as an organ of guidance, as representative of the general interests of Society. It is a State as the embodiment of authority, as the organ of authority, as the instrument of domination of one class by another" (p. 75–76). It is not in this latter sense that Marx and Engels speak about the destruction of the State. "Propositions of too absolute a character would run the risk of being inexact. Between the capitalist State based upon the domination of one class only, and the proletarian State, which aims at the abolition of all classes, there are many stages of transition" (p. 156).
Here you have Vandervelde's style, which is slightly different from that of Kautsky, but in essence, identical with it. The dialectical method repudiates absolute truths, being engaged in the elucidation of the succession of opposites and the importance of crises in history. The eclectic does not want propositions which are "too absolute," in order to be able to forward is philistine desire to replace the revolution by "stages of transition." That the transition stage between the State as an organ of domination of the capitalist class, and the State as an organ of domination of the proletariat, is just the revolution, which consists in the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, and in the destruction, the breaking up of its State machine, is, of course, suppressed by the Kautskys and the Vanderveldes in silence. They are just as anxious to suppress the fact that the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie of one class, the proletariat, and that, after the "transition stages" of the revolution will follow the "transition stages" of the general withering away of the proletarian State.
This is just where their .political apostasy lies. This is just, from a theoretical or philosophical point of view, where they substitute eclecticism and sophistry for dialectics. The latter is concrete and revolutionary, and distinguishes between the "transition" from the dictatorship of one class to the dictatorship of another, from the "transition" of the democratic proletarian State to the non-
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