The State and Revolution
V. I. Lenin (1917)
In capitalist society, under the conditions most favorable to its
development, we have more or less complete democracy in the
democratic republic. But this democracy is always bound by the
narrow framework of capitalist exploitation and consequently
always remains, in reality, a democracy for the minority, only
for the possessing classes, only for the rich. Freedom in
capitalist society always remains just about the same as it was
in the ancient Greek republics: freedom for the slave-owners. The
modern wage slaves, owing to the conditions of capitalist
exploitation, are so much crushed by want and poverty that
"democracy is nothing to them," "politics is nothing to them";
that, in the ordinary peaceful course of events, the majority of
the population is debarred from participating in social and
political life.
The correctness of this statement is perhaps most clearly proved
by Germany, just because in this state constitutional legality
lasted and remained stable for a remarkably long time - for
nearly half a century (1871-1914) - and because Social-Democracy
in Germany during that time was able to achieve far more than in
other countries in "utilizing legality" and was able to organize
into a political party a larger proportion of the working class
than anywhere else in the world.
What, then, is this largest proportion of politically conscious
and active wage slaves that has so far been observed in
capitalist society? One million members of the Social-Democratic
Party - out of fifteen million wage workers! Three million
organized in trade unions - out of fifteen million!
Democracy for an insignificant minority, democracy for the rich -
that is the democracy of capitalist society. If we look more
closely into the mechanism of capitalist democracy, everywhere,
both in the "petty" - so-called petty - details of the suffrage
(residential qualification, exclusion of women, etc.) and in the
technique of the representative institutions, in the actual
obstacles to the right of assembly (public buildings are not for
"beggars"!), in the purely capitalist organization of the daily
press, etc., etc. - on all sides we see restriction after
restriction upon democracy. These restrictions, exceptions,
exclusions, obstacles for the poor, seem slight, especially in
the eyes of one who has himself never known want and has never
been in close contact with the oppressed classes in their mass
life (and nine-tenths, if not ninety-nine-hundredths, of the
bourgeois publicists and politicians are of this class), but in
their sum total these restrictions exclude and squeeze out the
poor from politics and from an active share in democracy.
Marx splendidly grasped this
essence
of capitalist democracy when, in analyzing the experience of the
Commune, he said that the oppressed were allowed, once every few
years, to decide which particular representatives of the
oppressing class should be in parliament to represent and repress
them!
But from this capitalist democracy-inevitably narrow, subtly
rejecting the poor, and therefore hypocritical and false to the
core - progress does not march onward, simply, smoothly, and
directly, to "greater and greater democracy," as the liberal
professors and petty-bourgeois opportunists would have us
believe. No, progress marches onward, i.e., toward Communism,
through the dictatorship of the proletariat; it cannot do
otherwise, for there is no one else and no other way to
break the resistance
of the capitalist exploiters.
But the dictatorship of the proletariat - i.e., the organization
of the vanguard of the oppressed as the ruling class for the
purpose of crushing the oppressors - cannot produce merely an
expansion of democracy.
Together
with an immense expansion of democracy which
for the first time
becomes democracy for the poor, democracy for the people, and
not democracy for the rich folk, the dictatorship of the
proletariat produces a series of restrictions of liberty in the
case of the oppressors, the exploiters, the capitalists. We must
crush them in order to free humanity from wage slavery; their
resistance must be broken by force; it is clear that where there
is suppression there is also violence, there is no liberty, no
democracy.
Engels expressed this splendidly in his letter to Bebel when he
said, as the reader will remember, that "as long as the
proletariat still
needs
the state, it needs it, not in the interests of freedom, but for
the purpose of crushing its antagonists; and as soon as it
becomes possible to speak of freedom, then the state, as such,
ceases to exist."
Democracy for the vast majority of the people, and suppression by
force, i.e., exclusion from democracy, of the exploiters and
oppressors of the people - this is the modification of democracy
during the
transition
from capitalism to Communism.
