The State: A Lecture Delivered at the Sverdlov University

The record of Lenin’s speech on the issue of state at the Sverdlov University on July 11,1919. Originally it was published by the “Lenin Institute” of the Soviet Union on January 18, 1929, in Pravda issue No. 15. The Chinese translation is included in Vol. 37 of the second revised edition of Complete Works of Lenin.

After the victory of the October Revolution, the bourgeoisie, the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries spread fallacies about question of state and attacked the newly established Soviet regime. Therefore, it was very urgent to explain the state issue thoroughly from the theoretical point of view. In this context, Lenin delivered two speeches at the Sverdlov University in 1919, a detailed exposition of Marxist-Leninist state theory and the Communist Party’s attitude towards the state. The main points were as follows:

Firstly, Lenin pointed out that the state issue is extremely complex and confused by bourgeois scholars and writers, because it affects the interests of the ruling classes more than any other question. Lenin criticized bourgeois scholars for using the state theory to justify social privilege, the existence of exploitation and the existence of capitalism and pointed out that the struggle between different classes is reflected or expressed in a conflict of views on the state.

Secondly, Lenin explained the scientific method to approach the state question. He pointed out that the correct analysis of this question requires a historical review of the emergence and development of the state. “The most important thing is to examine every question from the standpoint of how the given phenomenon arose in history and what were the principal stages in its development, and from the standpoint of its development, to examine what it has become today.”

Thirdly, Lenin used the methods of historical analysis and class analysis to examine the history of the emergence and development of the state and proposed that we should focus on the fact that the society is divided into classes and the change of the ruling form of classes and take it as a basic guiding clue to analyze all social problems. Lenin pointed out that the state, as a special institution that systematically uses violence and forces people to obey violence, did not always exist, but only when the society was divided into classes and when the exploiters and the exploited appeared. Before the forms of human exploitation and class division appeared, there was no special category of people set apart to rule others using a certain apparatus of violence, so there was no state. As an apparatus of rule which stands outside society as a whole, the state comes into being only when the society is divided into classes and when people exploit people. Armed forces, police, prisons, courts and other means of forcing others to obey violence constitute the essence of the state. In essence, the state is a machine and tool for maintaining the rule of one class over another. The state as a special apparatus for coercing people arose wherever and whenever there appeared a division of society into classes.

Lenin also analyzed the class essence of a slave-owning society, feudalism or serfdom society and capitalist society one by one, and explained that the reason for the transition of different state forms was the change of production mode and social structure. He pointed out that in slavery, only the slave owners were counted as citizens and had rights. Slaves were always oppressed classes, they weren’t not only counted as citizens but also not as human beings. Roman law stipulated that slaves were only an object, not only without any rights, but also could be killed by arbitrary violence. In the later period of slavery, the form of exploitation changed, which gradually led to the disintegration of slavery society and the emergence of serfdom. In the serfdom society, only the landlords have full rights, while the peasants have no rights and are bound to the land. However, the peasants have made great progress compared with the slaves. They are no longer the direct private property of the landlords, but can spend part of their time on their own land, so the peasants belong to themselves to some extent. The serfdom society was bearing the great factors for the development of commerce and industry. The development of commodity exchange made the bourgeoisie accumulate a huge amount of wealth, the landlord class declined, the serfdom gradually disintegrated, and capitalism developed. In the capitalist society, the former division into slave-owners and slaves disappeared, and all citizens seem to be equal before the law. However, in essence, the capitalist society is the freedom of propertied classes. It is based on private ownership; in fact, people are only equal in words and on the surface.

Fourthly, Lenin explained the attitude of the Communist Party on the issue of state, especially the bourgeois state. He pointed out that the essence of bourgeois state is still the bourgeois rule i.e., the bourgeois democracy, freedom and equality are all false. Lenin put forward that capitalist society is a society based on private ownership, capital rights, and complete control upon the proletariat and other working people. However, bourgeois ideologues claim that it represents the will of all the people and is a non-class state based on freedom.

In fact, bourgeois states are the machines that help the bourgeoisie implementing control upon proletariat and carry out its class rule. Universal suffrage, constitutional assembly and parliament are only forms of deceiving public opinion and the working people. As long as private ownership exists, the state, no matter what form it takes, is a machine for capitalists to suppress workers. Therefore, the Communist Party’s attitude towards the state is that the proletariat seizes and controls the state machine, uses the state as a tool to eliminate all exploitation and eliminate the basis for the existence of exploitation. Only when there is no possibility of class exploitation and oppression remains in the world, can this machine be destroyed, then there will be no state and exploitation.”

The text of “The State” enriched and developed Marxist theory of the state and historical materialism, providing the proletariat with a theoretical weapon for the correct study and analysis of the state.