January 21, 2024 is the centenary of Vladimir Lenin’s death.
I am not a socialist because humans, at the current stage of their biological development, still need material motivation to facilitate further progress.
But I am not a capitalist either because for humans, who are biological and social beings, social justice is no less important than material motivation when it comes to maintaining stability in society.
I would define myself as a biological progressist who hopes that humanity is still going through a process of biological evolution. That is why our need for material motivation and social justice is just a legacy of our biological past when we were still primates living in social groups. If we are lucky enough, then perhaps we can evolve to a stage where we will simply enjoy discovering new things rather than fighting for food, sex, and social dominance. Until we reach this happy state of human mind, there will be history. And this history will be necessarily turbulent from time to time with charismatic leaders like Lenin emerging seemingly out of nowhere to lead and mislead us in times of crises.
Lenin can be considered a controversial person. However, almost any leader of major political transformations and revolutions can be considered controversial: Napoleon, Oliver Cromwell, Gaius Julius Caesar and many others. After all, “you cannot make a revolution in white gloves,” as Lenin himself put it.
But Lenin was an extremely shrewd and effective political operator. And his biggest advantage was that he was able to formulate his thoughts in a very direct and even blunt way. In today’s politically correct world, this straightforwardness sounds like a breath of cold, but nonetheless, fresh air. Therefore, it would be useful to know what he thought about life, politics, and economics.
Lenin’s Thoughts on Life:
1. There is no abstract truth, truth is always concrete.
2. It is impossible to live in society and be free from society.
3. Tell me who praises you, and I will tell you where you have made a mistake.
4. Despair is typical of those who do not understand the causes of evil, see no way out, and are incapable to fight.
5. All our knowledge is important only if it serves the purpose; and in achieving your purpose you need to be quick and decisive. …A lazy person is someone who has no purpose.
6. A person’s flaws are usually the extension of his virtues. But if these virtues are used more than necessary, or if they are displayed when and where they are not needed, they become the flaws.
7. We are remembered as long as we are getting in the way of others.
8. Defeat is not as dangerous as the fear of admitting defeat.
9. One man with a gun can control a hundred without one.
10. Equality before the law is not yet equality in life.
Lenin’s Thoughts on Politics:
1. Politics is the most concentrated expression of economics, its generalization, and its culmination.
2. Political events are always very confusing and complicated. They can be compared to a chain. To hold the whole chain, you need to cling to the main link.
3. People have always been and will always be silly victims of deception and self-deception in politics, unless they learn to recognize the interests of certain classes behind any moral, religious, political, social phrases, statements, promises.
4. No amount of political freedom will satisfy the hungry masses. …Every society is three meals away from chaos.
5. While the State exists, there can be no freedom. When there is freedom there will be no State.
6. Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in ancient Greek republics: Freedom for slave owners.
7. No one is guilty if he was born a slave; but a slave who not only shuns the pursuit of his freedom, but justifies and embellishes his slavery, such a slave is a lackey and a boor who causes a legitimate feeling of indignation, contempt, and disgust.
8. There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen. …Months of revolution sometimes educate citizens more quickly and fully than decades of political stagnation.
9. You cannot make a revolution in white gloves.
10. The most dangerous thing in war is to underestimate your enemy and take comfort in the fact that you are stronger.
Lenin’s Thoughts on Economics:
1. Typical of the old capitalism, when free competition held undivided sway, was the export of goods. Typical of the latest stage of capitalism, when monopolies rule, is the export of capital.
2. As long as capitalism remains what it is, surplus capital will be utilized not for the purpose of raising the standard of living of the masses in a given country, for this would mean a decline in profits for the capitalists, but for the purpose of increasing profits by exporting capital abroad to the backward countries. In these backward countries profits are usually high, for capital is scarce, the price of land is relatively low, wages are low, raw materials are cheap.
3. From the liberator of nations that capitalism was in the struggle against feudalism, imperialist capitalism has become the greatest oppressor of nations. Formerly progressive, capitalism has become reactionary; it has developed the forces of production to such a degree that mankind is faced with the alternative of going over to socialism or of suffering years and even decades of armed struggle between the “great” powers for the artificial preservation of capitalism by means of colonies, monopolies, privileges, and national oppression of every kind.
4. But in fact, capitalism has long replaced small-scale independent commodity production where competition could indeed cultivate entrepreneurship, energy, and courage with large-scale factory production, joint-stock companies, syndicates and other monopolies. Competition under such capitalism means an exceptionally brutal suppression of the entrepreneurial spirit, energy, and bold initiative of the mass of the population…and also means replacing competition with financial fraud, nepotism, and servility at the top of the social ladder.
5. The entire increase in wealth resulting from the combined labor of the masses of workers or from improvements in production goes to the capitalist class, while the workers, who toil from generation to generation, remain propertyless proletarians.
6. The best way to destroy the capitalist system is to debauch its currency.
7. The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.
8. The small owner exploits employees particularly harshly.
9. Socialism is merely state-capitalist monopoly which is made to serve the interests of the whole people and has to that extent ceased to be capitalist monopoly.
10. In striving for socialism, however, we are convinced that it will develop into communism and, therefore, that the need for violence against people in general, for the subordination of one man to another, and of one section of the population to another, will vanish altogether since people will become accustomed to observing the elementary conditions of social life without violence and without subordination.
Have we learned anything in 100 years since Lenin’s death? It is probably too early to tell, but there should be hope. Lenin, at least, was very confident that: “Human reason has discovered many amazing things in nature and will discover still more, and will thereby increase its power over nature.”
