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Marx and Lenin on Communism

Simon Monette
The New School for Social Research
Fall 2018

Introduction

Marx is often considered to be the most important theorist of communism. Yet, little is
known about what Marx’s vision of communism actually looks like. This paper tasks itself with
understanding what Marx’s conception of communism itself. We will discuss the historical
preconditions of moving beyond capitalism, the two stages of communism, their political
structure, and their economic structure, and the transition between the two. Then, we will
consider Lenin’s elaboration on Marx. We will conclude with a critique of their visions.

Marx’s Vision

Marx sees communism as the natural outcome of historic class conflicts. He believes that
the progression of capitalist relations (the latest rendition of class conflict) will centralize the
means of production in the hands of a few capitalists, expand the dichotomy between the
proletariat and the bourgeoisie, and cause recurrent crises of overproduction. All of these factors
culminate to create the conditions which will end capitalism. Crises create the need to end
capitalism, the centralization of capital creates the tools to do it, and the creation of the
proletariat creates the class to do it. Marx sees communism as resolution of these contradictions.
Where capitalism is unplanned and crisis-prone, communism is to be planned and crisis-free.
Perhaps more importantly: where capitalism strengthens class divisions, communism suppresses
them until they are nonexistent. This is the historical impetus for Marx’s communism.
This historical impetus for communism realizes itself in the struggles of the proletariat
against the bourgeoisie. Marx believes that proletarian struggles will take three forms before
pushing capitalism over the edge. Firstly, the people of a workplace will organize against their
individual employers. Secondly, they will organize themselves into trades unions, and struggle
against a multiplicity of capitalists at once. Thirdly, once the trades unions realize their struggle’s
“class character,” they will form a political party. This political party will seize state power
through revolutionary struggles, and establish the “dictatorship of the proletariat” so that
communism might be brought about.
Marx discusses communism as consisting of two phases. The first phase begins
immediately after the dictatorship has seized power, and is commonly referred to by Marxists as
“socialism.” The purpose of this phase is to make way for the second phase of communism. This
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process is facilitated by the dictatorship. The role of the dictatorship is threefold. Firstly, it must
abolish capitalist social relations within the workplace. The abolition of capitalist expropriation
means that producers will appropriate the products of their own labor, minus deductions for
industrial development and social purposes. Secondly, it must coordinate the economy. This
means that the dictatorship will both instruct workplaces to create a certain quality and quantity
of goods, and that the aforementioned deductions will be used strategically for growth and
general welfare. Another key to this arrangement is a system of labor notes, which the
dictatorship establishes so that goods may be exchanged in proportion with their labor cost. The
third role of the dictatorship during socialism is to suppress the remaining bourgeoisie. Insofar as
capitalists resist the emergence of socialism, it is the government’s job to crush them.
Marx’s vision of socialism has an interesting relationship to the marxian law of
value--that is, the claim that the relative prices of commodities gravitate around the relative
“simple abstract socially necessary labor-times” expended in their production. In the strict sense
that the law of value is an emergent property of markets, it is not true of Marx’s socialism. On
the other hand, if the dictatorship was successful in measuring a given worker’s expended labor,
and was likewise successful in imbuing labor notes with that measure, it would be possible to
argue that the law of value holds during socialism.
The second phase of communism is called “full communism,” or simply “communism.”
Marx envisions communism as a stateless condition in which people are remunerated in
accordance with their needs. This is quite distinct from socialism, which has a state and provides
distribution in accordance with effort. Thus, before socialism (“first-phase communism”)
becomes communism (“full communism”), a number of prerequisites must be met. First, the
state must wither away. Marx believed that the “withering away” of the state would happen
throughout socialism as the functions of the state became redundant. As socialism develops, the
division between mental and manual labor erodes, allowing all workers to participate in planning
and making the need for a state planning body redundant. The state also withers as bourgeois
resistance is extinguished, and a special body is no longer needed for their suppression. The
redundancy of the state planning body alongside the complete destruction of bourgeois resistance
allows the state to wither away. The second prerequisite of full communism is that the economy
is highly productive. In order for distribution take place in accordance with people’s needs, the
economy must be productive enough to create enough to meet those needs. The third prerequisite
of full communism is that people change their natures in general. They must enjoy work in its
own right if they are to do it without the threat of starvation, and they must be willing to give to
the common stockpile of goods instead of wanting to greedily hoard the products of their labor.
For Marx, these are the three main prerequisites that must be met before socialism may become
communism.
Let us be reminded that Marx did not only see communism as a possibility; he saw it as a
historical inevitability. The contradictions of capitalism create proletarian struggle. That
proletarian struggle leads them to seize the state and create a proletarian dictatorship. The
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proletarian dictatorship abolishes class and develops the forces of production. The state withers
away. Human nature changes. Communism is established.

