Lenin: State and Revolution (Lenin 5)

Dispatches from
GAITHER STEWART
European Correspondent • Rome

Russia 1918 – Proletarian Dictatorship “propaganda.”

“The state is an organ of class domination, an organ of oppression of one class by another; its aim is the creation of ‘order’, which legalizes and perpetuates this oppression by moderating the collisions between the classes…”

The Marxist Theory of the State and the Tasks of the Proletariat in the Revolution

Lenin, kittens, and Stalin, no less. The anti-Stalin gang has consistently misrepresented Lenin’s views on Stalin.

State and Revolution, published in 1918, is the core of Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov or Lenin’s political thought. As if dictated by Lenin’ fate, the long work was written in 1917, three months before the October Revolution, on the very eve of the revolution which he was instrumental in bringing about and was in fact interrupted by the Bolshevik seizure of power in Russia. Seldom has an aphorism been timelier than Lenin’s: “It is much more pleasant and useful to go through the experience of the revolution than to write about it.” In this work of 110 pages in his collected works (73 pages in an English language Ebook format available online), Lenin develops his views on the nature of the state as an instrument of class oppression and the necessity of revolution to change things, after which he proceeds to examine the stages of the transition from capitalism to communism. In the present article about State and Revolution I have used to a great extent the same (often heavy but highly emotional and descriptive) words and expressions and stuck to Lenin’s style as much as I thought proper.

As Lenin farsightedly noted—an undermining practice continuing also today perhaps even to a greater degree than in Lenin’s time—the bourgeoisie, opportunists in the labor movements and I would add the intellectual classes, especially liberal academics, devote much time and effort to adulterating Marxism, “omitting, obliterating and distorting the revolutionary side of its teaching, its revolutionary soul. They push to the foreground and extol what is, or seems, acceptable to the bourgeoisie….” Therefore, Lenin writes that his first aim in State and Revolution is “to resuscitate the real teaching of Marx on the state.

Leningrad defenders. The people in arms.

“The state,” Lenin writes in reference to the essence of the words of Marx, “is the product and the manifestation of the irreconcilability of class antagonisms. The state arises … to the extent that those class antagonisms cannot be objectively reconciled. And, conversely, the existence of the state proves that the class antagonisms are irreconcilable.” Bourgeois ideologists, Lenin points out, accept the state’s existence where there are class antagonisms, but revise Marx in such a way as to make it appear that the state exists to reconcile classes. Thus, the bourgeois state is the good, its role being to moderate and reconcile the classes—today, for example, to reconcile the differences between the 0.00001 % and the impoverished classes in the USA for whom even food stamps are unnecessary, for whom free health care and proper education are dispensable and besides smack too much of the hated socialism.

According to Marx, Lenin writes, “the state could neither arise nor maintain itself if a reconciliation of classes were possible.” In reality, the state is an organ of class domination, an organ of oppression of one class by another; its aim is the creation of ‘order’, which legalizes and perpetuates this oppression by moderating the collisions between the classes;… to moderate collisions does not mean (claim petty-bourgeois and philistine professors and publicists) … to deprive the oppressed classes of … the means and methods of struggle for overthrowing the oppressors, but to practice reconciliation.”

In the case of the Russian Revolution of 1917, the meaning and role of the state arose and demanded action on a mass scale, But there, Lenin writes just at the time when this was happening, many left-wing Socialist revolutionaries embraced the petty-bourgeois theory of reconciliation of the classes by the state. That is all they wrote about, reconciliation, reconciliation. This petty-bourgeois class is never able to understand—precisely the same today—that the state is an organ of domination of a definite class which cannot be reconciled with its antipode (the class opposed to it).

SPECIAL BODIES OF ARMED MEN, PRISONS, ETC.

[dropcap]R[/dropcap]eferring often to Engels, Lenin writes that civilized society is broken up into irreconcilably antagonistic classes, which, if armed would come into armed struggle with each other. However, a state creates a special power in the form of special bodies of armed men (the army and police), and every revolution, by shattering the state apparatus, demonstrates to us how the ex-ruling class aims at the restoration of these special bodies of armed men (Lenin here is apparently speaking of counterrevolutionary action like the Whites” in the Russian civil war yet to come after the Bolshevik seizure of power. Foresight!) and how the oppressed class tries to create a new organization of this kind, capable of serving not the exploiters, but the exploited. In this case, the army of the oppressed people. The kernel of the Red Army. The army of the post-revolution against the reaction sure to come.

Does this man look like a fire-breathing monster?

