The issue of the state gains particular importance today from both a theoretical and a practical-political perspective. The imperialist war has accelerated and intensified the process of transforming monopoly capitalism into state-monopoly capitalism. The tremendous oppression of the working masses by the state, which is merging ever more closely with the all-powerful unions of capitalists, is becoming increasingly severe.

The advanced countries are turning - we are talking about their 'rear' - into military prisons for workers. The unspeakable atrocities and the sufferings of the prolonged war make the condition of the masses unbearable, strengthening their indignation. The international proletarian revolution is clearly developing. The question of its attitude towards the state takes on practical significance.

The elements of opportunism that accumulated during decades of relatively peaceful development have created the current of socialist-bourgeois nationalism, which dominates the official socialist parties around the world. This current (Plekhanov, Potresov, Breskovskaya, Rubinovich, later, in a somewhat veiled form, the gentlemen Tsereteli, Chernov, and others in Russia, the Seideman, Legin, David, etc. in Germany, the Renondel, Gendt, Vandervelde in France and Belgium, Hyndman and the Fabians in England, etc.) advocates socialism in words, but nationalism in practice, characterized by the vulgar sycophantic adjustment of the 'leaders of socialism' to the interests not only of their 'own' national bourgeoisie, but also of their 'own' state, since most of the so-called great powers have long been exploiting and enslaving a number of small and weak nations.

And the imperialist war is indeed a war for the division and redistribution of the spoils of this kind. The struggle to free the working masses from the influence of the bourgeoisie in general, and the imperialist bourgeoisie in particular, is impossible without combating the opportunistic prejudices regarding the 'state'.

We will first examine the teachings of Marx and Engels on the state, analyzing in great detail the forgotten or opportunistically distorted aspects of this teaching. Then we will specifically engage with the main representative of these distortions, Karl Kautsky, the most well-known leader of the Second International (1889 - 1914), who failed so miserably during the present war.

Finally, we will draw the basic conclusions from the experience of the Russian revolutions of 1905 and particularly of 1917. As it appears, the latter is now (early August 1917) closing the first phase of its development, but this entire revolution can generally be understood only as a link in the chain of socialist proletarian revolutions provoked by the imperialist war.

The question of the attitude of the socialist revolution of the proletariat towards the state thus acquires not only practical-political significance but also an extremely urgent significance, as a question of enlightening the masses about what they must do in order to free themselves in the immediate future from the yoke of capital.