We explain what Leninism is, what its characteristics, its history and its principles are. Also, we tell you who Lenin was.

What is Leninism?
Leninism is the doctrine political, social and economic developed from the precepts of the Marxism by the Russian communist revolutionary and philosopher Vladimir Ilyich Ulianov, alias Lenin (1870-1924). This is a specific interpretation of the ideas of Karl Marx (1818-1883) and their adaptation to the particular conditions of society in the Russian Empire at the beginning of the 20th century.
In this way, Leninism was the dominant version of Marxist thought in the Soviet Union following the imposition by the Bolshevik Party of a one-party government that suppressed the political opposition, including the other factions of Marxism: anarchism and the Mensheviks (moderate sector of the Social Democratic Labor Party of Russia).
Lenin maintained that, to overthrow capitalism, it was necessary to carry out the revolution under the leadership of a revolutionary party composed of conscious workers. Unlike traditional Marxism, it emphasized the importance of a vanguard intellectual elite to guide the working class and the need for a highly centralized organization to carry out the revolution.
The term Leninism and the precepts regarding communism proposed by this doctrine were accepted by the left-wing revolutionary sectors at the V Congress of the Communist International (1924), and later served as the basis for the development of new communist currents, such as Trotskyism, Maoism and Stalinism.
Whether Leninism constituted a contribution or a corruption of basic Marxist thought is something that is debated among theorists and academics of the left, but Its importance in the configuration of communist governments in the 20th century is a recognized and indisputable fact.
See also: Scientific communism
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between Leninism and Marxism?
Leninism adapted Marx's ideas to the conditions of Russia, emphasizing the need for a revolutionary vanguard party and the seizure of power by the workers.
What was Lenin's role in the Russian Revolution?
Lenin was the leader of the Bolshevik Party and one of the main promoters of the October Revolution of 1917, which led to the overthrow of the provisional government and established the first socialist state in the world.
What is “democratic centralism” in Leninism?
“Democratic centralism” is one of the primary ideas of Leninism and involves democratic decision-making within the revolutionary party, followed by the discipline of all members to implement those decisions once they are made.
How did Leninism influence international politics?
Leninism promoted the expansion of socialism on a global level, through the international solidarity of workers and support for revolutionary movements in other countries.
What was Lenin's main contribution to political theory?
Lenin developed the theory of imperialism as the highest phase of capitalism, arguing that it would lead to imperialist wars, which would provide an important basis for proletarian revolution worldwide.
Origin of Leninism

Leninism formally emerged as a Marxist current in the context of the October Revolution of 1917, the year in which Lenin exposed his April Thesis in the Táuride Palace, after his return from exile.
In this speech, Lenin called for the next step in the revolution: the soviets (workers' councils) must overthrow the moderate government and conquer political power. Furthermore, he proclaimed that the Russian Revolution was the first socialist revolution in history, destined to inspire workers' rebellion throughout the world.
Even then, Lenin was an influential communist thinker and politician, and since the start of the First World War in 1914 had become an important voice in the call for international proletarian revolution in Europe.
Beginning in 1917, Lenin became the main leader of the Bolsheviks in power and held the position of president of the Council of People's Commissars of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, with sufficient political authority to sign peace with the German Empire in 1918 (the Peace of Brest-Litovsk).
Characteristics of Leninism

