Book Review of a Classic: Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism, A Manual.
(Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, USSR, 1963. Original hardcover 734 pages.)
Reviewed by Izzy Kantor
January 5, 2025
“Marx’s teaching is all-powerful because it is true.” – Lenin
For communists today, there are entire libraries of theoretical work any comrade could readily recommend. Articles on this very website name numerous worthy titles. Of all of them, none condenses the essentials as successfully as the official Fundamentals of Marxism Leninism, A Manual, published in 1963 by a group of Marxist authors in the Soviet Union, led by Otto Wille Kuusinen and translated by Clemens Dutt.
For this reader, the text has been a gift that keeps on giving, offering Marxism- Leninism in an easy-to-understand, well-organized, and orderly format in what would otherwise be an overwhelming textbook. Its accessible style makes it easy to return to sections already studied, and it avoids the all-too-common density of texts typified by college texts. Think of this manual as an inestimable aid to your study, a guidebook of sorts.
Fundamentals is just that, the fundamentals. It serves as not just a guide but a manual for the reader to understand the philosophy, economics, and tactics of socialism and communism. Through such an understanding, the reader is armed with a lens through which the world can be understood not only during the time of its writing, but through today and into the future as well. In its introductory remarks it offers that, “It need hardly be said that one book cannot encompass all the wealth of Marxism-Leninism. This book deals only with its fundamentals”.
So, what is a reader to do with a text like this? While it can be overwhelming at first glance. Assuming one would not read it like a novel from front to back, the book’s table of contents helps to guide the reader to a particular topic of study. The text is divided into four component parts, each branching off into well-sequenced chapters.
A PHILOSOPHY FOR THE WORKING CLASS
Part One begins with the philosophical foundations of the Marxist-Leninist world outlook. This reviewer once had a keen interest in the history of philosophy, often reading books from more liberal-minded academics. These books, while worth a glance, often took an inaccessible, academic tone in being dense and hard to read. Fundamentals blows all of them out of the water with its simple, direct style. The text summarizes materialist thought from the ancients like Democritus and Epicurus all the way to later thinkers like Descartes and Spinoza, leading to the culmination of the scientific thought and process that is Marxism-Leninism.
All of this emphasizes one key point: that materialist philosophy is based on the recognition of reality independent of our consciousness, and through that, humans can learn to know and understand the world around us. Noting that progressive materialist science constantly fights ignorance, superstition, and self-serving ruling class ideologies, the working-class reader can be armed with this text to identify and reject idealism and reaction.
It is imperative that working-class readers be able to discern reactionary thought in their own time and place, and counter it with revolutionary and scientific thinking. In its latter part, this section covers pragmatism and its roots in American religiosity at length, describing it as the “philosophy of the advantageous.” Never has that title been as relevant as it is now.
THE REVOLUTIONARY FORCE – WORKERS
Part Two focuses on the materialist conception of history, reviewing the role of the modes of production, the reality of the class struggle, the nature of the state, and the individual in society’s development. The most important concept for our time is that the masses are the makers of history. The struggle of the masses eventually leads to social progress. Building upon the first section, the reader learns to recognize bourgeois ideology meant to dissuade or conceal the Marxist viewpoint from the masses of workers. Lacking Marxism means that workers are unlikely to understand how the system oppresses and exploits them, and it inhibits organizational or political advance for the working class.
One can take from this a direct quote from Lenin that rings true today, “Wherever you look, you come at every step across problems which humanity is quite capable of solving immediately” and that “capitalism prevents this.” Any reader can instinctively tell from their own experience of being a cog in capitalism’s machine that much of the problems they see at home and in the streets are caused by the capitalist system. The lack of understanding of these fundamentals prevents progressive solutions from taking hold. Only through revolutionary learning and action can the logjam be broken.
THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF CAPITALISM
The third section lays out the political economy of capitalism. Think of this part as a condensation of Karl Marx’s Das Kapital and Lenin’s theory of imperialism. Here, many concepts from the works of both men are reviewed succinctly. Basic explanations help the reader to grasp complex concepts such as; “When capitalism reaches the stage of imperialism, it inevitably enters the period of its general crisis.” While this text was written and edited long before our current state of world affairs, one cannot help but see how correct this observation is. Wars between imperialist powers persist, a product of imperialism itself, all of which drags the working class toward death, misery, austerity, and risk planetary destruction.
The authors explore aspects of the militarization of the economy and the resulting growth of the “war machine”, which we witness today in the United States. It also offers a glaring warning about the “myths of revisionists and reformists about present-day capitalism.” Countless vogue concepts to patch up the damaged economy and falling living standards are generated by the ruling elites, with none possessing any possible prospect of success. Media pundits and consultants are ready to repeat whatever the ruling class offers up as they manufacture the consent of the working class to buy into their new wars wherever they are. And the punditry spins its support for a state of endless war by claiming that the warfare state is creates jobs. This is among many points that ring true for our time.
A WORKING CLASS WITHOUT BORDERS
In Part Four, the theory and tactics of the international communist movement are discussed at length. This section focuses on the strategic thinking of the working class and the international communist community, a great and urgent need today. International socialist unity is a key tenet of this text, as the bourgeoisie will foment nationalist, religious, and reformist tendencies in order to retard the development of working-class movements. Without the masses organizing nationally, and across international borders, a revolution will not happen. This is explained in brilliant detail in the section titled “Internationalism is a Source of the Strength of the Working-Class Movement.”
A REVOLUTIONARY FRAMEWORK
Lastly, Part Five discusses socialism and communism. Think of it as a review of the socialist mode of production. This isn’t academic, utopian divel coming from an ivory tower. On the contrary, it’s a real guide for how a working-class party, once in power, organizes itself in a post-capitalist society. The dictatorship of the proletariat, a truly maligned phrase in the hands of the ruling class, is defined here as “power in the hands of working people, led by the working class and having its aim the building of socialism.” The past 100 years have shown us clearly that working class suppression of the ruling elites is required, as these forces inevitably work endlessly to first stop the advance of socialism and then work to erode and undermine it wherever it has formed.
This section also reviews the workers role in the period of transition from a socialist system to an eventual communist state of things. Starting with the nationalization of big industry, transport, and banks, the workers’ revolution is not meant to end there. Instead, it develops culture for the people, taking away power from the bourgeois intelligentsia and democratizing societ in a way not done before under the vice grip of capitalism. It not only touches on these points but goes further on the interests of the individual, seeing socialism as a way for every member of society to improve their position. Labor itself is to be transformed, with hazardous occupations gone and new trades to take hold with the help of a vast expansion of education. Lastly, this manual spells out a solution to housing problems, the reduction of the working day, and the expansion of public consumption funds. All of this leads to a far better world for all.
BUY AND READ THIS BOOK
Leftists and trade unionists alike, both young and old, new and experienced both will find a one-stop shop of condensed Marxist-Leninist thought in this magnificent book. While original 1963 hard copies may be hard to find, the book is available from Red Star Publishers at: https://www.redstarpublishers.org/ and https://www.redstarpublishers.org/FundamentalsML.pdf You can download a free PDF copy here in the Marxist Internet Archive, and a number of scanned copies of the 1963 edition can be found online. The Red Star Publishers edition is also available on Amazon and other online sites.
I strongly advise those interested in exploring the political science and organizational wisdom of Marxism-Leninism to buy this book in hard form, given that its large size and the need to seek out sections and chapters as one studies makes Internet reading tedious at best. You will find yourself, like me, returning to this volume repeatedly for reference and insight. It is imperative in the current period that we return to the roots of our movement, familiarize ourselves with the basics of Marxism-Leninism, and prepare ourselves to play a serious role in the battles that loom large.
-Izzy Kantor is a union member and activist in the Florida public sector labor movement.
