Lenin: Contradiction and Revolutionary

Chapter I: Lenin the Revolutionary
In order to investigate Lenin the revolutionary, we must situate him above all in the proletariat's historical task: the conquest of political power and the achievement of the Revolutionary Dictatorship of the Proletariat. Lenin's role in revolutionary Marxism is inseparable from the theoretical development of proletarian strategy and the concrete exercise of class leadership. He did not only interpret Marx; he adapted Marxism to the concrete circumstances of imperialist Russia, a country still not fully capitalist, and in doing so demonstrated the dialectical necessity of a disciplined, centralized proletarian party.
The revolutionary significance of Lenin is most seen in his vanguard party theory. In What Is To Be Done? (1902), he formulated the thesis that spontaneous class awareness of the workers, while a indispensable basis of struggle, is inadequate for the seizure of power. The day-to-day experience of the workers, bound up with economic struggle under capitalist circumstances, does not generate revolutionary consciousness spontaneously. Here is Lenin's great insight: revolutionary consciousness of the proletariat must be imported from outside, by a tightly organized party of professional revolutionaries, who unify theory and practice to guide the masses to the overthrow of the bourgeois state.
The historic validity of this methodology is upheld in the 1917 Russian Revolution. The February revolution revealed the objective contradictions in the Russian state and the revolutionary potential of the proletariat and peasantry. It was the Bolshevik Party, however, under the leadership of Lenin, that transformed the spontaneous revolutionary momentum into effective political power, leading to the October insurrection and the establishment of the Soviet regime. Lenin's brilliance was to understand the dialectical interplay between spontaneity and organization: the proletariat must act by itself, yet it must be led by a conscious vanguard able to navigate the complexities of seizing power.
Lenin also built on Marxist theory regarding imperialism. In Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916), he theorized that capitalism in its monopoly form sets the stage for global proletarian struggle by concentrating wealth and exploiting the colonies. The global spread of imperialism both imposes crises on and presents opportunities to the proletariat; Lenin's analysis honed the revolutionary tools of the world working class by illustrating that the capitalist state, even in backward countries like Russia, could be overthrown if the vanguard seized the revolutionary moment. Here we have the fusion of theory and practice that renders Lenin a revolutionary: he is at once a Marxist theorist and a strategist of proletarian revolution.
Furthermore, Lenin's revolutionary accomplishments cannot be divorced from his theory of the state. In State and Revolution (1917), he emphasized the necessity of destroying the bourgeois state and replacing it with the Revolutionary Dictatorship of the Proletariat. He envisioned the danger of bureaucratization and the need for soviets—workers' councils—as proletarian organs of power. The soviets are not advisory councils, but organs of class rule, a living expression of proletarian dictatorship that has to maintain both centralization and democratic accountability. Lenin's insistence on this dual nature—centralized direction with mass participation—is central to his revolutionary legacy.
Yet Lenin's revolutionary method was never abstract. The praxis of the Revolution—the Revolution's application of the theory in the concrete struggles of the Russian workers and peasants—demonstrates that revolutionary theory is not an ideology but a guide to action. Lenin's writings in Kommunist (1918) incessantly emphasize the necessity of the defense of the Revolution against counter-revolutionary elements, foreign and internal. His calls for discipline, centralization, and ideological definition within the party and soviets were a direct response to the practical realities of civil war, class struggle, and imperialist intervention. The revolutionary Lenin is thus inseparable from the practical experience of 1917-1921: a leader who was aware that the proletariat must consciously exercise state power, guided by theory, in order to achieve its emancipation.

