Kelsen H. The Political Theory of Bolshevism: A Critical Analysis

Berkeley; Los Angeles: University of California press, 1949, — 64 p.The Soviet regime is more than any other political system connected with a political ideology which it uses as an intellectual instrument for its justification ; and no other regime needs more urgently a justification than the totalitarian dictatorship of Bolshevism. Its ideology is the social philosophy of Marx and Engels as interpreted hy Lenin and Stalin. The center of this philosophy1 is a political theory according to which the state as a coercive order ' is necessary only for the maintenance of capitalistic exploitation and, consequently, will disappear when socialism is established, Marx and Engels predicted the disappearance of the coercive order11 as the automatic effect of the establishment of socialism within a single state. Since this prediction evidently did not come true in ( Soviet Russia, Lenin and Stalin were forced to modify the original doctrine hy postponing the disappearance of the state to the time when socialism will he realized all over the world. According to the new doctrine it is only the socialist world state which can and will disappear. Since this event is not to he expected in the near future, the provisional character of the coercive machinery maintained in the Soviet Union needs all the more to be emphasized. For as a mere transitory stage on the way to a free society even a totalitarian state may he considered by the people as endurable, especially if its dictatorship is interpreted as democracy.Concept of the StateRestriction of Freedom
Concept of Democracy
Theory of Politics and “Political” Theory
Value of the State
Dialectical Method
Contradictions in the Bolshevik Doctrine of the State
The Proletarian State
The “Withering Away” of the State
Capitalist Encirclement
Decisive Modification of the Marx-Engels Doctrine
The Socialist World State: The Last StateDemocracy or Party DictatorshipMarx's and Engels’ Attitude Toward Democracy
Democracy and Revolution
Democracy and Capitalism
Establishment of Socialism in Russia
Abandonment of the Postulate of Democracy
Reinterpretation of the Concept of Democracy
Importance of Capitalist Democracy for the Struggle for Socialism
Dictatorship of the Proletariat: A True Democracy?
Dictatorship of the Proletariat: Dictatorship of the Communist Party
Stalin’s Interpretation of “Dictatorship”
The Constitution of 1936
Political Reality in Soviet Russia