“What my campaign is about is a political revolution – millions of people standing up and saying enough is enough.”

The words of US presidential candidate and self proclaimed “democratic socialist” Bernie Sanders. In recent years much of the world has witnessed a surge in populist leaders arising out of both the “left” and right. From Farage and Corbyn in the UK to Le Pen in France, from Vox and Podemos in Spain to Bolsanaro in Brazil, Salvini in Italy to Orban in Hungary, etc. These people all differ in ideology, narrative and many policy ideas. But they all have one thing in common – the are fighting a “political revolution” against a supposed criminal elite – be that the wealthiest 1%, the EU, the “cultural Marxists” or corrupt government. These people have another thing in common. Like their namesake, the Populares of the Roman Republic, they represent a certain group of the “common people” who have been disenfranchised by the elite. This group of common people is almost always a slightly warped interpretation of what is simply the proletariat (sometimes including the petty bourgeoisie as well). In order to defend the interests of “the people” they must seize power in a “political revolution.” What this translates to is a changing of the state structure, without actually changing the existing mode of production or solving the class antagonisms of the capitalist system. This bears exact resemblance to Julius Caesar fundamentally reforming the Roman Republic into its final form – the far more openly totalitarian Roman Empire, without actually challenging the classical mode of production – slavery.

In order to understand why a “political revolution” is not sufficient to solve capitalism’s contradictions it is necessary to understand the true function of the state, not only in capitalist society, but in all class systems. The state, despite the pretense that it is the embodiment of a pursuit for justice, divine right or civilization, merely exists to serve the ruling class in any given mode of production. It possesses a monopoly on violence and power. It is the means by which the propertied classes control the police, military, intelligence services, etc. The existence of a ruling class presupposes the existence of a state, in order to shield it from the struggle of opposing classes. This is no less true today than in antiquity. The state shall exist as long as class, and will only cease to exist when a classless society (communism) has been achieved. Hence Lenin’s quote “so long as the state exists there is no freedom. When there is freedom, there will be no state.” Under capitalism the state will give the veneer of a functioning democratic institution, but will in reality remain, as Frederick Engels put it, an “instrument of oppression of one class by another.” Our current dissent into the thralls of a fascistic style systems is proof that when capital is under threat, the mask of democracy is pulled off.

A political revolution is therefore superstructural change. It does not challenge the class system, the base of society, but rather changes the nature of the state, part of said class system’s superstructure. This is a lesson that has been taught to us throughout history, from the classical slave societies to modern capitalism.

The first and second centuries BCE were a time of crisis for Rome’s slave owning aristocracy. The Gracchi brothers, two proto-leftist politicians, had proposed radical land reform and had questioned the wealth inequality of the Republic. This resulted in rich senators organizing the murder of Tiberius, the older of the brothers, and conspiring against the younger Gaius until his movement ended with a bloody massacre by the Roman army and his own suicide. The Gracchi brothers had however started a movement that would later be known as the Populares, or “favouring the people.” Shortly after the failure of the Gracchi movement the much more radical Sparticus, an escaped slave, lead a major armed revolt against the system of slavery all together, thereby directly challenging the mode of production and attempting to advance history into the next class system. This open attempt at class struggle was defeated by the might of the Roman state, defending the interests of the Roman ruling class, but had provided another great blow to the already wounded socioeconomic system. Enter Julius Caesar. Caesar was part of the growing Populares movement, now a more moderate echo of what the Gracchi brothers had started, which aimed merely to secure political power on behalf of the Plebs and did not provide any challenge to the system of slavery. Caesar’s rise to power came about after a three way political struggle with the hardline conservative Cato the Younger and General Pompey. It’s important to remember that under any system the interests of the ruling class are not always homogeneous. Cato, Pompey and Caesar all represented the interests of the slave owning aristocracy, just different sectors of this class. In the end Caesar won the three way struggle and became dictator of Rome (in the mainstream sense of the word as Rome was already a dictatorship of the slave owning aristocracy). With Caesar’s rise to power the Republic entered a new political phase, Caesarism. Caesarism played a very similar role in the slave societies as fascism does in modern capitalism. Although he had risen to power promising to represent the plebs (but not the slaves), once in power Caesar pursued an imperialist foreign policy and filled the senate with his own supporters. Eventually he would declare himself dictator for life. The rise in Caesarism did upset some members of the slave owning aristocratic class, as although he still represented slavery as a mode of production there were many cases where his political revolution harmed some of their immediate interests. This was what led to his assassination. Brutus, his assassin, represented the same class interests as Caesar. His struggle against Caesar was of the same vein as the one waged by Cato and Pompey. He was acting on behalf of a different faction of the same ruling class, whose short term interests lay in attempting to hold back the new phase of Roman slave society. But ultimately Caesar’s assassination did not prevent Caesarism from taking hold and the political revolution was complete. The far more openly tyrannical Roman Empire was formed and the old Republic ceased to exist. Yet all the change Caesarism ushered in was superstructural. The slave system as a mode of production remained, and the aristocratic slave owning class still retained their position of dominance over the political and economic system. The state, despite undergoing numerous reforms, still embodied the interests of the same ruling class. This pattern of struggle between different puppets of the same class interests and of superstructural change presenting itself as revolutionary would continue throughout history up until the present day. To quote William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar “How many ages hence, shall this our lofty scene be acted over, in states unborn and accents yet unknown!”

