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p By V. V. PLATKOVSKY

p Lenin’s theory of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the socialist state occupies a central place in his ideological legacy.

p Lenin considered the state to be the "focus of all present-day political questions and political disputes".  [220•1  But he was not interested in state problems as such, i.e., in the abstract; they only interested him insofar as they were linked to the tasks of the class struggle of the proletariat, to the socialist revolution and to the building of socialism. And the more acute and tense became the class struggle—and, consequently, the closer the revolution—the more attention Lenin paid to the problems of the state.

p Lenin appreciated the enormous significance of Marx’s and Engels’s idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat at the very outset of his revolutionary activities and consistently upheld and developed it to the end of his days. In his early works he clearly posed the question of the proletariat’s attitude to the state and put forward the dictatorship of the proletariat as the chief plank of the revolutionary Marxist party’s political platform. And in the course of the first revolution in Russia (1905-1907), he elaborated in detail his tenet on the revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry and its subsequent transformation into the socialist dictatorship of the proletariat. On the eve of the second Russian revolution, at the end of 1916 and the beginning of 1917, Lenin made a thorough study of the literature on the state and prepared his Marxism on the Slate for publication. In August and September 221 1917, on the threshold of the October Socialist Revolution, when the question of the proletariat’s attitude to the state was an urgent matter of immediate importance, he, working in difficult underground conditions, wrote his brilliant work The State and Revolution. After the October Revolution he devoted himself entirely to the building of the first socialist state in history. All his fundamental works of this period and almost all his articles, reports and speeches related to the theory and practice of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the new socialist state.

p But Lenin did much more than restore Marx’s and Engels’s teachings on the origin and nature of the state and on the decisive importance of the dictatorship of the proletariat in the transition from capitalism to socialism—all of which had been distorted by opportunists. He closely followed the political developments of his day and amassed little by little all that was valuable in the experience of revolutionary struggle of the working class in different countries. In particular he studied the experience of the Paris Commune and that of the three Russian revolutions, lie generalised the knowledge gained of state-building in the early years of Soviet power and evolved on this basis a well-knit and clear-cut theory of the socialist state.

p The Communist Party of the Soviet Union cherishes this theory as its greatest ideological asset. It is resolved to keep it pure in the face of all the assaults of revisionism and dogmatism, and to develop it on the basis of the latest political experience. Modern revisionists claim that they have nothing against Lenin’s theory of the socialist state "in general" but do everything to prove that it is outdated. They seek to turn this theory, as they do with all the teachings of Marx, Engels and Lenin, into a historical monument which one should revere but which is of no practical value. The dogmatists, for their part, want to turn Lenin’s teachings into a collection of ready-made decisions and recipes to fit any situation and any conditions. They thus endeavour to stunt and kill Lenin’s ideas. The Marxist-Leninist parties, by waging an uncompromising struggle against all forms of revisionism, are taking good care of and creatively developing Lenin’s theory of the socialist state; thanks to this it has retained its effectiveness and serves the world communist movement well as a guide to the solution of urgent tasks.

In the new Programme adopted at its Twenty-Second Congress the CPSU gave a splendid example of the creative application and development of Lenin’s theory of the socialist state. The theoretical propositions concerning the historical duration 222 of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the growth of the state ol the dictatorship of the proletariat into a socialist state of the entire people, the all round extension and perfection ol socialist democracy and the gradual development of socialist statehood into communist public self-administration, and other important formulations in this Programme, arc imbued with the creative spirit of Leninism and add to Lenin’s theory of the socialist state.

p The Marxist-Leninist theory of the state is the direct continuation and logical conclusion of the Marxist theory of classes and class struggle and of the proletariat’s revolutionary role in history. The crucial element in the class struggle is the proletariat’s struggle for political power, since the question of power is at the heart of every revolution, especially a socialist revolution.

p Every new class striving for power has hitherto regarded the seizure of the existing state machine as the main goal of struggle, whereas the proletariat’s attitude to this question is entirely different.

p The old state machine is adapted to the interests of the exploiting classes, so that it can only serve to perpetuate class domination and exploitation. The proletariat, on the other hand, has directly contrary aims: the elimination of all forms of exploitation and oppression and the abolition of exploiting classes and classes in general. The proletariat clearly cannot make use of the existing state machine and operate it in its own interests.

p But at the same time the proletariat cannot adopt a policy of “neutrality” towards the bourgeois state, leaving it alone in the hope that it will abolish itself or die away peacefully. If the state were truly supra-class, as the apologists of capitalism affirm, this would be possible. But the proletariat has learned from its own experience that the state is by no means neutral in the struggle between itself and the bourgeoisie. "The state,” Lenin emphasised, "can on no account be something inert, it always acts and acts very energetically, it is always active and never passive."  [222•1  The regular army, the police, the courts and the whole of the vast bureaucratic apparatus of the state /ealously serve the bourgeoisie.

p The state machine must be smashed and destroyed. This is the proletariat’s first main task in the socialist revolution. Former 223 revolutions all improved the state machine, but the proletariat must break and destroy it. As Lenin pointed out, this conclusion was the chief point of the Marxist theory of the state. The uncompromising class struggle and the overthrow of the bourgeoisie and its state through revolution were the first and decisive steps towards the elimination of the state as such. He wrote: "The transitional stage between the state as an organ of the rule of the capitalist class and the state as an organ of the proletariat is revolution, which means overthrowing the bourgeoisie and breaking up, smashing their state machine."  [223•1  This Marxist-= Leninist thesis concerning the need to smash the old bourgeois state machine holds good in the present day, too, despite the “clever” objections of revisionists, both Right and “Left”.

p Enlarging upon Marx’s and Engels’s views on the state, Lenin put the matter very clearly: historical development inevitably leads to the collapse of capitalism and to communism; what, then, becomes of the state? And he gave a clear and definite answer, pointing out the main historical stages in the development of the state: first, there exists in capitalist society a state in the proper sense, a state indispensable to the bourgeoisie; secondly, the state is preserved during the transition from capitalism to communism—since it is also indispensable to the proletariat—but it is a state of a special, transitional type, "not a state in the proper sense”; finally, in communist society, the state is no longer necessary, so it withers away.

