Vladimir Lenin: State

Vladimir Lenin was Russian politician, led the October Revolution. Explore interesting quotes on state.
Vladimir Lenin: 672 quotes145 likes

“Complete self-government for the province [gubernia and region], district and community through bureaucrats elected by universal suffrage; the abolition of all local and provincial authorities appointed by the state.”

Vladimir Lenin book The State and Revolution

Source: The State and Revolution

“We are not utopians, we do not indulge in "dreams" of dispensing at once with all administration, with all subordination; these anarchist dreams… serve only to postpone the socialist revolution until human nature has changed. No, we want the with human nature as it is now, with human nature that cannot dispense with subordination, control and "managers."… The united workers themselves… will hire their own technicians, managers and bookkeepers, and pay them all, as, indeed, every state official, ordinary workmen's wages.”

Vladimir Lenin book The State and Revolution

§ 3.4, Essential Works of Lenin (1966), pp. 307-308
Source: The State and Revolution (1917)

“Revolution consists not in the new class commanding, governing with the aid of the old state machine, but in this class smashing this machine and commanding, governing with the aid of a new machine.”

Vladimir Lenin

Source: State and Revolution

“While the State exists, there can be no freedom. When there is freedom there will be no State.”

Vladimir Lenin

Пока есть государство, нет свободы. Когда будет свобода, не будет государства. <br class="br"> Ch. 5 http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/ch05.htm <br class="br">(1917) <br class="br">Source: Estado y revolución

“Socialized medicine is the keystone to the arch of the socialist state.”

Vladimir Lenin

Fabricated quote from The Voluntary Way is the American Way (1949) by PR firm Whitaker and Baxter. According to The Heart of Power by David Blumenthal and James Morone (pp. 91-92)
: Whitaker and Baxter published a fifteen-page pamphlet of questions and answers entitled The Voluntary Way is the American Way, which, deep in the Q&A, concocted a quotation from Lenin:
:: Q: Would socialized medicine lead to socialization of other phases of American life?
:: A: Lenin thought so. He declared: socialized medicine is the keystone to the arch of the socialist state.
: Senator Murray asked the Library of Congress to track down the quote and, as expected, they found nothing like it—most scholars assume Whitaker and Baxter dreamed it up.
Alternate form: "Socialized medicine is a keystone to the establishment of a socialist state."
Misattributed

“The proletarian state must effect the transition to collective farming with extreme caution and only very gradually, by the force of example, without any coercion of the middle peasant.”

Vladimir Lenin

Collected Works, Vol. 31, pp. 152–64.
Collected Works

“It is not national interests we are upholding — we claim that the interests of socialism, the interests of world socialism, rank higher than national interests, higher than the interests of the state. We are defenders of the socialist fatherland.”

Vladimir Lenin

Address to the Party Central Committee (14 May 1918); Collected Works, Vol. 27, pp. 365-381.
1910s

“Imperialism - the era of bank capital, the era of gigantic capitalist monopolies, the era of the transformation of monopoly capitalism into state-monopoly capitalism - has particularly witnessed an unprecedented strengthening of the "state machine" and an unprecedented growth of its bureaucratic and military apparatus, in connection with the increase in repressive measures against the proletariat in the monarchical as well as in the freest republican countries.”

Vladimir Lenin book The State and Revolution

2.2, Essential Works of Lenin (1966)
The State and Revolution (1917)

“We know that an unskilled labourer or a cook cannot immediately get on with the job of state administration.”

Vladimir Lenin

Will the Bolsheviks Retain Government Power? (1917); this is often misquoted as "every cook must learn to govern the state" or even "every cook can govern the state."
1910s

“A United States of Europe is possible as an agreement between the European capitalists … but to what end? Only for the purpose of jointly suppressing socialism in Europe”

Vladimir Lenin

Collected Works, Vol. 21, p 341.
Collected Works

“We set ourselves the ultimate aim of abolishing the state, i. e., all organized and systematic violence, all use of violence against people in general. We do not expect the advent of a system of society in which the principle of subordination of the minority to the majority will not be observed.
In striving for socialism, however, we are convinced that it will develop into communism and, therefore, that the need for violence against people in general, for the subordination of one man to another, and of one section of the population to another, will vanish altogether since people will become accustomed to observing the elementary conditions of social life without violence and without subordination.”

