Departure of Leninism from Marxism

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, described by Alfred G. Meyer (1965) as having created in the Bolshevik movement the model on which many other modern totalitarian parties have been built, was a follower of Karl Marx who nevertheless departed from Marx with respect to a number of important issues. Many analysts, including Robert Service (1995, 2000), George Brinkley (1998), Neil Harding (1996), and Meyer (1965), do not suggest in any way that Lenin moved dramatically away from the central theories identified by Marx with respect to such important issues as class consciousness, the alienating impact of capitalism, or the inevitability of socialism.

However, as Meyer (1965) points out, the political apparatus and governing structure created by Lenin in Russia after the Bolshevik revolution represented a break with classical Marxism. Specifically, as will be discussed herein, the Communist Party seems to negate the role attributed to the working class by Marx, that of the chosen people who would destroy the social structure of capitalism and construct a socialist commonwealth. Meyer (1965, p. 21) maintains that "the importance that Leninism attaches to party doctrine seems to be opposed to original Marxist conceptions of the negligible role of ideas in history." The Leninist emphasis on the party and its leaders, as well as its normative doctrine, is not in harmony with the Marxist view of history as a natural process in which e

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anism that would ensure the success of such a revolution in such a country. Indeed, Lenin virtually replaced the proletariat as the spontaneous historical agency of the revolution with the vanguard party of professional revolutionaries. Further, said Mills (1971), the Russian proletariat, though small, was insufficient to bring about a successful revolution. It would be the Bolsheviks who would achieve this and become the agency by which the revolution would be led if not made. Marx, aided by Trotsky, also contended that the Bolshevik Party, once it obtained power in Russia, needed to maintain its power as a revolutionary organization. It would be the only permissible political party because it alone had the capacity to be truly representative of the Russian workers and the peasants (Mills, 1971). This theory, once put into practice, allowed for no dissent or public disagreement among party members. Mills (1971, p. 139) says that "Bolshevik theorists confronted problems Marx never confronted; Bolshevik practitioners solved these problems in ways with which Marx might or might not have agreed." However, the Bolsheviks under Lenin used the categories of Marx as well as various elements of his general model of society. Len
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