Did Lenin Refound Marxist Dialectics in 1914

Bibliographic Data

ID3971825
AuthorsNathan Coombs (0000-0002-7319-1181, University of Edinburgh, corresponding author)
Year2016
Volume21
Issue1
Pages1-18
Publication date2016-01-02
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe European Legacy (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1084-8770 • E-ISSN: 1470-1316
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/10848770.2015.1085676
OpenAlexW2132638910
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited6

During the twentieth century a number of competing accounts of Lenin’s theory and practice have sought to reclaim its true meaning from ossification under Stalinism. One account popular today is the Hegelian-Marxist interpretation of Lenin’s Philosophical Notebooks written in 1914 and 1915. According to thinkers such as Raya Dunayevskaya and Kevin Anderson, Lenin’s notebooks on Hegel’s Science of Logic represent a radical break from classical dialectical materialism. For these Hegelian-Marxists, Lenin’s acerbic remarks on Engels’s and Plekhanov’s dialectics reveal him as the forerunner of Georg Lukács and Herbert Marcuse and represent a thoroughgoing reconceptualization of the dialectics of revolution. In this article I submit these arguments to the test of a fine grained textual analysis. I conclude, opposite to the Hegelian-Marxist narrative, that Lenin neither intended to nor accomplished a refoundation of Marxist dialectics in 1914. The notion of quantity-quality leaps Lenin adds to his works from 1914 onwards show him less as an innovator in Marxist philosophy and more as a keeper of the flame of dialectical materialist orthodoxy

Dialectic · Dialectical materialism · Epistemology · Hegelianism · Marxist philosophy · Materialism · Critical Theory and Philosophy · Law · Philosophy · Political Economy and Marxism · Weber, Simmel, Sociological Theory

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