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

116V. I. LENINever enjoyed “full power” is simply ridiculous (if it is nota repetition of the selfish class lie of the capitalists). Fullpower means power over all the land, over all the banks,over all the factories; a man who is at all familiar withthe facts of history and science on the connection betweenpolitics and economics could not have “forgotten” this“trifling” circumstance.The bourgeoisie’s device is to withhold power from theSoviets, sabotage every important step they take, while at thesame time retaining government in their own hands, retainingpower over the land, the banks, etc., and then throwingthe blame for the ruin upon the Soviets! This is exactly whatthe whole sad experience of the coalition amounts to.The Soviets have never had full power, and the measuresthey have taken could not result in anything but palliativesthat added to the confusion.The effort to prove the necessity for centralism to theBolsheviks who are centralists by conviction, by theirprogramme and by the entire tactics of their Party, is reallylike forcing an open door. The writers of Novaya Zhiznare wasting their time only because they have totally failedto understand the meaning and significance of our jeers attheir “country-wide” point of view. And the Novaya Zhiznpeople have failed to understand this because they merelypay lip-service to the doctrine of the class struggle, butdo not accept it seriously. Repeating the words about theclass struggle they have learned by rote, they are constantlyslipping into the “above-class point of view”, amusing intheory and reactionary in practice, and are calling thisfawning upon the bourgeoisie a “country-wide” plan.The state, dear people, is a class concept. The state is anorgan or instrument of violence exercised by one class againstanother. So long as it is an instrument of violence exercisedby the bourgeoisie against the proletariat, the proletariatcan have only one slogan: destruction of this state. But whenthe state will be a proletarian state, when it will be an instrumentof violence exercised by the proletariat against thebourgeoisie, we shall be fully and unreservedly in favourof a strong state power and of centralism.To put it in more popular language, we do not jeer at“plans”, but at Bazarov and Co.’s failure to understand