Louis Althusser - Crisis of Marxist Theory and of The International Communist Movement

Historical Materialism 23.
1 (2015) 152–178
brill.com/hima
Some Questions Concerning the Crisis of Marxist

Theory and of the International Communist
Movement
Louis Althusser
I feel very honoured and moved to be able to speak before you all today,
thanks to the kind invitation of the Catalan College of Building Engineers and
Technical Architects.
This is the third time that I have spoken in Spain. The first time was in
Granada, during Easter 1976. I gave a talk on whether or not we can speak of
the existence of a Marxist philosophy. The second time was a few days later in
Madrid, where I gave the same talk. Several thousand students came to each.
In Granada there were too many people for a public debate, but in Madrid a
discussion was possible thanks to the disposition of the venue’s management,
and even despite the great number of students. They asked me questions
on the French and Spanish political situation and the abandonment of the
dictatorship of the proletariat by the Twenty-Second Congress of the French
Communist Party (PCF). I answered all of their questions, but I got the impres-
sion that much of the audience thought that my talk was too much philosophy
and not enough politics.
I know that I am today speaking in a city where the popular and democratic
forces have reconquered the right to wage their struggle out in the open, and
that if today I can speak before you freely – and speak freely about politics – then
I owe this to the struggle waged by the popular forces of Barcelona. And I know
already that what I am about to say will be distorted by the TV and the papers,
because – you know as well as I do – in Catalonia there is a certain degree
of tolerance, but not freedom of expression. Today I can speak, but I am not
certain that I will be able to do so in two weeks’ time. Besides – as you know
perfectly well – in the eyes of the post-Franco government, the Communists do
not have the same rights as everyone else. There is already a political project
Text of a talk given by Althusser at the Catalan College of Building Engineers and Technical
Architects, 6 July 1976. Translated by David Broder.
© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ��5 | doi 10.1163/1569206X-12341385

Some Questions Concerning the Crisis of Marxist Theory 153
underway that envisages a pseudo-democratic future institutionalising the dis-

crimination currently exercised against the Communists. So we are here, today,
you and I, protected by the strength of the Catalan people, by the strength of
the Catalan working class, by the strength of all Catalan democrats.
I am not going to talk about French or Spanish political questions. I am not
going to do what Lenin called a ‘concrete analysis of the concrete situation’.
Everything has its proper place. What I want to speak to you about is a funda-
mental question, one of absolutely essential importance to the class struggle:
the question of the crisis of the international communist movement.
I will not be speaking on the concrete problems of the class struggle in Spain,
France, Italy, or any other country, because I am not capable of doing so. In
order to speak of such things, I would need to have at hand a ‘concrete analysis
of the concrete situation’, as Lenin called it, for each of these social formations,
as well as for the class struggle on the international plane. But for the results of
such concrete analysis to be available to us, it must already have taken place.
While as far as I am aware the Communist Parties do in principle have the sci-
ence of Marxist theory (historical materialism) available to them, and this sci-
ence is also available to Marxists who are not Communists, they have still not
managed to carry out the long and difficult work of making concrete analyses
of the class struggle in each country. We only have general descriptions, which,
even if they are not wrong, are still insufficient. But in order to wage the class
struggle, with all its righteousness and strength, we need more than general
descriptions, general evaluations, and general criteria. We have to enter into
detail, that is to say, into the concrete, the concrete relations of class struggle –
not only that of the working class and popular movements, but also and above
all the class struggle waged by imperialism, in all fields, from the base to poli-
tics and ideology. I say that because we know from the Marxist science of social
formations (historical materialism) that the class struggle is not limited to the
economic class struggle, but also extends to the political and, indeed, ideologi-
cal class struggle.
This being the case, I will not speak of the concrete problems of the class
struggle waged by the international communist movement, its crisis and the
eventual solution of that crisis. I am going to talk about something else: the
dictatorship of the proletariat.
We can say that this theme is on the order of the day of every Communist
Party in the world. It is on the order of the day in People’s China, where the
Chinese Communist Party insistently stresses the need to understand, respect
and apply the dictatorship of the proletariat. It has been on the order of the
day in the Soviet Union since 1936, that is to say, ever since Stalin declared
officially that the USSR had now left behind the dictatorship of the proletariat
Historical Materialism 23.1 (2015) 152–178

154 Althusser
and that it was thus no longer on the order of the day. But at the time that
Stalin claimed that the dictatorship of the proletariat had been superseded
in the USSR, he also declared that it was essential for the other Communist
Parties, since unlike the USSR they had still not achieved socialism. Here,
I must say that Stalin’s idea that when a given country reaches socialism,
that social formation has thus superseded the dictatorship of the proletariat –
an idea structuring all of his reasoning on this question – contradicts all the
theses of Marx and Lenin, who declared that the dictatorship of the proletariat
coincided with the entire socialist phase, far from it being superseded under
socialism.
Let us now look at the Communist Parties of the imperialist world. The dic-
tatorship of the proletariat is on the order of the day in a paradoxical manner.
The PCF at its Twenty-Second Congress has just officially abandoned the dic-
tatorship of the proletariat, yet that same Congress voted unanimously for a
resolution that entirely upholds the dictatorship of the proletariat, from A to Z,
albeit without once naming it as such. The Italian Communist Party, which
removed any mention of the dictatorship of the proletariat from its statutes
at the end of the Second World War under the influence of Togliatti, still has
an interest in it, given that it has never officially renounced it, and given that
its whole politics is based on the theory Gramsci developed around the notion
of hegemony. And yet as in Gramsci, its notion of hegemony is an ambiguous
one, particularly in its understanding that hegemony – at root, the consensus
that a class obtains when it manages to take state power – can also exist before
it seizes power. In Gramsci’s understanding – or, at least, this is what some
Gramsci scholars in line with Togliatti’s interpretation say – the hegemony that
exists prior to taking state power is not only the hegemony of the proletariat
over its allies (that is, Lenin’s thesis) but also its hegemony over all society; as a
consequence, the dictatorship of the proletariat becomes the privileged means
of seizing state power, that is, for taking and exercising state power and, there-
fore, ensuring the hegemony of the proletariat. We can express the same idea
by saying that for these interpreters of Gramsci, who are very subtle, more so
than Lenin himself, who never considered this possibility, the hegemony of the
proletariat has the extraordinary characteristic of existing before the historical
conditions – meaning, the economic, political and ideological conditions – for its
own existence are met, even before the seizing of state power. This constitutes
what logicians and some others might call a vicious circle: and we cannot
go on like this indefinitely. And yet that is precisely what the interpreters of
Gramsci that I mentioned are doing. But since they are intellectuals, this is not
of overwhelming importance, except insofar as it could paralyse certain forms
of class struggle, firstly among communist and Marxist intellectuals, as well as

among others who are neither communist nor Marxist, because it obscures,
it subverts, one of the essential principles of Marxist theory. And, naturally,
it also has consequences concerning the line and the political practice of the
Italian Communist Party, in which intellectuals play a very important role. In
any case, even if the circle is closed the question is left open, and it will be
solved through the development of the class struggle in Italy.
As far as I know, the Spanish Communist Party has not declared its stance
on the dictatorship of the proletariat, but it is clear that its theoretical and
political sympathies are moving toward the PCI, which exercises great influ-
ence in Spain – above all in Catalonia, less so in Andalusia, just to speak of the
regions which I know at first hand.
The Portuguese Communist Party’s clandestine Tenth Congress, held in
1974, clearly expressed itself on this question, through the mouth of Alvaro
Cunhal. He said that
we must remove certain expressions from our vocabulary, just a few. We

must do so because after fifty years of fascism the Portuguese people
struggles to understand why the Communist Party, which struggles for
freedom, would use them. For example, the expression ‘dictatorship of
the proletariat’.
And Cunhal added, very calmly and forcefully: ‘no-one should be mistaken: we
are only abandoning the expression “dictatorship of the proletariat”, and we
are absolutely not abandoning anything from the concept itself, which is the
key concept of the Marxist theory of class struggle’. And as Cunhal said, and
Machiavelli before him: when the political situation obliges you to abandon
certain words, you have to do it, but even then you can never, never, never,
abandon the thing itself, the principles or concepts themselves. Because if
principles and concepts are abandoned not just in words but in reality, in prac-
tice, then we lose all direction, losing what Marxists call the political ‘line’ to
be followed. And having lost our political line, we are like a ship without a
compass, unable to make it to port, our destination.
I would add that the most surprising paradox, here, is that all of these dec-
larations either in favour of the dictatorship of the proletariat or for its aban-
donment, or at least the abandonment of the expression – including Stalin’s
statements on the need to abandon the dictatorship of the proletariat, since
the USSR had superseded it upon achieving socialism – can also be considered
just statements, just words. This point is very important, because you cannot
put a stop to the class struggle just by declaring that it has stopped or been
superseded. In the same way, the objective needs – and thus scientific needs –

