The State And Revolution Quotes
"The state is a product and a manifestation of the irreconcilability of class antagonisms."
"The working class, in the course of development, will substitute for the old bourgeois society an association which will preclude classes and their antagonism."
"The proletariat needs the state — this is repeated by all the opportunists, social-chauvinists and Kautskyites, who assure us that this is what Marx taught."
"The proletariat needs state power, a centralized organization of force, an organization of violence, both to crush the resistance of the exploiters and to lead the enormous mass of the population."
"The oppressed classes need political rule in order to completely abolish all exploitation, i.e., in the interests of the vast majority of the people, and against the insignificant minority."
"All revolutions perfected this machine instead of smashing it."
"The proletariat revolution 'abolishing' the bourgeois state, while the words about the state withering away refer to the remnants of the proletarian state after the socialist revolution."
"The development, perfection, and strengthening of the bureaucratic and military apparatus proceeded during all the numerous bourgeois revolutions."
"The state is not 'abolished'. It withers away."
"Imperialism - the era of bank capital, the era of gigantic capitalist monopolies, of the development of monopoly capitalism into state-monopoly capitalism - has clearly shown an unprecedented growth in its bureaucratic and military apparatus."
"No credit is due to me for discovering the existence of classes in modern society or the struggle between them... What I did that was new was to prove: (1) that the existence of classes is only bound up with the particular, historical phases in the development of production, (2) that the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat, (3) that this dictatorship itself only constitutes the transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless society."
"The proletariat needs the state only temporarily."
"The working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery and wield it for its own purposes."
"The Commune was essentially a working-class government, the result of the struggle of the producing against the appropriating class, the political form at last discovered under which the economic emancipation of labor could be accomplished."
"After overthrowing the yoke of the capitalists, should the workers 'lay down their arms', or use them against the capitalists in order to crush their resistance? But what is the systematic use of arms by one class against another if not a 'transient form' of state?"
"A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is an act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets, and cannon, all of which are highly authoritarian means."
"The Commune substitutes for the venal and rotten parliamentarism of bourgeois society institutions in which freedom of opinion and discussion does not degenerate into deception, for the parliamentarians themselves have to work, have to execute their own laws, have themselves to test the results achieved in reality, and to account directly to their constituents."
"The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class shall represent and repress them in parliament!"
"Democracy for an insignificant minority, democracy for the rich, that is the democracy of capitalist society."
"The state is nothing but a machine for the oppression of one class by another, and indeed in the democratic republic no less than in the monarchy."
"The proletarian revolution...requires the proletariat to become the ruling class, and to use its political supremacy to wrest all capital from the bourgeoisie."
"The abolition of the state means also the abolition of democracy; that the withering away of the state means the withering away of democracy."
"Democracy is a state which recognizes the subordination of the minority to the majority, i.e., an organization for the systematic use of force by one class against another, by one section of the population against another."
"In capitalist society, we have a democracy that is curtailed, wretched, false, a democracy only for the rich, for the minority."
"The dictatorship of the proletariat...will for the first time create democracy for the people, for the majority."
"Only communism makes the state absolutely unnecessary, for there is nobody to be suppressed - 'nobody' in the sense of a class, of a systematic struggle against a definite section of the population."
"The first phase of communism cannot yet provide justice and equality; differences, and unjust differences, in wealth will still persist."
"Law can never be higher than the economic structure of society and its cultural development conditioned thereby."
"The state withers away insofar as there are no longer any capitalists, any classes, and, consequently, no class can be suppressed."
"So long as the state exists there is no freedom. When there is freedom, there will be no state."
"Democracy is a form of the state, it represents, on the one hand, the organized, systematic use of force against persons; but, on the other hand, it signifies the formal recognition of equality of citizens."
"The whole of society will have become a single office and a single factory, with equality of labor and pay."
"From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs."
"Revolution consists in the proletariat destroying the 'administrative apparatus' and the whole state machine, replacing it by a new one, made up of the organized armed workers."
"The proletariat cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery and wield it for its own purposes."
"The experience of the Commune has been not only ignored but distorted."
"Revolution consists not in the new class commanding, governing with the aid of the old state machine, but in this class smashing this machine and commanding, governing with the aid of a new machine."