Leninism
레닌주의
Leninism is the interpretation and practice of Marxism that Vladimir Lenin developed for the conditions of the Russian revolutionary movement. Its core is a theory of the party — a vanguard organised on democratic centralism that brings political consciousness to the working class and leads the revolution — together with the analysis of imperialism as the highest stage of capitalism, the alliance of workers and peasants, and the dictatorship of the proletariat. Party leaders began using the name around 1922, when illness removed Lenin from work, and it was codified after his death in 1924. Mutually hostile currents — Stalin's Marxism–Leninism, Trotskyism, Maoism — each claimed to be its legitimate heir.
In depth
Origins and the name
Leninism's starting point is What Is To Be Done? (1902), in which Lenin argued that the economic struggle over wages and working conditions could not by itself bring revolution, and that a revolutionary vanguard party recruited from the working class had to lead the political struggle. The Bolshevik faction formed the next year at the Second Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, and in doctrine Leninism coincides with the Bolshevism Lenin led.
The word "Leninism", however, came into frequent use in party leaders' speeches only after illness withdrew Lenin from work in 1922. At the Twelfth Party Congress in April 1923 Bukharin said that the essence of Leninism on the national question was the struggle against Great Russian chauvinism. Formulations followed Lenin's death in January 1924: in February György Lukács published in Vienna a pamphlet treating Leninism as a new phase of materialist dialectics, and in March Stalin's lectures at the Sverdlov University appeared as The Foundations of Leninism, defining it as "Marxism of the era of imperialism and the proletarian revolution". At the Fifth Comintern Congress that year Zinoviev used the term for "vanguard-party revolution", and the Thirteenth Party Congress in May decided to introduce Leninism into the teaching of all social disciplines, to found the Lenin Institute and to publish his collected works.
Party, imperialism and the state
Lenin's contributions concern the party, imperialism, the state and revolution. The party was organised on democratic centralism: free debate until a policy was decided, after which every member was bound by it. Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916) argued that industrialised countries exported finance capital to their colonies and used the proceeds of superexploitation to sustain a domestic labour aristocracy, so that the first proletarian revolution would come in the weakest country of the global finance system. The State and Revolution (1917) described the dictatorship of the proletariat as the organisation of the vanguard of the oppressed as the ruling class to crush the oppressors. On the national question Lenin defended the right of nations to self-determination (1914) against Russian chauvinism.
Soviet scholarship reduced Leninism to four theses: imperialism is the highest and last stage of capitalism; revolutions occur first in the "weak links", the underdeveloped countries; victory requires an alliance of workers and peasants led by the workers; and the dictatorship of the proletariat is exercised under the leadership of a revolutionary vanguard party.
Practice after the revolution
After the October Revolution Leninism became the dominant version of Marxism in Russia. The Bolshevik government nationalised industry and monopolised foreign trade, fed the Civil War through war communism (1918–1921), and in March 1921 replaced grain requisitions with an agricultural tax and limited private trade under the New Economic Policy. In the same year Lenin banned factions in the party. Most political opposition — the Mensheviks, factions of the Socialist Revolutionary Party and the Left SRs, the anarchists — was suppressed, leaving the vanguard party as the only party in Russia, though Lenin held that disenfranchising the exploiters was "a purely Russian question" rather than a feature of proletarian dictatorship in general.
Bolsheviks and Marxism–Leninism
Leninism denotes Lenin's theory and practice, as distinct from the Bolsheviks, the faction and party that carried it. The more important distinction is from Marxism–Leninism, the Soviet state doctrine Stalin systematised after Lenin's death around socialism in one country, for which Leninism served as the claimed source of legitimacy. The Institute of Marxism–Leninism of the CPSU Central Committee defined Leninism as "a new, higher stage of Marxism" whose stage continued in the theoretical work of the CPSU and fraternal parties. Warnings against that appropriation came early: at the Fourteenth Congress in 1925 Lenin's widow Nadezhda Krupskaya objected to cries about "true Leninism", recalling Lenin's remark that great revolutionaries' teachings were turned into harmless icons after their death.
The contested inheritance
Nearly every communist current after Lenin claimed his inheritance. Stalin's socialism in one country and Trotsky's permanent revolution each claimed legitimate descent from Leninism and denied the other's legitimacy; the term "Trotskyism" itself was used by Stalin and the troika to present Trotsky's views as factional and anathema to Leninist thought. In 1922 Lenin had allied with Trotsky against the party's bureaucratisation and Stalin's influence, and his testament of December 1922 urged Stalin's removal as General Secretary. Mutually opposed currents — Trotskyism, Stalinism, Maoism, Hoxhaism and Bordigism — have all identified themselves with Leninism.