The main characteristics of Leninism are:
- It was an interpretation of Marxism and a way of building communism. As its name indicates, the great ideologist of this current was Vladimir Lenin.
- He conceived the revolution as an international event not merely national, and as a long-term process whose changes had to be materialized through authoritarianism and the will of the party, since left to their own devices they could never occur.
- He proposed that the intellectual elite guide the working class in the revolution. For this, he created the Vanguard Communist Party, which held all the power of the government (through the so-called “dictatorship of the proletariat”) and played a role as ideological guide for the rest of the working class.
- He argued that the working class should be the revolutionary protagonist.Updated Marx's diagnosis of the capitalist system, since the industrial world had changed significantly since the mid-19th century. Thus, even though Russia was an eminently agricultural country, the revolution had the industrial working class as its protagonist.
- It was a pragmatic communist revolutionary government which made concessions (such as state capitalism) in order to prolong the revolutionary government.
- He imposed himself with violence on the opposition It led to the end of the civil war between 1918-1921 and resulted in the creation of one of the first modern totalitarian States (the Soviet Union), since the imposition of communism had to occur through the conquest of all possible resistances. of society, for which social, economic and cultural supervision by the revolutionary vanguard party was necessary.
Principles of Leninism

The implementation of communism in accordance with Lenin's precepts and vision was guided by the following general points:
Democratic centralism
Democratic centralism was a fundamental organizing principle in Leninism, which It combined the centralization of leadership with internal democracy within the communist party. This concept sought to balance the need for unity and discipline with participation and debate within the party.
Under Lenin, the Bolsheviks organized themselves as a party in which political consensus was the only limit on freedom of expression. Political debate was always the party's organizational tool: discussions were open and decisions were made by majority vote.
Party members were then expected to work together and in a disciplined manner, maintaining a semblance of cohesion and avoiding party fragmentation.
dictatorship of the proletariat
The government of revolutionary Russia implemented what Lenin called “the dictatorship of the proletariat,” which operated in accordance with the principles of democracy direct and of the soviets (workers' assemblies). The term dictatorship It did not refer to a dictatorship in the traditional sense of autocratic rule by one person, but rather to the domination of one social class over another.
In this government, the working class led by Lenin's party had absolute political control. For Lenin, the dictatorship of the proletariat was a necessary transitional phase after the socialist revolution and before the complete construction of communism, where the State, controlled by the workers, would suppress the resistance of the bourgeoisie and organize the socialist economy.
Economic pragmatism
Although Leninism was committed to the construction of communism, its economic practices were always down to earth. The changes during Lenin's government were consistent with his understanding of the transition to communism, but from a very point of view pragmatic and firmly anchored in Russian reality. Lenin did not hesitate to make concessions regarding his theoretical principles, and to do so he considered that the revolution had to be a long-term project.
For example, between 1918 and 1921 he established “war communism” to confront the Russian civil war. It was an economic policy designed to guarantee the supply of resources to face the military effort in the civil war and ensure State control over the economy.
Then, starting in 1921, he implemented the New Economic Policy (NEP), a form of state capitalism (that is, a mixed economy) that had the objective of recovering the Russian economy hit by the civil war.
National self-determination
Leninism opposed Russian chauvinism (which considered the rest of the ethnic groups that inhabited the territory of the Russian Empire as inferior). He believed that such ethnocentrism was a cultural obstacle to the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Lenin defended the right of nations to self-determination and considered Marxism and Bolshevism as inherently international political forms, just as Marx preached with his phrase “Workers of the world, unite.”
socialist culture
Since the Revolutionary Vanguard Party proposed by Lenin had the role of ideologically educating the working class, his control over culture it was huge. Its main task was to promote socialist culture, staunchly opposing traditional religious values and the cultural status quo of the bourgeoisie.
However, the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party opposed, for example, the Proletkult, a revolutionary federation of cultural organization that emerged in 1917 that aspired to create a new proletarian aesthetic.
Who was Lenin?

