Notes on Fundamentals of Marxist-Leninism

This book was produced by the Khrushchev era USSR. I don’t agree with everything in it, but some of the ideas and concepts might help beginner socialists. Be sure to read the originals.

Dialectical and Historical Materialism: The Philosophical Foundation

The core of Marxist-Leninism lies in dialectical and historical materialism. Throughout history, ruling classes have promoted ignorance and superstitions through idealism onto the rest of the population, struggling against materialism, which is recognized as the philosophy of the proletariat.

Materialism vs. Idealism: One of the biggest philosophical questions revolves around the basis of reality: the human mind or the external world. Materialism posits that the material world is the basis of reality, while idealism believes the human mind and its subjectivities are. For instance, René Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am” is an idealist notion, suggesting reality is known through individual thought. Materialists argue the world exists independently of the human mind; if baking soda and vinegar react in Yemen, they’ll have the same observed reaction because the world exists objectively.
Seeing the World as It Is: Materialism allows for a clear view of reality. Consider fascism, an idealistic ideology that presupposes inherent racial superiority or inferiority. Materialism counters this, asserting that human actions are shaped by their environment. For example, modern concepts of race were constructed due to the economic motivations of expanding European powers needing enslaved labor for emerging capitalism. A person commits crimes due to social conditions and deprivation, not because of their skin color. Materialism thus breaks with the confused, almost religious idealism offered by liberalism and fascism alike.
Rejecting an “Imagined World”: As stated, “Philosophical idealism refuses to recognize the reality of the external material world, repudiating it and proclaiming it unreal and advancing instead an imagined, non-material world.”
Marx and Engels’ Contribution: While materialism existed before Marx and Engels (forming the foundation of modern science), they were the first to apply it to human societies, developing dialectical and historical materialism.
The Study of Change: Liberal idealist thinkers contend that capitalism has always existed and always will, seeing it in past economies that were far from capitalist. However, the science of materialist Dialectics rejects this, defining itself simply as the study of change and development.
Constant Motion: A core principle of dialectical and historical materialism is that nothing in the universe is permanent; everything is in constant motion. Just as mountains erode into dust over millennia, human societies and their economies are impermanent. History shows a progression from fairly egalitarian hunter-gatherer societies to slavery-based civilizations, then to feudalism, followed by capitalism based on private ownership of the means of production. Capitalism, too, will eventually wither away, transforming into something new: communism.
Idealism’s Purpose: The goal of idealism, a philosophy promoted by the bourgeoisie, is to distract the proletariat from seeing the truth. This is evident in how mainstream political parties often redirect working-class anger towards “culture wars” that are fundamentally meaningless, rather than towards class struggles.
The Battle for Communism: The struggle for communism, led by communist parties, is essentially the proletariat’s battle against bourgeois idealism. As the crises of capitalism become more glaring and unexplainable without the scientific truth of class struggle and revolution, the bourgeois answers become increasingly unsatisfactory.
The Terror of Materialism: The materialist outlook, as Marx put it, “terrorizes the bourgeoisie ‘because it includes in its comprehension an affirmative recognition of the existing state of things, at the same time also, the recognition of the negation of that state, of its inevitable breaking up; because it regards every historically developed social form as in fluid movement, and therefore takes into account its transient nature not less than its momentary existence; because it lets nothing impose upon it, and is in its essence critical and revolutionary.’”
Cause and Effect: Materialist Dialectics is also heavily based on cause and effect, believing no actions occur in a vacuum. To understand their origins, one must study all the conditions that allowed them to happen. For example, while World War I was initiated by the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, its roots were in the inevitable turmoil of the imperialist stage of capitalism, leading to inter-imperialist wars. These “world wars” are effects of capitalism’s inherent conditions, explaining why we’ve had two and are arguably in a “third” one today.
Scientific Validation: Dialectics, being scientific, weeds out ineffective socialist ideologies. With time, practice, and observation, theories such as ultra-left ones “which ignore the natural development of events and under-estimate the importance of everyday work among the masses, of preparing them for revolution, of building up the revolutionary forces” ultimately fall away, yielding to those that prove effective.
The Concept of the “Leap”: Scientific socialism is also based on the conception of a “leap,” where the everyday operations of a system cause a fundamental shift to a new one. In the scientific world, laws of physics cause stars to “leap” from gas balls into huge explosions when their nuclear fuel is exhausted. In human societies, these leaps are called revolutions—when the internal contradictions and logic of a sociopolitical system consume themselves, causing an explosive jump to a new one.

