State and Revolution by Vladimir Lenin
The means of production are no longer the private property of individuals. The means of production belong to the whole of society. - Lenin
Written in 1917, Lenin’s State and Revolution describes the role of the state, and the means to overthrow bourgeois rule. By Lenin’s observations, the ruling class maintained their power through the oppression of the proletariat. By this exploitation, individuals were utilized to produce excess, which would be sold to the global market, leaving the worker with barely enough resources to survive. By harrying workers with longer hours and less pay, the bourgeois maintained their dominance. Instead of allocating the wealth, the opulent kept all but the table scraps. Instead of allowing citizens to keep their grain, work in meaningful occupations for themselves, and make available a society which exists outside of Capitalist wealth, the bourgeois insisted upon ability to work being the most important concept within culture. By downplaying the magnitude of individual kith and kin’s needs, the collective wealthy remained in power. Lenin would agree with the perception that both demons and humans are willing to perpetrate atrocities for their own profit. Lenin ensured the people that, if they rose against the oppressive bourgeois, the proletariat could, one day, erect a utopia. Instead of division through ability, communal life would be the necessity.
Lenin’s thought on government was that the State was principally founded to keep class struggle in check, which morphed into the State domineering, and eventually, enslaving the lower-classes of society. Lenin further claimed that the State machine is ever-expanding, filled with corruption, only serving its own interests.[1] Sentiments of this kind were shared by Peter Kropotkin, who contended that the decadent rich limit the output of production to increase profits via inflation. Labor is wasted on vanity projects while factories remain idle, with millions of people desiring work, but finding none.[2] Both of these men agreed that such issues could not be solved through legislation, but rather through a social revolution, as the state operated utilizing only mala fide means.
Lenin makes the argument that “true” Marxism is not about class struggle, but about the destruction of class entirely. Such a society, he claims, can only be erected through the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.[3] Marx defines this change as Feudal Socialism, where the proletariat retorts and assumes governance.[4] Both men agreed upon the concept of the destruction of class entirely, though Lenin differed with Marx in that he believed that such a revolution could only be achieved through the colossal usurpation of power.
Communes as collectives seemed to prove that a Socialist platform was effective. The United States was not inoculated from Communalism. Hippies created the largest number of intentional communes in the history of the United States, forming alternative, egalitarian farms and homesteads in Northern California, Colorado, New Mexico, New York, Tennessee and other states.[5] The idea was, with all wages being equal and all privileges being the same, the leadership faded into the background and became true communism. Today, in order to spread this doctrine to others, the majority must push against bourgeois policies which enslave the proletariat.[6]
National unity must be erected by the destruction of the bourgeois State. Marx does not specify the idea of federalism as opposed to centralism; rather, he speaks about smashing the bourgeois machine which exists in all bourgeois countries. The aim is to tear down the state power, which Marx sees as parasitic.[7]
The proletariat only needs anarchy long enough to establish the state, and only needs the State temporarily. The revolution gains authority through force and dissolves by its own means.[8]
To Lenin, freedom in the Capitalist model was freedom for the slave owners. It is democracy designed only for the rich. In addition, the oppressed are targeted by exclusions and exceptions for the rich’s expense. There is no freedom where there is suppression, law can never be higher than the economic structure of society, and once socialism converts private property into common property, bourgeois law disappears. However, it is difficult to say whether or not his utopia would ever come to pass, since Communism has never worked in any place which it has been tried.
[1] Vladimir Lenin, State and Revolution (The Leftist Public Domain Project, 2019), 9-11.
[2] Peter Kropotkin, The Conquest of Bread (Columbia: Independent Press, 2021), 18-27.
[3] Lenin, State and Revolution, 26-27.
[4] Karl Marx and Frederic Engles, The Communist Manifesto (New York: International Publishers, 1948), 32-42.
[5] Turner, Fred (2006), From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism, University Of Chicago Press, ISBN 0-226-81741-5
[6] Lenin, State and Revolution, 34-35.
[7] Lenin, State and Revolution, 41-44.
[8] Lenin, State and Revolution, 50-52.