156 Althusser
expressed by the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat do not cease to

exist upon the declaration that this concept or its expression (what some call
the ‘notion’ of the dictatorship of the proletariat, in order to free themselves of
this difficulty) is to be abandoned. Nor by declaring, as Stalin did in 1936 and
Brezhnev continues to do today, that the dictatorship of the proletariat has
been superseded in the USSR because socialism exists there and that conse-
quently the Soviet state is a ‘state of the whole people’ – which makes no sense
from the standpoint of Marxist theory. Indeed, Marxist theory scientifically
demonstrates that the state exists only in class societies, where class struggle
and a ruling class that exercises its dictatorship also therefore exist.
In consequence, theoretically speaking, the notion of a state ‘of the whole
people’ is absolute nonsense. And since the dominant aspects of the Soviet
social formation do not appear to belong to the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie –
contrary to the view of the Chinese comrades, whose arguments must be
studied very seriously, though unfortunately they are not very developed –
nor apparently to the dictatorship of the proletariat, we must obviously ask
ourselves – ‘What are the current relations of production in the USSR, and
what are the corresponding social, political and ideological relations?’
If we could, ultimately, give a scientific answer to this key question, that
answer would contribute – naturally, at that level – to preparing the solution
to one of the most serious aspects of the crisis of the international communist
movement, namely the current division of that movement, a division that is
imperialism’s main strength. It should be noted that the international commu-
nist movement is in the process of confronting this question directly, thanks
to the political initiative taken by the Western Communist Parties, the reason-
ableness of whose arguments the CPSU had to acknowledge, in part, in the
final report of the Berlin conference.
Clearly, what I have just expounded does pose many questions, and these
must be examined in detail. But before turning to a study of these questions,
I am going to explain in straightforward terms the Marxist theory of the dic-
tatorship of the proletariat, such as it is found in Marx and Lenin. I will not
speak of Gramsci, since his position is a complicated one. His Notebooks never
used the expression ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’, which can be explained
by the fact that he was in prison and subject to an implacable censorship.
For example, we know that due to censorship Gramsci used the expression
‘philosophy of praxis’ to refer to Marx’s thought, Marxist theory and Marxist
science-philosophy, even though he absolutely did not believe that Marxist
philosophy is a ‘philosophy of praxis’. We can suppose that if Gramsci had
been able to express himself fully freely, he would have used the expression
‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ and not ‘hegemony’ to designate the concept

and reality of the dictatorship of the proletariat. If he had been able to

express himself fully freely, this would have averted many problems, and the
Italian, Spanish, French and other interpreters who had such considerable
difficulty trying to understand Gramsci’s thought would not have wasted so
much time on useless interpretations. Moreover, the international commu-
nist movement – rightly very attached to Gramsci – would have gained the
great advantage of seeing this question clearly, which is of decisive political
importance; and also the advantage of no longer committing the errors that
appear in a great number of these inaccurate interpretations. As a result, we
could finally set words in accordance with things, and the official declarations
of the Communist Parties in accordance with the class struggle of the popu-
lar masses: for it is there that we find the drama, the paradox, and also the
basis for our certainty in ultimate victory. The popular masses, whether or not
they are conscious of the scientific truth of the dictatorship of the proletariat,
whether or not they know of the dictatorship of the proletariat, do know the
meaning – not in words, nor even in their thinking, but in and through their
concrete struggles – of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, the dictatorship of
imperialism. For them to know this is already sufficient, because the dictator-
ship of the proletariat is, in principle – as I am going to demonstrate – the same
thing as the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, but for the obvious difference that
here it is the proletariat and not the bourgeoisie that exercises the dictatorship.
I will now return to my object, the dictatorship of the proletariat; and, to
begin, I will pose this simple question: ‘What is the theoretical status of the
expression “dictatorship of the proletariat”?’
My answer: this expression has the status of a scientific concept, a solid one,
the most solid that it could have, as a scientific truth demonstrated, tested and
constantly verified in practice. And, I will add: this scientific concept, qua sci-
entific concept, belongs to the science founded by Marx – not to what people
call ‘Marxist philosophy’, which, in my understanding, does not exist, in the
sense that it does not exist in the classical form that the bourgeois intellec-
tual division of labour would call ‘philosophy’. So it does not belong to Marxist
philosophy, but to the science founded by Marx, generally termed ‘historical
materialism’. And what is the object of this science (since unlike philosophy,
which has no object, all science does have one)? The object of this science is
the laws of the class struggle. It is not political economy, as Engels and all too
many Marxists believe.
Karl Marx demonstrated – I repeat, demonstrated – as surely as can be, in
a scientific demonstration, that what is called political economy, what exists
under that name in the imperialist countries – and, unfortunately, also in the
Soviet Union and the socialist countries – is not a science but a theoretical

158 Althusser
formation of bourgeois ideology, and therefore a theoretical formation pro-

duced by the bourgeoisie’s ideological class struggle against the proletariat. It
is a theoretical formation of bourgeois ideology that naturally has practical
consequences – if we are materialists – for the bourgeois class-struggle against
the proletariat; and, moreover, it is a theoretical formation of bourgeois ideol-
ogy produced in order to bring about these effects of the class struggle against
the proletariat’s own class struggle.
As a consequence, the object of the science founded by Marx is simply the
laws of the class struggle in the various different social formations appertaining
to what Marx calls the different modes of production.
To say that the expression ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ is a scientific
concept means that it provides an authentic consciousness of the reality that
takes the same name. Every science goes like this: words designate things, but
only correctly so when we have arrived at scientific truth. But this is not the
case if we remain on the terrain of ideology, be that theoretical or practical, for
example political ideology. To take one example of falling short in this manner:
despite the declarations of the Soviet leaders claiming that the dictatorship
of the proletariat has been superseded in the USSR, we are not exactly sure
that this is actually the case. When you are mistaken about reality, you also
use words mistakenly, and vice versa. We have known this as long as science
has existed – that is, as Spinoza explained, since the beginning of world’s first
science able to provide demonstrations, and thus to demonstrate ipso facto
that it is a science: namely, mathematics.
If the expression ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ designates a scientific
concept proper to the scientific theory founded by Marx, the object of this
scientific theory being the laws of the class struggle in a class society, then we
also have to recognise that this same expression – which also simultaneously
indicates a reality, which it imparts consciousness of – can evidently also have
other subordinate functions as an expression. It can serve as an idea (that is to
say, an idea that can be true without it explicitly being an object of demonstra-
tion); it can also serve as a notion and even a false idea, that is, an error (when
we say words indicating something other than reality and consciousness of
it); it can serve as a slogan for political action; and so on. All these different
uses are secondary in relation to the first, namely the use of the expression
‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ as a scientific concept. It is highly important
to understand this subordination properly, since it means two further things,
themselves constituting one and the same point: 1) it is by starting out from
the use of this expression as a scientific concept that we can understand the
other uses of this same expression; 2) the inverse is not the case. Spinoza
expressed this truth in his famous formula verum index sui et falsi, meaning:

