Introduction
The writings of Marx and Engels on a socialist society and the revolution that would achieve it are somewhat fragmentary; they were more concerned with a critique of capitalist society and the bourgeois state than in predicting what would replace them or how it would do so. Furthermore, capitalism and the world have changed immensely since their time, and their vision would have to be updated substantially. Yet it is still worth tracking down what they wrote in order to understand the general principles of what they meant by socialism before we proceed to evaluate it and update the details.
There are two important reasons why this is necessary. First, for those of us who want to create a socialist society, it is vital to know the general direction in which we ought to be heading, even if all the twists and turns in the pathway cannot be anticipated. And second, so many followers of Marx and Engels have distorted their vision, resulting in a definition of socialism completely at odds with what they themselves outlined, that it is necessary to set the record straight.
Marx’s analysis of capitalism
Since socialism for Marx is the negation of capitalism, it is worth summarising his analysis of capital. According to Marx, capitalism is characterised by commodity production, money and wage-labour. Commodities, he explains, combine use-value – someone must find them useful – and exchange-value, or, more simply, value: they must be sold before they can be used, and in a developed commodity economy they are sold for money, the universal equivalent. This already creates potential problems. Someone may desperately need the commodity – say, food – but lack the money to buy it and therefore go hungry or even starve to death, as happens far too often in the world today. The sellers can face problems too. They go into production believing there is a good market for what they are producing, but if too many of them do so, it may become difficult or even impossible to sell their products at a remunerative price in competition with other producers. They – especially petty commodity producers, whose resources are limited – are therefore dogged by the threat of losses and bankruptcy. In some cases this leaves them with nothing to sell but their capacity to labour, which Marx calls their labour-power, thus becoming part of the proletariat or working class.
Marx explained that what employers pay workers is not the equivalent of the value created by their labour but, rather, the value of their labour-power – the wages necessary for the reproduction of their capacity to labour from day to day and generation to generation. Capitalists then use the labour-power of the workers they have employed to produce ‘surplus value’ over and above the value they pay out as wages, and this is the source of their profit. Profit is reinvested in expanded production; this is the process of capitalist accumulation. The production of profit and accumulation of capital are the motive force of capitalist production, driving the bourgeoisie around the world and making capitalism an inherently global system. But it leaves workers alienated from their products – which belong not to them but to their employers – and from their own labour, which is performed under the domination and control of their employers. The compulsion to accumulate results in the impoverishment of the proletariat and crises in the capitalist system.[1]
Marx’s analysis of capitalist relations of production is not perfect. For example, in one place he says that the value of labour-power, like the value of every other commodity, is determined by the amount of labour-time that has gone into its production. Logically, that would include the time spent to earn the wage, with which commodities for subsistence are bought, and the time spent on the domestic labour – shopping, cooking, cleaning and caring – which is required to turn those commodities into present and future labour-power. But Marx ignores domestic labour in his analysis, and in one place even suggests that only individual consumption goes on in the working-class home, thus rendering invisible a vast amount of labour performed by women. Engels acknowledges the existence of the gender division of labour, but not the contribution of domestic labour to the value of labour-power. This omission affects not only Marx’s analysis of capital but also his vision of socialism and the transition to it, but it was only in the latter half of the 20th century that Marxist feminists took up this issue in a concerted manner.[2] However, Marx’s great strength is that he provides us with the tools to criticise and develop his own analysis as well as the work of others.
Marx’s and Engels’ analysis of the bourgeois state is less systematic and more scattered. The most famous pronouncement on it is in the Communist Manifesto: ‘The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.’[3] Yet the very same Manifesto acknowledges that this does not mean that capitalists, divided against each other in production, are always united politically; it points out that the organised working class ‘compels legislative recognition of particular interests of the workers, by taking advantage of the divisions among the bourgeoisie itself. Thus, the ten-hours’ bill in England was carried.’ These statements are not in contradiction with each other, but put together they suggest a more nuanced position than one that sees the bourgeois state as a monolith which always opposes the interests of workers.
