122. The State as a parasitic Apparatus.
We have previously shown that the State is the organisation of force, that it is the expression of the dominion of one class over another class or over other classes. The bourgeois class, in the course of capitalist development, becomes to an increasing extent a class of idlers, who consume goods while doing nothing to help in the work of production. What view, then, are we to take of the bourgeois State, which serves to protect the ease and the income of these idlers from the exploited and incensed masses? The police and the gendarmerie, the standing army, the whole judicial apparatus, the entire machinery of administration — these comprise a huge mass of individuals not one of whom has ever produced a bushel of wheat, a yard of cloth, or so much as a pin or a needle. The whole organisation lives upon surplus value, which is produced by the workers and peasants. This surplus value is absorbed by the State in the form of direct and indirect taxation. For example, the tsarist government extracted in this way from the workers and peasants more than three milliards of roubles. (Translated into the terms of our present paper currency, this would represent three hundred milliards, which is thrice as much as all the money in Russia.) Only a small fraction of the State revenue was devoted to production, to such things as the building of roads and railways, bridges, ships, etc.
Turning to consider the proletarian State, we find that this likewise, so long as the civil war continues and so long as the resistance of the bourgeoisie has not been broken, must to a degree be an organ standing above production. The work of many of the instruments of the