State and Revolution,
Part 7
Lenin speaking in 1917
Housing, Democracy and Communism
This fourth chapter of Lenin’s “The State and Revolution”
(linked below) presents a study circle with a problem: As short as it is, yet
there is too much in this chapter to discuss in a 1½ hour session.
The Freirean requirement from any text is only that it
provides a good occasion for dialogue. The dialogue is where the value lies,
because it generates socialised learning. We are not trying to learn the text
in its entirety, as individuals.
This chapter is almost a catalogue of critical contributions
made by Frederick Engels, plus remarks of Lenin’s own. The remarks on democracy
are particularly challenging. So the chapter provides many topics that could be
taken in a dialogue, from which comrades will have to choose. Here are some of
them:
Housing Question
"How is the housing question to be settled then? In
present-day society, it is settled just as any other social question: by the
gradual economic levelling of demand and supply, a settlement which reproduces
the question itself again and again and therefore is no settlement.” [Engels]
Authority
"Have these gentlemen ever seen a revolution? A
revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is an act
whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by
means of rifles, bayonets and cannon, all of which are highly authoritarian
means. And the victorious party must maintain its rule by means of the terror
which its arms inspire in the reactionaries.” [Engels]
Monopoly capitalism (remarks on the Erfurt
Programme)
The "proximity" of such capitalism to socialism
should serve genuine representatives of the proletariat as an argument proving
the proximity, facility, feasibility, and urgency of the socialist revolution,
and not at all as an argument for tolerating the repudiation of such a
revolution and the efforts to make capitalism look more attractive, something
which all reformists are trying to do.
…the
democratic republic is the nearest approach to the dictatorship of the
proletariat. [Lenin]
National Question
Engels, like Marx, never betrayed the slightest desire to
brush aside the national question. [Lenin]
Religion
…the party struggle against the opium of religion which
stupifies the people. [Lenin]
The State (in the Paris Commune)
"... in order not to lose again its only just-gained
supremacy, this working class must, on the one hand, do away with all the old
machinery of oppression previously used against it itself, and, on the other,
safeguard itself against its own deputies and officials, by declaring them all,
without exception, subject to recall at any time...."
“…in Germany particularly the superstitious
belief in the state has passed from philosophy into the general consciousness
of the bourgeoisie and even of many workers.” [Engels]
Communist and Social-Democrat
Engels wrote that in all his articles he used the word
"Communist", and not "Social-Democrat". [Lenin]
Overcoming of democracy
…it is
constantly forgotten that 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 suspect us of expecting the advent of a system of society in
which the principle of subordination of the minority to the majority will not
be observed - for democracy means the recognition of this very principle.
No,
democracy is not identical with the subordination of the minority to 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 force
by one class against another, by one section of the population against another.
We set
ourselves the ultimate aim of abolishing the state, i.e., all organized and
systematic violence, all use of violence against people in general. We do not
expect the advent of a system of society in which the principle of subordination
of the minority to the majority will not be observed.
In
striving for socialism, however, we are convinced that it will develop into
communism and, therefore, that the need for violence against people in general,
for the subordination of one man to another, and of one section of the
population to another, will vanish altogether since people will become
accustomed to observing the elementary conditions of social life without
violence and without subordination. [Lenin]
This is a
very complete concretisation of the question of democracy and communism.
Image: Lenin in late 1917, probably only a few weeks
after writing “The State and Revolution”.
- The above is to introduce the original reading-text: State and Revolution, Chapter 4, Engels’ Supplementary Explanations, Lenin.
- To download any of the CU courses in PDF files please click here.
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