p In a consistent and thorough way Lenin developed this basic idea, paying particular attention to the questions that had not been elucidated by Marx and Engels or had been distorted by revisionists and anarchists. It may be recalled that in his struggle with the anarchists, who demanded the immediate “abolition” of the state, Engels stressed that the state cannot be simply abolished, it must wither away. Reformists distorted this thesis, making it appear that it was the bourgeois state that withered away. But Lenin vigorously rebuffed this idea, emphasising that the bourgeois state did not wither away but was destroyed in the course of revolution. The only state that could wither away was a special kind of state—the proletarian state. The decisive step in the transition from state to a “non-state” was the replacement of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie by the 224 dictatorship of the proletariat, of the bourgeois state by the proletarian, socialist state. This, Lenin stressed, was "the sole way the state can eventually wither away altogether".  [224•1 

p The bourgeois state may be replaced by a proletarian state only through socialist revolution. It is this new state that comes into being after a revolution that is capable of withering away and is so built that it can wither away. "Dialectics are concrete and revolutionary and distinguish between the ‘transition’ from the dictatorship of one class to the dictatorship of another and ‘transition’ from the democratic proletarian state to the non-= state (‘the withering away of the state’)."  [224•2 

p The Marxist thesis on the need to smash the bourgeois state was interpreted by anarchists as a demand for the immediate “abolition” and renunciation of any kind of state system, including the state of proletarian dictatorship. Exposing the anarchists, Lenin showed that the proletarian revolution did not set itself the task of immediately destroying the state altogether. Moreover, not everything in the bourgeois state has to be destroyed: only the military-bureaucratic, exploitivc machine created by the bourgeoisie requires destroying. He recalled Marx who had said that "the workers set up their revolutionary dictatorship in place of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. . ., give the state a revolutionary and transient form instead of laying down their arms and abolishing the state".  [224•3 

p Class-conscious workers refute the views of anarchists. They know that the revolutionary proletariat, having overthrown the bourgeoisie and destroyed the bourgeois state, cannot immediately renounce statehood. And this is primarily because there is nothing it can immediately replace society’s state system with: no socio-political organisation of the working class has a universal state organisation that can exercise the functions of the state, and without such an all-embracing authoritative organisation society would inevitably fall into a state of anarchy—which would in turn, and just as inevitably, lead to the restoration of the power of the overthrown exploiters.

p The founders of scientific communism came to the conclusion that the objective conditions of the proletariat’s class struggle against the bourgeoisie and the tasks confronting the socialist revolution made the dictatorship of the proletariat historically 225 necessary. The conquest of state power by the proletariat is merely the beginning of the socialist revolution, not its consummation. To bring the revolution to an end—to score a complete victory over the bourgeoisie and build a socialist society—it is necessary to have a dictatorship of the proletariat, which can educate the proletariat and steel it as a force capable of politically administering society and also educate non-proletarian people, notably peasants, in a socialist spirit and draw them into socialist construction.

p Speaking of the substance of proletarian dictatorship and its historic tasks, Lenin said that the proletariat must "overthrow the bourgeoisie, take state power from it in order to use that instrument for its class aims.

p "What are the class aims of the proletariat?

p "Suppress the resistance of the bourgeoisie;

p “ ‘Neutralise’ the peasantry and, if possible, win them over— at any rate the majority of the labouring, non-exploiting section— to the side of the proletariat;

p "Organise large-scale machine production, using factories, and means of production in general, expropriated from the bourgeoisie;

p "Organise socialism on the ruins of capitalism."  [225•1 

p The first, historically inevitable task arising "on the very next day" after the victory of the proletariat is the suppression of the resistance of the overthrown exploiting classes. The proletariat’s social revolution overthrows the power of the exploiting classes but it cannot abolish these classes at one stroke. They remain for a relatively long time after the victory of the socialist revolution. And as long as they exist, they do not give up their efforts to restore their rule, desperately resisting the new power and the new social system by military, political, economic, ideological and moral means.

p That is why the victorious proletariat finds itself compelled to take steps to defend the revolution and to break the resistance of the overthrown exploiting classes. These steps cannot be reduced to single acts—it is necessary to have an organised, centralised force in the form of the state power of the new class for the systematic suppression of its class enemies and ultimately for their complete abolition. Such a centralised force or governmental power is the dictatorship of the proletariat, which Lenin 226 described as a "class struggle waged by a proletariat that is victorious and has taken political power into its hands against a bourgeoisie that has been defeated but not destroyed, a bourgeoisie that has not vanished, not ceased to oiler resistance, but lias intensified its resistance".  [226•1 

p The dictatorship of the proletariat, as Lenin stressed time and again, is the continuation of the proletariat’s class struggle in new conditions and new forms. History shows that the tasks of the proletariat in relation to the bourgeoisie and other exploiting classes arc (with certain modifications necessitated by the particular conditions in individual countries), first, to deprive the bourgeoisie of political power and to smash its military- bureaucratic state machine; secondly, to suppress the open resistance of the exploiters, smash their sabotage and ruthlessly to quash their armed actions; thirdly, to deprive them of their economic potential and to take the means of production from them, that is, to "depose the landowners and capitalists in actual fact, to replace their management of the factories and estates by a different management, workers’ management, in actual fact"  [226•2 ; and, fourthly, to abolish the exploiting classes themselves and to create conditions "in which it will be impossible for the bourgeoisie to exist, or for a new bourgeoisie to arise".  [226•3 

p In the specific historical conditions of the Soviet Union it took almost two decades to complete these tasks. For the same reason the struggle against the resisting exploiters often assumed very sharp forms. In other countries the struggle may be briefer and less bitter, everything depending on prevailing conditions. In any case, the suppression of the resistance of exploiting classes is a necessary condition for the transition from capitalism to socialism in all countries. "The indispensable characteristic, the necessary condition of dictatorship is the forcible suppression of the exploiters as a class."  [226•4 

p The main purpose of the dictatorship of the proletariat is to build a socialist society. Lenin wrote that "the essence of proletarian dictatorship is not in force alone, nor chiefly in force. Its main feature is the organisation and discipline of the advanced contingent of the working people, of their vanguard; of their sole leader, the proletariat, whose object is to build socialism, abolish the division of society into classes, 227 make all members of society working people, and remove the basis for all exploitation of man by man."  [227•1 

p The working class carries out a political revolution and takes state power into its hands for the sole purpose of using this power to carry through radical economic and social changes and to build socialism. In the Soviet Union, the dictatorship of the proletariat has carried out the economic and organisational, cultural and educational functions from the very start. The more successfully the task of suppressing the class enemy was fulfilled, the more fully and thoroughly were these creative functions of the dictatorship of the proletariat developed, until they gradually extended to all the aspects of the work of the Soviet state and people.

p The dictatorship of the proletariat employs force only against former and would-be exploiters, not against the whole of society. It therefore expresses the interests of all working people and enjoys their sympathy and support. Without this support it could not fulfil its basic tasks. That is why the working class does not assume power or attempt to administer the state by itself but does it in close alliance with all working people of town and country, particularly with the peasantry. Lenin stressed that the supreme principle of the dictatorship of the proletariat was the workers’ alliance with the labouring peasants, an alliance in which the leading role belonged to the working class.

