06.03.2025

Very essence of Marxism

Mike Macnair reviews Bruno Leipold Citizen Marx: republicanism and the formation of Karl Marx’s social and political thought Princeton University Press, 2024, pp418, £32

One of the first articles I wrote for this paper, in May 2003, was a review of Iseult Honohan’s 2002 textbook, Civic republicanism.¹ Part of my argument in that article was that the left misunderstood Marx by virtue of reading his works through the assumptions of liberal political theory (whether for or against them). In contrast, Marx’s and Engels’ writings could be understood as influenced by the political tradition of republican political theory that was still current when they were writing, but lost towards the end of the 19th century. I concluded:

This is not exactly an argument for taking the academic civic republicans seriously. But it is an argument for taking seriously the republican heritage of our own movement: for using an improved understanding of the republican tradition - into which the academics (and particularly the historians) provide an imperfect route - as part of the necessary process of renewing Marxism in the aftermath of Stalinism.

Quite rapidly after I wrote that article, it became apparent to me that I had merely dipped into the edges of a wider discussion - not only of republicanism (which I already knew), but also of people reading Marx and Engels, and the 19th century radical, workers’ and socialist movements, in their relationship to the republicanism of their times. This discussion has been ongoing; I give merely for an example Alex Gourevitch’s 2015 book, From slavery to the cooperative commonwealth on the ideas current in the 19th century US labour movement. Gourevitch says that he started out aiming to produce a Marxist critique of “labour republican” ideas (p10), but wound up finding a lot of overlap of ideas (pp185-88).

Now we have available to us Bruno Leipold’s brilliant systematic study of Marx’s relationship to republicanism as a form of radical politics in his lifetime, and the heavy influence on Marx’s ideas of the republican conception of freedom. This republican conception sees freedom not as the absence of interference (as the liberals would have it), but as the absence of domination by others: of their arbitrary power over you.

Comrade Leipold’s book has been published at quite affordable prices: £32.20 in hardback or £22.75 on Kindle from Amazon. It ought to be very widely read, because, although it is an academic book, it is extremely clearly written. And because, like Hal Draper’s multi-volume Karl Marx’s theory of revolution, it places Marx’s and Engels’ arguments in the context of their actual engagement in the politics and the left politics of their times, it should be comprehensible and useful to activists in the organised (and disorganised) left.

That said, I am sorry to say that it is actually likely that the left either will not read Leipold’s book, or will seek to ‘read it down’ in one way or another. The reason for this is that the spinal core of Leipold’s argument is that Marx and Engels, starting with a purely political democratic republicanism, were persuaded in favour of a communism that was initially anti-political (as were the communisms of the ‘utopian socialists’), but then moved to a new form, which placed democratic political revolution first - not as the end point, but as the necessary first step towards communism. And at the same time Marx and Engels grounded this possibility on the struggle for political power of the proletariat as a class: that is, the propertyless wage-workers.

The modern left, though it calls itself Marxist, largely consists of opponents of this policy, and supporters of the ideas of those who in Marx’s and Engels’ times were opponents of Marx and of ‘Marxism’ (used in a derogatory sense).

Firstly, the former Eurocommunists who have not altogether gone over to the right, and other ‘opponents of class reductionism’, reject altogether Marx’s conception of the centrality of the movement of the proletariat to the project of general human emancipation, in favour of the creation of broad alliances of the oppressed - as did Giuseppe Mazzini and other republicans who rejected class-talk and socialist-talk around 1850.²

Secondly, the modern, ‘mass-strikist’ far left follow, without knowing it, the line of Mikhail Bakunin’s 1870 argument, that “All the German socialists believe that the political revolution must precede the social revolution. This is a fatal error. For any revolution made before a social revolution will necessarily be a bourgeois revolution ...”³

Thirdly, the modern, broad-frontist and ‘transitional method’‑ist left follow, without knowing it, the arguments of ex-Bakuninist ‘Possibilist’ (capital P) Paul Brousse against the minimum programme, and in particular its inclusion of constitutional proposals, in the 1880 Programme of the Parti Ouvrier.⁴

Parts

While urging comrades to read the actual book, let us give an outline summary of Citizen Marx. After a general introduction, the book is divided into three parts, the first two containing three chapters each, and the third one. The treatment is approximately, but not rigidly, chronological. Part I, ‘The democratic republic’, begins with a chapter on Marx’s early republican journalism (1842‑43). Leipold places this against the background of the Prussian politics of the 1830s-40s, and draws out the extent to which Marx’s critique of the Prussian regime in these pieces is republican in the sense of political theory - that is, focussed on how the regime creates domination and arbitrary power.

