State and Revolution has long seemed to be the most puzzling of Lenin's written works. The traditional view among western scholars has regarded State and Revolution as a Utopian fantasy that is completely out of character with the rest of Lenin's thought. The most prominent exponent of that viewpoint is Robert V. Daniels, who, in an influential article published in 1953, asserted that the ideas of State and Revolution were "permeated with an idealistic, almost Utopian spirit." and who in a later work described State and Revolution as an "argument for Utopian anarchism" and a treatise in "revolutionary utopianism." Similar comments have been offered by a number of other authors. Alfred Meyer, though not dealing in detail with State and Revolution in his brilliant review of Lenin's thought, regards the essay as a reflection of the "dream of the 'commune state'" expressed in Lenin's statements from early 1917 through the first few months of 1918. Adam Ulam refers to State and Revolution as "almost a straightforward profession of anarchism." All those authorities agree that the themes found in State and Revolution are strikingly inconsistent with the elitism, realism, and authoritarianism that permeated Lenin's other writings, before and after the publication of State and Revolution, and that guided him in practice as the leader of the Bolshevik party and the Soviet state. Deniels contends that "State and Revolution is a work conforming neither to Lenin's previous thought nor to his subsequent practice.

It stands as a monument to its author's intellectual deviation during the year of revolution, 1917." Louis Fischer calls State and Revolution an "aberrant intellectual enterprise, a fanciful exercise for so rockhard a man, as un-Leninist as the mask he wore and the false name he bore in hiding while writing it." According to Ulam, "no work could be more un-representative of its author's political philosophy and his general frame of mind than this one by Lenin." Viewed in that manner, State and Revolution is an anomaly, an instance of un-Leninist Leninism, and the question that inevitably is posed is why Lenin wrote an essay that is said to be very sharply at variance with the general tone and direction of his thought. Answers to that question differ considerably among the authors just cited, but the most common explanation for the utopianism of State and Revolution is that in 1917 the collapse of the tsarist regime, the upsurge of mass militancy and radicalism in Russia, and the rapid improvement of the prospects for a successful proletarian revolution aroused Lenin's optimism as never before and encouraged him to shift toward sympathy with the aspirations of Left Bolsheviks. Lenin, in that perspective, was so caught up in the revolutionary mood of 1917 that he was virtually intoxicated with optimism. Most of the proponents of that school of thought, however, see Lenin as sobering up when assuming the responsibility of exercising power and as discarding the dreams of State and Revolution when his authoritarianism reasserted itself increasingly from the spring of 1918 on.

Another school of thought, more frequently heard from in recent years, denies that State and Revolution represents a fundamental deviation from the general line of Lenin's thought. That revisionist interpretation of the place of State and Revolution among Lenin's works was expressed most emphatically in an article by Rodney Barfield in [Slavic Review] in 1971. Barfield agrees that Lenin's approach in State and Revolution "gives way to spontaneous, anarchistic tendencies," that the essay promises an "anarchistic state of affairs," and that it is filled with "Utopian notions" and "anarchistic proposals." Barfield, however, sees Lenin's major treatise on the state as a "theoretical work looking into the future," a model of future socialist society that was, on the level of abstract theory, not incongruent with Lenin's general outlook. "State and Revolution does represent his fundamental philosophy of man, his inner conviction of human nature, his ideals for a more humane world." Barfield argues that both hard-nosed realism and Utopian idealism were inherent elements of Lenin's values and expectations throughout his political career. Rolf Theen also charges that the interpretation of State and Revolution as an aberration or a daydream "fails to recognize … that underneath Lenin's pragmatism as a revolutionary there was always a powerful Utopian vision." Though the essay,

with its anarchistic tendencies, its emphasis on the spontaneous abilities and key role of the masses in the construction of the new society, as well as its concomitant de-emphasis of discipline and organization … seems to be the perfect antithesis of the elitist and managerial approach to revolution which constitutes the central theme of What Is To Be Done?,

Theen contends that "the disparity is only superficial," because Lenin's essay on the state was "not as much concerned with the practical politics of the immediate present as with the theoretical exposition of the future society under socialism," and revealed Lenin's belief in "the ultimate rationality and perfectibility of man." A distinctly different position is taken by Neil Harding, who says that Lenin's writings of 1917 on political organization were not intended as an abstract, theoretical projection for the new society of the remote future but were meant to furnish "a coherent set of guidelines which would guide socialists in the practical task of establishing a socialist society." Harding, like other authors, describes State and Revolution as advocating the dominance of unrestrained, spontaneous mass initiative. That essay was a "project to dissolve the state and to inaugurate mass self-administration," a "vision of genuine direct democracy and genuine freedom," and a model of "radical direct democracy," which "necessarily entailed the broadest diffusion of authority and power to a multiplicity of self-acting organizations of the popular mass, its animating principles being camaraderie and spontaneous self-organization." Yet Harding rejects the view that State and Revolution was a pipe dream inconsistent with Lenin's writing before 1917, since he sees Lenin as primarily a somewhat idealistic theorist rather than a pragmatic political leader, and as innocent of the accusation of Jacobinism, at least until later in his life.

