Page:Lenin - The State and Revolution.pdf/13

 Society? We shall see how this theoretical problem was solved in practice by the Paris Commune in 1871, and how it was slurred over in 1912 by Kautsky.

"Since the State arose out of the need of keeping in check the antagonisms of classes; since at the same time it arose as a result of the collisions of these classes, it is, as a general rule, the State of the most powerful and economically predominant class, which by means of the State also becomes the predominant class politically, thereby obtaining new means for the oppression and exploitation of the oppressed class."

It was not only the ancient and feudal States which were organs of exploitation of the slaves and serfs, but the "Modern representative State, too, is the means of exploitation of wage labor by capital. By way of exceptions, however, there are periods when the warring classes attain such an equilibrium of strength that the State power for a time becomes, to an extent, independent of both classes and appears as a mediator between them. …"

Such, for instance, were the absolute monarchies of the 17th and 18th centuries, the Bonapartism of the First and Third Empires in France, and the Bismarck regime in Germany.

Such, we may add, is now the Kerensky Government in Republican Russia after it has initiated the persecution of the revolutionary proletariat, at a moment when the Soviets, thanks to the leadership of the lower middle-class democrats, have already become impotent, whilst the capitalist class is not yet strong enough to dissolve them.

"In a democratic Republic [Engels continues] wealth uses its power indirectly, but so much the more securely, first, by means of direct bribery of officials (as in America); second, by means of an alliance between the Government and the Stock Exchange (as in France and America)."

At the present time Imperialism and the domination of the banks have reduced to a fine art both these methods of defending and enforcing the omnipotence of wealth in democratic Republics of all descriptions. If, for instance, in the very first months of the Russian Democratic Republic—one might say during the honeymoon of the union of the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks with the bourgeoisie in the Coalition Ministry—M. Paltchinski obstructed every measure of restraint against the capitalists and war-profiteering, or the plunder of the public treasury by army contractors; and if, after his resignation, M. Paltchinski (replaced, of course, by an exactly similar Paltchinski) was "rewarded" by the capitalists with a "cushy" little job