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Western Political Thought

Notes posed by Nikolai Ivanovinch Bukharin (1888-1938) in 1916, Lenin developed his theory of the state
in The State and Revolution, regarded as the greatest contribution of Lenin to political theory.
Lenin reiterated the need to destroy the state machinery in a situation of revolutionary seizure of
power. The state, per se continued in its socialist phase in the form of the dictatorship of the
proletariat with full democracy, exhibiting, like Marx, contempt for parliamentary and
representative institutions. However, the suppression of the constituent assembly, universal
suffrage, the exclusive monopoly and pre-eminence of the Communist Party and the brutal
repressive measures against the Kronstadt rebellion, completed the logic of what was essentially
a minority revolution led by the Bolsheviks. The libertarian and majoritarian perceptions of Lenin,
in 1916, were subsumed by his authoritarian and undemocratic outlook in What is to be done!
(1902).
The dictatorship of the proletariat, in practice, was reduced to the dictatorship of the Bolshevik
Party over the proletariat. Both Kautsky and Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919) were critical of the
Leninist experiment. Kautsky characterized the Bolshevik revolution as a coup d’etat, and its
socialism as “barrack socialism”, for it had nothing to do with majority rule and parliamentary
democracy. Luxemburg expressed solidarity with Lenin and Trotsky for pre-empting a socialist
revolution, but was critical of their abrogation of spontaneity, freedom of opinion and socialist
democracy.
Lenin and Trotsky reacted sharply to Kautsky’s criticism. Lenin dismissed the argument that
democracy was not only compatible, but also a precondition for the proletarian rule, as irrelevant.
He clarified that democracy was abolished only for the bourgeoisie. Subsequently, in 1921, Lenin
acknowledged the lack of culture, and the fact that the Bolsheviks did not know how to rule, as the
serious shortcomings of the new regime. Trotsky defended the use of terror, force and violence as
means of safeguarding Socialism and its advancement in Russia. Later, Trotsky also turned critical
of Stalin for making Socialism repressive and bureaucratic, never acknowledging that along with
Lenin, he himself was instrumental for laying the foundations of Stalinism. In fact, Solzhenitsyn
characterized Stalinism as the malignant form of Leninism.
12.7 Indequacies in the Marxist Theory of the State

Viewed in this perspective, all the experiments that were carried out in the twentieth century in
the name of Marx have totally repudiated his principles. Russia’s backwardness, the lack of a
coherent theory of post-revolutionary society in Marxism, and Marx’s personal fascination with
the possibilities of absolute power, attenuated the Blanquism in Lenin and Stalin. If Stalinism was
an offshoot of Leninism, then Leninism itself was inspired by Marxism, for Lenin repeatedly
affirmed his commitment and faith in Marxist ideology. The distortions in Soviet Communism
could be attributed to the shortcomings and inadequacies in Marx’s world-view, the fact that Marx
had pointed out that
historical developments are always open to several possibilities. Yet Marx disregarded
the possibilities open to his own theory; and here lies its major intellectual blunder ...
he overlooked the possibility that one of the alternatives to which the future
development of his own theory was open might be the combination of his philosophical
and historical theory with the Jacobin tradition of merely political, subjectivist
revolutionary action. Thus, if Marx’s point of departure was Hegelian, so was his
blind spot : like Hegel himself he did not subject his own theory to a dialectical
critique.
Dahl asserted that Marxism could not be accepted “as an adequate political theory” on the basis of
the basic propositions on democracy which were agreeable to all political parties, and defended
zealously by them. These were: (a) inevitability of conflict of interests and articulation of wants as
a matter of choice in a complex society, (b) resolution of such conflicts by majority rule, but with

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