What is Leninism?
Leninism is the set of ideas and methods developed by Vladimir Lenin, the leader of the Bolshevik revolution in Russia in 1917. It adapts the thought of Karl Marx to a country that was poor, mostly rural and ruled by a tsar. Lenin argued that workers on their own would settle for better wages, so a tightly organized party of full-time revolutionaries had to lead them. After taking power, the party would rule in the name of the working class and use the state to crush the old ruling classes and build socialism. Leninism became the model for the ruling parties of the Soviet Union and later of China, Cuba, Vietnam and other states. Its record includes mass repression, and historians still debate how far later Soviet terror grew from Lenin's own methods.
Core beliefs
- A small, disciplined vanguard party must lead the working class.
- The party should follow democratic centralism: debate first, then strict obedience to decisions.
- Capitalism has reached its final stage as imperialism, which breeds wars and revolutions.
- The old state must be smashed and replaced by a workers' state led by the party.
- Property in land and industry should be taken into public hands.
- Revolution should be spread abroad through an international communist movement.
History
In What Is to Be Done? (1902) Lenin argued for a tightly run party of professional revolutionaries. At the 1903 party congress the split between his Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks began. During the First World War he wrote Imperialism (1916), which said that the great powers' wars came from the search for colonies and markets. After the tsar fell in February 1917, Lenin returned to Russia, called for all power to the soviets, and led the Bolshevik seizure of power in October. In January 1918 the Bolsheviks shut down the elected Constituent Assembly, where they were a minority. A secret police, the Cheka, was created in December 1917 and carried out the Red Terror during the civil war. Forced grain requisitions contributed to famine, and the Kronstadt sailors' revolt was crushed in March 1921. That year Lenin brought in the New Economic Policy, which allowed limited private trade, and banned organized factions inside the party. The Communist International, founded in 1919, tried to spread the model. Lenin died in 1924.
Variants
After Lenin, rival readings fought for his legacy. Stalin built a harsher, more personal dictatorship and an industrial state under the name Marxism-Leninism. Trotsky, who opposed Stalin, claimed to be the true heir and called for world revolution. Bukharin defended the NEP's market elements. In China, Mao adapted the model to a peasant revolution. Other Marxists, such as Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Kautsky, rejected Lenin's methods from the start, while later reformers inside communist states tried to loosen the system.
Criticisms
Social democrats such as Kautsky said Lenin had replaced the rule of the working class with rule by one party. Luxemburg warned that without free elections and open debate, public life would die out and bureaucracy would rule. Anarchists pointed to Kronstadt and the suppression of independent workers' groups. Liberals note that the Red Terror, forced requisitioning and the early camp system caused vast suffering. Defenders reply that Russia faced civil war, foreign intervention and collapse, and that Lenin's party also brought mass literacy, women's legal equality and industry. Historians remain split over whether Stalinism was a continuation of Leninism or a break from it.
In practice
Leninist parties ruled the Soviet Union until 1991 and still run several states today. Their common features are one-party rule, state control of the economy, a secret police, and official control of the press. The experience led many on the left to reject Leninism and to defend democratic socialism instead. On the 12 axes it scores at the far Public end of Ownership, strongly toward Planned on Markets, and high toward Strong leader on Authority and Secular on Religion.