Reconstructing Lenin reviewed by Marx & Philosophy Review of Books

‘Reconstructing Lenin’ by Tamás Krausz

Reviewed by Sean Ledwith

The 21st century has witnessed a significant revival of interest in the ideas of Karl Marx among both the general public and left-leaning academics. No doubt this reflects a desire among many to examine solutions from the greatest and best-known critic of the system to capitalism’s recurrent bouts of economic contraction and social polarisation. There has been a notable lack of concomitant interest, however, in one of the few figures within the Marxist canon who can rival the founder for breadth and depth of analysis. The Hungarian scholar, Tamas Krausz, sets out to rectify that discrepancy in his ambitious and suitably titled volume, Reconstructing Lenin. Krausz perceptively notes that the academic neglect of the architect of the world’s first workers’ state, in notable contrast with the fashionable interest in Marx, is not primarily due to a lack of substantive theorising in the work of the former. There is essentially a political agenda to the downgrading of Lenin: ‘Marx’s philosophical and economic achievements may continue to exist apart from any revolutionary workers’ achievement-but not Lenin’s’ (359). In other words, the bourgeois academy has become increasingly adept at sanitising Marx and presenting him as an interesting, albeit eccentric, radical commentator. No such intellectual neutering is possible with Lenin as his analyses and ruminations are always tightly integrated with the revolutionary project of smashing the system. Lenin cannot be made safe for students to the same extent as is possible with Marx. As Krausz puts it: ‘Lenin’s ideas philosophically resist fragmentation or segmentation by discipline … All its constituent elements point toward the totality, the indivisible process’ (358)…

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