Unfinished Leninism: The Rise and Return of a Revolutionary Doctrine

by Paul Le Blanc

"One doesn’t have to be a Leninist to read and appreciate Paul Le Blanc’s brilliant essays. This is indeed an outstanding study of Lenin’s ideas, his relation to Leon Trotsky and Rosa Luxemburg, as well as his unfinished democratic revolutionary legacy."—Michael Löwy

As a leader of the Russian Revolution, Vladimir Lenin was perhaps the greatest revolutionary of the twentieth century. These clearly written essays offer an account of his life and times, a lively view of his personality, and a stimulating engagement with his ideas.

Paul Le Blanc is a professor of history at La Roche College and has written widely on radical movements.

Genres: History, Politics, Theory

256 pages, Paperback

First published March 19, 2014

About the author

Paul Le Blanc is an American historian at La Roche University in Pittsburgh as well as labor and socialist activist who has written or edited more than 30 books on topics such as Leon Trotsky and Rosa Luxemburg.

Reviews

[Julesreads · Rating 5 out of 5]

Le Blanc’s essays do one thing that is essential not just to understanding (or re-understanding) Lenin, but to understanding the key behind socialism — they are dialectical. They look closely at Leninist historians, Lenin’s personhood, his relationships and accounts of his personality, but they do so to show those who had good insight, and those who didn’t, and that those people could have both good and bad insight into one of the most important revolutionary figures in history. Lenin, written off, misunderstood, and overstated in those sectarian views of history, was thoughtful, strong-headed, exacting, but never a monster. He lived through a monstrous period in history (if briefly triumphant). Though Stalin made a monstrosity of the Bolshevik party and of Leninism, Lenin himself is a figure that deserves to be studied as closely as possible and to glean from him, his writings, and his experience as much as possible on the new road to any socialist future. As Lenin said, and Le Blanc emphasizes, Lenin loved Marxism like no other. Don’t let the bourgeois history books paint Lenin a monster, burn his memory to ashes, and sweep him righteously into the dustbin. Give the guy a chance!

[Bill Crane · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great collection of essays addressing Lenin's personality and political method, aspects of the application of Leninism in different countries including Britain and the US, and sustained engagements with scholars like Lars Lih and Charlie Post, hacks like Alex Callinicos, as well as morons like Louis Proyect and Pham Binh. Highly recommended.

[Shireen Rummana · Rating 4 out of 5]

This books is a collection of essays, all by Le Blanc, in large part dissecting how Lenin has been depicted and challenging these depictions of him. One chapter reevaluates Lenin's relationship with Rosa Luxemburg, which has commonly been portrayed as clashing on multiple fronts ideologically, on nationalism and imperialism etc., and shows that they were much closer and their ideas complemented and brought out different elements of the other's. The other chapters discuss Lenin's continued relevance to the Left, and where Leninist/Trotskyist organizations have gone wrong in recent decades, viewing themselves as "the" vanguard party and thus closing in on themselves when in reality the political situation is not even ripe for a vanguard or a Party, and the vanguard can be conceptualized completely differently -- LeBlanc sees the vanguard as seasoned activists who are politically conscious and from a variety of left-wing organizations (or not at all) and can push forward revolutionary situations when they arise, but do not have to all be in the same revolutionary organization, certainly not in the current moment when we have been pushed back to very low working-class consciousness and simply need to build whatever left-wing activity and consciousness that we are able to in the current phase.... A helpful and sobering book. In its critique of today's organizations it comments on the SWP crisis and somehow seems to predict the ISO crisis and demise. The author also discusses Lenin's democratic centralism -- which actually originated in the Mensheviks before being adopted by the Bolsheviks -- as full freedom of discussion and debate, and unity in action. He suggests how this went wrong immediately after 1917 but does not fully explore it. At any rate, I still consider myself a Leninist due to Lenin's contributions in terms of how to organize and win a revolution. But the challenge today seems to be how to create healthy, sustainable left-wing and revolutionary organizations that can lay the groundwork for a better position for the Left in the near future....

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a collection of essays on 'Leninism' post the collapse of Soviet Communism.

The task set for these essays is show that, contrary to public belief, there is a future for revolutionary socialism if Communists are prepared to think again about the meaning of democracy and reject the deification of Lenin practised by the Stalinist regimes of Eastern Europe as the thing is learn from Lenin's practice and his mistakes not to set his ways in concrete.

I hope that is a fair summary of the book.

I enjoyed it immensely and would recommend it to everyone who is interested in Marxism in the post Soviet era.

[Isaac · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very inspiring. Would recommend to socialists of all kinds.

[Alexander · Rating 2 out of 5]

Kept waiting for the author to argue why Lenin's ideas should be emulated, rather than modified or discarded, but if the author did I must have missed it. Some interesting tidbits on historiography and the UK SWP's scandalous handling of an accusation of rape , but I can't say that I enjoyed the book.

[Sameh Refaie · Rating 4 out of 5]

are there an arabic translation for this book

[Nigel Pearce · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is well worth the read, but I disagree with some of his analysis.

[Jason Schulman · Rating 4 out of 5]

See my review here: http://newpol.org/content/what-thing-...