The State and Revolution.
By Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.
First Published: 1918.
Source: V.I.Lenin, Collected Works, Volume 25, p.381-492.
The
question of the state is now acquiring particular importance both in
theory and in practical politics. The imperialist war has immensely
accelerated and intensified the process of transformation of monopoly
capitalism into state-monopoly capitalism. The monstrous oppression
of the working people by the state, which is merging more and more
with the all-powerful capitalist associations, is becoming
increasingly monstrous. The advanced countries - we mean their
hinterland - are becoming military convict prisons for the workers.
The
unprecedented horrors and miseries of the protracted war are making
the people's position unbearable and increasing their anger. The
world proletarian revolution is clearly maturing. The question of its
relation to the state is acquiring practical importance.
The
elements of opportunism that accumulated over the decades of
comparatively peaceful development have given rise to the trend of
social-chauvinism which dominated the official socialist parties
throughout the world. This trend - socialism in words and chauvinism
in deeds (Plekhanov, Potresov, Breshkovskaya, Rubanovich, and, in a
slightly veiled form, Tsereteli, Chernov and Co. in Russia;
Scheidemann. Legien, David and others in Germany; Renaudel, Guesde
and Vandervelde in France and Belgium; Hyndman and the Fabians[1] in
England, etc., etc.) - is conspicuous for the base, servile
adaptation of the "leaders of socialism" to the interests
not only of "their" national bourgeoisie, but of "their"
state, for the majority of the so-called Great Powers have long been
exploiting and enslaving a whole number of small and weak nations.
And the imperialist war is a war for the division and redivision of
this kind of booty. The struggle to free the working people from the
influence of the bourgeoisie in general, and of the imperialist
bourgeoisie in particular, is impossible without a struggle against
opportunist prejudices concerning the "state".
First
of all we examine the theory of Marx and Engels of the state, and
dwell in particular detail on those aspects of this theory which are
ignored or have been distorted by the opportunists. Then we deal
specially with the one who is chiefly responsible for these
distortions, Karl Kautsky, the best-known leader of the Second
International (1889-1914), which has met with such miserable
bankruptcy in the present war. Lastly, we sum up the main results of
the experience of the Russian revolutions of 1905 and particularly of
1917. Apparently, the latter is now (early August 1917) completing
the first stage of its development; but this revolution as a whole
can only be understood as a link in a chain of socialist proletarian
revolutions being caused by the imperialist war. The question of the
relation of the socialist proletarian revolution to the state,
therefore, is acquiring not only practical political importance, but
also the significance of a most urgent problem of the day, the
problem of explaining to the masses what they will have to do before
long to free themselves from capitalist tyranny.
The
Author
August
1917.
Preface to the Second Edition.
The
present, second edition is published virtually unaltered, except that
section 3 had been added to Chapter II.
The
Author
Moscow
December 17, 1918.
I. CLASS SOCIETY AND THE STATE.
1.
The State: A Product of the Irreconcilability of Class Antagonisms
What
is now happening to Marx's
theory has, in the course of history, happened repeatedly to the
theories of revolutionary thinkers and leaders of oppressed classes
fighting for emancipation. During the lifetime of great
revolutionaries, the oppressing classes constantly hounded them,
received their theories with the most savage malice, the most furious
hatred and the most unscrupulous campaigns of lies and slander. After
their death, attempts are made to convert them into harmless icons,
to canonize them, so to say, and to hallow their names to a certain
extent for the “consolation” of the oppressed classes and with
the object of duping the latter, while at the same time robbing the
revolutionary theory of its substance, blunting its revolutionary
edge and vulgarizing it. Today, the bourgeoisie and the opportunists
within the labor movement concur in this doctoring of Marxism. They
omit, obscure, or distort the revolutionary side of this theory, its
revolutionary soul. They push to the foreground and extol what is or
seems acceptable to the bourgeoisie. All the social-chauvinists are
now “Marxists” (don't laugh!). And more and more frequently
German bourgeois scholars, only yesterday specialists in the
annihilation of Marxism, are speaking of the “national-German”
Marx, who, they claim, educated the labor unions which are so
splendidly organized for the purpose of waging a predatory war!
In
these circumstances, in view of the unprecedently wide-spread
distortion of Marxism, our prime task is to re-establish what Marx
really taught on the subject of the state. This will necessitate a
number of long quotations from the works of Marx
and Engels themselves.
