V.I. Lenin: The Necessity of the Soviets

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“Had not the popular creative spirit of the Russian revolution, which had gone through the great experience of the year 1905, given rise to the Soviets as early as February 1917, they could not under any circumstances have seized power in October, because success depended entirely upon the existence of ready-made organisational forms of a movement embracing millions. These ready-made forms were the Soviets, and that is why in the political sphere there awaited us those brilliant successes, the continuous triumphant march, that we experienced; for the new form of political power was ready to hand, and all we had to do was, by passing a few decrees, to transform the power of the Soviets from the embryonic state in which it existed in the first months of the revolution into a legally recognised form which has become established in the Russian state—i.e., into the Russian Soviet Republic”

 

V.I. Lenin

Complete Works. Vol. XXII, p. 315.

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I believe that this remains the case today. There could not have been a transformation from Feudalism to Capitalism, if the forms of Capitalism had not already been developed within the womb of Feudalism. Lenin says so himself. Within the belly of the beast, we much build the organisational forms of a new society, i.e. Communist Society. The Soviet is, in effect, the basic form of Communist Society. There can be no Communism without Soviets. Within the Soviet, one learns to work with ones comrades. One learns Soviet discipline, and Soviet courage and innovation. Within the Soviet, one transcends the atomization of the bourgeois order. Instead of treasuring bourgeois privacy and isolation, one makes links and alliances. Through Soviet work, one learns to trust and depend on one's comrades. One learns to analyse the social structures of the hegemonic regime, and, thus, one takes onto one's self the ability to imagine and create new structures. In short, one stops being the passive victim that the bourgeois order requires, and becomes an active Communist, building a Communion of Workers.