Customarily the word ‘socialism’ today refers to the social system which came into existence with the seizure of political power by the Bolshevik party in Russia in 1917; it is the Russian system that became the prototype for socialism mutatis mutandis in the different lands which followed. Socialism in this context signifies a society ruled by a single political party, where the means of production are owned mostly by the state and the economy is directed by central(ised) planning. For its adherents, the abolition of private ownership in the means of production is equivalent to the abolition of capitalism itself, while bringing the means of production under state or ‘public’ ownership is thought to be tantamount to the abolition of private ownership of the means of production and thus the establishment of socialism. Finally, the spokespersons of these régimes consider themselves to be Marx’s followers and claim the origin of their system in Marx’s ideas.

It is notable that most of the discussions on the régimes in question turn on political narratives, dealing with what Marx calls the ‘edifice’ or ‘superstructure’ of a society. They leave aside society’s very foundation – the material base – the mode of production and the social relations of production derived from it. Of course the absence of these questions in the discourses of ‘socialism’ does not mean that they are also absent in reality. In fact, following Marx, the character of a society is shown by the type of its social relations of production. Considered from this angle, it appears that all these régimes, including their prototype, have been commodity societies, marked by what Marx calls the ‘commodity mode of production’, where all products of human labour, including labour power, are commodities. Here the producer does not dominate the product, contrariwise, the product alienated from the producer dominates the producer. Here production is meant not for direct satisfaction of needs, but for exchange, and the social necessity of labour involved in production is confirmed ex post. Here individuals exist not in view of solidarity, but as competitors for material (monetary) advantage. Here the fundamental form of the system is appropriation by alienation.

In Marx socialism is a profoundly emancipatory concept, that is, socialism is just another name for an ‘Association of free and equal individuals’ arising from the working people’s struggle for self-emancipation through their collective self-activity and which excludes all the elements which are oppressive and repressive of the (human) individual, such as contending classes, private ownership of the conditions of production, commodity production including wage/salaried labour and the state.

Now, it is remarkable that the conceptual framework of this socialism, claimed to follow from Marx’s ideas, is almost totally limited to the ownership of the means of production as a juridical category, excluding its relational base. In other words, there is hardly any discussion of these régimes’ mode of production and the social relation(s) of production following therefrom.

As to the political side of these régimes, these are mostly the products of the seizure of power initiated and led by small groups of radicalised intelligentsia, heading a single party and substituting for a whole class – the working class – who, in fact, far from exercising any initiating or leading role in the process, at best followed the ‘leaders’. This is a far cry from the revolutionary process as the outcome of the spontaneous movement of the immense majority in the interest of the immense majority resulting in the working class, and not any party in its name, becoming the ruling class and winning the battle of democracy, as the Communist Manifesto envisages.

So, the very inauguration of the new order defined the new rule as minority rule over the majority, by definition undemocratic, completely negating the 1848 Manifesto’s predicted outcome of ‘winning the battle of democracy’. And these minority régimes had to be neverendingly coercive, to be terrorist régimes, in order to survive.

The contrast with socialism as envisaged by Marx could not be sharper. It is equivalent to the contrast between slavery and freedom. Marx’s socialism is a society of free individuals based on the Associated mode of production. The present work discusses at length the content of what Marx alternately calls Association, ‘communism’, ‘co-operative society’, and ‘republic of labour’. Most people, unfamiliar with Marx’s own writings, accept Party-State socialism as Marx’s own or at least as originating in Marx’s ideas, as claimed by the spokespersons of the régimes in question, and they conclude that Marx’s socialism is also naturally a coercive régime under state terror. They are hardly aware that Marx was anti-state from the very beginning of his adult life. Marx considered state and slavery indissociable. As regards coercion, in 1853 Marx had written in a New York daily, ‘what kind of a pitiable society is that which does not know a better means of defending itself than the hangman!’

Our present work is a very humble contribution towards restoring Marx’s immense emancipatory heritage, which has been consigned to oblivion by Marx’s epigones, who have made Marx serve the Party-State. This Preface gives the gist of the present work’s content.

We are grateful to the following friends who have helped us in different ways: Sebastian Budgen and Peter Thomas for their never-ending encouragement; David Broder and Danny Hayward for their great kindness and patience in view of my technical backwardness; members of the Calcutta Marx Circle, in particular Rana Bose, Sankar Ray and Sudeb Mitra. And then Andrew Kliman, Alfredo Saad Filho and Paolo Guissani for having read some parts of the manuscript and offered helpful suggestions. Also to Manfred Neuhaus and Regina Roth for arranging a congenial environment for our work as guest researcher at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences over a period.

Now, a word on the citations in the book. As regards Marx we have cited him both in his original German and side by side in the corresponding English, wherever this is available. For Capital Volume I, we have also given the texts in French. The same goes for Lenin’s texts (Russian and English). For the rest of the authors, they are given wherever possible in English.