The dictatorship of the proletariat is thus brought into being by the class struggle, by the need to reorganise society’s life along socialist lines. It is the instrument of the socialist revolution, the continuation of the proletariat’s class struggle in new conditions and new forms, the instrument of socialist construction. The historical experience of the Soviet Union and other socialist countries has irrefutably and fully proved that the teachings of Marx, Engcls and Lenin on the dictatorship of the proletariat are applicable everywhere. It has now been proved both theoretically and practically, says the CPSU Programme, that the peoples arc able to achieve socialism only as a result of the socialist revolution and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat. He who does not recognise the need for the dictatorship of the proletariat in the transition from capitalism to socialism betrays Marxism-Leninism and sides with counter-= revolution, as the historical experience has shown.

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p Lenin’s works devote much attention to the state organisation of the dictatorship of the proletariat, i.e., to its organising mechanism. This is a major question, a question of decisive significance for the functioning of the dictatorship of the proletariat, for the fate of the socialist revolution. It is precisely on this issue that the nature of the dictatorship of the proletariat is distorted and perverted. Revisionists, or Right opportunists sever the concepts of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the state from each other and oppose the one to the other. Left doctrinaires, on the other hand, fuse these concepts, identifying the dictatorship of the proletariat with the socialist state, thus confusing the question of the development of the state under socialism and during the transition to full communism.

p Present-day revisionists repeatedly raise the question of whether the proletariat needs a state. They accuse Leninists of “idolatry”, of "superstitious faith in the state”, and so on, and seek to prove that the proletariat needs a dictatorship but not a state, i.e., that the dictatorship of the proletariat should not take a state form. They affirm that the "state does not make up the content of the dictatorship of the proletariat" and that, generally speaking, dictatorship is a “political” conception and has nothing in common with the conception of the state, and that it should find expression not in state power but in "the absolute leading role of the proletariat”. And all this gibberish is accompanied by references to Lenin!

p These theorists cannot even see the corner they have got themselves into. Political organisation in this case means first and foremost state organisation. So what can "the absolute leading role of the proletariat" mean if leadership in a state form is precluded? The proletariat exercises its leadership (hegemony) over the peasantry and other sections of the working population in different forms at all stages of the revolution. The state leadership of the proletariat is the highest form in which the proletariat’s leadership of society manifests itself.

p What aims do revisionists pursue by demanding the renunciation of the state organisation of the dictatorship of the proletariat? Why, indeed, shouldn’t the dictatorship of the proletariat take a state form? What does the dictatorship of the proletariat (the state power of the proletariat) that has not taken a state form, look like? Back in 1918, it may be recalled, the German opportunists launched the slogan of the "independence of the 229 working class from the state”. In the same year Karl Kautsky wrote in his pamphlet The Dictatorship of the Proletariat that a class can only "rule but not govern" and that, consequently, the Russian Soviets should not have been made into state organisations. Modern revisionists propagate essentially the same idea.

p Lenin indignantly characterised the views that Kautsky preached as a complete break with Marxism and socialism, as desertion to the camp of the bourgeoisie, "who are prepared to concede everything except the transformation of the organisations of the class which they oppress into state organisations".  [229•1  Lenin showed that opposition to the organisation of the working class into a state means either renouncing state power in general or recognising the possibility of the working class using the old state machine and, consequently, denying the need to destroy this machine.

p The founders of scientific communism at no time conceded that the dictatorship of the proletariat could be something that was amorphous or unorganised. They always insisted that the dictatorship of the proletariat was a state concept. In the Communist Manifesto Marx and Engels interpreted the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat as that of a state in which the proletariat was organised as the ruling class.

p This same idea of organising the proletariat into the ruling class, that is, into a state, was constantly propagated by Lenin. He tirelessly explained that a dictatorship is an organised state force, and that the principle of the dictatorship of the proletariat should not be replaced by a weak state organisation. "Soviet power is nothing but an organisational form of the dictatorship of the proletariat"  [229•2  and "the dictatorship of the proletariat, the proletarian state, which is a machine for the suppression of the bourgeoisie by the proletariat, is not a ’form of government’, but a state of a different type".  [229•3  These and many other pronouncements by Lenin make it perfectly clear and beyond dispute, all the claims of revisionists notwithstanding, that the concepts of the socialist state and the dictatorship of the proletariat are not opposed to each other. The proletarian state is not only a form but represents the very essence of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

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p The dictatorship of the proletariat cannot be simply equated with the state or the state machine. While Lenin did not contrast the two, neither did he identify them. And because the dictatorship of the proletariat and the state arc not the same thing, Lenin dealt with the question of the mechanism of proletarian dictatorship. The dictatorship of the proletariat, he pointed out, could not be exercised through the “wholesale” organisation of industrial workers. It was necessary to have a whole system of different organisations to enable the proletariat to become the ruling class.

p In this system of different organisations, in the mechanism of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the leading role is played by the Communist Party, the vanguard of the working class, the nucleus of power, without which there can be no proletarian dictatorship. Next come the trade unions, which embrace the whole of the working class and link it to the Party. They arc followed by the Soviets, the massive, most representative political organisation in town and countryside. The Soviets represent a state form of the dictatorship of the proletariat which covers all the organs of state power and state administration—that is, everything that constitutes the state apparatus proper: legislative and executive organs of power and economic and cultural administrative bodies. Finally come the co-operatives, the Young Communist League and the other mass organisations that unite the people in their productive, cultural, scientific, sporting and other activities.

p Such is the mechanism with the aid of which the proletariat is organised into the ruling class and exercises its dictatorship. This harmonious and smoothly functioning political system is a system of government and non-government institutions and organisations embracing all aspects of life in Soviet society.

