Leninism is Marxism!

[PolskiLenin]

It has come to my attention the increasingly large amount of people with misconceptions regarding Lenin’s contributions to Marxism, and his role as one of the greatest revolutionaries of all time.

Leninism and Marxism are one and the same. Lenin complemented existing Marxist writings with pieces more specifically applicable to his time period, all the while putting forth works that are more than valuable today.

BUT, unfortunately, many misconceptions are bred by the ridiculous term: Marxist-Leninism. This “Marxist-Leninism” really isn’t Leninism or even Marxism it all. Adherers to the latter tendency idolize Marx, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao Zedong.

If they actually knew what Marxism was, they wouldn’t dare call themselves such an abomination. Marxist Leninism is the very elitist, revisionist Marxism that characterized the Stalinist U.S.S.R. – which from the point of Stalin’s bureaucratization on…wasn’t truly socialist/communist/Marxist. Real Marxism is powered by the people, which Lenin advocated, not the elites.

Lenin was not the elitist dictator his opposition claim he was. For if he was, then he would have never done the following:

• Given “all power to the Soviets”
• Put the people in power
• Cared enough to elaborate on the most important stage in Marxism: the dictatorship of the proletariat (not the dictatorship of LENIN!)
• Cared enough to push for education for every illiterate peasant so that they could help the Bolshevik cause.

BUT HE DID! History speaks for itself on Lenin's behalf.

Lenin devoted his life to Marxism. After all, he successfully brought about the first Marxist state.

Lenin’s emphases on the necessity of a vanguard party of professional revolutionaries and on the importance of the transitional phase, the dictatorship of the proletariat, make him one of the greatest revolutionaries in history, and look…his ideas are identical to Marx’s!

“Lenin lived”
“Lenin lives”
“Lenin will live”

[Q]

Dear OP: Could you explain what theoretical value this thread has? Is there even any room for discussion here? Do you need to write spam threads when you apply to join the L5I?

As for Lenin, how much do you actually know about the Russian revolution, including it's darker sides? The suppression and dissolving (de facto coup d'etats) of soviets in which the Bolsheviks lost majority support from early 1918 onwards? The ban on factions inside the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) in 1921 that gave the Stalin-faction a leading edge to close down any and all criticism in the party and which still has a mark on the far left culture today? To name just two. No?

Now, I very much respect Lenin (and Trotsky by the way), but your sugardriving "ZOMG LENIN WAS COOL, I JUST CAME" is really not helpful. Believe it or not, Lenin was human, he made mistakes and errors, pretty big screwups too. We should look and study them to learn why that happened and how it helps us today. Putting him on a pedestal to gasp at him is not going to bring us any further.

[Kronsteen]

Quick quiz. Which of these terms appeared in Marx?

* Dialectical Materialism
* Historical Materialism
* Worker's State
* Vanguard Party

Answer: None. They come from Kautsky, Plekanov and Lenin - some from interpreting Hegel, not Marx.

If you want to discuss whether Lenin's version of marxism was an improvement or not, that might be useful.

If you just want to jerk off on a picture of Lenin...then I suppose you're free to do so, but don't ask me to watch.

[Admiral Swagmeister G-Funk]

Sometimes, being an anarchist is very satisfying.

[thefinalmarch]

Lenin was not the elitist dictator his opposition claim he was. For if he was, then he would have never done the following:

• Given “all power to the Soviets”
• Put the people in power
...with his bare hands.

[Tifosi]

Quick quiz. Which of these terms appeared in Marx?

* Historical Materialism

Answer: None.

What about this (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01b.htm#p53)?

[Kronsteen]

* Historical MaterialismWhat about this (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01b.htm#p53)?

First of all, I asked what terms were used, not which broad categories of ideas were used.

More importantly, what Marx calls "The Materialist Conception of History" is not identical with what Plekhanov calls "Dialectical Materialism", and attributes to Marx.

Marx says:

This conception of history depends on our ability to expound the real process of production [...] as the basis of all history; and to show it in its action as State, to explain all the different theoretical products and forms of consciousness, religion, philosophy, ethics, etc. etc. and trace their origins and growth from that basis; [...] it does not explain practice from the idea but explains the formation of ideas from material practice.