Chapter II: Lenin and Contradiction
While Lenin's revolutionary leadership is unquestionable, his role is also marked by contradictions inherent in the first experience of proletarian state power. Such contradictions express both the limitations of objective circumstances as well as the difficulties of transition from revolutionary seizure to socialist construction. Most prominent among such contradictions are the Brest-Litovsk Peace and the economic policies that abandoned strict War Communism, namely the inauguration of the New Economic Policy (NEP).
The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (March 1918) provides a classic illustration of Lenin's pragmatic response to contradiction. Confronted with the direct danger of German imperialism and a nascent proletarian state, Lenin prioritized the survival of the Revolutionary Dictatorship of the Proletariat over that of immediate revolutionary internationalism. In doing so, he exposed the contradiction between internationalist principle and material necessity: the proletariat could not risk its own annihilation in the interests of ideological consistency. In the opinion of the Bolshevik Left Communists, this was a tactical retreat, a betrayal not of proletarian revolution but of the potential for immediate revolutionary advance, but one which nevertheless reveals the structural contradictions of state power under the conditions of imperialist encirclement. The peace allowed the Soviet state to consolidate power, to form workers' councils, and to defend the revolution internally, but it also created opposition among revolutionary tendencies who perceived it as a capitulation to imperialism.
Similarly, Lenin's economic policies after the civil war highlight the contradictions between the need for proletarian control and the material realities of a war-shattered economy. War Communism, which was in force from 1918-1921, was a desperate attempt to socialize production and requisition surplus to feed the Revolution. But the collapse of agriculture, industrial production, and urban provisioning revealed the limits of coercive policies in the face of inadequate broader social support. Lenin's introduction of the NEP in 1921 was a strategic concession: the reintroduction, on a temporary basis, of market forces and petty private trade for the stabilization of the economy. For Bolshevik Left Communists, this is an obvious example of contradiction in practice: the proletarian state is compelled at certain moments to allow partial capitalist mechanisms to be present, not because capitalism is being accepted, but in order to preserve the Revolution.
Lenin's NEP also underscores the theoretical contradiction between workers' self-emancipation and state control. While the NEP continued the centralization of party leadership and state power, it allowed for a re-emergence of private trade and commodity production. This is a precarious balance from a revolutionary viewpoint: the proletariat must retain control of the commanding heights of the economy while enabling limited capitalist activity to prevent social collapse. Lenin was acutely aware of this tension; his own writings in 1921 stubbornly insist that NEP is a temporary measure, a tactical retreat designed to consolidate the Revolutionary Dictatorship of the Proletariat rather than undermine it.
Apart from NEP and Brest-Litovsk, Lenin's economic policies reveal another dimension of contradiction: uneven development of productive forces. Russia, a semi-capitalist and semi-feudal society, lacked the industrial foundation for immediate socialist construction. Lenin's pragmatic strategy—promoting electrification, planning, and workers' control where feasible—embodies an acute awareness of the dialectical interaction of revolutionary initiative and objective conditions. The contradiction is not abstract; it manifests itself in the tension between the revolutionary desire for instant equality and the material need to rebuild the economy under disadvantageous conditions.
Lastly, Lenin's contradictions do not lessen his revolutionary legacy; they illustrate the dialectical nuances of the first workers' state. The necessity of compromise, the dialectic between principle and material condition, and the cautious introduction of restricted capitalist mechanisms illustrate that revolutionary leadership is always positioned in a web of social, economic, and geopolitical constraints. Lenin's genius lies in the fact that he could navigate these contradictions without surrendering the essential principle of workers' dictatorship.

Conclusion
It is impossible to reduce Lenin's life and work to a simple narrative of success or failure. As a revolutionary, Lenin theoretically and practically developed Marxism, creating the conditions for the proletariat to seize and exercise state power in the Revolutionary Dictatorship of the Proletariat. His vanguard party theory, imperialism, and dualism of spontaneity and organization changed the direction of world revolution.
Yet Lenin was also a man of profound contradiction. The Peace of Brest-Litovsk and the NEP are the strategic retreats and structural contradictions that are the hallmarks of the first experience of proletarian power. Such contradictions are not deviations; they are the necessary expressions of the material and historical conditions in which the revolutionary proletariat is compelled to act. Lenin's ability to balance theory and praxis, principle and material necessity, is precisely what makes up his revolutionary contribution. In learning from both the revolutionary and contradictory elements in Lenin, we further grasp the ongoing struggle to consolidate the Revolutionary Dictatorship of the Proletariat—a struggle that continues to lead the Bolshevik Left Communist movement's theoretical and practical task today.