Customer Reviews

Building the Party: Lenin, 1893-1914 (Biography of Lenin)

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I think this is an amazing book which displays the application of Marxist theory to the real world. In reading, I found it extremely helpful in clearing up the contradictions ahout Lenin I'd held onto for so long. Tony Cliff's analysis, true to Marxist principles, shows how the revolutionary movement was shaped by the struggle. It shows that Lenin's ideas weren't just bright ideas that popped into his head, but the result of a process including open debate and active participation in the struggle. Overall, Tony Cliff gives a positive view of the kind of open, democratic principles which served as the framework for the Russian Revolution and provides a sharp contrast to the distorted picture of an authoritarian and elitist Lenin we're usually shown.

This book is absolutely ESSENTIAL reading for anyone interested in building a revolutionary organization and it provides plenty of hope for those who wish to see a world in which decisions are made based on human need instead of profit.

This is a great biography on Vladimir Lenin, focusing on his early years. It chronicles Lenin's youth and the history of the early Marxist movement in tsarist Russia. Later chapters focus on his efforts to craft an effective revolutionary party.

This book is chock full of information, but is still very engaging. It is pretty down to earth and doesn't make use of high-falutin language wherever possible. Compare reading this book to the official Stalinist biography of Lenin, or those put forward by right-wing cranks.

Overall, this is a must-read for all activists, especially socialists. I highly recommend this book to people with an interest in politics.

This work is a politcal biography, in the sense that the major focus is on Lenin's revolutionary activities - specifically in building and organizing the Bolsheivik party - in the years before the first World War. The beauty of this book is that it exposes the "sacred capitalist myth" that ascribes the Marx-Lenin-Stalin progression as one that arises naturally. In 'Building the Party' we see Lenin not as a rutheless bloodthirsty dictator but rather as a brilliant tactical organizer and one of the foremost intellectual-revolutionaries of the Twentieth Century

Building the Party has so many gross factual and political errors that it is useless as a historical study of Lenin's actions and thoughts. This conclusion is inescapable for anyone who reads the book closely and compares it with the writings of Lenin and the historical record. For example, in chapter eight Cliff celebrates Lenin's fight at the third RSDLP congress held in April 1905 against the Bolshevik committeemen over two issues: recruiting workers to party committees and democratising the party in the midst of the 1905 revolution. According to Cliff, "[b]uttressing themselves with quotations from What Is to Be Done? [the Bolshevik commiteemen] called for `extreme caution' in admitting workers into the committees and condemned `playing at democracy.'"

The problem with Cliff's account is that Lenin and the Bolsheviks never fought about either recruiting workers to party committees or democratising the party at the third congress. It simply did not happen. Lars T. Lih discovered that this episode in Building the Party was "lifted wholesale from Solomon Schwarz," a Bolshevik-turned-Menshevik who wrote The Russian Revolution of 1905: the Workers' Movement and the Formation of Bolshevism and Menshevism ("wholesale" meaning copied word for word).

Cliff's plagiarism is a relatively minor issue compared to the real scandal: he evidently never bothered to read Lenin's "Report on the Third Congress of the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party" written in May 1905! Had Cliff read Lenin's account of the third congress he would have discovered that Lenin makes no mention of any conflict, debate, or friction over whether to recruit workers and democratize the party in light of the new conditions created by the 1905 revolution. The report is positively glowing about the results of the third congress, which included more clearly defined party rules (so much for Lenin's alleged informality) and a series of resolutions guiding the RSDLP's conduct during the 1905 revolution.

The conclusion is inescapable: either Cliff did not read what Lenin said about the 1905 third congress or he knowingly repeated a falsehood taken from someone else's work in order to support Cliff's narrative of "Lenin versus the party machine he built". Neither is acceptable for a political biographer of Lenin.

Those who read Building the Party and take it seriously will need to unlearn the falsehoods and misinformation contained in its pages if they want a reasonably accurate picture of Lenin's work in the context of the Russian socialist movement of the early twentieth century.

For a fully detailed and documented account of these errors look up "Mangling the Party" using a search engine.

Lenin, after Marx, is the great figure in the pantheon of Communism, and distilled Marx's discoveries about the nature of capitalism and class struggle into concrete revolutionary practice.

This sweeping, authoritative volume gives deep insight into the construction of the Bolshevik party over the two decades leading up to the first World War. Lenin's crucial contributions to the struggle in terms of organization, theory, strategy, and tactics are presented in an accessible and illuminating style. Lenin's insight that a highly organized 'vanguard party' of dedicated professional revolutionaries would be necessary to focus the struggles of the workers sufficiently to overthrow the rulers is presented with great clarity, and the narrative of his tireless efforts to put these insights into practice in struggle is fascinating and instructive.

Highly recommended for those interested in the history of revolution.