Politics and the State

Abstract

We have seen that in 1914 Lenin arrived at the conclusion that the whole historical epoch of capitalism was dissolving in internal and international contradictions. The epoch of revolutionary transformation to inaugurate the global triumph of socialism was firmly on the agenda. These findings were the distinguishing characteristics of Leninism as an emergent ideology and were theoretically vindicated in his text, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism.¹ The questions that now presented themselves to Lenin was how ought socialists to restructure social, political and economic relations, and what were to be the positive content of socialism as the first genuinely human and universal form of association? Given that the international revolution for socialism was now adjudged to be imperatively necessary if humankind was to avoid a descent into barbarism, it plainly became necessary for revolutionary theory to establish, at least in outline, the principles, procedures and institutions that were to inform the construction of socialist society. There was, moreover, an immediate practical point to this task. Lenin recognised perfectly well that, in order to get the masses to act decisively, it was not enough for the revolutionaries to expose the rottenness of existing society. The withering critique of state monopoly capitalism might be sufficient to undermine the legitimacy of existing structures of power but this, of itself, would not dispose the mass of the people to act to overthrow it.