In fact, Marx’s other political writings suggest an even more complex view. In his early writings, he develops his argument by way of his critique of Hegel, for whom the bourgeois state – by contrast with civil society, where citizens pursue their own particular interests in competition with and at the expense of each other – pursues the general interest of society. Marx points out that, on the contrary, functionaries of the state also pursue their own particular interests, which may be opposed to the interests of civil society as a whole, and they are also divided by class, like civil society. Marx sees a connection between bourgeois society as a society of competing interests and the alien character of this society’s supposed common interest.[4]
This view of the state as detached from civil society is taken to its most extreme in Marx’s account of the coup d’etat by Louis Bonaparte: ‘Only under the second Bonaparte does the state seem to have made itself completely independent’, imposing Bonaparte’s despotic rule over the bourgeoisie as well as the proletariat. Marx explains that Bonaparte has a base amongst the conservative small peasantry, belongs to the lumpen proletariat, and ‘knows how to pose at the same time as the representative of the peasants and of the people in general, as a man who wants to make the lower classes happy within the framework of bourgeois society.’[5] So here we have an authoritarian despot who opposes the bourgeoisie politically, but preserves capitalist production relations and thereby bourgeois society.
As these references show, Marx was aware that the bourgeois state could take different forms, and although he criticised them all for perpetuating capitalism, that doesn’t mean he thought workers should be indifferent to the form it took. In his Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, he says that ‘In unrestricted suffrage, both active and passive, civil society has actually raised itself for the first time to an abstraction of itself, to political existence as its true universal and essential existence’, and sees this as advancing the ‘dissolution’ of both the bourgeois state and capitalist society. This belief is repeated by Marx and Engels in the Communist Manifesto: ‘the first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to win the battle of democracy’; and Engels later confirmed, ‘The Communist Manifesto had already proclaimed the winning of universal suffrage, of democracy, as one of the first and most important tasks of the militant proletariat’.[6] The issue of a democratic bourgeois state will come up again when we look at the transition from capitalism to socialism.
On socialism
At the outset it is important to clarify, as Paresh Chattopadhyay does after an extensive investigation of their work, that Marx and Engels use ‘socialism’ and ‘communism’ interchangeably to mean the same thing: a ‘Society of Free and Associated Producers’ or ‘Union of Free Individuals’. In other words, there will be neither a capitalist class that owns and controls the means of production, nor a class of wage-labourers; in fact, all class divisions will have been abolished.[7] One can envisage this as production by something like a network of cooperatives producing inputs for each other as well as consumption goods, guided by feedback from other producers as well as consumers specifying what they need. Products will not be sold as commodities, and there will be no money. Labour time will be minimised and free time maximised.[8] Since capitalism is global, it follows that socialism would be global too.
Another important clarification made by Chattopadhyay is that in Marx’s view, centralisation of all capital in the hands of the state, even a proletarian state, does not constitute the abolition of capitalism or the advent of socialism ‘as long as the great majority, separated from the means of production, remains wage/salary earners’.[9] According to these criteria, neither the USSR, nor any of the other states established after it in Eastern Europe, China and so on, count as socialist, since separation of the great majority from the means of production, wage-labour (and in the worst cases slave labour), commodity production and money persisted; they could be characterised as state capitalist. Likewise, social-democratic welfare states are not socialist in Marx’s sense. Marx does indeed talk of a lower phase of communism as it has just emerged from capitalism and a higher phase in his Critique of the Gotha Programme, and there is some resemblance between these societies and the lower phase, in which Marx says that individuals will receive back from society an amount of labour-time equivalent to what they have put in, after deductions for replacement of means of production used up, expansion of production, reserve or emergency funds, costs of administration, public services like health and education, and support for those unable to work. However, all this will be done by way of something like labour certificates rather than money. In the higher phase of communism, individuals will receive according to their needs and contribute according to their ability, and work will be transformed into a satisfying and enjoyable occupation.[10]
Today it would be important to specify that even in the lower phase, it would be necessary to provide for the basic needs of everyone (food, clothes, housing, public utilities, healthcare and education) regardless of the amount of work they do, and to ensure that able-bodied adults contribute the social labour required to satisfy these needs. However, it may take longer to make work into a pleasure. Society would need to automate or robotise functions that are hazardous and unpleasant; for example, hundreds of Dalit sanitation workers in India die every year while cleaning blocked sewers, and while such work can be made less hazardous with better safety equipment, it would likely remain quite unpleasant, making total elimination desirable. This may take some time. It would also be necessary to reorganise production, for example to eliminate the division between intellectual and manual labour, and match individuals with socially necessary work that they enjoy doing, and this too may take time.
