Page:Lenin - The State and Revolution.pdf/67

 will not be respected—for is not Democracy just the recognition of this principle?

No, Democracy is not identical with majority rule. No, Democracy is a State which recognizes the subjection of the minority to the majority, that is, an organization for the systematic use of violence by one class against another.

We set ourselves, as our final aim, the task of the destruction of the State, that is, of every organized and systematic violence, every form of violence against man in general. We do not expect the advent of an order of Society in which the principle of the submission of the minority to the majority will not be observed. But, striving for Socialism, we are convinced that it will develop further into Communism, and, side by side with this, there will vanish all need for force, for the subjection of one man to another, of one section of Society to another, since people will grow accustomed to observing the elementary conditions of social existence without subjection.

In order to emphasize this element of habit, Engels speaks of a new generation, "brought up under new and free social conditions which will prove capable of throwing on the dust heap all the useless and old rubbish of State organizations"—every sort of State, including even the democratic republican State.

For the elucidation of this, we must examine the question of the economic foundations of the withering away of the State.