The focus of disagreement among commentators on State and Revolution has been the relationship between that essay and the rest of Lenin's thought and writings. There has been general agreement, however, that the content of State and Revolution is Utopian in the sense of discarding the concern with elites, centralization, and hierarchy that is a prominent feature of many of Lenin's other works and endorsing a virtually unstructured, semi-anarchist system of rule by the autonomous popular masses. If that were indeed the content of Lenin's vision of socialism in State and Revolution, the essay would be something of an anomaly; reconciling that vision with the rest of Lenin's writings on politics and society would be difficult. It is the argument of this article, however, that State and Revolution has been misinterpreted in most of the scholarly literature on Lenin's thought. State and Revolution is simply not the Utopian, quasi-anarchistic expression of hostility to authority and blind faith in the masses that it is usually made out to be. The essay does represent the high watermark of Lenin's optimism concerning the merits of mass initiative in building the new society, but elitism, hierarchy, and centralization are by no means absent from Lenin's picture of socialist society. In 1917 he did not in theory or practice throw all caution to the winds and stake everything on the unsullied wisdom of the masses. Lenin's essay was vulnerable to the charge of being unrealistic, not because he failed to allow for authority from above, but because he expected centralized planning and guidance to be easily compatible with enthusiastic initiative from below. Yet Lenin may have had good practical reasons for appearing at the time to be overly optimistic on that issue. The reexamination of State and Revolution in this article will proceed through two steps. The first is a description of the purposes Lenin sought to achieve in that essay, as shown by contextual evidence as well as statements in State and Revolution itself. The second step will be an analysis of the details of Lenin's remarks on the structure and operation of the institutions of the future socialist society, as discerned through a careful rereading of State and Revolution and reference to his other relevant works of 1917.

Before dealing with the purposes and content of State and Revolution, however, it will be worthwhile to review briefly the circumstances of its writing and publication. Recent scholarship has established that most of Lenin's preliminary work on State and Revolution preceded the February Revolution. There is some evidence that Lenin had shown particular interest in questions concerning the role and significance of the state in 1915 and 1916, yet other problems clearly preoccupied him more until the later part of 1916. Lenin's intensive reexamination of Marxist thought on the state was stimulated by Nikolai Bukharin, who in July 1916 submitted an essay, "Towards a Theory of the Imperialist State," for inclusion in a series edited by Lenin. The essay was rejected by Lenin, who bluntly informed Bukharin that it was ill-formed and erroneous in its treatment of political matters. Bukharin published another version of the article, titled "The Imperialist Pirate State," in Jugend-Internationale in December 1916. Lenin responded with a piece in Sbornik Sotsial-Demokrata, published in the same month, in which he again repudiated Bukharin's position and revealed that he hoped to compose an article of his own on the state. Lenin then "set to work" in the Zurich Library, as Nadezhda Krupskaia reported, "rereading all that Marx and Engels had written on the state and making notes on their work." He was absorbed in that theoretical effort during January and February of 1917, still expressing the intention of producing an "article" on "the attitude of Marxism to the state." In the course of his studies of early 1917, he arrived at conclusions that signified a virtual reconciliation with Bukharin. Lenin's notes from January and February 1917 were written in a notebook with a blue cover, bearing the title "Marxism on the State." Those notes, consisting of extensive quotations from Marx, Engels, and later socialist authors, along with Lenin's comments, set forth the essence of the argument that later was to be elaborated in State and Revolution. The principal themes of Lenin's major essay on the state were derived from his review of theoretical writings before the Russian Revolution of February 1917.

After the fall of the Romanov dynasty, Lenin's return to Russia and his involvement in revolutionary activity forced him to set aside theoretical endeavors. In July 1917, when Lenin fled Petrograd to avoid arrest, he left a note imploring Lev Kamenev to publish his notes on Marxism and the state if he were "bumped off." Finding himself alive and well in hiding near Razliv, Lenin was able to obtain the delivery of his blue notebook from Stockholm, where it had been left during his return to Russia. His labors at transforming his notes into a finished work continued in Finland in August and September. In the fall of 1917, Lenin planned to publish State and Revolution under a pseudonym, to avoid confiscation of the book by the Provisional Government. As the work was not published until January 1918, that subterfuge proved unnecessary. A second edition of State and Revolution was published in 1919 with the inclusion of only one additional section by Lenin and without the chapter on the experience of the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917 that Lenin had planned to add. The circumstances of the preparation and printing of State and Revolution indicate clearly that the main ideas in the essay took shape before February 1917 but that in the heat of revolutionary political activity, Lenin retained a keen interest in the completion and dissemination of his theoretical arguments on the relation of Marxists to the state.

Lenin's primary objective in State and Revolution was not the description of the state in the future socialist society, though he did turn to that subject in extensive passages of his essay. His primary objective is easily identified. Lenin opened the essay with the complaint that since Marx's death, his teachings had been distorted by the bourgeoisie and the "opportunists" within the labor movement. "In these circumstances, in view of the unprecedentedly widespread distortion of Marxism, our prime task is to re-establish what Marx really taught on the subject of the state." Lenin aimed to define the doctrinal orthodoxy of Marxism concerning the proper relationship of the proletariat toward the state. The principal theme of State and Revolution, supported by lengthy quotations from Marx and Engels, is that the working class cannot take over the existing bourgeois state for its own use but must smash (razbW) the bourgeois state and replace it with a new one. "Marx's idea is that the working class must break up, smash the 'ready-made state machinery,' and not confine itself merely to laying hold of it." Lenin insisted that the imperative of destruction of the bourgeois state was of central importance for Marxism. "The necessity of systematically imbuing the masses with this and precisely this view of violent revolution lies at the root of the entire theory of Marx and Engels." But why did Lenin elevate the principle of destruction of the bourgeois state to the status of the key test of Marxist orthodoxy?

