Leninism

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Template:Communism Image:Lenin 1920.jpg Leninism is a political and economic theory which builds upon Marxism; it is therefore a branch of Marxism. Leninism was developed mainly by the Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin, and it was also put into practice by him after the October Revolution. The term "Leninism" itself did not exist during most of Lenin's life. It came into widespread use only after Lenin ended his active participation in the Soviet government due to health problems (strokes), shortly before his death. Grigory Zinoviev popularised the term at the fifth congress of the Communist International. Since the mid-1920s, Leninism has arguably become the dominant branch of Marxism.

In his book "What is to be Done?" (1903), Lenin argued that the proletariat can only achieve a successful revolutionary consciousness through the efforts of a Communist party that assumes the role of "revolutionary vanguard." Lenin further believed that such a party could only achieve its aims through a form of disciplined organization known as democratic centralism, where Communist Party officials are elected democratically, but once they are elected and other decisions are made through voting, all party members must follow those decisions.

Leninism holds that capitalism can only be overthrown by revolutionary means (i.e. that any attempt to reform capitalism from within is doomed to fail). According to Lenin, the revolution should be followed by a period of dictatorship of the proletariat (a system of workers' democracy, in which workers would hold political power through councils known as soviets; see also soviet democracy).

One of the central concepts of Leninism is a view of imperialism as the highest stage of capitalism. Lenin developed a theory of imperialism aimed to improve and update Marx's work by explaining a phenomenon which Marx predicted: the shift of capitalism towards becoming a global system (hence the slogan "Workers of the World Unite!"). At the core of this theory of imperialism lies the idea that advanced capitalist industrial nations increasingly came to export capital to captive colonial countries to exploiting those colonies for their resources and investment opportunities. This superexploitation of poorer countries allowed the advanced capitalist industrial nations to keep a small number of their own workers content, by providing them with slightly higher living standars (see labor aristocracy).

For these reasons, Lenin argued that a proletarian revolution could not occur in the developed capitalist countries as long as the global system of imperialism remained intact. Thus, he believed that a lesser-developed country would have to be the location of the first proletarian revolution. A particularly good candidate, in his view, was Russia - which Lenin considered to be the "weakest link" in global capitalism at the time.

However, if the revolution could only start in a poor underdeveloped country, this posed a challenge: According to Marx, such an underdeveloped country would not be able to develop a socialist system (in Marxist theory, socialism is the stage of development that would come after capitalism and before communism), because capitalism hasn't run its full course yet in that country, and because foreign powers will try to crush the revolution at any cost. To solve this problem, Leninism proposes two possible solutions.

One option would be for the revolution in the underdeveloped country to spark off a revolution in a developed capitalist nation (for example, Lenin hoped the Russian Revolution would spark a revolution in Germany). The developed country would then establish socialism and help the underdeveloped country do the same.

Another option would be for the revolution to happen in a large number of underdeveloped countries at the same time or in quick succession; the underdeveloped countries would then join together into a federal state capable of fighting off the great capitalist powers and establishing socialism. This was the original idea behind the foundation of the Soviet Union.

Either way, socialism cannot survive in one poor underdeveloped country alone. Thus, Leninism calls for world revolution in one form or another.

Near the end of the 1920's, the Soviet Union began to move away from Lenin's policies and towards what is usually called "Stalinism", with many of Lenin's colleagues and followers (the "Old Bolsheviks") perishing in the Great Purge. In China, Stalinist organizational structure was used by the Communist Party of China; later, the Chinese Communists developed the theory of Maoism.

Other prominent variants of Leninism have also developed, most notably including Trotskyism, which defines itself in opposition to the Stalinist practices implemented in the Soviet Union soon after Lenin's death. Present-day Leninists often see globalization as the modern continuation of imperialism.

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Leninism

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