Marx and Engels repeatedly make it clear that there will be no state in a socialist society. As Engels puts it, ‘The society which organizes production anew on the basis of free and equal association of the producers will put the whole state machinery where it will then belong – into the museum of antiquities, next to the spinning wheel and the bronze ax.’[11] But how, then, would production and distribution be coordinated in this society? Engels makes a helpful distinction between the state as an organ of class rule responsible for the ‘government of persons,’ which will no longer be necessary under socialism, and the ‘administration of things and… direction of processes of production,’ which will still be necessary, but can be undertaken by a radically more democratic form of government.[12] According to this criterion too, the USSR, where an authoritarian state began developing soon after the October revolution and grew to monstrous proportions under Stalin, was never a socialist society.
Is such a society possible? While calculations of how much of what to produce without depending on the market would have been difficult in earlier periods of history, the development of computers and the internet makes this far more feasible today. With some tweaking (such as gender equality), one can imagine elected bodies modelled on the Paris Commune (see below) debating, making decisions, and implementing those decisions on issues like energy policy and healthcare priorities. Of course local governments would need to send representatives to provincial-level ones, those would have to send their delegates to country-level ones, which would in turn need to send representatives to a global body, to take care of decisions on progressively higher levels. But in principle this would be workable, on the assumption that the goals of these bodies at each level are freedom from oppression, democratic decision-making in all spheres of society, and a better life for all.
What may be more of a challenge is wresting the means of production from capitalists and getting rid of the bourgeois state. How can this be done?
The transition to socialism
Marx and Engels make it very clear that ‘the emancipation of the working class must be achieved by the working class itself,’ and socialists of other classes may assist the proletariat but cannot lead it; they also conceive of the transition to socialism not as a momentary event but as an epochal process.[13] An important point which has become even more important since their time is that they conceived of the revolution as inherently international. This is why the Communist Manifesto concludes with the slogan ‘Working men of all countries unite!’
The last line of the Manifesto certainly displays a commitment to internationalism, but it also suggests a marginalisation of women which is all the more striking given the large-scale induction of women into the wage-labour force at the time. Since then, heroic efforts by socialist feminists have uncovered the important role of women in both historic and contemporary working-class struggles, and have to some degree embedded the struggle for gender equality in the vision of socialist revolution. International Women’s Day, first proposed at an International Socialist Women’s Conference in 1910, has given working women of the world a platform from which to broadcast their demands and struggles. But there is no denying that there is still a long way to go. Worldwide, most socialist/communist parties and groups are heavily male-dominated, as are trade unions; the gender division of labour still persists; and skills and qualities attributed to women are still undervalued. Many adults who grew up in supposedly socialist countries don’t acknowledge the basic right of women to control their own bodies. There are even disgraceful cases where socialist leaders have engaged in sexual assault and others have covered up for them. The old mantra that sexism would be dealt with after the revolution is less prevalent now, but it has yet to be universally accepted among socialists that there will be no socialist revolution unless women play an equal role in it.
In the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels refer to ‘the more or less veiled civil war, raging within existing society, up to the point where that war breaks out into open revolution, and where the violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie lays the foundation for the sway of the proletariat’. This is one conception of the socialist revolution. Yet, as we saw above, in the same Manifesto they say that ‘the first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to win the battle of democracy’. This dilemma – violent overthrow or peaceful transition? – has plagued their followers ever since.
