Lenin: The State and Revolution! (6)

The State and Revolution 1917! P6:
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Let us being with the most popular of
Engels’ works,

The Origin of the Family,
Private Property and the State,

the Sixth Edition of which
was published in Stuttgart as far back as 1894.

We have to translate the quotations
from the German originals,

as the Russian translations,
while very numerous,

are for the most part either incomplete
or very unsatisfactory.

Summing up his historical analysis,
Engels says:

The state is, therefore, by no means
a power forced on society from without;

just as little is it “the reality of the ethical idea",

“the image and reality of reason",
as Hegel maintains. Rather,

it is a product of Society at
a certain stage of development;

it is the admission that this society
has become entangled in
an insoluble contradiction with itself,

that it has split into
irreconcilable antagonisms which
it is powerless to dispel.

But in order that these antagonisms,

these classes with conflicting
economic interests,

might not consume themselves
and society in fruitless struggle,

it became necessary to have a power,
seemingly standing above society,

that would alleviate the conflict
and keep it within the bounds of “order";

and this power, arisen out of society
but placing itself above it,

and alienating itself more and more from it,
is the state." (Pp.177-78, sixth edition)

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