Following is the eighth part of an eleven-part series of study columns on the theory of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought.
The study series was originally developed for study groups conducted by the League of Revolutionary Struggle (M-L) and is the product of a number of years of practice in leading study groups in Marxism-Leninism among workers and students.
Among the topics covered in the series are classes and class struggle; the crisis of capitalism and the inevitability of socialism; imperialism; the national question; the state and revolution; the communist party; and Marxist philosophy.
Lenin, Vol. 1, The State.
Mao Zedong, “On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People,” especially pp. 432-447 in Selected Readings.
(Supplementary Readings: Lenin, The State and Revolution, Chapters 11, V; The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky, pp. 1-39; League of Revolutionary Struggle, FORWARD No. 7, “China is Vigorously Building Socialism.”)
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The central question of the proletarian revolution is the seizure of stale power by the proletariat and the masses of oppressed peoples. Under capitalism, the state is not neutral or above the class struggle, but is the political weapon of the monopoly capitalists. This lesson is evident whenever there is a big strike and the police inevitably take the side of capitalist private property and the employers.
One of the fundamental lessons learned by communists the world over is that the liberation of the working class and oppressed peoples from reactionary rule requires the use of force to overthrow the enemy class, confiscate its property and overturn its governmental apparatus, the state. In place of the bourgeois state, the working class forms its own government, called the dictatorship of the proletariat. The revolutionary proletariat as the ruling class exercises its dictatorship, its rule over the whole of society.
The dictatorship of the proletariat protects the hard won fruits of the revolution and enables socialism to be constructed. While there must be the dictatorship of the proletariat to suppress the enemies of the revolution there must also be the greatest possible expansion o democracy for the working people to involve the masses of people in the building the new society. This socialist democracy is impossible under capitalism, where political and economic power are held by the bourgeoisie who use this power to distort, limit, suppress or deny every democratic right that is supposed to exist under capitalism. In contrast, under socialism the working class will control the means of production. It, not capitalist business, will run the media and all other avenues of expression. The working class state will protect all the basic rights of the working people including speech, assembly, association, and election of officials and representatives. In all these areas the working people will really be the masters and be able to exercise their will and express their voice as never before.
The dictatorship of the proletariat and socialism, though, are only a transition period from capitalism the era of world communism. In this future time, after the economic, moral and social conditions are achieved, classes will disappear and the state itself will no longer necessary. It will begin to “wither away.”
1. What is the historical origin of the state and its purpose? Why is the state under capitalism “an instrument of the exploitation of the oppressed classes”? What examples do we have of this in the U.S. today?
2. Why must the bourgeois state be smashed by violent revolution? Why are the revisionists who preach “peaceful transition to socialism” wrong?
3. What are the distinctions between socialist (or proletarian) and bourgeois democracy? Give examples from the U.S. today to illustrate Lenin’s view that capitalist democracy is democracy for the rich and that the poor are constantly restricted from participation in politics.
4. What is the function of the state under the dicta ship of the proletariat? Why must it exist for a certain period of time? Under what conditions will the state disappear?