State and Revolution represented Lenin's bid to claim the mantle of international leadership in the interpretation of the teachings of Marx and Engels. The essay, like many others written by Lenin, had a polemical character; its chief target was the most prominent theoretician of German social democracy, Karl Kautsky.

Since Engels's death in 1895, Kautsky had been generally recognized as the world's leading exponent of Marxist theory. Lenin acknowledged in 1917 that Kautsky had been "the most outstanding authority" and the "best-known leader of the Second International." After the outbreak of World War I, however, Kautsky's adoption of a position of compromise on Germany's military efforts had outraged Lenin and prompted him to try to discredit Kautsky in the eyes of the world's Marxists. During the war, Lenin had adopted the aim of forming a new, genuinely radical international organization of Marxist parties. He urged impatiently, "our Party must not wait, but must immediately found a Third International." Lenin expected to be among the leaders of the new International. He sought to demonstrate that Kautsky, the most respected theoretician of the old International, had made errors of fundamental importance in the interpretation of Marxism.

Several pieces of evidence indicate that Kautsky was the chief target of Lenin's polemic in State and Revolution. Each of Lenin's letters of early 1917 that mentioned that he was writing an essay on the state noted that he was singling out Kautsky for criticism. He wrote to Aleksandra Kollontai in February 1917 that

I am preparing (have almost got the material ready) an article on the question of the attitude of Marxism toward the state. I have come to conclusions more sharply against Kautsky, than against Bukharin. … The question is extremely important; Bukharin is much better than Kautsky, but Bukharin's mistakes may ruin this "just cause" in the struggle with Kautskyism.

Later in the same month, in a letter to Inessa Armand reporting on his study of Marxist views on the state, Lenin said.

I … have come, it seems to me, to very interesting and important conclusions much more against Kautsky than against N. Iv. Bukharin (who, however, is still not right, although closer to the truth than Kautsky). I would terribly like to write of that: to publish No. 4 of the "Collection Social-Democrat" with Bukharin's article and my analysis of his small mistakes and Kautksy's big lies and vulgarization of Marxism.

When writing Armand again several days later, Lenin referred to the debate between Anton Pannekoek and Kautsky that would be reviewed in State and Revolution: "I have read Pannekoek's discussion in 'Neue Zeit' (1912) with Kautsky: Kautsky is an arch-villain, and Pannekoek is almost right; he only is guilty of inaccuracies and slight mistakes. Kautsky is the acme of opportunism." Lenin's correspondence revealed that his analysis of Marx's writings on the state was closely tied to the attack on Kautsky. In addition Kautsky was the only author other than Marx and Engels to whom major sections of Lenin's notes of January and February 1917, "Marxism on the State," were devoted.

The text of State and Revolution itself makes it clear that Lenin sought in that essay to demolish Kautsky's position among international Marxists. In the preface to that work, after asserting that "the struggle to free the working people from the influence of the bourgeoisie… is impossible without a struggle against opportunist prejudices concerning the state," Lenin adds that "we deal especially with the one who is chiefly responsible for these distortions, Karl Kautsky." In the first section of the essay following the preface, after complaining of the "doctoring" of Marxism and explaining that his prime task is to reestablish "what Marx really taught on the subject of the state," Lenin says that the inclusion of long excerpts from the works of Marx and Engels is necessary to present the views of the founders of scientific socialism "and so that their distortion by the 'Kautskyism' now prevailing may be documented and clearly demonstrated." The text of State and Revolution consists of six sections, of which the first five are devoted to quotations from Marx and Engels with commentary by Lenin, while the sixth deals with errors in the presentation of Marxist views on the state by the "opportunists." It is striking that, though Lenin finished writing his major work on the state while he was in Russia and Finland, during some of the most turbulent months of revolution in Russia, he pays little attention to Russian political figures in the course of the essay. He deigns to attack most spokesmen for other Russian parties and factions only briefly and in passing. He does devote one separate, but rather short, subdivision of the sixth section of State and Revolution to the criticism of one of Plekhanov's pamphlets. At the time Plekhanov was far more important as a theoretician of world Marxism than as a leader of any organized group of Russian socialists. Lenin attacked Plekhanov and engaged in a much longer polemic against Kautsky in the last section of State and Revolution, in order to attempt to damage the prestige of the intellectual leaders of the centrist forces within international Marxism.

