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Browse: Home / History and Politics

What were the differences between Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin?

Question by Pablo: What were the differences between Marx and Lenin?
Could somebody help me with a topic I am terrible at. I need to know the differences between the governments of Marx and Lenin.

Answers and Views:

Answer by picturebleedspaint
Marx was a socialist Jew from Germany, who emigrated to England due to his political views being somewhat unpopular in Germany at the time. Marxism is about socialism, and equalizing the great economic imbalances (redistributing wealth, and breaking the cycle of abuse of workers). He is a “socialist.” Socialists believe in doing this through the democratic process.

Lenin, adapted Marx’s ideas, except with one major difference: he was a communist. Communists believe in taking over a government forcefully, and implementing widespread socialist policies. Typically communist governments have been authoritarian (undemocratic). Lenin was the first leader of the USSR after the revolution in 1917.

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Comments ( 2 )

  1. Spellbound says

    Marx was an economist, political philosopher and writer, not a politician. Lenin was also a political philosopher, drawing on Marx as his inspiration, and, from 1917 onwards, also a politician.

    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:
    Lenin, A Biography – Robert Service
    Karl Marx – Francis Wheen
    The Communist Party of the Soviet Union – Leonard Shapiro

    Reply
  2. Paul says

    Harpo was a member of the Marx Brothers, and John was a member of the Beatles.

    Reply

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