The modern form of Marxism as developed by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (1870-1924). Lenin led the uprising that overthrew the Russian government in the October Revolution of 1917. He applied Marxism to the new kinds of capitalism that had developed since Marx's day, such as the increasing concentration of capital in larger organizations of producers. Lenin believed that the constant search for raw materials, driven by the need to make a profit, resulted in imperialist policies that led to recurrent wars. The state was merely a tool of the ruling class and therefore had to be destroyed.

One of the distinctive aspects of Leninism was the creation of the party, a disciplined group of revolutionaries who would act as the vanguard of the proletariat. Lenin did not believe that capitalism would collapse merely through the weight of economic forces-there had to be a catalyst, and this was the party. Through the party, Lenin justified extreme measures for seizing and consolidating power, and laid the basis for the authoritarianism that transformed the Soviet Union into a dictatorship and kept all power in the hands of the communist party (where it remained until as recently as 1991). Thus the original Marxist idea that the state would gradually wither away turned out to be the opposite of the truth-the power of the state continued to grow and grow.