The theoreticians of the Marxist "center" had gained great esteem as defenders of orthodox Marxism during debate with the revisionists in the early 1900s. Lenin's reexamination of passages on the state in the works of Marx and Engels in Zurich had clarified his own thinking on the bourgeois state and the proletarian revolution and, also, convinced him that he had found a point of strategic vulnerability in the position of the centrists, the most prominent of whom was Kautsky. Lenin felt he was now able to document a major deviation from Marx's precepts in Kautsky's writings. The point of attack was well chosen, for, though in actuality Kautsky was generally much more in accordance with the letter of Marx's doctrines than was Lenin, the centrists were, from the viewpoint of orthodox Marxism, most open to criticism on the grounds of their lack of enthusiasm for the traumatic and disruptive ordeal of the proletarian revolution. While being careful to postpone the consideration of the specific form of that future revolution, Kautsky had inched very close to forecasting the peaceful assumption of power within the state by a parliamentary majority of socialist deputies. Lenin tried to prove that the possibility of attaining control over the bourgeois state by constitutional means had been rejected by Marx (a dubious, one-sided interpretation of Marx's statements on the subject) and that Marx had insisted on violent revolution against the bourgeois state as the only possible means of instituting socialism. In the initial stages of his work on State and Revolution, during late 1916 and early 1917, Lenin evidently hoped that his reestablishment of the revolutionary essence of Marx's teachings on the state would serve as the basis for demonstrating the unrevolutionary character of the Marxist center, dethroning Kautsky from the status of a world-renowned disciple of Marx, and greatly enhancing his own reputation among international Marxists as an authority on the theory of scientific socialism.

The aims of discrediting Kautsky and winning recognition as the leading representative of the leftist tendency in world Marxism had not been abandoned by Lenin upon his return to Russia in April of 1917, as the international orientation of State and Revolution implies and that essay's focus on Kautsky's deviation demonstrates. State and Revolution is written in general terms, with its precepts applicable to any country (or at least any major power in Europe or North America) and not only to Russia. The completion of a theoretical essay on the state gained added value in relation to Russian events and conditions, so much so that Lenin considered it worthwhile to spend a great deal of time writing a lengthy theoretical treatise, even while in hiding in August and September of 1917 but still in close touch with the Bolsheviks in Petrograd and earnestly attempting to provide direction for his party. The constant theme of Lenin's speeches and writings since shortly after the February Revolution had been the necessity of renouncing all support for the Provisional Government and prodding the soviets toward the assumption of power. To show that Marx had repudiated parliamentarism as the means of the ultimate realization of socialism and had insisted on the destruction of the bourgeois state would offer a theoretical justification for the forcible elimination of the Provisional Government, help bring an end to the doubts and hesitation of many of Lenin's fellow Bolsheviks, and perhaps instill in the masses greater confidence in their capacity to make a revolution.

If the reformists were open to the accusation of excessive caution, Lenin was vulnerable to the charge of being unrealistic. How could it be possible to replace the entire organization of the existing state, virtually at once, with a new government by untutored and untested workers? In order to make a convincing argument for the destruction of the bourgeois state, Lenin had to persuade his audience that he offered a workable alternative. The urgency of his task of persuasion increased after February 1917, as the possibility of winning power in Russia presented itself and as informed political figures voiced their skepticism concerning the capacity of the Bolsheviks and their followers—or any other political force—to handle the seemingly intractable problems facing Russia at the time. Daniel Tarschys has observed astutely that "a successful political platform is no cautious prognosis of what a party is likely to do but a partisan message advertising its hopes and strengths, moderately exaggerative, both suggestive enough to raise expectations and sober enough not to kill them by appearance of unreliability." If the Bolsheviks took power in Russia or leftist Marxists gained the upper hand in any other European nation, they could be expected to rely on the strengths, not of parliamentary experience or administrative skills, but of the energy and enthusiasm of their working-class adherents. State and Revolution asserts the superiority of the virtues of the working class; the new type of state will not merely equal but surpass the rule of the bourgeoisie in the quality of its performance. Here Lenin presses home the thesis of proletarian competence; as Tarschys puts it, "Lenin sought to demonstrate that the whole proletariat could govern." That thesis was vital to Lenin's argument but was subsidiary to his main theme of the necessity of smashing the bourgeois state.

In general rhetoric, Lenin does seem to endorse direct rule by the workers in the new society. His strongest language on that point comes in his first discussion in State and Revolution of the arrangements that will replace the bourgeois state that had been smashed by the revolution. According to Lenin, "instead of the special institutions of a privileged minority (privileged officialdom, the chiefs of the standing army), the majority itself can directly fulfill all these functions." He also argues that, since those performing the functions of suppressing the bourgeoisie and crushing their resistance will be the majority of the population, the need for the exercise of coercion by the state will immediately diminish, and "in this sense, the state begins to wither away. " He confidently predicts that the majority will be able to suppress the remnants of the exploiting classes "even with a very simple 'machine,' almost without a 'machine,' without a special apparatus, by the simple organization of the armed people. " Lenin affirms that the withering away of the state will find its result in the stateless communist society, when

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-book maxims. They will become accustomed to observing them without force, without coercion, without subordination, without the special apparatus for coercion called the state.

Much in the language of Lenin's essay gives a superficial impression of sympathy with the aspirations of anarcho-syndicalists, and the substance of his discussion of the proletarian revolution and the higher phase of communism does genuinely draw on elements of anarchism.

In State and Revolution, the word anarchism, in the sense of the endorsement of an outburst of violence by the masses for the destruction of political authority, pertains to the period of proletarian revolution and to the smashing of the bourgeois state. That sort of anarchism was to be left behind in the next stage, in which Lenin expected the reconstitution of authority under the rule of proletariat. Later in 1917 he distinguished between the stages of destruction and rebuilding of authority:

So long as it is an instrument of violence exercised by the bourgeoisie against the proletariat, the proletariat can have only one slogan: destruction of the state. But when the state will be a proletarian state, when it will be an instrument of violence exercised by the proletariat against the bourgeoisie, we shall be fully and unreservedly in favor of a strong state power and of centralism.

