Page:Lenin - The State and Revolution.pdf/78

 and all the forces of social wealth will be pouring an uninterrupied torrent—only then will it be possible wholly to pass beyond the narrow horizon of bourgeois law, and only then will society be able to inscribe on its banner: 'From each according to his ability; and to each according to his needs.'"

Only now can we appreciate the full justice of Engels' observations when he mercilessly ridiculed all the absurdity of combining the words "freedom" and "state." While the State exists there can be no freedom. When there is freedom there will be no State.

The economic basis for the complete withering away of the State is that high stage of development of Communism when the distinction between brain and manual work disappears; consequently, one of the principal sources of modern social inequalities will have vanished—a source, moreover, which it is impossible to remove immediately, by the mere conversion of the means of production into public property, by the mere expropriation of the capitalists.

This expropriation will make it possible gigantically to develop the forces of production. And seeing how incredibly, even now, capitalism retards this development, how much progress could be made even on the basis of modern technique at the level it has reached, we have a right to say, with the fullest confidence, that the expropriation of the capitalists will result inevitably in a gigantic development of the productive forces of human society. But how rapidly this development will go forward, how soon it will reach the point of breaking away from the division of labor, of the destruction of the antagonism between brain and manual work, of the transformation of work into a "first necessity of life"—this we do not and cannot know.

Consequently, we are right in speaking solely of the inevitable withering away of the State, emphasizing the protracted nature of this process, and its dependence upon the rapidity of the development of the higher phase of communism; leaving quite open the question of lengths of time, or the concrete forms of this withering away, since material for the solution of such questions is not available.

The State will be able to wither away completely when society has realized the formula: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs"; that is, when people have accustomed themselves to observe the fundamental principles of social life, and when their labor is so productive that they will voluntarily work according to their abilities. "The narrow horizon of