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Out of context: Reply #68726
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Armand Sadowski, studied International Relations & Philosophy at Alexandru Ioan Cuza University (2017):
Although Marxism have some similarities with Leninism, they represent two completely different philosophical paradigms.
In short, Marxism considers that the loyalty based on class in the most important one. Starting from this idea, Marx stated that the common values of the proletariat (basically meaning industrial workers from the end of the nineteenth century) are far stronger than other values like religion, nationality or ethnicity. Here I will only try to focus on the differences between the two doctrines, explaining only the basic ideas. For a complete explanation of what classical Marxism was, one of the greatest article that I read on the subject is this: Roots of Communism (Communism as theory).
In his youth, Lenin was a convinced Marxist. He became a radical Marxist in 1887, when his older brother, Ulyanov, was executed for a failed assassination attempt on the life of the Tsar Alexander the third. Things changed dramatically after World War One. According to the Marxist theory, this war should have never existed because the conflict served only the interests of the exploiting class of capitalist owners. The common identity of proletarians should have stopped German workers to fight the French ones. However, nationalism proved to be a stronger catalyzer, as countless workers from all the European countries happily volunteered in the war. This had a profound impact over Lenin. Again, for a wider perspective over Leninism you should look at this chapter: Lenin (Father of USSR).
In response to the failure of the Marxist theory to explain World War One, Lenin invented the imperialistic theory. German workers were able to fight French workers because they betrayed the ideal of the Communist revolution. They did it because they become corrupted by the capitalist owners. The rich people from the great European powers were able to pay their workers better, to offer them pensions, medical treatment or basic education because the major European states exploited the poor countries (remember that the European states held great colonial empires all over the world). In this process, the workers from rich countries were no longer exploited but became accomplices of the “evil capitalists”. They become themselves the exploiters.
Marxism claimed that the Communist revolution would appear in rich countries, because there the gap between rich and poor is the greatest. From Marx’s perspective, this was a scientific causality. Leninism observed that Marx was wrong and outdated (The Communist Manifesto was written in 1848, Leninism appeared after 1917). The revolution will come in poor countries like Russia because the fight is no longer between the great proletariat and the exploiting capitalist class, but between rich countries (that want to take advantage of week countries) and poor countries (that fight for their freedom). In order to gain the Revolutionary conscience and not be corrupted, the proletariat need to be led by a strong Communist party that will guide them until the people are ready. Only the party leader know when that objective is obtained, a belief that encouraged dictatorship and totalitarianism.
Finally, another major difference is related to the relation of the two paradigms with violence. Classical Marxism is very ambiguous regarding the use of violence when the Communist Revolution will come. Marx was inspired by Darwin and believed that history evolves like biological species. As a consequence of that, he considered that his theory is scientific and amoral. The proletariat should make the revolution and create Communism not because they have the moral right to do so (actually, Marx praised Capitalism as a far better system than Feudalism, and Communism as a normal evolution from Capitalism), but because the objective laws of a scientific economic history dictates this outcome. From his perspective, capitalist owners are not necessary bad people, the system is broken. If a capitalist tried to provide better conditions for the workers, he would be eliminated by the competition. However, he considered that the Communist system is far more efficient than the Capitalist one because it was the result of evolution. The consequence of the clash is inevitable because history is not decided by individuals or states, but by scientific objective laws (in that sense, Marx was a predecessor of today’s scientism, a current of thinkers that believes blindly in the infinite power of science to explain and understand everything). Because these objective laws are not bad or good, we cannot say for sure if the proletariat should use violence or not in the revolution. They might have to do it if they are put in that position. After Marx’s death, that ambiguity determined many socialist thinkers to argue about the use of violence. If you are into philosophy, I recommend you the book “The open society and its enemies volume 2. Hegel and Marx” by the great German thinker Karl Popper. There you can find a detailed and profound analysis of Marxism.
In contrast with Marxism, Lenin believed that there was no objective laws of history. The Communist Revolution might never happen. The only way to obtain the ideals of the revolution is to actively fight for it by using any means. He explicitly encouraged mass violence. Lenin is famous for saying that the wars between armies and soldiers are just sports. The Soviet leader encouraged total war by implicating the whole population and using methods of extermination: “We would be deceiving both ourselves and the people if we concealed from the masses the necessity of a desperate, bloody war of extermination, as the immediate task of the coming revolutionary action.”