Contradictions and Class Struggle

Struggle of Opposites: Marxist contradictions are fundamentally based on the struggle of opposites, and this struggle between two opposing things drives systems forward. While in mathematics this might be addition and subtraction, in human societies these contradictions manifest through class struggle, as the ruling class sits opposite the ruled classes on the sociopolitical ladder. Their struggles for power, resources, and so on, make history, and resolving these contradictions causes development itself.
Primary and Secondary Contradictions: Alongside the primary contradiction in human society, which is class struggle, there are a myriad of secondary contradictions stemming from it. For example, the contradictions between colonized and colonizers, like those seen in Palestine and Israel today, are rooted in the primary contradiction of class struggle and capitalism, but they have led to a racialized colonizer-colonized dynamic.
Perpetual Struggle Under Capitalism: Contradictions allow us to see that the class struggle between the capitalist and the proletariat will always remain under capitalist society until it is overthrown by revolution.
New Contradictions in Socialism: However, just because old contradictions are resolved by revolution doesn’t mean contradictions disappear entirely. There will always be contradictions within socialist society. Typically, these are between the rapid progress of the socialist economy and the growing material and cultural requirements of the people, or between old ideas and forces that people held and the new socialist future, or between the advanced and backward aspects of a society transitioning rapidly (e.g., from semi-feudal peasantry to socialism, skipping developed capitalism).
Resolving Contradictions in Socialism: These contradictions arising in socialist society are resolved through the party and state, both of which work with the masses until neither are needed anymore and wither away into communism. Contradictions can also be dealt with in antagonistic ways, like the contradiction between peasants and workers, which are resolved by both classes working together under socialist construction.
New Replaces Old: Contradiction and the struggle of opposites always imply that the new replaces the old. As contradictions in an old system heighten, the system collapses and is replaced by a new one. But that new system always has contradictions itself, even if they are very hard to discern in its earliest stages. For example, early capitalism looked like a completely different beast than the one we are dealing with now, and for early economists like Adam Smith, it was hard to see these contradictions. For the capitalism of Marx, it was easier to analyze these trends, and for the capitalism of Lenin, it could be further analyzed. Again, the world is always in motion.
No Clean Break: However, just because a new system is created doesn’t mean it’s a clean and complete break with the old, as many “left communists” and anarchists tend to believe. “When the socialist social system is built upon the ruins of capitalist society, the ‘negation’ of capitalism does not imply complete destruction of everything created by mankind under capitalism. The productive forces and the valuable achievements of science and culture are preserved and continue to develop. Far from being destroyed by the proletarian revolution, everything of value that was created by capitalism serves as a basis for further progress, for the building of socialism. Speaking against people who denied the importance for socialism of the old culture created under the bourgeois system, Lenin said that a new, socialist culture could not be created out of nothing, that ‘it is not something that has sprung nobody knows whence,’ and that it ‘must be the result of a natural development of the stores of knowledge which mankind has accumulated under the yoke of capitalist society.’”
Non-Linear Development: With dialectics, it’s important not to fall into linear path thinking, presupposing that humanity develops in a straight line. Lenin would describe it more as a spiral that holds some elements of the past and brings new ones at every stage.
Scientific Study and Practice: Dialectics is ultimately a scientific study of human systems, finding repeatable trends within them that allow for the revolutionary change of reality. Parties and ideologies that abandon materialist dialectics are doomed to fail, as they fall into the same mistakes over and over again that past labor and socialist movements have made. This knowledge has been gained through practice. Idealist socialists and “left communist” varieties often fail to grasp that practice is as important a part of materialist dialectics as theory itself. Just like the scientific method, one must produce an experiment with a hypothesis, and the results of these experiments often open up more avenues for further exploring the world and developing theories! Through practice, theories change the world, which then means one needs to reflect on what worked and didn’t and further develop theory with the new world situation.
Avoiding Extremes: It is important to avoid both crude reliance on only practice without theory (which “MAGA communists” might fall into) and only theory with no practice (“left communists” often fall into). Both are erroneous and doomed to fail. As with idealist socialists, they fall into the trap of “ignoring reality, of groundless fantasy and of the process of thought being converted into something self-contained, into an end in itself… The reliable antidote to this is the link with practice, with life, with production, with the experience of the people. Genuine science advances because it always returns to sense-experience, to practice.”
Theory and Practice: Ultimately, all theory is our best attempt at describing the world around us and getting as close as we can to it. All human beings are limited; we cannot know every single facet and operation of whole economies, governments, social relations, or operations. All we can do is get as close to the ‘truth’ as possible, and through practice and observation, we can hone our theories to get closer and closer. This is what Marxist-Leninism has managed to accomplish; if you read the works of Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Ho Chi Minh, etc., they are all surprisingly relevant today and could have been written yesterday because they observed repeatable trends about capitalism, socialism, and the like. The truth is only found through theory and practice and the constant dance between both.
Dogmatism vs. Revisionism: A common error is that “Dogmatism views theoretical propositions as absolute, universal truths that can be applied equally in all cases, regardless of the concrete situation and the emergence of new phenomena.” While “Revisionism, on the other hand, as far as its methodology is concerned, adopts an extreme relativism and attributes no more than a relative character to every truth, disowning the fundamental principles of Marxism, which constitute its revolutionary essence.” In fact, one of the greatest contributions to materialism that Marx and Engels made was that practice is the only way for you to figure out if your theories are right; practice is the criterion of truth! Pragmatism, which “MAGA communists” might fall into, ends up believing that action divorced from theory is the basis for liberation. This, however, easily lends itself to fascism, “by subordinating all practical and theoretical activities to considerations of immediate advantage, pragmatism furthers the development of a subjective, narrowly utilitarian, opportunist approach to life. Applied to the working-class movement, it means advocating the policy of petty affairs and the ‘fight for a farthing’, it means loss of perspective and betrayal of the class interests of the proletariat.” Essentially, action must be guided by theory, then theory by lessons learned from action, not on crude practice itself, which might lead to temporary wins but ultimately blinds the movement and leads to errors and failures.

Historical Materialism: The Motor of History

Since the beginning of time, many philosophers have sought to understand what moves history. Marx and Engels’ great contribution was the realization of historical materialism: the idea that humans move history, but they do so based on the objective material conditions they inherited around them.

For example, the Jacobins of the French Revolution moved history from feudalism to capitalism, but only because they lived under a dying feudalism. The conditions around them allowed the Jacobins to strike and progress humanity to a new system.
Mode of Production: The basis of all societies and historical materialism is the mode of production. This refers to how a society produces its most basic needs (food, shelter, clothes, etc.). These are shaped by geographical environment, population size, technological advancement, and the relations in which these goods are produced. For example, is the basis of the economy noblemen renting out land (feudalism), or slave labor (ancient Rome), or private individuals owning the means of production and paying others wages for working for them (capitalism)?
These relationships are determined by technology. It would have been almost impossible for capitalists to own the means of production before the Industrial Revolution when labor output was so small. Only with the conquering of the Americas, the slave trade, and the Industrial Revolution could European capitalists have enough labor power to create capitalism and its associated relations.
Contradiction of Productive Forces and Relations: One of the biggest contradictions that arises is between the economic relations and the productive forces themselves—that is, how an economy and people’s relations within it are organized, versus the technological advancement itself. Productive relations almost always severely slow the growth of technology. When feudalism was in its final days, the old relationship between peasants and noblemen was slowing down the burst of the new capitalist era. Currently, our capitalist mode of production is severely hindered by the private ownership of the means of production. We live in a post-scarcity world where we produce more than enough to feed and shelter everyone but refuse to do so because of the profit motive. We also rely on continually archaic industries and energy sources like cars and oil, not because of the needs of the masses, but of the capitalist classes. When such a contradiction between relations and technological advancements exists, the only solution is revolution.

Base and Superstructure

In every society, there are two structures: the base and the superstructure. The base is the means of production and the relations around them (capitalism, feudalism, slavery). This is the foundation of all society. On top of the base is the superstructure, which includes culture, laws, media, news, governments—essentially everything within a society that is connected to the mode of production and reinforces it.
For example, if the mode of production is feudalism, the laws are about peasants not having rights, and the government looks like kings in castles. If the mode of production is capitalism, the news you see in the New York Times is about how great American capitalism and Jeff Bezos are, and the laws passed by your local city council cut taxes for big business barons and make it easier for outside investors. The basis for our culture and government is capitalism, and it all serves to reinforce capitalism.
Ideas of the Ruling Class: Ultimately, this is why Marx said that “the ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas,” because every structure within capitalist society is meant to protect the interests of capitalism and reinforce it within us, from the education children receive to the halls of Congress, to the music we listen to.
Revolution vs. Reformism: This is why radical revolution and not reformism is so important. If we only change the superstructure or put a band-aid on the base, like social democrats want to do, the oppressive structures still remain, and essentially so does capitalism, but with a slightly kinder facade. Only through smashing the old modes of production is any true, long-lasting change ever made.
Working-Class Consciousness: The way the base and superstructure are set up in capitalist society always leads to workers mostly falling into pro-capitalist parties, ideologies, and ideas. In fact, it’s inescapable, and most people have “liberal guilty pleasures” from movies to video games. However, there will always be a section of the working class that is more conscious than others. This section will use these superstructures like government and politics to advocate for the working class and use the institutions allowed in the superstructure to form trade unions, engage in political agitation, spread consciousness (like podcasts), and guide the rest of the workers in a vanguard party.