Of course, long quotations will render the text cumbersome and not
help at all to make it popular reading, but we cannot possibly
dispense with them. All, or at any rate all the most essential
passages in the works of Marx and Engels on the subject of the state
must by all means be quoted as fully as possible so that the reader
may form an independent opinion of the totality of the views of the
founders of scientific socialism, and of the evolution of those
views, and so that their distortion by the “Kautskyism” now
prevailing may be documentarily proved and clearly demonstrated.
Let
us being with the most popular of Engels' works, The Origin of the
Family, Private Property and the State, the sixth edition of which
was published in Stuttgart as far back as 1894. We have to translate
the quotations from the German originals, as the Russian
translations, while very numerous, are for the most part either
incomplete or very unsatisfactory.
Summing
up his historical analysis, Engels says:
“The
state is, therefore, by no means a power forced on society from
without; just as little is it 'the reality of the ethical idea', 'the
image and reality of reason', as Hegel maintains. Rather, it is a
product of society at a certain stage of development; it is the
admission that this society has become entangled in an insoluble
contradiction with itself, that it has split into irreconcilable
antagonisms which it is powerless to dispel. But in order that these
antagonisms, these classes with conflicting economic interests, might
not consume themselves and society in fruitless struggle, it became
necessary to have a power, seemingly standing above society, that
would alleviate the conflict and keep it within the bounds of
'order'; and this power, arisen out of society but placing itself
above it, and alienating itself more and more from it, is the state."
(Pp.177-78, sixth edition)
This
expresses with perfect clarity the basic idea of Marxism with regard
to the historical role and the meaning of the state. The state is a
product and a manifestation of the irreconcilability of class
antagonisms. The state arises where, when and insofar as class
antagonism objectively cannot be reconciled. And, conversely, the
existence of the state proves that the class antagonisms are
irreconcilable.
It
is on this most important and fundamental point that the distortion
of Marxism, proceeding along two main lines, begins.
On
the one hand, the bourgeois, and particularly the petty-bourgeois,
ideologists, compelled under the weight of indisputable historical
facts to admit that the state only exists where there are class
antagonisms and a class struggle, “correct” Marx in such a way as
to make it appear that the state is an organ for the reconciliation
of classes. According to Marx, the state could neither have arisen
nor maintained itself had it been possible to reconcile classes. From
what the petty-bourgeois and philistine professors and publicists
say, with quite frequent and benevolent references to Marx, it
appears that the state does reconcile classes. According to Marx, the
state is an organ of class rule, an organ for the oppression of one
class by another; it is the creation of “order”, which legalizes
and perpetuates this oppression by moderating the conflict between
classes. In the opinion of the petty-bourgeois politicians, however,
order means the reconciliation of classes, and not the oppression of
one class by another; to alleviate the conflict means reconciling
classes and not depriving the oppressed classes of definite means and
methods of struggle to overthrow the oppressors.
For
instance, when, in the revolution of 1917, the question of the
significance and role of the state arose in all its magnitude as a
practical question demanding immediate action, and, moreover, action
on a mass scale, all the Social-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks
descended at once to the petty-bourgeois theory that the “state”
“reconciles” classes. Innumerable resolutions and articles by
politicians of both these parties are thoroughly saturated with this
petty-bourgeois and philistine “reconciliation” theory. That the
state is an organ of the rule of a definite class which cannot be
reconciled with its antipode (the class opposite to it) is something
the petty-bourgeois democrats will never be able to understand. Their
attitude to the state is one of the most striking manifestations of
the fact that our Socialist- Revolutionaries and Mensheviks are not
socialists at all (a point that we Bolsheviks have always
maintained), but petty-bourgeois democrats using near-socialist
phraseology.
On
the other hand, the “Kautskyite” distortion of Marxism is far
more subtle. “Theoretically”, it is not denied that the state is
an organ of class rule, or that class antagonisms are irreconcilable.
But what is overlooked or glossed over is this: if the state is the
product of the irreconcilability of class antagonisms, if it is a
power standing above society and “alienating itself more and more
from it", it is clear that the liberation of the oppressed class
is impossible not only without a violent revolution, but also without
the destruction of the apparatus of state power which was created by
the ruling class and which is the embodiment of this “alienation”.
