Karl Marx and Vladimir Ilich Lenin - look at their very similar views on the state and discuss whether they are applicable to today's societies.

Today’s Western societies are dominated by the fact that they are both capitalist and liberal democratic societies. We are able to enjoy the freedom of choosing our own political leaders, and we have the same influence over the state in the same way as our neighbours. There is no real dominant class, as we have the ability to assert ourselves. Everybody can obtain economic, political and social power. We are governing ourselves, as nobody can gain political power without the consent of society. The people in positions of power are not there as a result of the class system, but as a result of the consent of the people; we are the personnel of the state. Marx and Lenin argued that, since the bourgeoisie dominated the economy, it influenced the state to their advantage, hence the state could not act independently. Therefore it suppressed the working class, and the minority suppressed the majority.

Marx and Lenin argue that a particular type of personnel dominates our state, and not only one, but all parts of the state; political, cultural and economic. Milibrand suggested that “the people who are located in the commanding heights of the state, in the executive, administrative, judicial, repressive and legislative branches, have tended to belong to the same class or classes which have dominated other strategic heights of the society; the economic and the cultural ones.”In today’s society who is in charge of actually managing the state? In the British House of Commons the Labour Party is traditionally regarded as representing the workers’ interests, and the Conservative and Liberal Parties the interests of the business side of the community. Do these parties adequately represent the differing areas of society? We find a huge amount of academics in the legislatures of most liberal democracies. The proportion of women, students, workers and the unemployed is very low. This surely demonstrates that the legislature is not in any way relevant to the structure of society. The ‘ordinary’ citizen is not trusted to take state power. We are governed by an elite, and not by ourselves. A good example of this would be France, where the President and Prime Minister come from the same elite university; the elite is built up, and the ordinary citizen has no access to political power. This is also true in the United States of America, where no ordinary person can run for office because of the huge budget required for the electoral campaign. The legislatures in today’s Western democracies have limited amount of seats reserved for the minority of highly educated people. Therefore surely it is not democratic, when the majority of the population is excluded from political recruitment.

The argument that everybody has the same ability to influence politics is highly controversial. Surely everyone has one vote, and the chance to choose the government is equal for every citizen. However, the power of the media is very high in our society. A big businessman meeting with the Prime Minister is surely not on an equal level to that of a student seeing the head of government on television. There are huge differences here of the opportunities to influence the conduct of the state. In this sense, Lenin and Marx could not have been more accurate on their discussions of the state and of the class divisions within that state.

Marx claims that liberal democracies, like the societies of today’s Western World, deny their citizens the right to self-determination. The capitalist society divides its citizens into two groups: the land-owning ruling class and the hired working class. The upper class capitalists gain sufficient funds from their hired workers, and the working class have “no realistic alternatives”, but to accept their employer’s terms of employment, thus gaining no self-fulfillment. Another way that the liberal democratic and capitalist states impede the citizens is the mechanics of the ‘free’ market economy. They are made susceptible to outside forces such as recession and mass unemployment. But there is a great importance of the market economy in today’s capitalist societies. What is good for the economy is good for the state, and therefore is good for the population. It is necessary for the good of society as a whole. A bad economy leads to an increase in unemployment and hence reduces the standard of living. In this sense the state machinery is influenced both by the employers and the employees, and is therefore is not just a forum for the interests of the bourgeoisie.

In any liberal democracy the primary aim of the government is re-election, and not necessarily the well-being of its population. Hence the state listens carefully to the hints from the economy, as it will benefit the population as a whole (in the short term). Of course, this economy will ultimately benefit the dominant bourgeois class. It does not reflect on the well-being of the working classes. As Milibrand stated: “capitalist enterprise is undoubtedly the strongest ‘pressure-group’ in capitalist society; and it is indeed able to command the attention of the state.”

