>From zodiac@io.org Tue Sep  7 17:29:56 1993

                                chapter I

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                     CLASS AND SOCIETY AND THE STATE
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            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 they 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 gate 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 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 INSTRUMENTS FOR THE EXPLOITATION
                          OF THE OPPRESSED CLASS

The maintenance of the special public power standing above society
requires taxes and state loans. 

     "Having public 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
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. 

END OF CHAPTER 1
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