As we shall see later, Marx very explicitly drew this theoretically
self-evident conclusion on the strength of a concrete historical
analysis of the tasks of the revolution. And — as we shall show in
detail further on — it is this conclusion which Kautsky has
“forgotten” and distorted.
2.
Special Bodies of Armed Men, Prisons, etc.
Engels
continues:
“As
distinct from the old gentile [tribal or clan] order, the state,
first, divides its subjects according to territory...."
This
division seems “natural” to us, but it costs a prolonged struggle
against the old organization according to generations or tribes.
“The
second distinguishing feature is the establishment of a public power
which no longer directly coincides with the population organizing
itself as an armed force. This special, public power is necessary
because a self-acting armed organization of the population has become
impossible since the split into classes.... This public power exists
in every state; it consists not merely of armed men but also of
material adjuncts, prisons, and institutions of coercion of all
kinds, of which gentile [clan] society knew nothing...."
Engels
elucidates the concept of the “power” which is called the state,
a power which arose from society but places itself above it and
alienates itself more and more from it. What does this power mainly
consist of? It consists of special bodies of armed men having
prisons, etc., at their command.
We
are justified in speaking of special bodies of armed men, because the
public power which is an attribute of every state “does not
directly coincide” with the armed population, with its “self-acting
armed organization".
Like
all great revolutionary thinkers, Engels tries to draw the attention
of the class-conscious workers to what prevailing philistinism
regards as least worthy of attention, as the most habitual thing,
hallowed by prejudices that are not only deep-rooted but, one might
say, petrified. A standing army and police are the chief instruments
of state power. But how can it be otherwise?
From
the viewpoint of the vast majority of Europeans of the end of the
19th century, whom Engels was addressing, and who had not gone
through or closely observed a single great revolution, it could not
have been otherwise. They could not understand at all what a
“self-acting armed organization of the population” was. When
asked why it became necessary to have special bodies of armed men
placed above society and alienating themselves from it (police and a
standing army), the West-European and Russian philistines are
inclined to utter a few phrases borrowed from Spencer of
Mikhailovsky, to refer to the growing complexity of social life, the
differentiation of functions, and so on.
Such
a reference seems “scientific”, and effectively lulls the
ordinary person to sleep by obscuring the important and basic fact,
namely, the split of society into irreconcilable antagonistic
classes.
Were
it not for this split, the “self-acting armed organization of the
population” would differ from the primitive organization of a
stick-wielding herd of monkeys, or of primitive men, or of men united
in clans, by its complexity, its high technical level, and so on. But
such an organization would still be possible.
It
is impossible because civilized society is split into antagonistic,
and, moreover, irreconcilably antagonistic classes, whose
“self-acting” arming would lead to an armed struggle between
them. A state arises, a special power is created, special bodies of
armed men, and every revolution, by destroying the state apparatus,
shows us the naked class struggle, clearly shows us how the ruling
class strives to restore the special bodies of armed men which serve
it, and how the oppressed class strives to create a new organization
of this kind, capable of serving the exploited instead of the
exploiters.
In
the above argument, Engels raises theoretically the very same
question which every great revolution raises before us in practice,
palpably and, what is more, on a scale of mass action, namely, the
question of the relationship between “special” bodies of armed
men and the “self-acting armed organization of the population".
We shall see how this question is specifically illustrated by the
experience of the European and Russian revolutions.
But
to return to Engel's exposition.
He
points out that sometimes — in certain parts of North America, for
example — this public power is weak (he has in mind a rare
exception in capitalist society, and those parts of North America in
its pre-imperialist days where the free colonists predominated), but
that, generally speaking, it grows stronger:
“It
[the public power] grows stronger, however, in proportion as class
antagonisms within the state become more acute, and as adjacent
states become larger and more populous. We have only to look at our
present-day Europe, where class struggle and rivalry in conquest have
tuned up the public power to such a pitch that it threatens to
swallow the whole of society and even the state."
This
was written not later than the early nineties of the last century,
Engel's last preface being dated June 16, 1891. The turn towards
imperialism — meaning the complete domination of the trusts, the
omnipotence of the big banks, a grand-scale colonial policy, and so
forth — was only just beginning in France, and was even weaker in
North America and in Germany. Since then “rivalry in conquest”
has taken a gigantic stride, all the more because by the beginning of
the second decade of the 20th century the world had been completely
divided up among these “rivals in conquest", i.e., among the
predatory Great Powers. Since then, military and naval armaments have
grown fantastically and the predatory war of 1914-17 for the
domination of the world by Britain or Germany, for the division of
the spoils, has brought the “swallowing” of all the forces of
society by the rapacious state power close to complete catastrophe.
