THE STATE AND REVOLUTION 9 THE CLASS STRUGGLE site (the class opposed to it. is altogether beyond the comprehension of the petit bourgeois democracy. Their relation to the state is one of the most striking indications that our and Mensheviki are not socialists at all (we Bolsheviki have repeatedly pointed this out. but petit bourgeois democrats with an almost socialistic phraseology.
On the other hand, the Kautskian distortion of Marxism is even thinner. Theoretically it does not deny that the state is the organ of class rule, nor that class contradictions are irreconcilable. But it loses sight of, or obscures this fact: if the state is the product of the irreconcilability of class contradictions, if it is a power standing over society, and more and more estranging itself from society, then it is clear that the liberation of the oppressed class is not possible unless there is not only a revolution by force, but also an annihilation of the mechanism of state power created by the ruling class, in which this estrangement is incorporated. This inference, which is theoretically clear enough to stand on its own bottom, was drawn by Marx with the utmost definiteness, on the basis of a concrete historical analysis of the tasks of revolution. And just this conclusion, as we shall clearly show in our further exposition, is forgotten and distorted by Kautsky.
to make impossible any independent armed organizations of the population at the time of the cleavage of society into classes. This social power is present in all states, and consists not only of armed persons, but of physical accessories, prisons, and institutions exercising every manner of constraint, which were unknown under the family (clan) structure of society.
Engels displays a profound understanding of that power which is called the state, a power arising out of society, but placing itself over society and estranging itself more and more from it. And in what does this power, generally speaking, consist? In special bodies of armed men, having at their disposal prisons and so forth.
We have a right to speak of special bodies of armed men because it is a characteristic of every state that the social power does not coincide with the armed population, with its independent armed organizations.
Like every great revolutionary thinker, Engels attempts to direct the attention of the class conscious workers to the fact that the dominant philistinism considers such state powers to be all the less deserving of special attention, in that is sanctified by custom, and made permanent if not petrified in the prejudices of men: The police and the standing army are the chief weapons of force used by the state power but could this be otherwise? Special Bodies of Armed Men, Prisons, etc. As compared with the ancient gens (family or clan) organization, Engels continues, the state is distinguished, in the first place, by a division of the subjects of the state according to territorial sections.
To us this division seems natural, but it required a long struggle with the old organization in tribes and clans before it was realized. The second distinguishing feature is the institution of a social power, no longer completely coinciding with the population, which organizes itself as an armed force. This special social power is necessary in order From the standpoint of the great majority of Europeans at the end of the 19th century, to whom Engels was speaking, and who had never lived through or even witnessed a great revolution, it could not be otherwise. It was completely inconceivable to them what was meant by independent armed organization of the population. To the question of whence arose the necessity of special bodies of armed men (police, standing army. placed above society and estranging themselves from it, the Western European and also the Russian philistine would have been inclined to answer with a few trivial phrases, borrowed from Spencer or from Mikhailovsky, or references