Vladimir Ilyich Ulianov, alias Lenin, was a Russian politician and philosopher born in Simbirsk in 1870. He had a long political career in his country, always affiliated with anti-tsarist sectors, and was a prominent revolutionary intellectual.
In 1895 he founded the League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class a short-lived organization that earned him prison and then exile to Siberia from 1897 to 1900. He later joined the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDP) and later founded the newspaper Iskra during a season of exile between London and Geneva.
He returned to Russia in 1905, thanks to a series of pardons obtained as a result of the Russian Revolution of that year, but left again after the revolutionary failure in 1908. However, his role in Russian politics was not minor, and until 1910 He was extremely active in the revolutionary political and theoretical debate. In particular, he was a supporter of the separation of the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks.
In 1912 he became a member of the party's Central Committee and in 1914 he preached against Russian participation in the First World War considering it a capitalist confrontation between empires and bourgeoisies. Instead, he was an enthusiast of the civil war that began in 1917 and that would bring him to power at the hands of the Bolsheviks.
As part of the steering committee of the newly founded socialist Russia, Lenin was a central figure and the greatest revolutionary thinker. He never exercised power directly but he held important positions until his death in 1924, victim of a successive series of strokes.
Differences between Marxism, Leninism, Trotskyism and Stalinism

Marxism
To understand the difference between these terms, it is important to first understand what Marxism is, since the others constitute dependent variants of this main concept.
Marxism is a current of philosophical, political, economic and social thought created by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in the second half of the 19th century. This current proposed understanding the history of humanity from the class struggle for control of the means of production. According to Marxism, each historical era was based on a specific mode of production, in which one social class owned the means of production and exploited another social class. This was called “the exploitation of man by man.”
In the 19th century, the predominant mode of production was capitalism, through which the bourgeoisie exploited the proletariat to appropriate the surplus value, the surplus of the work done, without making any effort. This inherently unjust regime would lead, in Marx's opinion, to the revolution of the proletariat and the eventual construction of a classless society, which he baptized “communism” or “socialism.”
Despite being a philosophical work, Marx's writings inspired numerous revolutionary politicians, many of whom constructed their own versions, local adaptations or ways of implementation.
Leninism
The Marxist interpretation of Vladimir Lenin, also known as “Marxism-Leninism”, was valid during the participation of this Russian politician in the destiny of the young Soviet Russia.
The main characteristic that differentiates Leninism from the rest of the Marxist interpretations is its emphasis on the role of the vanguard revolutionary party. Lenin argued that the working class alone would not achieve the necessary revolutionary consciousness, but needed the leadership of a party made up of professional revolutionaries.
Trotskyism
Trotskyism was a current developed by Leon Trotsky (1879-1940), Russian politician and revolutionary, organizer of the October Revolution of 1917. He represented the left-wing opposition to Stalinism in the Soviet Union and proposed the idea of the “permanent revolution.” , that is, that the success of the communist revolution was based on delegating power solely to the proletariat and assuming an international character that guaranteed its permanence.
Among its central measures were the opposition to bureaucratism and the strengthening of democratic centralism, measures totally opposite to those of Stalinism and which earned Trotsky persecution, exile and death.
Stalinism
Stalinism was the movement developed by Joseph Stalin (1878-1953), who was the de facto dictator of the Soviet Union from the 1930s until his death. He maintained that Stalin was Lenin's legitimate successor in charge of the party and that all his opponents sought to distort the revolutionary process.
Thus, Stalinism encouraged political dogmatism and the cult of personality, exercised fierce control over the communist bureaucracy and further entrenched the autocratic and authoritarian features of the system. In addition, Stalin implemented forced socialization and collectivization, accelerated industrialization and five-year plans (an idea initially proposed by Trotsky) as a method to move towards the implementation of communism. He also developed fierce patriotic and ideological propaganda.
All this took place alongside a system of spying on citizens that today is comparable to German and Italian fascism, and which gave the term Stalinism a pejorative connotation.
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References
- Ackermann, M. (2008). Lenin, Vladimir. Encyclopedia of World History, vol. V: Crisis and Achievement. 1900 to 1950. Facts on File.
- Ackermann, M. (2008). Marxism, Karl Marx (1818–1883), and Friedrich Engels (1820–1895). Encyclopedia of World History, vol. IV: Age of Revolution and Empire. 1750 to 1900. Facts on File.
- Van Dijk, R. et al. (Eds.). (2008). Marxism-Leninism. Encyclopedia of the Cold War. Routledge.