>
> What's it from? Lakoff?
Engels. Lenin deals with it at some length in State & Revolution.
Doug
^^^^ CB: Yeah, Lenin paraphrases Engels from _The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State_
2. Special Bodies of Armed Men, Prisons, etc. Engels continues:
“As distinct from the old gentile [tribal or clan] order,[2] the state, first, divides its subjects according to territory...."
This division seems “natural” to us, but it costs a prolonged struggle against the old organization according to generations or tribes.
“The second distinguishing feature is the establishment of a public power which no longer directly coincides with the population organizing itself as an armed force. This special, public power is necessary because a self-acting armed organization of the population has become impossible since the split into classes.... This public power exists in every state; it consists not merely of armed men but also of material adjuncts, prisons, and institutions of coercion of all kinds, of which gentile [clan] society knew nothing...."
Engels elucidates the concept of the “power” which is called the state, a power which arose from society but places itself above it and alienates itself more and more from it. What does this power mainly consist of? It consists of special bodies of armed men having prisons, etc., at their command.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/ch01.htm#s2