Chapter 2, ‘True democracy: Marx’s critique of the modern state, 1843’, is addressed primarily through Marx’s critique of Hegel on the state (not the more abstract ‘Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of right: introduction’) and Marx’s collaboration with left-republican Arnold Ruge. The preponderant theme is the arbitrary character of the state bureaucracy; Prussian in their immediate target, the arguments are applicable with equal force to the modern British or other state bureaucracies - or to those of the former Communist Party of the Soviet Union or of the Socialist Workers Party in today’s Britain.

Chapter 3 deals with Marx’s transition to communism in 1843‑45 and his political break with Ruge. Leipold sees Marx, and more sharply Engels, at this period temporarily moving into the “critique of politics” ideas of the socialists of the time, for whom the struggle for democracy/republicanism was to be altogether rejected in favour of a focus on economic alternatives to capitalism. Leipold argues that even in this period, in the Economic-philosophical manuscripts of 1844, Marx’s objections to alienated labour remain republican - shaped by its character as subjecting the worker to domination.

Part II, ‘The bourgeois republic’, begins with chapter 4, ‘The red flag and the tricolor: republican communism and the bourgeois republic, 1848-52’. As is apparent, this is mainly about Marx’s and Engels’ ideas in the revolutions of 1848; and, in particular, the idea that the bourgeois republic “was an insufficient but necessary step for the emancipation of the proletariat” (p190). Comrade Leipold stresses the novelty of this idea, beginning with the “antipolitics” elements in the socialisms of Henri Saint-Simon, Robert Owen and Charles Fourier. Marx and Engels broke with this approach in the unpublished drafts that were stuck together and printed in the 1920s as The German ideology, and in the Communist manifesto - particularly the polemic against “true socialism”. This turn was also reflected in their political action in Germany, and in Marx’s writings in The class struggles in France and The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.

Leipold makes the point that Marx offered very specific criticisms of the constitutional order of the French second republic (1848-52), which have been “perhaps the most neglected aspect of Marx’s critique” (p231): criticisms of the directly elected presidency, of the ideas of “separation of powers” and “checks and balances”, and of the “balancing” of rights by vague “public order” limitations, which in practice meant selectivity that denied the rights to the proletariat. Nonetheless, the bourgeois republic did provide openings for the proletariat - in particular freedom of the press and manhood suffrage (insufficient, but necessary).

Chapter 5, ‘People, property, proletariat: Marxian communism and radical republicanism, 1848-52’, focusses on polemics between Marx and Engels and the radical republicans, Karl Heinzen and William James Linton. Leipold is concerned to explain what Heinzen and Linton’s positive policy proposals were, and why these implied sharp differences with the communism of Marx and Engels: in particular, they sought a return to or protection of small-scale private production as the foundation of republicanism, and hence opposed both the idea of the socialisation of large industry, and the wager on the propertyless proletariat.

Chapter 6, ‘Chains and invisible threads: liberty and domination in Marx’s critique of capitalism, 1867’, may seem to leap from the early 1850s to 1867. It does not really do so, because, though the centre of the discussion is Capital, volume 1 (including the French edition serialised in 1872-75, to which Marx made substantial changes, not adopted in Engels’ later editions), the materials used go back as far as the Economic-philosophical manuscripts of 1844, and there is a considerable amount of contextualisation of the argument from the competing perspectives on offer in the First International (Proudhonist, left-Ricardian, Comtean positivist, and so on). The narrative is largely one very familiar to Marxists - the way in which the capitalist market produces the radical subordination of the wage-worker. Leipold’s account, however, brings to the fore the prominence of standard republican arguments about freedom and domination in Marx’s arguments.

