2000s >> 2001 >> no-1169-december-2001

Marx and Lenin’s views contrasted


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.



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 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”.



Lenin’s distortions


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.



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.


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”.


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.





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.


Richard Montague

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