M. Rezunov, Conditions for the Withering Away of the State and Law: A New Interpretation. 1934

Original Source: Sovetskoe gosudarstvo i sotsialisticheskoe obshchestvo (Leningrad, 1934), 18-32.

Marx, Lenin, and Stalin frequently stressed the great significance of the state and law during the period of socialism. The classics of Marxism-Leninism, in doing this, had in mind the proletarian state and its law. Marx wrote in Critique of the Gotha Program:

What we have to deal with here is a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from a capitalist society, which is thus in every respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerges. Accordingly, the individual producer receives back from society-after the deductions have been made exactly what he gives to it.

... Here, obviously, the same principle prevails as that which regulates the exchange of commodities, insofar as this is an exchange of equal values. Content and form are changed, because under the altered circumstances no one can give anything except his labor and because, on the other hand, nothing can pass into the ownership of individuals except individual means of consumption.

Equal obligation of all to work and equal rights of all working people to receive pay according to their work are the principles of the organization of labor and the distribution of the articles of consumption in the epoch of socialism. This was Lenin's view. The same view was also clearly stressed by Comrade Stalin in his speech at the Seventeenth Party Congress.

The problem of law in the epoch of socialism is not an abstract, academic problem. It is a problem of vital importance to our practical work. On this problem, just as on the problem of state, numerous views were advanced, views clearly distorting the theory of Marx, Lenin, and Stalin and capable of bringing great political harm to the Proletarian dictatorship. For example, Comrade Liberman, adopting Trotsky's position on the problem concerning the character of the economy in the transition period, intensely propagated the "theory" Of the liquidation of Soviet civil law. He wrote: "We have now a new economic policy; we are carrying out the liquidation of relations based on private property... This signifies at the same time liquidation or abolition of relations based on civil law ... Thus, the radical change in the socioeconomic conditions in our country leads, first and foremost, to two consequences in the economic-legal superstructure: first, the liquidation of relations based on civil law; and second, the liquidation of relations based on land law."'

By liquidating private property for the means of production, the Party and the working class seek to introduce into the whole socialist economy the principle "equal pay for equal work," to develop Soviet commerce as a form of distribution of the articles of consumption during the period of socialism, and to strengthen Soviet civil law, which regulates commerce. The liquidator of Soviet law-Liberman confuses the liquidation of private property for the means of production with the liquidation of private property relations in general (i.e., individual property for the articles of consumption, obtained with the wages and income from collective farms), and advances the "theory" of the liquidation of Soviet commerce and Soviet civil law. 2

Soviet law is one of the most significant forms of policy in the proletarian dictatorship. Soviet law and the revolutionary legality of the proletarian state are the mighty means for suppressing the exploiters' resistance, for strengthening the union between the working class and the peasants, and for the socialist transformation of society. Soviet law and revolutionary legality, as organized powers of the Soviet State are of special significance during the second five-year plan. Liberman-the liquidator of Soviet civil and land laws-declares that it is impermissible to reduce law to policy; that Soviet civil law, being based on the "relations of private property," is alien and hostile to the socialist system and is subject to immediate destruction.

It is not difficult to see that Liberman's theory on the liquidation of Soviet law (even if only civil law) is directed toward undermining Soviet law and revolutionary legality or, in other words, toward the weakening of the proletarian dictatorship.

The founders of Marxism-Leninism characterized the law in the period of socialism as "bourgeois law." Of course, it is not the law of a capitalist society, safeguarding capitalist property and exploitation. The system of bourgeois law was destroyed by the proletarian revolution together with the bourgeois state. Soviet law-the new historical type of law-safeguards the inviolability and stability of socialist property and the state system of the proletarian dictatorship. It is one of the forms of policy in the socialist state. That is why it amounts to a bourgeois distortion to assert that Soviet law is at the same time the bourgeois law which thrives in capitalist countries.

Marx and Lenin characterized the law in the period of socialism as "bourgeois" (Lenin places the term "bourgeois" in quotation marks), because the equal right of the working people to receive remuneration for their work, according to its quantity and quality, results, in fact, in the unequal satisfaction of their needs...

