Page:Lenin - The State and Revolution.pdf/58

 for the dictatorship of the proletariat, as has been demonstrated by the great French Revolution. …"

Engels repeats here in a particularly emphatic form the fundamental idea which, like a red thread, runs throughout all Marx's work, viz., that the Democratic Republic is the nearest jumping board to the dictatorship of the proletariat. For such a republic, without in the least setting aside the domination of capital, and, therefore, the oppression of the masses and the class struggle, inevitably leads to such an extension, intensification and development of that struggle that, as soon as the chance arises for satisfying the fundamental interests of the oppressed masses, this chance is realized inevitably and solely in the form of the dictatorship of the proletariat, of the guidance of these masses by the proletariat. These also have been, for the whole of the Second International, "forgotten words" of Marxism, and their neglect was demonstrated with particular vividness by the history of the Menshevik party during the first half year of the Russian Revolution of 1917.

On the question of a Federal Republic, in connection with the national composition of the population, Engels wrote:

"What ought to arise in the place of present-day Germany (with its reactionary monarchist constitution and the equally reactionary division into small States, a division which perpetuates the peculiarities of 'Prussianism' instead of submerging them in Germany as a singe whole)? In my opinion the proletariat can only make use of the form of a one and indivisible republic. A federal republic is still, as a whole, a necessity in the enormous territory of the United States, but even so, it is already becoming an impediment in the Eastern States. It would be a progressive step in England, where four nationalities live on the two islands, and where, in spite of one Parliament, three systems of legislation exist side by side. It has long since become a hindrance in little Switzerland, and if there the Federal Republic can still be tolerated, it is only because Switzerland is content with the role of an entirely passive member of the European State system. For Germany, a federalization on the Swiss model would be an enormous step backward. Two points differentiate a federated State from a unitary State, viz., that each individual State within the union has its own civil and criminal legislation, its own particular judicial system; and then this: that, side by side with the popular chamber, there is a chamber of representatives from the States in which every canton votes as such irrespective of its size."