Lenin
The State
The main text today is Lenin’s lecture, “The State” (download linked below).
In “Bourgeois and Proletarians”,
the first section of the Communist Manifesto,
Karl Marx wrote: “The executive of the modern state is but a committee
for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.”
In other words: The modern State is the executive committee
of the ruling bourgeois class, of which there is, and cannot be, any other such
ruling executive committee or totalising authority.
The State manifests itself in many ways. Not only is it
Legislature, Executive and Judiciary, but it also includes the “Special Bodies
of Armed Men” (police, intelligence and military), the “sovereign document” of
the Constitution, the State Owned Enterprises, “Delivery” departments like
Education, Health, and Public Works; and others.
As communists we hold fast to the concept of the State as
the instrument of class power that enforces and perpetuates bourgeois class
dictatorship in our country. We do not believe that the State is neutral, or
above class struggle. The State is the principal instrument of class struggle
on behalf of the ruling bourgeois class.
We intend that there should as soon as possible be no class
division and therefore that the State as we know it would become redundant and
give way to social self-management, or in other words, to communism: true
freedom.
Yet the term “State” is used in other, less strict senses,
and we as political people who must communicate with others, do also use the
word in other senses than the above. For example, we sometimes use the phrase
“Developmental State”, which even if we ourselves would qualify its meaning, is
nevertheless widely understood as meaning a State that is equally beneficial to
all classes (i.e. is a “win-win”, or classless, or neutral state).
We are fortunate to have the lecture that Lenin [pictured]
gave to students in Moscow in 1919 on this topic, wherein Lenin
asks “what is the state, how did it arise and fundamentally what
attitude to the state should be displayed by the party of the working class,
which is fighting for the complete overthrow of capitalism - the Communist
Party?”
Lenin
referred his audience to Engels’ “Origin
of the Family, Private Property and the State”. Engels’ book sweeps through the
whole human story and explains the fall of the women, as well as class struggle
and the state. We will take it as our next item in this part, and then, for a fuller treatment from Lenin, there is
the extraordinary work that he produced between the two Russian revolutions of
February and October, 1917: “The State and Revolution”,
Chapter 1 of which will be our third item in this ninth part of our course.
Please download and
read this text via the following link:
Lecture
on The State, 1919, Lenin (7217 words)
Further reading:
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