It shows that history does not end by being resolved into “self-consciousness as spirit of the spirit,” but that in it at each stage there is found a material result. [...] It shows that circumstances make men just as much as men make circumstances.

Plekhanov says:

It is the economic system of any people that determines its social structure, the latter, in its turn, determining its political and religious structures and the like. [...] 1) the production relations determine all other relations existing among people in their social life. 2) the production relations are, in their turn, determined by the state of the productive forces.

For Marx, you explain history and people's ideas by examining the material conditions in the context of human needs, but you can't predict how any given set of material conditions will make themselves felt.

For Plekhanov, economics determines society, which determines consciousness.

Marx explains, Plekhanov predicts.

[Aspiring Humanist]

Which people did he put in power? Party bureaucrats? Or those pitiful so called workers councils that had no power? If Lenin wasn't a dictator he would not have crushed everything that he didn't like even though it was supportive of the Bolshevik cause (the free territory)

[PolskiLenin]

As soon as I have time, I will be putting up my "In Defence of Lenin" writing. I will look forward to future discussion.

[A Revolutionary Tool]

I like this new guy he's fun to watch.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Lenin himself was a Marxist-Leninist, and his actions in power show it.

"The tacit assumption underlying the Lenin-Trotsky theory of dictatorship is this: that the socialist transformation is something for which a ready-made formula lies completed in the pocket of the revolutionary party, which needs only to be carried out energetically in practice. This is, unfortunately – or perhaps fortunately – not the case. Far from being a sum of ready-made prescriptions which have only to be applied, the practical realization of socialism as an economic, social and juridical system is something which lies completely hidden in the mists of the future. What we possess in our program is nothing but a few main signposts which indicate the general direction in which to look for the necessary measures, and the indications are mainly negative in character at that. Thus we know more or less what we must eliminate at the outset in order to free the road for a socialist economy. But when it comes to the nature of the thousand concrete, practical measures, large and small, necessary to introduce socialist principles into economy, law and all social relationships, there is no key in any socialist party program or textbook. That is not a shortcoming but rather the very thing that makes scientific socialism superior to the utopian varieties."

Rosa Luxembourg above emphasises the difference between the orthodox, Scientific Socialism that Marx was an advocate of, and the Leninism put into practice by, among others...Lenin.

To imagine that there was no continuity of policies from Lenin to the dictatorial, centralised, bureaucratic and party-exceptionalist Stalin period is to literally imagine, as it's far from the reality.

On the question of dictatorship (real dictatorship, not the concept of the DotP), in fact, Rosa Luxembourg analyses and concludes far better than I can in Chapter 8 of The Russian Revolution (1918), when she highlights the mistake made by the Bolsheviks in setting the political landscape as a choice between bourgeois democracy and Bolshevik dictatorship, choosing the latter. Much as the Marxist-Leninists today often see the world in black/white terms on a number of issues (take their inability to see past the obvious two choices [support Qaddafi or support the rebels] in the current Libyan conflict), so the Bolsheviks did in the aftermath of the Russian revolution, and therein lies their (and Lenin's) ultimate theoretical mistake, which only by luck (for Lenin's legacy amongst the left) was largely borne out after his death.

[PolskiLenin]

You should read the following article

The idea that Lenin led to Stalin has been the subject of many a school history essay. Stalin certainly succeeded Lenin as leader of the Russian Communist Party. But is there something within Leninism which led inexorably to the horrors of Stalinism?

Did the politics which led to the victory of the Russian workers in the October Revolution of 1917, have within them the seeds of a brutal dictatorship which still blights workers across Eastern Europe, Russia and beyond?

The answer is no.

Lenin led the Russian workers to victory in 1917 against the will of many a “revolutionary”, even some within his own party. Some argued that Russia, a less developed capitalist country, was not economically strong enough to withstand the turmoil of a workers’ revolution; others that the Russian working class were not numerically and politically strong enough to lead that revolution and to ensure that it became an international revolution.