Part 3, ‘The social republic’, consists of a single chapter: chapter 7, ‘A communal constitution’, on the Paris Commune and Marx’s response to it in The civil war in France. This is again a text extensively read by Marxists. Leipold strongly contextualises Marx’s discussion in relation to the conflicting views of the Commune held by republicans (notably the opposition of Mazzini). He points out that both Marx and Engels believed the Commune meant that correction to the approach to the state in the Communist manifesto was required (pp358-59). Further, a good deal of what Marx wrote was traditional democratic republican positions (militia, sovereign elected body, and so on), and in addition Marx to some extent ‘spun’ what the Commune actually did in the direction of what was desirable.

A second theme of the chapter is Marx’s insistence on the Commune as a form of self-government. This involved a radical opposition to bureaucracy that went back to his 1843 critique of Hegel. And it involved a trust in the ability of the working class masses to actually run affairs that was shared by radical republicans - but not, for example, by the Comtists in the First International (pp370-71).

The final element of the chapter is a discussion of whether Marx foresaw “an end to politics” in full communist society (pp385-403). Leipold argues that, contrary to common academic (and leftist) views, this is not the case: the “withering away of the state” is of its structure as a bureaucratic-coercive apparatus and the return of public power to the public. This is coupled, however, with the hostility of Marx (and Engels) to providing detailed blueprints for the form of communism of the sort that had been offered by the utopian socialists. This hostility has been misread, he argues, as a belief in anti-politics for the communist future.

The brief ‘Postface’ begins with the introductory part of the 1880 programme of the Parti Ouvrier Français as a summary of Marx’s argument, and as showing the continued necessity to argue against both ideas of a property-owning democracy, and anti-political and anti-democratic socialisms. The point, he argues, is still fundamental: “Social transformation requires a constitutional setup that provides ‘the Republic with the basis of really democratic institutions’”( p408).⁵

Questions

As I have already indicated, I think this is a great book and one which should be very widely read. I have a couple of small issues with the argument, concerned with the absences of the English constitution⁶ before the 19th century Reform Acts (1832, 1867 …). These, in turn, pose questions in relation to issues comrade Leipold (rightly) raises in chapter 7 about how far Marx’s constitutional ideas are relevant to present politics.

The ‘English question’ begins with Marx on Hegel on ‘corporations’ and representation. Leipold here in passing presents the British constitution as showing “a more modern, individual form of representation” by constituencies, in contrast to Hegel’s representation by “corporations” (p96, note 130). But this retrojects onto the 18-teens, when Hegel was writing the Philosophy of right [law], the post-Reform Acts constitutional order; before the Reform Acts, England’s urban population was precisely represented by “corporations”; the more modern form of geographical constituencies designed to equalise their sizes is a product of the French revolution.⁷

The other side of this coin is Leipold’s queries in chapter 7 about how far the level of self-government and “de-professionalisation” of the state proposed in The civil war in France is actually feasible - or, at least, how far all the current levels of civil service and local government could practically be elected. He suggests that increased use of “sortition” (random choice of officials or representatives; as used in ancient Athens) might help (pp383-85).

Here, again, the English constitution before the early-mid 19th century could add something: the use of trial by jury (selected by sortition), which was much more extensive than today; the conscript militia, and conscription (by sortition) of police constables and analogous local officers; the strong constitutional convention against interference with local government; the House of Lords, including the non-lawyer peers, as the ultimate court of appeal; the use of parliamentary enquiries (not lawyerised ‘kick it into the long grass’ enquiries) to deal with scandals. These were all systems that involved the self-government of the property-owning classes. The Reform Acts, gradually letting the hoi polloi into voting and juries, required the reduction of the democratic/republican elements of the constitution, beginning at the same period.⁸

The relevance of this material is that the ‘unreformed’ English constitution organised a country that was more economically ‘modern’, and a state that was more militarily effective, than the French absolutist regime celebrated as a necessary stage on the road to ‘modernity’ by Weberians and similar writers. And aspects of this regime of local self-government have persisted in the USA down to recent times - again, in connection with a more modern economy and a more militarily effective state than is produced by the cult of bureaucratic professionalism.⁹

Superseded?

The conception of the democratic republic as the necessary first step to communism was, in fact, Marx’s conception: comrade Leipold has, I think, shown this beyond rebuttal. But it is still possible to argue that Marx was wrong on this question, as many theorists of ‘coalitions of the oppressed’ argue openly. And it is also possible to argue that Marx’s and Engels’ conception of the road to socialism is superseded by 20th century developments.

