Freedom and Peace Require Anti-Democratic Systems

“...the democratic [and unitary] republic is the shortest path to the dictatorship of the proletariat. For such a republic . . . inevitably leads to such an extension, development, unfolding and intensification of this struggle that, as soon as there arises the possibility of satisfying the underlying interests of the oppressed masses, this possibility is realized inevitably and solely through the dictatorship of the proletariat.” – Lenin, ‘State and Revolution’
 
As the saying goes, when somebody tells you who they are, believe them. Lenin’s analysis throughout ‘State and Revolution’ – both of historical dynamics and of the real intentions of Marx and Engels – is brilliant. His forecasting is less certain, but he is quite sanguine and open about the need for some reasonable length period of a bloody-handed terror state “of the proletariat”. The USSR was indeed such a state, though its success on Lenin’s terms is more dubious.
 
So when Lenin says that the state organisation most open to Communist revolution has a certain three components, we should believe him – and if we accept the vast proof of history that Communism is morally vacuous and leads inevitably to mass slaughter on an industrial scale, we will work to prevent all these conditions coinciding. What are those conditions?
 
Democratic: Though of course in Marxist-Leninist theory “democratic” in its noblest form means a coordination of local bottom-up power of communes/Soviets with top-down power of the proletarian state which faithfully seeks the good of the people, democratic in Lenin’s definition here is meant more broadly. It certainly includes representative democracy, where that is moderately franchised and empowered. Of course such a representative democracy is ultimately a tool of capitalism to Lenin, but it is a useful transition stage.
 
Unitary: Not mentioned directly in the quote above, but a vital part of the surrounding discussion – federal republics are notably inferior to Lenin than unitary ones. He accepts there was a historic need for a federal, decentralised republic in the USA, but that it was becoming obsolescent in the developed East; he sees it as a liability in Switzerland; he says it would be an improvement on the United Kingdom’s system; it would be a step backwards in Germany. You see that the exact quality of development of a state is relative to its circumstances and history. Lenin considers that the centralised republic is a better guarantor of democracy than the federal one because it allows more power to flow directly to centres of population, and for wider-ranging measures to be undertaken by the right people in power. Note that really this is simply an explication of “democratic”, in Lenin’s terms.
 
Republic: It is interesting that this is a specific point made by Lenin. He does not mean here a republic in the American sense (i.e. “limited republic” contrasted with “democracy”), but in the executive sense. He desires the abolition of monarchies. Of course, you might chalk this up to pure ideological venom – but it is hard to believe that in such a careful and practical analysis this is the case. It also seems implausible that he could gin up so much venom against the vestigial monarchy of the United Kingdom of 1917. I think he probably more clear-sightedly sees that a monarchy diverts energies and passions away from the democratic forge – even in a constitutional monarchy like the Nordics or Britain, an undemocratic figure of reverence dissipates proletarian zeal. At any rate, this too is really a “democratic” constitutional feature.
 
Now the key question: why is this particular combination of constitutional features so germane to the future dictatorship of the proletariat? Because it leads to the “development, unfolding and intensification of this struggle”. Class struggle develops, unfolds, and intensifies under the unitary democratic republic, because the mediating institutions and natural stays on class struggle have been crippled. Marx, Engels, and Lenin see the state as a way in which one class enforces its will against the other classes – it is a management of class relations. Therefore, according to their logic, you should want to render that class arrangement as unstable as possible, and increasingly open to revolutionary vanguards.
 
Now even if we take a more benign view of the state’s effect on class relations – if we believe that it often serves as the most effective and least destructive balancer of class interests available – we can accept Lenin’s conclusion. There may well be certain political conditions more conducive to an intensified class struggle than others, and as a matter of historical fact, certain social and political developments have generally preceded “popular” revolutions. France in 1789, Russia in 1905/1917, Cuba in the late 50s, and even China in 1911 were all “modernizing” nations with growing wealth more widely distributed across the population. That wealth distribution remained, nonetheless, strained and uneven just as communications and education spread the possibility of intelligible dissatisfaction. That dissatisfaction becomes foment, and from the foment many foul bubbles issue forth, all brewing toward tyranny. A growing, educated, democratically-inclined middle class is a severe danger to the peace of a nation, and must be managed with the utmost care by the hands of the state to prevent disaster.
 
Before I proceed to my conclusion from Lenin’s thesis, it must be frankly admitted that he seems – at a very brief glance – to be have been wrong. Those four sample Revolutions did not occur, surely, in unitary democratic republics, did they? But not so fast: first, in general, his principle may be indicatively right if not specifically right, insomuch as it points to general conditions and patterns.
 
