Page:Lenin - The State and Revolution.pdf/48

 of their present possessors, and by settling in them the homeless workers or the workers who are now living in over-crowded homes. And as soon as the workers win political power, such a measure, based on the best interests of Society, will be as easily carried out as all other expropriations and commandeerings by the modern State." (German edition, 1887, p. 22.)

Here it is not the change in the form of the State which is considered, but only the character of its activity. Expropriations and the occupation of houses take place by direction even of the present State. The proletarian State, from the formal point of view, will also "direct" the occupation of houses and the expropriation of buildings. But it is clear that the old executive apparatus, the bureaucracy connected with the bourgeoisie, would simply be useless for the carrying out of the orders of the proletarian State.

"It is necessary to state that the actual seizure of all the means of labor and of all industry by the laboring masses of the nation is the direct antithesis to the Proudhonist 'buying out.' Under the Proudhonist system the individual worker becomes the owner of a house, of a small-holder's plot of land, of necessary tools. In the other case, however, the 'laboring people' becomes the collective owner of houses, factories and tools. The use of these houses, factories and so forth, will hardly be offered, at any rate, during the transition period, to single individuals or to companies, without recovering the expense. In the same way, the abolition of the private ownership of land does not presuppose the abolition of rent, but its handing over, although in a different form, to the whole of Society. The actual appropriation of all the means of labor by the laboring masses does not exclude in any way, therefore, the preservation of the right to rent or let." (Page 69.)

In the next chapter we shall discuss the question touched on here, namely, the economic reasons for the "withering away" of the State. Engels expresses himself most cautiously here, saying that the proletarian State will "hardly" allot houses without pay, "at any rate, during the transition period." The letting of houses belonging to the whole nation, to separate families for rent presupposes the collection of this rent, a certain amount of control, and some standard or other to guide the allotment of the houses. All this demands a certain form of State, but it does not at all involve a special military and bureaucratic apparatus, with officials occupying privileged position. But a transition to a state of affairs when it will be possible to let houses without rent is bound up with a complete "withering away" of the State.