The right of the producers is proportional to the labor they supply; the equality consists in the fact that measurement is made with an equal standard, labor. But one man is superior to another physically or mentally and, consequently, supplies more labor in the same time, or can labor for a longer time; and labor, to serve as a measure, must be defined by its duration or intensity; otherwise it ceases to be a standard of measurement. This equal right is an unequal right for unequal labor. It recognizes no class differences, because everyone is only a worker like everyone else; but it tacitly recognizes unequal individual endowment and thus productive capacity as natural privileges. It is, therefore, a right of inequality, in its content, like every right.

Furthermore, if we keep in mind that one worker is married and another is not, one has more children than another, etc., then it is obvious that in the first phase of communism there could be no full equality, because, with the right of each workingman to receive remuneration according to the quantity and quality of work, one will receive more, another less, one will be richer than the other, etc.

By equality, Marxism-Leninism does not mean general wage leveling under which people would receive an equal quantity of bread, Meat, the same cloth, etc. Petty-bourgeois Socialists and primitive "Communists" of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were dreaming of such egalitarian socialism. In attempting to discredit Marxism-Leninism, bourgeois publicists and scientists were, and are, producing caricatures of socialist society as a uniform, dull, barrack-like society of average men, one as similar to another as two drops of Water.

By equality"-said Comrade Stalin at the Seventeenth Party Congress-"Marxism means, not equalization of individual requirements and individual life, but the destruction of classes, i.e., ( 1 ) the equal emancipation of all working people from exploitation after the capitalists have been overthrown and expropriated; (2) the equal abolition of all private property for the means of production after these Means have been converted into the property of the whole society; (3) the equal duty of all to work according to their ability and the equal right of all working people to receive remuneration according to the amount of work performed (socialist society); (4) the equal duty of all to work according to their ability, and the equal right of all working people to receive remuneration according to their needs (communist society).

Consequently, the inequality of distribution of produced goods will remain in the first stage of a communist society. But, at the same time, no one will be able to seize the means of production as his private property and convert them into a means of exploitation.

The elimination of equalization and the introduction of wages based on the principle of the quantity and the quality of the work; the organization of the entire labor supply on this principle; the development of Soviet commerce; the struggle with kulak equalization on the collective farms and the introduction of collective farm calculations based on the quantity and quality of work accomplished-these are the concrete achievements of the "bourgeois law" of the epoch of socialism about which Marx, Lenin, and Stalin spoke. People have not yet learned to work for society without any legal norms because of the survival of capitalist traditions, habits, petty-bourgeois laxity, and the lack of discipline. The "bourgeois law" serves here as one of the most powerful forms of policy of the proletarian dictatorship in the period of socialism.

A fierce class struggle is taking place in our country against the furious resistance of the remnants of the parasitic classes. Proletarian dictatorship suppresses and destroys the anti-Soviet machinations of our class enemies and, by means of revolutionary legality, breaks their attempts to undermine the great edifice of socialist construction. And even after the liquidation of classes during the period of socialism-as long as the economic prerequisites for the application of the principle "from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs" are not established-there will be need for "bourgeois law" as a standard for the distribution of labor and the articles of consumption, as an instrument for the suppression of counterrevolutionary attempts to harm and hamper socialist construction. But, as long as law is necessary, equally necessary is the proletarian state, which would safeguard law, for law is nothing without the state's protection; a proletarian state, while protecting public property for the means Of production, would safeguard equality of labor and equality of the distribution of products.

Complete victory over the surviving traces of capitalism in the economy and in the consciousness of men, the liquidation of all survivors of the antagonism between mental and physical work, and the creation of the material prerequisites for a full communist society, will create conditions for the withering away of the state.

Classes will be liquidated finally by the second five-year plan; however, this does not mean that the Soviet state will begin to die off exactly on January 1, 1938. A firm and strong dictatorship will be necessary, even after the second five-year plan, for the purpose of liquidating all survivors of the class society. "The state is withering away," Lenin said, "insofar as there are no longer any capitalists, any classes, and, consequently, no class can be suppressed. But the state has not yet altogether died, since there still remains the protection of 'bourgeois law,' which sanctifies actual inequality. For the complete extinction of the state, full communism is necessary."