p Every link of this system has a definite role to play in the era of transition from capitalism to socialism. The dictatorship of the proletariat does not boil down to any one of them in particular—to the Party, the trade unions, or the Soviets, etc. As part of the general mechanism of the dictatorship of the proletariat, each of these organisations has its own tasks, its specific organisational form, its own working methods and its own paths of development. This conception of the mechanism enables the Party to foresee the direction of development of all these organisations in the period of transition to socialism and later to communism. Dogmatists do not understand and do not take this very important factor into account. By identifying the 231 government and non-government organisations with the dictatorship of the proletariat itself, they confine the existence of these organisations within the historical bounds of proletarian dictatorship. This is wrong from the theoretical point of view and also docs not accord with historical facts.

p Opposing the state organisation of the dictatorship of the proletariat, revisionists propose the immediate replacement of the state by various forms of non-state organisation. But it was precisely such proposals that Lenin vigorously opposed, describing them as anarcho-syndicalist. In April 1917, reporting to the Petrograd City Conference of Bolsheviks, he said: "The Soviet of Workers’ Deputies is not an organisation of the trade union type, as the bourgeoisie would like it to be. The people see it differently and more correctly—they see it as a governmental power. ... This is the type of state under which it is possible to advance towards socialism."  [231•1 

p Historical development will ultimately lead to the replacement of the state system of government by public self- administration. But that can happen only when communism has been fully established. To demand the immediate replacement of the state by various kinds of mass organisations or by organs of public self-administration is to renounce the socialist state—in other words, to slip into the position of anarchists.

p The leadership of the Communist Party is indispensable for the dictatorship of the proletariat. The enemies of socialism, the enemies of the working class, strike mainly at the leading role which the Communists play in the system of proletarian dictatorship and in the socialist state. The revisionists of every hue have aligned themselves with the open enemies of socialism— with bourgeois ideologists and politicians. Some of them arc insisting on the separation of the Party from the state. But if the Party separates itself from state power, from the spheres of production and economy, science and culture, it abandons the key positions in society, and these are immediately seized by the enemies of the working class. Such is the logic of class struggle. People who make this demand pursue only one aim—to disarm the working class and abolish the dictatorship of the proletariat. The working class, however, can under no circumstances agree to that.

p Particularly dear to the revisionists is the demand for a multi-party system in state power (political pluralism), for the 232 abolition of one-party rule. "One-party monopoly" is undemocratic, they say. In this process some resort to open deception by claiming that Marx and Lenin were for a multi-party system and that Soviet leaders have deliberately distorted them in order to reject the multi-party system. This is a lie designed to delude politically ignorant people. Marxists-Leninists have never denied the possibility of several parties existing under the dictatorship of the proletariat but they have always maintained that the leading role must be played by one party—the Communist Party.

p In the early days of Soviet power Lenin and the Bolshevik Party, far from opposing other political parties, tried to promote co-operation with them. Historically, however, things turned out differently: the Menshevik and Socialist-Revolutionary parties joined the counter-revolutionary camp and thus removed themselves from the Soviet government system. There remained only one political party in the USSR—the Communist Party— backed by all Soviet people. A one-party system is in operation in some other socialist countries. While in others—the German Democratic Republic and Poland, for example—there are several parties and they all co-operate closely with the communist vanguard in building socialist society.

p But while allowing the possibility that several parties may exist, Marxists-Leninists maintain that only one party, the Communist Party, can be the guiding force and the core of working-= class power. Lenin drew attention to the behaviour of the class enemies of the proletariat who at first were prepared to reconcile themselves even to the Soviets and demanded “only” the withdrawal of the Communists from them. They were ready to back any Right or “Left” shift of power so long as it was a shift away from the Communists. That is why Lenin resolutely declared that "the dictatorship of the proletariat would not work except through the Communist Party".  [232•1  It is this Leninist policy, proved correct by the experience of the USSR and other socialist countries, that all true Marxists-Leninists adhere to strictly.

p Lenin’s doctrine of the dictatorship of the proletariat deals at length with the possible diversity of the state forms of proletarian rule. Credit is due to him for discovering such a state form most suitable to Russian conditions as the Soviets. Lenin stressed that the Soviets were a state of the same type as the Paris Commune and at the same time a new state form created by the 233 revolutionary masses of Russia. The period of transition from capitalism to socialism, he pointed out, could not but yield a vast diversity of political forms, though their essence would be the same—the dictatorship of the proletariat. "All nations,” he wrote, "will arrive at socialism—this is inevitable, but all will do so in not exactly the same way, each will contribute something of its own to some form of democracy, to some variety of the dictatorship of the proletariat, to the varying rate of socialist transformations in the different aspects of social life."  [233•1 

p This prediction of Lenin’s has been fully borne out by history. The development of the socialist revolutions in some European and Asian countries after the Second World War engendered a new form of the dictatorship of the proletariat—people’s democracy. The international liberation movement will undoubtedly produce other forms of the political organisation of society which will exercise the functions of the dictatorship of the proletariat and ensure the transition to socialism in conformity with the historical and national peculiarities of the countries concerned.

Generalising the experience of the Soviet Union and the People’s Democracies, the CPSU Programme further develops Lenin’s idea about the diversity of the state forms of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The Programme points out that while the principal law-governed processes of the socialist revolution arc common to all countries, the diversity of specific national features and traditions that have arisen in the course of history gives rise in turn to a variety of state forms and to different rates of advance to power by the working class. This means that it is possible and necessary, in a number of countries, for there to be transition stages in the struggle for the dictatorship of the proletariat, and for there to be a variety of forms of political organisation in societies building socialism.

p The dictatorship of the proletariat engendered by the socialist revolution creates an entirely new type of state, which Marx, Engels and Lenin no longer called a state in the old, proper meaning of the term. This new type of state means an immeasurably higher type of democracy than bourgeois democracy— democracy for the working people, for the overwhelming majority of the nation. The period of transition from capitalism to 234 socialism, Lenin wrote, "inevitably is a period of an unprecedentedly violent class struggle in unprecedentedly acute forms, and, consequently, during this period the state must inevitably be a state that is democratic in a new way (for the proletariat and the propertyless in general) and dictatorial in a new way (against the bourgeoisie)".  [234•1 

p Bourgeois ideologists claim that dictatorship and democracy are mutually exclusive concepts. Lenin said that this point of view was a vulgar prejudice. And modern revisionists attack the dictatorship of the proletariat in this same vulgar bourgeois way. The state precludes democracy, they say, and insist that there can be no genuine democracy as long as the state exists and that the state should therefore be replaced by democracy. This is the basis of their demand for the immediate "withering away" of the state.

