State

An instrument of class rule, apparatus of violence that represents the political rule of the economically ruling class in order to maintain its class interests and fortify its dominance, composed of the standing army, police, courts, prisons, and other organs of force. Among them, the standing army is the main component and pillar of the state. The state is a machine for the oppression of one class by another, a machine for holding in obedience to one class other, subordinated classes. The state is an organ of class rule, the organ for the oppression of one class by another. The state belongs to the superstructure of society, which is determined by and serves the economic foundation.

State is a historical category. In primitive society, due to the low level of the productive forces, there was no private property, class struggle and, the state apparatus as an instrument of class oppression was of course out of question; at that time, only the gentile organization administered social and public affairs. In his book The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, Engels has scientifically elaborated the reasons for the emergence of the state, and held that the emergence of the state was the necessary result of the development of human society and appeared with the appearance of classes. He pointed out that “the state is a product of society at a particular stage of development; it is the admission that this society has involved itself in insoluble self-contradiction and is cleft into irreconcilable antagonisms which it is powerless to exorcise. But in order that these antagonisms, classes with conflicting economic interests, shall not consume themselves and society in fruitless struggle, a power, apparently standing above society, has become necessary to moderate the conflict and keep it within the bounds of ‘order’; and this power, arisen out of society, but placing itself above it and increasingly alienating itself from it, is the state.” At the very outset of the development of human society, the state has not existed; but at a definite stage of economic development, which necessarily involved the cleavage of society into classes, the state became a necessity because of this cleavage. In contrast to the “barbarism” of primitive society, “the central link in civilized society is the state”. Moreover, the state is the result of the development of the contradictory movement within the society, an organization of class society and a product and a manifestation of the irreconcilability of class antagonisms. It is without exception the state of the ruling class, and in all cases continues to be essentially a machine for holding down the oppressed, exploited class. Lenin inherited and developed Engels’ thoughts, and held that the state appears wherever and whenever a division of society into classes appears, whenever exploiters and exploited appear. The state is a product and a manifestation of the irreconcilability of class antagonisms. The state arises where, when and insofar as class antagonisms objectively cannot be reconciled. And, conversely, the existence of the state proves that the class antagonisms are irreconcilable. The state is a particular administrative machinery, apparently standing above society and responsible for maintaining social order, this surface phenomenon conceals the real essence of the state. In fact, the state is indissolubly connected with class antagonisms and class struggle. The state appeared as an instrument of the ruling class for class oppression. In class society, the rule of any class is rooted in its economic rule, which, in turn, necessarily depends on its political rule to be maintained and fortified. Therefore, the state power always belongs to economically ruling classes, and the state is a means and an instrument of the economically ruling classes for holding down and exploiting the ruled classes. The state is a machine, a particular authority. It differs from the gentile organization of the primitive society and from other social organizations. The fundamental feature of the state is the possession of violence, the capacity to subjugate the ruled classes to the will of the state by force, and the organs of coercion such as the army, police, courts, prisons, etc., which exercise this power. The state divides the citizens under its rule and sphere of domination according to its territory, and has the right to levy taxes on them.

So far, due to the different class character of the state and the different forms of rule, there have been successively slave, feudal, capitalist, semi-colonial, semi-feudal and socialist states in the human history. On the whole, they can be divided into dictatorships of exploiting classes and dictatorship of the proletariat. States of different types have different functions. In states of dictatorship of exploiting classes, a minority of exploiters at home exercise suppression and control over the majority of the working people, and invade other countries abroad. The essence of a socialist state is the dictatorship of the proletariat, the proletariat and the working people are the master in their own house, the dictatorship of the vast majority over an insignificant minority. The state of the dictatorship of the proletariat is no longer a state in the proper sense of the word, but the unity of a new democracy and a new dictatorship, which is the last type of state in human history. Its historical mission is to abolish classes and class distinctions and realize communism.

The State is not eternal, either; it has its laws of emergence, development and fall. Engels pointed out that classes will fall as inevitably as they once arose. The state inevitably falls with them. The society which organizes production anew on the basis of free and equal association of the producers will put the whole state machinery where it will then belong—into the museum of antiquities, next to the spinning wheel and the bronze ax. Of course, the disappearance of the state is a long historical process. Lenin said that we are entitled to speak only of the inevitable withering away of the state, emphasizing the protracted nature of this process and its dependence upon the rapidity of development of the higher phase of communism with the complete liquidation of classes, economic differences and class contradictions, and in accordance to the objective law of social development, the dictatorship of the proletariat, the last type of state in human history, will inevitably wither away.

Due to the limitation of historical conditions and the different standpoints of people, there have been different views of the origin and essence of the state throughout history. Nearly all political disputes, disagreements and opinions now center around the conception of the state. For example, “theory of social contract”, “theory of the divine right of kings”, “theory of social organism” and “social psychology school”, etc. are all divorced from the class nature of the state, deny the essential connection between the state and classes and class struggle, and are the theories of historical idealism.