only by s tarting out from a true scientific concept can we demonstrate that it
is a scientific concept and that it is true, and only by starting out from this true
scientific concept can we understand the false uses of the same expression, the
error, what Spinoza calls the falsum, falsehood.
Let us proceed. If the expression ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ is a scien-
tific concept proper to Marxist theory, and designates its object in an adequate
manner, as Spinoza would say, meaning that it provides objective conscious-
ness of its object, then the historicist interpretation of the dictatorship of the
proletariat upheld by the leaders of the French Communist Party is evidently
an absurdity. A scientific concept, an objective truth, cannot, as one leader of
that party said, be superseded ‘by life’. Since mathematics has provided the
demonstration that 2 + 2 = 4, the truth 2 + 2 = 4 will never be superseded for
anyone who ever exists, and it could never be ‘superseded by life’. The same
goes for the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Its truth is – as
Spinoza said of all scientific truths – eternal; that is, valid across all space and
time. This means that this truth is always valid, even when its object does not
exist; even though, evidently, it is only applicable when its object does exist.
The difference between a scientific truth’s universal validity, independent of
the actual existence of its object, and the practical applicability of this truth,
is clear enough, since this truth can only be applied to its object if this object
actually exists. Concretely, this means that the dictatorship of the proletariat is
true for us even when the dictatorship of the proletariat – that is, socialism –
does not exist in our countries. When the proletariat has already taken power,
the truth of the dictatorship of the proletariat exists in another way, since its
object has an actual existence to which this truth is thus directly applicable,
strategically. Furthermore, when communism reigns across the world, the
truth of the dictatorship of the proletariat will continue to exist, as the truth of
what took place under socialism, even though it will not be applicable to what
is going on under communism, since, with classes and the class struggle having
disappeared, the dictatorship of the proletariat will have become superfluous.
I had to clarify these points in order to be able to emerge from the mire
of historicism, which is one of the forms of bourgeois philosophical ideology
most dangerous to the international workers’ movement, given its success in
making the workers’ movement doubt the scientific character of Marx’s scien-
tific theory. Without doubt, historicism is along with neopositivism the form of
the bourgeoisie’s ideological class struggle that is today most dangerous to the
workers’ movement. It does, moreover, have profound affinities with neoposi-
tivism, given that both are forms of empiricism, the number-one philosophical
enemy of the proletariat’s class struggle. This can easily be demonstrated, but
I shall not be doing so today.

160 Althusser
One question inevitably comes up at this point: is there not a problem of

vocabulary? Does not the word ‘dictatorship’ bring up problems?
Of course, yes, there is a word problem. Every concept must be expressed,
become a reality in language, and must thus be identified with definite words,
in both senses of that term: to recognise itself in these words and to form a
single whole with them.
The absolute objective compulsion for a concept to be identified with
words, and the relative independence of its meaning with respect to the words
that express it, mean that there is nothing in principle opposed to changing
these words if necessary or if other better words can be found. We know that
Gramsci, for example, practically never used the expression ‘dictatorship of
the proletariat’ in his Prison Notebooks. Perhaps this was in order to avoid cen-
sorship (for instance, he never spoke of Marxism but instead of the ‘philosophy
of praxis’). But the fact is that he made use of various words without ever aban-
doning the concept. Were they better? Possibly so: it is worth studying.
In principle, then, the words can be changed. But words are always needed,
and in reality there is not always much room for manoeuvre: we have to go
down the paths of established language, which is always conservative since it
records the things and meanings recognised by the ruling ideology.
All poets and philosophers know how to break language open, and so, too,
do revolutionary militants.
At any rate, when Marx in 1852 forged the expression ‘dictatorship of the
proletariat’ – having called on the proletariat, in the 1848 Manifesto, to raise
itself to the position of ‘ruling class’ – evidently his aim was forcibly to bring to
light a reality that no-one before him had managed to uncover from beneath
bourgeois ideology’s vast cloak of ‘evidence’. And evidently there was no name
in existing language designating this reality. Marx did the same as everyone
else. He had to take the words that he needed from where they were. He took
a word from the language of politics: dictatorship. He took a word from the
language of socialism: proletariat. And he forced them to co-exist in an explo-
sive formulation (dictatorship of the proletariat) in order to express with an
unprecedented concept the necessity of an unprecedented reality.
It is then, completely exact: in uniting the word proletariat with the word
dictatorship, Marx – we must recognise – broke open the word ‘dictatorship’.
He changed its meaning, but in order to make use of his meaning for it.
But although in the classical tradition and consequently in existing language
the word ‘dictatorship’ means an absolute power, this concerns only political
power, that is, the power to govern, whether it was held by one man (Rome) or
by an assembly (the Convention), in either case under legal forms. But before
Marx no-one had imagined that it was possible to speak of the dictatorship of

a social class, since this expression has no meaning within the frame of refer-
ence determined by political institutions. Well, this is precisely what Marx did:
he tore the word ‘dictatorship’ from the terrain of political power in order to
force it to express a reality radically different from any form of political power.
Namely, that type of absolute power, not previously endowed with a name,
which every ruling class (feudalist, bourgeois, proletarian) necessarily exer-
cises, not only at the political level but much more so beyond it, in the class
struggle that spans the whole of social life, from the base to the superstructure,
from exploitation to ideology, passing – but only passing – through politics.
Try to do better with two words, and you will see that it is not so easy! To
speak of class rule (as in the Manifesto) or of class hegemony (as in Gramsci)
may be, or seem to be, too weak or too learned. If we need a familiar word
that is sufficiently forceful and emotive, not just to be understood but also to
evoke the tremendous force of this relation of ‘absolute power’ standing above
any law, then we must choose ‘dictatorship’. But also if we need an exceptional
word to designate this exceptional power – a power that is ‘absolute’ precisely
because it is above laws – that is, higher, vaster and deeper than political power
alone. And, since ‘dictatorship’ entails the idea of an absolute power above the
law, Marx took control of this meaning, uniting ‘dictatorship’ and ‘proletariat’
in order to force it to say something new: in the class struggle, the power of the
ruling class is above the law, above and beyond politics.
Lenin: ‘dictatorship is a tough, bloody word, a word that expresses the unre-
lenting struggle to the death between two classes, two worlds, two epochs of
universal history. Words like this are not cast out into the void.’
It was in this manner, almost naked and dressed only in these two words,
that the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat entered into theory and
history – as violent language, as a violent language to express the violence of
class rule.
Do we have to say, then, that the concept of the dictatorship of the prole-
tariat is based on the idea that class rule is, in its own way, an absolute power
that cannot be reduced to the forms of political power?
For the moment, I will answer – yes.
But this also means that the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat
cannot be understood in isolation. And, indeed, it is always linked to another
concept: the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. The two concepts are identical –
what changes is the ruling class. But what does not vary is the alternative itself:
one class or the other, either the bourgeoisie or the proletariat. But in order to
understand this alternative, we must add: it is the concept of the dictatorship
of the bourgeoisie that holds the ‘secret’ to the concept of the dictatorship of
the proletariat.