Both of these factors did become crucial in the years following the revolution. But Lenin recognised in 1917 that the Russian workers were going to fight to the death even if some “learned socialists” did not fancy the odds. What is the role of a revolutionary in such a situation? To stand to one side muttering about bad omens or to fight alongside the workers and try and secure a victory that would inspire workers across the globe? Lenin was clear where the Bolsheviks should be.

And the omens were far from bad. The revolutionary situation which gripped Russia was not an isolated one. The 1914-18 war led to human slaughter on an unprecedented scale and workers across Europe rose up against it. And of course the 1917 Revolution itself became a factor in events.

Inspired by October, British workers defied their bosses and refused to allow arms to be shipped to the White Russians fighting against the workers’ revolution. German and Austrian workers and soldiers embarked on a series of revolutionary struggles only to be betrayed by cowardly reformist leaders. Workers and peasants in the colonies rose against their imperialist oppressors.

As Lenin foresaw, Russia was the opening shot in the world revolution. When the workers seized power in 1917 they expected the European revolution would triumph within years, if not months. The most immediate tasks were to defend the revolution at home and build the revolution internationally.

In the context of the civil war that followed the revolution, the Bolsheviks took steps which some, anarchists for example, see as the first signs of the descent into bureaucratic dictatorship. The Bolsheviks subordinated many aspects of their long term programme for socialist democracy to the needs of winning the civil war and ensuring the workers’ state survived. Among the measures taken other parties were deemed illegal, the Kronstadt rising in 1921 was suppressed and, in the same year, factions within the party were banned.

Some of these measures were absolutely necessary, others, like the banning of factions, were serious errors. But either way Lenin and other revolutionary leaders like Trotsky were united on one vital issue – such measures were absolutely temporary and emergency measures carried through because no other options were open. They were not “norms”, not goals socialists wished to inscribe into their programme.

The gulf separating Lenin from Stalin can be seen in what became known as the “Georgian affair”. At the end of the civil war, as the Bolsheviks set about constructing the Union of Soviet Republics, they met with opposition within some of the republics in the Caucasus. Stalin declared that the decisions of the federal government in Russia were binding on all republics, betraying his tendency towards Great Russian chauvinism and his hostility towards the democratic rights of the oppressed.

It was this position which alerted Lenin to the danger of Stalin. Lenin went to the Politburo and denounced Stalin, arguing for self-determination for all peoples and a free union of Soviet Republics not one imposed bureaucratically from above. As the revolution was no longer in immediate danger, for Lenin political persuasion was what was required not force.

Lenin wrote that Stalin’s methods were “the onslaught of that really Russian man, the Great Russian chauvinist, in substance a rascal and a tyrant”, adding that “Stalin’s haste and his infatuation with pure administration, together with his spite against the notorious ‘nationalist-socialism’, played a fatal role here.”

Thus began Lenin’s last struggle – against Stalin and the rising bureaucracy, a struggle cut short by his death but eventually taken up by Trotsky and the Left Opposition.

The objective situation, however, was beginning to work to the Stalin faction’s advantage. The economic consequences of the civil war and the imperialist encirclement soon began to bite. By the end of the civil war, in 1922 industrial production was at only 25% of pre-war levels.
The Bolsheviks were forced to retreat at the economic level and the New Economic Policy (NEP) was introduced in 1921. Lenin recognised that this was a backward step, allowing the laws of the free market to dominate within certain sectors of the economy in an attempt to encourage the peasantry to produce more and address serious food shortages.

But NEP did not resolve and in fact exacerbated a fundamental problem within the revolutionary Russian economy: the scissors crisis. As industrial production collapsed, industrial costs and prices were rising steeply. The success of the liberalisation of NEP meant that at the same time agricultural prices were plummeting. As industrial prices grew, agricultural prices fell.

Leon Trotsky was one of the first of the Bolsheviks to address the economic problems facing Russia with a conscious strategy of socialist planning. A minority on the Central Committee of the Bolsheviks at the time argued for a massive increase in state subsidised, and planned, industrial development. Trotsky published his “Theses on Industry” in April 1923 and in October of that year formed an official opposition with 46 other party members. The opposition was not simply around the economy but also against the bureaucratisation of the party, which had flourished under NEP.

