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Leninism
Political
doctrine based on Marxism as developed by Vladimir Ilich Lenin. It
emphasized the role of the revolutionary party guided by the
"correct" theory in the Communist seizure and consolidation of
power. Party members would be professional and class-conscious
revolutionaries organized on the basis of "democratic
centralism" whose tasks would be to bring revolutionary
consciousness, discipline, organization, and Marxist theory to the
working class, to provide "a concrete analysis of the concrete
situation". Without such a centralized party, the proletariat would
never go beyond the limitations of "economic struggles" such
as strikes for higher wages. After the seizure of power, the party would
establish the "dictatorship of the proletariat"—in practice,
the dictatorship of the party purporting to speak on behalf of that
class—and rule the country until the completion of the transition to
socialism.
After
the establishment of the Communist International (the Third
International), these organizational principles—the product of
specific Russian conditions which had forced revolutionaries into
clandestinity—were adopted by all Communist parties. The Leninist
canon was absorbed into Marxism as "Marxism-Leninism" and was
reinterpreted in various and contrasting ways by Lenin's followers,
including Antonio Gramsci, Joseph Stalin, Leon Trotsky, and Mao Zedong.
Since then, Leninism has been associated with orthodox, centralist forms
of Communism.
Leninism
also contributed a theory of imperialism, originally devised in 1916 and
seeking to explain the causes of World War I. This theory held that the
consequence of the long-term tendency for the rate of profit to fall led
capitalists to form cartels and develop "monopoly capitalism",
whose most prominent feature was the integration of financial and
industrial capital. Accordingly, this new imperialist stage of
capitalism saw the acquisition of colonies, the division of the world
among the main European powers, and the ensuing conflicts between them
which led to the war.
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