Engels'
could, as early as 1891, point to “rivalry in conquest" as one
of the most important distinguishing features of the foreign policy
of the Great Powers, while the social-chauvinist scoundrels have ever
since 1914, when this rivalry, many time intensified, gave rise to an
imperialist war, been covering up the defence of the predatory
interests of “their own" bourgeoisie with phrases about
“defence of the fatherland", “defence of the republic and
the revolution", etc.!
3.
The State: an Instrument for the Exploitation of the Oppressed Class
The
maintenance of the special public power standing above society
requires taxes and state loans.
“Having
pubic power and the right to levy taxes,” Engels writes, “the
officials now stand, as organs of society, above society. The free,
voluntary respect that was accorded to the organs of the gentile
[clan] constitution does not satisfy them, even if they could gain
it....” Special laws are enacted proclaiming the sanctity and
immunity of the officials. “The shabbiest police servant” has
more “authority” than the representative of the clan, but even
the head of the military power of a civilized state may well envy the
elder of a clan the “unrestrained respect” of society.
The
question of the privileged position of the officials as organs of 3.
The State: an Instrument for the Exploitation of the Oppressed Class
state power is raised here. The main point indicated is: what is it
that places them above society? We shall see how this theoretical
question was answered in practice by the Paris Commune in 1871 and
how it was obscured from a reactionary standpoint by kautsky in 1912.
“Because
the state arose from the need to hold class antagonisms in check, but
because it arose, at the same time, in the midst of the conflict of
these classes, it is, as a rule, the state of the most powerful,
economically dominant class, which, through the medium of the state,
becomes also the politically dominant class, and thus acquires new
means of holding down and exploiting the oppressed class....” The
ancient and feudal states were organs for the exploitation of the
slaves and serfs; likewise, “the modern representative state is an
instrument of exploitation of wage-labor by capital. By way of
exception, however, periods occur in which the warring classes
balance each other so nearly that the state power as ostensible
mediator acquires, for the moment, a certain degree of independence
of both....” Such were the absolute monarchies of the 17th and 18th
centuries, the Bonapartism of the First and Second Empires in France,
and the Bismarck regime in Germany.
Such,
we may add, is the Kerensky government in republican Russia since it
began to persecute the revolutionary proletariat, at a moment when,
owing to the leadership of the petty-bourgeois democrats, the Soviets
have already become impotent, while the bourgeoisie are not yet
strong enough simply to disperse them.
In
a democratic republic, Engels continues, “wealth exercises its
power indirectly, but all the more surely", first, by means of
the “direct corruption of officials” (America); secondly, by
means of an “alliance of the government and the Stock Exchange"
(France and America).
At
present, imperialism and the domination of the banks have “developed”
into an exceptional art both these methods of upholding and giving
effect to the omnipotence of wealth in democratic republics of all
descriptions. Since, for instance, in the very first months of the
Russian democratic republic, one might say during the honeymoon of
the “socialist” S.R.s and Mensheviks joined in wedlock to the
bourgeoisie, in the coalition government. Mr. Palchinsky obstructed
every measure intended for curbing the capitalists and their
marauding practices, their plundering of the state by means of war
contracts; and since later on Mr. Palchinsky, upon resigning from the
Cabinet (and being, of course, replaced by another quite similar
Palchinsky), was “rewarded” by the capitalists with a lucrative
job with a salary of 120,000 rubles per annum — what would you call
that? Direct or indirect bribery? An alliance of the government and
the syndicates, or “merely” friendly relations? What role do the
Chernovs, Tseretelis, Avksentyevs and Skobelevs play? Are they the
“direct” or only the indirect allies of the millionaire
treasury-looters?
Another
reason why the omnipotence of “wealth” is more certain in a
democratic republic is that it does not depend on defects in the
political machinery or on the faulty political shell of capitalism. A
democratic republic is the best possible political shell for
capitalism, and, therefore, once capital has gained possession of
this very best shell (through the Palchinskys, Chernovs, Tseretelis
and Co.), it establishes its power so securely, so firmly, that no
change of persons, institutions or parties in the
bourgeois-democratic republic can shake it.
