Lenin, State & Revolution: Withering away of state = withering of democracy?

[Ritzy Cat]

I'm reading Lenin's State & Revolution, but I'm having some trouble understanding what he means in this passage:

"...The abolition of the state means also the abolition of democracy; that the withering away of the state means the withering away of democracy. At first sight this assertion seems exceedingly strange and incomprehensible; indeed, someone may even begin to fear that we are xpecting the advent of an order of society in which the principle of the subordination of the minority to the majority will not be respected--for is not democracy the recognition of this principle? No, democracy is not identical with the subordination of the minority of the majority. Democracy is a state which recognizes the subordination of the minority to the majority, i.e., an organization for the systematic use of violence by one class against the other, by one section of the population against another"

Could someone clear this up for me? He is certainly right in saying that, at first, it appears exceedingly strange and incomprehensible to me!

Does he mean that the institution of "democracy" as a tool of class oppression (with an added element of legitimacy for the oppressors because its "democratic") will also wither away, but to be replaced by the dictatorship of the proletariat?

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Democracy is one of the forms the state takes; it is one of the ways in which political violence by a ruling class is organised. When the state has withered away, there is no more political violence, no more ruling class, no government over people, no matter how "democratic". To me it seems quite clear - likewise the world socialist community will not be a republic, not because it will have a king (or caesar), but because it will not include any sort of state power, whether led by a king or a president.

[Comrade Jacob]

Democracy is the oppression of the minority by the majority (at least in it's actual form). The withering away of the state would mean there would be no democracy because there would be no state.

[cyu]

Everyone wants to go to the city of anarcho-communism, but we just choose different roads and vehicles to get there ^^

[DOOM]

Democracy today is used to determine the state's approach in legislation concerning the management of private property. Different factions within the bourgeoisie channel their power to rally as much people as possible behind their specific cause, which is never the sublation of private property.
It's needless to say that such a form of democracy - whether it's representative or direct - is obsolete under socialism. The only thing that would matter in socialism is the socially determined production plan.

[Tim Cornelis]

But Lenin is saying the opposite of what you're saying DOOM. He's saying democracy is the subjugation of the minority (bourgeoisie for instance) to the majority (proletariat). He's saying there's no such thing as "bourgeois democracy", oddly. It's based on a misconception of what democracy means. Democracy isn't simply majoritarianism, as Lenin seems to suggest.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

No, he's saying that democracy is the state form where the course of action which attains majority support is preferred to the course of action that has only minority support. This is perfectly compatible with the ruling class being a minority, as long as proposals representing the interest of that class are guaranteed to achieve majority support, because of the structure of the state apparatus and the nature of class society.

See e.g. his " (https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1919/mar/comintern.htm)Thesis and Report on Bourgeois Democracy and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat" (https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1919/mar/comintern.htm) from the First Congress of the CI.

[DOOM]

But Lenin is saying the opposite of what you're saying DOOM. He's saying democracy is the subjugation of the minority (bourgeoisie for instance) to the majority (proletariat). He's saying there's no such thing as "bourgeois democracy", oddly. It's based on a misconception of what democracy means. Democracy isn't simply majoritarianism, as Lenin seems to suggest.

Ah, I see. He's basically saying that bourgeois democracy isn't "true" democracy and only the form achieved in the DoTP is, even though this form will wither away with the DoTP together.
And you've already said it, this only holds true if we consider democracy to be majoritarianism, which isn't the case.

[Emmett Till]

But Lenin is saying the opposite of what you're saying DOOM. He's saying democracy is the subjugation of the minority (bourgeoisie for instance) to the majority (proletariat). He's saying there's no such thing as "bourgeois democracy", oddly. It's based on a misconception of what democracy means. Democracy isn't simply majoritarianism, as Lenin seems to suggest.

What is democracy? Let's go back to the original Greek.

Ancient Greece was a class divided society, in which the three prime classes were the slaves, the demos, the lower class nonslaves, and the aristos, the upper classes. So, since freedom for the slaves was basically impossible at that stage of historic development, the question was which class would rule? Democracy or aristocracy?

Over in Rome, the lowest nonslave class was the proletarians, those with no property, no work, and no connection to to the means of production in a society totally based on slavery, more so even than ancient Greece. Whose only contribution to society was procreation giving birth to children i.e. "proles." "Dictatorship" is a Latin derived word, Rome had "dictators" who would, literally, dictate to everyone else.

"Proletarian" was an insult in ancient Rome, "proletarians" were what American bourgeois sociologists call the "underclass," and Marxists call the lumpenproletariat. Proletarian in modern times was a slur against factory workers, taken up as a point of pride by European workers more or less like lately gay people sometimes like to call themselves "queer."

So, if you stick to the original meaning of the words, the biggest difference between "democracy" and "the dictatorship of the proletariat" is the difference between the Latin and Greek languages.

And that's why America's founding fathers, classic scholars all, considered democracy to be a dirty word. Later, starting with that supreme con artist Thomas Jefferson, "democracy" was reinterpreted into something else. Let us not fall into bourgeois deceptions.

Bourgeois democracy is the rule of the bourgeoisie in popular disguise. Proletarian democracy, as advocated by Lenin, is a return to using the word in its proper meaning, without deception.

And Lenin by the way *did not* mean by proletarian democracy the rule of the majority. After all, the vast majority of the Russian population were peasants. Proletarian democracy meant that the workers, only some 10% of the Russian population at the time, would be in charge.

[RedMaterialist]

Does he mean that the institution of "democracy" as a tool of class oppression (with an added element of legitimacy for the oppressors because its "democratic") will also wither away, but to be replaced by the dictatorship of the proletariat?