The Rise of Capitalism

Humanity went through several phases of development, but the one most concerning for understanding capitalism is feudalism, as capitalism was birthed out of it.
After the fall of the slave societies of antiquity like Rome, the world entered into feudalism. Though feudalism is an all-encompassing term involving many different societies, at its basis, feudalism saw lords dividing up land and having peasants work on it for them, with peasants paying taxes for the land. It was in some ways better than slavery, as peasants had a much better incentive to produce things; however, they were also completely dependent on their lords.
While feudal society was mostly rural, there were also big urban centers and towns, and it was here where capitalism was born as the merchant classes of these towns during the age of feudalism began trading and expanding, accumulating great fortunes and transforming themselves into an upcoming bourgeoisie.
This new merchant class had a problem: they were not the rulers of society; feudal nobles and kings were. The nascent bourgeoisie also needed free workers not bound to feudal lands, and needed national markets not controlled by kings and nobles. Thus began the era of liberal revolutions like the French Revolution, ushering in the era of capitalism.
Whereas before, peasants under feudalism had some common ownership of land—the main means of production of that economy—capitalism deprived the vast majority of humanity of any sense of property and put it in the hands of the new ruling class: the bourgeoisie or capitalists.
The rest of humanity, with no ownership whatsoever, would be forced to sell their labor to the capitalists in exchange for wages from the capitalists. This section of humanity became the proletariat or working class.
Through colonialism, this system became global and led to one of the biggest divisions of labor ever seen in human history, as labor would not only be divided into hierarchies within a home country but along entire country lines, creating exploiter and exploited nations.
The capitalist system carries with it many contradictions. The big industrial behemoths of the Industrial Revolution produce more than enough commodities, yet they maintain artificial scarcity because they’re owned by capitalists. Class struggle heightens to never-before-seen tensions as the working classes are deprived of the basic goods of life, eventually leading to them rallying politically to change the relations of production, with the masses coming to own these industrial behemoths for the 99% and not the 1% for the common good.
Historical materialism does not mean that anything is inevitable, as “historical laws themselves, without people, do not make history. They determine the course of history only through the actions, the struggle and the consciously directed efforts of millions of people.” That is to say, the historical rules that Marxism observes do not exist outside of people but because of them and their actions. While the fall of capitalism may be inevitable due to the inherent contradictions of the system, its fall actually depends on the actions of the working classes, including communist parties, organizations, class consciousness, and the ability of the communist parties to effectively mobilize the masses. As Che Guevara put it, “The revolution is not an apple that falls when ripe. You have to make it fall.”
Ideology’s Role: Materialism does not actually view ideology as useless; in fact, the goal of Marxists is to give the working class a class-conscious ideology. Materialism simply recognizes that ideology’s roots are in the economic base of societies, but this does not mean that ideology doesn’t shape society. Ideas and ideologies that resonate with the material conditions of the masses become mass ideas that then become action, and through action, consciousness is transformed into a material change in the world.
Incoherence of Mass Ideology: The ideology of the masses always remains incoherent; there are always “revolutionary phenomena and tendencies as well as old and reactionary ones,” as some workers and sections of the population are always more advanced than others, and others hold onto old ideas even of decaying systems.
While some sections of the working classes remain attached to old, dying ideas, “the progressive ideology possesses a decisive advantage in that it reflects the demands of social development. Revolutionary ideas can be forbidden but they cannot be destroyed. Sooner or later they take possession of the masses, spur them to action, and then comes the end of the old system. Thus social ideas are interwoven in the natural course of historical development.”
Because the means of production and the way history is moved under capitalism is held in such a tiny minority of the population, the vast majority, having no direct control, ends up holding mystical and idealistic views such as liberalism or fascism. However, sections of the working classes always gain consciousness and become aware of their historical role, and during moments of capitalist crisis (like World War I), the working class in general becomes revolutionary.
The Unique Proletariat: The working class is one of the most unique classes in history, as its role in revolution is not only to free itself and then become the new oppressors (as the bourgeois did in the liberal revolutions of old) but all other classes, including the peasantry! Capitalism has created an economy in which the main power is concentrated in a class that has all the tools to free itself—from education to the allowance of space and ability for the working class to politically organize itself. Even when repressing the working class, capitalists have opened up a Pandora’s box.

Universal Laws and Historical Development

One thing that differentiates the Marxist-Leninist view of the world from the liberal view is that Marxist-Leninism recognizes that human societies operate under universal, repeatable laws.

Of course, what happens from place to place is not always 100% the same. But for example, Lenin, in the midst of World War I, was able to accurately predict that with capitalism having reached the imperialist stage (in which the world is divided into markets), world wars were just the normal condition of this system as long as it would go on, as imperialist powers would fight each other to redivide the world—a general law that allowed him to predict World War II and the current global crises long after his death.
Meanwhile, liberalism does not really seek to see any universal laws. In fact, as early as the 1960s, liberal philosophers were envisioning an “end to history”—a theory that capitalism was the economy humanity has always had and always will, and that humanity will never evolve into something new from capitalism. This idea was expanded by Francis Fukuyama after the fall of the Soviet Union and has been the main ideology of our neoliberal age. As neoliberal labor leader Tony Blair proclaimed in 1999, “The class war is over.” This is really what sets Marxist-Leninism and liberalism apart: to Marxist-Leninists, human society is always evolving, moving, and operates with these predictable laws; to liberals, human society is static (is capitalist and always will be), and things like war, revolutions, strikes, and economic crashes come out of nowhere; it’s almost religious.
Class Struggle as the Guiding Force: One of Marx’s greatest discoveries was that class struggle was the guiding motivation for history. Whereas before, philosophers had come up with ideas of the divine right of kings, Marx realized a singular thread that was guiding the engine of human society that no one else had seen before.
Class division began in the earliest human societies when, due to technological advancement, humans were able to create surpluses, which also required the division of labor itself. This, in effect, led to exploited and exploiting classes. But what makes the current mode of production so significant is that we currently exist in a society and age of technological advancement in which we produce more than enough surplus for all of humanity. We produce more than enough food, housing, and basic goods for all of humanity. Therefore, the only thing holding us back from abolishing classes under the capitalist mode of production—and which makes socialism/communism inevitable—is the class relation. We are no longer limited by technology in terms of taking care of all human beings; we are only limited by our class relations, that is, that we have to have capitalists and workers. Eventually, the workers will realize that we don’t need capitalists and, in fact, they are a hindrance to our lives.
Engine of History: Class conflict is the main driving force of history because of “The incompatibility of economic interests between antagonistic classes [which then] gives rise to an implacable struggle between them. ‘Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.’” This is the engine that drives history.
Main Classes in Capitalism: Within capitalist society, the two main classes are the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. The bourgeoisie, which once had been a progressive force for history, freeing humanity from feudalism, quickly became the new oppressor as the system of capitalism developed. The other class, the proletariat, is the main creator of wealth for the bourgeoisie. As capitalism and the vast hordes of wealth of the bourgeoisie develop, so does the exploitation of the proletariat. But also, the proletariat, in the development of capitalism, has been given the tools to politically organize like the masses never had before: mass communication, education, the creation of political participation under capitalism—all have allowed the proletariat to have a revolutionary role that peasants who were stuck to individual feudal lords could never have imagined having. In essence, as capitalism develops, it ends up creating its own gravediggers and its own eventual collapse.
Capitalism itself has never come with a complete clean break with feudalism; feudal landlords in many societies still remained, quickly becoming the new bourgeoisie. So did the peasantry, which under capitalism was exploited even further and forced to pay even worse taxes by the new capitalist lords.
The Petty Bourgeoisie: Between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat is the petty bourgeoisie. These are people who own some means of production but do not have it yet at a scale to exploit most proletarians and mostly work in it themselves. Think of a family taco shop or a small Chinese restaurant whose only workers are family members. Because the petty bourgeoisie is both exploited by the competition of the market and bigger companies but also has aspirations to become bourgeoisie itself, its class consciousness is always confused, and whether it sides with the bourgeoisie or the working class always depends on the conditions of said society.
The Lumpenproletariat: Finally, there is the lumpenproletariat. These are people who are the most exploited and left to die by capitalism: the homeless, gangsters, criminals, sex workers, etc. Marx and Engels themselves saw the lumpenproletariat as having no revolutionary potential, viewing them as a non-revolutionary section of the working classes. However, this has been challenged by future Marxists who have argued they are; it’s a hotly debated topic.

