Why didn't Lenin simply start a company?

[Boojatta]

By starting a company and hiring people, there would be a small risk that Lenin would have caused unemployment. The risk would be a sudden failure of his company on the assumption that, had his company not been established, his employees would have been employed by organizations that didn't fail.

[skidoo]

1. I enjoyed that.

What's the punchline?

[Boojatta]

2. There's no punchline.

Employers competing for employees would mean less risk of exploitation of workers by an organization controlled by Lenin. Lenin's workers would have the option of quitting and working elsewhere. Also, it would have been their choice to work for Lenin's company.

[uberllama42]

3. Lenin was partly a pawn for the Germans

who sent him to Russia to help overthrow the Tsar and pull Russia out of World War I. He had been exiled from Russia, so he couldn't really have started a company there.

Besides, even if he was sincerely interested in ending the abuses of the capitalist system, a single company with limited market power could only do so much to affect wages and working conditions. If the problems were systemic, one company could not hope to solve them.

[Boojatta]

4. By "systemic", do you mean that the problems would have

occurred within Lenin's company? If so, then what specific problems do you have in mind?

Systemic problems outside Lenin's company might have given his company a competitive advantage that would allow it to grow without limit.

[uberllama42]

5. Lenin might have been able to remedy certain problems

Like low wages, long hours, and unsafe working conditions, depending on what kind of market structure his company was operating under. Part of the reason why companies keep wages as low as possible and do not use resources improving working conditions is in order to remain competitive. There is no guarantee that Lenin's company could avoid the same market pressures, and if he had tried to run his company differently he may well have failed. Paying higher wages may have forced him to charge higher prices and thus have led him to failure.

All of this assumes that he actually cared about the workers and did not merely use Marxism as a means to justify his own installation in power. I'm not familiar enough with Lenin to make a judgment about his sincerity.

[Boojatta]

6. "Paying higher wages may have forced him to charge higher prices and thus have led him to failure."

Don't higher prices mean that nominally higher wages do not necessarily provide any increase in purchasing power? You make it sound as though Lenin had something of value to offer, but simply couldn't compete. However, did he actually have anything of value to offer?

[uberllama42]

7. If he has nothing of value to sell

what kind of company is he going to run? I assumed that was part of the scenario. What kind of company are you talking about?

[Boojatta]

8. Of course, to generate revenue, something must be sold, but generating some revenue is not enough.

For a business to survive, there must be some value more persistent and less tangible than the value accounted for when one sales transaction occurs. If the founder is devoting time to manage the business, then that management effort should eventually add value greater than what the founder would earn by doing routine work as someone's employee.

[Boojatta]

20. "He had been exiled from Russia, so he couldn't really have started a company there."

When he returned to Russia, did he remain concealed from government authorities until the completion of the coup that allowed him to become the new head of government?

[Alcibiades]

9. Back then, companies were small potatoes

compared to states. For example, companies couldn't have armies, but states could.

How times have changed!

Anyway, this question misses the mark. I assume you're talking about V. I. Lenin, no? In which case, we would have to say that he didn't start a company because he thought the entire capitalist system itself was being superseded by socialism. The new unit of social organization would be the soviet.

[Boojatta]

10. "The new unit of social organization would be the soviet."

If he had power over his company, then what would have prevented him from assigning that power according to a system of his choice?

[Alcibiades]

11. The really short answer is that he was a revolutionary,

not an MBA. Capitalism didn't exactly thrive in old Russia for exactly the reason it does not thrive in any autocracy: political power trumps economic interest. By definition, only the Tsar would have absolute power, even over an individual firm, if he so desired. The moment our hypothetical Leninist firm becomes threatening to the status quo, the Tsar could simply order it out of existence.

Some socialist folks have, however, pretty much up and done did what you are talking about. Engels himself, for example, was the son of an industrialist, a manager, and later a capitalist himself, whose own efforts at reform are often cited as one of the reasons for the failure of his business, though I'm not altogether familiar with the details. Various experiments along these lines included La Reunion in Texas in the late 1850's, Jean-Baptiste André Godin's worker-owned Familistère in Guise, and, of course, the Owen's experiment in New Harmony, which may have failed in part because it was established as a community rather than a corporation. Then there was also the cooperative movement, employee ownership and credit unions, all of which were inspired by socialist ideals.

