Foundations of Leninism is a 1924 collection by Joseph Stalin of nine lectures he delivered at Sverdlov University that year. It was published by the Soviet newspaper, Pravda.
Stalin's nine lectures covered the historical roots of Leninism, methods, theory, the dictatorship of the proletariat, the peasant question, the national question, strategy and tactics, and style of work. He focused his first lecture on the issue of the historical roots of Leninism as a form of Marxism. According to Stalin, Leninism is a product of imperialism and a guiding ideology of the Bolsheviks. He lists three contradictions which imperialism brings to capitalism:
The contradiction between labor and capital
The contradiction between financial groups and imperialist nations
The contradiction between ruling nations and colonial nations and peoples
These factors, associated with imperialism, increase the contradictions already present in capitalist countries. The lecture builds on Lenin's writings about the nature of imperialism, particularly 1917's Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism. Stalin opens his second lecture, on methods, with a reference to the period of the Second International in which Karl Kautsky and other orthodox Marxists adopted "opportunistic", principles to preserve unity in the social-democratic parties. It was due to this opportunism that Kautsky and the parties did not endorse revolutionary socialist tactics and programs, instead favoring Eduard Bernstein's reformism. According to Stalin, the Second International became "antiquated," "chauvinistic," and "narrow-minded" at the onset of World War I by supporting the war and opposing violent proletarian revolution; Leninism, with its success in the October Revolution and the Russian Civil War, became Marxism's main legitimate tendency. He defines the methods of Leninism as:
Testing the theoretical dogmas of the Second International and the restoration of theory and practice
Testing the policy of the parties of the Second International
Reorganization of all party work along new, revolutionary lines, preparing the masses for revolutionary struggle
Self-criticism, with the party a means of regulating opinion and assessing strategy
The concept of self-criticism was developed and expanded as an essential component of party politics, with Stalin justifying the doctrine by citing Lenin's . Self-criticism, according to Stalin, should be considered an essential component of Leninist political ideology.
Reception
Bolshevik Leon Trotsky referred to the lectures in The Permanent Revolution as "ideological garbage", "an official manual of narrow-mindedness" and "an anthology of enumerated banalities", characterizing them as part of a propaganda campaign by Zinoviev, Bukharin, and Kamenev. Zinoviev published a similar criticism in . According to Trotskyist historian Isaac Deutscher, The Foundations of Leninism was withdrawn from circulation due to conflicts between the text and Stalin's recently-developed concept of socialism in one country. Stalin produced a follow-up text, The Problems of Leninism, which presents a corrected conception of Marxism-Leninism in which socialism can be produced by focusing on the industrial economy of a single state. Erik van Ree, a lecturer at the University of Amsterdam's Institute of Eastern European Studies, notes that The Foundations of Leninism contributed to Stalin's developing synthesis of Marxism with Russian nationalism in the form of social patriotism. In contrast to the Trotskyist movement, African American civil rights activist and Soviet politburo member Harry Haywood received the text extremely positively, particularly praising Stalin's theories on the nature of imperialism in relation to Jim Crow and slavery.
Plagiarism allegation
Historian Stephen Kotkin accuses Stalin of plagiarizing Foundations of Leninism from Soviet journalist Filipp Ksenofontov.
