Leninism

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The term Leninism refers to the political and economic ideas associated with Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (1870–1924), leader of the Russian Bolshevik Party and of the Soviet Union following the revolution of October 1917. Lenin saw himself as a follower of Karl Marx (1818–1883) and sought to give Marx’s ideas practical expression.

In What Is to be Done? (1902), Lenin advocated the formation of a disciplined and centralized organization of professional revolutionaries in Russia to agitate for socialism, rather than the looser grouping favored by other Russian Marxists. Initially, he viewed this as necessary only because of the need to organize clandestinely in czarist Russia, where revolutionary groups were illegal, but later he generalized this model. Lenin argued that it was necessary in all advanced countries to build parties consisting of the most militant and class-conscious members of the working class in order to combat ruling-class ideology and overcome divisions between workers. This revolutionary vanguard would have the clarity of purpose and independence of action necessary to win a majority to its program during a period of major political and economic crisis, and to lead a successful socialist revolution.

Lenin’s Bolsheviks put his theory into practice in Russia during the course of 1917, but within a few years the revolution that they led had degenerated into a one-party regime that bore little resemblance to the ideal of workers’ democracy defended in his State and Revolution (1918). Lenin’s critics see this as proof of an undemocratic impulse in his basic outlook, while his defenders argue that the revolution’s degeneration was a consequence of adverse circumstances, including a brutal civil war, economic collapse, external threats, and the failure of revolution to spread successfully to more economically advanced countries, such as Germany. Certainly before the early 1920s there was always much disagreement, discussion, and debate in Lenin’s party, in sharp contrast to the monolithic dictatorship that developed under his successor, Joseph Stalin (1878–1953), and to the practice of most Communist parties around the world that claimed, following Stalin, to be committed to the tenets of Marxism-Leninism.

Among Lenin’s most influential theoretical contributions is his analysis of imperialism and war. Drawing on the work of the British economist J. A. Hobson (1858–1940), Lenin argued in Imperialism: The Latest Stage of Capitalism (1917) that the imperialist expansion by the world’s major powers in the late nineteenth century was an outgrowth of the development of monopoly capitalism, in which economic power in the advanced countries is increasingly concentrated in a relatively small number of large firms, industrial capital merges with big banks, and there is growing integration of private companies and the state. Competition between capitals for markets thus gives rise, on Lenin’s account, to military and territorial competition between nation states, which he viewed as the underlying explanation of the world war that broke out in 1914. On this analysis, rivalries and wars between major powers are rooted in the dynamic of capitalist development itself, and can only be eliminated by radically restructuring the economic system and replacing capitalism with socialism.

SEE ALSO Bolshevism; Communism; Imperialism; Lenin, Vladimir Ilitch; Maoism; Marxism; One-Party States; Revolution; Russian Revolution; Socialism; Stalin, Joseph; Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Harding, Neil. 1983. Lenin’s Political Thought: Theory and Practice in the Democratic and Socialist Revolutions. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press.

Le Blanc, Paul. 1990. Lenin and the Revolutionary Party. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press.

Lenin, V. I. 1970. Selected Works. Moscow: Progress Publishers.

Liebman, Marcel. 1975. Leninism under Lenin. Trans. Brian Pearce. London: Merlin Press.

Philip Gasper

Le·nin·ism / ˈlenəˌnizəm/ • n. Marxism as interpreted and applied by Lenin. DERIVATIVES: Le·nin·ist n. & adj. Le·nin·ite / -ˌnīt/ n. & adj.