From January 2004 issue of Socialist Standard

When Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov was sixteen his brother was hanged for complicity in plot to assassinate the Tsar. Later, he himself got involved in anti-Tsarist revolutionary activity, was arrested, spent three yrs prison in Siberia.
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In 1900 exiled, later settled in Switzerland, adopt name “Lenin”. He founded & was d leader of d Bolshevik wing of Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) in 1903. After revolution of Feb. 1917 Lenin returned to Russia. In Oct led the Bolsheviks to power in a coup.
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Died in Jan 1924, most of d main feudal obstacles to capitalist development were removed, & all political opposition too.
Socialist analysis of Lenin & his legacy is different fm Cold War propaganda which can still be found in books such as Orlando Figes' A People's Tragedy:
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The Russian Rev 1891-1924, published in 1996, which depicts Lenin & Bolsheviks as forerunners of Hitler & Nazis. The socialist argument against Lenin is based on the evidence that he distorted what Marx claimed, thereby damaged socialist theory, pursued political action, that
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was against interests of d working class, dragged name of socialism through d mud.
Starting with What Is To Be Done? 1902 Lenin said: “the history of all countries shows that the working class, exclusively by its own efforts, is able to develop only trade union consciousness”
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Lenin argued socialist consciousness had to be brought to WC by prof'snal revolutionaries rather dan parliamentary party, drawn mainly from d petty-bourgeoisie, & organised as a vanguard party. But in 1879 Marx and Engels issued a circular in which they declared the opposite:~
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“When d International was formed we expressly formulated battle cry: The emancipation of d working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves. We cannot, therefore, cooperate with people who openly state that workers are too uneducated to emancipate themselves
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and must be freed from above by philanthropic big bourgeois and petty bourgeois”

It must be noted however that Lenin's elitism was consistent with the outlook of the 2nd International. As Hal Draper has written: “The fact is that Lenin had just read this theory ~
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~in the most prestigious theoretical organ of Marxism of the whole international socialist movement, the Neue Zeit. It had been put forward in an important article by the leading Marxist authority of the International, Karl Kautsky.” (The Myth of Lenin's Concept of The Party).
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Difference between Kautsky & Lenin here was over who was to lead workers beyond “TU-consciousness”, though historically Lenin's interpretation that this should be a vanguard party of professional revolutionaries has been more influential.
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By contrast, when Socialist Party of Great Britain was formed in 1904 it repudiated leadership as a political principle, insisted that the emancipation of d working class really had to be d work of the working class itself.

False Distinction
Lenin not first to say socialism~
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~as transition society,but he was d most influential. His Political Thought (1981), Neil Harding claims, in 1917 Lenin made “no clear delineation” between socialism & communism. But in fact Lenin did write in State & Revolution (1917) of “scientific distinction” between S&C:
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“What is usually called socialism was termed by Marx the 'first', or lower, phase of communist society. Insofar as the means of production become common property, the word 'communism' is also applicable here, providing we do not forget that this is not complete communism”
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First sentence of this quote is simply untrue and Lenin must have known this. Marx & Engels used the terms socialism and communism interchangeably to refer to the post-revolutionary society of common ownership of the means of production. It is true that in his~
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~Critique of d Gotha Programme (1875) Marx wrote of transition between lower phase of communism & higher phase. Marx held that, because of the low level of economic development (1875), individual consumption would have to be rationed, possibly by the use of lab-time vouchers~
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(similar to those advocated by Robert Owen). But in higher phase, when the forces of production develops sufficiently, consumption would be according to need. It's important to realise, however, that in both phases of S/C there would be no state or money economy.~
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Lenin, on other hand, said, socialism (1st ph. of com) is transitional between capitalism & full communism, in which there's both state & money. According to Lenin:
“It follows that under communism there remains for a time not only bourgeois right, but even d bourgeois state,
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w/o the bourgeoisie!… For state to wither away completely, complete communism is necessary.”

Lenin failed to see what this would involve. In effect, the theory of “socialism” as a transitional society was to become an apology for state capitalism.
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