Abstract

The Marxian theory of revolution is a statement about the relationship between historical understanding and political action by an historical agent. This dissertation will examine the principal ways in which Lenin appropriated this theory and extended it to his own theory and practice of revolution. ;Historical understanding in the Marxian world-view signified the following: the historical process is capable of being understood by the human subject; this understanding provides the point of entry for human intervention. Consequently, the proposition that revolutions are changes in the mode of production of given societies and that they represent a transfer of power from one class to another, is simply another way of saying that political change is indissolubly linked to socioeconomic change. This statement about the historical process and the possibilities of human intervention in the process was elaborated by Marx chiefly in his materialist interpretation of history, in his analyses of historical events and in his critique of one mode of production, modern capitalism. This classical legacy was taken over by Lenin in his own analyses of the development of capitalism in Russia and later in his studies of the connection between war and imperialism; in both cases, these analyses became the point of departure for a program of political action. This much is not particularly controversial or contentious. ;However, when we approach the question of the varieties of human intervention in the historical process, even if we do so from a specifically Marxian vantage point, it becomes problematic as to whether the final insurrectionary assault on the political institutions of Russian capitalism and the importance given to the vanguard Party represent Lenin's extensions of Marxian theory or a wholesale departure from it. ;This dissertation will argue for the former case and show that the transition from a theory of revolution to its practice engaged Lenin in some of his most interesting contributions to the Marxian foundation. The background to the emergence of these views and Lenin's confrontation of the issue of state and revolution will be examined in the latter half of the dissertation