The State: A Tool of Class Rule

Definition of the State: In Marxist-Leninism, the state comprises all tools of suppression in human society: “detachments of armed men (army and police), courts, prisons.”
Origin of the State: The earliest human societies, when people were hunter-gatherers, had no conception of a state. Tribal ancestors didn’t need police, armies, prisons, etc. But when humanity first developed class society, with classes at the top representing a tiny minority and classes at the bottom representing the vast majority, keeping the openly democratic forms of classless society was unstable, and suddenly a state was needed.
Because the new rulers of society needed to suppress the masses in order to maintain their hold on power, the state was created. The state is always a tool of oppression of the ruling class over the ruled, and is, as a result, a dictatorship of the class that rules it.

Dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie: Under capitalism, we live in a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, as that is the class that rules our society. The courts, police, jails, armies in all capitalist societies therefore serve the interests of the capitalist classes.
The state under capitalism, the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, comes in many forms: liberal democracy (which is not real democracy), constitutional monarchy, dictatorship, and fascism. But at the end of the day, the one thing that doesn’t change is that the tools of the state are used to suppress the working class from rising up against the bourgeoisie (e.g., the disparity in resources spent on prosecuting white-collar crimes versus working-class drug crimes).
Class Struggle and State Actions: Class struggle remains one of the motivating engines of human development as the struggle between the ruling classes and the ruled governs the actions of states. Their conflicting interests begin to clash. For example, under capitalism, the bourgeoisie, because of the relations of society, are incentivized not to continue technological development (think America’s reliance on fossil fuels), to maintain artificial scarcity in immense abundance (like having 16 million empty homes yet only 600,000 homeless people), to cut wages, and to lengthen working hours, and they use the state to secure this.
Social Revolution: However, no matter how much the state is used to suppress the rising contradiction between the ruled and the rulers, the contradiction between their different interests eventually breaks into what is called a social revolution, in which a new, rising mode of production that solves the contradictions of the previous one is born out of the rotting, decrepit system of the old. All revolutions ultimately solve a contradiction of the old system with a new one, and this cannot happen peacefully either, as no ruling class has ever peacefully given up its power.

Forms of Proletarian Struggle

The struggle of the proletariat is generally fought on four fronts:

Economic Struggle: In which the working classes fight for their best economic interests and rights under capitalism. This is the most basic and beginning form of class consciousness, as things such as fighting for higher wages and their own economic interests mobilize the working classes and bring them into a force. However, because economic struggle is often fought for reforms within the capitalist system (e.g., higher wages and better working contracts), it has its limitations. Economic struggle still keeps the systems of capitalism in place, and because they’re usually focused on short-term protection of workers’ rights and don’t change the system politically, whatever gains made during these struggles can eventually be taken away, and usually are when the capitalists get the chance.
Ideological Struggle: Going far beyond just the immediate economic needs of a single worker, the higher stage of struggle is the gaining of class consciousness within the proletariat, in which they realize that they shouldn’t just fight for their own rights at their company within their job, but against the entire capitalist class and system, in which they realize that they and the workers of other industries and even countries are the same and united. The trade union movements, while nice in terms of gaining rights, do not typically lead to the fostering of any class consciousness and therefore never evolve into socialism, often just transforming society into social democracies that eventually take away hard-fought rights with austerity when possible. Fostering class consciousness is an important task of Marxist-Leninist parties, as is resisting bourgeois ideas from infiltrating the socialist and communist movements of countries that seek to distort and neuter threatening communist ideas into forms that are much more palatable to the bourgeois.
Political Struggle: In which the proletariat masses become involved with working-class vanguard Marxist-Leninist parties and begin to organize politically with the aim of bringing class struggle to the political sphere, all across a nation.
Revolution: Finally, the highest form of political struggle for the proletariat is revolution. As the big contradiction between the amazing gains of the productive forces that the Industrial Revolution has brought humanity and the relations of how they are owned by a tiny minority leads the working class into seizing state power for itself in violent revolution, instituting a dictatorship of the proletariat over the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, ushering in a new form of government never seen before. For the first time, the apparatuses of the state are utilized for the vast majority of humanity and not a tiny ruling class, with true equality, democracy, democratic ownership of the means of production, and eventually the complete abolition of the state itself following after the proletariat finally vanquishes all remnants of the bourgeoisie.

The Dictatorship of the Proletariat and Socialism

Under socialism, the workers come to power and smash the old state apparatus, creating a new one to continue to suppress reaction and bourgeois forces until the battle is eventually won, and the state can then wither away, with humanity entering into a stateless, classless, society (this cannot be done immediately).
Proletarian revolutions happen within “bourgeois-democratic revolution, from a national-liberation movement of oppressed peoples, from an anti-fascist, anti-imperialist struggle of liberation.”
Masses as Drivers of History: Marxist-Leninism rightfully recognizes the masses as the main drivers of history, as they, and not the rulers, are the ones producing most material things for every single human economy ever. The masses are also the sole role makers during periods of revolution, during wars of liberation and defense, such as the brave Soviet masses’ resistance to the onslaught of fascism, or the brave Algerian masses’ struggle against the French imperialists. This is why adventurist actions like individual acts of terrorism without an organic connection to the masses so often fail to spur a revolution; simply assassinating a high-level figure does not involve the momentum of the masses and therefore changes nothing about a given system.
Likewise, while leaders are important to guide the masses, ultimately leaders serve their specific historical condition and circumstances and do not get anything done without the masses themselves. This is why “great man of history” theory is so unrealistic. For example, the idea that Stalin and Mao controlled and did everything in their experiments and not hundreds of millions of people. Because of the material conditions of history, assassinating one person doesn’t fundamentally change the events of history; if you went back in time and killed Napoleon, Hitler, George Washington, or Brian Thomson, another would be found by the conditions of his time.
Strength of the Working Class: In addition, compared to the weaker uprisings of slave and feudal society, in which revolts were small and tiny, “The working class has raised the struggle against the exploiters to its highest level. It is the most organized of all oppressed classes in history. The working class is the only class that enters the struggle fully armed with a scientific world outlook. It is not only a national but an international force, welded together by strong links of proletarian solidarity. All this makes the workers’ class struggle particularly powerful and enables it even in non-revolutionary, ‘peaceful’ periods to play an immense part in political life.”
Capitalism’s Contradictions: Capitalism, like all systems, was born out of contradiction. While it gave humanity many great progressive gains from the earlier feudalism, it also involved, for the first time since the age of feudalism, the mass deprivation of people of the means of production as the common lands many peasants farmed on were enclosed and peasants became landless wanderers so they could work on machines. Likewise, a section of the working class that was always too desperate and unemployed was needed as a way to break workers’ negotiating power; thus, the reserve army of labor was created.
Finally, “the development of some countries takes place at the cost of suffering and disaster for the peoples of other countries. For the soaring development of the economy and culture of the so-called ‘civilized world’—a handful of capitalist powers of Europe and North America—the majority of the world’s population, the peoples of Asia, Africa, Latin America and Australia paid a terrible price. The colonization of these continents made possible the rapid development of capitalism in the West. But to the enslaved peoples it brought ruin, poverty and monstrous political oppression. In the process of colonization, ‘cultured’ Europe not only destroyed many civilizations of other continents (the Inca, Maya and Aztec civilizations in America, for example, and many civilizations in Africa and the Asiatic countries), it also exterminated whole peoples. Not one man of the aboriginal population of Tasmania survived the colonization of that country, for example. The aboriginal population of Australia was reduced from 300,000 to 47,000. During the ‘assimilation’ of territories in America, nearly 30 million Indians were destroyed. And the ‘assimilation’ of Africa led to the extermination or forced transportation abroad, as slaves, of nearly 100 million peoples.”
Likewise, one of the greatest rots of the imperialist stage of capitalism is that the great and progressive gains in technology made are used for the senseless slaughter of workers all across the world in wars and world wars, as the relations of capitalism demand that technology not be used for the good of humanity but for its destruction.
Socialism solves the main contradictions of capitalism, in which the means of production are only used for the benefit of a tiny minority of humanity, and the imperialist domination of other countries. As Lenin would say, “‘Wherever you look you come at every step across problems which humanity is quite capable of solving immediately,’ wrote Lenin. Capitalism prevents this. It has amassed enormous wealth—and has made men the slaves of this wealth. It has solved the most complicated technical problems—and has prevented the application of technical improvements because of the poverty and ignorance of millions of the population, because of the stupid niggardliness of a handful of millionaires. Under capitalism civilization, freedom and wealth call to mind the rich glutton who is rotting alive through overeating but will not let what is young live on. ‘But the young is growing and will emerge supreme in spite of all.’”
One thing to mention, however, is that socialism historically has been built in the most underdeveloped and weakest links in the global system of capitalism, giving these socialist experiments the tasks of building up their societies in ways that were absent of the socialist revolution winning in a country with strongly developed capitalism (e.g., Russia, China, Vietnam). This has been a contradiction that has had to be dealt with in various ways.

