Lenin’s most important contribution to the development of Marxist politics was his theory and practice of building a mass revolutionary socialist party to successfully lead the working class in the struggle against capitalism. This talk will look at how Lenin developed his ideas from a combination of the practical experience of building the Bolshevik party in the conditions of Tsarist repression, theoretical study and polemical debates with other currents on the left.
An important turning point for Lenin’s outlook was the capitulation of the German Social Democratic Party, which he had previously looked to for inspiration, to pro-war chauvinism at the outbreak of World War I. This led to both important theoretical reflection on his part, a return to Marx and a call for a sharp break with all shades of reformism and equivocation in the socialist movement and the founding of a new revolutionary socialist international.