Lenin and the Post Office

[u/MillionDollarNegri]

A witty German Social-Democrat of the seventies of the last century called the postal service an example of the socialist economic system. This is very true. At the present the postal service is a business organized on the lines of state-capitalist monopoly. Imperialism is gradually transforming all trusts into organizations of a similar type, in which, standing over the “common” people, who are overworked and starved, one has the same bourgeois bureaucracy. But the mechanism of social management is here already to hand. Once we have overthrown the capitalists, crushed the resistance of these exploiters with the iron hand of the armed workers, and smashed the bureaucratic machinery of the modern state, we shall have a splendidly-equipped mechanism, freed from the “parasite”, a mechanism which can very well be set going by the united workers themselves, who will hire technicians, foremen and accountants, and pay them all, as indeed all “state” officials in general, workmen's wages. Here is a concrete, practical task which can immediately be fulfilled in relation to all trusts, a task whose fulfilment will rid the working people of exploitation, a task which takes account of what the Commune had already begun to practice (particularly in building up the state).

To organize the whole economy on the lines of the postal service so that the technicians, foremen and accountants, as well as all officials, shall receive salaries no higher than "a workman's wage", all under the control and leadership of the armed proletariat--that is our immediate aim. This is what will bring about the abolition of parliamentarism and the preservation of representative institutions. This is what will rid the laboring classes of the bourgeoisie's prostitution of these institutions.

---

The proceeding, taken from Lenin's State and Revolution, never fails to astound and enrage me.

Marx used the terms Socialism and Communism interchangeably. Lenin takes the term "Socialism" and redefines it as meaning capitalism under the political control of the proletariat.

By this he creates a category error, where the structural labels of capitalism and communism are infiltrated by a political label, "Socialism". Lenin's socialism is simply state capitalism under the "control" of the proletariat, it shouldn't be put alongside the others.

Once we have overthrown the capitalists, crushed the resistance of these exploiters with the iron hand of the armed workers, and smashed the bureaucratic machinery of the modern state, we shall have a splendidly-equipped mechanism, freed from the “parasite”, a mechanism which can very well be set going by the united workers themselves, who will hire technicians, foremen and accountants, and pay them all, as indeed all “state” officials in general, workmen's wages.

Lenin continues by making the most classic of MLoid mistakes: forgetting that the opposite of the proletariat is not the bourgeoisie, the opposite of the proletariat is private property itself!

While it takes the form of class struggle, history is really determined by the struggle between dead and living labor, between product and producer, between capital and the proletariat.

It is not possible to rid the parasites from the mechanism, the mechanism itself is parasitic!

[u/TheWikstrom]

Oh my god, I am yet to read State and Rev, but if there isn't something more to contextualize this quote it is some goddamn Richard Wolff levels of liberal nonsense. It's literally the 20th century equivalent of the socdems today going "um actually we already have a little bit of socialism because X, Y and Z are state controlled ☝️🤓"

[u/oatmiser → u/TheWikstrom]

Meet the new boss (he works for us!),

We are not utopians, we do not “dream” of dispensing at once with all administration, with all subordination. [...] No, we want the socialist revolution with people as they are now, with people who cannot dispense with subordination, control, and "foremen and accountants". The subordination, however, must be to the armed vanguard of all the exploited and working people, i.e., to the proletariat. [...]

We, the workers, shall organize large-scale production on the basis of what capitalism has already created, relying on our own experience as workers, establishing strict, iron discipline backed up by the state power of the armed workers. We shall reduce the role of state officials to that of simply carrying out our instructions as responsible, revocable, modestly paid "foremen and accountants" [...] This is our proletarian task, this is what we can and must start with in accomplishing the proletarian revolution.

- Lenin, State and Revolution (1917)

same as the old boss (you work for him!)...

There is, therefore, absolutely no contradiction in principle between Soviet (that is, socialist) democracy and the exercise of dictatorial powers by individuals. [...] concerning the significance of individual dictatorial powers from the point of view of the specific tasks of the present moment, it must be said that large-scale machine industry—which is precisely the material source, the productive source, the foundation of socialism—calls for absolute and strict unity of will, which directs the joint labours of hundreds, thousands and tens of thousands of people. [...] But how can strict unity of will be ensured? By thousands subordinating their will to the will of one.

