100 years after Lenin

Die "kommunistische Welt" erlebte nach dem Ende des Zweiten Weltkriegs eine Periode der Ausdehnung unter Josef Stalin, der den Anspruch erhob, der einzige Erbe Lenins zu sein. Doch kurz nach Stalins Tod stürzte das, was nach außen hin als sozialistischer "Monolith" erschien, in eine tiefe Krise, in welcher alte marxistische Debatten wiederbelebt wurden. Eine dieser Debatten ist die um den Vorwurf des "Revisionismus", repräsentiert durch die Figuren Chruschtschow und Mao, aber auch die europäischen und nordamerikanischen Anhänger Leo Trotzkis. Debatten um Revisionismus hatte es in der marxistischen Linken an historischen Wendepunkten seit dem Auftauchen sozialistischer Massenparteien gegeben, als Debatten darüber, welche Politik dem Erbe des Marxismus gerecht wird - nun wurden sie erneut um das Erbe Lenins und der Revolution von 1917 geführt. Was bedeutete der Kampf um das Erbe Lenins damals und zur Zeit der Neuen Linken? Was ist Revisionismus, was Anti-Revisionismus? Kann die Kritik am Revisionismus für die Linke heute noch etwas bedeuten?

Lenin could look back on half a century of experience of Marxist mass parties, first and foremost the SPD. The Marxist mass party was thus a condition for the possibility of his revolutionary politics. Numerous projects from the Millennial Left have set themselves the goal of rebuilding something similar in order to make revolutionary politics possible again. This task raises questions that go all the way back to Marx’s dispute with the anarchists in the First International: What would it mean for the Left to take "political action" today? What is the point of a political party for the Left? Where do we stand with respect to the task of building this political party today? What is the meaning of the political party for Marxism? Can Marxism help clarify this task?

"The actuality of the revolution: this is the core of Lenin's thought and his decisive link with Marx. For historical materialism as the conceptual expression of the proletariat's struggle for liberation could only be conceived and formulated theoretically when revolution was already on the historical agenda as a practical reality; when, in the misery of the proletariat, in Marx's words, was to be seen not only the misery itself but also the revolutionary element 'which will bring down the old order'."
— Georg Lukács

Commemorating the 100th anniversary of Lenin's death this month, the Left refers to the most controversial figure in the history of Marxism, and perhaps one of the most controversial figures in all of history. What is the legacy of Lenin's politics today? Should we even remember him? How has the Left in different moments of the past 100 years attempted to take up Lenin's politics? What do these attempts and their outcomes express about our present moment?