Many on the Left have canonised Lenin as a saint to be venerated. 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.
Lenin’s claims to Marxist 'orthodoxy' are bogus. Lenin could not accept the Marxian view that commodity production was an identifying feature of capitalism. Following the Bolshevik seizure of power, the production of wealth in the form of commodities was the only option open to the misnamed Communist Party. Commodity production continued and was an accepted feature of life in "communist" Russia. Lenin stood for state capitalism and argued that socialist democracy is in no way inconsistent with the rule and dictatorship of one person. There is a wide chasm between the views of Marx and those of Lenin in their understanding of the nature of socialism, of how it would be achieved and of the manner of its administration. Marx sees socialism as the abolition of ownership (implied in the term "common ownership"). His vision is a state-free, class-free and money-free society which, by its nature, could only come to fruition when a conscious majority wanted it and wherein the affairs of the human family would be democratically administered. A form of social organisation in which people would voluntarily contribute their skills and abilities in exchange for the freedom of living in a society that guarantees their needs and wherein the poverty, repression and violence of capitalism would have no place. Lenin's definition of socialism is "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 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)
The terms socialism and communism have had a checkered history, but it can be said with certainty that it is not correct that Marxists have always used the term socialism to mean a "period between the seizure of power by the working-class and the epoch of full Communism." Marx did not, neither did Engels, and Lenin knew this. Lenin, in "The State and Revolution", actually quotes Marx from a passage in the Critique of the Gotha Programme where Marx begins with the words: "But these defects are unavoidable in the first phase of Communist society . . .” Lenin then interposes the words "generally called Socialism." Marx and Engels used the terms communism and socialism to mean precisely the same thing. They used "communism" in the early years up to about 1875, and after that date mainly used the term "socialism" There was a reason for this. In the early days, about 1847-1850, Marx and Engels chose the name "communism" in order to distinguish their ideas from Utopian, reactionary or disreputable movements then in existence, which called themselves "Socialist" Later on, when these movements disappeared or went into obscurity, and when, from 1870 onwards, parties were being formed in many countries under the name Social-Democratic Party or Socialist Party, Marx and Engels reverted to the words socialist and socialism. Thus when Marx in 1875 wanted to make the distinction he spoke of the "first phase of communist society" and "a higher phase of communist society" Engels, writing in the same year, used the term socialism, not communism, and habitually did so afterwards. It will be noticed that one of the most widely circulated works of Engels was called by him "Socialism, Utopian and Scientific" not "Communism, Utopian and Scientific." So Marx more or less used sometimes the one, sometimes the other, without any distinction of meaning.
In his criticism of the Gotha programme in 1875, Marx pointed out that "the co-operative commonwealth based upon common ownership of the means of production" (i.e., Socialism, or, as he then called it, Communism) would have a "first phase" in which it would be "afflicted with the congenital defects of the society from which it has sprung." In this first phase the individual "receives from society a voucher showing that he has done so-and-so much work. . . . On presentation of this voucher he withdraws from the communal storehouse of articles of consumption as much as this quantum of work is worth."
In this first phase, there would, Marx says, be mal-adaptations. Thus if each individual were required "to do an equal quantum of work, and all to receive an equal share from the social fund of articles of consumption," the man with dependents to keep would be worse off than the single man, while the stronger and more clever individuals would be able to do the required amount of work with less effort than the weak. Marx added that "such mal-adaptations are inevitable in the first phase of Communist society because it is born out of capitalist society."
In due course the first phase would go, giving place to a higher phase: -
"In a higher phase of communist society, when the slavish subordination of the individual to the yoke of the division of labour has disappeared, and when concomitantly the distinction between mental and physical work has ceased to exist; when labour is no longer the means to live, but is in itself the first of vital needs; when the productive forces of society have expanded proportionately with the multi- form development of the individuals of whom society is made up—then will the narrow bourgeois outlook be utterly transcended, and then will society inscribe upon its banners, "From everyone according to his capacities, to everyone according to his needs!"
(It may be mentioned that Louis Blanc and others had also preceded Marx in stating that this last principle would not be applicable until after a "transition" period.)
Leninism (in whatever of its versions or mutations) was and remains, by virtue of its assumptions and ethos, an elitist and totalitarian doctrine, capable of creating, whatever its subjective intentions, only elitist and totalitarian societies, in which the proletariat either becomes or remains a politically repressed and economically exploited class. 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. Leninism constitutes a monumental and tragic hoax perpetrated on countless millions of oppressed and exploited human beings, not only in Russia but throughout the world. The situation in Russia left the Bolsheviks no alternative to the development of capitalism under the agency of the state. The concept of state capitalism is wholly consistent with Lenin's misunderstanding of the nature of socialism. State capitalism was erroneously exported via Comintern 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 again mis-defined “dictatorship of the proletariat. The Russian state and its coercive arms became a huge, brutal dictatorship under Lenin, who set the scene for Stalin.
The Bolshevik seizure of power in November 1917 was not a "working class soviet (workers' council) revolution" but a military coup engineered by Lenin, Trotsky and the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party. 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. It is true that Lenin wrongly thought their Russian coup would spark off similar revolts in Western Europe and, especially, in Germany. Not only was this a monumental political error, but it was based on Lenin's erroneous perception of socialism and his belief that his distorted conceptions could be imposed on the working class of Western Europe which was, generally, better politically organised and more sophisticated than the people of Russia.
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