Page:Lenin - The State and Revolution.pdf/53

 items of reasoning in the works of Marx and Engels on the State is contained in the following passage in Engels' letter to Bebel on March 18, 1875. This letter, we may remark in passing, was first published, so far as we know, by Bebel, in the second volume of his memoirs (My Life), published in 1911, that is, thirty-six years after the writing and dispatch of the letter.

Engels wrete to Bebel, criticizing that same draft of the Gotha program which Marx criticized in his famous letter to Bracke, and, referring particularly to the question of the State, said:

"The Free People’s State has been transformed into a Free State. According to the grammatical meaning of the words, the Free State is one in which the State is free in relation to its citizens, that is, a State with a despotic government. It would be well to throw overboard all this nonsense about the State, especially after the Commune, which was already no longer a State in the proper sense of the word.

"The Anarchists have too long been able to throw into our teeth this 'People's State,' although already, in Marx's works against Proudhon, and then in the Communist Manifesto, it was stated quite plainly that with the introduction of the Socialist order of Society, the State will dissolve of itself (sich auflöst) and will disappear. As the State is only a transitional institution which we are obliged to use in the revolutionary struggle in order forcibly to crush our opponents, it is a pure absurdity to speak of a Free Peopie's State. During the period when the proletariat still needs the State, it does not require it in the interests of freedom, but in the interests of crushing its antagonists; and when it becomes possible really to speak of freedom, then the State, as such, ceases to exist. We should, therefore, suggest that everywhere the word State be replaced by Gemeinwesen (Commonwealth), a fine old German word, which corresponds to the French word .'Commune,'" (German edition, p. 322.)

One should bear in mind that this letter refers to the party program which Marx criticized in his letter dated only a few weeks later than the above (Marx's letter of May 5, 1875), and that Engels was living at the time with Marx in London. Consequently, when he says "we" Engels undoubtedly suggests to the leader of the German working class party, both in his own and in Marx's name, that the word "State" should be struck out of their program and exchanged for "Commonwealth."

What a howl about "Anarchism" would be raised by the leaders of the present-day “Marxism” adulterated to meet the