Second, and much more to the point, many Revolutions have happened against the very background of a “unitary democratic republic”. The two great Revolutions of the 19^th century were, to the Communists, those of 1848 and 1870 in France. The former generated a unitary democratic republic – which soon fell to dissension. The radicals did not win that bout, with Louis Napoleon declaring the Second Empire instead. The latter Revolution was again a secondary effect, with Louis Napoleon captured and deposed by the Prussians; the Communards of Paris rose against their own republican government, feeding off the democratic and radical fervour of the “day of freedom”.
 
Russia and China, in fact, offer something of the same pattern. Yes, in February 1917, the Kadets and SRs and Mensheviks overthrew the Tsar – and founded a unitary democratic republic, becoming all the more unitary as the Soviets were subsumed. It was against that background that Lenin overthrew the Kerensky Government, and it was with the unified state machinery that he suppressed the election results of 1918. China, too, did see its first revolution lead to a pseudo-unitary pseudo-democratic pseudo-republic (it was complex, okay?). The many ructures over three decades led eventually to Chiang crushing the warlords and surviving the Japanese – only for that unified state to be taken by Mao and his Communists.
 
Lenin’s idea of historical development is not watertight, but it is generally successful as an explanatory device. Levelling, centralization, and bureaucratization are not neutral or technocratic or mitigatory processes – they are ultimately a political solvent. (There is sometimes a temporary purpose for a solvent, of course, but its abuse leads to many nightmares.)
 
So my central response to Lenin is this: if one rejects his view of the state as malignly oppressing subaltern classes, but instead believes that it can and ought to serve a regulatory role between classes; and if one recognizes the clear historical process he identifies; then one must make every political effort to prevent the full confluence of the dissolving factors (democracy, the unitary state, and the republic) gathering in one’s state.
 
Now, it may be fairly said that one or more of these has seemed to exist in relative stability in many, many states over time. Sometimes a solvent has its use. But this is because the component – often of long custom and with many checks – has reached an equilibrium with more solid components of the constitution. Britain extended the franchise with only delayed ructure several times in the 19^th and 20^th centuries – but was renowned through much of that time, including to Lenin, as having an extremely vestigial central state apparatus at home, all whilst under the nominal reign of a hereditary monarch. Many Imperial Chinas – including the current one – have complex bureaucratic systems recruiting for and empowering the centralised state, but there has never been a corresponding democracy, and often only the myth of a republic.
 
I am not, then, arguing against any democracy, or any unitary power, or any republic, as if in a particular local dynamic one of those elements might not work well or be needful. I am saying that you can have wine or ale or Scotch, but not all three in a punch bowl. Selection and localisation is required.
 
With all this in mind, we may identify the manoeuvres of modern day radicals for what they are. When a British person calls for a republic, an extension of the franchise to age 16, and a more powerful administrative state (the state they regularly condemn, remember), they are not in good faith, seeking peaceful solutions for social ills. They desire the fundamental destabilisation of the rather decayed house in which we all live. They would rather topple it, with our children in it, so as to rebuild on some secret blueprint, rather than repair and beautify. When American radicals call for race-based equity programmes and the abolition of their filibuster and the geographic balance of the Senate, they are not calling for any equity that will happen in history. We know how their plans will go, in the end (and they will be as disappointed, deep down, as anyone).
 
The British Monarchy and the American Senate and German Federalism and the old University seats and hereditary Lords and the tradition of finding a reluctant town doctor for your Congressman – these are not merely good old traditions, a fine brocade depicting the ideal of noblesse oblige, an honouring of the localities, a realization of the power of land, a tradition of service, or whatever else. They are those, and much more, and to be vigorously preserved where this age of destruction has not taken them. But to our purpose, let me describe the great advantage of these institutions and social traditions.
 
When you bully a reluctant town doctor to go and represent you, knowing he disagrees with you on many things, and scarcely wants to do the job except out of duty, with him knowing you may kick him out at the next election, but also knowing that in Washington he will be his own man of honour and dignity – then you will not end up with some little theorist or career climber. You may find that devolving power to the localities is inefficient, but an empowered locality is much more liable to successfully resist the overreach of a meddling state than a bureaucratic sub-office of that state. No-one has ever pretended, in England, that hereditary Lords are natively wiser than their neighbour – but they don’t need political patronage, and for a long time they were raised in such a way that they shed proportionately more blood for their nation than any other section, bonding those sections both on the land and at war. And a geographically-based US Senate ensures that the proletariat may never patronisingly say “See, farmers, you are economically vulnerable; you need our vanguard; we are the only ones who can politically succeed.” Wyoming may always turn round and send its two Senators with a polite refusal.
 
If you desire stability, peace, and a modicum of private freedom – preferring the flawed real to the perfect delusion of radicalism and Communism – then you must, in all circumstances, seek to prevent the thorough “democratization” of your state.