leninism

[Charles]

I keep hearing a few bad things about leninism, and i realised i dont know much about it, could someone please explain it in more detail?

and just a prefrence, i would rather hear it form a leninist then an anarchist :P

[viva le revolution]

Marxism-Leninism is an extension of orthodox Marxism. it is Marxism in the era of imperialism.
Leninists believe in the revolution by the workers being led by the most dedicated, organized, class-consciousness workers orgnized on a mass, national scale in the form of a communist party. Going by history, thats the only way in which the proletariat has been able to threaten world finance capital, let alone take state power.

[Charles]

hmmmmmm, makes sence. but does leninism function as a sociaty and if it does what makes it different to all the other theorys?

lol i know its probly a stupid question.

[Jadan ja]

I am not a Leninist, but I will try to explain what I the main Leninist ideas I understand. I am not sure how much do you know about Leninism, so I will simply write the most important ideas.

Lenin develpoed the idea that imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism and that rich capitalist counties develop "labour aristocracy," meaning that the workers in the imperialist countries benefit form the exploitation of the workers in the other countries. As a result those workers are not dissatisfied with capitalism which increases their standard of living and, therefore, are not interested in starting a revolution. That means that the revolution must start in countries that are not well developed, such as Russia.

He also believed that the proleteriat, for the socialist revolution to be successful, must be led by a vanguard party, which is composed of intellectuals and workers. The role of the party is to develop counsciousness of the working class and to organize the proleteriat.

The organizational method of the vanguard party is democratic centralism, which was defined by Lenin as "democracy in discussion – centralism in action." It means that there should be freedom of discussion and open debate, but, once they had voted on the issues, everyone must follow the decision of the majority.

(please correct me if I was wrong on anything or an explanation of any of the concepts is incomplete)

[Severian]

The best thing to do is read what Lenin wrote himself. That way you can cut through all the BS that's thrown up. Both Lenin's opponents and some people who call themselves Leninist tend to misrepresent his ideas. Between the two, they can produce a lot of fog.

As Jadan says, Lenin's main additions to Marxist thinking were on imperialism and on party organization. So a couple good things to read are:

Imperialism (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/index.htm)
and
What is to be Done? (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/witbd/index.htm)

I've also posted some stuff about Lenin's concept of the party in the past, in debate with both anti-Leninists and pseudo-Leninists...

Thread: RE: Leninism & Vanguard (http://www.revolutionaryleft.com/index.php?showtopic=40056&st=0&#entry1291932634)

Thread: Democracy (http://www.revolutionaryleft.com/index.php?showtopic=37699&st=25&#entry1291899644)

Leadership, subordination, and communism (http://www.revolutionaryleft.com/index.php?showtopic=39826&st=0)

[viva le revolution]

Originally posted by Jadan [email protected] 27 2006, 09:03 AM


Lenin develpoed the idea that imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism and that rich capitalist counties develop "labour aristocracy," meaning that the workers in the imperialist countries benefit form the exploitation of the workers in the other countries. As a result those workers are not dissatisfied with capitalism which increases their standard of living and, therefore, are not interested in starting a revolution. That means that the revolution must start in countries that are not well developed, such as Russia.


That is a thourough misconception. Leninism is not mere 'third-worldism'. The idea of the labour aristocracy is not in reference to entire proletarian populations in the first world, but to select corrupt officials in the labour heirarchy that are toeing the line of imperialism, eg, highly paid trade union officials etc.
However, i forgot to mention the most important point, Leninism broke with mechanical marxism when Lenin propounded that proletarian revolutions were possible in the third world, ie. Russia in that time, in the form of an alliance of the working masses, ie. proletariat and peasantry. That was the fundamental break between Lenin and the mechanical, orthodox, euro-centric trends of marxism as propunded by Plekhanov, and to some extent, Trotsky and menshevism in general.

[jaycee]

it wasn' a break with marxism at all it was reacting to a new historical period using marxism. he never saw the revolution in russia as seperate to that of the western proletariat and realised that the success of theussian revolution lay in western europe.