State and Revolution
A review

Lenin outlines in State and Revolution the Marxist position on the state, its origins, and what its purpose is. He then shows the need for revolution and the need to replace the state with a workers’ democratic dictatorship, a workers state.

The leader of the Russian revolution found time during 1917 to write a crucial text on the Marxist position on the state and ‘the tasks of the proletariat in the revolution’. He was driven by the practical needs of the revolution in Russia at the time: to show that the ‘opportunists’ had distorted Marxism and to refute the anarchist claims that all states are reactionary. In his work, State and Revolution, Lenin reiterates and emphasises what Marx and Engels meant by the ‘withering away of the state’, and he shows that in order to ‘win the battle of democracy’, the working class must first become the ruling class.

In order to create a ‘classless, rulerless society’, the working class has to raise itself to the position of the ruling class; this seems contradictory and anarchists will argue against this. How can this paradox be explained?

The Marxist position on both democracy and the state is that whilst class antagonism exists neither can be neutral and they can only serve the interests of the ruling class. By preserving the status quo, and codifying laws and ‘bodies of armed men’ to defend existing property relations, the state under capitalism is a bourgeois state.

Lenin quotes Engels to show how the state came into being from society itself, and yet it resumes a position of power above that society. The state “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 is cleft into irreconcilable antagonisms that it is powerless to dispel.” In order that the antagonisms of the bourgeoisie and proletariat do not “consume themselves in sterile struggle, a power seemingly standing above society became necessary for the purpose of moderating the conflict, of keeping it within the bounds of ‘order’; and this power, arisen out of society, but placing itself above it, and increasingly alienating itself from it, is the state.” (Lenin, State and Revolution 1973 ed., p7)

Engels indicated how far removed the whole idea of the state is from primitive classless societies. He points to the ‘special public power’ that it exercises over society. This “public power exists in every state; it consists not merely of armed people but also of material adjuncts, prisons and institutions of coercion of all kinds, of which gentile (clan) society knew nothing.” (p10)

Unlike liberalism, Marxism does not see the state as a neutral force keeping in check the conflicting interests of groups in society. Engels went on to say that “the state arose from the need to hold class antagonisms in check, but as 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.” (p14)

If the state is fundamentally serving the political interests of the economic ruling class, it follows that so-called liberal democracy is but a ‘bourgeois facade’ that attempts to conceal the true nature of the state. Lenin sums up this Marxist position by reminding us that ‘democracy’ in bourgeois society merely involves deciding “once every few years which member of the ruling class is to repress and crush the people through parliament - such is the real essence of bourgeois parliamentarism, not only in parliamentary- constitutional monarchies, but also in the most democratic republics.” (p54)

Lenin shows that there can be no ‘peaceful road to socialism’, instead we need a revolution. Previous revolutions in Europe had shown that in a revolutionary situation the state is seized by the victorious class and modified for its use (e.g. France,1789). The experience of the Paris Commune in 1871, however, taught Marx and Engels that there existed the need for the working class to smash the bourgeois state altogether. In the preface to the 1872 edition of the Communist Manifesto, they wrote, “One thing is especially roved by the commune, that the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready made state machinery and wield it for its own purposes”. The bourgeois state can neither be altered by the ‘democratic process’, nor can the revolutionary working class simply take over the bourgeois state; the state must be destroyed. This, by the way reveals that Marx and Engels were not dogmatists. They started from the real world - and drew theoretical conclusions from it, not the other way around as some critics claim.

The first task of a successful revolution is to create a new state based on the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’. This would essentially entail the democratic rule of the majority (proletariat) over the minority (the bourgeoisie). Lenin gives a very clear picture of how a workers state would differ from the capitalist state.

Instead of a parliamentary talking shop which serves the purpose of duping the ‘common people’ whilst the real business of state is conducted behind closed doors, a workers state would ensure that any ‘representative institutions’ would be working bodies. “The Commune was to be a working, not a parliamentary, body, executive and legislative at the same time.” (p55)

The administration of the workers state, and the control over the economy would be carried out and overseen by the workers themselves through democratically elected and instantly recallable representatives. This would “reduce the role of state officials to that of simply carrying out our instructions as responsible, revocable and modestly paid ‘foremen and bookkeepers’ ... This is what we can and must start with in accomplishing the proletarian revolution. Such a beginning, on the basis of large scale production, will of itself lead to the gradual “withering away” of all bureaucracy.” (p58-59)

Neither the administrators nor the elected representatives of the workers’ state would be given privileges in the way that bourgeois parliamentarians are. They would, as the example of the Paris Commune indicated, be paid workers’ wages, “all under the control and leadership of the armed proletariat.” (p59-60) This is a crucial point to make and should be remembered, especially after the Stalinists took over and bureaucratised the workers’ state in Soviet Russia.

The case of the Paris Commune, for Marx and Engels, and later Lenin, was an example of a new type of state in which the dictatorship of the proletariat was actually the highest form of democracy seen at the time. The working class becomes the ruling class- but a democratic ruling class.

The ‘democratic ruling class’ can then proceed to dissolve itself as a class. As the democratically planned economy increases production and meets the needs of the whole of society rather than the needs of the privileged few, classes will begin to disappear and consequently so will the state. As production in a workers state is controlled by all, the machinery of the state in Marx’s words, ‘withers away’. As the position of administration becomes open, “everyone becomes a bureaucrat and so no one is a bureaucrat.”

The state only exists as long as there are antagonistic and irreconcilable classes. During the revolution there will clearly be a need to repress the capitalists who will do anything to destroy the creation of a socialist society. Anybody who says otherwise is trying to fool themselves. The capitalists will not disappear overnight. We must be clear that we therefore need to have a democratic workers state, or ‘semi-state’, to prevent the old ruling class organising against us.

Lenin shows that there is a clear need for the creation of a new form of dominant political and economic power during a revolution. A democratic state needs to be created - the old one smashed - so that the cause of social conflict, unequal control, distribution and use of economic and social power can begin to be dealt with. “This can be achieved only by the proletariat; and by achieving it, the proletariat at the same time takes a step towards the socialist reconstruction of the state.”(p53) The dictatorship of the proletariat is not the solution, but gives the opportunity for the working class to build a socialist society

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State & Revolution

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