In The Civil War in France, Marx describes the Paris Commune both as a working-class government and as a proletarian state. Consisting of elected representatives who were paid no more than workers’ wages and could be recalled at short notice, it was legislative and executive at the same time; the Communards envisaged similar communes in every town and village sending elected representatives to a national assembly. It dissolved the standing army and replaced it with a National Guard consisting mainly of working people.[14] As a government, therefore, the Commune was a wonderful experiment, which we can even see as prefiguring the administration of a classless socialist society. But as a state, it was a failure: the ‘armed people’, as Marx called them, were no match for the standing army of their enemies. The Commune was crushed, the Communards slaughtered.
The following year, Marx said, ‘we do not deny that there are countries… where the workers can attain their goal by peaceful means. This being the case, we must also recognize the fact that in most countries on the Continent the lever of our revolution must be force.’[15] In his Critique of the Gotha Programme, on the one hand he says that ‘Vulgar democracy, which sees the millennium in the democratic republic… has no suspicion that it is precisely in this last form of state of bourgeois society that the class struggle has to be fought out to a conclusion’; and on the other that ‘Between capitalist and communist society lies a period of revolutionary transformation from one to the other. There is a corresponding period of transition in the political sphere and in this period the state can only take the form of a revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat’. So on the one hand the class struggle is fought out to a conclusion in the (bourgeois) democratic republic, while on the other the transition to socialism takes place under the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat. What do we make of this?
Two decades later, with the benefit of hindsight, Engels tries to make sense of it all. He admits that the economic development of the continent (Europe) was not ripe for the ending of capitalist production during the 1848–1871 revolutions; that the military balance of forces, already tilted against proletarian insurrectionists at that time, has moved decisively in favour of the bourgeosie since then; and that universal suffrage has put in the hands of the working class a potent means of fighting the bourgeoisie from within the state while at the same time winning over the great mass of the people, i.e. the peasants.[16] In a way, this article is fleshing out Engels’ statement that ‘The working class can only come to power under the form of a democratic republic. This is… the specific form for the dictatorship of the proletariat’.[17]
Let us take a closer look at these pronouncements. If, as Marx says, the class struggle is fought out to a conclusion (i.e. socialism) under the democratic republic, there is nothing between the democratic republic and socialism; therefore the ‘revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat’ refers, quite literally, to nothing. In trying to rationalise this contradiction, Engels says that the democratic republic and the dictatorship of the proletariat are one and the same thing – in which case, why not simply call it the democratic republic? Surely it would be better to abandon the term ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’, which is dangerously misleading? Today, ‘dictatorship’ connotes an autocratic, repressive regime, and the use of this term has allowed some Marxists to conclude that they must build such a state, whereas in the view of Marx and Engels, socialist politics is as anti-state as it is anti-capital.
If we re-examine the three factors Engels refers to, we can see that economic development was at that time even more backward than Engels thought, with European empires blocking industrialisation – and thus the development of the proletariat – in the colonies. From a global perspective, even if we expand the definition of working people to include managerial, white-collar, professional and technical workers at one end, and informal workers, the rural poor and working-class women and children (whether wage-workers or not) at the other, we have still some way to go before they constitute the vast majority of society, which alone can carry out a socialist revolution.
Regarding the second point, if it had become difficult to envisage a successful overthrow of the bourgeois state at the end of the 19th century, that problem has grown to enormous proportions today, when a democratic uprising against the totalitarian state in Syria is pounded by that state and its allies with barrel bombs, chemical weapons, bunker-busters, cruise missiles, cluster munitions, incendiary weapons, thermobaric bombs, and more. This doesn’t mean that socialists should never participate in armed struggles for national liberation or against a fascist/totalitarian state, but it does mean acknowledging a high risk of failure if they are carried out by the ‘armed people’. In order to succeed, such struggles would have to set up their own armies, since only an army can successfully confront the bourgeois armed forces. But an army is a key marker of a bourgeois state. Therefore what emerges from a successful armed struggle will not be a socialist society but a bourgeois state, which at best is only a prelude to the establishment of a democratic republic, the first step in a working-class revolution.
