Page:Lenin - The State and Revolution.pdf/11

 few phrases, borrowed from Spencer or Mikhailovsky, about the complexity of social life, the differentiation of functions, and so forth.

Such a reference seems "scientific" and effectively dulls the the senses of the average man, obscuring the most important and basic fact, viz., the break-up of Society into irreconcilably antagonistic classes. Without such split the "self-acting armed organization of the population," though differing from the primitive organization of a herd of monkeys merely grasping sticks, or of primitive man united in a clan form of Society, by its complexity, its high technique, and so forth, would still have been possible. It cannot, however, exist now, because Society in the period of civilization is broken up into antagonistic, and indeed, irreconcilably antagonistic classes, the "self-acting" arming of which would lead to armed struggles between them. The State is therefore formed; a special force is created in the form of special bodies of armed men; and every revolution, in shattering the State machinery, demonstrates to us how the governing class aims at the restoration of the special bodies of armed men at its service, and how the oppressed class tries to create a new organization of a similar nature, capable of serving not the exploiting but the exploited class.

In the above discussion Engels poses theoretically the very same question which is presented to us in an actual, palpable form, on a mass-scale, by every great revolution, viz., the question of the relation between "special bodies of armed men" and the "self-acting armed organization of the population." We shall see how this question is illustrated concretely by the experience of the European and Russian revolutions.

But let us return to Engels.

He points out that sometimes (for instance, here and there in North America) this public power is weak (he has in mind here rare exceptions in capitalist society and parts of North America in its pre-Imperialist days, when the free colonist predominated), but that in general it tends to become stronger:

"The above-mentioned public force increases with the intensification of class antagonisms within the State, and with the growth in size and population of adjacent States. One has but to glance at present-day Europe in which the class-struggle and rivalry in conquests have screwed up that public force to such a pitch that it threatens to swallow up the whole of Society and even the State itself. …"

This was written as far back as the beginning of the 'nineties