“How to relate to the Leninist tradition? How to extract its truth? The basis of Lenin’s success was the perfect adaptation of his political strategy to the historical terrain of late Tsarist Russia, with its still quasi-feudal agrarian structure, its absolutist state and its supine bourgeoisie. But the Bolsheviks mistakenly drew from this experience the conclusion that they had discovered a general formula for revolutionary transformation: a cadre party of full-time revolutionaries aimed at the seizure of state power. This generalization was of course a distortion since Lenin was a highly sophisticated political thinker, who understood the importance of linking the socialist project to the democratic movement against the Tsarist autocracy. But after the revolution a certain schematism set in, especially with the establishment of the Communist International and the demand that all affiliated parties adhere to the 21 points. This forced an unhealthy process of splitting which severely w...
“The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other civilizations were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.” —Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilisation and the Remaking of the World Order, 1996, p. 51