p This point of view is absurd, of course. Lenin pointed out that "democracy is also a state and that, consequently, democracy will also disappear when the state disappears".  [234•2  Recalling Engels’s remark about “overcoming” the state and, as a result, democracy too, Lenin stressed that the opportunists had " forgotten that the abolition of the state means also the abolition of democracy: that the withering away of the state means the withering away of democracy".  [234•3 

p Democracy is a historically transient phenomenon. Its forms have changed with the replacement of one ruling class by another through the millennia since the first beginnings of democracy in ancient times.

p Bourgeois democracy is democracy for the rich alone and for a small section of the proletariat (that is, for the labour aristocracy), "democracy as something exclusive only, never com- plete".  [234•4  It makes inevitable the transition to a new, higher form of democracy—to socialist democracy.

p The dictatorship of the proletariat is democracy for the poor, i.e., for nine-tenths of the population, fulfilling the essential task of breaking the resistance of the rich, the classes of exploiters. It is a new, higher type of democracy, a "democracy that is almost complete, bound only by the suppression of the resistance of the bourgeoisie."  [234•5 

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p Communism is truly complete democracy that will become a habit, and which, consequently, will wither away. "Complete democracy equals no democracy. This is not a paradox, it is the truth,” Lenin points out.  [235•1 

p Democracy is thus a form of the state which can neither abolish nor replace the state itself, as the revisionists claim. On the contrary, it will wither away with the state. It follows that the only question that remains is that of developing socialist democracy more and more fully until the political conditions are created for the withering away of the state.

p The transition from bourgeois democracy to socialist democracy is not expressed in the simple extension of democratic freedoms and rights, although socialist democracy does offer the people immeasurably more than all preceding forms of democracy. The main thing is the fundamental, qualitative change that takes place in the historical development of democratic forms of power.

p Power and state administration are taken over by the most progressive and revolutionary class in society—the working class— in defence of the best interests of all working people; and exploiters are debarred from state administration. Democracy without exploiters, democracy for the working people—that is the essence of socialist democracy and its fundamental difference from bourgeois democracy. Socialist democracy creates real conditions for the working people to have the decisive say in state administration. This extension of democracy transcends the bounds of bourgeois democracy and is incompatible with the bourgeois system in general.

p Socialist democracy thus means the genuine popular rule, the exercise of power by the people themselves. It represents an absolutely new, higher form of democracy—truly complete, universal democracy for the working people. Lenin therefore had every reason to declare that socialist democracy was a million times more democratic than any bourgeois democracy.

p At first, the Soviet working class was compelled to resort to certain restrictive measures (for example, measures relating to class representation at congresses of the Soviets) in order to secure its decisive influence in the state, paralyse unstable and vacillating elements, and lead the majority of the working people. Lenin stressed in this connection that the deprivation of the bourgeoisie of the franchise was a "purely Russian" measure necessitated by 236 the violent resistance of the bourgeoisie and that this measure need not be applied in other countries.

p When we speak of socialist democracy we do not mean only the demoralisation of the state structure, the improvement of the electoral system, and the extension of citizens’ democratic freedoms and rights. The main thing for us, as Lenin emphasised, is to induce all citizens without exception to exercise state junctions.

p The CPSU seeks to solve this problem in a broad and comprehensive way by, first, constantly raising the living and cultural standards of the people and, second, by taking measures to improve all forms of the state structure and social administration in order to make them simple and easily understood by everybody so that they can themselves carry out state and social functions with greater ease.

p The Soviet Communist Party directs the people’s efforts and energies towards ensuring the steady growth of the economy and culture and improving their welfare. It regards this as a major prerequisite for the development of socialist democracy. On the other hand, the participation of the working people in economic and cultural construction and in the improvement of society’s well-being is itself the fullest expression of democracy.

p Communist construction means developing and improving socialist social relations, and eliminating the remaining distinctions between the working class and the peasantry, between mental and physical labour, and between town and country. This is the social basis for the development of socialist democracy. The relations of comradeship and friendship that develop on this basis among equal and unexploited people, their respect for human dignity and personal liberty, and the full use of the abilities, gifts and talents of each member of society—these are the real products of genuine and complete democracy.

p Working people take an active part in the administration of the state and in the solution of problems that arise in the process of economic and cultural construction through the Soviets, the trade unions and other mass organisations. Socialist democracy covers the political freedoms—the freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly and the right to elect and to be elected—and social rights—the right to work, rest and leisure, a free education and medical service, maintenance in old age and in case of sickness or disability; and the equality of citizens of different sex, race, or nationality in all spheres of government and economic and cultural activity. All the democratic freedoms, political and social 237 rights of Soviet citizens—unlike those of the citizens of capitalist countries—are both proclaimed and guaranteed by the Soviet political and socio-economic system.

p All aspects of the life of Soviet society are thus based on broad democracy. Genuine and constantly developing and improving democracy is the law of life in socialist society.

By its social nature and its democratic principles, the dictatorship of the proletariat in the Soviet Union always represented a special kind of state power which could develop in one direction only—towards greater democratisation and the ever greater participation of working people in state administration and the management of social production and cultural development. This was the road along which, despite all internal and external difficulties, the dictatorship of the proletariat advanced in the Soviet Union, undergoing substantial changes in the process. The state of the dictatorship of the proletariat gradually grew into a nation-wide organisation of all the working people of socialist society; proletarian democracy was becoming more and more socialist democracy for the whole people.

p The founders of scientific communism stressed that the dictatorship of the proletariat would not always be required, that it was only a temporary, historically determined and transient form of society’s political organisation. It is made temporary by the very nature of the working class and of the tasks it has to fulfil in the socialist transformation of society.

p Hitherto, all ruling classes have seized power with one purpose in mind: to establish their own rule over society and to ensure for themselves a special position and privileges for all time to come. The proletariat is the only class in history that does not seek to perpetuate its rule. On the contrary, its purpose is to eliminate all classes and class privileges, including its own rule as a class. And when it resorts to dictatorship, it is only because the historical conditions of the struggle for socialism compel it to do so.