THE STATE AS AN INSTRUMENT FOR THE EXPLOITATION OF THE OPPRESSED CLASS

At this point, Lenin concentrates on the power wielded by the state’s officials, from the “shabbiest police servant” to the head of the military arm, as explained by Engels who places state officials as “organs above society”, which permit the dominant class to hold down and exploit at will the oppressed class just as ancient and feudal states were organs of exploitation of the slaves and serfs. However, not only ancient states, but also the Bonapartism of the First and Second Empires in France, the Bismarck regime in Germany, the Kerensky government in the Russia Lenin that was about to overthrow, and how much more so in the unrestrained power of those “above society” (unchecked militarized police and top secret agencies) in the USA today.

Bourgeois ideologists, Lenin points out, accept the state’s existence where there are class antagonisms, but revise Marx in such a way as to make it appear that the state exists to reconcile classes. Thus, the bourgeois state is the good, its role being to moderate and reconcile the classes—today, for example, to reconcile the differences between the 0.01 % and the impoverished classes in the USA for whom even food stamps are unnecessary, for whom free health care and proper education are dispensable and besides smack too much of the hated socialism.

Engels had written that in the first place, on the assumption of state power, the proletariat “puts an end to the state as the state.” Engels means the destruction of the bourgeois state by the proletarian revolution. Engels added that the state itself is a “special repressive force.” Therefore, the special repressive force maintained by a handful of the bourgeoisie for the suppression of the (masses of) proletariat must be replaced by a “special repressive force” of the proletariat for the suppression of the bourgeoisie (and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat). The reader must not be mislead by Lenin’s extensive quotes from the work of the great revolutionary Friedrich Engels; he uses them in order to express pure Leninist views.

The revolution constitutes the destruction of “the state as the state.” It is the seizure of the means of production in the name of society, The so-called “withering away of the state” refers to the period after the socialist revolution. Engels, Marx and Lenin attempt to define the form of society which will replace the crushed bourgeois state as well as the form of proletarian statehood or the democracy that remains after the revolution. But since democracy is also a state it too must eventually go. The bourgeois state is first crushed and done away with, then, what “withers away” after the revolution is the proletarian semistate. It is the state in general, the idea of the state (as a repressive force, remember, that is to wither away. The whole point of Marx. Engels and Lenin, is the justification, no, the necessity of revolution to change things, since the bourgeois will never, never “wither away” on its own. It must be crushed and eliminated by a violent revolution.. The idea of the absolute necessity of violent revolution to eliminate the bourgeois state is the heart, the core, of the thinking of Marx, Engels and finally Lenin.

TRANSITION FROM CAPITALISM TO COMMUNISM

[dropcap]L[/dropcap]enin quotes Marx: “Between capitalist and communist society lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the former into the latter. To this also corresponds a political transition period, in which the state can be no other than the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.”

This conclusion is based chiefly on the irreconcilability of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Now the question arises as to how the transition from the old to the new society can proceed. Lenin too writes that the transition from a capitalist to a communist society requires a “political transition period”, and the state in this period can only be the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.

Lenin notes in this text that “it is said that the class struggle is the main point of Marxism. That is wrong. The theory of the class struggle was created by the bourgeoisie before Marx. The true Marxist extends the class struggle to the dictatorship of the proletariat. That is the most perfect distinction between a Marxist and the ordinary petty (and the big) bourgeois.”

Lenin then asks what the relation is between this dictatorship to democracy. The answer lies in the changes democracy has undergone during the transition to communism. Although we have almost complete democracy in the democratic republic, he says, this democracy is bound by the narrow framework of capitalist exploitation. Therefore it remains a democracy for the minority (for an ever more restricted minority in capitalist states today (if what remains for them can be legitimately called democracy), only for the rich, only for the possessing classes, which Lenin compares to the democracy of ancient Greeks limited to slave owners, while in modern times the democracy, in which wage slaves hardly participate, has no meaning. It means nothing to them. Thus, Lenin concludes: “democracy for an insignificant minority, democracy for the rich—that is the democracy of capitalist society.” Especially the American reader might ponder Lenin’s conclusion of one hundred years ago. He notes that if one looks at some of the details of the suffrage (residential and registration requirements), the working of the representative institutions, press freedom, etc., we see on all side restrictions after restrictions of democracy, which effectively eliminate the masses from politics and a share in democracy. Marx too, over one hundred years ago, noted the sham and the irony of every few years allowing the oppressed to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class should be in parliament to represent and oppress them.

So the progress of capitalist democracy does not march smoothly onward to greater and greater democracy. No! Lenin pronounces, “Progress marches onward toward communism, through the dictatorship of the proletariat (achieved by violent revolution); it cannot do otherwise, for there is no one else and no other way to break the resistance of the capitalist exploiters. To provide genuine democracy to the poor, for the people, and not for the rich, the dictatorship of the proletariat applies a series of restrictions on the oppressors, on the exploiters. We must crush them in order to free humanity from wage slavery. There is no other way.”

So the modification of democracy during the transition from capitalism to communism is that it is a democracy used to crush the capitalist antagonists. Democracy for the great majority of people and suppression of the exploiters and oppressors, such are the task of the revolution and the new society.