162 Althusser
Everyone knows of Marx, Engels and Lenin’s famous paradoxes with regard
to the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. But what was Lenin saying when he
repeatedly stated that the ‘freest’ parliamentary bourgeois democracy is the
form par excellence of this dictatorship? (I am not here going to go into the
debatable question as to whether there can exist any form par excellence.) He
was bringing to light the following fundamental distinction: the political forms
by which a class in the class struggle exercises its dictatorship are one thing;
the class dictatorship itself is something else. And, Lenin added: the dictator-
ship of a class is effectively exercised in and through political forms, but is not
reducible to this alone. All these strands brought together, Lenin means that
it is impossible to understand the meaning and function of the political forms
of a class dictatorship (varying according to the course of the class struggle)
without establishing the relation between this class dictatorship and the class
struggle, and the relations of force therein.
This distinction, between class dictatorship and the political forms that
contribute to its exercise, is valid for both the proletariat and the bourgeoisie.
And this is why, posing the same paradox but now in the service of the dic-
tatorship of the proletariat, Lenin can say that the political form (and social
form, as we will see) par excellence of the dictatorship of the proletariat is the
‘democracy of the widest masses’, ‘a thousand times freer’ than the freest bour-
geois democracy.
If we do not properly master this distinction between the dictatorship of
the ruling class in the class struggle, and the political forms in and through
which this dictatorship is exercised, we cannot understand what Marx called
the ‘necessity’ of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
This distinction is based on a great idea which is fundamental to Marxist
theory. For Marx, the relations of the class struggle (including those) sanc-
tioned and regulated by law and the laws that suit the ruling class are not, in
the last instance, juridical relations but rather relations of struggle. That is to
say, they are relations of force, and, ultimately relations of violence – whether
openly so or otherwise. This does not mean that Marx saw right and laws as
having a pure ‘juridical’ essence, thus without violence; it means, rather, that
because class relations are, in the last instance, extra-juridical (with a force
distinct from right and laws) and these relations are thus ‘above the law’, and
because they are, in the last instance, relations of force and violence (whether
openly so or otherwise), the rule of one class in the class struggle must ‘neces-
sarily’ be thought as ‘power above the law’: dictatorship.
If a few minutes ago it seemed that I was reserved in saying ‘for the moment’,
it was to stress that I would have to go much further. And now we have arrived
there.

Because it is not enough to give a merely negative definition and say that the
power of class domination is, in the last instance, ‘extra-juridical’ – meaning,
‘non-juridical’. We have to say positively what this absolute power is, and have
to demonstrate what it is that ‘in the last instance’ means.
Now, we cannot respond to these questions without taking a great deal of
account of the Marxist theory of class struggle, such as it appears in Marx’s
analysis of the capitalist mode of production, Capital.
But careful! We must not fall into the trap set by our present enemies, believ-
ing, as they claim, that the theory of class struggle began with Marx and could
be ascribed to Marxism, as if it were some discovery or invention of his. The
theory of class struggle was initially a bourgeois theory, and continues to be
so. It was not Marx that discovered ‘the existence of classes and their struggle’.
He himself said, in an 1852 letter to Weydemeyer, ‘My own contribution was . . .
that the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat’.
We have arrived, then, at the answer to the burning question, namely that what
distinguishes the bourgeois theory of the class struggle from the Marxist the-
ory of class struggle is . . . the dictatorship of the proletariat; that is, the point at
which the Marxist theory of class struggle and the concept of the dictatorship
of the proletariat are as close as lips and teeth.
With this surprising caveat, we can enter into what the bourgeois theory of
class struggle is, in order to counterpose it to what the Marxist theory of class
struggle is really about.
We can say that the bourgeois theorists’ thinking distinguishes classes, on
the one hand, and the class struggle, on the other, and often with a conception
that gives logical or historical primacy to classes rather than the class struggle.
Bourgeois theorists do recognise the existence of classes, even if they give them
another name. Since they judge them in separation from the class struggle,
they fall into an economic, sociological or psycho-sociological conception of
classes: thus bourgeois ideology forces political economy, sociology and psycho-
sociology to serve theoretically and practically this bourgeois conception of
the class struggle – and this can be proven historically and theoretically. In any
case, they think first and foremost of the existence of classes, while consider-
ing the class struggle an extension of their existence as if it were a secondary
effect, a derivate, more or less contingent on the existence of classes and their
relations. How do they see the class struggle, then? In the terms of sociology,
politics and ideology: and bourgeois ideology provides them with all the tools
necessary for this.
But the interesting thing, here, is the political consequences of this con-
ception. If the class struggle is a derivate effect, and is more or less contin-
gent, it will always be possible to find a way to master it, by treating it with

164 Althusser
the a ppropriate means. And these means are the historical forms proper to
capitalist methods, namely workers’ ‘participation’ in their own exploitation.
Marx’s conception was totally different from this. Unlike the bourgeois
theorists who imposed a separation between classes and class struggle, and
generally gave primacy to classes over class struggle, Marx identified them,
and, within this identity, gave primacy to class struggle over classes. The class
struggle, for Marx, far from being a derivate effect that was more or less con-
tingent on the existence of classes, instead formed a whole together with what
divided the classes into classes and reproduced class division in the class strug-
gle. Philosophically speaking, this can be expressed as follows, according to
the historical period: primacy of the contradiction over the opposites, or the
identity of the contradiction and the opposites.
In order to see concretely how this class division operates under the weight
of the class struggle, to see concretely in what sense the existence of classes
is identical to the class struggle, we need to analyse what is happening in the
economic base (determinant ‘in the last instance’), and precisely examine the
class-struggle relation that divides classes into classes: the relations of capital-
ist production.
So what do we see in this relation? Let us consider it in itself and its presup-
positions – which are simultaneously its effects (the ensemble of social rela-
tions, which at the same time as conditioning it, depend on it) – and see what
follows. Formally speaking, the capitalist production relation appears to be a
juridical one: buying and selling labour power. However, it is not reducible to
a juridical or a political relation, nor an ideological one. The capitalist class’s
ownership of the means of production (which stands behind each individual
capitalist) can be sanctioned and regulated by juridical relations (the appli-
cation of which presupposes the state) but it is not itself a juridical relation –
rather, it is a relation of uninterrupted force, from the overt violence of the
period of primitive accumulation up to the contemporary extortion of surplus-
value. The working class’s sale of its labour power (which stands behind each
productive worker) can be sanctioned by juridical relations, but it is a relation
of uninterrupted force, violence against the dispossessed, who pass back and
forth between work and the reserve labour force.
As such, class violence – the violence ‘outside the law’ that the capitalist class
exercises against the working class – is, in the last instance, to be found at the
very centre of the capitalist production relation dividing classes into classes and
reproducing this division through the double process of accumulation and pro-
letarianisation. That is to say, it is anchored in ‘the last instance’: production.
The dictatorship of the bourgeoisie is a dictatorship because, in the last
instance, it is a violence stronger than any law. In the last instance – but only
in the last instance, given that this violence cannot be exercised without the

forms of law that sanction and regulate it, without the political forms that
sanction and regulate the ruling class’s hold over state power, and without the
ideological forms that impose subjection to the ruling class’s production rela-
tion, right and laws. If war, understood as an open struggle between two states’
armies, is, in Clausewitz’s words, ‘the continuation of politics by other means’,
then we have to say that politics is the continuation of (class) war by other
means: right, political laws and ideological norms. But we cannot understand
right, political laws or ideological norms without reference to this war and the
violence of class exploitation.
The relation between classes is, then, a relation of struggle, a relation of force
coming ‘before any law’, and, necessarily, an antagonistic relation. The primacy
of class-struggle over class results from this irreconcilable relation. This non-
juridical, non-political ‘law’ of class struggle ‘necessarily leads’ (Marx) not only
to the dictatorship of the ruling class, but also to the alternative between bour-
geois and proletarian dictatorship.
We can realise easily enough that this conception has nothing to do with
‘political economy’, sociology or psychology, these formations of bourgeois
ideology that have nothing to do with Marxism – after all, they are the weap-
ons of the bourgeois class struggle in its ideology of ‘society’. And it clearly
shapes another type of politics, different to that of the bourgeois and social-
democratic conception. If the class struggle is not a derivate effect more or less
contingent on the existence of classes, then class collaboration and reformism
appear for what they are: weapons of the bourgeoisie’s class struggle. On the
contrary, the organisations of working-class struggle must master the natural
and scientific law that governs the class struggle, and draw in theory and prac-
tice the consequences of the alternative that it poses: either the dictatorship
of the bourgeoisie (whatever its political forms) or the dictatorship of the pro-
letariat (whatever its political forms). This is the objective that the Manifesto
assigned the proletariat: to ‘constitute itself into the ruling class’. But can we
stop here? The question of the state . . . Of course, we cannot stop here. But I
had to start from here in order to be able to see the overall structure.
We have to pay attention to this point, since the question of the state is a
complicated one, and the Marxist theory of it is not always well-understood.
Marxist theory is opposed to the bourgeois theory of the state also in this
regard. The state is not a reality external to the class struggle, standing above
the class struggle, a reality with a universalist or ‘spiritual’ calling standing
above classes, an arbiter that can even partially be identified with the so-called
‘general interest’ or ‘public’.
The state can only be understood in function of class struggle and class rule.
The state, an instrument of class rule in the service of the ruling class, does not
only serve for concrete interventions (whether violent or otherwise) but, above