Consequently, the law, and the state protecting it, will wither away during the transition from complete socialism to full-scale communism. This period is far beyond the second five-year plan ...

Lenin frequently stressed that our state is not a state in the usual meaning of the term, i.e., the state of a small group of exploiters of millions of working people. Lenin characterized the Soviet state as a semi-state, "not a state in the proper sense," a state withering away. What did he have in mind by such a characterization of the proletarian state power?

First, the Soviet state is a semi-state because it is not simply a political superstructure but a mighty economic power, a system of organization of the socialist economy. The proletarian dictatorship holds in its hands the constantly growing ... national economy (industry, means of transportation, banks, etc.), and exerts a direct influence upon the development of the economy. The bourgeois state, on the other hand, is an executive committee of the bourgeoisie, its political machine for coercive "administration of the people," i.e., the proletariat, in the name of capitalist property and exploitation. "Things," i.e., the economy, in the bourgeois society are administered by individual capitalists and their monopolistic organizations. "The bourgeois state apparatus, bourgeois ministries," said Comrade Kaganovich at the Seventeenth Party Congress, "do not administer economy. The bourgeois state apparatus plays, chiefly, a police-like regulating role, protecting the interests of capitalists against revolutionary workers while enterprises are directed by the capitalists themselves. In contrast, in our country-in the socialist society-it is the state which gives unity to political and economic leadership."

The Soviet state is not only the proletarian political machine "administering the people" but also a mighty, constantly growing system of the administration of "things," i.e., the socialist economy. The sphere of the administration of things by the proletarian state expands in proportion to the growth of socialist industry and agriculture. Hence, the enormous organizational role of the Soviet state in the period of socialism. The liquidation of classes and the remnants of class society, the transition from socialism to full-scale communism-which is impossible without a mighty and strong proletarian dictatorship-will render the administration of the people by the state unnecessary. The activity of a social organization under full-scale communism, that is, a stateless society, will be limited to the administration of things and to the direction of industrial processes.

Second, the Soviet state is a semi-state because it systematically destroys the classes, thus creating preconditions for the transition to the communist, stateless system. By destroying the classes, it destroys the basis of all states forever. What is needed for the destruction of classes, for the liquidation of the sources of class division, and for the liquidation of antagonisms between town and country, between mental and physical work, is a continuous, political and economic strengthening of the proletarian dictatorship. The creation of preconditions for the withering away of the proletarian dictatorship can be achieved only through its strengthening.

This is the law of the development of the proletarian dictatorship. "We are for the withering away of the state. But at the same time we stand for the strengthening of the dictatorship of the proletariat, which is the most vigorous and the mightiest of all state powers that have hitherto existed. The highest development of state power in preparation for its withering away-this is the Marxist formula. Is this contradictory? Yes, it is 'contradictory.' But this contradiction is vital and fully reflects Marx's dialectic."

This is beyond the comprehension of some comrades, who advocate the thesis that the withering away of the state takes place together, simultaneously, along with the liquidation of classes. And, since the proletarian dictatorship starts the liquidation of classes at the moment of its rise, the beginning of the state's withering away belongs to the first days of the October Revolution.' Proponents of this view confuse prerequisites of the withering away of the Soviet state with the withering away of the proletarian dictatorship, which begins after the creation of these prerequisites, i.e., after the liquidation of classes and all "birthmarks" of capitalism, in a full-scale socialist society. This dangerous confusion on such a significant problem as that of the proletarian dictatorship is capable of causing great harm, for it pours water upon the mill of the bourgeois theories of the weakening of the soviets.

Third, the Soviet state is a semi-state because, for the first time in history, it draws millions of working people into the administration of the state and, step by step, liquidates all barriers between the state apparatus and the broad masses of workers and peasants. Lenin wrote in State and Revolution:

Here we observe a case of "transformation of quantity into quality"; democracy, introduced as fully and consistently as is generally thinkable, is transformed from bourgeois democracy into proletarian democracy, from the state (i.e., a special force for the suppression of a particular class) into something that is no longer a state in the proper sense. It is still necessary to suppress the bourgeoisie and its resistance. This was particularly necessary for the Commune; and one of the reasons for its defeat was that it did not do this with sufficient determination. But the organ of suppression is now the majority of the population and not a minority as was always the case under slavery, serfdom, and wage labor. And, once the majority of the people itself suppresses its oppressors, a "special force" for suppression is no longer necessary! In this sense the state begins to wither away.