Lenin’s Vision

Lenin took the idea of a proletarian dictatorship and placed it at the center of his thought.
He theorized in greater detail about the particular political character of the dictatorship. Lenin’s
most important work on the topic is his ​State and Revolution ​(1917), written just before the
bolshevik revolution in Russia. Like Marx, he insists that the proletariat must seize state power
to abolish capitalism. Unlike Marx, he completely doubts the possibility that this could happen
through nonviolent parliamentarism. Lenin insists that “the suppression of the bourgeois state is
impossible without a violent revolution” (p. 325). The proletariat must take up arms to make
their revolution.
When Marx says that “the proletariat” should hold state power during the revolutionary
dictatorship, he is not very clear on who exactly he is referring to. He is not referring to the
proletariat as a whole, who are the vast majority of the population and clearly cannot ​all h​ old
office. It is on this point that Lenin makes his special contribution. In Lenin’s view, the
revolutionary movement should be led by “the vanguard of the proletariat, capable of assuming
power and leading the whole people to socialism” (p. 328). The vanguard is a group of secretive,
professional marxist revolutionaries. It is their job to lead the proletarian party, to organize them
in their struggles, and to operate the state of the revolutionary dictatorship in their name.
On the matter of what socialism should actually look like, Lenin’s writings are rather
confused. In one moment, he pushes the stateless model of the Paris commune, advocating a
“proletarian democracy” in which “the majority itself can directly fulfil all [the] functions”
previously carried out by “the special institutions of a privileged minority” (339-340). He
proposes that the army, police, and officialdom be abolished. To the degree that there must be
representation, Lenin insists that all representatives be “elected and subject to recall” (p. 399).
Such a change will mean the end of parliamentarism and the birth of worker’s democracy. For a
moment, Lenin sounds quite libertarian.
Only a moment after praising the Paris commune model, Lenin turns to condemning it. In
the same breath that he applauds the commune’s work in expelling subordination, he says that
“we [the bolsheviks] do not ‘dream’ of dispensing at once with...all subordination” (p. 344).
Quite the contrary. Lenin takes postal service--an enterprise of complete subordination--as his
model for the reorganization of society. He does a reversal, condemning Proudhon’s federalism
(which was the model of the commune) in favor of Marx’s centralism (p. 348).
It is important to note this key distinction of Lenin from Marx. Marx saw the elimination
of capitalist social relations--that is, the elimination of employer-employee relationships--as one
one of the major tasks of the revolutionary dictatorship. Lenin disagrees. Lenin is quite suited
with the idea of the citizenry as employees of the state, enjoying a condition of “complete
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subordination” (p. 380). In Lenin’s eyes, such a thing is entirely acceptable in the course of the
state’s withering away.
What to make of Lenin’s contribution, then? In my view, there are two of significance:
firstly is his notion of the revolutionary vanguard who must lead the proletariat, both before and
after the revolution; secondly is his vision of what socialism ought to look like, which played out
in Russia in the years after the publication of ​State and Revolution.

A Critique

I have a few objections to Marx and Lenin’s claims.

In the first place, it is not clear to me that capitalism creates the preconditions for a
proletarian revolution. Surely, capitalism is plagued by centralization of industry and recurrent
crises; but I am unconvinced that a revolutionary proletariat (Marx’s promelgators of socialism)
inevitably develops alongside capitalism. The proletariat has become ​less ​revolutionary with
time, not more. They grow ever more divided as the managerial class grows, and as they are
forced to compete with workers in new foreign markets. Their morale is deadened as their work
becomes ever more meaningless and competitive. In this sense, the proletariat is becoming less
revolutionary with time. History has proved me correct thus far; the 20th century was full of
revolutions in backward peasant countries, but not in industrialized ones. Proletarians are not
revving up for the socialist revolution.
In the second place, it is not clear to me that the dictatorship of the proletariat (if it were
ever established) would naturally wither away into communism. I am inclined to think that the
proletarian state--like all states--would foster the conditions of its own perpetuation. In this
sense, I don’t think communism is possible through the pathways described by Marx and Lenin.
In the third place, I certainly would not desire a Marx/Lenin style revolution, regardless
of its feasibility. I object to it because it justifies state power, and I believe state power to be
always unjustified. The proletarian state can be no different than any other other state: it can only
be a cause of hierarchy, domination, and coercion. I do not intend to convert the reader to this
opinion of mine. All the same, I will still leave a short polemic by a famous philosopher of my
disposition in hopes that it can at least be ​felt​.

“To be GOVERNED is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed,

law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled,
checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither
the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so. To be GOVERNED is to be at
every operation, at every transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped,
measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented,
forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and
in the name of the general interest, to be place under contribution, drilled, fleeced,
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exploited, monopolized, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then, at the

slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified,
harassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned,
judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown all,
mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonored. That is government; that is its
justice; that is its morality." (Proudhon, pp. 293–294)

That--I might add--is the dictatorship of the proletariat. It does not lead to Marx’s communism,
and I would not want it if it did.

References

Marx, Karl et al. ​The Marx-Engels Reader​. W.W. Norton & Company, 1978.
Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph. "What Is Government?", written in ​General Idea of the Revolution in
the Nineteenth Century.​ London, 1923.
Tucker, Robert Cinnamond, and Vladimir Lenin. ​The Lenin Anthology.​ Norton, 1975.