One difference that I have found between the similar works of Lenin and Marx is the fact that, in his later works, Marx believed that the working class could “achieve their aims by peaceful means” (democracy). Lenin, however, thought that the arrival universal franchise would produce a different outcome. Lenin maintained that the control that the ruling class had over the newspapers and other aspects of society would enable it to control the outcome of supposedly democratic decisions. He also believed that problems would arise because the ruling executive was separate form the parliament, the “hollow talking-shop.” The bureaucracy of unelected officials could frustrate the views of the parliament, ensuring that the wills of the ruling class would be protected. The philosophy of both Marx and Lenin overlaps again at this point, as Marx also believed that the unelected bureaucracy was an “appalling parasitic body which enmeshes the body of…society like a net and chokes all its pores.”

When Lenin was writing his book on ‘State and Revolution’ he cited his primary task as the “resuscitation of the real teaching of Marx on the state.” He, like Marx saw the modern state as a repressive force. He maintained that the ruling class had a hold over the state through alliances with the government, such as the corruption of the bureaucratic officials. Lenin thought that the “bureaucracy and the standing army, direct products of class oppression, have to be smashed. The army would be replaced by armed workers and the bureaucrats by elected officials subject to recall.” They would not become people who are above the ordinary citizen. In Lenin’s treatment of political organization, he thought that “the work of the new socialist order could be conducted by workers in an organized framework of direct democracy (soviets) yet he defended the authority of the party in nearly all spheres.” He did not attempt to discuss the extent to which state organizations are affected by other extreme social factors, and not just by the differing class society.

In the philosophy of Marx and Lenin, once the class divisions have been done away with, through the revolution of the proletariat, there will be no need for the state. Therefore it will just ‘wither away’. They both agree with Engel’s view. He says that the state will just die away naturally. It is replaced with the “administration of things and by the conduct of the process of production.” The state is the mean of suppression of the dominant class, but in the new communist society there will not be any classes. The state will not be needed, and society will take over the means of production. The society that Marx and Lenin both long for is one without a state apparatus. The society will commonly run production, and violence will disappear, as it was the state which encouraged the oppression of the non-dominant classes. Everybody contributes to society according to his or her ability, and everybody receives from society according to his or her needs.

But for us, the citizens of the Western World, the total dissolution of the state seems to hold many problems. It is very difficult for any one of us to imagine a society without a ‘state’ of some sort. It seems to have always been there as an element of human society. It regulates social welfare, infrastructure and even the defense forces. If there were to be a communist society, as Marx and Lenin are looking for, surely there would be chaos and the occupation of states by other states. We have agreed that the state of our time is dominated by the minority class which suppresses the majority, but the utter dissolution of the state seems too problematic for society. For Marx the defense issue would not be a problem, as all states would be communist, and no communist state would harm another.

The process of the withering away of the state also seems logical. The revolution by the workers would abolish the bourgeois state and replace it with a workers’ state. The means of production would become publicly owned as will the goods generated. However, suppression will still be necessary, but his time it will be the majority class suppressing the minority capitalists. This is necessary to impose communist values on the society as a whole. The class system will then be abolished, and “freed from capitalist slavery, from the untold horrors, savagery, absurdities and infamies of capitalist exploitation. People will gradually become accustomed to observing the elementary rules of social intercourse that have been known for centuries and repeated for thousands of years in all copy maxims.”

In this essay I have analyzed the contributions of both Marx and Lenin to the theoretical values of communism, and I have discussed whether their theories are applicable to today’s society. I agree with both Marx and Lenin when they say that a minority elite dominates liberal democratic societies. True equality does not exist, and the influential capitalists dominate other aspects of social life, such as the media. As for the dissolution of the state, I think it is desirable, and maybe even necessary to protect workers rights’, but in today’s societies it is well nigh impossible to conceive a revolution of the proletariat on a global scale. It is only possible on a global scale, as single communist states would not survive in the international environment. Therefore, although the theories of Marx and Lenin are valid, in my opinion they would not stand up to the tests of today’s Western World.

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