Vladimir Lenin book The State and Revolution

Ch. 4 : Supplementary Explanations by Engels http://www.smirnov.demon.co.uk/socialism/writings/lenin/staterev/ch04.htm <br class="br">The State and Revolution (1917)

“To carry on a war for the overthrow of the international bourgeoisie, a war which is a hundred times more difficult, protracted and complex than the most stubborn of ordinary wars between states, and to renounce in advance any change of tack, or any utilisation of a conflict of interests (even if temporary) among one’s enemies, or any conciliation or compromise with possible allies (even if they are temporary, unstable, vacillating or conditional allies) — is that not ridiculous in the extreme?”

Vladimir Lenin

Left-Wing Communism, An Infantile Disorder (April - May 1920) http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/lwc/ch09.htm. <br class="br">1920s

“The Soviets are a new state apparatus which, in the first place, provides an armed force of workers and peasants; and this force is not divorced from the people, as was the old standing army, but is very closely bound up with the people, From the military point of view this force is incomparably more powerful than previous forces; from the revolutionary point of view, it cannot be replaced by anything else.”

Vladimir Lenin

Can the Bolsheviks Retain State Power?, (1917)
1910s

“The proletariat needs state power, a centralized organisation of force, an organisation of violence, both to crush the resistance of the exploiters and to lead the enormous mass of the population - the peasants, the petty bourgeoisie, and semi-proletarians - in the work of organising a socialist economy.”

Vladimir Lenin book The State and Revolution

1.1, The Lenin Anthology
The State and Revolution (1917)

“Hundreds of thousands of rouble notes are being issued daily by our treasury. This is done, not in order to fill the coffers of the State with practically worthless paper, but with the deliberate intention of destroying the value of money as a means of payment… Experience has taught us it is impossible to root out the evils of capitalism merely by confiscation and expropriation… The simplest way to exterminate the very spirit of capitalism is therefore to flood the country with notes of a high face-value without financial guarantees of any sort. …[T]he great illusion of the value and power of money, on which the capitalist state is based will have been definitely destroyed.”

Vladimir Lenin

The Daily Chronicle and New York Times (April 23, 1919), Paul Miliukov, Bolshevism: An International Danger, London: UK, Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2010, pp. 75-76, first published in 1920
1910s

“When we say "the state," the state is We, it is we, it is the proletariat, it is the advanced guard of the working class.”

Vladimir Lenin

Speech (27 May 1922).
1920s

“The big banks are the "state apparatus" which we need to bring about socialism, and which we take ready-made from capitalism' our task here is merely to lop off what capitalistically mutilates this excellent apparatus, to make it even bigger, even more democratic, even more comprehensive. Quantity will be transformed into quality. A single State Bank, the biggest of the big, with branches in every rural district, in every factory, will constitute as much as nine-tenths of the socialist apparatus.”

Vladimir Lenin

"Can the Bolsheviks Retain State Power?", (1917), The Lenin Anthology
1910s

“The proletariat needs state power, the centralized organization of force, the organization of violence, for the purpose of crushing the resistance of the exploiters and for the purpose of leading the great mass of the population - the peasantry, the petty bourgeoisie, the semi-proletarians - in the work of organizing a socialist economy.”

Vladimir Lenin

2.1, "The Eve of The Revolution", Essential Works of Lenin (1966)
(1917)

“The passing of state power from one class to another is the first, the principal, the basic sign of a revolution, both in the strictly scientific and in the practical political meaning of that term.”

Vladimir Lenin

Collected Works, Vol. 24, pp. 42–54.
Collected Works

“Disarmament is the ideal of socialism. There will be no wars in and the dictatorship of the proletariat is not a socialist. Dictatorship is state power based directly on violence. And in the twentieth century — as in the age of civilisation generally — violence means neither a fist nor a club, but troops. To put “disarmament” in the programme is tantamount to making the general declaration: We are opposed to the use of arms. There is as little Marxism in this as there would be if we were to say: We are opposed to violence!”

Vladimir Lenin

&quot;The “Disarmament” Slogan&quot; (October 1916) http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/oct/01.htm; Collected Works, Vol. 23, p. 94-104. <br class="br">1910s