Marx and Lenin’s Analysis of Capitalism

Marx and Lenin both lived in different eras of capitalism; Marx lived before capitalism reached its imperialist stage, and Lenin analyzed it after. Therefore, both analyses are important to examine.
Marx’s Commodity Analysis: To Marx, commodity production was the basis of capitalism. He began Das Kapital with a thorough explanation of commodities. A commodity, most fundamentally, is something made to satisfy a need and for exchange. For example, if you make a toothbrush, it’s made for cleaning teeth, and if you make it for someone other than your own needs, it’s a commodity.
Every single commodity has two values: a use value and an exchange value. A use value is just the intended use for the commodity (e.g., a home is to live in). An exchange value is how much profit can be made from a commodity (e.g., how much profit can I make off of this home). The working class ultimately only cares about the use value of commodities; the bourgeoisie only cares about the exchange value, which is why we have 16 million empty homes despite only 600,000 homeless people—homes as commodities in capitalism are used for exchange, not use.
Labor Theory of Value: One of the biggest questions economists have had for centuries is where the value for a commodity comes from. Marx answered simply: labor. The amount of work people did across a society and how long it took them to produce said commodity is what gives it its value. Marx’s theory put the worker and the labor they did at the center of the driving force of economies, therefore in his labor theory of value.
Money as a Universal Measure: Money itself is a commodity that makes the exchange of other commodities easier. Instead of having to barter 10 chickens for a home, money is able to be a universal measurement of value. “The fundamental function of money is to serve as a measure of value for all other commodities.” Money has also allowed the ruling elites of society to hoard the value produced by a given society easier, as it’s easier to keep a lot of money in the bank rather than cows or gold bars.
Monopolization: Because the value of a commodity is determined by socially necessary labor time, in the anarchy of the free market where hundreds of businesses usually operate at the same time, the businesses that get the newest technologies manage to cut down on the necessary time from their competition, which allows them to undercut their competition, sell their commodities at lower prices, and when their rivals fail, take over their competitors’ businesses. Therefore, capitalism, no matter how many reforms, no matter what libertarians tell you, is always tending towards monopolization of entire industries into the hands of smaller and smaller people.
Surplus Value: Marx’s other great realization was that ultimately all of capitalism is a pyramid scheme, as he dubbed it surplus value. For example, if you work in a watch-making factory and with your own two hands use your labor power to make $3,000 worth of watches in one day, and only get paid $200, then $2,700 has been robbed from you by your capitalist boss! This is a common theme for all workers across all industries: we all produce more value than we are paid. Where does this surplus value go then? It goes to the capitalists, who use this surplus value amassed from millions of workers to reinvest their money to make more commodities, which then give them more surplus value that lets them reinvest money, and so on. Think of the old adage “Boss makes a dollar, I make a dime, that’s why I poop on company time” – this is the simplest way to understand surplus value. In this way, our wages are actually illusions, as they completely hide the real value extraction that was done to us by our bosses.
Consider Jeff Bezos: those billions of dollars he has, he didn’t work for. All that is surplus value that was made by millions of workers employed by Amazon that he skimmed off the top of and gave each of those workers paltry wages that were nothing compared to what they produced. Jeff Bezos then used that surplus value to reinvest into exploiting more workers and expanding his industry, which has repeated itself into him becoming one of the richest men in history, with so much wealth that even the pharaohs of Egypt would blush!
Longer Hours: That is also why we work insane hours these days compared to our work hours not corresponding with productivity. The more hours capitalists keep us working, the more surplus value we produce for them. Essentially, there are a couple of hours in everyone’s workday where we work unpaid, making solely money for our bosses and not ourselves without even realizing it. Capitalism ultimately is incentivized to keep us working as long as possible to extract as much surplus value out of us.
Capital’s Nature: Capital itself is surplus value that the bourgeoisie use to invest to get more surplus value. Capital becomes a never-ending machine: the rich use the wealth gained from exploiting workers to fund exploiting more and more workers, and because of competition, this leads to our infinite growth in a finite Earth that we see as a natural tendency of the system.
Economic Crises: This infinite growth system often over-scales the purchasing power available in societies, especially since at the same time capitalists are incentivized to produce as much as possible, they’re also incentivized to cut wages of workers who are the main consumers of commodities, leading to the inevitable depressions, recessions, and economic crashes that we all “love.” As Marx recognized, the source of all economic crashes is “the poverty and limited purchasing power of the masses” and “It is found that the mass of commodities thrown upon the market cannot be paid for by the mass of purchasers in view of their limited incomes and purchasing power.”
AI and the Reserve Army of Labor: Under capitalism, an increase in technological progress like AI is actually a bad thing, as it contributes to the reserve army of labor. The reserve army of labor is a section of the working class that is perpetually unemployed and then used as a bargaining chip for current workers. People who are working suddenly find themselves in competition with unemployed people who are willing to take any wage, thus breaking the negotiating and organizational power of the working class by having us play off of each other.

Lenin’s Contributions: Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism

Lenin’s contributions would be taking the base given to him by Marx and expanding his analysis of capitalism to the imperialist age, which Lenin dubbed the highest stage of capitalism, seeing it as capitalism’s final, most highly developed form.

