Lenin's Ideology versus Enlightenment Liberalism

Lenin's ideas differed fundamentally from those of the Atlantic revolutionaries. Jefferson, Lafayette and Bolívar saw government as protecting natural rights, including property, and sought constitutional limits on power. Lenin, building on Marx, saw the state as an instrument of class rule and rights such as property as protections for the bourgeoisie. In What Is to Be Done? (1902) he argued that a disciplined vanguard party must lead workers, who would otherwise settle for reforms.

In his April Theses (1917) he demanded 'all power to the soviets', an end to the war and land to the peasants. In State and Revolution (1917) he argued that the old state must be destroyed and replaced by a dictatorship of the proletariat. Comparing these ideas helps explain different outcomes: Enlightenment revolutions built constitutional checks, while Bolshevik theory justified concentrated party power in the name of a class.