“Most characteristically, it is this important correction that has been
distorted by the opportunists, and its meaning probably is not known to
nine-tenths, if not ninety-nine-hundredths, of the readers of the
Communist Manifesto. We shall deal with this distortion more fully
farther on, in a chapter devoted specially to distortions. Here it will be
sufficient to note that the current, vulgar ‘interpretation’ of Marx's
famous statement just quoted is that Marx here allegedly emphasizes the
idea of slow development in contradistinction to the seizure of power,
and so on.
“As a matter of fact, the exact opposite is the case. Marx's idea is that
the working class must break up, smash the ‘ready-made state
machinery’, and not confine itself merely to laying hold of it.
“On April 12, 1871, i.e., just at the time of the Commune, Marx wrote to
Kugelmann: