Avineri, Shlomo. “How to Save Marx from the Alchemists of Revolution.” Political Theory, Vol. 4 (1976), pp. 35-44.

Excerpt:

“At the risk of repeating some of the evidence which can be found in my

book, I would like to reiterate briefly Marx’s position on the question of
gradual versus violent overthrow of capitalist governments. Marx’s classical
text on this is his Amsterdam Speech of September 18, 1872:
We do not assert that the attainment of [political supremacy of the workers]
requires identical means. We know that one has to take into consideration the
institutions, mores, and traditions of the different countries, and we do not
deny that there are countries, like England and America and if I am familiar
with your institutions, Holland, where labour may attain its goal by peaceful
means.
In other countries, like France and Germany, Marx goes on to suggest,
the transformation will have to be undertaken by a violent overthrow of
the existing machinery of government. It seems that the criteria used by
Marx to make the distinction are fairly obvious: the transformation to
socialism can be relatively peaceful in countries where there is a large
proletariat, where there are well-entrenched parliamentary institutions
more or less based on universal suffrage, and where there does not exist a
strong state machinery which controls administration. In continental
countries like France and Germany, on the other hand, where the
bourgeoisie is still relatively weak, where the majority of the population is
still made up of peasants rather than of industrial workers, where there is
no tradition of genuinely parliamentary institutions-there the transforma-
tion will have to be violent, because existing institutions do not bear
within themselves the dialectical potential of qualitative change. As Marx
remarks in the Capital, the process of social transformation, when it will
reach the continent, “will take a form more brutal or more humane,
according to the degree of development of the working class itself.”2”

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