p The temporary nature of the dictatorship of the proletariat also follows from the historically transient nature of the tasks it is called upon to fulfil. One of the basic tasks of the dictatorship of the proletariat—to crush the resistance of the exploiting classes—is transient in nature and content: it can remain a task only as long as exploiters remain. The elimination of the 238 exploiting classes in the Soviet Union meant the fulfilment of the first historic task of the dictatorship of the proletariat and with it the withering away of one of its basic functions—the suppression of resisting exploiters. Another major task of the dictatorship of the proletariat is the building of socialism. This task takes a limited amount of time to fulfil, too. The Soviet people have built a socialist society with the aid of the dictatorship of the proletariat and thus carried out this task, too.

p The dictatorship of the proletariat is a historically transient form of society’s political organisation. It extends, however, throughout a whole historical epoch and ceases to be a necessity only when the conditions engendering it disappear. As Lenin said, the dictatorship of the proletariat ends only when the tasks which society fulfils with its aid are completed.

p When exactly will the dictatorship of the proletariat become unnecessary? What are its historical limits? This is a very complicated question and naturally gives rise to a number of different and even contradictory answers. Some theoreticians claim that Marx and Lenin considered the dictatorship of the proletariat to be indispensable right up to the victory of full communism. In this they usually quote the following statement of Marx’s in his Critique of the Gotha Programme: "Between capitalist and communist society lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat."  [238•1 

p It should be known, however, that Marx did not speak of full communism in defining the bounds of the transition period. Anyone who has read the Critique of the Gotha Programme knows that it is in this work that the two stages of communism arc first mentioned: the first stage—socialism—and the higher stage— full or developed communism.

p Marx regarded communism as a single developing socio- economic formation which is bound to succeed capitalism. Between capitalism and communism lies a whole transition period, the period of transformation of the former into the latter. Without going into great detail, Marx dwelt only on the main point—that from a political point of view the transition period represents the dictatorship of the proletariat. But how long does this transition period last? If we assume that it lasts until the higher stage of communism, then it must include the entire first stage of 239 communism—but this is completely contrary to the spirit of scientific communism. For socialism, as the first stage of communism, is already an entirely new society, one that differs fundamentally from capitalism. That is precisely why Lenin, like Marx before him, deemed it possible to call socialism “communism”, without meaning full communism. In The State and Revolution Lenin wrote: "What is usually called socialism was termed by Marx the ‘first’, or lower, phase of communist society. Insofar as the means of production become common property, the word ‘ communism’ is also applicable here, providing we do not forget that this is not complete communism."  [239•1 

p The period of transition from capitalism thus goes on until the victory of socialism and not until the higher phase of communism. That is how Lenin interpreted the transition period. And in his "Greetings to Hungarian Workers”, he said that the fulfilment of the tasks of the dictatorship of the proletariat "requires a fairly long period of transition from capitalism to socialism because the reorganisation of production is a difficult matter, because radical changes in all spheres of life need time and because the enormous force of habit of running things in a petty- bourgeois and bourgeois way can only be overcome by a long and stubborn struggle. That is why Marx spoke (in the Critique of the Gotha Programme—V. P.) of an entire period of the dictatorship of the proletariat as the period of transition from capitalism to socialism."  [239•2 

p This shows that Marx and Lenin did not and could not think that the dictatorship of the proletariat would continue to be necessary up to the higher phase of communism. The era of the dictatorship of the proletariat is precisely confined to the period of transition from capitalism to socialism.

p It is also true that the dictatorship of the proletariat is indispensable beyond the time when society has entered socialism; it is indispensable until socialism has been firmly established as the first phase of communism. This means that the dictatorship of the proletariat is destined not only to eliminate the old relations of production and create new, socialist relations of production but also to strengthen these new relations; not only to abolish private ownership of the means of production and replace it by socialist public ownership but secure socialist ownership as the sole economic base of the new system; not only to abolish all 240 exploiting classes and the exploitation of man by man but to create the conditions that will for ever make their reappearance impossible.

p Thus, the dictatorship of the proletariat is necessary not only during the entire period of transition from capitalism to socialism, i.e., until the foundations of socialism have been laid, but until the full victory of socialism and the complete establishment of the socialist system. Only after that can the dictatorship of the proletariat consider its mission fulfilled. In line with this, the CPSU Programme says that, having brought about the complete and final victory of socialism—the first phase of communism—and the transition of society to the full-scale construction of communism, the dictatorship of the proletariat has fulfilled its historic mission and has ceased to be necessary in the USSR, from the point of view of the tasks of internal development.

p This conclusion is a matter of enormous significance. It is a new major contribution to the theory of scientific communism. The CPSU Programme has made another step forward in the creative elaboration of the Marxist-Leninist theory of the dictatorship of the proletariat by being the first in Marxist literature to determine, on the basis of the wealth of practical experience accumulated in the struggle for socialism and communism, the historic moment when the dictatorship of the proletariat ceases to be necessary.

A crushing blow has thus been dealt to dogmatists and, at the same time, to bourgeois ideologists and Right-wing socialist and revisionist theoreticians who depict the dictatorship of the proletariat as outright violence and who invent stories about the “egoism” of the working class, its bent for “totalitarianism”, etc. For the first time in history a ruling class, the proletariat, acting on its own initiative, and on fulfilment of its task of building communism has turned the state of its dictatorship into a state of the whole people. This is an historic act which no one can deny or gloss over.

p But what remains when the dictatorship of the proletariat ceases to be necessary and comes to an end? There remains the socialist state as an organisation of the whole people. The building of communism does not require the dictatorship of the proletariat, but the state remains indispensable as the main instrument of the building of communism. The socialist state will remain for a long time. "The Party,” the CPSU Programme says, "holds that the dictatorship of the working class will cease to be necessary before 241 the state withers away. The state as an organisation of the entire people will survive until the complete victory of communism.”

p This theory that the dictatorship of the proletariat comes to an end and the socialist state withers away at different times is declared “non-Marxist” by dogmatists. Identifying the dictatorship of the proletariat with the state, they affirm that they both wither away at the same time, that the "withering away of dictatorship means the withering away of the state”. In reality, this is not so, and the thesis of the CPSU Programme that these processes do not occur simultaneously accords with the ideas of Marx and Lenin. In the Critique of the Gotha Programme, Marx draws a line between the dictatorship of the proletariat, indispensable in the transition period, and the "future state of communist society”.

