Where did Lenin say this?

[Caj]

[S]ocialism is nothing but state capitalist monopoly made to benefit the whole people[.]

When I googled it, it said it's from Lenin's Toward the Seizure of Power. However, I cannot locate that text on marxists.org. Is there a different name for it?

[Astarte]

I think said work is "Lenin Apocrypha", meaning it is not included in the Progress Publisher's Collected Works of Lenin in English, but can be found in International Publisher's (this was the CPUSA's publishing house) vol. XXI of Lenin's Collected works, published in 1932.

http://www.bookfinder.com/search/?ac=sl&st=sl&ref=bf_s2_a5_t1_10&qi=hKPjaWiz9bxwlNgMWuzl6hgIAJA_1625077243_1:32:590&bq=author%3Dvladimir%2520i%2520lenin%26title%3Dcol lected%2520works%2520of%2520v%2Ei%2E%2520lenin%2E% 2520toward%2520the%2520seizure%2520of%2520power%2E %2520vol%2E%2520xxi

I think Marxists.org as far as the collected works go is based on the Progress Publisher's editions.

[Geiseric]

I'm not sure if that's something Lenin would say, must be from his early days. Or it was taken out of context, everything i've read from Lenin states otherwise.

[el_chavista]

From Die Neue Zeit's article "The Class Struggle Revisited":


Lenin: Proletocratic “State Socialist”

“Nobody has combatted State Socialism more than we German Socialists, nobody has shown more distinctively than I,
that State Socialism is really State capitalism!” (Wilhelm Liebknecht, "The Political Position of Social-Democracy")

What was this “state socialism” that Wilhelm Liebknecht, the father of the revolutionary martyr Karl Liebknecht,
was talking about? Just mere days before the “October Revolution” (November 7, 1917), Lenin had this to say about German “state socialism”[The Impending Catastrophe and How to Combat It]:


And therefore what the German Plekhanovs (Scheidemann, Lensch, and others) call "war-time socialism" is in fact war-time state-monopoly capitalism, or, to put it more simply and clearly, war-time penal servitude for the workers and war-time protection for capitalist profits.
Now try to substitute for the Junker-capitalist state, for the landowner-capitalist state, a revolutionary-democratic state, i.e., a state which in a revolutionary way abolishes all privileges and does not fear to introduce the fullest democracy in a revolutionary way. You will find that, given a really revolutionary-democratic state, state-monopoly capitalism inevitably and unavoidably implies a step, and more than one step, towards socialism!

However, the combative tone of Liebknecht implied that he meant something much more. Indeed, in 1889, he had this to say[On The Political Position of Social-Democracy]:

For if that happens it is only too easy to forget, in the struggle for material improvements, for higher wages, that the bourgeois mode of production in its entirety has to be reorganized, that the wage system as a whole must be abolished.

Unfortunately, Lenin was all too euphoric about the potential of worker-controlled state capitalism, going as far as to equate it with “socialism”:

For socialism is merely the next step forward from state-capitalist monopoly. Or, in other words, socialism is merely state-capitalist monopoly which is made to serve the interests of the whole people and has to that extent ceased to be capitalist monopoly.

[Dave B]

V. I. Lenin THE IMPENDING CATASTROPHE AND HOW TO COMBAT IT written in september 1917 apparently.




For socialism is merely the next step forward from state-capitalist monopoly. Or, in other words, socialism is merely state-capitalist monopoly which is made to serve the interests of the whole people and has to that extent ceased to be capitalist monopoly.

page 361


http://www.marx2mao.net/Lenin/IC17.html


There is a compilation of Lenin’s state capitalism quotes at post 18 on this site

http://www.revleft.com/vb/lenin-and-...579/index.html

[Kadir Ateş]

Kind of puts perspective on the same man who once wrote that Marx's letter to Kugelmann on value theory should be re-read before one approaches Capital...

[Caj]

Kind of puts perspective on the same man who once wrote that Marx's letter to Kugelmann on value theory should be re-read before one approaches Capital...

What exactly are you referring to?

[Kadir Ateş]

What exactly are you referring to?

This: http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1907/feb/05.htm

Specifically:


"[Marx] teaches us his method, using the most common objections as illustrations. He makes clear the connection between such a purely (it would seem) theoretical and abstract question as the theory of value and “the interest of the ruling classes”, which must be “to perpetuate confusion”. It is only to be hoped that every one who begins to study Marx and read Capital will read and re-read this letter when studying the first and most difficult chapters of that book."

