Marxism–Leninism

Name and formation

The name "Marxism–Leninism" was not used in Lenin's lifetime. Denoting Marx's teaching as developed and put into practice by Lenin, the term and the doctrine took shape in the inner-party struggle of the 1920s after his death, with Stalin as their chief theorist. Stalin's Concerning Questions of Leninism (1926) presented Marxism–Leninism as a separate communist ideology with a global hierarchy of communist and revolutionary vanguard parties. A course on the "Foundations of Marxism–Leninism" was introduced in all Soviet higher education from 1925. In 1934 Karl Radek proposed "Marxism–Leninism–Stalinism" in Pravda to stress Stalin's leadership, but Stalin and the party's ideologists kept the established name.

The doctrine was fixed in textbook form by the History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks): Short Course of 1938. Its chapter "Dialectical and Historical Materialism", written by Stalin, became the foundation of Marxist–Leninist philosophy, and the Great Russian Encyclopedia credits the book with establishing the term itself.

Content of the doctrine

In Soviet textbooks Marxism–Leninism comprised dialectical materialism, historical materialism, the political economy of capitalism, Lenin's theory of the "party of a new type", and scientific communism, the teaching on the coming communist order. Politically it held to a two-stage revolution: a vanguard party organised through democratic centralism seizes power on behalf of the proletariat and establishes a one-party state, which controls the means of production and suppresses opposition, counter-revolution and the bourgeoisie to prepare a classless and stateless communist society. It rejected the Western Marxist view of world revolution as a precondition for socialism in favour of socialism in one country. The USSR declared the dictatorship of the proletariat until 1936; after the Second World War people's democracy and people's democratic revolutions took precedence. The doctrine rejected anarchism, left communism, Trotskyism, reformism and social democracy, and the slightest deviation from orthodoxy was treated and punished as revisionism.

State ideology

Marxism–Leninism became the official ideology of the USSR and the Comintern in the 1920s and 1930s. The 1936 constitution formalised the leading role of the party guided by it; the 1977 constitution made it the official ideology of the Soviet state. Its study was compulsory in all educational institutions from the upper grades of secondary school, as were the decisions of party congresses and plenums. After 1945 the Sovietised states of Eastern Europe and Asia followed its model of five-year plans and rapid industrialisation, political centralisation and repression, and during the Cold War several Non-Aligned and Third World states adopted it. At its height its influence covered at least a third of the world's population. The CPSU's Third Programme of 1961 proclaimed that "the present generation of Soviet people will live under communism", with 1980 as the approximate date.

Divergence and splits

After Stalin's death and de-Stalinisation Marxism–Leninism underwent adaptations such as Guevarism, Titoism, Ho Chi Minh Thought, Hoxhaism and Maoism, the last two constituting anti-revisionist Marxism–Leninism. These caused the Tito–Stalin split, the Sino-Soviet split and the Sino-Albanian split; in the Sino-Soviet dispute both sides claimed fidelity to Marxism–Leninism and accused the other of departing from it.

The revolutions of 1989 and the dissolution of the USSR in 1991 ended its dominance. The ruling parties of China, Cuba, Laos and Vietnam still profess it, and the Chinese Communist Party's constitution names it. North Korea's Juche is described as a transformation of Marxism–Leninism and Kim Il Sung's ideas, though its derivation is disputed.

Leninism, Stalinism and Trotskyism

Marxism–Leninism claims Leninism as its source but is not the same thing: neither Marx nor Lenin sanctioned an "-ism" after themselves, and Stalin popularised the term after Lenin's death. It overlaps with Stalinism without being identical. In Stalin's lifetime the Soviet state called its ideology Marxism–Leninism, not Stalinism; and whereas Stalinism, tied to Stalin's person, ended with de-Stalinisation, Marxism–Leninism survived, revised, as the state ideology of the Second World. Trotskyists call themselves Bolshevik–Leninists and do not apply the term to themselves; opposition to Stalin's regime was denounced as Trotskyism, a deviation from Marxism–Leninism. The political scientist Rachel Walker calls it an "empty term" redefined according to the needs of ruling communist parties.