Page:Lenin - The State and Revolution.pdf/22

 the proletariat organized as the ruling class, and to increase as quickly as possible the total of productive forces." (Seventh German edition, 1906, pp. 31–37.)

Here we have a formulation of one of the most remarkable and most important ideas of Marxism on the subject of the State—namely, the idea of "the dictatorship of the proletariat" (as Marx and Engels began to write after the Paris Commune); and also a definition of the State, in the highest degree interesting, but vevertheless also belonging to the category of forgotten thoughts of Marxism: "The State, that us, the proletariat organized as the ruling class."

This definition of the State, so far from having ever been explained in the current propagandist and agitation literature of the official Social-Democratic parties, has been deliberately forgotten, as it is quite irreconcilable with Reformism, strikes straight at the heart of the common Opportunist and middle-class illusions about the "peaceful development of democracy."

"The proletariat needs the State," is a phrase repeated by all the Opportunists, Social-chauvinists and Kautskians, who assure us that this is what Marx taught. They "forget," however, to add that, in the first place, the proletariat, according to Marx, needs only a withering away State—a State that is so constituted that it begins to wither away immediately and cannot but wither away; and, secondly, the workers "need" a State, "that is, the proletariat organized as the ruling class."

The State is a particular form of organization of force; it is the organization of violence for the purpose of holding down some class. What is the class that the proletariat must hold down? It can only be, naturally, the exploiting class, i. e., the bourgeoisie. The toilers need the State only to overcome the resistance of the exploiters, and only the proletariat can guide this suppression and bring it to fulfillment—the proletariat, the only class revolutionary to the finish, the only class which can unite all the toilers and exploited in the struggle against the capitalist class for its complete displacement from power.

The exploiting classes need political supremacy in order to maintain exploitation, i. e., in the selfish interests of the tiny minority, and against the vast majority of the community. The exploited classes need political supremacy in order completely to abolish all exploitation, i. e., in the interests of the enormous majority of the people, and against the tiny minority constituted by the slave owners of modern times—the landlords and capitalists. The lower middle-class Democrats, the sham Socialists who