How did Lenin and Trotsky stray from the ideals of Marxism?

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1. Spellbound says

   Lenin made two important revisions of Marxist doctrine:
   1) Marx claimed that history was marked by changed in the economic relationships of the classes, i.e. history marched on an “inevitable” path from hunter-gatherer to slavery, to feudalism to capitalism to imperialism to socialism and finally to communism. He stated that each of these stages morphed into the next stage when they were fully mature and through a process he called class struggle. Lenin believed that, although Russia had only just shaken off feudalism, and was barely capitalist (although it was imperialist) this stage could be “telescoped” – shortened – allowing for a socialist revolution.
   2) His other major revision was that Marx claimed that the peasantry was always conservative and would support the existing regime; the workers would be the motor of the socialist revolution. Lenin realised that because in Russia the working class was so small then the peasants also had to be part of the socialist revolution.
   See:
   http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/
   Lenin, A Biography – Robert Service
   Karl Marx – Francis Wheen
   The Communist Party of the Soviet Union – Leonard Shapiro

   Trotsky was a maverick, disagreeing with both Menshevik and Bolshevik factions and only joining Lenin and the Bolsheviks in October 1917. His major revision of Marxist thought was the idea of Permanent Revolution. This has two main features: i) that the revolution MUST be exported, especially to the most industrialised countries. ii) that the administrators of the new regime are periodically, and systematically replaced. This is to prevent a political elite forming and subverting the revolution for their own good, rather then for the good of the working classes.
   Trotsky was also a “left communist” believing that the state must take ownership of all the means of production and that capitalist practises between enterprises must be abolished.
   See:
   http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/
   The Revolution Betrayed – L Trotsky
   Trotsky, A Biography – Robert Service

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2. Pieter Beernaert says

   Only one way to say it “power corrupts”. The way a Social system like that by Marx can work is if everybody has a say in how the money is spent. The Soviet Union was as corrupt as they get. The idea of marxism is to reduce the divide between rich and poor to nothing. Everybody gets the same, every family, every social class, even if you work for the government or in a factory.
   Lenin and Trotsky implemented a system that gave all the money to the rich, and kept the poor from rising up through fear of being sent to Siberia. Socialism can only work when everybody is equal and the people who have the power only use it for good. But in a world where everybody only wants more and more, this system can not work. That was/is the problem with all leaders, even before and after Lenin and Trotsky, they wanted more and only for themselves.

   Get used to it, in our world and with the so called “intelligence” of mankind today, Marxism or Scientific Socialism can never work.

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