Consequently, our state "is no longer a state in the proper sense," for, being the state of millions of working people, it is no longer a force standing above society. The development of all forms of Soviet democracy, the appearance and boisterous blossoming of the new forms of proletarian democracy during the first and the second five-year plans (such as socialist competition, shock-workers, and technical, industrial, and financial planning, etc.), strengthen tremendously the power of the proletarian dictatorship, make way for the conditions necessary for the withering away of the state and for the fusion of society with the state after the liquidation of classes and their "birthmarks."

This is beyond the comprehension of comrades who propagate the thesis on the withering away of the Soviet state from the moment of its rise. They think that October 1917, was the beginning of an uninterrupted withering away of the Soviet state. Adhering to such "theories," Comrade Liberman advances erroneous views in several of his works: "The withering away of the state is a protracted process. It begins on the first day of the proletarian revolution, on the first day of the seizure of power by the proletariat and the organization of its own state. It comes to an end at a higher phase of the communist society; only then will the complete and final withering away of the state take place." Comrade Liberman was struggling energetically against the liquidators of the Soviets, but his formulation of the problem of the withering away of the Soviet state also introduces confusion and error into the political question that is of great significance to our Party.

At the Seventeenth Party Congress, Comrade Stetskii ... said the following concerning the thesis that the withering away of the Soviet state began in October, 1917:

During the summer of this year, some Institutes of the Communist Academy were discussing the problem of the state's withering away.

These discussions took place after Comrade Stalin's speech at the January Plenum of the Central Committee, in which he stated that the strengthening of our proletarian dictatorship is inevitable. Nevertheless, some "theorists" advanced the view that our proletarian state began to wither away neither later nor earlier but on the second day after the October Revolution and that, consequently, it has been withering away through the past sixteen years. In view of this, one wonders how it could be existing at the present time.

What is the source of such a formulation of the problem? Its source is an incorrect interpretation of Lenin's thesis that our state is already a semi-state, that our state is a withering away state. Yes, this is a fact, but it is its ultimate aim; it is the destiny of the proletarian state. To achieve this aim, our state must perform a tremendous task in rebuilding the economy, in liquidating class enemies, in liquidating classes, in drawing the masses into participation in the administration of the state, in promoting self-discipline and the communist attitude toward work.

This is bow the problem of the state's withering away stands. Comrades who assumed that the proletarian state begins to wither away on the second day after the October Revolution were quite wrong. They forgot Lenin's thesis that the proletariat needs a state in the transition period, that the state withers away only under communism. They have forgotten Stalin's thesis that the withering away of the proletarian state takes place through its strengthening. All these speculations concerning the withering away pour water upon the mill of opportunists, upon the mill of those who desire to rest on the results already achieved, those who seek to disarm us in our struggle against class enemies.

... Erroneous ideas on an uninterrupted withering away of the Soviet state found their expression also in the literature dealing with Soviet law. In this literature, too, voices began to reiterate that the withering away of Soviet law began in October. For example, Comrade Aleshin wrote: "Just like the proletarian state, Soviet law-the law of the transition period-is a withering away law. The beginning of this 'withering away' dates from the very moment of the proletarian revolution, from the moment of the final victory of the proletariat in the revolution." Arguments about the withering away of Soviet law since October, 1917, are opposed to the Party's Leninist slogan on strengthening and instilling socialist legality.

As proof that their views are correct, some proponents of the "theory" of permanent withering away of the proletarian dictatorship refer to the place in State and Revolution where Lenin stated that "the proletariat needs only a withering away state, i.e., a state organized in such a way that it would begin immediately to wither away and could not wither away." Taking these words out of context, proponents of the withering away of the Soviet state from the first day of October interpret them in a metaphysical, formal, and anti-historical way.