[Dave B]

this famous passage I guess?

http://www.marx2mao.com/Lenin/PRTK07.html

[Dave B]

he beat me to it, Drat!

[daft punk]

I cant post links at the mo but it is at marxists dot org. The wording is slightly different. It is the 1917 article The Impending Catastrophe and How to Avoid it.

marxists has a search engine for each writer so you can search the Lenin archive for phrases and so on, to find stuff.

"Either in the interest of the landowners and capitalists, in which case we have not a revolutionary-democratic, but a reactionary-bureaucratic state, an imperialist republic. Or in the interest of revolutionary democracy—and then it is a step towards socialism.
For socialism is merely the next step forward from state-capitalist monopoly. Or, in other words, socialism is merely state-capitalist monopoly which is made to serve the interests of the whole people and has to that extent ceased to be capitalist monopoly.
There is no middle course here. The objective process of development is such that it is impossible to advance from monopolies (and the war has magnified their number, role and importance tenfold) without advancing towards socialism."

[workersadvocate]

Yes, the Impending Catastrophe...

Lenin references this in another piece written in April 1918, called 'Left Wing' Childness and the Petty Bourgeois Mentality.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/may/09.htm

BTW, I'd love to get comrades' opinions on that piece I've linked.

[Die Neue Zeit]

When I googled it, it said it's from Lenin's Toward the Seizure of Power. However, I cannot locate that text on marxists.org. Is there a different name for it?

Comrade El Chavista quoted me, but indeed the direct source is

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/ichtci/index.htm#11

(The Impending Catastrophe and How to Combat It)


Yes, the Impending Catastrophe...

Lenin references this in another piece written in April 1918, called 'Left Wing' Childness and the Petty Bourgeois Mentality.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/may/09.htm

BTW, I'd love to get comrades' opinions on that piece I've linked.

That multi-economy stuff is a good transitional model. It needs tweaking for modern circumstances and Marx vs. Kautsky on the role of money, but sufficed to say there are cooperative elements, state-capitalist elements, money-based but directively planned elements (from Stalin to Kosygin), labour-credit elements, and free-access/gift elements:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/state-capitalism-necessary-t166014/index.html?p=2322961


There are various forms utilized in the transition. Most of them involve Generalized Commodity Production, including all the examples below.

There's extensive, real state capitalism to start, not just government spending as a percentage of GDP, or mere protectionism, dirigisme, and all that crap. The core of this is a minimum of indicative planning. Worker coops "with state aid" (Lassalleans, Eisenarchers) could be promoted. With nationalizations, this is the minimum market socialism.

Then there's Lenin's "state-capitalist monopoly which is made to serve the interests of the whole people" definition of "socialism," derived from Kautsky's The Social Revolution and in fact less radical than the more directives-based Stalinist economy. When applied to a particular sector, in this scenario the state owns all of the MOP in that sector (no small enterprises or even coops), but market socialism with indicative planning is still the norm. Consumers buy and sell at market prices, and more importantly, so do state enterprises (labour markets and capital markets).

When I said that "all agriculture must be based on public-paid wage labour (i.e., sovkhozization by hook and by crook)," here's an example of a sector that should be subject to this state-capitalist monopoly (which the Soviets, much less the Eastern Europeans, never had):

http://www.revleft.com/vb/national-democratization-industrial-t143922/index.html

A Fully Socialized Labour Market, whereby the state is the de jure employer of everybody, would contract all labour out to all of the above and to what's below (which the Soviets didn't have, thus having chronic problems with enterprises hoarding labour):

http://www.revleft.com/vb/supply-side-political-t152098/index.html

Then there's the directive-based economy, but one that retains money. When applied to a particular sector, in this scenario the state owns all of the MOP in that sector, and directive planning throughout that sector is applied. Indeed, there are no labour markets or capital markets. However, Generalized Commodity Production is still retained; money is still retained because things like working capital, current assets less current liabilities, need to be taken into account.

An example of a sector that should be subject to this directive-based economy is none other than the socialist polity's defense industry, thus having a Fully Socialized Defense Industry:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/us-deficit-debate-t158896/index.html?p=2191600