During this same period the decimation of the working class itself in the civil war and the low level of literacy in Russia meant that the Bolsheviks could not run the state without some of the old Tsarist bureaucracy remaining in place. These state functionaries prospered under NEP and were a political danger to the revolution. It was precisely such time-servers who were to form the political power base of Stalin.
Lenin identified the threat posed by this bureaucracy as early as 1921:

“We do have a bureaucratic ulcer, it has been diagnosed and has to be treated in earnest.”

He called for measures to be taken against the bureaucracy including making them subject to election and recall and having wages no higher than workers. Lenin also hoped that rejuvenated soviets would keep a check on the bureaucracy.

But the Russian working class and its party the Bolshevik Party were, like the economy, scarred by the civil war. The revolutionary workers of Petrograd and Moscow were the first to volunteer for the Red Army and many were lost.

The party grew significantly despite these losses, but many of the newer members were careerists who saw the party as a means to develop their own fortune. This fundamental shift within the class character of the party was consolidated following the death of Lenin in 1924 when the doors to the party were opened up to the Lenin Levy – a quarter of a million new members at one time.
The rise of the bureaucracy mirrored the rise of the Stalin faction. Under their influence the party regime became increasingly hostile to any opposition.

The degeneration of the party can be graphically seen in the differing fates of the two oppositions organised by Trotsky. In 1923 the Platform of the 46 was widely discussed within the party. Stalin did move against them – dismissing the entire leadership of the youth section, the Communist Youth, of the party who were sympathetic to Trotsky – but within a few months the Politburo had agreed the New Course resolution presented by the opposition.

Three years later, the United Opposition was formed in 1926. When they attempted to hold debates meetings were cancelled or physically attacked, the leaders were shot at and arrested. Police methods replaced party discussions and the bureaucracy established its grip on the throat of democracy.

Did Lenin fail to recognise the danger posed by Stalin and Stalinism? No, he wanted to defeat him. Prior to his death Lenin was preparing for a full scale offensive against Stalin at the 12th Congress but he suffered a stroke and Trotsky felt unable to carry on with the attack.

This encouraged Stalin to press ahead, not simply by attacking party democracy but by betraying the core internationalist principles of Bolshevism. Following the defeat of the Bulgarian and German uprisings in 1923 Stalin first published the theory of “Socialism in One Country” in 1924. Russia’s isolation increased the popularity of this theory, the idea that it was possible to create a revolution and maintain it within just one country.

Within the Communist International (CI) the Stalinists moved against those who supported Trotsky in arguing the centrality of internationalising the revolution. International defeats – especially the defeat of the British General Strike of 1926 and the Chinese revolution of 1927 – despite being, to a large extent, caused by Stalin’s political errors, actually served to strengthen the national-centred Stalin faction. Trotsky described how the influence of Stalinism within the CI affected the international situation:

“The leaders of the bureaucracy promoted the proletarian defeats; the defeats promoted the rise of the bureaucracy.”

Stalin’s defeat of Trotsky in the CI was rapidly followed by Trotsky expulsion from the party and eventual deportation from Russia in 1929. Grotesquely twisting certain of the opposition’s proposals for economic development, Stalin instituted the First Five Year Plan in 1928, which included the forcible collectivisation of the peasantry. Bureaucratic, not democratic, planning led to famine, over-production in some sectors, underproduction in others and ultimately to the labour camps.

Stalinism’s grip on the party tightened. Murders and expulsions became commonplace, culminating in the grotesque charade of the show trials and the Great Purges launched in 1936. Every link between Stalin’s Soviet Union and the revolutionary tradition of Bolshevism was severed. Every human link was either killed or sent to the camps. The reaction swept through the whole of society with many of the post-revolutionary gains in social policy – divorce, abortion on demand, legalisation of homosexuality – being taken away.

Lenin did not lead to Stalin. Stalin smashed Leninism in the USSR. This bureaucratic victory was not inevitable. The isolation of the Russian revolution was not god-given. It came courtesy of the west European reformist leaders who either derailed or drowned in blood (Germany) the revolutions which erupted after 1917.

