Page:Lenin - The State and Revolution.pdf/52

 (The next chapter treats of this subject.) Such are the problems of the transformation of the nature of public functions, from political to simple administrative, and of the "political State." This last term, particularly liable to cause misunderstanding, indicates the process of the withering away of the State: the dying State, at a certain stage of its decay, can be called a non-political State. The most remarkable point in our quotation from Engels' work is, again, the way he puts the case against the Anarchists. Social-Democrats, desiring to be disciples of Engels, have disputed with the Anarchists thousands of times since 1873, but they have not disputed at all as Marxists can and should. The Anarchist idea of the abolition of the State is muddled and non-revolutionary—that is how Engels put it. It is precisely the Revolution, in its rise and development, with its specific problems in relation to violence, authority, power and the State, that the Anarchists do not wish to see. The usual criticism of the Anarchists by the modern Social-Democrats has been reduced to the purest middle-class triviality: "We, forsooth, recognize the State, whereas the Anarchists do not." Naturally such trivialities cannot but repel any revolutionary workingmen who think at all. Engels says something quite different. He emphasizes that all Socialists recognize the disappearance of the State as a result of the Socialist Revolution. He then deals with the concrete question of the Revolution—that very question which, as a rule, the Social-Democrats, because of their Opportunism, evade, leaving it so to speak exclusively for the Anarchists "to work out." And in thus formulating the question Engels takes the bull by the horns. Ought not the Commune to have made more use of the revolutionary power of the State, that is, of the proletariat armed and organized as the ruling class?

The modern predominating official Social-Democracy has generally dismissed the concrete problems facing the proletariat during the revolution, either by some inane philistine jeers, or, at the best, by the evasive sophism "Wait and see!" And the Anarchists have thus gained the right to reproach such Social-Democrats with betraying their mission of educating the working class in revolution. Engels makes use of the experience of the last proletarian revolution for the direct purpose of drawing from it concrete conclusions as to how the proletariat should act concerning both banks and the State.

One of the most remarkable, if not the most remarkable,