Lenin, Vladimir Il Ich. (1935). State and revolution, Marxist teaching about the theory of the state and the tasks of the proletariat in the revolution. New York,: International publishers.
Originally written in 1917, this text has done much to formulate an orthodox Marxist interpretation of the state, and the transition from capitalist society to communist society. The text deals explicitly with Engle’s formulation of the “withering away of the state” and attempts to resuscitate its understanding from the jaws of critics of Marxism.
Firstly, Lenin must define and describe what characterizes a state. “The state is the product and the manifestation of the irreconcilability of class antagonisms. The state arises when, where, and to the extent that the class antagonisms cannot be objectively reconciled” (8 emphasis in original). The state is the mediator of class difference and class tension. In the bourgeois-democratic state of Lenin’s time, the state was also, “an organ of domination of a definite class which cannot be reconciled with its antipode” (9 emphasis in original).
The state must have a territory. It also must have an aspect of armed power. “Engles develops the conception of that ‘power’ which is termed the state—a power arising from society, but placing itself above it and becoming more and more separate from it. What does this power mainly consist of? It consists of special bodies of armed men who have at their disposal prisons, etc.” (10).
“In the Communist Manifesto are summed up the general lessons of history, which force us to see in the state the organ of class domination, and lead us to the inevitable conclusion that the proletariat cannot overthrow the bourgeoisie without first conquering political power, without obtaining political rule, without transforming the state into the ‘proletariat organized as the ruling class’; and that this proletarian state will begin to wither away immediately after its victory, because in a society without class antagonisms, the state is unnecessary and impossible” (25 emphasis in original).
“A Marxist is one who extends the acceptance of class struggle to the acceptance of the dictatorship of the proletariat” (30 emphasis in original).
“The forms of bourgeois states are exceedingly variegated, but their essence is the same: in one way or another, all these states are in the last analysis inevitably a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. The transition from capitalism to Communism will certainly bring a great variety and abundance of political forms, but the essence will inevitably be only one: the dictatorship of the proletariat” (31).
This transition is directly tied to the concept of democracy, which Lenin goes on to describe as true equality. “Democracy for an insignificant minority, democracy for the rich—that is the democracy of capitalist society” (72). “Marx splendidly grasped the 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!” (73). It only becomes possible to truly address the concept of freedom in Lenin’s construction through the withering of the state.
“The replacement of the bourgeois by the proletarian state is impossible without a violent revolution. The abolition of the proletarian state, i.e., of all states, is only possible through ‘withering away’ (20 emphasis in original).
The first phase of Communist society, a society that is described as “coming out of the womb of capitalism” (76), involves the transition of the means of production out of the hands of private interests and into the hands of the multitude. However, equality will be difficult to achieve, as different people produce differently and have different needs. “The state will wither away completely [and the higher phase of Communist society will be achieved] when society has realized the rule: ‘From each according to his ability; to each according to his needs’” (79). Socialism can be called the lower phase of development and Communism for the higher phase.