Imperialist Phase: Lenin had the great realization that capitalism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries had entered a new phase: its imperialist phase. As Lenin recognized, capitalism was a battle to conquer the market, a battle that inevitably led earlier free competitive capitalism to become dominated by finance monopolies (big banks and monopolies). To win the battle for the market in a country, once they won the battle at home, they looked abroad, and through conquest and the export of capital, would come to dominate and bring whole territories of the world under their control.
Therefore, these finance monopolies not only won the competition for the market at home but across the whole globe! But once there was nowhere left to expand in dividing up and conquering the world, the imperialist powers turned on each other to redivide the world, in what we call the World Wars. Therefore, Lenin recognized that the division of the world’s markets amongst imperialist powers, then fighting over to redivide the world in bombastic world wars, was an inevitable cycle of capitalism in its imperialist stage.
Export of Capital: One of the most important aspects of imperialism is the export of capital. As you remember, capital is surplus value used by capitalists to help them grow their businesses and exploit more surplus value from more workers. Under imperialism, this took on a whole new stage of international investment, in which imperialist capitalists from countries that have gained an insane amount of surplus value and development, with nowhere left to invest within their own home economy, invest their capital into poorer nations with cheaper labor power, resources, goods, land, etc., which leads to an unequal exchange and global inequality of the most disgusting type.
For example, in 1960, 48% of all total profits America got were from capital it invested in the Middle East and Latin America, with American finance monopolies getting 5 times the profit back to what they invested. As you can imagine, America sucked these other countries dry and took all of their wealth.
Territorial Divisions: Imperialism also leads to the territorial divisions of the world. By 1914, two-thirds of the world was a colony or semi-colony of the great European powers. But with nowhere left to expand and all the markets conquered, the European powers had no one else to conquer but themselves, and thus began the age of world wars in which the great imperialist powers fought each other for access to markets. For the colonies, “The yoke of the monopolies makes an all-round economic development of these countries impossible.”
Stagnation and Rot: But as much as finance monopoly capitalism and its imperialism brings capitalism to its highest stages ever, it also begins the death knell of capitalism as the monopoly stage of capitalism sets in an inevitable rot within the system. That’s because, unlike the earlier stage of capitalism, monopolies under capitalism tend to stagnate on technological innovation, progress, and efficiency, with their tight grips on the markets making such things impossible de facto. In addition, the workers begin to stagnate, unemployment and misery grow, and monopolies dig their own graves in millions of out-of-work proletarians.
Shift Towards Fascism: This new monopoly stage of capitalism, in its disgusting exploitation, slowly but surely begins getting rid of the few small democratic rights that were allowed under previous stages, almost always evolving into fascism as finance monopoly attempts to hold onto its power.
Labor Aristocracy: In addition, the age of imperialism has led within the imperialist countries to the creation of a new subclass, the labor aristocracy. This is a section of the global working class that, through colonial loot, has been bribed with better conditions to protect capitalism and imperialism against other workers. The labor aristocracy is temporarily the biggest bloc in stopping proletariat organization; however, it’s a temporary bandage on a decaying system, and a labor aristocracy cannot forever impede the coming decay of capitalism.
Uneven Development: The imperialist stage of capitalism also leads to uneven development within a country (think of the American South) and globally, as “Under capitalism it is impossible for individual enterprises, industries and countries to develop evenly. Private ownership of the means of production, anarchy of production and competition make the uneven development of capitalist economy inevitable. Some capitalist enterprises, industries, and countries lag behind, while others shoot ahead.”
Revolution in Weakest Links: In addition, Leninism has recognized that, unlike Marx and Engels’ old analysis that socialist revolution would happen in the most developed places in the capitalist world, a recognition that imperialism and its contradictions actually allowed for socialist revolution to happen in the weakest, most underdeveloped places in the capitalist world—something that has been proven right time and time again.
State Monopoly Capitalism: After World War II, American monopoly finance capital has become the biggest world hegemon of imperialism, quickly taking over European states and their sovereignty in alliance with their bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie of Europe allied with America to stop the spread of socialism and national liberation in return for helping America with its imperialism and interests. This has seen the creation of blocs like NATO, the World Bank, etc.
America managed to invest itself within Europe and therefore within Europe’s neo-colonies and spheres of influence. American dominance over the world has also been achieved through the building of military bases within countries in its hegemonic bloc all over the world, with the goal of both keeping these countries from rebelling and protecting its monopoly finance capital and its interests, as it’s a lot harder to liberate yourself when America has a base in your country. As Otto would write, observing prophetically in 1960, “A system of satellites dependent in some degree or another on the leading imperialist power—the United States of America—is coming into being.”
State monopoly capitalism has reached a stage where it cannot be confined to the borders of a singular country now, and so it tends towards big international economic agencies such as the EU, ECOWAS, etc. But all these effectively do is lead to the domination of the strongest economies over the weakest ones. “The imperialists advertise in every possible way the ‘supranational’ nature of these organizations, but in reality their ‘supranational’ nature is expressed in the fact that their member-countries have lost their independence in determining important aspects of their economic policy.”
This stage of capitalism after World War II that we currently are in has seen the breaking down of all tariffs, borders, and economies to become integrated into one world economy with large monopoly finance interests without borders. However, as of this recording, this free neoliberal order seems to be breaking down for more ugly imperialist interfighting once again.
Nationalism in Oppressed Nations: The nationalism of oppressed nations remains a progressive force in terms of fighting capitalism and pushing forward socialism. As Lenin would say, “‘The fatherland, i.e., the given political, cultural and social environment, is the most powerful factor in the class struggle of the proletariat…. The proletariat cannot be indifferent to and unconcerned about the political, social and cultural conditions of its struggle and, consequently, cannot remain indifferent to the fate of its country…but the destinies of the country interest it only to the extent that they affect its class struggle, and not in virtue of some bourgeois ‘patriotism’, quite indecent on the lips of a Social-Democrat.’” This distinguishes it from “MAGA communists” who might fall into uncritical nationalism.
Liberal bourgeois democracy always remains a fake democracy which under state monopoly is beholden to the monopoly finance interests of the big capitalists. In addition, whatever democratic gains are given to people under liberalism are always being eroded away; liberalism always tends towards fascism as “The aggravation of the class struggle, the further weakening of the positions of capitalism and the fear of socialism, whose forces are continuously increasing, drive the monopolies to extremes both in internal and foreign policy.” The struggle for Marxist-Leninism therefore is not a struggle against democracy but a struggle for true democracy, a proletarian democracy that represents the majority of humanity and not the tiny minority.
Peace and Imperialism: Our goal as communists is to avoid imperialist wars as much as possible and to push for peace, especially in our nuclear age, as “The monopolist bourgeoisie, being a class without any future in history, may in the face of all common sense plunge into the adventure of a new war even at the risk of taking whole countries and peoples with it into perdition… Peace cannot be begged from the imperialists, but it can be forced from them.”
Biggest Contradiction: Bar none, the biggest contradiction under our current stage of capitalism is the schism between the monopolies and all other classes within society (peasants, intelligentsia, workers, even sometimes small capitalists), which it exploits, subordinates, and deprives of democratic rights. Therefore, “There is no remedy for this national calamity except by uniting all the workers’ and democratic movements opposing the oppression of the financial oligarchy into a single, mighty stream which will sweep away the dictatorship of the monopolies and remove all its agents.”

