Last week in class we had an intense, cathartic and pointedly distorted critique of the Communist project as being a system that snatches power from one entity and gives it to another. I think this is in line with what Lenin is saying about the Menshevik and German Socialist 'interpretation' of Marx and Engels. We had the discussion on the role of the state in revolution; and somebody asked about how the checks and balances could be maintained within a Communist system.
I think Lenin addresses this in the first chapter of The State and Revolution where he breaks down Engels' complex statement about the withering of the state. Lenin believes that the state that is withering away is not the state that currently exists, i.e. not the bourgeois state that has historically arisen as a method of checking the irreconcilable antagonisms between various classes. The current bourgeois state can only be abolished; destroyed by revolution; overthrown. As he says, "A democratic republic is the best possible political shell for capitalism, and, therefore, once capital has gained possession of this very best shell, it establishes its power so securely, so firmly, that no change of persons, institutions or parties in the bourgeois-democratic republic can shake it."
However, the state that will wither away is the proletarian, or the semi-state that will come to function once the revolution has succeeded. Harking back to what we've read over the past two weeks, you'll remember both Marx & Engels talk about the interim state that will be formed in the first stage of communism (Socialism). For Lenin, it is this state, whose function is only to take Communism from it's first state to the second (or full communism), that will wither away. It is an entity that is meant to destroy itself once it's goal is achieved.
What this points to is how deep our prejudgments about Communism are. This comical perception that we all cite about Communism, an army of mindless drones only concerned about economism and ruled by an iron fist, etc,, falls completely on it's face when we think of the undistorted conception of a Communist state as envisioned by Lenin and Marx. Let's stop pretending to be shocked by violence; all of us participate in it structural violence everyday; be it in our enactments of gender roles, our class assumptions, our political and religious preferences. As Lenin says, "The necessity of systematically imbuing the masses with this and precisely this view of violent revolution lies at the root of the entire theory of Marx and Engels. The betrayal of their theory by the now prevailing social-chauvinist and Kautskyite trends expresses itself strikingly in both these trends ignoring such propaganda and agitation. The supersession of the bourgeois state by the proletarian state is impossible without a violent revolution. The abolition of the proletarian state, i.e., of the state in general, is impossible except through the process of “withering away".
Violence is not valorized in Marxism; but it is regarded as means to an end. That's just how it is.
I think Lenin addresses this in the first chapter of The State and Revolution where he breaks down Engels' complex statement about the withering of the state. Lenin believes that the state that is withering away is not the state that currently exists, i.e. not the bourgeois state that has historically arisen as a method of checking the irreconcilable antagonisms between various classes. The current bourgeois state can only be abolished; destroyed by revolution; overthrown. As he says, "A democratic republic is the best possible political shell for capitalism, and, therefore, once capital has gained possession of this very best shell, it establishes its power so securely, so firmly, that no change of persons, institutions or parties in the bourgeois-democratic republic can shake it."
However, the state that will wither away is the proletarian, or the semi-state that will come to function once the revolution has succeeded. Harking back to what we've read over the past two weeks, you'll remember both Marx & Engels talk about the interim state that will be formed in the first stage of communism (Socialism). For Lenin, it is this state, whose function is only to take Communism from it's first state to the second (or full communism), that will wither away. It is an entity that is meant to destroy itself once it's goal is achieved.
What this points to is how deep our prejudgments about Communism are. This comical perception that we all cite about Communism, an army of mindless drones only concerned about economism and ruled by an iron fist, etc,, falls completely on it's face when we think of the undistorted conception of a Communist state as envisioned by Lenin and Marx. Let's stop pretending to be shocked by violence; all of us participate in it structural violence everyday; be it in our enactments of gender roles, our class assumptions, our political and religious preferences. As Lenin says, "The necessity of systematically imbuing the masses with this and precisely this view of violent revolution lies at the root of the entire theory of Marx and Engels. The betrayal of their theory by the now prevailing social-chauvinist and Kautskyite trends expresses itself strikingly in both these trends ignoring such propaganda and agitation. The supersession of the bourgeois state by the proletarian state is impossible without a violent revolution. The abolition of the proletarian state, i.e., of the state in general, is impossible except through the process of “withering away".
Violence is not valorized in Marxism; but it is regarded as means to an end. That's just how it is.
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