Lenin argued that the movement from capitalism to full communism would be impossible without a period of transition, which he referred to as socialism or the first phase of communism, and that the state in that period would be the dictatorship of the proletariat. There can be no doubt that he wanted the dictatorship of the proletariat to exercise authority for the purposes of the suppression of resistance by the bourgeoisie, the construction of a new system of economic organization, and the supervision of the operation of the economy. The crucial question is, what structuring of authority in the political system of socialist society did Lenin envision?

At no point in State and Revolution or in any of his other writings did Lenin advocate the direct exercise of authority by the workers in the sense of the transfer of control over each productive enterprise to the workers within it, acting independently of the state and exerting their authority through a trade union or factory committee. Lenin's hope was not for a system of self-governing syndicates or communes. State and Revolution presents a picture of a "commune-state" only in the sense that Lenin's ideal was derived from Marx's description of the political arrangements of the Paris Commune in The Civil War in France. The notion of dispersing power among autonomous communes or regional bodies did not appeal to Lenin, who claimed that "there is not a trace of federalism in Marx's… observations on the experience of the commune" and asserted that "Marx was a centralist." Lenin was prepared to favor communes only as a transitional form, in the course of transforming private property into nationalized property.

Now if the proletariat and the poor peasants take state power into their own hands, organize themselves quite freely into communes, and unite the action of all communes in striking at capital, in crushing the resistance of the capitalists, and in transferring the privately owned railways, factories, land, and so on to the entire nation, to the whole of society, won't that be centralism?

His hopes for the future of local organs of self-government by the workers were summarized by his reference to "the voluntary fusion of the proletarian communes." It is indicative of Lenin's position that in State and Revolution he touched on the subject of federalism or local autonomy only in discussions of bourgeois republics and of temporary arrangements during the beginning of socialism. The decentralization of authority did not play a great role in his vision of the fully developed dictatorship of the proletariat, as indicated by Lenin's observation that "centralism is possible both with the old and the new state machine" and by his statement, quoted earlier, that the proletariat needs "a centralized organization of force."

If by the rule of the workers and peasants Lenin did not mean a system akin to anarcho-syndicalism or anarchistic communalism, what did he mean? State and Revolution makes it clear that popular rule is to be realized in two ways. First, the workers and peasants will elect representatives to councils, or soviets, to which the government administration will be responsible. In late 1916 and early 1917, his study of Marx's writings on the state had encouraged Lenin to arrive at a more positive assessment of the value of the soviets, which had appeared in Russia during 1905, leading him to identify those bodies with the type of proletarian rule suggested by Marx's review of the experience of the Paris Commune. Lenin was thus theoretically well prepared to respond to the news of the February 1917 Revolution in Russia with the demand that power be transferred to the soviets. Both before and after his return to Russia, he repeatedly stressed that the soviets could be the embodiment of proletarian democracy, which, he insisted, would be markedly superior to bourgeois democracy. State and Revolution is quite consistent with Lenin's other works of 1917 calling for the concentration of power in the soviets. The crucial place of those bodies in Lenin's scheme is indicated by the fact that he equates the "organization of the armed people " with "the Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies." He foresees the subordination of the executive departments of government, as well as all economic organizations, to the soviets. Lenin admits that "we cannot imagine democracy, even proletarian democracy, without representative institutions," though he adds, "we can and must imagine democracy without parliamentarism." The parliamentarism that inspired Lenin's disgust was that of bourgeois parliaments, which in his estimation were tainted by ineffectuality and corruption and misrepresented the interests of the working class. The means of destruction of that subculture of parliamentarism, according to Lenin, in addition to the stroke of expropriation that would eliminate the basis of the existence of the capitalist class, would be the abolition of the division between legislative and executive officials. That proposal, drawn directly from Marx's The Civil War in France, would have required that all members of the soviets discharge executive as well as legislative duties. Lenin argues that the result would have been "the conversion of the representative institutions from talking shops into 'working' bodies." Though Lenin repudiated the style of parliamentarism in bourgeois democracy and foresaw a significant expansion of the responsibility of elected representatives, his model of the socialist state was in essence a model of proletarian parliamentary democracy.

In addition to the control of executive organs by elected representatives, Lenin advocated a second means for realizing rule by the majority of the people: a high degree of direct popular participation in politics. The workers and peasants would elect representatives to the soviets, which is also to say that the laborers would choose major executive officials, with the stipulation that all such officials would be subject to recall by their constituents. In addition, all members of the laboring majority would frequently take their turns in carrying out the work of administration. Lenin promises that in socialism "the mass of the population will rise to taking an independent part, not only in voting and elections, but also in the everyday administration of the state. " Those whom Lenin labels as bureaucrats in the old order will be replaced en masse by workers and peasants. In his view, capitalism has created the prerequisites for widespread mass participation in bureaucratic work, through the achievement of universal literacy in the more economically developed countries and by accustoming the workers to the functioning of large complex bureaucratic organizations. Lenin contends that the duties of bureaucrats in advanced capitalist systems have been progressively simplified "and can be reduced to such exceedingly simple functions of registration, filing, and checking that they can easily be performed by every literate person." He goes so far as to say that the competence of bureaucrats requires no more than "supervising and recording, knowledge of the four rules of arithmetic, and issuing appropriate receipts." Offering another suggestion drawn from Marx's summary of the measures taken by the Paris Commune, Lenin specifies that under socialism the wages of the highest state officials will not exceed those of an ordinary worker. The regular rotation of all members of the laboring classes in and out of administrative positions will contribute to the withering away of the state by acquainting all with the principles enforced in supervisory roles and eventually making it possible for citizens to manage society without being subjected to coercion. "Under socialism all will govern in turn and soon will become accustomed to no one governing." Participatory bureaucracy will provide training for social self-administration.

