In the last 48 hours, liberal news outlets (in particular Britain's Guardian newspaper), have made a scandal out of the exposé into Cambridge Analytica. This is a shadowy peddler of influence that has been exposed by an employee-turned-whistleblower for its use of masses of digital data to target political adverts.
Last year, constitutional crises arose in Britain, the USA, Spain, Poland, and Brazil. Such crises present big problems for the ruling class because the state, and the constitutional laws that surround it, are deliberately mystified. Parliamentary democracy and the Rule of Law are treated as immutable ideas woven into the fabric of the universe. So when crises develop over the structure of the bourgeois state itself, this risks dispelling its aura of mystery and power.
I have been asked by my Swedish comrades to write a brief preface to Lenin’s State and Revolution – a task which I readily agreed to, given the enormous importance of this work for the worldwide struggle for socialism. Strangely enough, the question of the state, despite its colossal significance, is something that does not normally occupy the attention of even the most advanced workers.
On 15th June 1215, King John I of England signed a document known as the Great Charter (Magna Carta in Latin). This document was the product of a civil war that had been raging between John and his nobles. The document contained a number of concessions by John, through which he agreed to limit his power as king in return for the loyalty of his subjects.
In Italy under Mussolini, formally speaking, there were “trade unions”. However, they were state-run unions, i.e. instruments of the state. One therefore should not confuse these “unions” with genuine trade unions. Yet, in spite of this, Communists worked successfully inside them.
The question of the State in capitalist society is of key importance for Marxists. We do not see it as an impartial arbiter standing above society. The fundamental essence of every state, with its “armed bodies of men”, police, courts and other trappings is that it serves the interests of one class in society, in the case of capitalism, the capitalist class.
Standing between the working class and the socialist transformation of society is a colossal state machine. Where did it come from? What purpose does it serve? can it be reformed, or must it be done away with altogether? What should replace it, indeed should it be replaced at all? In the first place what is "it"?
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