Lenin split with these leaders. Stalin – in the 1930s – made peace with them setting up Popular Fronts with the reformist parties, and even with the open parties of the class enemy. Lenin united the leaders of Bolshevism around a revolutionary programme in an inclusive central committee of the party. Trotsky, commenting in 1939 on the fact that every single member of Lenin’s central committee had been either killed, ousted or exiled drew the conclusion:

“Stalinism had to exterminate first politically and then physically the leading cadres of Bolshevism in order to become what it is now: an apparatus of the privileged, a brake upon historical progress, an agency of world imperialism. Stalinism and Bolshevism are mortal enemies.”

- League for the fifth international

[North Star]

Lenin himself was a Marxist-Leninist, and his actions in power show it.

"The tacit assumption underlying the Lenin-Trotsky theory of dictatorship is this: that the socialist transformation is something for which a ready-made formula lies completed in the pocket of the revolutionary party, which needs only to be carried out energetically in practice. This is, unfortunately – or perhaps fortunately – not the case. Far from being a sum of ready-made prescriptions which have only to be applied, the practical realization of socialism as an economic, social and juridical system is something which lies completely hidden in the mists of the future. What we possess in our program is nothing but a few main signposts which indicate the general direction in which to look for the necessary measures, and the indications are mainly negative in character at that. Thus we know more or less what we must eliminate at the outset in order to free the road for a socialist economy. But when it comes to the nature of the thousand concrete, practical measures, large and small, necessary to introduce socialist principles into economy, law and all social relationships, there is no key in any socialist party program or textbook. That is not a shortcoming but rather the very thing that makes scientific socialism superior to the utopian varieties."

Rosa Luxembourg above emphasizes the difference between the orthodox, Scientific Socialism that Marx was an advocate of, and the Leninism put into practice by, among others...Lenin.

To imagine that there was no continuity of policies from Lenin to the dictatorial, centralised, bureaucratic and party-exceptionalist Stalin period is to literally imagine, as it's far from the reality.

On the question of dictatorship (real dictatorship, not the concept of the DotP), in fact, Rosa Luxembourg analyses and concludes far better than I can in Chapter 8 of The Russian Revolution (1918), when she highlights the mistake made by the Bolsheviks in setting the political landscape as a choice between bourgeois democracy and Bolshevik dictatorship, choosing the latter. Much as the Marxist-Leninists today often see the world in black/white terms on a number of issues (take their inability to see past the obvious two choices [support Qaddafi or support the rebels] in the current Libyan conflict), so the Bolsheviks did in the aftermath of the Russian revolution, and therein lies their (and Lenin's) ultimate theoretical mistake, which only by luck (for Lenin's legacy amongst the left) was largely borne out after his death.

Luxembourg has a point to an extent, but it is abstracted because it ignores the reality of Russia in 1917. There was a small proletariat and Russia was a peasant dominated country. Lenin made revolution for Europe not Russia. He certainly made many mistakes but Luxembourg's criticisms while having some valid points are ultimately pointless on the whole because it was now up to Germany to have a revolution.

[Binh]

Leninism? There's no such thing. Sorry.

[Weezer]

Leninism? There's no such thing. Sorry.

That's cute. :)

[The Dark Side of the Moon]

You should read the following article

The idea that Lenin led to Stalin has been the subject of many a school history essay. Stalin certainly succeeded Lenin as leader of the Russian Communist Party. But is there something within Leninism which led inexorably to the horrors of Stalinism?

oh yes horrors of stalinism, lets see, on the bad side he killed about 1 million people, but on the good side he ended famine, industrialized a feudal country, pushed back the greatest threat in human history, and had a cool mustache:p

so yes stalin was a fucking monster.

for the record that comes from a very pro capitalism book. The black book of communism

[Kronsteen]

Leninism? There's no such thing. Sorry.

That is either an extremely incisive and bold hypothesis, or an incredibly stupid thing to say.

Perhaps you could post you reasoning, so we can know which?

