Political Theory and Ontology of the Revolution: Lenin, Hobbes and Spinoza

Abstract

The article examines the possibility to apply political theory to the events of the Russian revolution. In the 17th century, the founders of modern political philosophy outlined some problems, dilemmas and contradictions that determined not only the course of theoretical development, but the political practice of modernity as well. At the same time, revolutionary thought, which functions as a conceptual framing for the events of the Russian revolution, is often placed in a kind of theoretical exclusion. The article attempts to place some of these texts in a horizon offered by the founders of modern political theory. The article strives to define "Leninism” not as a doctrine, but as a specific political technique related to the concept of the state formulated at the dawn of modernity. The case of the conflict between the "dictatorship of the proletariat” and the "spontaneous” form of a mass political organization (the Soviets) highlights the basic crisis of the Russian revolution. The paper tries to explicate the connection of this crisis with the modern theories of the state, sovereignty and constituent power. Also it attempts to relate the problematic of these theories to the question of organization that puzzled the thinkers of Bolshevism. Article concludes with the suggestion that the task to establish a social order by means of radical politics in a mass society that undergoes a radical transformation has brought to life the dilemmas which political theorists trying to comprehend the practice of nowadays democratic movements have to deal with.