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Why do people say "Marxist-Leninist" since Lenin was a Marxist; therefore, just saying Leninist would include the teachings of Marx, wouldn't it? (lemmygrad.ml)

submitted 2 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 46 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

Lenin was very serious about staying true to Marx, to the point of quoting entire pages to be sure he's not taking things out of context. His work is Marx's thought applied to economical and political developments Marx couldn't have foreseen, but it's in no way revisionist. I think this is why Stalin called it "Marxism-Leninism", to make sure it's clear this is Marxism.

Still you have "orthodox Marxists" who will claim ML is not really Marxism but I think if it was called just "Leninism" it would've been even easier for them to claim Leninism isn't even Marxism.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 weeks ago

I've interacted with several people who referred to themselves as Leninists, and every single one of them turned out to actually be Trotskyists.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Still you have "orthodox Marxists" who will claim ML is not really Marxism but I think if it was called just "Leninism" it would've been even easier for them to claim Leninism isn't even Marxism.

I wonder if nowadays I can just call myself a Leninist and people will get the message since nobody questions Lenin’s adherence to Marxism anymore.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Apparently Leninism is a wider term including ML, Trotskyism, and other tendencies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leninism

So it wouldn't be wrong call MLs Leninist, or just Marxist if you want to cast an even wider net.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago

Although I can understand this argument, I don't think it's realistically so. Leninism COULD mean that, but in practice, it's used only to exclude Marxist Leninists from the group. When someone says Leninist, they are so often referring to it in opposition to "Stalinists" that the umbrella model can't really work.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago

I don't like adding up more isms as more authors add their knowledge to it, like after Mao added his contributions, then some people started calling it afterwards Marxism-Leninism-Maoism... Marxism is a broad field of science that encompasses economics, history, sociology, revolutionary organization etc...

That said, I love Mao and Lenin's additions to the theory. But for simplicity, I just call the field of study as Marxism.