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Lenin and the Revolutionary Party
This study of Lenin's conception of the revolutionary party, and its place in Marxist thought, gives a vibrant sense of the historical context―both Russian and international―in which Lenin's views were shaped and upon which they had such a profound impact. This book will appeal to all readers interested in radical history and political activists of all varieties, as well as political scientists, philosophers, sociologists, and historians.
440 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1990
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About the author
Paul Le Blanc
57 books21 followersPaul Le Blanc is an American historian at La Roche University in Pittsburgh as well as labor and socialist activist who has written or edited more than 30 books on topics such as Leon Trotsky and Rosa Luxemburg.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
September 14, 2017
Main takeaways from Paul LeBlanc's "Lenin and the Revolutionary Party":
-the first to thing to understand approaching Lenin is that both the ruling classes in the US /and/ the bureaucracy in the USSR had a shared interest in distorting his meaning, to present him as the author of a theory of a monolithic, rigidly centralized party and state structure. This is a drastic distortion of how the Party actually functioned from 1903 to 1921 (when factions were banned)
-the ‘vanguard party’ is not counterposed to the ‘mass party’. To be a real vanguard, a revolutionary party must be fundamentally rooted in the masses. Lenin’s positions in the 1903 split with the Mensheviks, widely interpreted as a calling for a ‘tight-knit elite of professional revolutionaries’, as opposed to the ‘mass workers’ party’ advocated by Martov et. al., reflected an adaptation to the /particular/ situation of illegal work under the Russian autocracy, not a general advocacy of a fundamentally novel principle. Lenin considered the SPD a revolutionary vanguard party (pre-1914, before its capitulation to reformism became widely apparent) and thought its model suitable for ‘bourgeois-democratic’ countries.
-there are splits and there are splits. Lenin did /not/ believe that revolutionaries and reformists (or ‘centrists’, like the old Mensheviks) could coexist in the same party, and in this sense his model fundamentally differed from that of the German SDP (as retrospectively understood). But the give-and-take of different tendencies /among/ the revolutionary Marxists was an essential condition of growth among rapidly changing conditions. For example, Bogdanov's left-voluntarism was vital in the revolution 1905, but became an obstacle in the counterrevolution of 1907-12. The adaptation required political clarification through polemic and struggle. Nor were such splits permanent (eg Lunacharsky, who supported Bogdanov's philosophy and politics became Peoples Commissar of Education)
-Lenin’s party was called the Social-Democrats for 14 years for a reason. The Bolsheviks’ entire Marxist framework from 1903 to 1917 was within the mainstream Marxist framework of stagism: bourgeois-democratic, then proletarian revolution. However, the Bolsheviks diverged from the Mensheviks because they wanted a bourgeois-democratic revolution ‘without the bourgeoisie’, i.e. with only workers’ and peasants’ parties in the government. This was the idea of working-class political independence and /hegemony/ even in the ‘bourgeois-democratic’ revolution. This was their main /political/ difference from the Mensheviks , which helped them transition to the framework of a proletarian revolution after February 1917 and especially Lenin’s April Theses.
But the final takeaway for me is somewhat depressing: despite everything, these utterly brilliant men and women—these giants—failed in their final task to achieve a communist society. How can we hope to do better? The treatment in the book of the degeneration of Leninism into Stalinism, while extremely insightful, is too short to be definitive. Nevertheless, this is one of the best books to really break it down in terms of the differences between Leninism/Bolshevism and Stalinism and convey what is really /essential/ in Lenin’s political theory and practice. 5/5
-the first to thing to understand approaching Lenin is that both the ruling classes in the US /and/ the bureaucracy in the USSR had a shared interest in distorting his meaning, to present him as the author of a theory of a monolithic, rigidly centralized party and state structure. This is a drastic distortion of how the Party actually functioned from 1903 to 1921 (when factions were banned)
-the ‘vanguard party’ is not counterposed to the ‘mass party’. To be a real vanguard, a revolutionary party must be fundamentally rooted in the masses. Lenin’s positions in the 1903 split with the Mensheviks, widely interpreted as a calling for a ‘tight-knit elite of professional revolutionaries’, as opposed to the ‘mass workers’ party’ advocated by Martov et. al., reflected an adaptation to the /particular/ situation of illegal work under the Russian autocracy, not a general advocacy of a fundamentally novel principle. Lenin considered the SPD a revolutionary vanguard party (pre-1914, before its capitulation to reformism became widely apparent) and thought its model suitable for ‘bourgeois-democratic’ countries.
