Reply To: Dorking – No War But the Class War

In the interest of intellectual honesty, I should point out that, though we didn’t intervene in the argument between the ACG and CWO over the “semi-state”, our position would have been closer to that of the CWO. After all, we argue that the working class should take over control of the state (via elections and parliament), lop off its undemocratic features, and use it to disposses the capitalist class and coordinate the introduction of socialism. You could even describe this residual state as a “semi-state” if you wanted (but we’re not going to as this is Lenin’s term). And of course, once socialism had been established, it would disappear, with any useful administrative parts being incorporated into the democratic administrative of socialist society.

The difference between us and the CWO would be (1) they argue that the working class should smash the existing state in an armed insurrection and then create a “semi-state”, and (2) that this is not what the Bolsheviks did, not even for a couple of weeks.