Lenin on Freedom: "a bourgeois middle-class virtue"

[Caj]

According to Sam Dolgoff's Bakunin on Anarchy, Lenin once said that "freedom is a bourgeois middle-class virtue[.]" I was wondering if any one knew of the specific work in which Lenin stated this.

[Susurrus]

I googled it, and the only thing that it came up in was in Bakunin on Anarchy, thought that may have to do with the translation.

[CHE with an AK]

I've never come across the quote before, but I could see Lenin saying it, and could argue that it is correct.

I would imagine he is referring to how the bourgeois middle-class clings to the word "freedom" and falsely thinks that if they are allowed to make all the money they want, and work where they choose, and shout on a street corner whatever they feel like - that they have true "freedom" ... when in reality, they don't, as they still exist under the skeletal structure of oppressive capitalism.

Americans in particular love to say "America is the land of the free" or the "free(est) country on earth" ... when you mostly just have the freedom to starve, the freedom to be homeless, the freedom to exploit others, the freedom to not recieve healthcare, the freedom to work for a shitty unlivable wage, the freedom to not unionize (in most states), the freedom to be racist/sexist/homophobic/xenophobic etc.

[piet11111]

Sounds like a quote from the black book of communism.

[Dave B]

I think the basic idea, depending how you would want to interpret it, is there.

“Democracy” and Dictatorship


The Scheidemanns and Kautsky's speak about "pure democracy" and "democracy" in general for the purpose of deceiving the people and concealing from them the bourgeois character of present-day democracy. Let the bourgeoisie continue to keep the entire apparatus of state power in their hands, let a handful of exploiters continue to use the former, bourgeois, state machine! Elections held in such circumstances are lauded by the bourgeoisie, for very good reasons, as being "free", "equal", "democratic" and "universal".

These words are designed to conceal the truth, to conceal the fact that the means of production and political power remain in the hands of the exploiters , and that therefore real freedom and real equality for the exploited, that is, for the vast majority of the population, are out of the question. It is profitable and indispensable for the bourgeoise to conceal from the people the bourgeois character of modern democracy, to picture it as democracy in general or "pure democracy", and the Scheidemanns and Kautskys, repeating this, in practice abandon the standpoint of the proletariat and side with the bourgeoisie.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/dec/23.htm


The same argument can be applied to Bolshevik vanguardism;



But the (Bolshevik) dictatorship of (over) the proletariat cannot be exercised through an organisation embracing the whole of that class (and therefore it is ‘out of the question’), because in all capitalist countries (and not only over here, in one of the most backward) the proletariat is still so divided, so degraded, and so corrupted in parts (by imperialism in some countries) that an organisation taking in the whole proletariat cannot directly exercise proletarian (Bolshevik) dictatorship.

It can be exercised only by a vanguard that has absorbed the revolutionary energy of the class. The whole is like an arrangement of cogwheels
http://marxists.anu.edu.au/archive/lenin/works/1920/dec/30.htm



Lenins general idea repeated elsewhere eg;


http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1919/mar/comintern.htm


http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/prrk/democracy.htm


In this context the argument was put to justify the political repression of any group that were designated as petty bourgeoisie or agents of the capitalists class etc etc.

Despite the fact that in 1905 Lenin considered that the attainment of ‘political bourgeois liberties’, as in Switzerland, would be progress;


Two Tactics of Social-Democracy in the Democratic Revolution, 1905;


The democratic revolution in Russia is a bourgeois revolution by reason of its social and economic content. But a mere repetition of this correct Marxian proposition is not enough. It must be properly understood and properly applied in political slogans. In general, all political liberties that are founded on present-day, i.e., capitalist, relations of production are bourgeois liberties.

The demand for liberty expresses primarily the interests of the bourgeoisie. Its representatives were the first to raise this demand. Its supporters have everywhere used the liberty they acquired like masters, reducing it to moderate and meticulous bourgeois doses, combining it with the most subtle methods of suppressing the revolutionary proletariat in peaceful times and with brutally cruel methods in stormy times.


But only the rebel Narodniks, the anarchists and the “Economists” could deduce from this that the struggle for liberty should be rejected or disparaged. These intellectual-philistine doctrines could be foisted on the proletariat only for a time and against its will. The proletariat always realised instinctively that it needed political liberty, needed it more than anyone else, despite the fact that its immediate effect would be to strengthen and to organise the bourgeoisie. http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1905/tactics/ch13.htm

[Die Neue Zeit]

Liberty is a bourgeois and petit-bourgeois value.

Freedom is a muddled word.

Emancipation should be adopted by today's working class.

[thesadmafioso]

It sounds like it was referring to freedom in its bourgeoisie manifestations and uses as opposed to a communistic application of the term. He wrote a great deal about the concept of the temporary separation of rights on the basis of class in "State and Revolution", so I could see that serving as a fitting context.

[RadioRaheem84]

I feel like sometimes I sound like a broken record but we should really look at what is meant by freedom. What was Lenin presupposing?

Surely he meant the bourgeois definition of freedom and liberty.

[BostonCharlie]

Perhaps Lenin had this line from the Manifesto in mind:


It (the bourgeoisie) has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom — Free Trade (in modern terms, free enterprise). In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.

(Italicized additions are mine)

[freya4]

Well, according to Emma Goldman, Lenin once said, "Free speech is a bourgeois prejudice". If you think about it in context, it does make sense. What good is free speech if you're starving, unemployed and don't have a roof over your head? What kind of freedom is that? The liberal notion of freedom is false and illusory. True liberty cannot be realized while proletarian labor is being exploited by the parasitic capitalists. There is no freedom in being a wage slave. So when the bourgeoisie speak of "democracy" or "equality" or "freedom", it must be recognized that these words are merely but slogans used to keep the workers from realizing the lack of true democracy, equality and freedom they are given.

[Princess Luna]

Well, according to Emma Goldman, Lenin once said, "Free speech is a bourgeois prejudice". If you think about it in context, it does make sense. What good is free speech if you're starving, unemployed and don't have a roof over your head? What kind of freedom is that? The liberal notion of freedom is false and illusory. True liberty cannot be realized while proletarian labor is being exploited by the parasitic capitalists. There is no freedom in being a wage slave. So when the bourgeoisie speak of "democracy" or "equality" or "freedom", it must be recognized that these words are merely but slogans used to keep the workers from realizing the lack of true democracy, equality and freedom they are given.
Because starving, being unemployed and not having a roof over your head is hard enough without the added pressure of having the police breathing down your neck, just waiting for you to say something bad about the state/government so they can haul you off to a secret prison.

[piet11111]

The universal freedom to buy a ferrari just as a poor man as well as a banker is free to sleep on a park bench.

[Luís Henrique]

I am pretty sure it is a lie. Doesn't sound like anything that Lenin would actually say.

Luís Henrique