182 Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich
hood of all believers” and in a church congregation’s
right to elect their own minister. As a Jeffersonian
democrat, he believed the common people should run
the government. This ecclesiastical and political EGALI-
TARIANISM has permeated U.S. popular culture from
1800 to the present.
Further Reading
Butterfield, L. H. Elder John Leland, Jeffersonian Itinerant.1953.
Reprint, New York: Arno Press, 1980.
Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich (V. I.) (1870–1924)
Russian Marxist thinker, leader of the Bolshevik Com-
munist Party and the Soviet Union
V. I. Lenin brought the COMMUNISMof Karl MARXinto
the 20th century with his theories of CAPITALIST IM-
PERIALISM, “the role of a vanguard revolutionary Com-
munist Party,” and SOCIALIST governance through
“DEMOCRATICcentralism.” Thereafter, communist thought
becomes MARXISM-LENINISM.
By the turn of the century (1900), Marxism’s predic-
tion of working class revolution in the advanced capi-
talist countries (Germany, Britain, United States) had
not occurred. Lenin explained this by pointing to the
development of economic imperialism, growing out of
monopoly capitalism, especially finance capital or
banking. In his book, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of
Capitalism(1916), Lenin explained that the industrial
capitalist nations had “exported” their problems (over
production, CLASSconflict, poverty) to the Third World
colonies. These “neocolonies” in Africa, South Amer-
ica, China, and the Middle East provided cheap labor
and raw materials, markets for manufactured goods,
and places for economic experimentation. Thus, the
owner-worker class struggle, he continued, becomes
global. Competing capitalist-imperialist nations fight
wars (such as World War I) for control of these
colonies. The great profits accrued from this arrange-
ment allows capitalist corporations to “bribe” their
domestic (British, French, American) workers with
high wages and benefits and to keep them passive and
CONSERVATIVE. But as the neocolonies (China, Asia,
Latin America) have socialist wars of liberation, he
concluded, the crises of capitalism return to haunt the
imperialist host nations, causing lower wages in those
countries, leading to socialist revolution at home.
This Marxist-Leninist theory affected much of
20th-century international politics. African, South
American, and Asia countries fought wars of socialist
national liberation (e.g., Vietnam) and explained their
poverty (in the UN and elsewhere) by blaming the
“imperialist” Northern Hemisphere nations. Employ-
ing a “labor theory of value,” such Leninist rhetoric
continues in attacks on the United States, multina-
tional corporations, the World Bank, militarism,
racism, and so on. The American LEFTstill embraces
much of this perspective. By the turn of the 21st cen-
tury, however, with the fall of the SOVIET UNION’s com-
munist system, the failure of socialism in Cuba, Africa
and China, and the move toward democracy and mar-
ket capitalism in Latin America, the Marxist-Leninist
thesis had lost influence.
Internally, Lenin developed Marxist theory in the
Russian Revolution of 1917. His book The Development
of Capitalism in Russia(1899) analyzed economics in
his homeland. Although Russia was less developed in
capitalism than Western Europe, Lenin said it had
enough of a revolutionary proletariat (factory workers)
to lead a socialist revolution. They could inspire other
disaffected, impoverished classes (peasants, lower mid-
dle class) to overthrow the czarist system. What was
needed was a professional revolutionary party (or
cadre) to motivate this vanguard, revolutionary work-
ing class. Thus was born the highly disciplined, con-
spirational, and terrorist Leninist Communist Party. In
his book What Is To Be Done?(1902), Lenin formu-
lated the theoretical basis of this revolutionary organi-
zation, its strategy and tactics for taking power, and a
blueprint of the new socialist order. This work became
a handbook for communist revolutionaries around the
world. It covers how the “Reds” (Marxists) can infil-
trate the government and other established social
groups (the media, education, the military, even the
church) and gradually move them toward communist
ways of thinking. Such tactics (including violent ter-
rorism, assassination, and blackmail) were justified by
Lenin and other communists on the grounds that their
goal (socialism) was worth any means employed, even
murder, lying, and theft. Adherence to common moral
standards, for communist revolutionaries, would
maintain the oppressive, exploitative system of capital-
ist-imperialism. However, these methods aroused the
suspicion of CONSERVATIVESin Europe and America
(such as the JOHN BIRCH SOCIETYand the McCarthy
hearings) to any Leftist or LIBERALorganizations, caus-
ing persecution of many people whom were not actu-
ally communist.
Lenin’s BOLSHEVIKCommunist Party took over the
Russian government in October 1917. It quickly aban-