It should be noted, however, that in Lenin's view bureaucracy would still exist in socialism, though it would be transformed to serve the interests of the workers rather than those of the capitalists. He admits that "abolishing the bureaucracy at once, everywhere and completely is out of the question" and espouses the replacement of the old bureaucracy with a new one. The pattern of hierarchical organization will persist within socialism. "We are not Utopians. We do not 'dream' of dispensing at once with all administration, with all subordination." The rationale for the destruction of the old bureaucratic apparatus is not the rejection of the necessity of bureaucratic organization as such but, rather, is the complaint of the isolation of privileged officials from the masses, the association of the old bureaucrats with the interests of the bourgeoisie, and the consequent unfitness of the established administration to carry out the will of the proletariat. It was not the bureaucratic model of organization but the staff of bourgeois bureaucrats who would be replaced during the socialist revolution.

Lenin divides the employees of the capitalist state into two categories and foresees a different fate for each group. In the first category are those whom Lenin regards as "bureaucrats," the "foremen and accountants" who perform the tasks of supervision, calculation, and reporting and who will be replaced by proletarians. "It is quite possible, after the overthrow of the capitalists and the bureaucrats, to proceed immediately, overnight, to replace them in the control over production and distribution, in the work of keeping account of labor and products, by the armed workers, by the whole of the armed population." The second category of employees of the bourgeois state consists of "technicians of all sorts, types, and degrees," who will be retained by the dictatorship of the proletariat.

The question of control and accounting should not be confused with the question of the scientifically trained staff of engineers, agronomists and so on. These gentlemen are working today in obedience to the wishes of the capitalists, and will work even better tomorrow in obedience to the wishes of the armed workers.

Lenin implicitly recognizes that the technical expertise that is vital for the performance of many specialized tasks cannot be readily acquired by the workers. He further assumes that technical knowledge is a flexible tool that may be used in the service of one or another set of class interests and political objectives. Thus even in September 1917 Lenin was prepared to allow the employment of bourgeois specialists by the proletarian state. In "Can the Bolsheviks Retain State Power?" which Lenin finished writing at the beginning of October 1917, he even indicated that for some time after the revolution the technical experts would receive wages higher than those of the average workers; "in all probability we shall introduce complete wage equality only gradually and shall pay these specialists higher salaries during the transition period." In that way Lenin sought to reconcile the values of expertise and popular control.

Just as Lenin differentiated between bureaucrats and technicians, he also distinguished between the structure of the state and the organization of production. According to Lenin, the state arises out of class struggle and performs the function of oppressing one class on behalf of another. Lenin defines the state primarily in terms of the exercise of coercion and identifies the state largely with coercive organs. State power "consists of special bodies of armed men having prisons, etc., at their command." Or as Lenin said in April 1917 in "The Tasks of the Proletariat in Our Revolution," "the state in the proper sense is the command over the masses by detachments of armed men, separated from the people." The state in the proper sense, or the apparatus of coercion, would be destroyed by the proletarian revolution and superseded by the dictatorship of the armed workers. The economic organizations created by capitalism would not be destroyed by the workers but would be taken over intact. "We, the workers, shall organize large-scale production on the basis of what capitalism has already created." Lenin was to expand on that theme in "Can the Bolsheviks Retain State Power?"

In addition to the chiefly "oppressive" apparatus—the standing army, the police and the bureaucracy—the modern state possesses an apparatus which has extremely close connections with the banks and syndicates. … This apparatus must not, and should not, be smashed. It must be wrested from the control of the capitalists;… it must be subordinated to the proletarian Soviets; it must be expanded and made more comprehensive, and nationwide. And this can be done by utilizing the achievements already made by large scale capitalism.

In that same essay of September and October 1917, Lenin even held out the prospect that, in the course of subjecting the banks and syndicates to the control of the soviets, the employees of the capitalist enterprises would not be replaced. "We can 'lay hold of and 'set in motion' this 'state apparatus' at one stroke, by a single decree, because the actual work of bookkeeping, control, registering, accounting and counting is performed by employees, the majority of whom themselves lead a proletarian or semi-proletarian existence." The growth of state capitalism, the consolidation of production by large trusts and syndicates, and the increasing bureaucratization of economic organizations were positive steps in preparing the way for socialism.