166 Althusser
all, for the reproduction of the (juridical, economic, political and ideological)
general conditions of the relations of production – and, as a consequence, the
existing class relations that suit the ruling class.
When this conception has been properly mastered, three questions inevita-
bly arise: the very nature of the state, who holds state power, and the destruc-
tion of the state apparatus.
Fervent repetition of the slogans about the state being the instrument of
class rule in the class struggle, and so on, is not enough. We still need to know
what this ‘instrument’ is composed of, what it is not, and how it functions – all
the while steering clear of ‘functionalism’. Marx and Lenin always insistently
replied to this question using two words (again, more new words!): the state is
an apparatus, and the state is a machine. But since they (quite rightly) said that
this apparatus is above all a repressive apparatus, and this machine a machine
of repression, all that has remained of these words (apparatus and machine)
is the idea of an instrument, a repressive mechanism that brings about class
rule by means of violence, and so on. Effectively, the very words ‘machine’
and ‘apparatus’ have quietly fallen by the wayside. And yet they have a very
specific meaning, since they have a common meaning – though not what it is
believed to be. What apparatus and machine have in common is that they are
both a mechanical or organic whole that carries out transformations (of matter,
of form, of movement, of energy, and so on). We thus have to take ‘apparatus’ and
‘machine’ literally, and say that the state is an ensemble of mechanisms that
carry out transformations, and principally one transformation. Which?
I would say that just as the steam engine transforms heat into motion, the
state is the machine that transforms violence into power, and, more concretely,
the machine that transforms the relations of force of the class struggle into
juridical relations regulated by laws. Montesquieu was referring to precisely
this when he spoke of the division or separation of powers. What is it that
transforms class violence into powers, and separates them as best suits a stable
class dictatorship enjoying the most favourable conditions, if not the state? It
is the protagonist – even if a blind one – of the Spirit of Laws.
As such, I would propose that we keep in mind this clear idea of the machine,
and say that the state is the machine that transforms force into power, force
into laws – that is to say, the relations of force of the class struggle into juridi-
cal relations, right, laws, norms. I would propose that we say that the state is
a machine of power, and, indeed, a machine that ‘runs on’ power and which,
through this power – its own force – transforms ‘absolute power above the law’
into the power of law.
This formula has the advantage of showing that laws (everything that is law,
and not only political laws, but every ‘prescription’, written or otherwise, that

‘emanates from sovereign power’, whether that be in the juridical, political or

ideological field) are no more than relations of force exercised under the legal
form – that is, under the form of rules – and that the famous purity of law
(commercial or political, private or public) and of norms (ideological, reli-
gious, moral or philosophical) is nothing but the form of violence transformed
into laws. This unveils the violence reigning within laws – indeed, the particu-
lar violence that accompanies the sacred world of norms, of the disguised ‘val-
ues’ of ‘ideas’: ideology.
This formula is important for understanding that in order to transform class
violence into laws, the state needs – like any other machine – a determinate
structure and force, proper to it and concretely shaping it. It must be of such
structure that it is capable through its own strength of condensing class vio-
lence into state force, such as to be able to serve the transformation of this vio-
lence into laws. This structure is usually designated with the ambiguous term
‘state apparatus’ (ambiguous since it could give the impression that the state
could exist even before its apparatus). But for the moment I shall not address
this important point.
The advantage of this formula in defining the state is that it demonstrates
the close interdependence between the state and the ruling class.
Marxist theory translates this dependence into two decisive concepts that
both concern the dictatorship of the proletariat: the incompatibility of its class
character with state power, and the class character of the state apparatus.
Since the state, as an apparatus and machine, possesses its own structure
and force – even though it is a product and means of the class struggle – it
could be thought that the inertia of the state’s own force (as an apparatus and
machine) would really or virtually neutralise it. And if this were the case, the
state’s power could thus be held, like any neutral instrument indifferent to who
is holding it, by either one class or the other, or by an alliance of classes shar-
ing power. But to believe this is to forget that state power’s dependence on
the class struggle allows for only one alternative: either the bourgeoisie or the
proletariat, one or the other, can hold state power. The class nature of (who
holds) state power is an essential proposition of Marxist theory. This idea does
not in any way rule out the need for a class alliance in order to take state power,
nor the possibility of various classes participating with equal ‘rights’ alongside
the working class in the exercise of state power after the revolution. It only
indicates, albeit conclusively, that the relations of force in the class struggle are
such that state power inclines towards one class and one alone, whatever the
alliance or its participants: namely, the effective ruling class.
The same happens with the so-called state apparatus. In this case also,
it could be thought that even though it is a product and means of the class

168 Althusser
s truggle, the inertia of the state apparatus’s own force would really or virtually
neutralise it, and that for the new ruling class to issue orders to the old appa-
ratus would be enough to secure its obedience, and thus affirm its own class
rule. But this is to forget that the state apparatus is like a dog, which only obeys
its master (enough of the dog, now) and to forget the state apparatus’s depen-
dence on the forms of class struggle. Because no class chooses the forms of its
class struggle and class rule. The forms of its class struggle, or the juridical-
political-ideological forms of its class rule – and thus of its state apparatus –
are given by its forms of economic exploitation and the political and economic
oppression dependent on it.
As such, when the new class has made itself the ruling class, conquering
state power, it is obliged – whether it wants to do so or not – to transform the
state apparatus that it has inherited, in order to adapt it to its own forms of
exploitation and oppression. This transformation may be more or less deep,
more or less fast-paced, but it is inevitable. To take one example, the bour-
geoisie could not impose itself as a ruling class without carrying out deep and
lasting transformations of the state apparatus inherited from feudalism. And if
time is needed for this transformation, then this time has to be used rigorously:
it is the time that the new ruling class needs to transform the class apparatus
of the old ruling class, by way of a class struggle adequate to its own mode of
exploitation. And since this class struggle is but one part of the ensemble of
class struggle, and this ensemble changes as it lasts over time, it is no won-
der that the configuration of the state apparatus itself changes: the imperialist
state apparatus in the France of 1976 is not – as anyone can see – the capitalist
state apparatus of 1880.
Now we have fully entered into the concrete political problems connected
to the dictatorship of the proletariat: seizing state power, the destruction of the
state apparatus, the political forms of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the
extinction of the state . . .
We will attempt, then, to penetrate into these questions – which are so cur-
rent and controversial today – from the viewpoint to which Marx led us, that
is, from the viewpoint of the fusion of the workers’ movement and Marxist
theory, the viewpoint of the dictatorship of the proletariat, or, more simply,
the viewpoint of Marxist theory, when it illuminates the concept of the dic-
tatorship of the proletariat and when the concept of the dictatorship of the
proletariat illuminates Marxist theory.
First is the question of the proletariat seizing state power. It is undeniable
that in the historical and political tradition inherited by communist militants,
the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat is today 100 per cent identi-
fied with violently seizing state power. A whole historical and political study

