This segment addresses Vladimir Lenin's adoption of Marx's ideas, particularly the aspect of Marxism requiring political violence. Lenin's major innovation, often called "vanguardism," involved a top-down party of professional revolutionaries leading the

This segment addresses Vladimir Lenin's adoption of Marx's ideas, particularly the aspect of Marxism requiring political violence. Lenin's major innovation, often called "vanguardism," involved a top-down party of professional revolutionaries leading the workers. Inspired by Marx's reaction to the Franco-Prussian War, Lenin developed "revolutionary defeatism," which held that imperial wars between capitalist powers would create opportunities for revolution in the losing nation. This civil war would beget a "state of perennial global civil war" between the new proletarian dictatorship and non-communist countries, which Lenin explicitly advocated for as an ideal scenario, standing in tension with Marx's "emiseration thesis."