The theory of “socialism

According to Lenin:


“It follows that under communism there remains for a time not only bourgeois right, but even the bourgeois state, without the bourgeoisie!… For the state to wither away completely, complete communism is necessary.” 


But Lenin failed to see what this would involve. In effect, the theory of “socialism” as a transitional society was to become an apology for state capitalism. 


In terms of its impact on world politics, Lenin's State and Revolution was probably his most important work. This was derived from the theoretical analysis contained in his earlier work, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916). Lenin's theory of imperialism demonstrated to his satisfaction that the whole administrative structure of “socialism” had been developed during the epoch of finance or monopoly capitalism. Under the impact of the First World War, so the argument ran, capitalism had been transformed into state-monopoly capitalism. On that basis, Lenin claimed, the democratisation of state-monopoly capitalism was socialism. As Lenin pointed out in The Impending Catastrophe and How to Combat It (1917):