The workers' state would further concentrate control over production and distribution. In State and Revolution Lenin agrees with a statement that the postal service furnishes the example for a socialist economic system. "To organize the whole economy on the lines of the postal service … this is our immediate aim." Lenin prescribes "the conversion of all citizens into workers and other employees of one huge 'syndicate'," a single integrated economic machine on the scale of the entire nation. Workers' control over production will be realized, not through the fragmentation of capitalist monopolies into small, autonomous units, but through the combination of all enterprises into a single syndicate under the control of the elected soviets. It seems implicit that, since the pattern of economic organization in socialism will be that of state capitalism on a vast scale, the organization of production will be centralized and hierarchical. Indeed, Lenin leaves little doubt as to that conclusion when he refers with approval to Engels's rejection of the possibility of operating organizations combining the cooperative endeavors of substantial numbers of people without the exercise of authority. "Take a factory, a railway, a ship on the high seas, said Engels; is it not clear that not one of these complex technical establishments, based on the use of machinery and systematic coordination of many people, could function without a certain amount of subordination and, consequently, without a certain amount of authority or power?" Lenin later observes that

as far as the supposedly necessary "bureaucratic" organization is concerned, there is no difference whatever between a railway and any other enterprise in large-scale machine industry, any factory, large store, or large-scale capitalist agricultural enterprise. The technique of all these enterprises makes absolutely imperative the strictest discipline, the utmost precision on the part of everyone in carrying out his alloted task.

The organization of economic activity in socialism will be bureaucratic in the sense of including hierarchy and specialization but will not give birth to a privileged stratum of officials, because it will be responsible to the workers through the soviets. Lenin argues that the necessity of bureaucratic organization is derived from the technical imperative of coordinating people in the use of complex interrelated machines. For the working class to operate the productive machinery accumulated by capitalism, the hierarchical command of people engaged in production must survive the socialist revolution and be taken advantage of by the proletariat.

Lenin's acceptance of the bourgeois models of bureaucratic and economic organization even leads him into astonishing equivocation on his main thesis—the necessity of utterly destroying the bourgeois state. He observes that the first phase of communism will preserve "bourgeois right" in the distribution of products, in the form of the reward according to labor that Marx described as the principle governing distribution in the period of transition inaugurated by the proletarian revolution. Lenin reasons that bourgeois right presumes the existence of the bourgeois state, as the apparatus that will enforce compliance with reward on the basis of labor. He concludes that "in communism there remains for a certain time not only bourgeois right, but even the bourgeois state—without the bourgeoisie." It could be argued that Lenin is speaking figuratively on this point and that by the bourgeois state that persists in socialism he means only a state enforcing principles reflecting bourgeois values. In a later section of State and Revolution, however, Lenin seems to allow the possibility of the literal preservation of the previously existing departments of government. He quotes with disapproval Kautsky's statement that none of the ministries in a bourgeois state could be eliminated (since, Kautsky implies, all perform necessary functions). Lenin accuses Kautsky of displaying a "superstitious reverence" for ministries, which, according to Lenin, might be replaced by "committees of specialists" under the supervision of the soviets. He then offers the opinion that "the point is not at all whether 'ministries' will remain or whether 'committees of specialists' or some other bodies will be set up; that is quite immaterial." Lenin immediately reasserts his demand for the destruction of the old state machine, but that slogan has been robbed of much of its force by his expression of indifference as to whether government ministries will survive the workers' revolution. Lenin's call for the "destruction" or "smashing" of the "machine" of the bourgeois state reveals a feature often found in State and Revolution: the use of colorful language that creates a vivid impression but is metaphorical in content and therefore subject to ambiguity. In view of this admission of the possible persistence of ministries from existing governments, one plausible interpretation of Lenin's words could be that by the wholesale replacement of the old state apparatus with a new one he simply means the assumption of power by soviets of workers' and peasants' deputies. At any rate, that objective certainly is the heart of his program.

While State and Revolution repeatedly calls for the transfer of power to the soviets, it mentions only in one sentence the functions that the Leninist party will perform in proletarian democracy. That single sentence, however, has exceptionally rich political implications:

By educating the workers' party, Marxism educates the vanguard of the proletariat, capable of assuming power and leading the whole people to socialism, of directing and organizing the new system, of being the teacher, the guide, the leader of all the working and exploited people in organizing their social life without the bourgeoisie and against the bourgeoisie.

Lenin refers to the party as the vanguard of the proletariat and ascribes to it the functions of teaching, leading, guiding, directing, and organizing the laboring people in socialism. Though Lenin provides no further discussion of the relationship of the governing party to the other agencies of proletarian dictatorship, he furnishes in capsule form a clear endorsement of what is now recognized as the principle of the guiding and directing role of the Communist party in Soviet society. Implicit in that principle is the distinction, which Lenin chose not to emphasize in State and Revolution, between the level of class consciousness of the vanguard and that of the less-sophisticated majority of workers.

Lenin's description of the dictatorship of the proletariat pertains to socialism or the first phase of communist society. He emphasizes that the state will wither away as society moves into the higher phase, in which the potential of communism will be fully realized. Lenin's depiction of full communism may appropriately be described as pervaded with anarchism. In predicting that the state would be abolished in the higher phase of communism, however, Lenin was only repeating Marx's well-known ideas. All Marxists are anarchists as far as their ultimate goals are concerned, but Lenin was careful to avoid promising the imminent attainment of complete communism. He shows awareness of the distance that must be traveled in order to reach that goal, admitting that "politically, the distinction between the first, or lower, and the higher phase of communism will in time probably be enormous" and acknowledging that "by what stages, by means of what practical measures humanity will proceed to this supreme aim we do not and cannot know." By mentioning "stages" of transition to full communism, Lenin hints at the prospect of prolonged change through indirect means.