Under feudalism political revolution took on a new role. The change it brought about was still superstructural, but due to its decentralized nature often failed to bring about substantial political alteration. Feudalism’s equivalent of political revolution mainly involved different individuals from the same family fighting for the throne of a small kingdom, or sometimes different dynasties fighting among each other. Which brother inherited the throne from their father or which royal family ruled over a realm was of little consequence to the political structure the feudal kingdoms held, and held even less meaning for the peasantry, the exploited class of feudalism. As historian Neil Faulkner put it, “in contrast to the dynamism of capitalist economic development, the normal condition of the pre-capitalist economy was technological ‘stagnation’. Change was the exception, not the rule.” Feudalism was an inherently unstable system, yet it was also based on fragile class relations that needed some degree of stability to survive. There was constant rivalry between different members of the ruling class over land. To prevent these rivalries causing the whole system to implode, there was a continuous need to “export the violence inherent in the system” (Faulkner). This is what was really behind the bloodshed and slaughter of the Crusades, despite absurd claims of fighting a “holy war.” It was also what was behind the Reconquista (the taking back of the Iberian Peninsula from the Islamic Caliphate), which, according to historian Joel Levy, contrary to claims of heroism and holy war, was “driven by the need for land.” The exportation of conflict meant that much of Europe, although still bearing witness to bloody conflict between different members of the ruling class, rarely experienced radical change of any sort. There were some exceptions to this, the rebellion against King John of England and the signing of the Magna Carta for example brought about a wave of political reform in England but still maintained the feudal mode of production and the position of the feudal aristocracy. The feudal state defended the position of the aristocracy against rebellious peasants during events such as the English and French Peasants Revolts and the German Peasants War.

The feudal state’s relation with the raising bourgeoisie was more mixed. Sometimes the interests of the aristocracy and bourgeoisie were the same. The feudal state played a part in the seizure of the Commons which lead to the proletarianization of the peasantry. As the bourgeoisie gained more influence in the 17th and 18th centuries the state would play a huge role in colonialism and the slave trade, which opened up new markets and helped them accumulate the wealth necessary to create a modernized capitalist economy. The state would also play a part in helping the bourgeoisie of one nation fight the bourgeoisie of another for dominance over foreign markets, such as during the Seven Years War, the “first global war”, which started as simply disagreements within the Holy Roman Empire but eventually resulted in colonial wars between Britain and France in India, the Philippines and the Americas. The Spanish War of Succession similarly started out as a disagreement among feudal monarchs but developed into a colonial war for dominance over foreign markets. The landed nobility would over time lose more influence and the bourgeoisie would eventually confront the feudal state in armed seizings of power. This happened during the Dutch Eighty Years War which established the capitalist Dutch Republic and the English Civil War which, although the Monarchy was eventually restored, resulted in the succession of most power in the country to the bourgeois state. According to historian J.A Sharpe, following the civil war “England was more commercialized that it had been [prior to the civil war], possessed a rich and mature trading section and had a lively and variegated elite which incorporated substantial non-landholding elements.” Feudal states that did not come to represent the bourgeoisie rather than the feudal aristocracy would eventually cease to exist such as the Ancien Regime in France and the Holy Roman Empire. Bourgeois upheavals throughout Europe in the 19th century, such as the Revolutions of 1848, the Balkan Nationalist uprisings and the Carlist Wars in Spain would ultimately finish the transition from feudalism to capitalism in most of the continent. This change, which in most countries lasted over several centuries, constitutes genuine revolution. The old ruling class was overthrown (or in a multitude of cases incorporated into the bourgeoisie) and the feudal mode of production was replaced with the capitalist one, thus further advancing history. That is what differentiates these uprisings and revolutions from the wars between different aristocrats and kingdoms several centuries earlier, they only brought about superstructural change, or in most cases no change at all.

