Quiz: The State and Revolution

15 questions drawn at random. Score 80% for a silver medal.

1. 1. What, “in the main,” does the force called the state consist of?

   Special bodies of armed men who have prisons at their command The clergy and the schools The great banks and trusts Elected representatives of the people, sitting in parliament
2. 2. What does Engels call universal suffrage, in the passage Lenin quotes?

   “A fraud to be boycotted by every class-conscious worker” “An index of the maturity of the working class” The true expression of the will of the labouring majority The sure and peaceful road to socialism in every country
3. 3. What did Kautsky say, in his book against Bernstein, could “safely” be left to the future?

   The conquest of political power by peaceful, parliamentary means The problem of the proletarian dictatorship The question of the general strike and of mass action The abolition of private property in the means of production
4. 4. What is the first, or lower, phase of communist society “generally called”?

   Socialism Anarchy Statism Populism
5. 5. What, according to Lenin, does opportunism breed in the labour movement?

   Anarcho-syndicalist unions that reject all participation in political struggle A class of representatives of the better-paid workers, out of touch with the rank and file A mass revolutionary party drawing in the poorest and least organised strata of workers Peasant co-operatives that draw the most energetic workers away from the towns
6. 6. According to Lenin’s reading of Engels, what happens to the capitalist state?

   It is abolished overnight by a general strike, without any transitional state It is taken over intact by the workers and transformed into a free people’s state at once It withers away gradually as democracy is extended through universal suffrage It is destroyed by the proletariat; only the proletarian state withers away
7. 7. What, for Lenin, does the very existence of the state prove?

   That society has outgrown force That class antagonisms are irreconcilable That the bourgeoisie is weak That classes can be reconciled by it
8. 8. According to Lenin, in relation to what did Engels say religion is a private matter?

   In relation to the State, not to the party In relation to the trade unions In relation to the family In relation to the party, not to the State
9. 9. When does Lenin date his preface?

   November 1917 August 1917 January 1917 March 1918
10. 10. Which country did Marx exclude in 1871 from the rule that the state machine must first be destroyed?

    Italy Spain England Russia
11. 11. Which two institutions does Lenin call especially characteristic of the centralised state machine?

    The bureaucracy and the standing army The banks and the trusts The established church and the state schools The parliament and the higher courts of justice
12. 12. Why does Marx call the “equal right” of the first phase “bourgeois right”?

    Because capitalists still own the factories and the land, as before Because it applies the same measure to people who are not equal Because it still pays wages in money, just as capitalism did before Because it is still enforced by the old bourgeois courts and judges
13. 13. What, according to Lenin, did Plekhanov’s Anarchism and Socialism (1894) leave out?

    Any mention of Stirner or of his book on the individual ego The history of the ideas of Proudhon, Stirner and other anarchists The comparison of anarchists with bandits and the criminal underworld The relation of the revolution to the state
14. 14. To whom did Marx write, during the Commune, that the next French revolution must “shatter” the bureaucratic and military machine?

    Weydemeyer Bebel Kugelmann Bracke
15. 15. Why, according to Lenin, is a “self-acting armed organization of the population” no longer possible?

    Because populations are too large Because modern weapons are too costly for any but a standing army Because society is split into irreconcilably antagonistic classes Because people have lost the habit of arms