In State and Revolution, Lenin's forecasts for the withering away of the state are hedged with caution. He does argue that the state will begin to wither away at once with the beginning of socialism, in the sense that, because the majority will for the first time exercise coercion over a relatively small minority, less coercion will be necessary to protect the new relations of production. Lenin, however, is careful not to be very optimistic or specific with regard to the pace of the disappearance of the state or the eventual culmination of that process. He says that "clearly, there can be no question of specifying the moment of the future withering away, the more so since it will obviously be a lengthy process." While he promises that the need for the state will diminish as excesses in the conduct of individuals decrease, he adds that "we do not know how quickly and in what succession, but we do know that they will wither away." Arguing that the complete elimination of the state will presume the "gigantic development of productive forces" and the overcoming of the distinction between mental and physical labor, he concludes that "how rapidly this development will proceed… we do not and cannot know." What follows is Lenin's strongest and most explicit urging of caution in expectations for the abolition of the state.

Therefore we are correct only to speak of the inevitable withering away of the state, emphasizing the protracted nature of that process and its dependence on the rapidity of development of the higher phase of communism, and leaving the question of the time required for, or the concrete forms of, the withering away quite open, because there is no material for answering such questions.

Lenin was content to postpone the elimination of the state to the indefinite future. After the Bolshevik Revolution, he became even more aware of the difficulty of dispensing with coercion. His only later addition to State and Revolution consisted of a section stressing that the dictatorship of the proletariat would be necessary for the "entire historical periodf separating capitalism from the classless society. Even before the revolution, in his most extensive work on the state, Lenin's insistence on building a strong, disciplined proletariat dictatorship sharply distinguished him from the anarchists.

State and Revolution is conventionally described as an essay in which Lenin abandoned himself to quasi-anarchistic utopianism. Though the primary objective of that work was to discredit Karl Kautsky and other centrist leaders of international Marxism, it does reflect Lenin's enthusiasm in 1917 for the prospective benefits of rule by the proletariat. When Lenin speaks of the direct rule by the masses, however, he has in mind, not an anarchosyndicalist form of workers' control of industry, but the replacement of bourgeois parliaments by soviets elected by the workers and the institution of widespread participation by laboring people in public administration. He is careful to indicate that neither of those changes will be incompatible with the preservation of hierarchical patterns of authority in government and the economy. In Lenin's model of the socialist state, authority will be centralized, bureaucracy will execute decisions of policy, and experts will still be indispensable in administration. In the economy, the units of organization inherited from capitalism will be further enlarged and control of them will be further centralized, as all enterprises will be combined into one enormous, nationwide syndicate subordinated to the highest organs of state power. The disappearance of the coercive aspects of government will be postponed to the indefinite and evidently remote future, while the necessity of a hierarchical structuring of economic institutions may never be transcended. All the organizations of workers and technicians in the new society will be guided by a vanguard party with higher knowledge of the goal of socialism and the means of its attainment. The political system of socialism discovered through a careful examination of Lenin's own words in State and Revolution is far removed from the hopes and ideals of anarchism. Lenin considered the anarchistic impulse toward the destruction of authority to be a positive factor only in the stage of smashing the bourgeois state, as a means of clearing the way for the establishment of an authoritative dictatorship of the proletariat.

Though Lenin's major work on the state has become historically important as political theory, it is so filled with ambiguities, equivocations, and inconsistencies that it is difficult to take it seriously as a theoretical contribution. Its numerous inconsistencies reflect its nature as a mixture of polemic, platform, and program but also more fundamentally betray the tension between contradictory themes simultaneously advanced by Lenin. The source of that tension is not, as is usually thought, a contradiction between the anarchistic rejection of authority and the Leninist acceptance of it. Lenin sees the proletarian revolution as a revolt not against authority in general but against the bourgeois state, and thus he repudiates the dominance of the interests of the capitalist class while importing into his plan the bourgeois model of bureaucracy. The underlying contradiction in State and Revolution is that between the themes of democracy and hierarchy. While warmly endorsing the virtues of willing and energetic mass initiative in the construction of the new society, Lenin readily agrees with Engels's thesis concerning the technical necessity of a hierarchical structure in all complex organizations. Revolutionary mass participation will be guided by hierarchical institutions, which will be coordinated by a party whose members share a special vision of the future.

To describe Lenin as simply a cynical authoritarian or a revolutionary idealist would not do justice to the complexity and ambiguity of his thought, which was characterized by the interplay of apparently contradictory values. The themes of popular initiative and elite direction are not confined to State and Revolution but occur in all of Lenin's works. The relative emphasis on each varied, according to time and circumstance. In 1917 Lenin chose to stress the advantages of mass participation in elections and administration, but without relinquishing his conviction of the desirability of economic centralization, state bureaucracy, and party guidance of the political system. The solution to the apparent contradiction in State and Revolution was Lenin's assumption that in the approaching revolutionary situation the wishes of the masses and the decisions of the elite would be fully compatible; there would be a historically determined coincidence of spontaneity and consciousness. It would not be long before events in Soviet Russia would prove that assumption to be unrealistic, but the tension between the polarities of value in Lenin's thought of 1917 became a lasting part of the ideological heritage of Soviet communism.