Editing Blanquism (section)

===Alleged Connections to Lenin and Leninism===
[[File:Orthlen.png]] [[Leninism]] has been accused of Blanquism, usually by left-wing critics of it. The comparison was first made by Lenin's contemporaries, for example the german revisionist marxist [[File:Bernstein.png]] Eduard Bernstein and [[File:Menshevik.png]] Mensheviks like [[File:Plekhanov.png]] Georgi Plekhanov.

[[File:Luxem.png]] Rosa Luxemburg was also initially among those who made the accusation in her 1904 work "Organizational Questions of the Russian Social Democracy".<ref>https://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1904/questions-rsd/index.htm</ref> However she went on to change her view and defended the bolsheviks from accusations of blanquism in her 1906 work "Blanquism and Social Democracy".<ref name="blanquism and social democracy">https://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1906/06/blanquism.html</ref> She said:

{{Quote|
quote="We would dispute comrade Plekhanov’s reproach to the Russian comrades of the current “majority” [Bolsheviks] that they have committed Blanquist errors during the revolution. It is possible that there were hints of them in the organisational draft that comrade Lenin drew up in 1902, but that belongs to the past – a distant past, since today life is proceeding at a dizzying speed."<ref name="blanquism and social democracy" />
}}
{{Quote|
quote="If today the Bolshevik comrades speak of the dictatorship of the proletariat, they have never given it the old Blanquist meaning; neither have they ever made the mistake of Narodnaya Volya, which dreamt of “taking power for itself” (zachvat vlasti). On the contrary, they have affirmed that the present revolution will succeed when the proletariat – all the revolutionary class – takes possession of the state machine."<ref name="blanquism and social democracy" />
}}

[[File:Councom.png]] [[Council Communism|Council communists]], [[File:Libsoc.png]] [[Libertarian Socialism|libertarian socialists]] and [[File:Ancom.png]] [[Anarcho-Communism|anarcho-communists]] have also criticized Leninism as being similar to Blanquism.

Lenin himself rejected this comparison, and was heavily critical of Blanquism, as he said, "We have always heard a chorus of accusation that we were too inflexible and ossified, too adamant. And yet our opponents call us “Blanquists”, “anarchists” and “true socialists”. The Blanquists are conspirators (they have never been in favour of the general strike), they exaggerate the importance of revolutionary government"<ref>https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1906/may/26.htm</ref> and "To become a power the class-conscious workers must win the majority to their side. ''As long as no'' violence is used against the people there is no other road to power. We are not Blanquists, we do not stand for the seizure of power by a minority. We are Marxists, we stand for proletarian class struggle against petty-bourgeois intoxication, against chauvinism-defencism, phrase-mongering and dependence on the bourgeoisie"<ref>https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/apr/09.htm</ref>.