p Lenin likewise considered it possible for the state to exist in a society where there was no longer any need for the political rule of one class. In The State and Revolution he points directly to the "withering away of the state" in the transition to the higher phase of communism, when "the state withers away insofar as there arc no longer any capitalists, and classes, and, consequently, no class can be suppressed.

p "But the state has not yet completely withered away. . . ."  [241•1 

p Consequently, the historical bounds of the existence of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the bounds of the existence of the socialist state do not coincide. This is fully confirmed by the actual historical process of development of society’s political organisation. The dictatorship of the proletariat expresses the class nature of working-class power—it is the state power of one class, which it does not share with any other class. To exercise its power, the proletariat creates its own state organisation. It follows from this that although the dictatorship of the proletariat and the state of proletarian dictatorship are interconnected, they develop each in their own way. The dictatorship of the proletariat does not wither away but, to quote Lenin, "ceases to be" the power of one class. But the state of the dictatorship of the proletariat does not simply cease to be—and neither is it abolished: it is turned into a socialist state of the whole people—and it is this which gradually withers away, that is, grows into communist public self-administration.

p The transformation of the state of the dictatorship of the proletariat into a state of the entire people is a more or less lengthy process. This thesis of the CPSU Programme theoretically 242 generalises the actual process of Soviet society’s economic, social and political development. And this is how Lenin said that the question of the state should be approached: "The most important tiling if one is to approach this question scientifically is not: to forget the underlying historical connection, 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."  [242•1 

p This dialectical materialist approach makes it possible to ascertain correctly the nature of the dictatorship of the proletariat and its law-governed development. Like all other social phenomena, the dictatorship of the proletariat is historically conditioned and, therefore, transient. This also means that it never remains an unchanging, stagnant structure: its tasks and functions, the forms of its organisation, its working methods, and its economic and social bases all change. And the state of the dictatorship of the proletariat, in developing into a state of the whole people at a certain stage, is governed by this same law of dialectical development. This transformation can take place only because the state of the whole people is not essentially different from the state of the dictatorship of the proletariat; they arc all states of the same type. It is not so much a transition from one state to another as the law-governed natural development and growth of the state of the dictatorship of the proletariat into the socialist state of the whole people.

p This process is determined by the concrete socio-economic changes that occur in society after the victory of socialism; it cannot be determined by the subjective wishes of individual leaders. Although the transformation of the state of the dictatorship of the proletariat into a socialist state of the whole people is accomplished by the working class and its Party, it is not an act of will but a natural consequence of profound objective changes in the economy, in social relations, and in society’s political and spiritual life.

p The victory of socialism in the Soviet Union brought about a radical change in the economic basis of society which inevitably affected its political superstructure, the state. The dictatorship of the proletariat in the Soviet Union arose to function when there existed five different economic sectors: the socialist, private capitalist, state-capitalist, small-commodity production, and 243 patriarchal or natural economy. What is more, the socialist sector was by no means the dominant one at the beginning of the transition period. But the state of proletarian dictatorship relied in its economic activity on this particular sector. The victory of socialism abolished this multi-sectoral structure, establishing the undivided sway of socialist ownership in its two forms and of a single socialist system of planned economy. The Soviet socialist state thus acquired a single, unprecedentedly strong and powerful economic basis. No other country had ever been so united, and homogeneous economically.

p The social structure of Soviet society also altered radically. The exploiting classes—the landowners, capitalists, merchants, kulaks and other parasites living by the labour of others—disappeared once and for all, as did the domination of some classes by others, the exploitation of man by man. After the victory of socialism there remained but two friendly classes—the working class and the peasantry, and the people’s intelligentsia related to them. But the main thing was that these social groups underwent profound changes. While in the past the only socialist class was the working class, and the peasantry was a class of small owners, the peasantry now became socialist by nature, too. The Soviet intelligentsia also changed completely and is now socialist and closely connected with the working class and the collective-farm peasantry.

p All sections of Soviet society are thus now of the same, socialist, nature. Class antagonisms have disappeared and workers, collective farmers and intellectuals are socially, politically and ideologically united. Communism, the supreme goal of the working class, has become the goal and the practical task of all Soviet people, and the socialist ideology of the working class has become that of everyone.

p The alteration in the economic basis and the social structure of Soviet society has also resulted in radical changes in the character of the nations and nationalities of the Soviet Union. They became socially and economically homogeneous socialist nations. Their fraternal ties of internationalism, friendship and co-operation with one another became stronger and more extensive.

p The changes in the economic basis and the social structure of society naturally could not but cause changes in the political superstructure, too. The social basis of the socialist state expanded and the political organisation transcended the framework of the rule of one class. Today, when there are no exploiting classes and no need to suppress them, when all the strata of working 244 people have united round the working class and its Party, the dictatorship of one class would mean infringement of the interests and will of other social strata. But such egoism is alien to the working class.

p When the state of proletarian dictatorship became the socialist state of the whole people, this meant that proletarian democracy had grown into socialist democracy for the whole people. The Soviet Constitution of 1936 cancelled all measures restricting democracy and gave all citizens equal political rights and democratic freedoms. The reorganisation of the Soviets of Workers’, Peasants’ and Red Armymen’s Deputies into Soviets of Working People’s Deputies reflected this growth of proletarian democracy into socialist democracy for the whole people.

p The development of the state of proletarian dictatorship into an organisation of all working people, and of proletarian democracy into socialist democracy for the entire people, ended with the complete and final victory of socialism and the entry of Soviet society into the period of full-scale communist construction.

p Dogmatists peremptorily deny this; the very idea of the state of the entire people is unscientific and “absurd”, they say, since the state has always been an instrument of class domination. Yes, the state has had a class nature for centuries, it has always been an instrument of class domination, an expression of the struggle between antagonistic classes. And it is still so in the capitalist countries. The idea of the class nature of the state in an exploitive society is one of the basic ideas of the Marxist-= Leninist theory of the state, and this is what makes this theory entirely different from the various theories of bourgeois ideologists, reformists and revisionists.

