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 only be answered with the help of this scientific method; and however many thousands of times the word 'people' is combined with the word 'State,' this will not bring us one iota nearer its solution. …"

Having thus ridiculed all the talk of a "People's State," Marx formulates the question and warns us, as it were, that for a scientific answer to it one can only rely on firmly established scientific facts.

This first fact that has been established with complete exactness by the whole theory of evolution, indeed, by the whole of science—a fact which the Utopians forgot, however, and which is now forgotten by the present Opportunists, afraid of the Socialist revolution—is that, historically, there must undoubtedly be a special stage or epoch of transition from Capitalism to Communism.

"Between capitalist and Communist Society [Marx continues], there lies a period of revolutionary transformation from the former to the latter. A stage of political transition corresponds to this period, and the State during this period can be no other than the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat."

This conclusion Marx bases on an analysis of the role played by the proletariat in modern capitalist society, on the facts of the development of this society, and on the irreconcilability of the antagonistic interests of the proletarian and capitalist classes.

Earlier the question was put thus: To attain its emancipation the proletariat must overthrow the capitalist class, conquer political power and establish its own revolutionary dictatorship. Now the question is put somewhat differently: The transition from capitalist society developing towards Communism, to a Communist Society, is impossible without a period of "political transition” and the State in this period can only be the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.

What, then, is the relation of the dictatorship to democracy?

We saw that the Communist Manifesto simply places side by side the two ideas: the "conversion of the proletariat into the ruling class," and the "conquest of Democracy." On the basis of all that has been said above, one can define more exactly how Democracy changes in the transition of Capitalism to Communism.

In capitalist Society, under the conditions most favorable to