Matthew Durden

WHO 1022

Lenin & de Tocqueville on Revolution

To begin, let it be understood that Vladimir Lenin and Alexis de Tocqueville were active

in very different times and settings. Lenin, who would go on to ignite the communist revolution

in Russia in the early 1900s, based much of his ideology on that of Karl Marx and his Marxism.

In fact, Lenins ideology would go on to be known as Leninism, which goes hand-in-hand with

Marxism, and was eventually combined with Marxism to form Marxism-Leninism. De

Tocqueville, however, was a Frenchman active in French politics during the same time that Karl

Marx was forming his ideology. Lenin and de Tocqueville both played pivotal roles in the

Russian and French revolutions, respectively, and each had their own theories about the role of

revolution in shaping a nations government. Though similar in many ways, Lenin and de

Tocquevilles theories had many differences.

Lenin believed that in order for a revolution to be successful, it had to have been well-

organized and thought out. He even referred to unorganized revolutionaries as the League of

Struggle.1 He claimed that they would eventually garner a reputation and turn to open warfare,

which would always end in an immediate and complete fiasco.2 Lenin believed this to be true

because this type of warfare was not thought out or prepared, but was simply the result of

spontaneous growth of traditional study circles.3 Lenin compared this type of revolutionary

warfare to that of peasants, armed with clubs, against modern troops.4 De Tocqueville, on the

other hand, had different thoughts about revolution. De Tocqueville believed that revolution was

inevitable, and even followed a destined course, as he would say.5 He believed that it was the

1
Vladimir Lenin, What is to be Done? Victor J. Jerome. New York: International Publishers, 1969, 99.
2
Lenin, 99.
3
Lenin, 99.
4
Lenin, 99.
5
Alexis de Tocqueville, The Old Regime and the French Revolution. Stuart Gilbert. New York: Doubleday, 1983, 3.

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masses, that, once rallied together, were unstoppable. De Tocqueville was very metaphorical

when speaking of the French Revolution, referring to it as a grim terrific force of nature, a

newfangled monster, red of tooth and claw.6

According to de Tocqueville, European monarchs and statesmen at first shrugged off the

revolution in France, assuming it to be a passing phase not unusual to a growing nation.7 By

the end, however, some were even convinced that the revolution was the work of the devil

himself, and that it could lead to a complete and final disintegration of the social fabric

throughout the civilized world.8 Alternatively, de Tocqueville believed that the revolution was

meant to abolish the entire social structure of pre-revolutionary France and to institute new

ways of living, new conventions.9 Lenin, who was opposed to the idea of chaos, thought that

the organization of the revolutionaries must consist first and foremost of people who make

revolutionary activity their profession.10 He also believed that such an organization must not be

too large and must be as secret as possible.11

Now it is important to note that the French Revolution and the Russian Revolution had

different causes. The French Revolution was fought mainly over the idea of equality, and that the

lower class was treated unfairly compared to the nobility. The Russian Revolution, on the other

hand was brought about due to economic reasons. The lower classes were becoming increasingly

impoverished and Russias catastrophic involvement in WWI brought famine and unrest to the

nation as a whole. This is why Lenin often refers to one of the causes of the revolution in Russia

6
De Tocqueville, 3.
7
De Tocqueville, 4.
8
De Tocqueville, 4.
9
De Tocqueville, 8.
10
Lenin, 109.
11
Lenin, 109.

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as the economic struggle against the employers and the government.12 Lenin is also much

more political in his writings than de Tocqueville, calling for a Social-Democratic

organization,13 whereas de Tocqueville simply refers to the revolution in France as nothing more

than that the revolution. He seems to write with the idea that it was the masses as a whole that

brought about the French Revolution, and not a particular group. De Tocqueville does, however,

discuss the results of the revolution far beyond the scope of Lenins writings.

De Tocqueville even refers to the French Revolution as a religious revolution.14 He writes

that the French Revolution was different than any other revolution before it, due to the fact that it

reached outside of Frances borders and aspired to be world-wide.15 It was unique due to the

fact that it seemed to create a common intellectual fatherland16 which was open to men of all

nations and racial distinctions. This is the reason that de Tocqueville calls the French Revolution

a religious one because no political revolution had ever taken that form before in all of history,

but only religious revolutions. De Tocqueville theorizes that the French Revolution took this

astounding form due to the similarities of religion and the underlying fundamentals of the French

Revolution. Christianity, for example, has no links with any specific form of government or

nation.17 The revolution also tended to view the citizen as an entity independent of any

particular social order,18 similarly to the way religions view individuals. Through this

12
Lenin, 108.
13
Lenin, 116.
14
De Tocqueville, 10.
15
De Tocqueville, 10.
16
De Tocqueville, 10.
17
De Tocqueville, 10.
18
De Tocqueville, 12.

