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Rereading Lenin's State and Revolution

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Alfred B. Evans
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Extract

State and Revolution has long seemed to be the most puzzling of Lenin's written works. The traditional view among western scholars has regarded State and Revolution as a Utopian fantasy that is completely out of character with the rest of Lenin's thought. The most prominent exponent of that viewpoint is Robert V. Daniels, who, in an influential article published in 1953, asserted that the ideas of State and Revolution were “permeated with an idealistic, almost Utopian spirit“ and who in a later work described State and Revolution as an “argument for Utopian anarchism” and a treatise in “revolutionary utopianism.“ Similar comments have been offered by a number of other authors. Alfred Meyer, though not dealing in detail with State and Revolution in his brilliant review of Lenin's thought, regards the essay as a reflection of the “dream of the ‘commune state'“ expressed in Lenin's statements from early 1917 through the first few months of 1918.

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 46 , Issue 1 , Spring 1987 , pp. 1 - 19
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1987

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References

1. Daniels, Robert V., “The State and Revolution: A Case Study in the Genesis and Transformationof Communist Ideology,” The American Slavic and East European Review 12 (February 1953): 22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2. Daniels, Robert V., The Conscience of the Revolution: Communist Opposition in Soviet Russia (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960), p. 51 Google Scholar.

3. Meyer, Alfred G., Leninism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1957, pp. 195–196 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4. Ulam, Adam B., The Bolsheviks (New York: Macmillan, 1965, p. 353 Google Scholar.

5. Daniels, “The State and Revolution,” p. 2.

6. Fischer, Louis, The Life of Lenin (New York: Harper and Row, 1964), p. 122 Google Scholar.

7. Ulam, The Bolsheviks, p. 353.

8. Barfield, Rodney, “Lenin's Utopianism: State and Revolution” Slavic Review 30 (March 1971): 46, 47, 52.Google Scholar

9. Ibid., pp. 56, 45–46, 53.

10. Theen, Rolf H. W., Lenin: Genesis and Development of a Revolutionary (Philadelphia: J. B.Lippincott, 1973), pp. 117, 118–119 Google Scholar.

11. Harding, Neil, Lenin's Political Thought, Vol. 2: Theory and Practice in the Socialist Revolution (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1981), p. 140 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also p. 134.

12. Harding, Neil, “Authority, Power, and the State, 1916–1920,” in Authority, Power, and Policy in the USSR, ed. Rigby, T. H., Brown, Archie, and Reddaway, Peter (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1980), pp. 41, 42, 53Google Scholar.

13. Harding, Theory and Practice, p. 323.

14. Barfield, “Lenin's Utopianism,” pp. 49–50; V. V. Gorbunov, “K istorii napisaniia V. I. Leninymknigi Gosudarstvo i revoliutsiia,” Voprosy istorii KPSS, 1973, no. 2, pp. 77–78; Sawer, Marian, “The Genesis of State and Revolution ,” The Socialist Register 1977, ed. Miliband, Ralph and Saville, John (London: Merlin, 1977, pp. 216–219 Google Scholar.

15. Krupskaia, Nadezhda K., Reminiscences of Lenin (New York: International, 1970, p. 328 Google Scholar.

16. Sawer, “The Genesis of State and Revolution” p. 215, 216; Krupskaia, Reminiscences of Lenin, p. 331.

17. See Lenin's letter to Aleksandra Kollontai, 17 February 1917, Lenin, V.I., Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 5th ed. (Moscow: Politizdat, 1958), 9: 388 Google Scholar, and his letter to Inessa Armand, 19 February1917, 9: 390.

18. Some themes received greater emphasis in State and Revolution than in “Marxism on theState.” In particular, greater attention was devoted to the advantages of the proletarian-soviet formof rule in State and Revolution than in Lenin's earlier notes.

19. Ulam, The Bolsheviks, p. 348.

20. Lenin, Gosudarstvo i revoliutsiia, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii 33: 5–6.

21. Ibid., p. 37.

22. Ibid., pp. 22.

23. Lenin, , “Zadachi proletariata v nashei revoliutsii,” April 1917, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 31: 171 Google Scholar; Gosudarstvo i revoliutsiia, p. 4.