We
must also note that Engels is most explicit in calling universal
suffrage as well an instrument of bourgeois rule. Universal suffrage,
he says, obviously taking account of the long experience of German
Social-Democracy, is “the
gauge of the maturity of the working class. It cannot and never will
be anything more in the present-day state."
The
petty-bourgeois democrats, such as our Socialist-Revolutionaries and
Mensheviks, and also their twin brothers, all the social-chauvinists
and opportunists of Western Europe, expect just this “more” from
universal suffrage. They themselves share, and instil into the minds
of the people, the false notion that universal suffrage “in the
present-day state" is really capable of revealing the will of
the majority of the working people and of securing its realization.
Here,
we can only indicate this false notion, only point out that Engels'
perfectly clear statement is distorted at every step in the
propaganda and agitation of the “official” (i.e., opportunist)
socialist parties. A detailed exposure of the utter falsity of this
notion which engels brushes aside here is given in our further
account of the views of Marx and Engels on the “present-day”
state.
Engels
gives a general summary of his views in the most popular of his works
in the following words:
“The
state, then, has not existed from all eternity. There have been
societies that did without it, that had no idea of the state and
state power. At a certain stage of economic development, which was
necessarily bound up with the split of society into classes, the
state became a necessity owing to this split. We are now rapidly
approaching a stage in the development of production at which the
existence of these classes not only will have ceased to be a
necessity, but will become a positive hindrance to production. They
will fall as they arose at an earlier stage. Along with them the
state will inevitably fall. Society, which will reorganize production
on the basis of a free and equal association of the producers, will
put the whole machinery of state where it will then belong: into a
museum of antiquities, by the side of the spinning-wheel and the
bronze axe."
We
do not often come across this passage in the propaganda and agitation
literature of the present-day Social-Democrats. Even when we do come
across it, it is mostly quoted in the same manner as one bows before
an icon, i.e., it is done to show official respect for Engels, and no
attempt is made to gauge the breadth and depth of the revolution that
this relegating of “the whole machinery of state to a museum of
antiquities” implies. In most cases we do not even find an
understanding of what Engels calls the state machine.
4.
The “Withering Away” of the State, and Violent Revolution
Engel's
words regarding the “withering away” of the state are so widely
known, they are often quoted, and so clearly reveal the essence of
the customary adaptation of Marxism to opportunism that we must deal
with them in detail. We shall quote the whole argument from which
they are taken.
“The
proletariat seizes from state power and turns the means of production
into state property to begin with. But thereby it abolishes itself as
the proletariat, abolishes all class distinctions and class
antagonisms, and abolishes also the state as state. Society thus far,
operating amid class antagonisms, needed the state, that is, an
organization of the particular exploiting class, for the maintenance
of its external conditions of production, and, therefore, especially,
for the purpose of forcibly keeping the exploited class in the
conditions of oppression determined by the given mode of production
(slavery, serfdom or bondage, wage-labor). The state was the official
representative of society as a whole, its concentration in a visible
corporation. But it was this only insofar as it was the state of that
class which itself represented, for its own time, society as a whole:
in ancient times, the state of slave-owning citizens; in the Middle
Ages, of the feudal nobility; in our own time, of the bourgeoisie.
When at last it becomes the real representative of the whole of
society, it renders itself unnecessary. As soon as there is no longer
any social class to be held in subjection, as soon as class rule, and
the individual struggle for existence based upon the present anarchy
in production, with the collisions and excesses arising from this
struggle, are removed, nothing more remains to be held in subjection
— nothing necessitating a special coercive force, a state. The
first act by which the state really comes forward as the
representative of the whole of society — the taking possession of
the means of production in the name of society — is also its last
independent act as a state. State interference in social relations
becomes, in one domain after another, superfluous, and then dies down
of itself. The government of persons is replaced by the
administration of things, and by the conduct of processes of
production. The state is not 'abolished'. It withers away. This gives
the measure of the value of the phrase 'a free people's state', both
as to its justifiable use for a long time from an agitational point
of view, and as to its ultimate scientific insufficiency; and also of
the so-called anarchists' demand that the state be abolished
overnight." (Herr Eugen Duhring's Revolution in Science
[Anti-Duhring], pp.301-03, third German edition.)