Only in Communist society, when the resistance of the capitalists
has been completely broken, when the capitalists have
disappeared, when there are no classes (i.e., there is no
difference between the members of society in their relation to
the social means of production),
only then
"the state ceases to exist," and "
it becomes possible to speak of freedom
." Only then a really full democracy, a democracy without any
exceptions, will be possible and will be realized. And only then
will democracy itself begin to
wither away
due to the simple fact that, freed from capitalist slavery, from
the untold horrors, savagery, absurdities, and infamies of
capitalist exploitation, people will gradually
become accustomed
to the observance of the elementary rules of social life that
have been known for centuries and repeated for thousands of years
in all school books; they will become accustomed to observing
them
without force, without compulsion, without subordination, without
the
special apparatus
for compulsion which is called the state.
The expression "the state
withers away
" is very well chosen, for it indicates both the gradual and the
elemental nature of the process. Only habit can, and undoubtedly
will, have such an effect; for we see around us millions of times
how readily people get accustomed to observe the necessary rules
of life in common, if there is no exploitation, if there is
nothing that causes indignation, that calls forth protest and
revolt and has to be
suppressed
.
Thus, in capitalist society, we have a democracy that is
curtailed, poor, false; a democracy only for the rich, for the
minority. The dictatorship of the proletariat, the period of
transition to Communism, will, for the first time, produce
democracy for the people, for the majority, side by side with the
necessary suppression of the minority - the exploiters. Communism
alone is capable of giving a really complete democracy, and the
more complete it is, the more quickly will it become unnecessary
and wither away of itself.
In other words, under capitalism we have a state in the proper
sense of the word, that is, special machinery for the suppression
of one class by another, and of the majority by the minority at
that. Naturally, for the successful discharge of such a task as
the systematic suppression by the exploiting minority of the
exploited majority, the greatest ferocity and savagery of
suppression are required, seas of blood are required, through
which mankind is marching in slavery, serfdom, and wage labor.
Again, during the
transition
from capitalism to Communism, suppression is
still
necessary; but it is the suppression of the minority of
exploiters by the majority of exploited. A special apparatus,
special machinery for suppression, the "state," is
still
necessary, but this is now a transitional state, no longer a
state in the usual sense, for the suppression of the minority of
exploiters, by the majority of the wage slaves
of yesterday
, is a matter comparatively so easy, simple, and natural that it
will cost far less bloodshed than the suppression of the risings
of slaves, serfs, or wage laborers and will cost mankind far
less. This is compatible with the diffusion of democracy among
such an overwhelming majority of the population that the need for
special
machinery of suppression will begin to disappear. The exploiters
are, naturally, unable to suppress the people without a most
complex machinery for performing this task; but
the people
can suppress the exploiters even with very simple "machinery,"
almost without any "machinery," without any special apparatus, by
the simple
organization of the armed masses
(such as the Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, we may
remark, anticipating a little).
Finally, only Communism renders the state absolutely unnecessary,
for there is
no one
to be suppressed - "no one" in the sense of a
class
, in the sense of a systematic struggle with a definite section
of the population. We are not Utopians, and we do not in the
least deny the possibility and inevitability of excesses on the
part of
individual persons
, nor the need to suppress
such
excesses. But, in the first place, no special machinery, no
special apparatus of repression is needed for this; this will be
done by the armed people itself, as simply and as readily as any
crowd of civilized people, even in modern society, parts a pair
of combatants or does not allow a woman to be outraged. And,
secondly, we know that the fundamental social cause of excesses
which consist in violating the rules of social life is the
exploitation of the masses, their want, and their poverty. With
the removal of this chief cause, excesses will inevitably begin
to "
wither away
." We do not know how quickly and in what succession, but we know
that they will wither away. With their withering away, the state
will also
wither away
.
Without going into Utopias, Marx defined more fully what can
now
be defined regarding this future, namely, the difference between
the lower and higher phases (degrees, stages) of Communist
society.
