Question by help: In what ways and why did Lenin alter Marxism?
I’m having trouble finding information on Lenin’s principles of Marxism. Got any ideas?
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Answer by Jacob1207
Yeah. Karl Marx expected communism to first happen in the industrialized states, like Germany, Great Britain, and the United States. These countries would have, according to Marx, sufficient surplus wealth to allow communism to occur and flourish.
Unfortunately for Lenin, Russia was not only not highly industrialized, but downright backward. He came up with the idea of a vanguard party [1] which would get the ball rolling, since the people were in no position to rise up on their own. He figured that the Bolsheviks would get communism started there for the people, and then later on the state apparatus would wither away, leaving the people in direct control. (Needless to say, this did not at all happen)
In short, Marx thought that the impetus for a communist revolution would come directly from the people, once they got fed up enough with their rich, capitalist masters. Lenin realized that couldn’t happen anytime soon in Russia so he improvised, kick starting the revolution with the Bolshevik party. This is a big over simplification, but should get you pointed in the right direction.
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