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Luxembourg has a point to an extent, but it is abstracted because it ignores the reality of Russia in 1917. There was a small proletariat and Russia was a peasant dominated country. Lenin made revolution for Europe not Russia. He certainly made many mistakes but Luxembourg's criticisms while having some valid points are ultimately pointless on the whole because it was now up to Germany to have a revolution.

Her point about dictatorship and democracy actually transcends the problems of revolution in Russia at that point.

Indeed, she clearly states that the Bolsheviks could not take the Kautsky-style route and pull back from their revolutionary aims. In fact, i'd say that Luxemburg was far too congratulatory to the Bolsheviks in terms of their actual making of revolution, but perhaps that was just pleasantries on paper.

[Rooster]

oh yes horrors of stalinism, lets see, on the bad side he killed about 1 million people, but on the good side he ended famine, industrialized a feudal country, pushed back the greatest threat in human history, and had a cool mustache:p

Russia wasn't a feudal country. Despite it being backwards, Russia did have some of the most up to date and very large factories with a very concentrated work force. Much of the industry was built up pre-war with large investments from out of the country in money and technology and outside professionals/engineers.

[Q]

Russia wasn't a feudal country. Despite it being backwards, Russia did have some of the most up to date and very large factories with a very concentrated work force. Much of the industry was built up pre-war with large investments from out of the country in money and technology and outside professionals/engineers.

That only applied to about 15% of the population though. The other 85% were still living under very feudal relations. Serfdom was only - officially - abolished a few decades before (yet still in use in many places up to the revolution).

[Uncle Rob]

BUT, unfortunately, many misconceptions are bred by the ridiculous term: Marxist-Leninism. This “Marxist-Leninism” really isn’t Leninism or even Marxism it all. Adherers to the latter tendency idolize Marx, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao Zedong.

Marxism-Leninists doesn't "idolize" anybody. Idolization is anti-Marxist. Not to mention, not all Marxist-Leninists uphold Mao. Many of them, such as myself, see Mao as a revisionist.


If they actually knew what Marxism was, they wouldn’t dare call themselves such an abomination. Marxist Leninism is the very elitist, revisionist Marxism that characterized the Stalinist U.S.S.R. – which from the point of Stalin’s bureaucratization on…wasn’t truly socialist/communist/Marxist. Real Marxism is powered by the people, which Lenin advocated, not the elites.

Yeah....If you knew what Marxism was you wouldn't reduce a class analysis of the U.S.S.R. to liberal characterizations such as "bureaucratization", "power by the people" and "elites".

If you knew what Marxism was, I doubt your post would be nothing more than an overly dramatic, idolization of Lenin. I will not deny his very important contributions to Marxist thought but there is little substance to this post other than intellectual masturbation to his name.

On a final note, you should probably explain how or why Marxist-Leninism is, as you say, an "abomination" instead of simply insulting it if you want at all to be taken seriously.

[robbo203]

Leninism is at odds with Marxism in several important respects as this article makes clear:


Marx and Lenin's views contrasted


Lenin stood for state capitalism and argued that socialist democracy is in no way inconsistent with the rule and dictatorship of one person. Was Lenin a Marxist?

Marx and his co-worker, Engels, consistently argued that socialism (or communism, they used the terms interchangeably) could only evolve out of the political and economic circumstances created by a fully developed capitalism. In other words, production would have to be expanded within capitalism to a point where the potential existed to allow for "each [to take] according to their needs". In turn, this objective condition would have created the basis for a socialist-conscious majority willing to contribute their physical and mental skills voluntarily in the production and distribution of society's needs.

With the extension of the suffrage, Marx claimed (in 1872) that the workers might now achieve power in the leading countries of capitalism by peaceful means. Given the fact that socialism will be based on the widest possible human co-operation, it need hardly be said that Marx consistently emphasised that its achievement had to be the work of a majority.

Again, given their understanding of the nature of socialist society, Marx and Engels saw socialism essentially in world terms: a global alternative to the system of global capitalism.

In the very first sentence of his monumental work, Capital, Marx wrote that "the wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails presents itself as a vast accumulation of commodities". He then went on to define the nature of a commodity in economic terms as an item of real or imagined wealth produced for sale on the market with a view to profit.