Early capitalism was not without its political revolutions. The most potent example was in Revolutionary France, which, whilst undergoing it’s transition from feudalism to capitalism, experienced the period’s equivalent of Caesarism, Bonapartism. Like the Roman Republic in the years prior to Caesar’s ascension to power France in the 1790s was undergoing systemic crisis. The feudal state was destroyed and the new Bourgeois one was being created, but it wasn’t exactly rosy for the Bourgeois class. Jacobinism, the ideology of the most radical sectors of the revolution and the ideological precursor to communism, had taken hold. Maximillien Robespirre, a member of the Jacobin club, had become one of the most powerful men in France by 1793. Haitian Jacobin Toussaint L’Ouverture had lead an anti-colonial slave revolt in the Caribbean island. Although Robespierre was executed before his rise to power, Napoleon’s Coup of 18 Brumaire which established him as absolute ruler of France came about in the context of a still powerful Jacobin movement. Under Napoleon’s rule Jacobinism and all radical elements of the French Revolution were crushed, French colonialism was restored to the fullest and the interests of landowners and the now prominent capitalist class were represented in the state. Bonapartism was inherently totalitarian and Napoleon’s political revolution ultimately served as a means by the ruling class of defeating radicalism, terminating the French Revolution before it entered a truly anti-capitalist phase. Bonapartism would play the exact same role 50 years later when Napoleon’s nephew, Louis Napoleon, seized power following a period of similar revolutionary upheaval, securing the interests of big industrialists and landowners. Twenty years later Germany’s leader Otto von Bismarck would implement a German version of Bonapartism, introducing the “Anti-Socialist Laws” in 1878. History certainly did, as Marx said on the matter, repeat itself “first as a tragedy, then as a farce.”

Bonapartism had its contemporary equivalents in Britain. The British bourgeoisie had already comfortably seized political power by the latter half of the 18th century, but still leaders would be replaced under King George III’s direct orders when it suited ruling class interests, the primary motivation being British capitalism was leading the country to a new socioeconomic phase – industrialisation. Between 1760 and 1770 George III would dismiss three Prime Ministers and then go on to dismiss another in 1783. These dismissals were all in order to initiate or halt reforms that would aid industrialisation and expand on Britain’s colonial interests. These replacements were political revolutions in their own rights – individuals were replaced and the country’s political direction would change frequently, but the class interests would remain the same. The authoritarian nature of British liberal capitalism would be witnessed in the years following the French Revolution. Anyone who called for change in Britain was dismissed as a “French spy” (much like in the present day where leftists are constantly dismissed by the mainstream liberal media as being “Russian bots”). In 1819, following the Napoleonic Wars, Britain suffered terrible economic downturn. When working class groups organized a mass demonstration outside St Peter’s Church in Manchester calling for more political representation they were brutally massacred by the “democratic” British government. Similar cases of reactionary authoritarianism could be seen throughout Europe during the restoration period.

This tyrannical phase of early capitalism, Bonapartism, came about to secure the new ruling class’ interests. It came about through seizures of power within the Bourgeois state which changed the superstructure of capitalist society in order to meet the needs of the new mode of production.