p The proletarian state is also a class state in the period of transition from capitalism to socialism, that is, when exploiting classes have not yet been eliminated and a bitter class struggle is still in progress. But how do things stand with the state of a mature socialist society, in which there are no exploiting classes and in which, as Lenin said, there is consequently "nobody to be suppressed—‘nobody’ in the sense of a class, of a systematic struggle against a definite section of the population"?  [244•1 

p There can be no doubt that in its class nature this state also remains a socialist state governed by the working class. The 245 state of the entire people is the result of the further development of socialist statehood. It continues the cause of the dictatorship of the proletariat at a new stage of the struggle for communism. In the sphere of home policy, this state works to accomplish the great aims of the working class and serves as an instrument for building the classless, communist society. In international affairs, it conducts a class struggle against imperialism along with other socialist states. But since the class structure of socialist society has changed, the socialist state is no longer an instrument of class domination. Now that the exploiting classes have disappeared and the peasantry and the intelligentsia have become socialist in nature, like the working class itself, the social base of the Soviet state has grown immeasurably wider. It is now a political organisation of all working people led by the working class. It is these social changes in Soviet socialist society that are reflected in the thesis of the CPSU Programme on the socialist state of the entire people.

p Dogmatists invariably indulge in formal logic in order to turn every theoretical proposition into an abstract idea divorced from reality. They argue as follows: the state is the instrument of class domination, and the state withers away only under communism; therefore (they conclude, mechanically combining these two propositions), it must remain the instrument of class domination until the very last day of its existence. And conversely: classes and bitter class struggle remain as long as the state (the instrument of class domination) exists, for otherwise the state loses its class character. But how are we to get out of this vicious circle, how are classes and the state to disappear?—this is something the dogmatist is not interested in, for the main thing for him is the formal argument.

p But in life everything is always far more complicated than it appears. There is no such thing as abstract truth—truth is always concrete. Lenin liked to reiterate this tenet of dialectical materialism and always applied it himself in practice. He scathingly ridiculed those who clung to formulas, abstract schemes and so on, without being able to analyse concrete phenomena and processes.

p Of course, the existence of the state is bound up with the existence of classes: the state comes into existence only where and when classes come into existence and disappears when classes disappear. But these processes, interlinked and interdependent, have their own peculiarities—they do not develop automatically and they do not begin and end at the same time. Let us 246 recall the classical analysis of these processes made by Engels in The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State. With the appearance of private ownership of the means of production, society split into classes having conflicting class interests. Then (after a long time) the state arose as the organisation of the economically ruling class with the aid of which it secured its political rule. The state was thus from its very beginning an instrument of class rule, class subordination, class suppression, oppression and exploitation. Although the class structure of society has altered constantly over the centuries, and the types of state and the forms of its organisation have undergone corresponding changes, the state has remained the instrument of class domination—whether the tool of slave-owners, feudal lords or capitalists.

p Then came the socialist revolution, and although a new class— the proletariat—assumed power, the state it created remained a class state, but openly so, without the camouflage and the falsity to which the exploiting classes have always resorted. Nevertheless, it was a state of an entirely different type: first, it resolutely and thoroughly discarded or "chopped off" the old function of oppression and exploitation, and, secondly, it retained the function of suppression and subordination, but exercised it temporarily and only against the exploiting minority in the interests of the overwhelming majority of the working people. It must, therefore, be clear to everyone how much the nature of the state, its role and functions, have changed.

p Antagonistic classes and class struggle disappear with the victory of socialism and it becomes no longer necessary to moderate conflicts between certain classes or to hold them in check. The state ceases to suppress and subordinate hostile classes and so ceases to be the instrument of class domination. From a formalistic point of view, the state should also disappear, wither away, at this point. But this does not happen in life. There remain substantial differences between the working class and the peasantry; but these are akin and friendly classes and there is no need to “moderate” them or to keep them "in rein”. Nevertheless, classes have not yet been abolished and society has not yet reached that level of economic, social and ethical maturity which will enable it to get along without a state. Moreover, in order fully to overcome social distinctions and to establish a new, classless society it is, and will be, necessary to have a political organisation with the authority of state power. It is only natural that this state organisation should be different 247 in the new conditions, different from when antagonistic classes exist.

p But will society ever reach a stage when class distinctions disappear? Should one think of the state as disappearing automatically, “immediately”? He should not, because the withering away of the state will be a very long process, one depending on both internal and external conditions. When Engels spoke of the withering away of the state and the internal conditions necessary for it, he stressed that it would be a gradual and lengthy process during which the state would "fall asleep”. Only the generation grown up in the new conditions would be in a position to throw out all the rubbish represented by the state. And until then, he said, the state would be indispensable to society, although it would undergo a long series of major changes in its organisational forms, functions and methods of work. "The ’transitional stages’ of the revolution,” Lenin wrote, "will be followed by the ’transitional stages’ of the gradual withering away of the proletarian state."  [247•1 

p To build socialism and communism the CPSU considers it imperative to ensure the leadership of the working class over all sections of the working population, over the whole of society. But it would be a mistake to equate the leading role of the working class with the dictatorship of the proletariat, as dogmatists do. The leading role, the hegemony of the proletariat, is not the same thing as its dictatorship. The working class begins to play its leading role in the initial phases of the revolution, long before the establishment of its dictatorship. And it continues to play it after the dictatorship of the proletariat has come to an end and the socialist state has become a state of the whole people. In these conditions, the leading role of the working class ceases to represent class domination. The working class then exercises its leading role not through exclusive rights and privileges acquired at the expense of other classes and sections of society but through its high moral and political authority.

At the present stage of development of Soviet society the leading role of the working class is conditioned by the leading position of socialist industry in the country’s economy, by the leading and determining role of public ownership of the means of production (as distinct from the collective-farm, co-operative form of socialist ownership), by the extremely high level of organisation and socialist consciousness of the working class, 248 the (evolutionary experience and high authority it has acquired in the decades of struggle for the victory of socialism, and by the leading position of the Communist Party founded by the working class, and the wide acceptance of Marxist-Leninist ideology—the ideology of the world proletariat. The working class will cease to play its leading role only after communism has been built and all class distinctions have completely disappeared.

The labour movement in the capitalist countries, the national liberation movements, and the process of building socialism and communism in the Soviet Union and other socialist countries constantly give rise to new and complex problems that cannot possibly be foreseen. And each time this happens the Communist and Workers’ Parties find wise counsel in Lenin’s works which help them to solve these problems. Enriched by the experience of state building in the Soviet Union and other socialist countries, Lenin’s theory of the socialist state is a powerful instrument in the hands of Marxist-Leninist parties and the international working class.