Surviving Capitalism (Not) : [Russian Revolution part 8 of ?] The state and revolution

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Monday, October 9, 2017

[Russian Revolution part 8 of ?] The state and revolution

Click here to access article by Amy Leather from Socialist Review (Britain).

The author describes the revolutionary ideas of Lenin which he, during the summer of 1917, wrote down in his unfinished book State and Revolution. Here are a few of the most popular ones that inspired people to follow the leadership of the Bolsheviks:

Lenin argues that once people are freed from the “untold horrors and savagery” of capitalist slavery they “will gradually become accustomed to observing the elementary rules of community life…they will become accustomed to observing them without force, without coercion, without subordination, without the special apparatus of coercion which is called the state”.

The need for a workers’ state recedes as there are no longer any capitalists, any classes and consequently no class to be suppressed — and will wither away completely when the norm in society is “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs”....