Vol. 72/No. 32      August 18, 2008

BY GEORGE NOVACK  
In The State and Revolution, his classical though unfinished work on the subject, Lenin explained, in refutation of the anarchists, that the working class needs its own state when it takes power. Society cannot function without a state so long as classes and social conflicts exist and the economy cannot cover everyone’s needs, although the ultimate aim of socialism is to do away with the state as an agency of coercion. The proletarian regime has to defend itself and the gains of the revolution against the resistance of the exploiters at home or abroad, as well as guiding the masses of the population in the tasks of economic, social and cultural construction. If the first obligations require military and police agencies and forcible measures which have a dictatorial edge, the second set of tasks has a democratic character. Whether coercive or constructive, the administration and execution of both functions should rely upon the mobilization and enthusiastic support of the popular masses.

Lenin discussed the measures that could keep the new regime genuinely democratic, under the control of the workers, responsible to them and responsive to their demands. He was keenly aware of the dangers of reversion to a militarized, bureaucratized and authoritarian state apparatus like those which had arisen during the recoil against previous revolutionary upheavals. The principal bodies which arrogated exorbitant authority to themselves in oppressing the people were the standing army and its officer corps, the professional bureaucracy, the police, the judiciary and the clergy.

Lenin proposed to curb the repressive and reactionary role of these parasitic organs of the old state by handing over their functions to the people themselves or at least, for the interim period, placing them under the unremitting surveillance of the masses. The professional army was to be replaced by a popular militia, the people in arms. The police were to be stripped of all political functions and made responsible for their conduct to the workers’ councils. All state support to the clergy would be withdrawn, though believers of any denomination would have full right to voluntarily support their churches and pastors. Judges appointed for long terms or life would be replaced by elected judges. Juries and courts would be staffed and surveyed by neighbors of individuals accused of criminal offenses. Full-time officials at all levels were to be the real servants of the people and not act like imperious big shots heedless of popular feelings and problems.

The objective was to give the workers constant control over all elements of the state apparatus until such time as the development of socialism enabled the functions performed by full-time professionals to be assumed by rotation among the citizen body, as had been done on a much smaller scale and in a more restricted and primitive way under Athenian democracy.

Lenin proposed numerous safeguards against the estrangement of the officialdom from the people and their elevation above them. All public officials were to be elected and subject to recall periodically or in emergency for any ill-performance of their duties, just as shop stewards stand liable to revocation today where rank-and-file workers have a democratic shop union. To cut down careerism and corruption, no officeholder was to receive more than the highest paid worker. More and more of the functionaries were to be selected from the working masses and, when their special assignments in the state apparatus were completed, would return to their previous occupations and statuses.

Lenin urged as thoroughgoing a reformation of political representations of everyday administration of the government. The proletarian power would have to make a conscious break with the evils of parliamentarism, “the congressional racket,” as it is called in the United States, by narrowing as far as possible the gap between the legislative and executive powers. All representative institutions were to be transformed from debating societies, designed to dupe the people while carrying out the dictates of the rich, into working bodies. The deputies of the toilers would not simply pass laws and proclaim edicts but personally check to see that their purposes were implemented in practice. They should not be sequestered in a national or state capital, or city hall, fussing over legislation which does not take account of the actual conditions or most pressing demands of their constituents. They should hold themselves responsible for the results of the application of their enactments.

The type of organization needed for instituting and executing such measures was foreshadowed by the Paris Commune of 1871. It was first created during the Russian Revolution of 1905 and revived in more extensive form in 1917. These were the Workers’, Peasants’ and Soldiers’ Councils, known under their Russian name of soviets. These directly elected organs did not originate through the prevision or prescription of any political party. They were spontaneously improvised by the insurgent masses as instruments to register their will, organize their forces and carry forward their struggles against the czarist, landlord and bourgeois authorities.  
 
 
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