Editing Leninism (section)

== Historical background ==
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In the 19th century, [[Karl Marx]] and [[Friedrich Engels]] wrote the ''[[Manifesto of the Communist Party]]'' (1848), in which they called for the political unification of the European [[working class]]es in order to achieve [[communist revolution]]; and proposed that because the socio-economic organisation of [[communism]] was of a higher form than that of [[capitalism]], a workers' revolution first would occur in the industrialised countries. In Germany, Marxist [[social democracy]] was the political perspective of the [[Social Democratic Party of Germany]], inspiring Russian Marxists, such as Lenin.<ref name=lih1>{{cite book |last=Lih |first=Lars |title=Lenin Rediscovered: What is to be Done? in Context |year=2005 |publisher=[[Brill Publishers|Brill Academic Publishers]] |isbn=978-90-04-13120-0}}</ref>

In the early 20th century, the socio-economic backwardness of [[Russian Empire|Imperial Russia]] (1721–1917) — characterized by [[Uneven and combined development|combined and uneven economic development]] — facilitated rapid and intensive industrialisation, which produced a united, working-class [[proletariat]] in a predominantly agrarian society. Moreover, because industrialisation was financed chiefly with foreign capital, Imperial Russia did not possess a revolutionary [[bourgeoisie]] with political and economic influence upon the workers and the peasants, as had been the case in the [[French Revolution]] (1789–1799) in the 18th century. Although Russia's [[political economy]] was agrarian and [[Feudalism|semi-feudal]], the task of democratic revolution fell to the urban, industrial working class as the only [[social class]] capable of effecting [[land reform]] and democratisation, in view that the Russian [[bourgeoisie]] would suppress any revolution.

In the ''[[April Theses]]'' (1917), the political strategy of the [[October Revolution]] (7–8 November 1917), Lenin proposed that the Russian revolution was not an isolated national event but a fundamentally international event—the first socialist revolution in the world. Lenin's practical application of [[Marxism]] and [[proletarian revolution]] to the social, political, and economic conditions of agrarian Russia motivated and impelled the "revolutionary nationalism of the poor" to depose the [[absolute monarchy]] of the three-hundred-year dynasty of the [[House of Romanov]] (1613–1917), as [[Tsarism|tsars]] of Russia.<ref>{{cite book |title=The Faces of Janus: Marxism and Fascism in the Twentieth Century |title-link=The Faces of Janus |first=A. James |last=Gregor |author-link=A. James Gregor |date=2000 |pages=133 |location=New Haven, Connecticut |publisher=[[Yale University Press]] |isbn=0-300-07827-7}}</ref>

=== Imperialism ===
In ''[[Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism]]'' (1916), Lenin's economic analyses indicated that capitalism would transform into a [[global financial system]], by which industrialised countries exported [[financial capital]] to their [[Colonialism|colonies]] and so realise the [[exploitation of labour|exploitation of the labour]] of the natives and the exploitation of the natural resources of their countries. Such [[Superprofit|superexploitation]] allows wealthy countries to maintain a domestic [[labour aristocracy]] with a slightly higher standard of living than most workers, ensuring peaceful labour–capital relations in the capitalist homeland. Therefore, a [[proletarian revolution]] of workers and peasants could not occur in capitalist countries whilst the imperialist global-finance system remained in place. The first proletarian revolution would have to occur in an underdeveloped country, such as Imperial Russia, the politically weakest country in the capitalist global-finance system in the early 20th century.<ref name=tomasic>{{cite journal |last=Tomasic |first=D. |title=The Impact of Russian Culture on Soviet Communism |date=December 1953 |journal=The Western Political Quarterly |publisher=Western Political Science Association |volume=6 |number=4 |pages=808–809 |doi=10.2307/443211 |jstor=443211}}</ref> In the ''United States of Europe Slogan'' (1915), Lenin wrote:

{{blockquote|[[Workers of the world, unite!]]—Uneven economic and political development is an absolute law of capitalism. Hence the victory of socialism is possible, first in several, or even in one capitalist country taken separately. The victorious proletariat of that country, having expropriated the capitalists and organised its own socialist production, would stand up against the rest of the world, the capitalist world.|''Collected Works'', vol. 18, p. 232<ref>Lenin, V. I., ''United States of Europe Slogan'', ''Collected Works'', vol. 18, p. 232.</ref>|source=}}

[[File:Ленин В. И. Империализм, как высшая стадия капитализма (1917).jpg|thumb|First edition Russian cover of Lenin's 1917 book ''[[Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism|Imperialism, the Newest Stage of Capitalism]]'']]
In ''[["Left-Wing" Communism: An Infantile Disorder]]'' (1920), Lenin wrote:

{{blockquote|The more powerful enemy can be vanquished only by exerting the utmost effort, and by the most thorough, careful, attentive, skillful and obligatory use of any, even the smallest, rift between the enemies, any conflict of interests among the bourgeoisie of the various countries and among the various groups or types of bourgeoisie within the various countries, and also by taking advantage of any, even the smallest, opportunity of winning a mass ally, even though this ally is temporary, vacillating, unstable, unreliable and conditional. Those who do not understand this reveal a failure to understand even the smallest grain of Marxism, of modern [[scientific socialism]] in general. Those who have not proved in practice, over a fairly considerable period of time and in fairly varied political situations, their ability to apply this truth in practice have not yet learned to help the revolutionary class in its struggle to emancipate all toiling humanity from the exploiters. And this applies equally to the period before and after the proletariat has won political power.|''Collected Works'', vol. 31, p. 23<ref>{{cite book |title=Left-Wing Communism: an Infantile Disorder |chapter=No Compromises? |first=Vladimir |last=Lenin |author-link=Vladimir Lenin |publisher=[[Progress Publishers]] |year=1920 |place=[[Soviet Union]] |url=http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/lwc/index.htm |chapter-url=http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/lwc/ch08.htm |access-date=5 January 2013 |archive-date=29 February 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200229182927/https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/lwc/index.htm |url-status=live |via=[[Marxists Internet Archive]]}}</ref>|source=}}