The third point to note is that since Engels wrote this, several countries which established democratic republics and put centrist or left-wing parties in power have subsequently voted in right-wing, authoritarian political leaders and governments. Such a development is usually seen on the left as a reaction by the electorate to policies which are detrimental to working people being enacted by centrist or social-democratic parties. It is true that often these parties subscribe to neoliberal orthodoxy, but in the case of genuinely anti-austerity parties like Syriza, it is important to see such ‘betrayals’ in the context of the imbalance of power between global capitalism and national states. The threat of capital flight or withholding of credit is hard for any government, however left-wing, to confront on its own. The response to such betrayals, therefore, should not be to allow right-wingers to come to power but to work harder for international solidarity.
What all this highlights is that there are two distinct problems facing a socialist revolution. One is the takeover of production, and the other is dismantling the state. In a world where capital is global and bourgeois states would destroy an unarmed socialist society, neither of these can be accomplished by one country, no matter how big. The necessity for working people of all countries to unite is even greater today than it was in the time of Marx and Engels.
The task of socialists
If this prognostication is correct, the task of socialists is to help the working class to prepare for self-government and the takeover of production. We can begin by recognising that a large number of countries, especially in the Third World and the former Soviet Union, have not even taken the first step toward socialism by ‘winning the battle for democracy’. Worldwide, even where democratic republics have been established, they are under threat from the extreme right.
Regrettably, this shift has been facilitated by sections of the left implicitly or explicitly supporting authoritarian and imperialist powers opposed to ‘the West’ on the pretext of ‘anti-imperialism’ or combating ‘the establishment’. They forget that supporting one side in an inter-imperialist conflict still constitutes support for imperialism, and that fascism too is opposed to the liberal-democratic ‘establishment’. This development, sometimes called a ‘red-brown alliance’, is helping the far right to sweep across the world. Given the global character of socialism, any struggle for democracy in any part of the world is our struggle, and it is incumbent on us to find ways to support it. Socialist internationalism does not mean selective solidarity with some struggles alongside indifference or hostility to others, nor does it mean backing every far-right despotic regime which opposes our own state or its allies.[18]
Establishment of a democratic republic is not the millennium, but it is not inconsequential either: it is, after all, the first step towards socialism. Therefore once a democratic republic is wholly or partially established, socialists need to do whatever they can to prevent right-wing parties or candidates intent on installing an authoritarian state from gaining power. In countries like India and Sri Lanka where counter-revolutions of this sort have occurred, socialists know from bitter experience that attacks on democratic rights and freedoms, on an independent judiciary and on free and fair elections, have a devastating impact on workers, women, ethno-religious minorities, political dissidents, and others. The agenda of parties like the Communist Party of India (Maoist) to instal a more authoritarian state is also counter-revolutionary. It should be understood that voting for a social-democratic or liberal-democratic government does not preclude organising mass movements to fight against it once it is in power.
The list of goals to fight for is endless, but it should include implementation of the ILO Core Conventions (covering freedom of association, the right to unionise and bargain collectively, abolition of forced labour and child labour, and elimination of discrimination in employment and occupation). These rights are undermined not only by outright attacks on unions but also by informalisation, which leaves huge swathes of workers outside the protection of the law; this has to be counteracted by ensuring that all workers are protected. (Re)nationalising utilities like electricity and water and services like healthcare, education, public housing and public transport would rescue them from the obligation to produce profits for capital, so that they can better cater to the satisfaction of needs. Shortening working hours would protect and expand employment, as would increasing workers’ control over production by obtaining information and consultation rights. Forming industrial, agricultural and service cooperatives would ensure that working people have experience of self-management before socialism is established; leaving this to ‘after the revolution’ is a bit like expecting to do heart surgery on a live patient without having practised on a cadaver. For petty commodity producers too, mainly poor peasants but also artisans, vendors and others, promoting the voluntary formation of cooperatives would be the most feasible strategy. Not all of them will be open to the idea, but farmers facing ruin and suicide or artisans and vendors perched precariously on the edge of survival would surely prefer the security of a collective.[19]
A robust debate on what should and should not be produced is also necessary. Needless to say, there will be no military production under socialism, and it is crucial to move towards this goal under capitalism by eliminating the production and use of weapons of mass destruction including nuclear and DU weapons, land mines and cluster bombs, and slashing military expenditure in all countries. This will require redeploying workers and productive resources from military production and the military itself into socially useful production – an idea pioneered by employees at Lucas Aerospace, and now a worldwide movement. We should also work towards eliminating other products that destroy the environment and are hazardous to human health, such as nuclear energy, fossil fuels, poisonous pesticides and herbicides, and private vehicles that spew greenhouse gases, while providing alternative employment to workers engaged in their production. The resources freed up as well as money raised by progressive taxation and financial regulation can be used to support the production of renewable energy and a comprehensive social security and welfare system.
