Page:Lenin - The State and Revolution.pdf/47



Marx gives us the fundamentals on the subject of the meaning of the Commune. Engels returned to the same question repeatedly, elucidating Marx's analysis and conclusions, sometimes explaining so clearly and forcibly other sides of the question that we must stop expressly to consider these explanations.

Already in his work on the Housing Question (1872), Engels took into account the experience of the Commune, dwelling several times on the problems of the Revolution in relation to the State. It is interesting to note that in the treatment of this concrete question we are shown clearly on the one hand, those features of the proletarian State which resemble features of the present State—features which give us ground for speaking of a State in both cases; and, on the other hand, the features which differentiate them and mark the transition to the destruction of the State.

"How can the housing problem be solved? In modern society this question is solved, like every other social question, by a gradual economic equalization of supply and demand. This, however, is a kind of solution which itself constantly creates the problem anew, that is, it gives no solution. How the Social Revolution will solve this question depends not only on circumstances of time and place, but it is also bound up with questions which go much further, amongst which one of the most important is the abolition of the distinction between town and country. As we are not interested in Utopian speculations on the structure of the future Society, it would be more than a waste of time to dwell upon this point. One thing is certain: even now there are sufficient habitable buildings in the large towns materially to relieve the real shortage of accommodation, if sensible use were made of them. This, of course, could only be brought about by the