Marx claimed the wages system was the quintessential instrument of capitalist exploitation of the working class. He urged workers to remove from their banners the conservative slogan of "A fair day's pay for a fair day's work" and to inscribe instead "Abolition of the wages system!" Throughout his writings, he repeats in different form the admonition that "wage labour and capital are two sides of the same coin".

Marx considered that nationalisation could be a means of accelerating the development of capitalism but did not support nationalisation as such. On the contrary, he argued that the more the state became involved in taking over areas of production, the more it became the national capitalist.

Marx saw the state as the "executive committee" of a ruling class. In a socialist society, he affirmed, the state, as the government of people, would give way to a simple, democratic "administration of things".

Marx's vision of a socialist society can be fairly summed up as a world-wide system of social organisation based on the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by, and in the interests of, the whole community.

In other words, a universal classless, wageless and moneyless society wherein human beings would voluntarily contribute in accordance with their mental and/or physical abilities to the production and distribution of the needs of their society and in which everyone would have free and equal access to their needs.

Lenin's distortions
Post-Czarist Russia was a backward poorly developed and largely feudal country where the industrial proletariat was a relatively small minority. To suggest that Russia could undergo a socialist revolution (as Lenin did in 1917) is a complete denial of the Marxist view of history. Indeed, following the news of the Bolshevik coup, the Socialist Standard (official organ of the Socialist Party of Great Britain) wrote:

"Is this huge mass of people, numbering about 160 million and spread over eight and a half million of square miles, ready for Socialism? Are the hunters of the north, the struggling peasant proprietors of the south, the agricultural wage slaves of the Central Provinces and the wage slaves of the towns convinced of the necessity for, and equipped with the knowledge requisite for the establishment of the social ownership of the means of life? Unless a mental revolution such as the world has never seen before has taken place or an economic change immensely more rapidly than history has ever recorded, the answer is 'NO!'"(August 1918).

Lenin persistently rejected the view that the working class was capable of achieving socialism without leaders. He argued that trade union consciousness represented the peak of working class consciousness. Socialism, he affirmed, would be achieved by a band of revolutionaries at the head of a discontented but non-socialist-conscious working class. The Bolshevik "revolution" was a classic example of Leninist thinking; in fact it was a coup d'état carried out by professional revolutionaries and based on the populist slogan, "Peace, Land and Bread". Socialism was not on offer, nor could it have been.

It is true that Lenin and his Bolsheviks wrongly thought their Russian coup would spark off similar revolts in Western Europe and, especially, in Germany. Not only was this a monumental political error, but it was based on Lenin's erroneous perception of socialism and his belief that his distorted conceptions could be imposed on the working class of Western Europe which was, generally, better politically organised and more sophisticated than the people of Russia.

Probably for practical purposes – since no other course was open to them – Lenin and his Bolsheviks could not accept the Marxian view that commodity production was an identifying feature of capitalism. Following the Bolshevik seizure of power, the production of wealth in the form of commodities was the only option open to the misnamed Communist Party. Commodity production continued and was an accepted feature of life in "communist" Russia, just as it is today following the demise of state-capitalism in the Russian empire.

Back in 1905 Stalin, in a pamphlet (Socialism or Anarchism), argued the Marxian view that "future society would be . . . wageless . . . classless . . . moneyless", etc. In power the Bolsheviks proliferated the wages system making it an accepted feature of Russian life. Wage differentials, too, were frequently greater than those obtaining in western society. Surplus value, from which the capitalist class derives its income in the form of profit, rent and interest became the basis of the bloated lifestyles of the bureaucracy. A contrasting feature of state-capitalism and "private" capitalism is that, in the latter, the beneficiaries of the exploitation of labour derive their wealth and privilege from the direct ownership of capital whereas, in the former, wealth and privilege were the benefits of political power.

There is a wide chasm between the views of Marx and those of Lenin in their understanding of the nature of socialism, of how it would be achieved and of the manner of its administration. Marx sees socialism as the abolition of ownership (implied in the term "common ownership"). His vision is a stateless, classless and moneyless society which, by its nature, could only come to fruition when a conscious majority wanted it and wherein the affairs of the human family would be democratically administered. A form of social organisation in which people would voluntarily contribute their skills and abilities in exchange for the freedom of living in a society that guarantees their needs and wherein the poverty, repression and violence of capitalism would have no place.