would be necessary in order to understand the reason for this identification,

but I cannot today examine its causes. But what is clear, from the theoretical
point of view, is that this identification does not correspond to any theoretical
necessity, nor to any general historical necessity, unless we fall into a historical
fatalism unable to rise above the brutality of the fait accompli.
In reality, the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat, taken in itself –
that is, in the context of Marxist theory – does not prescribe any concrete form
of seizing state power. That does not mean to say that it is a matter of indiffer-
ence, but rather that we cannot deduce the concrete historical forms of seizing
state power in any given country at any given moment from the concept of
the dictatorship of the proletariat. I should reiterate that the concept of the
dictatorship of the proletariat designates ‘absolute power above the law’: the
working class’s class power in the class struggle after it has come to power.
Given these conditions, the concept in no way determines a priori the political
form (violent or peaceful, legal or not, and thus violent-legal, violent-illegal,
peaceful-legal, peaceful-illegal) of the seizing of state power. Marx and Lenin
were very conscious of this, since even though they recognised that the work-
ing class rising to power in a ‘peaceful’ (and thus bourgeois-democratic)
manner would be ‘exceptional’, and even though the historical situation in
their own time practically imposed an insurrectionary path, they nevertheless
still admitted this ‘possibility’. And it cannot be objected that the reasons that
they gave in favour of this possibility (the weakness of the British and US state
apparatuses) disappeared over time; what some circumstances have unmade,
others could remake. And how exactly could we say that this possibility was
only backed up in Marx and Lenin’s thought by a certain appraisal of the rela-
tion of forces, without it also being possible that other circumstances could
lead us to this same conclusion? Evidently the essential thing is not to miscon-
strue the relation of forces.
As a consequence, we can confidently conclude and clearly state that the
concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat has no theoretical competency
for deciding between the violent or peaceful road to ‘socialism’. The only thing
that can determine this historical choice is the relations of force in the actual
class struggle.
The destruction of the state apparatus, which correlates to the construction
of a new state apparatus, is apparently a more difficult question. Why should
the proletariat, now converted into a ruling class by its seizing of state power,
not imitate other ruling classes? Why not content itself with transforming
the inherited state apparatus through class struggle, and, moreover, prepare
to proceed through various different configurations of the state apparatus? In
any case, this is what Lenin seems to be saying when he affirms the possibility

170 Althusser
of ‘different political forms’ under the dictatorship of the proletariat. Why is it

absolutely necessary, according to the words used by Marx and Lenin – indeed,
committing a sort of violence against language – to ‘break’ or ‘destroy’ the
bourgeois state apparatus?
Sage observers, who ever since Engels and the machine gun have known that
the era of the barricades is finished, remind us that the current bourgeois state
apparatus has ‘troops of armed men’ of such enormous strength as compared
to any popular insurrection that they represent a mortal danger to any initia-
tive by the revolutionary masses (remember Chile). Because these prophets, who
always speak of other people’s weapons, are disarming ones. However little we
know about the class relations – which are, in the last instance determining –
what is stopping the class forces being armed to the same strength as the armed
forces? And what stops us replying: precisely, if it is a question of the relations of
force; if in given circumstances, in a given country, in a given epoch, the relation
of class forces is favourable; if the alliance of the popular classes is very potent;
and if, at the same time (and for the same reasons) the state apparatus is deeply
divided and broken, with at least some of its branches partly won over to the
people’s cause – whether clearly or confusedly – then, why not?
It will be said that when I speak like this of armed forces, comparing them
to class forces, then I seem to be talking about insurrection and civil war, and,
therefore, of the seizing of state power and not the destruction of the state
apparatus. But no-one should be mistaken. It is one and the same question,
because ultimately we always end up finding ourselves with the same weap-
ons, whether we want to take state power or destroy the state apparatus. To
this question, I answer with my own: if all the required conditions of force are
met, then why not?
Nevertheless, Marx and Lenin clearly insisted on ‘breaking’ and ‘destroying’
the state apparatus. And we have learnt to take this insistence seriously. Did
they mean to say, like anarchists, that we have to make tabula rasa of the state?
No, because it is instead a matter of replacing one state with another state, a
singular state, a ‘state that is a non-state’, or even a ‘commune’ or semi-state.
This new state is, precisely, the state proper to the dictatorship of the prole-
tariat. Evidently, for this singular state to be the state proper to the dictator-
ship of the proletariat, we have to do something more than transform the old
bourgeois state; we have to ‘break’ and ‘destroy’ something of the bourgeois
state: precisely that which makes it the state proper to the dictatorship of the
bourgeoisie. But what is this? We can only answer this question concerning
the destruction of the bourgeois state apparatus by posing a second question
regarding the extinction of the state. Which is to say, concretely, that the ques-

tion of the destruction of the bourgeois state apparatus can only be under-
stood if we start out from the extinction of the state, that is, the position of
communism. This is an absolute condition.
When the working class converts itself into the ruling class by seizing state
power, it is not in the same position as past ruling classes. All the old ruling classes
were exploiter classes: they had made their nest (think of the bourgeoisie) in the
previous society and set the material and social bases of a new mode of produc-
tion, introduced into the state apparatus. They in no way had the intention of
‘destroying’ it all, but simply of replacing one form of exploitation with another.
Was this dangerous? It was possible to come to an arrangement. There was give
and take: the old ruling class’s state apparatus could be put to work again, and
it was enough to make measured transformations adapting it to the new form
of exploitation. The old state asked nothing more than to be put to work again.
The working class is another type of class, of a very different character. It is
the first class to reach power without imposing a mode of exploitation already
established in the old society, and without the objective complicity that has
always existed among ruling classes. The working class does not conceal its
objectives: the end of exploitation, the classless society, communism. And for
over 130 years it has proclaimed this, forged class-struggle organisations, and
proven its resolve through its sacrifices. It openly struggles for communism. It
sows more terror than the bourgeoisie ever did; with the working class, there is
no more give and take. It calls for the unity of the people, but there is no choice
but to say yes to this unity, and the yes must really mean yes. Is it possible that
through some miraculous enlightenment the bourgeois state apparatus would
offer its services anew? The working class would love to see it.
When we think of the police, military, economic, political and ideological
functions of the state; when we think not only of the visible state (political
institutions, the police, the army, courts and so on) but also of the invisible
state, all of the infinitely subtle yet hardy ties of bourgeois ideology which
we find springing up throughout the ideological state apparatuses; when we
think that it is necessary not only to rule over this state apparatus, but also to
transform it in order to proceed towards communism – then the word ‘trans-
form’ seems weak and the word ‘break’ starts to resonate. I will simply say this:
between the bourgeois world and the communist world, there is, somewhere, a
rupture, between bourgeois ideology – which rules, structures and inspires the
whole state apparatus and its various (repressive and ideological) apparatuses
(the political, trade-union, school, information, ‘cultural’ and family system,
and so on), its mechanisms, its division of labour, its behaviour and so on – and
the ideology of communism. ‘To break’ the bourgeois state apparatus means