-there are splits and there are splits. Lenin did /not/ believe that revolutionaries and reformists (or ‘centrists’, like the old Mensheviks) could coexist in the same party, and in this sense his model fundamentally differed from that of the German SDP (as retrospectively understood). But the give-and-take of different tendencies /among/ the revolutionary Marxists was an essential condition of growth among rapidly changing conditions. For example, Bogdanov's left-voluntarism was vital in the revolution 1905, but became an obstacle in the counterrevolution of 1907-12. The adaptation required political clarification through polemic and struggle. Nor were such splits permanent (eg Lunacharsky, who supported Bogdanov's philosophy and politics became Peoples Commissar of Education)
-Lenin’s party was called the Social-Democrats for 14 years for a reason. The Bolsheviks’ entire Marxist framework from 1903 to 1917 was within the mainstream Marxist framework of stagism: bourgeois-democratic, then proletarian revolution. However, the Bolsheviks diverged from the Mensheviks because they wanted a bourgeois-democratic revolution ‘without the bourgeoisie’, i.e. with only workers’ and peasants’ parties in the government. This was the idea of working-class political independence and /hegemony/ even in the ‘bourgeois-democratic’ revolution. This was their main /political/ difference from the Mensheviks , which helped them transition to the framework of a proletarian revolution after February 1917 and especially Lenin’s April Theses.
But the final takeaway for me is somewhat depressing: despite everything, these utterly brilliant men and women—these giants—failed in their final task to achieve a communist society. How can we hope to do better? The treatment in the book of the degeneration of Leninism into Stalinism, while extremely insightful, is too short to be definitive. Nevertheless, this is one of the best books to really break it down in terms of the differences between Leninism/Bolshevism and Stalinism and convey what is really /essential/ in Lenin’s political theory and practice. 5/5
October 6, 2008
Paul Le Blanc's fine study flies in the face of those who have continued to present Leninism as an 'elitist,' 'authoritarian' sect of revolutionary intellectuals who sought to gain control over a peasant population by any means avaiable. Le Blanc presents a highly detailed, nuanced account of the Bolshevik's rise to power in 1917- and a remarkably complex picture of Lenin and Trotsky emerges, namely as links in the chain of a truly democratic and organized revolution. Lenin's dialectic approach to social transformation embodied a principled commitment to Marxism, while at the same time he allowed for flexibility in tactics. As a result of the Bolshevik's commitment to a revolutionary working class movement, paired with his political ability to measure the level of political development amidst a changing and tumultuous of landscape, the Bolsheviks were eventually successful in ceasing power over the bourgeois Menshiviks. Le Blanc also provides succinct explanations of the multiple left-wing criticisms of Leninism, and is able to demonstrate why they ultimately fail to accurately assess the inner dynamics and contradictions that constituted the Russian Revolution. This volume is one of the best accounts currently in print.
December 6, 2012
a tour de force on the reclamation of leninism project! in my mind this is the most thorough and concise book for its size on laying out what lenin did and didn't mean i regards to political organization. it is well researched and easy to read and grounded in not only what lenin said but, just as importantly, the concrete conditions within which he was acting. this is a must read for socialists who believe in the need and possibility of revolutionary change but perhaps are not clear of what the real legacy of lenin is. for sure go ahead and read tony cliff's Building the Party: Lenin 1893-1914, but to get a feel for the entire party building project, check this book out.
November 8, 2015
Even better the third time. There is no better work than this concise and illuminating book about Lenin's method of building a revolutionary party. Terrific.
May 10, 2021
lenin low key goated asf
April 6, 2022
Lucid and thought-provoking.
August 16, 2013
Paul Le Blanc's Lenin and the Revolutionary Party is an essential read for international socialists interested in creating a better world. Through exhaustive research and a close reading of Lenin and other leading Bolsheviks who helped create the world's first workers' state, Le Blanc presents a clearer picture of what Lenin's party and organizational thought actually looked like in contradistinction to the myths of anti-Leninists and Stalinists alike.
July 4, 2025
A core claim of this book, that what distinguished Lenin was an organisational form or something called 'democratic centralism', has been proven incorrect. This work expresses the limitations of an orthodox Trotskyist reading of Lenin.