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comparison, de Tocqueville concludes that the revolution in France not only changed the social

system within France, but it was nothing short of a regeneration of the whole human race.19

Lenin, with very few exceptions, rarely mentioned religion in his writings, but rather

spoke of different groups of people within Russia, such as Social-Democrats and workers.

Lenin tends to focus much more on organization throughout his writings in What is to be Done?

than on an actual uprising. In fact, Lenin writes that the reader of his work should note that his

plan consists of the rejection of an immediate call for assault,20 but rather calls for a single,

All-Russian organization of revolutionaries.21 Lenin does, however, accept that the eventual

culmination of all his organization will, in fact, be an assault. Another recurring theme

throughout Lenins writing is that of an All-Russian newspaper. Lenin believes that without an

All-Russian newspaper, issued very frequently, the organization needed to carry out a successful

Social-Democratic revolution would be unthinkable.22 Only through the issuance of this All-

Russian newspaper, Lenin believes, will a militant Social-Democratic organization gain the

flexibility required to adapt itself immediately to the most diverse and rapidly changing

conditions of struggle.23 The plan for an All-Russian newspaper, Lenin writes, is the most

practical plan for immediate and all-around preparation of the uprising.24

De Tocqueville and Lenins writings about the outcomes of their respective revolutions

are somewhat hard to compare. This is due to the fact that de Tocqueville is writing from a

period after the French Revolution had already taken place, and Lenin is writing from a period

19
De Tocqueville, 13.
20
Lenin, 167.
21
Lenin, 169.
22
Lenin, 172.
23
Lenin, 171.
24
Lenin, 174.

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before the Russian Revolution. However, they each had very strong, somewhat similar, opinions

about what they believed the outcomes to be. De Tocqueville, on one hand, wrote that the French

Revolution was essentially a movement for political and social reform and did not aim to

create permanent disorder.25 He also believed that the revolution in France sought to create a

more powerful central authority. Finally, however, de Tocqueville believed that the chief

permanent achievement of the French Revolution was the suppression of feudal institutions

which had, for many centuries, held sway in most of Europe. The Revolution replaced those

systems with a new social and political order, one that was based on the concept that all men

are born equal.26

Lenin, whom was only able to write about the outcome of the revolution in Russia in the

future sense, wrote of the Third Period of Russian Social-Democracy, in which he was

currently involved.27 Lenin believed that the Third Period would come to an end with the

beginning of the revolution. He believed that the Fourth Period would lead to the

consolidation of militant Marxism, and that Russian Social-Democracy will emerge from

the crisis in its most powerful form.28 Lenin believed that this would lead to the replacement of

the current leadership in Russia with the most revolutionary class.29 Lenin ends his conclusion

with the answer to the question, what is to be done? His answer is simple: Put an end to the

Third Period.30

25
De Tocqueville, 19.
26
De Tocqueville, 20.
27
Lenin, 177.
28
Lenin, 177.
29
Lenin, 177.
30
Lenin, 177.

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 Lenin and de Tocqueville had similar ideas about revolution in the sense that it is

necessary to usher in a new era of government leadership. However, the two differ on many

aspects. For one, Lenin believes that revolution will only be successful if it is meticulously

planned out and organized in secrecy. De Tocqueville, on the other hand, seemed to embrace the

idea that revolution is most successful in its most chaotic form, and that the Old Regime of

France had to be destroyed in order for a new type of government to emerge. In addition, de

Tocqueville often referred to religion to describe the French Revolution, citing the similarities

between religious revolutions of the past to the revolution in France, and their shared ideologies

of unity, regardless of nationality or race. Lenin, on the contrary, rarely mentions religion in his

writings, and is almost completely political, only mentioning the Social-Democrats which were

to organize and revolt. In the end, however, the two shared the idea that revolution was meant to

lead to the birth of an entirely new government, and, in their own eyes, at least, a better

government.