abolition ofcapitalismthroughrevolution, and those, for exampleGramsci
andEurocommunismin general, who favourgradualism.
Marxist-Leninism
Although it is traditional to describe the political system set up after the
Bolshevikcoup d’e ́tat of October 1917 in Russia as aMarxistsociety, it
should, more properly, be described as Marxist-Leninist. Marxist-Leninism
was the phrase coined byStalinto describe the conflation of basic Marxist
theory with the ideas ofLenin, the founder of the Soviet state, which guided
the revolution and became the justifying creed of the post-revolutionary state.
The need for additions to the Marxist canon primarily came from the fact that
Marx had little to say of a concrete nature about the post-revolutionary society,
or, indeed, about how the revolution itself should be organized and guided.
His thoughts stressed the very long term, and what he described was essentially
ananarchistsociety with little need for politics or the state, arrived at after the
inevitability of history had run its course. Lenin, in his long career as an exiled
revolutionary leader, had written at length on the conduct of the revolution
and on the immediate post-revolutionary society. His contribution to the
theories centred on the role of the communist party as thevanguard of the
proletariat, which would not only lead the revolution but also control society
during the intermediate phase while true socialism was being built. It was this
justification for the rule of the party that was particularly valuable to the
Bolsheviks, because it legitimated their rule. The concept of thedictatorship
of the proletariatultimately allowed Stalin and his successors a way of
refusing to grant either basic democratic rights, or even basic consumer
satisfaction, on the grounds that the mass could not be ready for freedom
until the Soviet state had fully rescued them from thefalse consciousness
they had been trained into by the previous regimes. AsMarxhimself had
viewed Russia as a very unlikely place in which to have a proletarian
revolution, because the industrial revolution there had hardly started, Lenin’s
additions were all the more necessary. The role of the party has been so central
to communist politics that it would be fair to say that most of the Western
communist parties have also been Marxist-Leninist rather than purely Marxist,
unless they have taken the route of Lenin’s rival, and becomeTrotskyist, or of
Stalin’s rival and becomeMaoist.
Mass Media
The media are the methods of mass communication and entertainment, which
have developed into vital political forces with the advent of virtual total adult
Marxist-Leninism