I put on one side the argument for the ‘coalitions of the oppressed’ approach. It handed the issue of class to the right wing, producing ‘vote Harris: get Trump’ and analogous results across the world and, as a result, far worse consequences for the oppressed than the old conception of prioritising the working class. And I put on one side the argument that the Russian Revolution proves the case for mass-strikism (false as a narrative of the Russian Revolution, it has been useless as a strategy).

It is nonetheless arguable that the more advanced stage of the spread of capitalism across the whole globe, and its decline at its core, means that we should focus more on socialisation: the immediate need to move beyond markets and privately-owned concentrations of capital as the means of coordinating human productive activities. It is certainly true that capital has created giant oligopolistic firms, which are ‘private’ and ‘competitive’ only in name; that the de-nationalisation of publicly owned infrastructure in the ‘Counter-Reformation’ of the 1980s has merely produced decay; and that human-induced climate change requires global planned action to respond to it. In this sense socialisation is more immediately posed than it was in the later 19th century.

There are two problems with this line of argument. The first is the Soviet case. Although the restoration of capitalism in the USSR has proved disastrous, it is nonetheless the case that Soviet ‘planning’ systematically failed, and this failure underlay the decision of the bureaucratic tops to collapse their own regime in 1989‑91. It failed because the Soviet bureaucracy and managerial class proved to have all the vices that Marx identified in 1843 in the Prussian bureaucracy and Hegel’s Prussian-imaged bureaucracy as expressing the ‘general interest’. On the contrary, bureaucrats and managers pursue their individual turf interests, and the result is ‘planning irrationalities’. Democratic republicanism is essential to effective economic planning; and, because it is essential to effective economic planning, it is also essential to believable socialism/communism.

The second and more immediate problem is that, at a low level, capital rules through the support of the managerialist labour bureaucracy - from its right wing in the “AFL‑CIA”¹⁰ to its left wing in the full-time apparatus of the Trotskyist left.¹¹ It is a common and correct idea that we need to overcome this managerialist labour bureaucracy in order to actually challenge capital. There are other outworks of the capitalist state’s layers of fortifications, but this element is the furthest out. It is, however, illusory to imagine that it is possible to fight for “workers’ democracy” against the bureaucracy, without simultaneously proposing a constitutional alternative to the regime of the capitalist state as such. Without challenging the capitalist constitutional order, it is impossible to render transparent the dictatorship of the labour bureaucracy in workers’ organisations.

Marx’s republicanism, then, remains essential to any socialism/communism that is to go beyond the endless ‘gerbil on a wheel’ repetitions of the far-left groups and the short-lived broad-left and people’s front attempts. Hence the extraordinary value of Bruno Leipold’s recovery of Marx’s ideas.

1. ‘Republicanism and Marxism’ Weekly Worker May 28 2003: weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/482/republicanism-and-marxism.↩︎

2. Leipold pp273-79. See also S Mastellone Mazzini and Marx Westport CT 2003.↩︎

3. libcom.org/article/critique-german-social-democratic-program-mikhail-bakunin.↩︎

4. Some outline discussion is available at ‘Blind leading the blind’ Weekly Worker July 27 2023 (weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1453/blind-leading-the-blind).↩︎

5. The internal quotation is from K Marx and F Engels The civil war in France (www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/civil_war_france.pdf).↩︎

6. ‘English’ because the Scots constitution was and remains separate from the English, while both Wales and Ireland were subject to special forms of colonial regulation.↩︎

7. I made this point about Hegel in ‘Law and state as holes in Marxist theory’ Critique Vol 34, pp211-36 (2006).↩︎

8. I refer to relevant literature in ‘On reducing undue trust in judges’ King’s Law Journal Vol 31, pp41-58 (2020).↩︎

9. There is more extensive discussion and references in my series, ‘Constitutions ancient and modern’, and the following articles (Weekly Worker September 2-30 2021).↩︎

10. J Schuhrke Blue collar empire London 2024.↩︎

11. See, for example, M Macnair, ‘Full-timers and cadre’ Weekly Worker April 25 2019: weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1248/full-timers-and-cadre.↩︎