Revolutionary Strategy and Practice

Marx’s Vision and Lenin’s Adaptation: The way Marx had traditionally envisioned revolution happening was that first a bourgeois capitalist revolution would happen and would implement a capitalist mode of production, then a socialist revolution would follow. A socialist revolution therefore, for most European Marxists, was impossible without a bourgeois revolution and capitalism in the first place. Lenin’s great contribution was the realization that in the age of imperialism, capitalism had developed so highly and created such a strong working class that the working class could lead a country into a capitalist revolution then a socialist one as one seamless revolution that didn’t need to wait for a long period of capitalist development in between (what happened in Russia: Revolution of 1905 capitalism → 1917 socialism; and China: KMT capitalism → CPC).
In doing so, the working class would take the state from a dictatorship of the bourgeois to a dictatorship of the proletariat, using its instruments to suppress bourgeois classes in defense of the working class and transitioning society towards socialism and communism.
Weakest Links of Imperialism: In breaking with Marx and Engels’ ideas of socialist revolution inevitably coming from the most highly developed capitalism, Leninism recognized that in the age of imperialism, revolution in fact happens in the weakest links in imperialism. What are the weakest links of imperialism though? “It implies a country or group of countries in which the economic and political contradictions of capitalism become particularly acute, in which the ruling classes prove incapable of coping with the revolutionary movement, the revolutionary forces being great and organized, and in which therefore the most favorable conditions are present for the overthrow of capitalism.”
World wars, as much as they reveal the worst sides of capitalism, also break the system so much that they inevitably lead to great workers’ revolutions, with the Russian following the First World War, and the Chinese, Korean, North Vietnamese all following the Second.
Lenin’s Three Criteria for a Revolutionary Situation:
1. When it is impossible for the ruling classes to maintain their rule in an unchanged form; when there is a crisis, in one form or another, among the ‘upper classes’, a crisis in the policy of the ruling class which causes a fissure.
2. When the want and suffering of the oppressed classes have become more acute than usual.
3. When, as a consequence of the above causes, there is a considerable increase in the activity of the masses who in turbulent times are drawn both by all the circumstances of the crisis and by the ‘upper classes’ themselves into independent historical action.
In this, Lenin recognized that the masses being angry at the rulers of a country wasn’t simply enough; the rulers of a country had to get into a crisis where they couldn’t even maintain rule anymore. Leninist parties therefore don’t only pay attention to the consciousness of the masses but also the “screw-ups” of the rulers.
However, the conditions for a revolution could be absolutely theoretically perfect, but without a working-class party there to guide the workers actually doing action, nothing’s going to happen. Without action, revolutionary crises dissipate or someone else fills the vacuum.
When the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie is overthrown by the working classes, the enemies of the working classes still remain, so do the capitalist relations, which is why a dictatorship of the proletariat is needed to both suppress enemies of the working class and also transition society from capitalism to socialism.
“Dictatorship” in Proletarian Dictatorship: A dictatorship of the proletariat does not mean dictatorship in the way we commonly understand it. It simply means the tools of the state (police, armies, prisons) are used to suppress reactionaries. In fact, a dictatorship in this sense is not how it’s commonly understood; it just means using the state to suppress another class. In fact, the dictatorship of the proletariat is much more democratic than liberal democracy because the working classes actually control the government. For example, when the first soviets were established in Russia, up to 12 million people would participate in them as delegates, in congresses, meetings, etc.
That’s because the bourgeoisie never give up their power peacefully and will try to restore their power whenever they can, and in the era of global capitalism, they can rely on help from America and Western capitalist states in trying to re-establish power.
“The dictatorship of the proletariat is inevitable in any transition from capitalism to socialism. It is necessary for crushing the resistance of the exploiters and suppressing the activities of criminal elements which, like scum, rise to the surface in this period,” as the workers take the tools of the state from the bourgeoisie.
And ultimately, the dictatorship of the proletariat cannot survive without mass support or democratic participation of the masses, so do not think of it as the absence of democracy but the creation of a better one. As “democracy in the imperialist countries is a screen for the very real dictatorship of the big capitalist monopolies, directed against the working class, against the working people,” as it devolves into open fascism, workers’ democracy, rather than seeing a rule of the minority over the majority, sees a rule of the majority over the minority classes.
Democratic Centralism: The dictatorship of the proletariat works under democratic centralism, which “means administration of affairs relating to the whole state by one centre and subordination of local bodies to this centre, coupled with election of all the organs of power and their accountability to the people, and with the largest possible drawing of the popular masses into the work of administration and the granting of independence to local bodies.”
In addition, “All the state bodies of the dictatorship of the proletariat rely on the popular masses, maintain constant contact with them, heed their opinion, and are under their control. Persons holding office are subject to election, are accountable to the people and can be recalled. Most of the officials of the machinery set up by the proletarian dictatorship come from the working people.”
Trade unions under the dictatorship of the proletariat are incorporated into the state, and though they’re not given state power (because giving them so would lead to an anarchy of production that might restore capitalism), they are used as democratic organs “against bureaucratic distortions of the Soviet apparatus, in the sense of protection of the material and spiritual interests of the working masses by means and ways inaccessible to this apparatus.”
Flexibility of Implementation: The way that the dictatorship of the proletariat is implemented changes on the conditions of a country. It might be simply a one-party state, like in the example of the Soviet Union, or the Marxist-Leninist party leading a united front in collaboration with other parties may implement a dictatorship of the proletariat, like North Korea, which has 4 political parties. In the united front case, it’s usually due to the working class not being as strong and needing other class allies (e.g., the Workers’ Party of Korea works with the Chondoist Party, which is a Christian peasant one). As long as all of these parties are committed to the dictatorship of the proletariat and the ultimate goal of building socialism and then communism, it’s alright. As Lenin would say, “All nations will arrive at socialism—that is inevitable—but they will not all arrive at it in exactly the same way; each will introduce something specific into one or other form of democracy, into one or other variety of the dictatorship of the proletariat, into one or another rate of socialist transformation of various aspects of social life.”
Temporary Phase: Now, the dictatorship of the proletariat is not a permanent phase, as “the founders of Marxism-Leninism never regarded the dictatorship of the proletariat as an end in itself. They saw in it merely a necessary means for suppressing the overthrown classes and ensuring the building of socialism. Lenin stressed that the aim of the dictatorship of the proletariat is ‘to build socialism.’ He spoke of the ‘period of the dictatorship of the proletariat as the period of the transition from capitalism to socialism.’” The dictatorship of the proletariat, where the working class wields the state to transition society to socialism, was always envisioned as eventually withering away as it was no longer needed, as class antagonisms disappeared, and the need for a state itself disappeared, when humanity was finally able to transition to that full stateless, moneyless society known as communism. Of course, the reason that modern-day communist states have retained it is because they’re under siege; socialist revolution hasn’t won globally, and thus getting rid of their states would be inviting their own end.