172 Althusser
finding the right form of this rupture for each time, for each apparatus, includ-
ing each branch of this apparatus, and carrying this through precisely in the
bourgeois apparatus itself.
Like everyone, I have some idea of the meaning of this ‘destruction’, but
since they are just my own individual ideas I will keep them to myself. It is not
a matter of demolishing institutions overnight, nor of deposing individuals.
The destruction of the state apparatus is a political task which, like any politi-
cal task, requires an analysis, a strategy and tactics, and, above all, an explicit
recognition of what is the decisive link in the chain and what is the opportune
moment for each action. For example, Lenin said that after seizing state power
it is necessary to break the essential piece of the bourgeois state apparatus
that is parliamentary democracy. How did he conceive of this ‘destruction’? He
wanted parliamentary democracy to be ‘active and lively’, suppressing the divi-
sion of labour between the legislature and the executive in a particular way,
and making elected representatives recallable by the people at any moment.
Destruction, then? It was in reality a deep transformation, converting this
political apparatus in order to make it adequate to serving communism.
One question is still left hanging: through what political forms could the
dictatorship of the proletariat be realised?
I think that I have shown that we cannot deduce from a given class dictator-
ship (whether bourgeois or proletarian) the political forms through which this
dictatorship is also realised. I say also, such that it is properly understood that
the class dictatorship is realised on the scale of all society: not just through the
forms of its political power, but also through the forms of its economic exploi-
tation and through the forms of its ideological rule.
It is decisively important to mention these three forms – economy, politics,
and ideology – such that we avoid being dazzled by what is going on at the so-
called political level.
This said, we have to sweep aside a fundamental misunderstanding that
unfortunately still weighs on the ‘question’ of the dictatorship of the prole-
tariat, that which reduces the dictatorship of the proletariat to the various pos-
sible forms of political dictatorship, be that the product of one man (Stalin) or
of a party (the Communist Party). The dictatorship of the proletariat, which
merely signals the fact of one class’s rule in the class struggle, does not at all
require a priori the dictatorship of one man or party – politically defined as a
tyrannical power – as the political form by which it is also realised.
That Lenin could, in a given moment of the history of the Soviet Revolution,
have reported that the dictatorship of the proletariat was de facto exercised
under the form of the political dictatorship of the Bolshevik Party –
mixed up with the new state apparatus, which was ‘broken’ very badly and

highly ‘bureaucratised’ – and denounced this deviation in practical terms,

proves both the ever-possible historical risk of a confusion or digression –
which Stalin would consecrate without any hesitation in his voice or in his
conscience – but also the fundamental incompatibility and heterogeneity of
the term ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ and dictatorship as a political form.
If there is a historical confusion, a theoretical and political incompatibility
or heterogeneity of the two terms, then we must not hide it: for here, we are
at a crossroads. What we must understand is not that there are roads (we have
plenty enough cartographers to attest to this) but rather that they cross: mean-
ing, they diverge. We must understand that, as concerns the political forms of
the dictatorship of the proletariat, there are roads that must necessarily cross.
And it is this necessity that must be explained, now or never.
In order to see whither these roads lead, and, above all, where they cross, we
have to look long into the future: it is necessary to have a strategy, the strategy
of communism. We have to look long into the future of class struggle. If we do
not do so, Marx said, even the best proletarian class-struggle organisation will
collapse into opportunism: and even sacrificing the future interests of the pro-
letariat to its immediate interests is enough for this to happen.
After all, what Marx said about socialism has, ultimately, not really been
taken seriously: namely, that it is a period of transition between the capitalist
and communist modes of production. The simple reality that there is no social-
ist mode of production, that socialism is instead a transition, the lower stage
of communism (Marx) has not been taken seriously. And, in consequence,
another reality has not been taken seriously either: just as there is no socialist
mode of production, it logically follows that there are no socialist production
relations. Also not taken seriously is Marx and Lenin’s idea that the class strug-
gle continues in new forms during the so-called socialist transition period (the
proof of this being that the state still exists), new forms which do really exist
despite their lack of any visible relation to the forms familiar to the capitalist
mode of production.
What is behind all these coinciding statements, which the Soviet Revolution
has never disproved in practice? Lenin gave the following definition of the
transition period, or socialism: a period defined by the contradiction between
capitalism and communism, by the contradiction between capitalist ‘ele-
ments’ and communist ones. The term ‘elements’ is certainly inadequate, but I
have no others at hand. Is this idea vague, abstract? Absolutely.
What does the working class do when it takes its first measures upon com-
ing to state power? It expropriates those who own the means of production
and exchange (and it can do so legally, or, as in Portugal, through the will of the
workers: bank employees ‘took power in their companies’ and the bill followed.

174 Althusser
Whether the law comes before or after, it is no more than a form of violence
carried out against established reality.). Here I get to the absolutely definitive
point, the crossroads. Considered by itself, this expropriation is a contradictory
action. After all, to nationalise is to destroy the bourgeoisie in its fortresses, and
thus formally to trace out the future appropriation of the means of produc-
tion; formally to anticipate the abolition of the ‘separation’ of the direct pro-
ducers from the means of production – which defines the capitalist mode of
production – and thus formally to take the road of communism. But at the same
time, to nationalise is nothing other than cloaking capitalism with a new form,
the state-capitalist form with which Lenin was obsessed, and which is noth-
ing but the realisation of the deepest tendency of capitalism. Namely, the ten-
dency that no-one wants to talk about, that of a ‘capitalism without capitalists’
(Marx) where the bourgeois state concentrates and distributes the functions
of accumulation and investment, and, therefore, the reproduction of the capi-
talist relation. Yes, the capitalist relation, because there are still wage labour-
ers and, with this, exploitation and commodity relations – that is, the power
of money.
Studying the first historical forms in which the capitalist mode of produc-
tion existed, Marx distinguished between ‘formal subsumption’ (in which the
old forms of work – the artisans’ ‘craft’ – continue to exist under the new capi-
talist relation of wage labour) and ‘real subsumption’ (in which the old forms
of work are transformed into new forms of the division and organisation of
labour, ones which correspond to the new capitalist relations – thus the end
of craft, and the fragmenting, slicing up and parcellisation of work). This is the
type of contradiction that the collective appropriation of the means of produc-
tion poses; with the difference that here it is the old (capitalist) relation that
must submit to the new (communist) form.
I say communist form because the transformation of production (collec-
tive property, planning) is only formal, since it does not affect the relations of
production (wage labour) or the division and organisation of labour. But at the
same time, I say communist form because it has, nonetheless, already been
set in motion, a subsumption tending towards its future and waiting for this
future to give it reality and existence. And everything is at stake in this indeci-
sion, this crossroads: either the old capitalist relation will prove more powerful
than the new communist form, or else the new communist form will become
real and impose itself as the new relation. What is decisive, in this alterna-
tive, is the relation of forces in the class struggle. But – how should we put
this? – at first, and for a long time, the class struggle – which is still anchored
in production, its stronghold – is displaced towards other sites and expressed
through other forms that concern not only production, but also the superstruc-

ture. The class struggle plays out within the new state (the new owner of the
means of production and exchange), around this state, around the new class
character of this state and its apparatus, within and around the party of the
working class which organised the masses’ class struggle, among the masses
and around these same masses, around their revolutionary capacity and revo-
lutionary will. At this moment an enormous, far-reaching test of force is set in
motion, namely the class struggle under the dictatorship of the proletariat, in
production, politics, and ideology simultaneously.
If someone asked, at this moment, what are the political forms proper to
the class dictatorship of the proletariat, we would see that they derive natu-
rally from its very character and the concrete conditions of this class struggle.
For the formal assumption of communism to lead to real communism, for the
formal appropriation of the means of production to become real, and for the
unresolved situation of the relations of production to incline towards commu-
nism rather than capitalism, all the forces of the popular masses have to enter
the stage of class struggle, multiplied tenfold by the maximum of lucidity and
consciousness. What appeared, when we were speaking only of the ‘destruc-
tion’ of the state apparatus, to be the invention of new forms appropriate to
depriving the state of its now-transformed functions, is a hundred times more
valid when we are talking about the class struggle in all its breadth. Without
‘the widest mass democracy’, the proletarian class struggle and the dictator-
ship of the proletariat are impossible, unthinkable.
Democracy, then. And Lenin also added: ‘the fullest democracy’. But the
meaning of these words, which were taken from existing – bourgeois – political
language, should not be mistaken. This democracy is different to bourgeois, par-
liamentary democracy, with its fiddled elections, the demagogy of its mecha-
nisms (all for the electoral clientele), its artificial stability (representatives being
elected for so many years), its internal and external division of labour (the leg-
islative body being separate from the executive and judiciary) and so on.
And when Lenin speaks of ‘the fullest democracy’, we have to follow him
down the riverside in order to realise that mass democracy is beginning over on
the other bank. ‘Mass democracy’ incorporates and transforms parliamentary-
democratic forms, the grip of whose division of labour it must necessarily
break. But it also ‘breaks’ the grip of the two other great divisions of ‘labour’
before which bourgeois parliamentary democracy is blind: one realised in pro-
duction, and another realised in ideology. How can anyone not see the hypoc-
risy of this bourgeois democracy, which does not want to know anything about
what is happening in the workplace, in exploitation, anything about real con-
ditions (which are constantly changing), anything about the housing condi-
tions of the workers, anything about their individual and collective transport

