Does this make sense?

[CatsAttack]

Vladimir had studied Capital so well that each time he returned to it thereafter, he was able to discover new ideas in it."

Shouldn't it be the other way around? He studied so poorly that every time he returned to it he discovered new things?

[svenne]

I guess you talk about Lenin? As i see it: the more you know about a subject, the easier is it to find the small differences, new "big pictures" (or whatever you call it, what it all becomes when it's put together), and how things evolve within the works itself. If you study something poorly, you have to discover everything once again every time you read the book(s).

[tuwix]

Nonetheless, whatever Lenin had read or thought about Marx, he accomplished it poorely. The most tragical things were introducing "temporary" censorship and secret police. It was as "temporary" as it survived until today, but soviet state didn't...

[connoros]

Is censorship inherently evil, though?

The state is an inherently oppressive thing; it's function is oppression. Is it impossible to redirect oppression that the traditionally exploited peoples are relieved while those who would have them exploited are "oppressed" in that their freedom to exploit and foment counter-revolution is taken from them?

[canto-faire]

Lenin made some mistakes; he himself was more than upfront about that. However, I would hardly say he accomplished what he did poorly. Russia, a semi-feudal despotism barely out of the middle ages, was transformed practically overnight into a modern republic. It experimented with different models of Socialism under him, never letting excessive dogmatism endanger the life of the world's first attempt at a Marxist-inspired Socialist Republic. The nation was established with the expectation of political support from revolutionary regimes in the West; even though they fell through, the State continued to survive. When the country was attacked on all fronts and from within by a massive reactionary civil war, Lenin and Trotsky managed to keep their country alive and pulled it to victory - a truly astonishing feat, especially considering the seemingly draconian policies of War Communism, which is an incredible testament to the resilience of the Party. When faced with an insurrection from his Leftist opponents, he did not let it threaten the stability of the country, but nevertheless understood and used their criticisms to help develop a new, more stable economic system.

While I disagree with the censorship, and the way the Cheka were used, the country was on the brink of total collapse from within literally before day 1. To cite them as examples of Lenin's failures to implement Marxism is to entirely miss the historical context, and to confuse opposing Lenin's policies with evaluating their success.

[CriticalJames]

You can't expect to become a master craftsman after your first craft. Surely you'd expect somebody who's re-read Das Kapital 10 times to be more well versed on the book than say somebody who's only read it once. This would apply to any book, however this is particularly true when you consider the sheer size and detail of Marx's Kapital.

Reading the book for the first time was a long and tedious task for myself. I'm sure I must have missed plenty of points and conceptions made out by Marx. To study it further, I would have had to go back to the book and continue to try to understand the theory. I'm sure that's what Lenin did and the fact he did that doesn't mean he studied it poorly.

David Harvey, a worldwide renowned Marxist professor, has also made similar claims. In his video lectures, Reading Marx's Kapital, Harvey specifically mentions how he his perceptions of Marx and his theory change each time he does the lecture and re-reads the book. I wouldn't even dream of saying Harvey studied Das Kapital poorly either.