Lenin "State and Revolution" Ch. 2

[Idealism]

I was reading lenins the state and revolution chapter 2, and im having trouble understand his comparison between France 1848-1852 and the rest of the capitlist cycle. What happened in France 1848-1852? What did he mean with these paragraphs?

"Let us, however, cast a general glance over the history of the advanced countries at the turn of the century. We shall see that the same process went on more slowly, in more varied forms, in a much wider field: on the one hand, the development of "parliamentary power" both in the republican countries (France, America, Switzerland), and in the monarchies (Britain, Germany to a certain extent, Italy, the Scandinavia countries, etc.); on the other hand, a struggle for power among the various bourgeois and petty-bourgeois parties which distributed and redistributed the “spoils” of office, with the foundations of bourgeois society unchanged; and, lastly, the perfection and consolidation of the "executive power", of its bureaucratic and military apparatus.

There is not the slightest doubt that these features are common to the whole of the modern evolution of all capitalist states in general. In the last three years 1848-51 France displayed, in a swift, sharp, concentrated form, the very same processes of development which are peculiar to the whole capitalist world.

Imperialism--the era of bank capital, the era of gigantic capitalist monopolies, of the development of monopoly capitalism into state-monopoly capitalism--has clearly shown an unprecedented growth in its bureaucratic and military apparatus in connection with the intensification of repressive measures against the proletariat both in the monarchical and in the freest, republican countries.

World history is now undoubtedly leading, on an incomparably larger scale than in 1852, to the "concentration of all the forces" of the proletarian revolution on the “destruction” of the state machine."

[Idealism]

i dont know the rules about bumping on this forum and i went to the FAQ and searched for some, but anyway if bumping=bad im sorry.

[Tower of Bebel]

Lenin, influenced by Hilferding I guess, writes about the concentration of capitalist forces on state level (executive power - concentration of capital on the economic level) which reflected growing contradictions between the proletariat and the capitalist class. The capitalist class used more state power because the proletariat was both growing in numbers and organizational strenght (social democracy).

In the period of 1848-1851 this happened on a much smaller scale in France where Louis Napoleon's position became stronger and stronger (culminating in his coup d'etat or 18th Brumaire) the more the bourgeoisie was unable to keep the proletariat and revolutionary petty bourgeoisie down.

The discours of the Second International betrayed a believe in the growing opposition between democracy, socialism and imperialism. Bourgeois democracy was in decay while imperialism was on the rise. This feeling became stronger during the war (in which state took control over economic and social life) and also after the war (fascism). It's only partially true that imperialism contradicts democracy. But only in the sense that bourgeois democracy is always limited to the needs of capital, not the peoples.

[Idealism]

Lenin, influenced by Hilferding I guess, writes about the concentration of capitalist forces on state level (executive power - concentration of capital on the economic level) which reflected growing contradictions between the proletariat and the capitalist class. The capitalist class used more state power because the proletariat was both growing in numbers and organizational strenght (social democracy).

In the period of 1848-1851 this happened on a much smaller scale in France where Louis Napoleon's position became stronger and stronger (culminating in his coup d'etat or 18th Brumaire) the more the bourgeoisie was unable to keep the proletariat and revolutionary petty bourgeoisie down.

The discours of the Second International betrayed a believe in the growing opposition between democracy, socialism and imperialism. Bourgeois democracy was in decay while imperialism was on the rise. This feeling became stronger during the war (in which state took control over economic and social life) and also after the war (fascism). It's only partially true that imperialism contradicts democracy. But only in the sense that bourgeois democracy is always limited to the needs of capital, not the peoples.

Thank you, but then does lenin then says that Marx came to the conclusion in 1852 with The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon that the Proletariat needs to focus its destructive forces on the Bourgeois state?

[Tower of Bebel]

The proletariat must break the capitalist state, clearing a path for genuine proletarian forms of true or ultra-democracy. That's the lesson of both 1851 (a negative lesson: Social democracy thought it could implement true democracy by running the capitalist state) and 1871 (where the proletariat either destroyed the bourgeois state aparatus or revolutionarized it in such a way that it became proletarian in character).

The lesson of the part you quoted is that, allthough the bourgeoisie propagates bourgeois democracy and capitalist forms of popular representation as if it were truely democratic, we still need to distinguish the social kernel from the form. Bourgeois democracy looks like democracy from the outside (form) but it is still a dictatorship of capital over the working classes (kernel). When the working classes are in anyway threatening the capitalist order capital will use any means necessary to save itself from its gravedigger. These means are mostly forms of state repression like police, army, courts, etc. Bourgeois democracy (parliament f.e.) serves capital but can easily be moved aside when needed. Examples are police states and fascism. They represent the demise of parliamentary powers in favour of executive powers without touching the fundamental capitalist principle of private property of the means of production (the rule of capital). Growing bureaucracies are also signs of the opressive rule of capital.