Page:Lenin - The State and Revolution.pdf/69

 only touches upon this question in passing, being interested mainly in another subject—the evolution of Communist Society. The whole theory of Marx is an application of the theory of evolution—in its most consistent, complete, well-thought-out and fruitful form—to modern Capitalism. Naturally, for Marx there arose the question of the application of this theory both to the coming crash of Capitalism and to the future development of future Communism.

On what foundation of facts can the future development of future Communism be based? It can be based on the fact that it has its origin in Capitalism, that it develops historically from Capitalism, that it is the result of the action of social forces to which Capitalism has given birth. There is no shadow of an attempt on Marx's part to fabricate a Utopia, idly to guess that which cannot be known. Marx treats the question of Communism in the same way as a naturalist would treat the question of the development of, say, a new biological variety, if he knew that such and such was its origin, and such and such is the direction in which it changes its form.

Marx, first of all, brushes aside the confusion which is introduced by the Gotha program into the question of the mutual relations of State and of Society.

"Contemporary Society [he writes] is capitalist Society, which exists in all civilized countries freed, to a greater or lesser extent, from admixture of mediaevalism, more or less varying in type according to peculiar historical conditions of development of each country, more or less fully developed. The 'contemporary State,' on the contrary, varies with every State boundary. In the Prusso-German Empire it is quite a different thing from that in Switzerland; in England quite different from that in the United States. The 'contemporary State' is therefore a fiction.

"However, in spite of the motley variety of their forms, the different forms of the State in the different civilized countries have this in common—they are all based on contemporary bourgeois Society, more or less capitalistically developed. They have, therefore, certain fundamental traits in common. In this sense one can speak of the 'contemporary State' in contradiction to that future time when its present root, namely, capitalist society, will have perished.

"The question is then put thus: To what transformation will the forms of government be subjected in Communist society? In other words, what social functions will there remain, then, analogous to the present functions of the State? This question can