The splendid future society, the Utopian ideal, the worker with head high and shining eyes looking forward to the splendid future depicted on crude early Soviet posters of the time when men and women now freed from the horrors of capitalist oppression and exploitation and indignation have become accustomed to the elementary rules of social life, the time when the state as such can begin to “wither away”, to modern readers smacks of hyperbolic, old-fashioned propaganda, today, in the time of subtle, cradle-to-the-grave brainwash. And Lenin’s last words in State and Revolution, written a century ago will sound like a fairy tale to people busy making money, to the elite of capitalist society. It would be preferable if the images created by Marx and Engels and Lenin appeared at least chimerical. It might surprise readers to learn that a recent survey in Russia shows that over fifty per cent of Russians would like a return to the Soviet Union. Most certainly not the elite, but the poor and the exploited and oppressed today in much of the world and I believe also in the USA would perceive hope in such words and images in Lenin’s State and Revolution. Yes, I believe so.

IN THE SERIES:

Lenin on Compromises (Lenin 1)

Lenin on Tactics of the Democratic Revolution (Lenin 2)

Lenin: The Working Class as the Vanguard Fighter for Social Democracy (Lenin 3)

Lenin on Imperialism and Capitalism (Lenin 4)

About Gaither Stewart

Our Senior Editor based in Rome, serves—inter alia—as our European correspondent. A veteran journalist and essayist on a broad palette of topics from culture to history and politics, he is also the author of the Europe Trilogy, celebrated spy thrillers whose latest volume, Time of Exile, was recently published by Punto Press.

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“We are in a revolutionary moment”: Chris Hedges explains why an uprising is coming — and soon

ELIAS ISQUITH } SALON

The status quo is doomed but whether the future will be progressive or reactionary is uncertain, Hedges tells Salon

Chris Hedges

[dropcap]In recent years,[/dropcap] there’s been a small genre of left-of-center journalism that, following President Obama’s lead, endeavors to prove that things on Planet Earth are not just going well, but have, in fact, never been better. This is an inherently subjective claim, of course; it requires that one buy into the idea of human progress, for one thing. But no matter how it was framed, there’s at least one celebrated leftist activist, author and journalist who’d disagree: Chris Hedges.

In fact, in his latest book, “Wages of Rebellion: The Moral Imperative of Revolt,” Hedges argues that the world is currently at a crisis point the likes of which we’ve never really seen. There are similarities between our time and the era of the 1848 revolutions throughout Europe — or the French Revolutionary era that preceded them — he says. But in many ways, climate change least among them, the stakes this time are much higher. According to Hedges, a revolution is coming; we just don’t yet know when, where, how — or on whose behalf.

Recently, Salon spoke over the phone with Hedges to discuss his book, why he thinks our world is in for some massive disruptions, and why we need revolutionaries now more than ever. A transcript of our conversation which has been edited for clarity and length can be found below.

Do you think we are in a revolutionary era now? Or is it more something on the horizon?

It’s with us already, but with this caveat: it is what Gramsci calls interregnum, this period where the ideas that buttress the old ruling elite no longer hold sway, but we haven’t articulated something to take its place.

That’s what that essay I quote by Alexander Berkman, “The Invisible Revolution,” talks about. He likens it to a pot that’s beginning to boil. So it’s already taking place, although it’s subterranean. And the facade of power — both the physical facade of power and the ideological facade of power — appears to remain intact. But it has less and less credibility.

There are all sorts of neutral indicators that show that. Low voter turnout, the fact that Congress has an approval rating of 7 percent, that polls continually reflect a kind of pessimism about where we are going, that many of the major systems that have been set in place — especially in terms of internal security — have no popularity at all.

All of these are indicators that something is seriously wrong, that the government is no longer responding to the most basic concerns, needs, and rights of the citizenry. That is [true for the] left and right. But what’s going to take its place, that has not been articulated. Yes, we are in a revolutionary moment; but maybe it’s a better way to describe it as a revolutionary process.

Is there a revolutionary consciousness building in America?

Well, it is definitely building. But until there is an ideological framework that large numbers of people embrace to challenge the old ideological framework, nothing is going to happen. Some things can happen; you can have sporadic uprisings as you had in Ferguson or you had in Baltimore. But until they are infused with that kind of political vision, they are reactive, in essence.

So you have, every 28 hours, a person of color, usually a poor person of color, being killed with lethal force — and, of course, in most of these cases they are unarmed. So people march in the streets and people protest; and yet the killings don’t stop. Even when they are captured on video. I mean we have videos of people being murdered by the police and the police walk away. This is symptomatic of a state that is ossified and can no longer respond rationally to what is happening to the citizenry, because it exclusively serves the interest of corporate power.