Lenin's simple definition of socialism is set out in his The Impending Catastrophe and How to Combat It (September 1917): "Socialism is merely state-capitalist monopoly which is made to serve the whole people". Lenin knew that he was introducing a new definition of socialism here which was not to be found in Marx but claimed that there were two stages after capitalism: socialism (his new definition) and communism (what Marxists had always understood by socialism: a stateless, classless, moneyless, wageless society). However, so new was this definition that other Bolshevik publications of the same period still argued that "socialism is the highest form of social organisation that mankind can achieve".

Marx would obviously have concurred with the latter claim but, as has been shown, would have rejected completely the suggestion that socialism had anything to do with nationalisation or that it could be established over the heads of the working class.

Obviously Lenin was being consistent with his "nationalisation" theory when, in Left-Wing Childishness (May 1918) he proclaimed the need for state capitalism. It is true, of course, that the situation in Russia left the Bolsheviks no alternative to the development of capitalism under the aegis of the state. The fact is, however, that the concept of state capitalism is wholly consistent with Lenin's misunderstanding of the nature of socialism. State capitalism achieved a permanent place in the Russian economy and Communist Party propaganda exported it as being consistent with the views of Marx.

The contrast between Marx and Lenin is demonstrated most strikingly in Lenin's view of the nature and role of the state. Whereas Marx saw the state as a feature of class society that would be used by a politically-conscious working class to bring about the transfer of power and then be abolished, Lenin saw the state as a permanent and vital part of what he perceived as socialism, relegating Marx's abolition of the state to the dim and distant future in communism while in the meantime the state had to be strengthened. The Russian state and its coercive arms became a huge, brutal dictatorship under Lenin, who set the scene for the entry of the dictator, Stalin.

That Lenin approved of dictatorship, even that of a single person, was spelt out clearly in a speech he made (On Economic Reconstruction) on the 31 March 1920:

"Now we are repeating what was approved by the Central EC two years ago . . . Namely, that the Soviet Socialist Democracy (sic!) is in no way inconsistent with the rule and dictatorship of one person; that the will of a class is at best realised by a Dictator who sometimes will accomplish more by himself and is frequently more needed" (Lenin: Collected Works, Vol. 17, p. 89. First Russian Edition).

This statement alone should be enough to convince any impartial student of Marxism that there was no meeting of minds between Marx and Lenin.

Russia, after the Bolshevik coup and the establishment of state capitalism became a brutal, totalitarian dictatorship. The fact that that its new ruling class exploited the working class through its political power instead of economic power meant that the workers were denied the protection of independent organisations such as trade unions or political organisations.

The western media, particularly oblivious to the implications of communism even as defined sometimes in their dictionaries, frequently drew attention to the poverty of the Russian workers. Conversely, and correctly, it also drew attention to the privileged and opulent lifestyles of the "communist" bosses. The same media, apparently without any sense of contradiction, was telling the public in the western world what the "Communist"-controlled media were telling workers in the Russian empire: that Russia represented the Marxian concept of a "classless" society.

The litmus test of the existence of "communism" for western journalists was recognition of the claim, by a state or a political party, that is was either "socialist" or "communist". Similar claims by such states and parties to be "democratic" was never given the slightest credibility. It might be argued that those who rejected the "democratic" claim knew a little about democracy whereas they appear to know nothing whatsoever about socialism.

The contradiction between the views of Marx and Lenin set out above relate to fundamental issues. Inevitably, however, they formed the basis for numerous other conflicts of opinion between Marxism and Leninism. In the light of these basic contradictions, it is absurd and dishonest to claim that there is any compatibility between Marx's concept of a free, democratic socialist society and the brutal state capitalism espoused by Lenin. Journalists, especially, should be in no doubt about the interests they serve when they promulgate the lie that Marxism or socialism exists anywhere in the world.
http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/dec01/marx.html