Page:Lenin - The State and Revolution.pdf/29

 possibility that in the oncoming proletarian revolution France may once more reveal herself as the traditional home of the class-war to a finish.

Let us, however, cast a general glance over the history of the more advanced nations during the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries. We shall see that the same process has been going on more slowly, in more varied forms, on a much wider field. On the other hand, there has been a development of "parliamentary government" not only in the Republican countries (France, America, Switzerland), but also in the monarchies (England, Germany to a certain extent, Italy, the Scandinavian countries, etc.). On the other hand, there has been the struggle for power of the various middle and lower middle-class parties distributing and re-distributing the "plunder" of official appointments, the foundations of capitalist society remaining all the while unchanged. Finally, there has been the perfecting and strengthening of the "executive" and of its bureaucratic and military apparatus.

There can be no doubt that these are the general features of the latest stage in the evolution of all capitalist States generally. In the three years, 1848–51, France displayed in a swift, sharp, concentrated form all those processes of development which are inherent in the whole capitalist world.

Imperialism in particular, the era of financial capital, the era of gigantic capitalistic monopolies, the era of the transformation of simple trust-capitalism into State trust-capitalism, shows an unprecedented strengthening of the "State machine" and an unheard-of development of its bureaucratic and military apparatus, side by side with the increase of oppression of the proletariat, alike in monarchical and the freest Republican countries.

World-history is undoubtedly leading up at the present, moment, on an incomparably larger scale than in 1852, to the "concentration of all the forces" of the proletarian revolution for the purpose of "breaking up" the machinery of the State.

As to what the proletariat will put in its place, instructive data on the subject were given us by the Paris Commune.