There are a heck of a lot of reasons why Lenin himself did not start a company, from the condition of Russia, to his own status as a political exile, to his personality. The most compelling reason, however, comes from the teachings of orthodox Marxism, (which Lenin himself helped to define as we know it today, but this bit is certainly pre-Lenin in its origins, and fundamental to Marx's original work). Marx teaches that capitalists must continually compete with one another to survive. Though Marx certainly took some account of advances in technology, nonetheless the means by which he thought capitalists would compete was through increasing exploitation of the proletariat (which also takes on a related technical meaning in Marxism), which means finding a way to get more out of the workers for the same or less money. One way to do this is through the process of capital accumulation, but it's also clear that Marx thought that capitalists pretty much had to gyp workers and maltreat them. Any capitalist unwilling to gyp workers and abuse them would eventually be bought out or driven out of business by those willing to do so.

There's much, much more, but the short answer is that Lenin didn't start a company for the purposes of establishing social justice because he thought (correctly, in my opinion) that such a company would have been driven out of business by the more ruthless competition.

[Boojatta]

13. "the Tsar could simply order it out of existence"

Wasn't there a Duma that had some authority before the abdication of the last Tsar? Also, wasn't there some time between the Tsar's abdication and Lenin's power grab in October 1917?

[Alcibiades]

14. Besides the fact that a corporation cannot bring about

changes of the scope Lenin worked for, the conditions in Russia at that time did not make it a fertile ground for capitalist enterprise. The Tsar retained an absolute veto. Was the constitution of 1906 more liberal than the absolute monarchy? You betcha, but it was still the most autocratic constitutional monarchy ever attempted.

Anyway, I had not assumed 1906 would have been the starting date of the counterfactual. Lenin was certainly already a committed Marxist revolutionary by 1895, when the Tsar still retained his full authority. I had implicitly assumed this would be the approximate hypothetical starting date of the counterfactual corporation in question. Lenin's starting a corporation sometime between April and October of 1917 is a much, much sillier scenario. Where would he incorporate? Who would invest? Why would someone who had spent their entire adult life as a professional revolutionary suddenly do this at the moment when he is about to assume control of the state?

Pre-revolutionary Russia was not a place that produced many capitalists, but a good environment for revolutionaries. Bad business climate, but ripe for revolution. If it had not been Lenin, it would have been someone else.

[Boojatta]

15. Okay, let's consider 1895.

Weren't some companies started in Russia in 1895? Was a mere risk of political interference enough to prevent all formation of companies?

I hear that private companies were started in the USSR when it was illegal to start any kind of private company.

[Alcibiades]

17. Let's not

This thought experiment has gotten too silly. There's a lot of literature on private property rights and enterprise if you're interested. Suffice it to say, absent state protection, there is little incentive to start corporations. In any event, Lenin was interested in either:

a. social and economic justice
b. absolute power

neither of which you get by starting a corporation, but which Lenin may have imagined he could get for Russia by taking control of the state. Why didn't Lenin start a corporation? At this point, you might as well ask why he didn't start a knitting club. It's about as related to his objectives as starting a corporation.

[Boojatta]

18. Re "economic justice" and a company

Lenin was interested in either:

a. social and economic justice (underlining added by Boojatta)

b. absolute power

neither of which you get by starting a corporation

(...)

Why didn't Lenin start a corporation? At this point, you might as well ask why he didn't start a knitting club.

If you control a company, then isn't it possible for you to make an effort and have some hope of success in achieving economic justice within the company?

Imagine it is now some time in the 1890s and I am living in Russia and my ten-year goal is to become the owner of a limousine and to also have a chauffeur as my employee. If you outlined a plan that I might use to become the owner of a limousine, then would it be appropriate for me to complain that you might as well tell me how to start a knitting club because I want both a limousine and a chauffeur?

Note: If my words led you to assume that I wanted to restrict my hypothetical to Lenin starting specifically a corporation rather than some other form/kind of company, then my words were misleading and I apologize.

[Jim__]

12. If he had started a company, would there have even been a Lenin?

Lenin was a revolutionary pseudonym. If he had started a company, would be have needed a pseudonym?

[SergeyDovlatov]

16. He wanted to avenge for the death of his brother

Lenin's brother was an anarchist who attempted to assassinate the Tsar in 1887.
He was caught and executed. Since then Lenin was plotting to avenge his brother death.

His effort has finally succeeded after entire royal family was executed on his orders in July of 1918.

Facts from wiki, spin is mine.

[Boojatta]

19. Did Lenin cause a lot of unemployment soon after he acquired power?