p The state is the principal unit of the political system. The Marxist-Leninist doctrine of the state is set forth in Frederick Kngels’s The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State and Anti- Diihring, and in V. I. Lenin’s The State and Revolution and The State.
p There was a time when no state existed. It emerged as a result of society’s historical development. There was no state, nor was it needed, in the primitive community where there was no private property and no classes. Society’s life was regulated by force of habit and tradition, the authority of the elders or the tribal council which represented the common interests of people.
p Private property and economic inequality, classes and class antagonisms emerged due to the 118 development of the productive forces. No longer was it possible to settle society’s affairs collectively because different classes had different, antagonistic, interests. It had become essential to protect private property, the right of one class to exploit another, and to hold down the oppressed masses constituting the majority of society. That was what the state was formed for. "The state is a product and a manifestation of the irreconcilabilit. of class antagonisms. The state arises where, when and insofar as class antagonisms objectively canno. be reconciled.” [118•1
p The state is a class-oriented entity. In an antagonistic society it is controlled by the economically dominant class, which uses it primarily to suppress its class enemies. As Lenin wrote, "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." [118•2
p The exploiter state has two essential functions (directions). Its internal function, realised in the state’s internal policies, is to control the suppressed, exploited masses, and is conducted by open coercion through an army of officials, intelligence agencies, the judiciary, prisons, etc. The 119 external function of the state, realised in the state’s foreign policy and diplomacy, stems from its internal function and amounts to protecting the state’s interests in the international arena, providing for reliable military defence, and ensuring success in military or political aggression against other states.
p Today, as in the past, there is a qualitative difference between states. To each type of production relations corresponds a definite type of state. The type of state expresses its class essence. From this point of view, states differ above all according to the class whose interests they protect. The four basic types of state are: the slave-owning, feudal, capitalist, and socialist state. There are also nonbasic types of state. The number of states today exceeds 150, among them socialist, capitalist, and socialist- or capitalist-oriented developing states. The world population comprises 2,000 nations, nationalities, and ethnic groups, including minute tribes of several hundred people and large nations of several hundred million people.
p The state takes different forms-according to the manner in which the dominant class exercises its rule. The forms of rule depend on historical conditions, the correlation of class forces, and external influences. A state can be either a monarchy or a republic. A monarchy is either an autocracy or the constitutionally limited rule of one person (king, emperor, shah, etc). A republic 120 is ruled by elected bodies. Most bourgeois states are republics (the USA, France, Italy, and others). Some capitalist countries are monarchies, as a rule, constitutional monarchies (Belgium, Great Britain, Japan, Morocco, and others).
p According to the system of government there arc unitary states (a single entity) and combined states (federations). A federation is a union of several juridically relatively independent state units such as states in the USA, the Lands in the Federal Republic of Germany, the Union Republics in the USSR, etc. The USSR, for example, is a federative state uniting fifteen Soviet socialist republics. The Soviet federative state has proved to be a historically viable form of socialist statehood in a multinational country.
p Determining the essence of a state from the point of view of its political regime is of the utmost importance. The political regime is the set of methods used in exercising power, showing the extent to which democratic rights and freedoms are realised. The regimes prevalent in contemporary bourgeois states are: parliamentary, military dictatorial, fascist, semi-fascist, and so on.
p Advocates of capitalism deceive the workers and hold forth about the progressive role of the modern bourgeois state, which they describe as a "welfare state" caring equally for the interests of all classes and social strata. In fact, however, the bourgeois state (however democratic its form of 121 rule) is first and foremost a machine for suppressing the workers by means of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.
p The bourgeois slate became still more reactionary with the advent of imperialism at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. Imperialism, as Lenin pointed out more than once, spells reaction all down the line, primarily in state and political affairs. The social base of the bourgeois state is contracting. Once it represented the big bourgeoisie and the relatively wide strata of the petty bourgeoisie, while now it is strictly a committee for the management of the affairs of the monopoly bourgeoisie. Imperialism furthers the extensive development of state-monopoly capitalism, merging the monopolies and the state into a single power for enriching the monopolies, suppressing the working-class movement and national liberation struggle, protecting capitalism, and waging wars of aggression.
p Both the internal and external policy of the imperialist state is essentially reactionary and directed against the mass of the people. The bourgeois state today interferes vigorously in labourcapital relations, often assumes partial control over wages and salaries, limits or outlaws strikes, and puts pressure on trade unions.
p As state-monopoly capitalism develops, the national economies of bourgeois states, like all other spheres, are militarised to an unprece- 122 dented extent. The power of the military- industrial complex (capitalists profiting from the arms race and closely associated with the military) increases. None other than the military-industrial complex determines the foreign and home policies of the United States today, obstructing peaceful settlement of international issues. Militarism, the worst manifestation of the bourgeois state’s reactionary essence, has created a grave threat to peace and to life on Earth.
p Being essentially reactionary and against the people, the bourgeois state cannot be used for the cause of socialist revolution or for any radical, revolutionary change in society. The state in antagonistic societies is geared to exploiting, suppressing, and oppressing the people. Socialist revolution eliminates all forms of social exploitation. That is why the bourgeois state cannot be used by the working class for achieving its aims; the workers must tear it down in the course of the socialist revolution and replace it with a new, proletarian, state. This is equally true for all countries aiming to do away with capitalism and achieve far-reaching socialist transformations, as borne out by the experience of all revolutions, both victorious and not victorious. All the countries building socialism had first to demolish their bourgeois state machine. Of course, not all institutions of the bourgeois state are to be eliminated. There is no need to destroy those state institu- 123 tions, such as the post and telegraph, which are socially neutral and are not levers of exploitation. To destroy them is to cause disarray.
First to be destroyed are institutions protecting the old, exploiter social order, such as the bureaucracy and the law-enforcement agencies. As history has shown, destruction of the old state and its replacement with a new, socialist state proceeds differently from country to country. The process may be short or long, it may destroy all or preserve some of the old institutions, such as parliament (while completely changing their nature, principles, and style of work). Destruction of the bourgeois state machine is common for all socialist revolutions.