June 20, 2024
A few caveats:
- This is a book mostly for intermediary socialists in terms of theory.
- The author is a Trotskyite, but since this mainly is a book about Leninism and the events prior to and including the October Revolution, deviations in that regard don't apply as much (as in naming "Stalinism" as something distinct from Leninism, which it is not, but primarily why I'm docking it a star for still doing so in the margins)
As I've been researching the Bolsheviks and the October Revolution, this was an illuminating book on the Leninism, in terms of how Lenin synthesized Marxist theory and developed it over the course of the decades before the October Revolution, the various debates within the early RSLDP and the Bolshevik/Menshevik split, and how the theory was consistent with the Marxist scientific method, using events like the 1905 revolution as data that shaped Lenin's ideas.
Most anti-communists in general will even declare how Lenin was an authoritarian dictator, even communists such as Rosa Luxembourg would criticize the Bolsheviks for setting up what she thought was an authoritarian state that was counter to Marxist principles. But Le Blanc shows through Lenin's writings and actions that this was not the characterization of what Lenin called Democratic Centralism, in which Lenin recognized that the average working class person would need significant education to be able to participate in Russian politics, and that there would be a period where a vanguard professional revolutionary group that would both organize the initial stages of the movement while also developing organs that would give different previously disenfranchised groups representation and while also developing their own political education.
Readers should probably familiarize themselves with the basic history of the events of Russia from 1890-1917 as well as Lenin's works such as "State and Revolution", "What is To Be Done" and other writings he made during this period as a primer to fully understand what Le Blanc refers to. Many of the problems of western leftism today mirror what Le Blanc points out was going on between Lenin and the Menshevik factions, on separating within Marxism messianic idealism from dialectical materialism.
- This is a book mostly for intermediary socialists in terms of theory.
- The author is a Trotskyite, but since this mainly is a book about Leninism and the events prior to and including the October Revolution, deviations in that regard don't apply as much (as in naming "Stalinism" as something distinct from Leninism, which it is not, but primarily why I'm docking it a star for still doing so in the margins)
As I've been researching the Bolsheviks and the October Revolution, this was an illuminating book on the Leninism, in terms of how Lenin synthesized Marxist theory and developed it over the course of the decades before the October Revolution, the various debates within the early RSLDP and the Bolshevik/Menshevik split, and how the theory was consistent with the Marxist scientific method, using events like the 1905 revolution as data that shaped Lenin's ideas.
Most anti-communists in general will even declare how Lenin was an authoritarian dictator, even communists such as Rosa Luxembourg would criticize the Bolsheviks for setting up what she thought was an authoritarian state that was counter to Marxist principles. But Le Blanc shows through Lenin's writings and actions that this was not the characterization of what Lenin called Democratic Centralism, in which Lenin recognized that the average working class person would need significant education to be able to participate in Russian politics, and that there would be a period where a vanguard professional revolutionary group that would both organize the initial stages of the movement while also developing organs that would give different previously disenfranchised groups representation and while also developing their own political education.
Readers should probably familiarize themselves with the basic history of the events of Russia from 1890-1917 as well as Lenin's works such as "State and Revolution", "What is To Be Done" and other writings he made during this period as a primer to fully understand what Le Blanc refers to. Many of the problems of western leftism today mirror what Le Blanc points out was going on between Lenin and the Menshevik factions, on separating within Marxism messianic idealism from dialectical materialism.
September 6, 2021
excellent book that goes clearly through Lenin's conception of the revolutionary party - highlighting his dynamism as a political thinker and also his clear political outlook rooted in revolutionary marxism, as well as an ability to assess the concrete tasks at hand at any particular moment. also just a nice read.
November 9, 2018
I had difficulties in comprehension throughout the first couple chapters, but overall Paul Le Blanc's Lenin and the Revolutionary Party is a necessary, fluid reading that helps you place Lenin's work in much needed social and historical context.
November 9, 2015
I really didn't understand to what extent it was so crucial to have the revolutionary party during those years until I read this book. It really does debunk all the myths about Lenin's authoritarianism and provides an in-depth study of what building a party like the bolsheviks' was like.
September 27, 2008
*The* book to read on Lenin's approach to revolutionary organization.
July 8, 2016
Good stuff.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews