Marxist-Leninist Ideology A root feature of communist states has been their subscription to the ideology of Marxism-Leninism. As fashioned by Lenin, building on the earlier works of Marx and Engels, it is the belief that history advances by means of class struggle, always nudged in a benign direction by the leadership of a communist party. The theory foresaw that in capitalist societies, a small vanguard of professional revolutionaries was necessary to infuse the working masses …showed first 75 words of 4590 total…

…showed last 75 words of 4590 total…their work to advance the revolutionary agenda of Marxism (see Marx, Karl), achieved a brief but spectacular prominence in these years. Although much of their output was later dismissed as heavy-handed propaganda, the proletarians produced some memorable pieces, including Kobayashi Takiji's Kanikōsen (1929; The Cannery Boat, 1933), which centers on the abuses suffered by workers aboard a floating crab cannery. Government repression crushed this movement in the 1930s; Kobayashi died while in police custody in 1933.