Basics,
Part 9b
Lenin
Class Society and the State
The first
chapter from "The State and
Revolution" is attached, and downloadable from the link below. Lenin
wrote the book between the February 1917 bourgeois-democratic revolution
in Russia, and the October 1917 proletarian revolution.
The October
Revolution dramatically interrupted his writing, leaving the work unfinished.
SACP Deputy
General Secretary Jeremy Cronin has remarked that South Africa is in some ways
stuck “between February and October”, meaning to compare our SA situation
during the 18 years since 1994 with the eight months in 1917 between the two
Russian revolutions.
The urgency
of Lenin’s revolutionary purpose is apparent from the first paragraph, as is
the priority he gives to the understanding of The State as a product of, and
integral to, the exploitative class-divided social system that the Bolsheviks
were determined to overthrow, and therefore a matter of the highest
revolutionary priority.
Hence the
first words are a definition and a challenge to those who would think
otherwise: “The State: a Product of the Irreconcilability of Class
Antagonisms”
In the
first paragraph Lenin refers to the embracing of “Marxism” by the respectable
bourgeoisie, and their pleasure at the amenability of “the labour unions which are so splendidly
organized for the purpose of waging a predatory war!”
The world
war that was raging at the time was not merely an incidental background to the
Russian Revolutions of 1917. As with the lethal global neo-liberalism of today,
the warmongers had seduced the major part of the social-democratic
organisations that claimed to represent the working class. The organised structures
of the working class had turned against the working class, and the crux of the
matter was the question, then as now, of The State.
Lenin is
unequivocal:
“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.”
Lenin
proceeds to write that the overthrow of the bourgeois state has to be
direct and forcible, whereas the withering-away of the proletarian state
can only be the indirect consequence of the progressive disappearance of class
antagonism during the transitional period called socialism. "The State and
Revolution" goes to the very heart of the revolutionary theory of class
struggle, sharpens all contradictions, and draws clear lessons - lessons that
are still relevant today, and especially in South Africa.
- The above is to introduce the original reading-text: State
and Revolution, C1, Class Society and The State, Lenin.
