Page:Lenin - The State and Revolution.pdf/92

 of the majority demonstrates its superiorty by destroying the organized force of the ruling minority" (p. 548).

Pannekoek did not expound his ideas very skilfully, but theideas are sufficiently clear; and it is interesting to note how Kautsky combated them. "Up till now," he wrote, "the difference between Social-Democrats and Anarchists has consisted in this: the first desired to conquer the State authority, while the Anarchists' aim was to destroy it: Pannekoek wants to do both" (p. 724). If Pannekoek's exposition lacks precision and concreteness—not to speak of other defects which have no bearing on the present subject—Kautsky seized on just that one point in Pannekoek's article which is the essence of the whole matter; and on this fundamental question of principle Kautsky forsakes the Marxian position entirely and surrenders himself without reserve to the Opportunists. His definition of the difference between Social-Democrats and Anarchists is absolutely wrong; and Marxism is finally vulgarized and distorted.

This is what the difference between the Marxists and the Anarchists is: (1) The Marxists aim at the complete destruction of the State but recognize that this aim is only attainable after the extinction of classes by a Socialist revolution as the result of the establishment of Socialism, leading to the withering away of the State. The Anarchists, on the other hand, want the complete destruction of the State within twenty-four hours, and do not understand the conditions under which alone such a destruction can be carried out. (2) The Marxists recognize that when once the proletariat has won political power, it must utterly break up the old machinery of the. State, and substitute for it a new machinery of organized armed workers, after the type of the Commune. Anarchists, on the other hand, while advocating the destruction of the State, have no clear idea as to what the proletariat will put in its place and how it will use its revolutionary power; they even deny that the revolutionary proletariat has any need to make use of the State and to establish its revolutionary dictatorship. (3) Marxists insist upon making use of the modern State as a means of preparing the workers for revolution; Anarchists reject all this.

In this controversy it is Pannekoek, not Kautsky, who represents Marxism, seeing that it was Marx himself who taught that the mere transference of the old State machine into new hands is no conquest of power at all: the proletariat must smash up this apparatus and replace it by something altogether new. Kautsky rats from Marxism to the Opportunists because, under his