Socialism in Practice and Economic Organization

Socialism, wherever it is built, is always marked by the level of production and issues of the old society. While capitalist propagandists love to compare war-torn Russia to the highly developed, peacetime America, the USSR started out at a lower level of productive forces and had to catch up. Even when starting out with less, socialism was better than capitalism in taking care of its citizenry, especially as it began to catch up to the capitalist world as these experiments built up their productive forces.
Gains under Proletarian Dictatorship: The biggest wins of the working classes under the dictatorship of the proletariat is gaining the wealth of society. In countries with less developed productive forces like Russia, this meant workers’ rights they’d never had before, like an immediate 8-hour workday. As they slowly built up their productive forces, eventually childcare institutions, free housing, subsidized vacation spots, and free education for their children were implemented. In highly developed societies, this wealth and these rights will be even greater.
Because Russia had little to no productive forces, Russia built up her own from the ground up under a socialist mode of production—something that had never been done before and was against all Marxist orthodoxy—but it ended up successful in the end and allowed her to defeat the Nazis and survive, going from an agrarian economy to a leading industrial behemoth and world superpower. China followed her example. In countries with highly developed productive forces like America, socialists’ jobs would just simply be to reorganize the relations of production.
Soviet Industrialization: The results of the socialist industrialization of the USSR were great too, as “By 1937, 98.7 percent of the production facilities were public property, that is, belonging to the socialist state or to the collective farms and co-operatives. By that time, the socialist enterprises accounted for 99.8 percent of the total industrial output. The share of the socialist sector in the total volume of agricultural production came to 98.5 percent and in retail trade to 100 percent. It indicated that the whole of the national economy was developing on a single socialist basis.”
Socialist Economy Structure: What does a socialist economy look like? “In socialist society these elements are combined in such a way that those taking part in the production process collectively own the means of labour which they employ. This totally excludes the possibility of the means of production being converted by one part of society into a means of exploitation of the other part of society.”
The two ways that socialism has historically manifested itself are state property (with the state nationalizing industry and representing the workers in doing so) and cooperatives. However, having workers’ co-ops is not a magical cheat code for building socialism on their own. That’s because many people like to believe that workers’ cooperatives under capitalism will magically help us create socialism; however, “Historical experience shows that under capitalism co-operation of small producers, in most cases, assumes a bourgeois character. In socialist society, when the working class and peasantry are in power and the state sector predominates in the country’s economy, the cooperatives become socialist in character.” Under socialism, the surplus value of society doesn’t go towards a small group of CEOs but instead back to the whole of society itself.
Socialist Commodity Production: Does socialism have commodity production? Yes, it does. While “left communists” often say that the USSR and all socialist experiments were failures because they continued to engage in both commodity production and money relations, what they forgot to account for was that when an underdeveloped agrarian economy builds up its productive forces, socialist commodity production was radically different from capitalist commodity production as “Socialist commodity production is a commodity production without private ownership, without capitalists and without small commodity producers. It is carried on by state enterprises, agricultural co-operatives, artisans’ and handicraftsmen’s co-operatives, etc., i. e. associated socialist commodity producers. Exchange is not the only form of social connection between them as it is under capitalism. Before any exchange takes place the socialist commodity producers are linked into a single whole through collective property and joint participation in planning and guiding the national economy. The means of production cannot be turned into a means of exploitation since they are collective property. The land, this important means of production, cannot be sold or bought at all, hence it is no longer a commodity. Nor can labour-power become a commodity in socialist economy. The working people, who collectively own the means of production, obviously cannot sell their labour-power to themselves.”
In addition, the value of commodities is no longer determined by a free market or exchange value but instead on “socially necessary expenditure of labour. Not the market but production itself becomes the chief sphere of operation of the law of value.” Through strategic pricing, the state under socialism is able to stimulate growth in other sectors of society. Socialist central planning also allows the socialist states to eliminate major issues under capitalism like unemployment.
Cooperative Work: Under capitalism, workers are pitted against each other in competition. However, the great thing about a socialist economy is that when a worker is good at something, they are encouraged to teach others methods to get to their level of productivity. Work becomes less cut-throat and more cooperative because you, your coworkers, and the society around you all own the means of production together.
Wages and Social Services: In a socialist economy, if someone produces more value, do they get paid the same? No, wages are based on one’s productivity; those who make more value get more value. In addition, everyone gets free social services like healthcare, education, pensions, and subsidized housing, which also add to one’s wage.
Mass Participation in Socialist Democracy: Socialist democracy worked especially in terms of mass participation. For example, “Altogether about 340,000 workers and nearly 780,000 collective farmers were elected to local Soviets in 1959.” Under socialism, the masses directly participated in their governments in ways they couldn’t in bourgeois democracy.

Cultural Revolution and the Path to Communism

A socialist revolution is not only a revolution of economy but also culture. As Lenin would say, “We must take the entire culture left by capitalism and build socialism out of it. We must take all science, technology, all knowledge, and art. Without this we cannot build life in communist society.” In essence, this is the creation of a new workers’ culture out of a previously reactionary one.
A cultural revolution also means taking culture out of the hands of the elites and letting the masses have a say in what it can be. This is because, rather than being owned by the elites, “after the revolution. Clubs, libraries, palaces of culture, theatres, museums, cinema, radio, television, press, and a ramified network of evening and correspondence schools become part and parcel of the people’s life,” and the masses get to choose their direction.
Transition to Communism: Socialism and the dictatorship of the proletariat are not the final evolution of humanity, however, as the ultimate goal of every socialist society is to eventually build up a base for the slow and gradual transition to a stateless, moneyless, classless society known as communism.
As the state under socialism would begin withering away when old class antagonisms were completely eradicated, as socialist society gets closer to that full communism, the workers of said society will stop being in highly specialized fields as the division of labor breaks away and all men become well-rounded individuals. No longer will people be stuck to a single occupation, which, as Marx saw it, led to the suppression of the entire world of human intellectual capabilities.
In China, something of this sort was tried during its Great Leap Forward, where people in communes would be educated in a well-rounded way and do multiple jobs in a year (soldier, working in the fields, factory worker), with the hope that no single individual could monopolize in a field. This also lent itself to be more efficient, as farmers that used tractors and worked in the factories to make them would know how to repair said tractors.
While Marx did not give us much as to what full communism would look like, what he did give us is fascinating. As socialist society begins its transition to full communism, the state will begin to wither away, and the democratic parts of socialist society will become amplified. People will slowly stop working for money and start working for their own initiative. A new culture will be incorporated into the people in which they will reasonably seek out things (no longer commodities since things are no longer produced for exchange) not for money and work not for money. This doesn’t mean that people will start hoarding diamonds, but anything that people need, as the productive forces of humanity reach a point of automation and production, elimination of scarcity within reasonable need will be available. The barriers between intellectual and physical work will disappear, and humans will have free time to use this for mental, physical, and philosophical capabilities. The repressive parts of the state will completely disappear, as will the state. Money itself will disappear as humanity is liberated from the state and even the division of labor itself.
Full communism would also become a society of “each according to his ability, each according to his need,” becoming a true meritocracy.
In addition, under full communism, “Leisure time will increase greatly. Let us recall the great significance that Marx attached to this. He said that under communism the wealth of society will be measured not by the amount of working time but by the free time of its members. Leisure means not only time for rest, the restoration of man’s strength, but also, to use the words of Marx, space for the development of his personality. The members of the new society, cultured people of versatile development, will undoubtedly find rational and worthy ways of filling this ‘space’. Study will become just as much an integral element of each man’s way of life as work, rest, and sleep. The enjoyment of all kinds of cultural benefits will rise immeasurably. Society, becoming richer, will be able to assign ever more resources and labor for the production of these benefits.”
“What a boundless field of activity will be open before communist society in the development of the abilities and personality of all its members, in achieving the physical and spiritual perfection of the people themselves! The advance to the shining heights of communist civilization will always engender in people unusual power of will and intellect, creative impulses, courage, and life-giving energy.” Whether we will ever see full communism within our lifetimes is doubtful, as it will take generations to build this.

Source

Kuusinen, O. V., Y. A. Arbatov, A. S. Belyakov, S. L. Vygodsky, A. G. Mileikovsky, and L. M. Sheidin. Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism. 2nd ed. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1963. https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/fundamentals-marxism-leninism.pdf.

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