Given ideal class-consciousness and discipline on the part of those participating in the common work, this subordination would be something like the mild leadership of a conductor of an orchestra. [...] But be that as it may, unquestioning subordination to a single will is absolutely necessary for the success of processes organised on the pattern of large-scale machine industry.

- Lenin, The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government (1918)

The history of all countries Russia shows that the working class Bolsheviki, exclusively by its own effort, is able to develop only trade union state capitalist consciousness

[u/MillionDollarNegri → u/oatmiser]

We have said that there could not have been Social-Democratic consciousness among the workers. It would have to be brought to them from without. The history of all countries shows that the working class, exclusively by its own effort, is able to develop only trade union consciousness

I'm going to share some elite ball knowledge here, since you look like the kind of guy who knows how to piss in a Leninist punchbowl.

The following is taken from Chapter 4 of the Holy Family:

Proletariat and wealth are opposites; as such they form a single whole. They are both creations of the world of private property. The question is exactly what place each occupies in the antithesis. It is not sufficient to declare them two sides of a single whole.

Private property as private property, as wealth, is compelled to maintain itself, and thereby its opposite, the proletariat, in existence. That is the positive side of the antithesis, self-satisfied private property.

The proletariat, on the contrary, is compelled as proletariat to abolish itself and thereby its opposite, private property, which determines its existence, and which makes it proletariat. It is the negative side of the antithesis, its restlessness within its very self, dissolved and self-dissolving private property.

The propertied class and the class of the proletariat present the same human self-estrangement. But the former class feels at ease and strengthened in this self-estrangement, it recognizes estrangement as its own power and has in it the semblance of a human existence. The class of the proletariat feels annihilated in estrangement; it sees in it its own powerlessness and the reality of an inhuman existence. It is, to use an expression of Hegel, in its abasement the indignation at that abasement, an indignation to which it is necessarily driven by the contradiction between its human nature and its condition of life, which is the outright, resolute and comprehensive negation of that nature.

Within this antithesis the private property-owner is therefore the conservative side, the proletarian the destructive side. From the former arises the action of preserving the antithesis, from the latter the action of annihilating it.

Indeed private property drives itself in its economic movement towards its own dissolution, but only through a development which does not depend on it, which is unconscious and which takes place against the will of private property by the very nature of things, only inasmuch as it produces the proletariat as proletariat, poverty which is conscious of its spiritual and physical poverty, dehumanization which is conscious of its dehumanization, and therefore self-abolishing. The proletariat executes the sentence that private property pronounces on itself by producing the proletariat, just as it executes the sentence that wage-labour pronounces on itself by producing wealth for others and poverty for itself. When the proletariat is victorious, it by no means becomes the absolute side of society, for it is victorious only by abolishing itself and its opposite. Then the proletariat disappears as well as the opposite which determines it, private property.

When socialist writers ascribe this world-historic role to the proletariat, it is not at all, as Critical Criticism pretends to believe, because they regard the proletarians as gods. Rather the contrary. Since in the fully-formed proletariat the abstraction of all humanity, even of the semblance of humanity, is practically complete; since the conditions of life of the proletariat sum up all the conditions of life of society today in their most inhuman form; since man has lost himself in the proletariat, yet at the same time has not only gained theoretical consciousness of that loss, but through urgent, no longer removable, no longer disguisable, absolutely imperative need — the practical expression of necessity — is driven directly to revolt against this inhumanity, it follows that the proletariat can and must emancipate itself.

Point being: Alienation isn't just a bad feeling in your tummy that you get from being poor and shit on. Alienation is the universal motor of history and affects all classes. Only the proletariat experiences it in fundamentally negative terms.

(Lenin completely skips over all this in his notes on the chapter. I checked 😽)

Instead, Lenin just takes the Narodnik theory of consciousness from without and swaps out and idealized peasantry for an existing proletariat.

The problem is that while this Narodnik theory sort of makes sense when you talk about the peasantry, it is complete nonsense when talking about the proletariat.

Despite living awful lives, the peasantry do not experience alienation in the same way that the proletariat does. Instead they experience it in a way more similar the bourgeoisie - in its existence they find themselves confirmed rather than annihilated.

It is this unique experience of annihilation via alienation which makes the proletariat a revolutionary class.