Marxism–Leninism

Joseph Stalin's 'Foundations of Leninism' was originally a series a lectures delivered in 1924. This text would begin the creation of a new official Marxism and establish an ideological line between Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin.

Marxism-Leninism was the official ideology of the Soviet Union. It developed after Lenin's death when competing factions within the Soviet leadership attempted to establish their legitimacy as Lenin's political successors. Soviet leaders such as Leon Trotsky, Grigory Zinoviev, and Joseph Stalin wrote works developing the concept of a specifically Leninist ideology. Stalin coined the term to describe an ideology which considers Lenin's political thought to be a necessary development of Marxism, and made the term popular through his 1938 work The History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks).

Background

See also: Leninism

Marxist-Leninist Ideology

Democratic centralism

Main article: Democratic centralism

A Marxist-Leninist party is organized according to democratic centralism. This means that first the party democratically decides something, and then all members are required to follow that decision and not work against it. If members still disagree with the decision, they are expected to request to discuss the issue again, not to form a faction or another party.

Other forms

Mao Zedong Thought

Main article: Mao Zedong Thought

Marxism-Leninism-Stalinism

Main article: Marxism-Leninism-Stalinism

Marxism-Leninism-Stalinism is often called "Hoxhaism", but this label is incorrect. Hoxhaists are Leninist-Stalinists.

Ho Chi Minh Thought

Main article:Ho Chi Minh Thought

Criticisms

Main article: Criticisms of Marxism-Leninism

Marxist critics argue that Marxism-Leninism works from the assumption that the Soviet Union was a socialist society and use this as reference point to navigate both political theory and practice. The consequence of this being that Marxism-Leninism is reconciled with bourgeois concepts such as the nation-state and nationalism. The most common criticism of Marxism-Leninism from Trotskyists is that rather than seeking to spread the socialist revolution throughout the world through direct revolutionary action, hence pursuing "Proletarian Internationalism," Stalin instead only assisted existing socialist revolutions, believing that the Soviet Union was the only country in the world capable of achieving socialism due to the success of its own revolution, and actually enacted a foreign policy of "peaceful coexistence" with the Western capitalist powers. Stalin named this theory "socialism in one country".

References

http://en.internationalism.org/ir/96/leninists
https://isreview.org/issue/93/zinovievism-and-degeneration-world-communism
https://archive.org/details/25ZinovievLeninizm
https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/ni/vol10/no03/trotsky.htm
https://libcom.org/library/revolutionary-alternative-left-wing-politics
The History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks) (1938)