Throughout the book. Lenin gives his interpretation of Marx and Engels on a series of topics regarding the State in relation to the Proletariat. He cites From The Civil War in France as his primary source in combating the opportunist trends of Kautsky and the reformism of Bernstein.
While reading I couldn't help but compare Kautsky to the current trend the CPUSA and other socialist parties are taking here in the united states. Most of these parties claiming to be Leninist, have actually taken from their programs the revolutionary fervor and have degenerated into the very aspects Lenin mercilessly attacks in this book. Take for example Sam Webb's (Chairman of the CPUSA) recent speech.
Sam Webb
Path to socialism
We are re-envisioning the path to socialism and socialist society, based on present day challenges and a critical examination of the socialist experience in the 20th century. What are some of its main elements?
Our vision is of a society that is peaceful, democratic, economically just and efficient, and ecologically sustainable. Our socialist goal privileges social solidarity, economic security and sustainability, equality, cooperation, respect for difference, and peace.
In our view, socialism is not simply a good idea, but an overriding necessity for humankind to find timely solutions to problems that threatens its very future – massive inequality and poverty, global warming, war and nuclear proliferation, energy and resource depletion, pandemic diseases, and so forth.
There are neither universal paths to nor universal models of socialism. Socialism has to grow out of the soil of a particular country, at a particular time, and in particular set of circumstances. Our country will be no exception. We will follow our own distinct nationally specific path.
Socialism must settle the “property question” (from capitalist to socialist property relations or to put it differently, from a capitalist to a socialist mode of production) to be sure. Every revolution must accomplish this essential task, and ours will be no different.
But how this is done and the pace by which it proceeds largely depends on concrete circumstances. At socialism’s dawn in any country and then long into the transition to socialism I expect that a mixed economy, operating in a regulated socialist market and combining different forms of socialist, cooperative, and private property, will prevail, albeit with tensions, contradictions, and dangers.
Such ownership relations and market mechanisms by no means preclude economic planning and democratic control. It is hard, in fact, to imagine how the transformation of the economy can be successfully tackled without democratic planning.
While political supremacy of the working class and its allies is an imperative, once acquired its task isn’t to smash the state into so many pieces, but rather to transform the class content of state structures; extend democratic rights into the economic, social and cultural spheres; enact new democratic forms of participation; and finish the democratic tasks left unfinished by capitalism – especially the elimination of racial and gender inequality.
I stress this because in the American mind, the idea that socialism and democracy are incompatible has widespread currency. And this perception can’t be ascribed solely to ruling-class propaganda. Socialist societies have had democratic shortcomings, too often major ones.
The path to socialism in our country will be long, laced at every turn with massive struggles on many levels and involve a wide array of class and social forces. It will proceed – not straightforwardly, not smoothly, not without reversals, but through stages and at each stage of struggle the balance of power will hopefully tip to the advantage of the working class and people.
Rather than one final conflict triggered by a generalized economic breakdown, I envision a series of connected political, economic, and social crises compressed in time and large in scale that result in a crises of confidence and legitimacy in capitalism and its institutional forms on the part of millions.
Such a rupture of power won’t settle everything once and for all, but it will constitute a decisive turn in a transitional process toward socialism.
Decades ago socialist revolutions grew out of economic catastrophes and major wars. But communists, going back to the 19th Century, never believed that armed struggle and civil war were the only or the preferred avenue to socialism.
“The worker,” Marx said in a speech in Amsterdam in 1872, “must one day conquer political supremacy in order… But we do not assert that the attainment of this end requires identical means. We know that one has to take into consideration the institutions, mores, and traditions of the different countries, and we do not deny that there are countries like England and America and if I am familiar with your institutions, Holland, where labor may attain its new goal by peaceful means.”
I would add that in recent years radical social transformations in relatively peaceful circumstances have occurred in Latin America.
There the force of an active, organized, and overwhelming majority of the working class and its allies combined with the winning of bridgeheads in state structures, including the military, have isolated elites, dislodged neo-liberal governments from power, and cleared the ground, so far peacefully, for social and socialist transformations.
We believe that such an outcome is possible here too. In fact, it is hard to imagine a non-peaceful path to socialism in our country.
Obviously, socialism isn’t imminent. As I see it, we aren’t living in an era of revolution, but rather an era of reform, including possibly radical reform, marked at its beginning by the election of the first African American president.
Six months into the Obama presidency, I would say without hesitation that the landscape, atmosphere, conversation, and agenda have strikingly changed compared to the previous eight years.
We are re-envisioning the path to socialism and socialist society, based on present day challenges and a critical examination of the socialist experience in the 20th century. What are some of its main elements?
Our vision is of a society that is peaceful, democratic, economically just and efficient, and ecologically sustainable. Our socialist goal privileges social solidarity, economic security and sustainability, equality, cooperation, respect for difference, and peace.
