![]() On the other hand, Lenin explicitly identifies 'socialism' with Marx's "first phase of communism", 4 Similarly, after posing the question, "what is communism and what distinguishes it from socialism?", he answers that communism is a "higher social form" compared to socialism, the latter being the "first form of the new society". Thus he holds that "from capitalism mankind can pass directly only to socialism" and that "socialism must inevitably adually into communism". Lenin makes a distinction between socialism and communism as well as identifies socialism with what is already, according to Marx, the "first phase of communism". Here we shall be trying to touch upon what we consider to be Lenin's most significant writings on the socialist economy, before and after October 1917, and we shall be paying particular attention to the relevant discussion in The State and Revolution. On the other hand, in Lenin's post-October writings there appear important theoretical formulations on socialism. However, while this preoccupation concerned socialism's implementation in practice, Lenin's most comprehensive discussion of socialism as a purely theoretical category-particularly with respect to its economic content-antedates the October seizure of power and is found mainly in the famous pamphlet The State and Revolution, unfinished though its composition was. True, beginning with the Bolshevik seizure of political power in October 1917, the problem of building a socialist economy in his country increasingly preoccupied Lenin's mind. ![]() Even then it is difficult to accept the statement of a contemporary Hungarian economist that "prior to the 1917 socialist revolution Lenin made only sporadic allusions to the pattern of the socialist economy". The discussion of socialism considered as a specific economic-social formation does not figure much in Lenin's writings as a theoretical category before 1917. In what follows, Section I summarises Lenin's main ideas on socialism's economic content, Section II examines these ideas in the light of Marx's writings on the subject, while Section III concludes the paper. It should be emphasised that we are not concerned here with the (practical) policies Lenin pursued, before or after October 1917, towards the realisation of socialism. As the title of the paper indicates, we shall be concerned here basically with the economic content of socialism considered purely as a theoretical category. In the following lines we propose to discuss critically how Lenin conceived of socialism as a new form of society and to what extent his concept of socialism could be considered Marxian. ![]() Economic and Political Weekly (Bombay) January 26, 1991.
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