Such an agenda will succeed only if it is pursued globally. This requires distinguishing between globalisation (free movement of commodities, money, capital and labour across international borders) and neoliberalism (privatisation of utilities and public services, attacks on social security and welfare, financial deregulation, and assaults on workers’ rights and environmental protection), and opposing only the latter. Many socialists already welcome refugees and migrants to their countries, but internationalist socialists should in addition oppose protectionism (except in the case of industrialising countries protecting their infant industries), because it sends the message that the workers of other countries who make the imported commodities are enemies. If the imported products are cheaper because workers in those countries are deprived of labour rights, there are ways they can be helped to gain these rights.[20]
Since a class divided against itself would not be able to do any of this, the number one priority is to eliminate forms of oppression and prejudice within the working class – sexism, racism, religious bigotry, casteism, ethnic supremacism, homophobia, discrimination against and exclusion of people with disabilities, oppression of children, xenophobia, nationalism, and so on and so forth – and fight against them in society. [21] The second priority is to promote democratic debate and decision-making in all working-class collectives – political groups, trade unions, households, neighbourhood associations and so on. Feminist groups around the world fighting against domestic violence, sexual harassment/assault and the gender division of labour are major contributors to this agenda. The New Trade Union Initiative in India is a good example of an effort to democratise the trade union movement.
It is vitally important that this agenda should include encouraging children to have multi-dimensional identities and to think critically. From birth, children should have homes where they are treated with love and respect for their humanity and individuality, and taught to treat others, without exception, in the same way.[22] Their insatiable curiosity and capacity to think for themselves should be nurtured instead of being crushed by authoritarian or dismissive responses. Nurseries and schools should be governed by the same principles, which means they must have a high ratio of staff to pupils. Children brought up this way will never fall prey to hate-filled, irrational ideologies, nor will they need to put others down in order to affirm their own worth.
Once the working people of the world have developed enough strength and unity to take over production and consign the repressive state apparatus to the museum of antiquities, we can be sure that they will find a way to do so; we cannot anticipate what the final act of the revolution will be.
Conclusion
There is enormous confusion about what Marx and Engels meant by ‘socialist revolution’, not least because they themselves were unclear about it – which is not surprising, given that they were writing in the 19th century. However, they have left us with clear principles which need to be followed in order to reach that goal. Some pertain to the democratic character of this revolution: that it will be carried out by the vast majority, the working class as a whole, not a minority claiming to act in its name; that a socialist society will not have a state, only a government; and that a democratic revolution is the first step towards socialism. Unfortunately, many of their followers (with the exception of a few like Rosa Luxemburg) chose to ignore or downplay these principles. Today, the democratic character of their conception of socialism is more widely recognised, but there is still a long way to go.
Another key principle is a commitment to internationalism, and to supporting the struggles of workers in other countries. On this front there has been less progress in recent times, partly due to a very active neo-Stalinist lobby promoting authoritarian, nationalist, xenophobic and racist parties and groups around the world. But passive support has been provided to them by socialists who feel no need for solidarity with working people of other countries unless they are being attacked by their own state or its allies, and who go along with policies excluding migrant workers, thus inadvertantly strengthening the far right which is undermining democracy and promoting xenophobia.
