The Philosophy of Life Before Death and Afterwards

Politics

Politics

The State and Revolution: How Lenin's Philosophy Fits in World Politics

The State and Revolution is a revolutionary manifesto concerned with the dictatorship of the proletariat and the establishment of a revolutionary government as an inter-phase between government and the withering away of the state. Lenin splits the book into seven chapters talking about the various stages of the revolution. Covered in the book are the words of Marx and Engels, the Paris Commune, the revolutions in Russia and a commentary on opposing views to Marxist-Leninism. Lenin provides Marx and Engel's framework of the Communist Manifesto and expands upon it by creating the political philosophy of Marxist-Leninism. Marxist Leninism is the idea that a dictatorship of the proletariat can only succeed with an armed revolution that focuses on the purging of those in opposition to the revolution.

Lenin characterizes the state as "[...]a special organization of force: it is an organization of violence for the suppression of some class. "[1] (Lenin 1917: 17) This depiction of the state is a realist one with a Marxist twist. The idea that the state exists to oppress a class in the jurisdiction of the sovereign society extends beyond that sovereign state. Lenin calls for a worldwide revolution in his analysis of Engels ideas of the Second International. Engels states that the Second International movement was hindered by "opportunism" in Germany by the Social Democrats. The idea was that class consensus should have shifted towards the absolution of private property into the hands of the proletariat, instead of a formation of a social democratic republic where property relations were sustained between capitalists and the proletariat.[2] (Lenin 1917 : 41-43) There is an idea that even though Lenin is writing generally about the revolution in Russia, if other states fail to come to the same conclusions, there will be a failure of the working class movement to gain legitimacy on the world stage. The opportunism of the bourgeoisie in the form of social democracy is a capitalist counter-movement which is antithetical to the dictatorship of the proletariat.

In quoting Marx, Lenin adds his famous commentary that " [f]reedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in the ancient Greek republics: freedom for the slaveowners."[3] (Lenin 1917 : 51) This idea was reinforced by previous remarks from Marx and Engels on the previous pages.[4] (Lenin 1917 : 48-50) In terms of international relations, the beginning of liberal democracy in the world saw a shift of ownership from feudal lords and slave owners to owners of capital. This disengaged the poor masses from the political process across the planet and left them in the same relative positions as before. This is a core idea in Marxist critical theories, that power relations are based around wealth inequality and economy. Lenin proposes that liberal democracy is an illusory shift of power towards freedom for all. What remains in the wake of liberal democracy is nothing more than the facade of political process which is driven by money.

There have been many works which center around The State and Revolution . The works which are quoted in the book include but are not limited to, The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx, Anti-Duhring by Engels and Critique of the Gotha Programme by Karl Marx[5] (Lenin: 70-73). Lenin derives the basis of his arguments from Marx and Engels with excerpts from other authors and political theorists as well. David McCllelan, in his work Marxism after Marx, states that "[Lenin] changed his mind [after a debate with Bukharin about the withering of the state], and many of the ideas of State and Revolution, composed in the summer of 1917 - and particularly the anti-Statist theme - were those of Bukharin."[6] (McClellan 1979 : 98) What is interesting is that Bukharin is not mentioned at all during The State and Revolution, which leads to questions of academic integrity on Lenin's part. It seems that he had appropriated Bukharin's argument into his own work as his own argument. In Toward a Theory of the Imperialist State written in 1915, Bukharin states "In foreign policy they [states] are becoming the ardent supporters of armaments, and by implication of imperialist slaughter; in domestic policy they are emerging as the apologists of civil peace."[7] Bukharin's argument