176 Althusser
situation? How can we not denounce the hypocrisy of this bourgeois democ-
racy, which restricts politics to voters voting and MPs deliberating – thus
asphyxiating politics – and arrogantly ignores what is taking place in the field
of activity of the state apparatus and the other ideological state apparatuses?
Mass democracy, according to Lenin, means the masses’ intervention not only
in politics in the bourgeois sense, by way of the parliamentary system, but also
in the state apparatus, production and ideology. Do we have to find the appro-
priate forms for this? Yes, but ultimately this is not so difficult. In order to find
them, we have to seek them out and invent them, though we can only do so
consciously, deliberately. And, certainly, there can be no desire for this if we do
not recognise that these interventions are vital for the masses’ class struggle, if
we do not know that right, laws and norms are the means and the stakes of the
class struggle, and if we do not know that politics, as conceived in the narrow
sense that the bourgeoisie ascribes to it, is only a small part of the vast terrain
of class struggle.
This knowledge comes from experience: and this experience is achieved
through the masses’ practice and concentrated in the experience of class struggle.
It is transmitted through the masses’ memory, namely their class-struggle
organisations. If the Communist Party does not get mixed up with the state,
if it is attentive to the will of the masses, if the Communist Party is ‘one step
ahead, but only one’, and above all not three steps behind, it can play a decisive
role. And its role is so decisive that we can justifiably say that the Party can
serve as the arbiter when the dictatorship of the proletariat is at the cross-
roads, giving the right direction to the tendency of history. Tell me how your
party functions and I will tell you what the forms of your dictatorship of the
proletariat are; tell me what these forms are and I will tell you if your state will
disintegrate or be further strengthened; tell me what your state is and I will tell
you what class’s dictatorship it is, proletarian or bourgeois.
In a manner of speaking. Because we could make the same assessment
grasping matters from whatever other angle. Tell me what your organisa-
tion of labour is . . . what your planning system is . . . what your trade unions
are . . . what your ‘cultural revolution’ is, and so on. In every case, these ques-
tions lead to the same crossroads. To what dictatorship have we committed
ourselves? Towards what dictatorship are we heading? We have no choice but
to deal with this.
Those who can, should reread Lenin: they will find almost all of these ques-
tions on every page. The same question is repeated each time. Where are we?
Where are we going? The same piercing, dramatic question: because to get an
answer, we have to pose these questions in unison, and since each of them leads
to the next, we have to consider them all at once. But what sustains the whole

set of questions in Lenin’s spirit, amid the worst horrors of the war and civil war,
amid the catastrophe of famine and the harsh test of the global blockade, is a
sharp vision of a relentless struggle, one which will tend towards dictatorship
unless it is kept going through the consciousness, effort, heroism and blood of
the other dictatorship, the dictatorship of a working class that knows that it is a
fight to the death. ‘Dictatorship is a tough, bloody word, a word that expresses
the unrelenting struggle to the death between two classes, two worlds, two
epochs of universal history. Words like this are not cast out into the void’.
It is for this reason that I have mentioned all of these theoretical points.
We must not be intimidated by those who today inveigh against theory, which
embarrasses them (and this is a practice that comes easily to them). History
has demonstrated well enough that Marxist theory, when it is not recited like
a prayer or invoked as an authority, speaks directly of the real – and it does so
in an electrifying manner.
For example, if the bourgeois state apparatus is destroyed or transformed,
and we immediately make ourselves a new state apparatus, but this latter
does not serve its own extinction through the intervention of the masses,
then what we are left with is a new bourgeois state apparatus. Its extinction
must, instead, start right from the moment of destruction or transformation.
And these are not empty words. The process begins when organisations aris-
ing from among the masses take charge of certain of the functions of the new
state: from the moment of its establishment, or even before. Is this a paradox?
I do not believe so. Because there is no single time in the class struggle, but
rather different, overlapping times, one already advancing and another still to
come. Certain things can begin before the revolution and later be an effect of
the revolution. Where? When? We just need to open our eyes. What are com-
munist class-struggle organisations if not already communism? What are the
popular initiatives that we now see emerging all around, in Spain, in Italy and
other places, in the factories, suburbs, schools and sanctuaries, if not already
communism?
For all of these reasons, I will devote my last few words to defending the
dictatorship of the proletariat. Restored to its rightful place, it opens up to us
the strategy for communism.
It reminds us – and today it is a painful yet crucial point – that socialism
is not a mode of production, one in which ‘socialist relations of production’
‘correspond’ to determinate productive forces; there is no socialist mode of
production and no socialist relations of production. Socialism is not a stable
society endowed with a powerful, monopolist state able to defend itself from
crises and divvy out security of employment and social services. Rather, it is a
contradictory ‘transition period’ in which, if everything goes as intended, the

178 Althusser
communist elements each day gain more ground on the capitalist elements,
in which the class struggle and classes continue to exist under new forms, in
which the initiative of the masses each day takes charge of more state func-
tions, with the perspective not of some ‘developed socialism’, but, simply,
communism.
And since I am speaking of communism, the concept of the dictatorship
of the proletariat also reminds us, above all else, that communism is not a
word, nor a dream for who knows what vague future. Communism is an objec-
tive tendency already inscribed in our society. The increased collectivisation
of capitalist production, the workers’ movement’s forms of organisation and
struggle, the initiatives of the popular masses, and – why not? – certain bold
initiatives by artists, writers and researchers, are outlines and symptoms of
communism that exist even today.
We have to believe that Lenin was saying something of the kind when he
stated – in his words, which are also our own – that the dictatorship of the
proletariat is the democracy of the widest masses, a freedom that men have
never known!

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Historical Materialism 23.

Some Questions Concerning the Crisis of Marxist

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���5 | doi 10.1163/1569206X-12341385

underway that envisages a pseudo-democratic future institutionalising the dis-

Historical Materialism 23.1 (2015) 152–178

Historical Materialism 23.1 (2015) 152–178

we must remove certain expressions from our vocabulary, just a few. We

Historical Materialism 23.1 (2015) 152–178

expressed by the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat do not cease to

Historical Materialism 23.1 (2015) 152–178

and reality of the dictatorship of the proletariat. If he had been able to

Historical Materialism 23.1 (2015) 152–178

formation of bourgeois ideology, and therefore a theoretical formation pro-

Historical Materialism 23.1 (2015) 152–178

Historical Materialism 23.1 (2015) 152–178

One question inevitably comes up at this point: is there not a problem of

Historical Materialism 23.1 (2015) 152–178

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Historical Materialism 23.1 (2015) 152–178

Historical Materialism 23.1 (2015) 152–178

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‘emanates from sovereign power’, whether that be in the juridical, political or

Historical Materialism 23.1 (2015) 152–178

Historical Materialism 23.1 (2015) 152–178

would be necessary in order to understand the reason for this identification,

Historical Materialism 23.1 (2015) 152–178

of ‘different political forms’ under the dictatorship of the proletariat. Why is it

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Historical Materialism 23.1 (2015) 152–178

Historical Materialism 23.1 (2015) 152–178

highly ‘bureaucratised’ – and denounced this deviation in practical terms,

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Historical Materialism 23.1 (2015) 152–178

Historical Materialism 23.1 (2015) 152–178

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Historical Materialism 23.1 (2015) 152–178

Historical Materialism 23.1 (2015) 152–178

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© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ��5 | doi 10.1163/1569206X-12341385