The following quotations are from:
Lenin, “What is to be Done,” Great Political Theories, 362-366.
“The consciousness of the masses of the workers cannot be genuine class consciousness, unless the workers learn to observe from concrete, and above all from topical political facts and events, every other social class and all the manifestations of the intellectual, ethical and political life of these classes; unless they learn to apply practically the materialist analysis and the materialist estimate of all aspects of the life and activity of all classes, strata and groups of the population…
The workers can acquire class political consciousness only from without, that is, only outside of the economic struggle, outside of the sphere of relations between workers and employers.” 363
“A small, compact core, consisting of reliable, experienced and hardened workers, with responsible agents in the principal districts and connected by all the rules of strict secrecy with the organizations of revolutionists, can, with the wide support of the masses and without an elaborate set of rules, perform all the functions of a trade-union organization, and perform them, moreover, in the manner Social-Democrats desire…
I assert: 1. That no movement can be durable without a stable organization of leaders to maintain continuity; 2. That the more widely the masses are drawn into the struggle and form the basis of the movement, the more necessary is it to have such an organization and the more stable must it be (for it is much easier than for demagogues to side-track the more backward sections of the masses); 3. That the organization must consist chiefly of persons engaged in revolution as a profession; 4. That in a country with a despotic government, the more we restrict the membership of this organization to persons who are engaged in revolution as a profession and who have been professionally trained in the art of combating the political police, the more difficult will it be to catch the organization; and 5. The wider will be the circle of men and women of the working class or of other classes of society able to join the movement and perform active work in it…
Only a centralized, militant organization…”
The only serious organizational principle the active workers of our movement can accept is: Strict secrecy, strict selection of members, and the training of professional revolutionists. If we possessed these qualities, ‘democracy’ and something even more would be guaranteed to us, namely: Complete, comradely, mutual confidence among revolutionists…
…a network of agents that would automatically be created in the course of establishing and distributing a common newspaper would not have to ‘sit around and wait’ for the call to rebellion, but would carry on the regular work that would guarantee the highest probability of success in the event of a rebellion. Such work would strengthen our contacts with the broadest strata of the masses of the workers and with all those strata who are discontented with the autocracy and who are so important to have in the event of an uprising. It is pre3cisely such work that would help to cultivate the ability properly to estimate the general political situation and consequently, the ability to select the proper moment for the uprising. It is precisely such work that would train all local organizations to respond simultaneously to the same political questions, incidents and events… in the most vigorous, uniform and expedient manner possible…” 365-36
Lenin, “The State and Revolution,” Great Political Theories, pp. 366-373
“The state is the product and the manifestation of the irreconcilability of class antagonisms. The state arises when, where, and to the extent that the class antagonisms cannot be objectively reconciled. And, conversely, the existence of the state proves that the class antagonisms are irreconcilable…
According to Marx, the state is an organ of class domination, an organ of oppression of one class by another; its aim is the creation of ‘order’ which legalizes and perpetuates this oppression by moderating the collisions between the classes… if the state is the product of the irreconcilable character of class antagonisms, if it is a force standing above society and ‘increasingly separating itself from it,’ then it is clear that the liberation of the oppressed class is impossible not only without a violent revolution, but also without the destruction of the apparatus of state power, which was created by the ruling class…
… the state is a ‘special repressive force.’ … It follows from this that the ‘special repressive force’ of the bourgeoisie for the suppression fo the proletariat, of the millions of workers by a handful of the rich, must be replaced by a ‘special repressive force’ of the proletariat for the suppression of the bourgeoisie (the dictatorship of the proletariat). It is just this that constitutes the destruction of ‘the state as the state.’ It is just this that constitutes the ‘act’ of ‘the seizure of the means of production in the name of society.’ And it is obvious that such a substitution of one (proletarian) ‘special repressive force’ for another (bourgeois) ‘special repressive force’ can in no way take place in the form of a ‘withering away…
The exploiting classes need political rule in order to maintain exploitation, i.e. in the selfish interests of an insignificant minority, and against the vast majority of the people. The exploited classes need political rule in order completely to abolish all exploitation, i.e., in the interests of the vast majority of the people, and against the insignificant minority consisting of the slave-owners of modern times—the landowners and the capitalists…
Only the proletariat—by virtue of its economic role in large-scale production—is capable of leading all the toiling and exploited masses, who are exploited, oppressed, crushed by the bourgeoisie not less, and often more, than the proletariat, but who are incapable of carrying on the struggle for their freedom independently.” 366-368
“He who recognizes only the class struggle is not yet a Marxist; he may be found not to have gone beyond the boundaries of bourgeois reasoning and politics. To limit Marxism to the teaching of the class struggle means to curtail Marxism—to distort it, to reduce it to something which is acceptable to the bourgeoisie. A Marxist is one who extends the acceptance of class struggle to the acceptance of the dictatorship of the proletariat…
Further, the substance of the teachings of Marx about the state is assimilated only by one who understands that the dictatorship of a single class is necessary not only for any class society generally, not only for the proletariat which has over-thrown the bourgeoisie, but for the entire historic period which separates capitalism from ‘classless society,’ from Communism. The forms of bourgeois states are exceedingly variegated, but their essence is the same: in one way or another, all these states are in the last analysis inevitably a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. The transition from capitalism to Communism will certainly bring a great variety and abundance of political forms, but the essence will inevitably be only one: the dictatorship of the proletariat.” 368-369.
“We organize large-scale production, starting from what capitalism has already created; we workers ourselves, relying on our own experience as workers, establishing a strict, an iron discipline, supported by the state power of the armed workers, shall reduce the role of the state officials to that of simply carrying out our instructions…” 369
“To organize the whole national economy like the postal system, in such a way that the technicians, managers, book-keepers as well as all officials, should receive no higher wages than ‘workingmen’s wages,’ all under the control and leadership of the armed proletariat—this is our immediate aim. This is the kind of state and economic basis we need. This is what will produce the destruction of parliamentarism, while retaining representative institutions.” 370
“The state will be able to wither away completely when society has realized the rule: ‘From each according to his ability; to each according to his needs,’ i.e., when people have become accustomed to observe the fundamental rules of social life, and their labor is so productive, that they voluntarily work according to their own ability.” 372