The State and Revolution.
By Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.
First Published: 1918.
Source: V.I.Lenin, Collected Works, Volume 25, p.381-492.
The
question of the state is now acquiring particular importance both in
theory and in practical politics. The imperialist war has immensely
accelerated and intensified the process of transformation of monopoly
capitalism into state-monopoly capitalism. The monstrous oppression
of the working people by the state, which is merging more and more
with the all-powerful capitalist associations, is becoming
increasingly monstrous. The advanced countries - we mean their
hinterland - are becoming military convict prisons for the workers.
The
unprecedented horrors and miseries of the protracted war are making
the people's position unbearable and increasing their anger. The
world proletarian revolution is clearly maturing. The question of its
relation to the state is acquiring practical importance.
The
elements of opportunism that accumulated over the decades of
comparatively peaceful development have given rise to the trend of
social-chauvinism which dominated the official socialist parties
throughout the world. This trend - socialism in words and chauvinism
in deeds (Plekhanov, Potresov, Breshkovskaya, Rubanovich, and, in a
slightly veiled form, Tsereteli, Chernov and Co. in Russia;
Scheidemann. Legien, David and others in Germany; Renaudel, Guesde
and Vandervelde in France and Belgium; Hyndman and the Fabians[1] in
England, etc., etc.) - is conspicuous for the base, servile
adaptation of the "leaders of socialism" to the interests
not only of "their" national bourgeoisie, but of "their"
state, for the majority of the so-called Great Powers have long been
exploiting and enslaving a whole number of small and weak nations.
And the imperialist war is a war for the division and redivision of
this kind of booty. The struggle to free the working people from the
influence of the bourgeoisie in general, and of the imperialist
bourgeoisie in particular, is impossible without a struggle against
opportunist prejudices concerning the "state".