Lenin's Misreading of Marx's Critique of the Gotha Programme

Lenin's The State and Revolution, written in 1917 on the eve of the October Revolution, introduced into Marxist theory the concept of socialism and communism as two different forms of post-capitalist society defined by the distinct ways in which they distribute consumer goods. Socialism would distribute consumer goods on the basis of the amount of work citizens undertook and retain a state. Only communism would see the completion of the state's “withering away” and distribution “according to need.” This is a conceptual framework that, in the twentieth century, was abused to justify Stalinist practice. Lenin based his theoretical innovation on Marx's discussion in the Critique of the Gotha Programme of two “phases” of “communist society.” In fact there is no basis for Lenin's schema in the writings of Marx. A careful reading of Capital, in particular, demonstrates that Marx wrote no blueprints for how the future society should be organized. He only predicted that it would evolve. For Marx, the state is a political institution that begins to dissolve as soon as the workers seize political power and will not outlast class society.