Page:Lenin - The State and Revolution.pdf/109

 it brings the working classes closer to the administrative apparatus, The same end is-also served by the union of the legislative and executive functions in the soviet organization of the state, and by the replacement of geographical voting districts by production-units, such as shops and factories.

The army was an. instrument of oppression not only under the monarchy; it retained this character in all the bourgeois republics, even in the most democratic. Only the Soviet Power, as the sole established state-organization of the classes oppressed by capital, is in a position to release the military from its subjection to bourgeois leadership, and to bring about a real identification of the army with the proletariat.

The soviet organization of the state is designed to place the leadership of the state in the hands of the proletariat as the class which has undergone the greatest concentration and enlightenment under Capitalism. The experiences of all revolutions and of all movements of enslaved classes, the experiences of the international Socialist movement teach that only the proletariat is capable of carrying along and uniting the scattered and backward levels of the working and exploited population.

Only the soviet organization of the state is capable of destroying suddenly and completely the bourgeois bureau-and-court machinery which remained intact, and had to remain intact, under Capitalism, even in the most democratic republics, since it developed into the greatest bulwark against the laboring classes in their attempt to realize democracy. The Paris Commune took the first world-historical step in this direction; the Soviet Power has taken the second.

All Socialists, and among them their leader Marx, have set up as their goal the destruction of the power of the State. If this goal is not achieved, true democracy, i. e., equality and freedom, are not attainable. But the only practicable means to this goal is the soviet or proletarian democracy, for it sets out forthwith to