Hegel has been denounced as the progenitor of modern totalitarianism, particularly Nazism, even though the National Socialists were not really guided by his thought. Karl Marx has been considered as a philosopher of freedom, even though his teachings are embraced by states whose commitment to personal freedoms is merely formal. I do not wish to labour the ironies of history, however, but to introduce the general issue of which this study treats a particular instance. That issue is the relationship between political and social theorists and the states and policies inspired by or attributed to them. What, in other words, constitutes historical continuity and legitimate application of political and social projects? This book examines whether Soviet authoritarianism was a necessary or inevitable consequence of Lenin's attempt to fulfil what he understood as Marx's project by tracing the concept of the transition to socialism through the Marxist tradition, from Marx to Lenin. This aspect of the relationship between Marx and Lenin, because of its abiding interest and political implications, has suffered no dearth of interpretations (some of which are examined briefly in the Introduction). But this work, I believe, is the first full-length study of it.

The political and social theorist who is concerned with the implementation of his ideas, rather than with study and reflection, places himself in an unenviable position. As a theorist, an employer of abstractions, he cannot hope to take account of every situation, every nuance of social life's infinite complexity.