Collected Works of V. I. Lenin - Vol. 26 - From Marx to Mao

102V. I. LENINas educated socialists. But Marx, basing himself on theexperience of the Paris Commune, taught that the proletariatcannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machineand use it for its own purposes, that the proletariat mustsmash this machine and substitute a new one for it (I dealwith this in greater detail in a pamphlet, the first part ofwhich is now finished and will soon appear under the titleThe State and Revolution. A Marxist Theory of the Stateand the Tasks of the Proletariat in the Revolution*). Thisnew type of state machinery was created by the Paris Commune,and the Russian Soviets of Workers’, Soldiers’ andPeasants’ Deputies are a “state apparatus” of the same type. Ihave indicated this many times since April 4, 1917; it is dealtwith in the resolutions of Bolshevik conferences and also inBolshevik literature. Novaya Zhizn could, of course, haveexpressed its utter disagreement with Marx and with the Bolsheviks,but for a paper that has so often, and so haughtily,scolded the Bolsheviks for their allegedly frivolous attitudeto difficult problems to evade this question completely istantamount to issuing itself a certificate of mental poverty.The proletariat cannot “lay hold of” the “state apparatus”and “set it in motion”. But it can smash everythingthat is oppressive, routine, incorrigibly bourgeois in theold state apparatus and substitute its own, new apparatus.The Soviets of Workers’, Soldiers’ and Peasants’ Deputiesare exactly this apparatus.That Novaya Zhizn has completely forgotten about this“state apparatus” can be called nothing but monstrous.Behaving in this way in their theoretical reasoning, theNovaya Zhizn people are, in essence, doing in the sphere ofpolitical theory what the Cadets are doing in political practice.Because, if the proletariat and the revolutionary democratsdo not in fact need a new state apparatus, then theSoviets lose their raison d’être, lose their right to existence,and the Kornilovite Cadets are right in trying to reduce theSoviets to nought!This monstrous theoretical blunder and political blindnesson the part of Novaya Zhizn is all the more monstrous* See present edition, Vol. 25.—Ed.