It
is safe to say that of this argument of Engels', which is so
remarkably rich in ideas, only one point has become an integral part
of socialist thought among modern socialist parties, namely, that
according to Marx that state “withers away” — as distinct from
the anarchist doctrine of the “abolition” of the state. To prune
Marxism to such an extent means reducing it to opportunism, for this
“interpretation” only leaves a vague notion of a slow, even,
gradual change, of absence of leaps and storms, of absence of
revolution. The current, widespread, popular, if one may say so,
conception of the “withering away" of the state undoubtedly
means obscuring, if not repudiating, revolution.
Such
an “interpretation”, however, is the crudest distortion of
Marxism, advantageous only to the bourgeoisie. In point of theory, it
is based on disregard for the most important circumstances and
considerations indicated in, say, Engels' “summary” argument we
have just quoted in full.
In
the first place, at the very outset of his argument, Engels says
that, in seizing state power, the proletariat thereby “abolishes
the state as state". It is not done to ponder over over the
meaning of this. Generally, it is either ignored altogether, or is
considered to be something in the nature of “Hegelian weakness”
on Engels' part. As a matter of fact, however, these words briefly
express the experience of one of the greatest proletarian
revolutions, the Paris Commune of 1871, of which we shall speak in
greater detail in its proper place. As a matter of fact, Engels
speaks here of the proletariat revolution “abolishing” the
bourgeois state, while the words about the state withering away refer
to the remnants of the proletarian state after the socialist
revolution. According to Engels, the bourgeois state does not “wither
away", but is “abolished” by the proletariat in the course
of the revolution. What withers away after this revolution is the
proletarian state or semi-state.
Secondly,
the state is a “special coercive force". Engels gives this
splendid and extremely profound definition here with the utmost
lucidity. And from it follows that the “special coercive force”
for the suppression of the proletariat by the bourgeoisie, of
millions of working people by handfuls of the rich, must be replaced
by a “special coercive force” for the suppression of the
bourgeoisie by the proletariat (the dictatorship of the proletariat).
This is precisely what is meant by “abolition of the state as
state". This is precisely the “act” of taking possession of
the means of production in the name of society. And it is
self-evident that such a replacement of one (bourgeois) “special
force” by another (proletarian) “special force” cannot possibly
take place in the form of “withering away".
Thirdly,
in speaking of the state “withering away", and the even more
graphic and colorful “dying down of itself", Engels refers
quite clearly and definitely to the period after “the state has
taken possession of the means of production in the name of the whole
of society", that is, after the socialist revolution. We all
know that the political form of the “state” at that time is the
most complete democracy. But it never enters the head of any of the
opportunists, who shamelessly distort Marxism, that Engels is
consequently speaking here of democracy “dying down of itself",
or “withering away". This seems very strange at first sight.
But is is “incomprehensible” only to those who have not thought
about democracy also being a state and, consequently, also
disappearing when the state disappears. Revolution alone can
“abolish” the bourgeois state. The state in general, i.e., the
most complete democracy, can only “wither away".
Fourthly,
after formulating his famous proposition that “the state withers
away", Engels at once explains specifically that this
proposition is directed against both the opportunists and the
anarchists. In doing this, Engels puts in the forefront that
conclusion, drawn from the proposition that “the state withers
away", which is directed against the opportunists.
One
can wager that out of every 10,000 persons who have read or heard
about the “withering away” of the state, 9,990 are completely
unaware, or do not remember, that Engels directed his conclusions
from that proposition not against anarchists alone. And of the
remaining 10, probably nine do not know the meaning of a “free
people's state” or why an attack on this slogan means an attack on
opportunists. This is how history is written! This is how a great
revolutionary teaching is imperceptibly falsified and adapted to
prevailing philistinism. The conclusion directed against the
anarchists has been repeated thousands of times; it has been
vulgarized, and rammed into people's heads in the shallowest form,
and has acquired the strength of a prejudice, whereas the conclusion
directed against the opportunists has been obscured and “forgotten”!
The
“free people's state” was a programme demand and a catchword
current among the German Social-Democrats in the seventies. this
catchword is devoid of all political content except that it describes
the concept of democracy in a pompous philistine fashion. Insofar as
it hinted in a legally permissible manner at a democratic republic,
Engels was prepared to “justify” its use “for a time” from an
agitational point of view. But it was an opportunist catchword, for
it amounted to something more than prettifying bourgeois democracy,
and was also failure to understand the socialist criticism of the
state in general. We are in favor of a democratic republic as the
best form of state for the proletariat under capitalism. But we have
no right to forget that wage slavery is the lot of the people even in
the most democratic bourgeois republic. Furthermore, every state is a
“special force” for the suppression of the oppressed class.