24. Ulam, The Bolsheviks, p. 307. Lenin's aspiration to lead a new international organization ofsocialists is emphasized by Page, Stanley W., Lenin and World Revolution (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1972, p. 22 Google Scholar.

25. “Zadachi proletariata v nashei revoliutsii,” p. 178.

26. Letter of 17 February 1917, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 49: 388.

27. Letter of 19 February 1917, ibid., p. 390.

28. Letter of 27 February 1917, ibid., p. 393.

29. Lenin, Marksizm o gosudarstve, ibid., 33: 272–305.

30. Lenin, Gosudarstvo i revoliutsiia, p. 4.

31. Ibid., p. 6.

32. Of course, from July till September 1917 Lenin emphasized that the existing Soviets in Russiawere dominated by counterrevolutionary elements. He still asserted in State and Revolution that inprinciple Soviets were the form to be taken by proletarian rule.

33. Tarschys, Daniel, Beyond the State: The Future Polity in Classical and Soviet Marxism (Stockholm: Scandinavian University Books, 1971, p. 112 Google Scholar.

34. Ibid., p. 113.

35. Gosudarstvo i revoliutsiia, p. 42.

36. Ibid., p. 91.

37. Ibid., p. 89.

38. Lenin, “Uderzhat li Bol'sheviki gosudarstvennuiu vlast'?,” Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 34: 318.

39. Gosudarstvo i revoliutsiia, pp. 86–87, 26, 97.

40. Ibid., p. 53. Gerhard Fischer, in “'… The state begins to wither away …': Notes on theInterpretation of the Paris Commune by Bakunin, Marx, Engels, and Lenin,” The Australian Journal of Politics and History, 25 (April 1979); 29–38, observes that Marx's writings paid little attention tothe actual experience of the commune, which tended toward the direct participation of workers in the control of industrial production through relatively independent factory councils. Fischer notes thatLenin relied principally on Marx's reporting for his understanding of the practice of the commune. Suny, Ronald Grigor, in The Baku Commune, 1917–1918: Class and Nationality in the Russian Revolution (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1972), p. 359 Google Scholar, observes that Lenin in 1917 gave amore statist interpretation to the experience of the Paris Commune than had Marx.

41. Gosudarstvo i revoliutsiia, p. 53.

42. Ibid.

43. Ibid., pp. 113, 26.

44. Lenin did not acknowledge Marx's ambivalence toward the commune. On Lenin's attitudetoward the Russian Soviets, see Anweiler, Oskar, The Soviets: The Russian Workers, Peasants, and Soldiers Councils, 1905–1921, trans. Hein, Ruth (New York: Random House, 1974), pp. 80–86, 149–152Google Scholar.

45. Lenin, “Pis'ma iz daleka,” March 1917, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii 31: 19; “O zadachakhproletariata v dannoi revoliutsii,” April 1917, ibid., p. 115; “Pis'ma o taktike,” April 1917, ibid., p.143; “Zadachi proletariata v nashei revoliutsii,” pp. 162–163.

46. Gosudarstvo i revoliutsiia, p. 91.

47. Ibid., pp. 91, 97, 114.

48. Ibid., p. 48.

49. Ibid., p. 46.

50. Ibid., p. 116.

51. Ibid., p. 100.

52. Ibid., pp. 44, 101.

53. Ibid., pp. 44, 109.

54. Ibid., p. 116.

55. Ibid., pp. 48, 49.

56. Ibid., p. 49.

57. Ibid., p. 101.

58. Ibid., p. 49.

59. Ibid., p. 101.

60. “Uderzhat li Bol'sheviki gosudarstvennuiu vlast?,” p. 312. See also p. 320.

61. Gosudarstvo i revoliutsiia, pp. 7, 9.

62. “Zadachi proletariata v nashei revoliutsii,” p. 180.

63. Gosudarstvo i revoliutsiia, p. 50.

64. “Uderzhat li Bol'sheviki gosudarstvennuiu vlast'?,” p. 307.