I think he meant that democracy is itself a form of state (literally, rule of the people.) The dictatorship of the proletariat is a form of state (whether democratic, republican, dictator, etc.) in which the proletariat suppresses and finally destroys the capitalist classes. This suppression is the same type of force used by previous states against subjected classes, i.e. the slave state, the feudal state and the bourgeois state. The sole reason for the existence of a "state" is the suppression by force by one group of people of another.

There is one historically revolutionary difference. One the proletariat has destroyed (one hopes by peaceful means, of course) all classes except itself then the state will have no basis for existence, there will be no class left to suppress or exploit. The state, the dictatorship of the proletariat, will then begin to wither away and die.

[Ritzy Cat]

Thanks for the responses comrades, the idea is becoming more fluid in my head now.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

The only thing that would matter in socialism is the socially determined production plan.

Isn't that something to inspire and look forward to?

[The Feral Underclass]

like lately gay people sometimes like to call themselves "queer."

Apologies to sidetrack the discussion, but I just wanted to be clear about this: the word "queer" isn't a term exclusive to gay people and didn't emerge as an alternative to the word gay.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Isn't that something to inspire and look forward to?

Well, I don't know about you, but to me, a society where the productive capacities of humankind are employed based on a general, scientific social plan instead of anarchically, and where there are no busybodies on a power trip telling me how to live my life (not even to enforce what is Moral and Just) sounds like a pretty good society to me.

[Burzhuin]

What Lenin meant is socialism moving towards communism the democracy will be dissipating. It means that society will be becoming more mature, where people will KNOW that what is good for society is good for them.

[Trap Queen Voxxy]

How well did that work out in the past?

http://www.clickondetroit.com/image/view/-/30295000/highRes/2/-/maxw/640/-/sphtw7/-/Kermit-the-Frog-sipping-tea-jpg.jpg

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Well, I don't know about you, but to me, a society where the productive capacities of humankind are employed based on a general, scientific social plan instead of anarchically, and where there are no busybodies on a power trip telling me how to live my life (not even to enforce what is Moral and Just) sounds like a pretty good society to me.

Agreed re: the power trip, but unless you employ a consensus-based politics, then any attempts to revert to a planned economy will go hand-in-hand with at least some level of hierarchy and bureaucracy, and ergo you have people on power trips either telling others how to live their lives or worse, as shown historically in the former Eastern Bloc.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Agreed re: the power trip, but unless you employ a consensus-based politics, then any attempts to revert to a planned economy will go hand-in-hand with at least some level of hierarchy and bureaucracy, and ergo you have people on power trips either telling others how to live their lives or worse, as shown historically in the former Eastern Bloc.

This, I feel, is based on a fundamental misunderstanding. Socialism does not employ "consensus-based politics" (which, in recent years, has more often than not been code for a minority of radlib activists imposing their view on other people), it doesn't employ politics at all. Politics is gone in socialism, along with the state, government etc. Any planning organ of socialist society relies on the cooperation of the workers who are actually going to do the work. So planning can't proceed unless it secures the cooperation of a broad stratum of workers. And obviously we're not talking about the Eastern Bloc; we're talking about a global, scientifically-planned industrial production.

[cyu]

For the sake of argument, let's say all the world's pro-capitalist leaders read RevLeft for fun, and finally just decide to throw in the towel, and abdicated tomorrow (since they already know "quantitative easing" is a dead end). There is no longer a bunch of really wealthy spenders consuming a disproportionate amount of economic resources. How would economic activity be planned instead?

I would start with the assertion that the vast majority of modern jobs are useless. This has to be distinguished from those who claim people are worthless. People in fact are the whole point of the economy - jobs are not. You don't value people because of what job they have. Jobs are not the goal, people are.

There are only so many activities necessary for human survival. All the rest is just to keep people from feeling bored - entertainment, toys, status symbols, competitions, elections, wars. No doubt even in the post-property world, there would still be lots of entertainment related activity going on - and many people might still devote all their time to it, while not doing any work that is actually essential.

If you had a totalitarian government that actually enforced boredom and prevented people from doing anything at all, and only allowed a select few to alleviate their boredom by working on farms, people would have uprisings just to demand the right to work on farms.

So if all borders and property were abolished, I assume people with any need for food or medicine would be willing to produce those things, just to alleviate the boredom, as long as it was easy for them to discover where they can go and to actually get there - probably even more willing to go if their closest internet friends were also there.

[cyu]

I remember someone claiming that the oldest science is actually psychology, and the results of psychological study were what became embedded in religious laws.

I guess the problem with religious and legal systems is that they do not deal with advances in psychological science very well. When the original laws were written, it was based on psychological understanding at the time, based on how they believed people were motivated, and punishments and threats were designed to fit their past understanding.

But since psychological understanding continually changes, new and better ways of motivating people have to be worked into the existing system somehow. But because dealing with motivation is such a fundamental and low-level part of any system, it is very difficult for new psychological understanding to be incorporated, without having to overthrow much of the old system. Slavery was based on only knowing how to motivate people with violence - and how did that system end? Reformism wasn't going to cut it because the change was too fundamental. So slave societies ended in revolution.

I guess as long as it is difficult to work new psychological understanding into the existing political system of motivations, then each old system will have to be completely overthrown, and rebooted.

[RedMaterialist]

For the sake of argument, let's say all the world's pro-capitalist leaders read RevLeft for fun, and finally just decide to throw in the towel, and abdicated tomorrow (since they already know "quantitative easing" is a dead end). There is no longer a bunch of really wealthy spenders consuming a disproportionate amount of economic resources. How would economic activity be planned instead?



Just because the capitalists disappear doesn't mean the capitalist mode of production will disappear. Wage-labor, for instance, will still remain until all production is fully social, as Marx showed in The Gotha Programme. Economic activity will probably be planned the same way it is today, with computers.