Consequently, every state is not “free” and not a “people's
state". Marx and Engels explained this repeatedly to their party
comrades in the seventies.
Fifthly,
the same work of Engels', whose arguments about the withering away of
the state everyone remembers, also contains an argument of the
significance of violent revolution. Engels' historical analysis of
its role becomes a veritable panegyric on violent revolution. This,
“no one remembers". It is not done in modern socialist parties
to talk or even think about the significance of this idea, and it
plays no part whatever in their daily propaganda and agitation among
the people. And yet it is inseparably bound up with the 'withering
away" of the state into one harmonious whole.
Here
is Engels' argument:
“...That
force, however, plays yet another role [other than that of a
diabolical power] in history, a revolutionary role; that, in the
words of Marx, it is the midwife of every old society which is
pregnant with a new one, that it is the instrument with which social
movement forces its way through and shatters the dead, fossilized
political forms — of this there is not a word in Herr Duhring. It
is only with sighs and groans that he admits the possibility that
force will perhaps be necessary for the overthrow of an economy based
on exploitation — unfortunately, because all use of force
demoralizes, he says, the person who uses it. And this in Germany,
where a violent collision — which may, after all, be forced on the
people — would at least have the advantage of wiping out the
servility which has penetrated the nation's mentality following the
humiliation of the Thirty Years' War. And this person's mode of
thought — dull, insipid, and impotent — presumes to impose itself
on the most revolutionary party that history has ever known! (p.193,
third German edition, Part II, end of Chap.IV)
How
can this panegyric on violent revolution, which Engels insistently
brought to the attention of the German Social-Democrats between 1878
and 1894, i.e., right up to the time of his death, be combined with
the theory of the 'withering away" of the state to form a single
theory?
Usually
the two are combined by means of eclecticism, by an unprincipled or
sophistic selection made arbitrarily (or to please the powers that
be) of first one, then another argument, and in 99 cases out of 100,
if not more, it is the idea of the “withering away” that is
placed in the forefront. Dialectics are replaced by eclecticism —
this is the most usual, the most wide-spread practice to be met with
in present-day official Social-Democratic literature in relation to
Marxism. This sort of substitution is, of course, nothing new; it was
observed even in the history of classical Greek philosophy. In
falsifying Marxism in opportunist fashion, the substitution of
eclecticism for dialectics is the easiest way of deceiving the
people. It gives an illusory satisfaction; it seems to take into
account all sides of the process, all trends of development, all the
conflicting influences, and so forth, whereas in reality it provides
no integral and revolutionary conception of the process of social
development at all.
We
have already said above, and shall show more fully later, that the
theory of Marx and Engels of the inevitability of a violent
revolution refers to the bourgeois state. The latter cannot be
superseded by the proletarian state (the dictatorship of the
proletariat) through the process of 'withering away", but, as a
general rule, only through a violent revolution. The panegyric Engels
sang in its honor, and which fully corresponds to Marx's repeated
statements (see the concluding passages of The Poverty of Philosophy
and the Communist Manifesto, with their proud and open proclamation
of the inevitability of a violent revolution; see what Marx wrote
nearly 30 years later, in criticizing the Gotha Programme of 1875,
when he mercilessly castigated the opportunist character of that
programme) — this panegyric is by no means a mere “impulse”, a
mere declamation or a polemical sally. The necessity of
systematically imbuing the masses with this and precisely this view
of violent revolution lies at the root of the entire theory of Marx
and Engels. The betrayal of their theory by the now prevailing
social-chauvinist and Kautskyite trends expresses itself strikingly
in both these trends ignoring such propaganda and agitation.
The
supersession of the bourgeois state by the proletarian state is
impossible without a violent revolution. The abolition of the
proletarian state, i.e., of the state in general, is impossible
except through the process of “withering away".
A
detailed and concrete elaboration of these views was given by Marx
and Engels when they studied each particular revolutionary situation,
when they analyzed the lessons of the experience of each particular
revolution. We shall now pass to this, undoubtedly the most
important, part of their theory.
