Page:Vladimir Ilyich Lenin - Lessons of the Revolution (1918).djvu/42

 hat geos without saying. The history of the bourgeois-parliamentary and the bourgeois-constitutional countries shows that a change of Ministers means very, little, for the real work of administration is lodged in the hands of a colossal army of officials, and this army is permeated with the antidemocratic spirit. By thousands and millions of threads it is connected with the landlords and the bourgeoisie, and dependent upon them in every way. This army breathes only the atmosphere of bourgeois relations with which it is surrounded; it is congealed, shrivelled with age, stiff and inert; it is powerless to escape from this atmosphere, unable to think, feel or act otherwise than it has always acted. This army is imbued with admiration for rank, for certain privileges of «State» service, and its upper strata are enslaved by stocks and bonds to Financial Capital, in a measure acting as its direct agents, the executors of its interests and influence.

To attempt by means of this administrative apparatus the carrying out of such reforms as the redeemed confiscation of landed estates, the monopolizing of bread, etc., is a huge illusion, a deception of the people.

This apparatus  well serve a republican bourgeoisie, creating a republic in the form. of a «monarchy without a monarch», after the fashion of the Third French Republic; but it is absolutely powerless to carry out reforms, not only ultra ra-