Vladimir Lenin - State Quotes

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No, Democracy is not identical with majority rule. Democracy is a State which recognizes the subjection of the minority to the majority, that is, an organization for the systematic use of force by one class against the other, by one part of the population against another.

Vladimir Lenin

The working class must break up, smash the "ready-made state machinery," and not confine itself merely to laying hold of it.

Vladimir Lenin

The aim of socialism is not only to abolish the present division of mankind into smaller states and all-national isolation, not only to bring the nations closer to each other, but also to merge them.

Vladimir Lenin

Soviet power is a new type of state in which there is no bureacracy, no police, no standing army.

Vladimir Lenin

Every cook has to learn how to govern the state.

Vladimir Lenin

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

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

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

Let us... take the most concrete example of state capitalism... It is Germany. Here we have the 'last word' in modern, large-scale capitalist engineering and planned organization, subordinated to Junker-bourgeois imperialism. Cross out the words in italics and [substitute] a Soviet state, that is, a proletarian state, and you will have the sum total of the conditions necessary for socialism.

Vladimir Lenin

The revolutionary proletariat will succeed making religion a really private affair, so far as the state is concerned. And in this political system, cleansed of medieval mildew, the proletariat will wage a broad and open struggle for the elimination of economic slavery, the true source of the religious humbugging of mankind.

Vladimir Lenin

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

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

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

Vladimir Lenin

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

For the state to wither away completely, complete communism is necessary.

Vladimir Lenin

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 socialist revolution 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

The suppression of the bourgeois state by the proletarian state is impossible without a violent revolution.

Vladimir Lenin

Socialism, by organising production without class oppression, by ensuring the well-being of all members of the state, gives full play to the sympathies of the population, thereby promoting and greatly accelerating the drawing together and fusion of the nations.

Vladimir Lenin

We must now set about building a proletarian socialist state in Russia.

Vladimir Lenin

Modern militarism is the result of capitalism. In both its forms it is the vital expression of capitalism — as a military force used by the capitalist states in their external conflicts and as a weapon in the hands of the ruling classes for suppressing every kind of movement, economic and political, of the proletariat.

Vladimir Lenin

The state does not function as we desired. The car does not obey. A man is at the wheel and he seems to lead it, but the car does not drive in the desired direction. It moves as another force wishes.

Vladimir Lenin

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

Disarmament is the ideal of socialism. There will be no wars in socialist society; consequently, disarmament will be achieved. But whoever expects that socialism will be achieved without a social revolution 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

So long as the state exists there is no freedom. When there is freedom, there will be no state.

Vladimir Lenin

Peaceful surrender of power by the bourgeoisie is possible, if it is convinced that resistance is hopeless and if it prefers to save its skin. It is much more likely, of course, that even in small states socialism will not be achieved without civil war, and for that reason the only programme of international Social-Democracy must be recognition of civil war, though violence is, of course, alien to our ideals.

Vladimir Lenin