In 1917, when we were advancing toward October-Stalin said in a speech delivered ... on December 2, 1923-we assumed that we would have a commune; that it would be an association of the working people; that we would put an end to bureaucracy and institutions; and that we would succeed in transforming the state into an association of the working people either during the next period or after two to three short periods. However, practice has demonstrated that this is an ideal from which we are still far removed; that in order to save the state from bureaucratic elements, in order to transform Soviet society into an association of the working people, it is necessary to raise the cultural level of the population, it is necessary to have a perfectly secure all-around world situation, so that there would be no need to maintain big military cadres requiring great means and a bulky payroll, whose presence leaves an imprint upon all other state institutions.

Enthusiasts of the permanent withering away of the Soviet state reject the sixteen years of experience of the socialist construction and the liquidation of classes as well as Lenin's remarks made at the Seventh Party Congress, March, 1918, against Bukharin's amendment to the resolution of the Party program. "When will the state begin to wither away?" said Lenin. "We will be able to convoke more than two congresses before the time comes when we could say: Look how our state is withering away. And this time is still far away. To proclaim the withering away of the state too early is a breach of historical perspective."

Fourth, the Soviet state is a semi-state, because only a proletarian state can wither away; because a new revolution, directed toward the destruction of this last historical type of state is not necessary; and, finally, because in the womb of the Soviet state there arises an apparatus for the social organization of a stateless system. In the epoch of the dictatorship of the proletariat there arise new, communist forms of labor, new, communist forms of the organization for the process of production, and new, communist forms for the administration of the whole economy.

... The strengthening of the proletarian dictatorship reinforces the accumulation of conditions necessary for the withering away of the Soviet state in the future but it does not at all mean that our society is presently being transformed into a stateless one; it does not at all mean that the proletarian dictatorship is presently "gradually atrophying."

... At the Seventeenth Party Congress ... Comrade Stalin subjected the attempts to revive opportunist ideas about the withering away of the Soviet state at this time to a devastating criticism. He said:

Take, for example, the problem of building a classless socialist society. The Seventeenth Party Congress declared that we are heading for the formation of a classless socialist society. It does so without saying that a classless society cannot come of itself, spontaneously, so to speak. It has to be achieved and built by the efforts of all the working people, by strengthening the organs of the dictatorship of the proletariat, by intensifying the class struggle, by destroying classes, by liquidating the remnants of the capitalist classes, and in battles with enemies both internal and external.

The point is clear, one would think. And yet, who does not know that the promulgation of this clear and elementary thesis of Leninism has given rise to not a little confusion and to unhealthy sentiments among a section of Party members? The thesis that we are advancing toward a classless society-which was put forward as a slogan-was interpreted by them as a spontaneous process. And they began to reason in this way: If it is a classless society, then we can relax the dictatorship of the proletariat and get rid of the state altogether, since it is destined to wither away soon in any case. They dropped into a state of mooncalf ecstasy in the expectation that soon there would be no classes, and therefore no class struggle, and therefore no cares and worries, and therefore we can lay down our arms and retire-to sleep and to wait for the advent of a classless society.

There can be no doubt that this confusion of mind and these sentiments are as like as two peas to the well-known views of the right deviationists, who believed that the old must automatically grow into the new and that one fine day we shall wake up and find ourselves in socialist society.

As you see, remnants of the ideology of the defeated anti-Leninist groups can be reanimated and have not lost their tenacity...

It goes without saying that, if this confusion of mind and these non-Bolshevik sentiments obtained a hold over the majority of our Party, the Party would find itself demobilized and disarmed.

What, then, is the withering away of the state? It is an atrophy of the organs of class domination, of the apparatus of the class organization of society and economy, and their transformation into organs of classless, communist administration of society and its economic processes. To advocate such a withering away of the state right now is tantamount to weakening and undermining the proletarian dictatorship; it is tantamount to preventing the working class from fulfilling its historical task, the liquidation of the capitalist elements and the remnants of class society; it is tantamount to weakening the struggle against the furious resistance of the capitalist elements; it is tantamount to undermining the defensive might of the USSR.

Source: Michael Jaworskyj, ed., Soviet Political Thought; an anthology (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1967), pp. 303-314.