Finally, in the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels were rather over-optimistic that the development of capitalism would automatically eliminate divisions within the working class; today, the need to fight against the myriad divisions that weaken the working class and help to perpetuate capitalism and bourgeois rule is far more evident.
All this may sound like an impossibly massive task, but as an old union song from 1864 says,
Step by step the longest march can be won.
Many stones can form an arch, singly none.
And by union what we will
Can be accomplished still,
Drops of water turn a mill,
Singly none.[23]
These three images sum up what needs to be done. We have a long way to go, but if we are farsighted enough to see our goal, we can reach it step by step. At present, working people are scattered around the world like stones of different shapes, sizes and colours scattered on a field, but if we have the patience and skill to gather and fit them together, we can build a strong and graceful structure, a classless society geared to the satisfaction of every individual’s needs. And if we can unite the working people of the world, together they can turn the wheel of history. Therein lies our hope.
(This paper was published as Chapter 10 in An Inheritance for Our Times: Principles and Politics of Democratic Socialism, eds. Gregory Smulewicz-Zucker and Michael J. Thompson, (New York and London: OR Books), 2020, pp.125-141.)
[2] Rohini Hensman, Workers, Unions, and Global Capitalism: Lessons from India. (New York: Columbia University Press; New Delhi: Tulika Books, 2011), pp. 222–224
[3] Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, The Communist Manifesto. 1848. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/index.htm
[4] Karl Marx, Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. 1843. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/critique-hpr/ch06.htm
[5] Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. 1852. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/18th-brumaire/
[6] Frederick Engels, Introduction to Marx’s Class Struggles in France. 1895. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1850/class-struggles-france/intro.htm
[7] Paresh Chattopadhyay, Socialism and Commodity Production: Essay in Marx Revival (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2018), pp. 27–29, 47
[8] Paresh Chattopadhyay, Socialism and Commodity Production: Essay in Marx Revival (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2018), pp. 152–153
[9] Paresh Chattopadhyay, Socialism and Commodity Production: Essay in Marx Revival (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2018), pp. 48–49
[10] Karl Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme. 1875. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/index.htm
[11] Frederick Engels, Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State. 1884, p. 94. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/origin_family.pdf
[12] Frederick Engels, 1877. Anti-Duhring https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/ch24.htm
[13] Paresh Chattopadhyay, Socialism and Commodity Production: Essay in Marx Revival (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2018), pp. 37–41
[14] Karl Marx, The Civil War in France. 1871. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/
[15] Karl Marx, ‘La Liberté Speech’ to the IWMA. 1872. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/09/08.htm
[16] Frederick Engels, Introduction to Marx’s Class Struggles in France. 1895. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1850/class-struggles-france/intro.htm
[17] Frederick Engels, 1891. A Critique of the Draft Social-Democratic Program of 1891. https://marxists.catbull.com/archive/marx/works/1891/06/29.htm
[18] Rohini Hensman, Indefensible: Democracy, Counter-Revolution, and the Rhetoric of Anti-Imperialism. (Chicago: Haymarket, 2018)
[19] Rohini Hensman, Workers, Unions, and Global Capitalism: Lessons from India. (New York: Columbia University Press; New Delhi: Tulika Books, 2011)
[20] Rohini Hensman, Workers, Unions, and Global Capitalism: Lessons from India. (New York: Columbia University Press; New Delhi: Tulika Books, 2011), pp. 278–319); Rohini Hensman, Indefensible: Democracy, Counter-Revolution, and the Rhetoric of Anti-Imperialism. (Chicago: Haymarket, 2018), pp. 287–291
[21] Some socialists have classified the struggle against these forms of oppression as ‘identity politics’ and counterposed them to ‘class politics’, but this is a mistake. The struggle for dignity and equality is not identity politics, and working class politics includes the elimination of inequality and oppression within the working class.
[22] Many people confuse individuality with individualism, but they are completely different. Individualism is an ideology valorising the pursuit of self-interest, whereas individuality is the unique identity of each person.
[23] http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/w/American_Miners%27_Association A moving performance of this can be found at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ay5POkIV7vI