state-capitalist monopoly

“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” (original emphasis, 


In State and Revolution Lenin claimed that according to Marx work and wages would be guided by the “socialist principle” (though in fact it comes from the christian saint, Paul): “He who does not work shall not eat.” This was eventually adopted in the USSR Constitution of 1936 and amended to read: “to each according to his work.” as a “principle of socialism.” Marx and Engels used no such “principle” and they made no such distinction concerning socialism. Lenin in fact did not “re-establish what Marx really taught on the subject of the state”, as he claimed, but substantially distorted it to suit the situation in which the Bolsheviks found themselves. When Stalin announced the doctrine of “socialism in one country” in 1936 (i.e. the establishment of state capitalism in Russia) he was drawing on an idea implicit in Lenin's writings.


Dictatorship
In State and Revolution, Lenin gave special emphasis to the concept of the “dictatorship of the proletariat”. This phrase was sometimes used by Marx and Engels and meant working class conquest of power, which (unlike Lenin) they did not confuse with a socialist society. Engels had cited the Paris Commune of 1871 as an example of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The Commune impressed Marx and Engels for its ultra-democratic features, which involved a non-hierarchical structure and the use of revocable delegates. Lenin, on the other hand, tended to identify the term with a state ruled by a vanguard party. When the Bolsheviks actually gained power they centralised political power more and more in the hands of the Communist Party. Modern-day Leninists claim that the rise of Stalin was due to the ravages of civil war and Russian isolation, but the fact remains that “democratic centralism” can allow dictators to rise to power and all openly pro-capitalist political parties have a similar structure which can allow the leadership to act undemocratically.


Lenin's short article The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism (1913) is a concise explanation of the basics of Marxism  But by 1918 the dictatorship of the proletariat had become for Lenin “the very essence of Marx's teaching” (The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky, 1918,  It is noticeable however that Lenin's Three Sources article contained no mention of the phrase or Lenin's particular conception of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Harding alleges that Lenin was the most “doctrinaire” of all Marxists at this time, but here again we see that Lenin was only too willing to distort Marx's arguments in order to fit into the reality of Russia's capitalist revolution. That is, the further development of wage labour, capital, commodity production and the state, which resulted in the exploitation of the working class by the party bureaucracy as the exploiting class.


Lenin's greatest positive achievement was getting Russia out of the bloody futility of World War One, something that the Socialist Party acknowledged at the time. The Socialist Party was the only British organisation to publish the Bolsheviks' anti-war declaration during the war. The trouble really started when claims about the “socialist” nature of Russia began to be aired, first within Russia then in the Communist parties being formed around the world. (See The false claims about Russian “socialism” are largely derived from Lenin's opportunism as he distorted Marxism – working class socialist theory. In this country, the Socialist Party always denied that socialism existed in Russia (or anywhere else) or that Russia was on a transition towards socialism. 


For its anti-democratic elitism and its advocacy of an irrelevant transitional society misnamed “socialism”, in theory and in practice, Leninism today deserves the hostility of workers everywhere. Lenin seriously distorted Marxism and thereby severely damaged the development of the socialist movement. Indeed, Leninism still continues to pose a real obstacle to the achievement of socialism.