The State and Revolution

In 1891, Engels sent another letter to Karl Kautsky, critical of the so-called “Erfurt Program” which he helped write for the German Social Democratic Party. Engels was careful to note that even as the bourgeois state intervened in the national economy, seemingly swapping out free-market capitalism for a kind of “state socialism’ (4.2.1), the society in question remained thoroughly capitalist. It is all part of their “efforts to make capitalism look more attractive” (4.2.1), which often succeeds in deluding reformist socialists.

The first mistake the Erfurt Program made was to accept the Reichstag as a legitimate representative body, whereas for Engels, it is merely "the fig leaf of absolutism" (4.2.1). Just because Germany was no longer banning the socialist parties outright, as it had before, did not mean that the state was now compatible with genuine socialism. Their ostensibly legitimate place within the political system is meant to divide and confuse them, diverting them into “abstract political questions” (4.2.1) which will do nothing to advance the cause of the workers.

However, a unified republic still serves a purpose as the best pathway to the dictatorship of the proletariat. It gives the workers just enough power to develop class consciousness, whereupon they realize the need to seize control of the state. Different countries would have their own path toward the “unified and centralized democratic republic” (4.2.1) which sets the best foundation for a proletarian state. The main difference in the transition would be that the proletarian state would abolish all forms of hierarchy. Some socialists were deceived into thinking that a federalist republic would be freer insofar as it granted more autonomy to the states and provinces, but Engels insisted on centralization to ensure the thorough and consistent application of the proletarian will.

The next section (also not numbered), “The 1891 Preface to Marx's ‘The Civil War in France,’" offers some further insights on the Paris Commune. It was a posthumous new edition (Marx died in 1883) and thus represents “the last word of Marxism on the question under consideration’ (4.2.2). It focuses in particular on the question of the classes being armed. Engels insisted that the proletariat must be armed, and that a top priority of the bourgeois state (especially a bourgeois revolution) is to disarm them.

Lenin notes that there were also meaningful remarks on the subject of religion, which ought to be private with respect to the state, but not to the party, which strictly regarded religion as a vestige of bourgeois morality. Engels’s most important points of emphasis were that the Commune proved the necessity of abolishing state power as such, not just introducing a new leadership or alternative set of state institutions. This especially means abolishing prestigious state offices. On the question of democracy, Engels held that it was “impossible under capitalism, and under socialism all democracy will wither away” (4.2.2). There is no meaningful difference between a monarchy and a democracy, so long as they both operate as a bourgeois state.

This leads to the next, non-numbered section, “Engels on the Overcoming of Democracy,” where Lenin turns to Engels’s dismissal of the very term “social-democrat” as inappropriate, except insofar as the party it describes ultimately forms into a “mass proletarian party” (4.2.3.) bent on the overthrow of the state. Lenin’s Bolsheviks were themselves members of the Social Democratic Labor Party, and at this point Lenin suggests they call themselves communists, “but to retain the word ‘Bolshevik’ in brackets” (4.2.3.) to clarify the connection to the earlier party and their revolutionary intent.

Lenin then reaffirms that when they talk about the “withering away of democracy” (4.2.3) as well as the state, they are not talking about a new form of minority repression to replace the old. Democracy is just another form of class warfare, which a communist state will abolish entirely, enabling “social life without violence and without subordination” (4.2.3).

Lenin writes that some of Marx’s comments might be read as endorsing the idea of a state, even under communism, but argues that Marx was ultimately in agreement with Engels. He did not focus on the state as much as Engels did because he was more “interested in another subject, namely, the development of communist society” (5.1). He was particularly interested in understanding how a communist society would evolve out of a capitalist one, just as an organism evolves from one form into another.

There are of course meaningful differences among states around the world, but they are all ultimately bourgeois and capitalist, and so they are all moving toward the same ultimate goal even if their pathways are not quite identical.

Lenin asserts that capitalist society will inevitably push the proletariat into a revolutionary condition, which must ultimately result in communism. However, there is a period of transition which deserves elaboration. Capitalism ought to evolve into a democracy, albeit one that preserves the interests of a ruling elite. Most people will lose interest in politics, correctly recognizing how little they benefit from it, and so a relatively small proportion of people will carry the burden of advancing the cause of the working class.

Eventually, democracy can progress no further, except through the dictatorship of the proletariat. This is a democracy that excludes the bourgeois, instead subjecting them to the repression of the majority. Once the class struggle is over, there will be a moment of “truly complete democracy” (5.2), but then democracy itself will wither away because it will be unnecessary. The state will exist so long as it is necessary to suppress any lingering bourgeois elements, but there is a meaningful difference between repression in the interests of the majority and that which existed before, serving only a tiny minority. When there is “nobody to be suppressed” (5.2), the people will truly be able to govern themselves.

Under a society that is merely socialist, as in a state which owns the means of production, there is too much bureaucracy for workers to enjoy fully the fruit of their labor. It requires a communist society, where class struggle and the state alike have vanished, for individuals to receive social benefits in exact proportion to their own contributions. A society based on rights commonly enjoyed by all is in fact an “injustice’ (5.3) because it provides the same benefits to all regardless of their contributions.

The first step to genuine equality is the abolition of private property, which allows people to enrich themselves and generate enormous inequalities. People will remain unequal in all kinds of ways because the abolition of capitalism will not immediately do away with its legacy. So long as the economic conditions that permitted capitalism in the first place endure, there will be remnants of bourgeois law, and thus some manner of inequality, even under socialism.

Full communism will be possible once capitalism reaches a period of peak productivity, and yet restrains its own capacities in order to satisfy the interests of the ruling elite. Once the workers take control of the means of production and rearrange it to suit the needs of the majority, it will “inevitably result in an enormous development of the productive forces of human society’ (5.4).

No one can predict exactly how and when this will happen, but “when society adopts the rule: ‘From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs’” (5.4) then the state will disappear. The bourgeoisie dismiss this idea as utopian, but the fact that this is a distant prospect does not change the short-term political questions at hand—namely, the expropriation of the capitalists and the establishment of a true democracy.

In the initial stages of communism, usually called socialism, the new world will have to deal with the ruins of the old one. There will be bourgeois law and institutions, even when the bourgeoisie are out of power, or gone from existence. A democracy will help create “formal equality” (5.4) but not genuine equality, but each of these imperfect stages are necessary to pass through on the way to communism. Whereas formal democracy tends to alienate the majority of citizens, who recognize it as a sham, socialism will start to enlist greater mass participation. Citizens will then be ready to serve as the collective authority, including as an armed force to take over from the police and military. Under socialism, “The whole of society will have become a single office and a single factory, with equality of labor and pay” (5.4). As people become better able to govern themselves, the need for government itself will disappear, and society will be ready for genuine communism.