65. Ibid., p. 308.

66. Gosudarstvo i revolutsiia, pp. 50, 97. See also ibid., p. 101: “All citizens become employeesand workers of a single nation-wide state‘syndicate'…. The whole of society will have become asingle office and a single factory, with equality of labor and equality of pay.“

67. Ibid., p. 97.

68. Ibid., p. 61.

69. Ibid., pp. 108–109.

70. Daniels, “The State and Revolution,” p. 34, acknowledges that Lenin was prepared to allowfor the preservation of “strong institutional authority” in the realm of economic affairs.

71. Gosudarstvo i revoliutsiia, p. 99.

72. Ibid., p. 114.

73. Ibid., p. 26.

74. Lenin was more explicit about that distinction even before taking power, however, in “Uderzhat li Bol'sheviki gosudarstvennuiu vlast'?,” p. 315: “We are not Utopians. We know that anunskilled laborer or a cook cannot immediately get on with the job of state administration…. Wedemand that training in the work of state administration be conducted by class-conscious workersand soldiers and that this training be begun at once…. The class-conscious workers must lead, butfor the work of administration they can enlist the vast mass of the working and oppressed people. “

75. Gosudarstvo i revoliutsiia, pp. 98–99.

76. Ibid., pp. 84, 91.

77. Ibid., p. 96.

78. Ibid., p. 35. That section was added by Lenin in December 1918.

79. Lenin was aware that the tendency toward the centralization of control over economic activityunder state capitalism had been intensified during World War I. His intention was not to abolishthe wartime organization of the economy but to absorb it into socialism. During the period of hisexamination of Marxist texts on the state, he wrote

The war has reaffirmed clearly enough and in a very practical way … that modern capitalistsociety, particularly in the advanced countries, has fully matured for the transition to socialism.If, for instance, Germany can direct the economic life of 66 million people from a single, centra! institution, …then the same can be done, in the interests of nine-tenths of the population, bythe non-propertied masses if their struggle is directed by class-conscious workers….

All propaganda for socialism must be refashioned from abstract and general to concrete anddirectly practical: expropriate the banks and, relying on the masses, carry out in their intereststhe very same thing the W.U.M.B.A. is carrying out in Germany.

“Chernovoi proekt tezisov obrashcheniia k internatsional'noi sotsialisticheskoi komissii i ko vsemsotsialisticheskim partiiam,” December 1916, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii 30: 278–279. The W.U.M.B.A.was the Weapons and Ammunition Supply Department.

80. Lenin's commitment to hierarchical organization in economic enterprises and other “complextechnical establishments,” documented in notes 68 and 69 above, was apparently open-ended.

81. It has not been the purpose of this article to criticize the system of rule advocated by Lenin.The political theory of State and Revolution is subjected to a thorough and trenchant criticism by Polan, A. J. in Lenin and the End of Politics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984)Google Scholar.

82. The need to reexamine the treatment of authority and democracy in Lenin's work is suggested by recent historical scholarship, which has tended to revise the dominant view of the relationship between the Bolsheviks and the Russian workers in 1917. The findings of that scholarship are reviewed by Suny, Ronald Grigor, “Toward a Social History of the October Revolution,” The American Historical Review 88 (February 1983): 31–52 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. More recent examples of similar work include Mandel, David, The Petrograd Workers and the Soviet Seizure of Power: From the July Days 1917 to July 1918 (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1984)Google Scholar; and Raleigh, Donald J., Revolution on the Volga: 1917 in Saratov (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1986)Google Scholar. Though such historical analyses focus primarily onmass activity in 1917, they imply that neither the depiction of Lenin as merely a wily, opportunistic manipulator of the masses nor the description of him as an idealistic revolutionary theorist is accurate.

83. The point that Lenin was simultaneously committed to both organizational discipline andpopular initiative is made by Kingston-Mann, Esther, Lenin and the Problem of Marxist Peasant Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983, pp. 173–174 Google Scholar.

84. Gorbachev, M. S., “Politicheskii doklad Tsentral'nogo Komiteta KPSS XXVII s “ezdu KommunisticheskoiPartii Sovetskogo Soiuza,” in Materialy XXVII s “ezda Kommunisticheskoi Partii Sovetskogo Soiuza (Moscow: Politizdat, 1986, p. 33 Google Scholar, insists that economic reform must both strengthencentralized direction of the Soviet economy and expand the independence of enterprises andassociations.