We have, to quote John Ralston Saul, “undergone a corporate coup d’état in slow motion” and it’s over. The normal mechanisms by which we carry out incremental and piecemeal reform through liberal institutions no longer function. They have been seized by corporate power — including the press. That sets the stage for inevitable blowback, because these corporations have no internal constraints, and now they have no external constraints. So they will exploit, because, as Marx understood, that’s their nature, until exhaustion or collapse.

What do you think is the most likely way that the people will respond to living in these conditions?

That is the big unknown. When it will come is unknown. What is it that will trigger it is unknown. You could go back and look at past uprisings, some of which I covered — I covered all the revolutions in Eastern Europe; I covered the two Palestinian uprisings; I covered the street demonstrations that eventually brought down Slobodan Milosevic — and it’s usually something banal.

As a reporter, you know that it’s there; but you never know what will ignite it. So you have Lenin, six weeks before the revolution, in exile in Switzerland, getting up and saying, We who are old will never live to see the revolution. Even the purported leaders of the opposition never know when it’s coming. Nor do they know what will trigger it.

What kind of person engages in revolutionary activity? Is there a specific type?

There are different types, but they have certain characteristics in common. That’s why I quote theologian Reinhold Niebuhr when he talks about “sublime madness.”

I think that sublime madness — James Baldwin writes it’s not so much that [revolutionaries] have a vision, it’s that they are possessed by it. I think that’s right. They are often difficult, eccentric personalities by nature, because they are stepping out front to confront a system of power [in a way that is] almost a kind of a form of suicide. But in moments of extremity, these rebels are absolutely key; and that you can’t pull off seismic change without them.

You’ve said that we don’t know where the change will come from, and that it could just as easily take a right-wing, reactionary form as a leftist one. Is there anything lefties can do to influence the outcome? Or is it out of anyone’s control?

“If we are not brutal about diagnosing what we are up against, then all of our resistance is futile. If we think that voting for Hillary Clinton … is really going to make a difference, then I would argue we don’t understand corporate power and how it works…”

There’s so many events as societies disintegrate that you can’t predict. They play such a large part in shaping how a society goes that there is a lot of it that is not in your control.

For example, if you compare the breakdown of Yugoslavia with the breakdown of Czechoslovakia — and I covered both of those stories — Yugoslavia was actually the Eastern European country best-equipped to integrate itself into Europe. But Yugoslavia went bad. When the economy broke down and Yugoslavia was hit with horrific hyperinflation, it vomited up these terrifying figures in the same way that Weimar vomited up the Nazi party. Yugoslavia tore itself to pieces.

If things unravel [in the U.S.], our backlash may very well be a rightwing backlash — a very frightening rightwing backlash. We who care about populist movements [on the left] are very weak, because in the name of anti-communism these movements have been destroyed; we are almost trying to rebuild them from scratch. We don’t even have the language to describe the class warfare that is being unleashed upon us by this tiny, rapacious, oligarchic elite. But we on the left are very disorganized, unfocused, and without resources.

In terms of a left-wing populism having to build itself back up from scratch, do you see the broad coalition against the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) as a hint of what that might look like? Or would you not go that far?

No, I would.

I think that if you look at what’s happened after Occupy, it’s either spawned or built alliances with a series of movements; whether it’s #BlackLivesMatter, whether it’s the Fight for $15 campaign, whether it’s challenging the TPP. I think they are all interconnected and, often times — at least when I’m with those activists — there is a political consciousness that I find quite mature.

Are you optimistic about the future?

I covered war for 20 years; we didn’t use terms like pessimist or optimist, because if you were overly optimistic, it could get you killed. You really tried to read the landscape as astutely as you could and then take calculated risks based on the reality around you, or at least on the reality insofar as you could interpret it. I kind of bring that mentality out of war zones.

If we are not brutal about diagnosing what we are up against, then all of our resistance is futile. If we think that voting for Hillary Clinton … is really going to make a difference, then I would argue we don’t understand corporate power and how it works. If you read the writings of anthropologists, there are studies about how civilizations break down; and we are certainly following that pattern. Unfortunately, there’s nothing within human nature to argue that we won’t go down the ways other civilizations have gone down. The difference is now, of course, that when we go down, the whole planet is going to go with us.

Yet you rebel not only for what you can achieve, but for who you become. In the end, those who rebel require faith — not a formal or necessarily Christian, Jewish or Muslim orthodoxy, but a faith that the good draws to it the good. That we are called to carry out the good insofar as we can determine what the good is; and then we let it go. The Buddhists call it karma, but faith is the belief that it goes somewhere. By standing up, you keep alive another narrative. It’s one of the ironic points of life. That, for me, is what provides hope; and if you are not there, there is no hope at all.

Elias Isquith is a staff writer at Salon, focusing on politics. Follow him on Twitter at @eliasisquith.

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