In our view, socialism is not simply a good idea, but an overriding necessity for humankind to find timely solutions to problems that threatens its very future – massive inequality and poverty, global warming, war and nuclear proliferation, energy and resource depletion, pandemic diseases, and so forth.
There are neither universal paths to nor universal models of socialism. Socialism has to grow out of the soil of a particular country, at a particular time, and in particular set of circumstances. Our country will be no exception. We will follow our own distinct nationally specific path.
Socialism must settle the “property question” (from capitalist to socialist property relations or to put it differently, from a capitalist to a socialist mode of production) to be sure. Every revolution must accomplish this essential task, and ours will be no different.
But how this is done and the pace by which it proceeds largely depends on concrete circumstances. At socialism’s dawn in any country and then long into the transition to socialism I expect that a mixed economy, operating in a regulated socialist market and combining different forms of socialist, cooperative, and private property, will prevail, albeit with tensions, contradictions, and dangers.
Such ownership relations and market mechanisms by no means preclude economic planning and democratic control. It is hard, in fact, to imagine how the transformation of the economy can be successfully tackled without democratic planning.
While political supremacy of the working class and its allies is an imperative, once acquired its task isn’t to smash the state into so many pieces, but rather to transform the class content of state structures; extend democratic rights into the economic, social and cultural spheres; enact new democratic forms of participation; and finish the democratic tasks left unfinished by capitalism – especially the elimination of racial and gender inequality.
I stress this because in the American mind, the idea that socialism and democracy are incompatible has widespread currency. And this perception can’t be ascribed solely to ruling-class propaganda. Socialist societies have had democratic shortcomings, too often major ones.
The path to socialism in our country will be long, laced at every turn with massive struggles on many levels and involve a wide array of class and social forces. It will proceed – not straightforwardly, not smoothly, not without reversals, but through stages and at each stage of struggle the balance of power will hopefully tip to the advantage of the working class and people.
Rather than one final conflict triggered by a generalized economic breakdown, I envision a series of connected political, economic, and social crises compressed in time and large in scale that result in a crises of confidence and legitimacy in capitalism and its institutional forms on the part of millions.
Such a rupture of power won’t settle everything once and for all, but it will constitute a decisive turn in a transitional process toward socialism.
Decades ago socialist revolutions grew out of economic catastrophes and major wars. But communists, going back to the 19th Century, never believed that armed struggle and civil war were the only or the preferred avenue to socialism.
“The worker,” Marx said in a speech in Amsterdam in 1872, “must one day conquer political supremacy in order… But we do not assert that the attainment of this end requires identical means. We know that one has to take into consideration the institutions, mores, and traditions of the different countries, and we do not deny that there are countries like England and America and if I am familiar with your institutions, Holland, where labor may attain its new goal by peaceful means.”
I would add that in recent years radical social transformations in relatively peaceful circumstances have occurred in Latin America.
There the force of an active, organized, and overwhelming majority of the working class and its allies combined with the winning of bridgeheads in state structures, including the military, have isolated elites, dislodged neo-liberal governments from power, and cleared the ground, so far peacefully, for social and socialist transformations.
We believe that such an outcome is possible here too. In fact, it is hard to imagine a non-peaceful path to socialism in our country.
Obviously, socialism isn’t imminent. As I see it, we aren’t living in an era of revolution, but rather an era of reform, including possibly radical reform, marked at its beginning by the election of the first African American president.
Six months into the Obama presidency, I would say without hesitation that the landscape, atmosphere, conversation, and agenda have strikingly changed compared to the previous eight years.
He Continues on to say how Obama "has created new democratic space for peace, equality, and economic justice struggles." and then at the end of his speech had the audacity to proclaim:
Sam Webb
As for our radical disposition, we are as radical as reality itself. And reality tells us that our main task is to assist in bringing the weight of the working class and other democratic forces to impress their interests on the struggle for reforms.
These men and women are not radical, they are opportunist by aligning themselves with the bourgeois-democrats in saying that they are our only way to political power and in that same respect reformist as well. And within all this claim to be a Marxist-Leninist party.
I like to take this opportunity to remind those in the CPUSA of the work in Lenin's The State and Revolution How use of the bourgeoisie government could not and will never serve the intrests of the working class.
Lenin
In capitalist society, providing it develops under the most favourable conditions, we have a more or less complete democracy in the democratic republic. But this democracy is always hemmed in by the narrow limits set by capitalist exploitation, and consequently always remains, in effect, a democracy for the minority, only for the propertied classes, only for the rich. Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in the ancient Greek republics: freedom for the slave-owners. Owing to the conditions of capitalist exploitation, the modern wage slaves are so crushed by want and poverty that "they have nothing to do with democracy", "nothing to do with politics"; in the ordinary, peaceful course of events, the majority of the population is debarred from participation in public and political life.
I suggest the book to everyone who is interested in learning of revolutionary politics to at least flip this book. The information displayed in this work is timeless and to quote the books introduction "The problems considered in the vibrant, muddled and dangerous chapters of 'The State and Revolution' await solution."
