What Is the Scientific Nature and Contemporary Value of Leninism?—A Discussion with Professor David Lane

ABSTRACT This article poses the question of how to correctly understand the working class and the socialist movement, stresses the existence and development of the Marxist left movements that represent the vanguard of the working class, while putting forward a definition of the proletariat and examining the structural changes the proletariat has undergone. The article indicates how the relationship between the dictatorships of different classes and democracy should be understood, suggests that the state systems of capitalist countries, that is, their class attributes, represent bourgeois-democratic dictatorship. The article puts forward views on how to correctly understand socialism, parliamentary democracy and proletarian revolution, sets out the reasons why proletarian dictatorship constitutes the dictatorship of the people. It explains how the new and old imperialism and the aspirations of the working class should be understood, details the characteristics of the new and old imperialism, and points out that it is necessary to use historical materialism to dialectically analyze the appearance and essence of the aspirations of the working class and of the broad masses of the people. It indicates how the general development trend of human society should be understood; expounds views on the basic contradictions of contemporary capitalism, the law of accumulation and the existence and continued development of various crises; and contends that Leninism is an international Marxist theory, paralleling the thought of Marx and Engels, that has guided the international proletarian revolution and socialist construction.