Marx’s warning of history’s repetitiveness would be realized once again in the 20th century. Bonapartism and Caesarism were relatively moderate, calm breezes compared to the thunderous terror and wrath that would be brought about by their modern equivalent, fascism. Fascism is a phase of capitalism that usually takes place once capitalism has been properly established in a country and serves to protect the bourgeoisie against rising leftist and workers movements. Notable fascists such as Hitler, Mussolini, Franco and Pinochet utilized the pre-existing bureaucracy of the Bourgeois liberal state to persecute leftists and trade unionists alongside marginalized groups within society, thus saving capitalism and the ruling class’ position from proletarian revolution, from communism. Like Caesarism and Bonapartism before it fascism would (and still does) not completely abolish the old state or mode of production, but simply implement radical reforms that would change the nature of the Bourgeois state. Fascists rise to power sometimes through violently overthrowing the previous government or sometimes through Bourgeois democracy. Once in power they bring about political revolution, superstructural change that adapts capitalism to its new material conditions. The recent rise of the far right throughout Europe, North America and Latin America alongside an increasing crackdown on dissent by the Bourgeois state through militarization of the police and the creation of a surveillance state is playing the exact same role.

This tale of lies, fraud, tragedy and defeat continues to the present day. There are still those who paint themselves as revolutionaries, but in reality are merely more Caesars, more Bonapartes and in the most extreme cases more Hitlers and Mussolinis. They do not want to abolish the capitalist mode of production. They do not want to do away with current class antagonisms, the Bourgeois state, property relations and the socioeconomic order. They do not want to advance human history, end our current stagnation, establish a Proletarian state and Proletarian ownership over the means of production. They do not want to establish a society working towards humanity’s ultimate destination: communism. They simply wish to bring about superstructural change, to reform the Bourgeois state into a new version of itself. They will and are bringing about disruption to the status quo, but ultimately they will conserve the capitalist mode of production and keep the same ruling class in power. Bolsonaro, Trump, Orban, Salvini, Le Pen, Vox, AfD, FPO, Farage, Duterte, Erdogan, Wilders etc all claim to be ‘outsiders’ fighting for the ‘common people’ against the ‘elite’, yet when you sift through the rhetoric and use a class based, dialectical materialist analysis you will see they all in the end represent the maintenance of capitalism and the interests of the bourgeoisie. Most of the leaders of these far right populist movements are members of the very ‘elite’ they claim to despise. Trump is a billionaire, Farage was a banker and multi-millionaire Steve Banon’s attempt to organize a far right wave across Europe was planned from luxury hotels and his friend’s mansion in Brussels. Sanders, Podemos, Corbyn, SYRIZA, Melenchon, etc all claim to support a version of socialism, but in reality simply wish to reform capitalism back to the good old days before neoliberalism, the days of social democracy, where the working class enjoyed a bigger piece of the pie, but still did not own any means of production or hold any genuine political power. None of these people offer an anti-imperialist alternative that isn’t watered down and spineless. Many of them are genuinely well meaning, but even if they wanted to implement policies that would begin the transition to a socialist society, they’d be either sabotaged by pro-capitalist camps within their parties or ousted by a US backed coup, if history has anything to say about it.

We need real revolution. The working class of the entire world must and will break their chains and rid themselves of exploitation, as the oppressed class did with feudalism and slavery before them. Every system, in attempts to save itself, has fooled the oppressed class by miss placing their anger and hope into politicians who merely represent a different sector of the ruling class, or will cause disruption without actually changing the mode of production. Only the communists offer a genuine solution to capitalism’s problems, based on hundreds of years of theory and practice.

Bibliography

Levy, Joel, World History, Dorling Kindersely, London, 2010, pg 143

Faulkner, Neil, Crusade and Jihad in the medieval Middle East, International Socialism Website, 2006

Lenin, Vladimir, The State and Revolution, Moscow, 1917

Engels, Friedrich, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, Zurich, 1884

Marx, Karl, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon, Die Revolution, New York City, 1852

Woods, Alan, Class Struggle in the Roman Republic, In Defense of Marxism, 2009

Shakespeare, William, The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, 1599

“Optimates and Populares” (Britannica, viewed 2019)

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Optimates-and-Populares

“Jacobin Club” (Britannica, viewed 2019)

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Jacobin-Club

Beaumont, Maurice, Larousse Encyclopedia of Modern History, Spring Books, London, 1987 pg 190-191, 237-242

“Steve Banon: I want to drive a stake through the heart of the Brussels vampire” (The Guardian, viewed 2019)

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/nov/21/steve-bannon-i-want-to-drive-a-stake-through-the-brussels-vampire-populist-europe