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Library:Vladimir Lenin/The state and revolution

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Revision as of 12:23, 18 December 2020 by Forte (talk | contribs) (Added the preface to the work)

Preface

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.

Vladimir Lenin
August 1917

Notes

  1. Fabians — members of the Fabian Society, a British reformist organization founded in 1884. It grouped mostly bourgeois intellectuals — scholars, writers, politicians — including Sydney and Beatrice Webb, Ramsay MacDonald and Bernard Shaw. The Fabians denied the necessity for the proletarian class struggle and for the socialist revolution. They contended that the transition from capitalism to socialism could only be effected through minor social reforms, that is, gradual changes. Lenin described Fabian ideas as "an extremely opportunist trend" In 1900 the Fabian Society became part of the British Labor Party. "Fabian socialism" is a source of the Labor Party's ideology. During the First World War the Fabians took a social-chauvinist stand. For Lenin's characterization of Fabian principles, see Lenin's article British pacifism and the British dislike of theory

Class society and the state

The state: a product of the irreconcilability of class antagonisms

Special bodies of armed men, prisons, etc.

The state: an instrument for the exploitation of the oppressed class

The "withering away" of the state, and violent revolution

The experience of 1848-51

The eve of revolution

The revolution summed up

The presentation of the question by Marx in 1852

Experience of the Paris Commune of 1871. Marx's analysis

What made the communards' attempt heroic?

What is to replace the smashed state machine?

Abolition of parliamentarism

Organisation of National Unity

Abolition of the parasite state

Supplementary explanations by Engels

The housing question

Controversy with the anarchists

Letter to Bebel

Criticism of the draft of the Erfurt Programme

The 1891 preface to Marx's The civil war in France

Engels on the overcoming of democracy

The economic basis of the withering away of the state

Presentation of the question by Marx

The transition from captialism to communism

The first phase of communist society

The higher phase of communist society

The vulgarisation of Marxism by opportunists

Plekhanov's controversy with the anarchists

Kautsky's controversy with the opportunists

Kautsky's controversy with Pannekoek

Postscript