#étienne balibar
So you see: to define the proletariat in accordance with its complete historical concept leads straight to a double conclusion which is of direct importance to us.
First: the development of the State power of the bourgeoisie, the reinforcement of its material means of intervention and the increased use of such intervention is in no way the consequence of simple technical and economic requirements, nor of the inevitable evolution of political power in general, but a direct function of the historical constitution of the proletariat as a class. The State of the imperialist epoch is not only the product of the class antagonism built into the capitalist production relation right from the beginning: it is the State of the epoch of revolutions and counter-revolutions; it is expressly organized as the State of pre-emptive counterrevolution.
Second: the process of constitution of the proletariat as a class is, for the fundamental reason indicated above, an unfinished process, counteracted by the very capitalism which sets it in motion. This process precisely cannot be brought to a conclusion without the proletarian revolution: the proletariat can only finally complete its constitution as a class in so far as it succeeds in constituting itself as the ruling class, through the dictatorship of the proletariat. But this suggests that the dictatorship of the proletariat must itself be a contradictory situation, in a new sense: a situation in which the proletariat can finally succeed in overcoming its divisions and form itself into a class, yet in which at the same time it begins to cease to be a class to the extent that it ceases to suffer exploitation. Thus we can understand why, as we are now seeing, the arguments about the dictatorship of the proletariat immediately involve arguments about the proletariat itself, and why the abandonment of the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat immediately causes the concept of the proletariat itself to ‘disappear’. The circle is closed: the working people, if they do not constitute a proletariat, cannot hold State power as a class; they simply need the State to provide for their needs… It is a nice dream, but it is unfortunately only a dream.
Balibar,On the Dictatorship of the Proletariat (1976)
Opportunism therefore consists in the belief and the argument that the State apparatus is an instrument which can be bent according to the will, the intentions and the decisions of a given class. It consists in the argument that the government is the master of the State apparatus. And of the actions which follow from this belief.
But this is complete idealist gibberish. A social class does not ‘decide’ anything at all; it is not an individual, even a million-headed individual. Which means that the State power of a class is not the product of a decision or of a subjective will: it is the organization, the objective practical activity of the State apparatus, a set of social relations independent of the will of the men who play a material role in the structure of the State apparatus. And since this is exactly the point made by the Marxist theory of the State, opportunism is obliged to ignore this aspect of Marxist theory, which is precisely the most important aspect.
Balibar,On the Dictatorship of the Proletariat(1976)
[D]o the ‘facts’ not show that the present-day bourgeoisie is quite different from its predecessors, that the present-day working class is quite different in structure and social status from the working class which Marx wrote about (or the one which we think he wrote about)? [Are Marxists], out of love for the concept [of class struggle] itself, refusing to accept the consequences of these 'facts’? The problem about this objection, which actually means that it immediately destroys its own value, is that it is based on a complete misunderstanding of Marxist theory, and of its dialectical character. Marx’s theory is not founded on the definition of some kind of 'pure’ proletariat (standing against a 'pure’ bourgeoisie): there is no 'pure’ proletariat, there is no 'pure’ revolution and there is no 'pure’ communism. [Marxist] theory does not depend on a picture of social classes with the fixed characteristics of a given epoch (the nineteenth century, or the beginning of the twentieth century, etc.). And for the excellent reason that the object of Marxist theory is not to paint such a picture, as a sociologist might do, but to analyse the antagonism itself, to discover the tendential laws of its evolution, of its historical transformation, and thus to explain the necessity of these transformations in the structure of social classes, ceaselessly imposed by the development of capital.
Balibar,On the Dictatorship of the Proletariat(1976)
