Collected Works of V. I. Lenin - Vol. 13 - From Marx to Mao

360V. I. LENINforth about “social peace”, about the harmfulness of theclass struggle, and so on. What class struggle can there beif the bourgeoisie itself is spending money on the “needsof the population”, on public health, on education? Whatneed is there for a social revolution if it is possible throughthe local self-governing bodies, gradually, step by step,to extend “collective ownership”, and “socialise” production:the horse tramways, the slaughter-houses referred to so relevantlyby the worthy Y. Larin?The philistine opportunism of that “trend” lies in thefact that people forget the narrow limits of so-called “municipalsocialism” (in reality, municipal capitalism, as theEnglish Social-Democrats properly point out in their controversieswith the Fabians). They forget that so long asthe bourgeoisie rules as a class it cannot allow any encroachment,even from the “municipal” point of view, upon thereal foundations of its rule; that if the bourgeoisie allows,tolerates, “municipal socialism”, it is because the latterdoes not touch the foundations of its rule, does not interferewith the important sources of its wealth, but extends onlyto the narrow sphere of local-expenditure, which the bourgeoisieitself allows the “population” to manage. It doesnot need more than a slight acquaintance with “municipalsocialism” in the West to know that any attempt on thepart of socialist municipalities to go a little beyond theboundaries of their normal, i.e., minor, petty activities,which give no substantial relief to the workers, any attemptto meddle with capital, is invariably vetoed in the mostemphatic manner by the central authorities of the bourgeoisstate.And it is this fundamental mistake, this philistine opportunismof the West-European Fabians, Possibilists, andBernsteinians that is taken over by our advocates of municipalisation.“Municipal socialism” means socialism in matters oflocal government. Anything that goes beyond the limitsof local interests, beyond the limits of state administration,i.e., anything that affects the main sources of revenue ofthe ruling classes and the principal means of securing theirrule, anything that affects not the administration of thestate, but the structure of the state, thereby goes beyond