The State as an Instrument of Class Oppression: Notes on Lenin's "The State and Revolution", Chapter 1

Lenin published The State and Revolution in 1917, fourteen years after arguing for the revolutionary movement's need for a professional, secret vanguard organization in What Is To Be Done?.

Much happened in Russia in these fourteen years. The 1905 revolution led to the creation of the Russian Duma, a democratic legislative body, but failed to overthrow Tsar Nicholas II. 1914 marked the beginning of WWI, which Nicholas II brought Russia into at great cost to the Russian people, inducing widespread food shortages; in early 1917, protests broke out across Russia, leading to Nicholas II's relatively swift and peaceful abdication in what has been named the February Revolution.

The Tsardom was no more, and the Duma set up a Provisional Government pending the creation of a new constitution. The Provisional Government was not uncontested, though, sharing power with an organization of workers called the Petrograd Soviet, who controlled much of Russia's military and infrastructure. At the helm of the Petrograd Soviet were the Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshovik parties, who were far more radical than the Provisional Government, but who Lenin's smaller Bolshevik party opposed as being Marxist opportunists and not true socialist revolutionaries.

The Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshovik parties decided to support the Provisional Government in continuing Russia's involvement in WWI, upholding commitments made to foreign allies. In April, Lenin returned from 16 years of exile abroad, garnering support for the Bolsheviks under the banner of "bread, peace, and land." When a military operation (the "June Offensive") ended in a major failure, dissatisfaction with the Provisional Government further increased and protests broke out in Petrograd, only to be met with heavy police crackdowns, forcing Lenin out of Russia once again to Finland.

In August, Trotsky, a Bolshevik leader who remained in Russia, organized red guard militias to fight back against the police. The tides soon changed in the Bolsheviks' favor, in September acquiring a majority in the Petrograd Soviet. In October, Lenin returned and stormed the capitol of the Provisional Government, overthrowing it and establishing the Bolsheviks' control by force. What followed in the next four years was a civil war that led to millions dead, and eventually the creation of the Soviet Union.

It was in the middle of these events -- specifically, in August 1917 -- that Lenin published The State and Revolution, a collection of notes and analyses on how to understand the nature of states in the Marxist framework, and how practically the Russian revolutionary movement should proceed.

What is the State?

In the first chapter, Lenin quotes Engels heavily, analyzing his definitions and ideas about the state and aiming to correct their distortions by contemporary Russian revolutionaries.

"The state, first, divides its subjects according to territory," Engels writes, as quoted by Lenin. "The second distinguishing feature is the establishment of a public power which no longer directly coincides with the population organizing itself as an armed force."

The second feature is what Lenin focuses on. The most natural society to imagine might be one where each individual is armed, and fights for their own interests. The state is something other than this, Lenin emphasizes. "[The state] arose from society, but places itself above it and alienates itself more and more from it," Lenin writes. Instead of "the population organizing itself as an armed force," the state consists of "special bodies of armed men" (emphasis mine) and the institutions they control, with authority detached from the governed people's direct sentiment. "'The shabbiest police servant' has more 'authority' than the representatives of the clan, but even the head of the military power of a civilized state may well envy the elder of a clan the 'uncoerced respect' of society," Lenin writes.

The state as a product of class antagonisms, and instrument of class oppression

How does such a form of society come into being?

"The state...is a product of society at a certain stage of development," Lenin quotes Engels. "It is the admission that this society has become entangled in an insoluble contradiction with itself, that it has cleft into irreconcilable antagonisms which it is powerless to dispel."

These antagonisms are, of course, class antagonisms. These antagonisms are the foundational idea behind all Marxist thought: humanity progresses through phases of opposing oppressed and ruling classes -- master and slave, lord and serf, capitalist and wage-laborer. The interests of these classes are diametrically opposed: the ruling class must oppress the oppressed class, and the oppressed class must overthrow the ruling class for their conditions to truly improve.

The state, Lenin explains, emerges directly as a result of these opposing class interests. In the natural order of things discussed earlier, where each individual is armed and fights for their own interests, a society with such class antagonisms could not stand. The state is a means to maintain societal order in the face of these antagonisms.

