Lenin, Bolshevism, and Social-Democratic Political Theory

Bibliographic Data

ID12673415
AuthorsJohn Eric Marot (Keimyung University, corresponding author), John Marot (Keimyung University)
Year2014
Volume22
Issue3-4
Pages129-171
Publication date2014-12-02
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueHistorical Materialism (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1465-4466 • E-ISSN: 1569-206X
PublisherBrill (PUBLISHER • NL)
DOI10.1163/1569206x-12341370
OpenAlexW2797487771
LanguageEN
References cited9

Lars Lih has contributed to our knowledge of Russian Social Democracy lately. However, serious methodological flaws bedevil this advance in knowledge. Lih’s overall approach displays a very static understanding of political ideas in relation to political movements. In the first section, ‘Lenin, the St Petersburg Bolshevik Leadership, and the 1905 Soviet’, I challenge Lih’s position that Lenin never changed his mind about bringing socialist consciousness into the working class ‘from without’. In the second section, ‘Lenin, “Old Bolshevism” and Permanent Revolution: The Soviets in 1917’, I challenge Lih’s revisionist view that Old Bolshevism’s pre-1917 goal of ‘democratic revolution to the end’ drove Lenin’s partisans to make a working-class, socialist revolution in 1917. On this singular account, Lenin’s April Theses , which called for the overthrow of the Provisional Government and the transfer of all power to the soviets, was merely a further expression of Old Bolshevik politics, not a break with it, as has almost universally been held

Democracy · Economic history · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Power (physics · Social democracy · Sociology · Working class · Critical Theory and Philosophy · History · Law · Political Economy and Marxism · Political theory and Gramsci

Tools

Open DOISci-Hub