Nikolai Bukharin

Review: Lenin, The State and Revolution

Lenin, The State and Revolution: The Marxist Theory of the State and the Tasks of the Proletariat in the Revolution [Zhizn' i Znaniye (Life and Knowledge) 2 roubles 50 kopeks]



First Published: in Kommunist. Ezenedel'nyi zurnal ekonomiki, politiki i obsenstvennosti. Organ Moskovskago Oblastnogo Byuro RKP (bol'sevikov) [The Communist. Weekly Magazine for Economics, Politics and Social Questions. Organ of the Moscow District Office of the RCP(B)], No. 1, April 20, 1918.
Source: Internationalist Communist Tendency
HTML Markup: Zdravko Saveski


The works of comrade Lenin need no recommendation but we would like to draw special attention to this one. From the point of view of substance, there is nothing new. But at the same time almost everything is new. Social democracy has been so successful in disfiguring and distorting the revolutionary communist teaching of Marx that, as comrade Lenin puts it so well, we are obliged to engage in comprehensive studies to rediscover the real thinking of the founders of scientific communism.

This book is not only interesting from the point of view of the simple restoration of their ideas. It is hot news because the question of the relationship between the proletariat and the state is the crucial question posed by the revolutionary action of the class. This question is of huge importance today because the World War has posed it directly for the proletariat. In fact, the very issue of the defence of the country is the corollary of the defence of the bourgeois state; the national question hangs on support for this State or, at least, in benevolent neutrality towards it, etc. All these partial questions, whatever their importance, are resolved according to the response given to the primary problem of the relations of the proletariat with the bourgeois state which gives itself the extraordinary name of the fatherland. The practical importance of this question becomes even more important because of the following: firstly because the state power of the bourgeoisie of all the advanced capitalist countries has been greatly strengthened by absorbing the economic organisations (unions, trusts, etc.); and then, because the proletariat must resolve, in practice, the question of taking power, that is to say, its dictatorship.

The central problems grouped in comrade Lenin's book, posed and solved by Marx and Engels, are those which follow: 1) what is the state; 2) what is the role of the state in the future communist society; 3) what is the role of the state in the transitional phase of the proletarian dictatorship; 4) what is the difference between the proletarian dictatorship and an ordinary type of state (in form and content); 5) how does the proletariat take power; and finally, 6) what should the proletarian attitude towards the bourgeois state apparatus be.

Marx and Engels give absolutely categorical answers to these questions which are in total contradiction with the practice of social democracy. (It is for this reason that Lenin, in his book, makes a clear distinction between Communists and Social Democrats.)

According to Marx, the state is the instrument of class oppression, the organisation of the ruling class. The Social Democrats say the state is, more or less, the representative of all the people.

No state will exist in communist society since all differences between classes will disappear, say the founders of scientific communism. "The Future State" is the Social Democratic "ideal".

During the transitional period between capitalism and socialism, the dictatorship of the proletariat, the proletarian state is necessary to definitively break the bourgeoisie, it exists as an instrument to ensure the subjection of the bourgeoisie. Social Democrats rage when we begin to put into practice Marx's ideas.

The dictatorship of the proletariat is not a parliamentary republic with all its trappings, it is a Commune-state without police, without a permanent army, without officials, etc., say the masters of revolutionary socialism. The Social Democrats proclaim "Nothing beyond the bourgeois republic!"

Marx and Engels taught us that to build the dictatorship, to conquer political power, it is necessary to break, shatter, blow up, the state apparatus of the bourgeoisie. The social democrats say that to win power, it is necessary to maintain the state apparatus almost as it is because it is a crime to "disorganise the army, the instruments of domination, etc".

The struggle against the bourgeois state until it is destroyed, hatred for it as the main mechanism of oppression - that's the slogan of our venerable predecessors. The servile social democrats submissively teach support for this state, its true patriotism and "state wisdom".

Basically, this is the difference between the teaching of revolutionary Marxists, that is to say, communists, and that of social-opportunist traitors who have turned their backs on the teaching of Marxism and who swear by the name of Marx but at the same time betray his teaching in the most cynical way.

Lenin's little book perfectly shows this difference. And the reader cannot blame the author for extensively quoting the works of Marx and Engels. These works silence these vile slaves of capital who say they are social democrats, as they silence all the Mensheviks, the SRs, the Bundists, the followers of Scheidemann and Novaya Zhizn (New Life) who dare to speak on behalf of the great masters.

Today every comrade has to read Lenin's book.

N. Bukharin