Specifically, the state is an instrument for the ruling class to maintain its oppression of the subordinate class. Lenin forcefully pushes back against the distortion that "the state is an organ for the reconciliation of classes" (emphasis his). "According to Marx, the state is an organ of class rule, an organ for the oppression of one class by another," Lenin writes (emphasis his). "It is the creation of 'order', which legalizes and perpetuates this opperssion by moderating the conflict between classes."

"The ancient and feudal states were organs for the exploitation of the slaves and serfs; likewise, '...the modern representative state is an instrument of exploitation of wage-labor by capital,'" Lenin writes. Modern progressive states, i.e. democratic republics, are still only "the best possible political shell for capitalism"; their core function is still to preserve the capitalist system of class oppression. "We are in favour of a democratic republic as the best form of state for the proletariat under capitalism; but we have no right to forget that wage slavery is the lot of the people, even in the most democratic bourgeois republic."

The implication is that the state, as it currently exists, must be completely abolished for the completion of socialist revolution. "If the state is the product of the irreconcilability of class antagonisms, if it is a power standing above society...then it is obvious that the liberation of the oppressed class is impossible not only without a violent revolution, but also without the distruction of the apparatus of state power which was created by the ruling class," Lenin writes.

The dictatorship of the proletariat and the withering away of the proletarian state

Engels is not an anarchist, though. The abolition of the bourgeois state should not lead immediately to anarchy, but rather to a "dictatorship of the proletariat" that then "withers away."

"The 'special repressive force' for the suppression of the proletariat by the bourgeoisie, of millions of toilers by handfuls of the rich, must be replaced by a 'special repressive force' for the suppresion of the bourgeoisie by the proletariat," Lenin writes. This replacement proletarian state is to be gotten through violent revolution, as discussed previously.

Socialist revolution means the abolition not only of the bourgeois state, but of class entirely. If the state is only a product of class struggles, it follows that the abolition of class and class struggle would lead to the abolition of all states, including a proletarian one, and this is precisely what Engels concludes.

"As soon as there is no longer any class of society to be held in subjection; as soon as, along with class domination and the struggle for individual existence based on the anarchy of production hitherto, the collisions and excesses arising from these have also been abolished, there is nothing more to be repressed which would make a special repressive force, a state, necessary," Lenin quotes Engels' writing. "The interference of the state power in social relations becomes superfluous in one sphere after another and then ceases of itself. The government of persons is replaced by the administration of things nad the direction of the processes of production. The state is not 'abolished,' it withers away."

Lenin points out that his contemporary Russian revolutionairies, i.e. the Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik parties in control of the Petrograd Soviet at the time, fail to understand Engels' and Marx's conclusion that the abolition of the bourgeois state is needed, and simultaneously the proletarian state will "wither way." These revolutionaries combine the two ideas "by means of eclecticism," arbitrarily choosing which one is more convenient rather than viewing them in their separate contexts.

Lenin ends the first chapter by making the separated understanding clear: "the supersession of the bourgeois state by the proletarian state is impossible without a violent revolution. The abolition of the proletarian state, i.e. of the state in general, is impossible except through the process of 'withering away.'"

Conclusion

The State and Revolution's style is familiar after reading What Is To Be Done?. Lenin addreses a specific string of ideas in Marxist/revolutionary theory, tying it to concrete examples and calls to action at the time of publishing, attacking contemporary opposing revolutionary groups strongly along the way.

In this first chapter, Lenin has introduced us to the basics behind the idea of the state, as promised in the title. There are still many holes to fill in and connections to be made, at least in my understanding. What does it actually look like to abolish the bourgeois state, or establish a dictatorship of the proletariat that withers away with time? What are some historical examples, and what does Lenin want from Russian revolutionaries in the midst of the historic events of 1917?

As in What Is To Be Done? the chapters seem to become more concrete and specific as they go, so I expect a lot of these high-level ideas to clear up more as I keep reading!