Editing Vladimir Lenin (section)

===The 1905 Revolution: 1905–1907===
In November 1905, Lenin returned to Russia to support the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Revolution_%281905%29 1905 Russian Revolution] In 1906, he was elected to the Presidium of the RSDLP; and shuttled between [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finland Finland] and Russia, but resumed his exile in December 1907, after the Tsarist defeat of the revolution and after the scandal of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1907_Tiflis_bank_robbery 1907 Tiflis bank robbery].Until the February and October revolutions of 1917, he lived in Western Europe, where, despite relative poverty, he developed [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leninism Leninism]—urban Marxism adapted to agrarian Russia reversing Karl Marx's economics–politics prescription to allow for a dynamic revolution led by a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanguard_party vanguard party] of professional revolutionaries.

==== Return to exile: 1907–1917 ====
In 1909, to disambiguate philosophic doubts about the proper practical course of a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_revolution socialist revolution], Lenin published ''[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialism_and_Empirio-criticism Materialism and Empirio-criticism]'' (1909), which became a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy philosophic] foundation of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxism-Leninism Marxism-Leninism]. Throughout exile, Lenin travelled Europe, participated in socialist activities, (the 1912 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prague_Party_Conference Prague Party Conference]). When [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inessa_Armand Inessa Armand] left Russia for Paris, she met Lenin and other exiled Bolsheviks. Rumour has it she was Lenin's lover; yet historian Neil Harding notes that there is a "slender stock of evidence . . . we still have no evidence that they were sexually intimate".

In 1914, when [[World War I]] (1914–18) began, most of the mass Social Democratic parties of Europe supported their homelands' war effort. At first, Lenin disbelieved such political fickleness, especially that the Germans had voted for war credits; the Social Democrats' war-authorising votes broke Lenin's mainstream connection with the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_International_%28political%29 Second International] (1889–1916). He opposed the Great War, because the peasants and workers would be fighting the bourgeoisie's "imperialist war"—one that ought be transformed to an international [[Civil War|civil war]], between the classes. Lenin's view of the war can be summed up in a letter he wrote to the Romanian poet [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valeriu_Marcu Valeriu Marcu] in 1917: "One slaveowner, Germany is fighting another slaveowner, England, for a fairer distribution of the slaves". At the beginning of the war, the Austrians briefly detained him in [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poronin Poronin], his town of residence; on 5 September 1914 Lenin moved to neutral [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switzerland Switzerland], residing first at [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bern Bern], then at [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z%C3%BCrich Zürich]<sup>.</sup>

In 1915, in Switzerland, at the anti-war [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zimmerwald_Conference Zimmerwald Conference], he led the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zimmerwald_Left Zimmerwald Left] minority, who failed, against the majority [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacifist pacifists], to achieve the conference's adopting Lenin's proposition of transforming the imperialist war into a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Class_struggle class war]. In the next conference (24–30 April 1916), at [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kienthal Kienthal], Lenin and the Zimmerwald Left presented a like resolution; but the conference concorded only a compromise manifesto.

In the spring of 1916, in [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z%C3%BCrich Zürich], Lenin wrote ''[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperialism,_the_Highest_Stage_of_Capitalism Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism]'' (1916). In this work Lenin synthesised previous works on the subject by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Kautsky Karl Kautsky], [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_A._Hobson John A. Hobson] ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperialism_%28Hobson%29 ''Imperialism: A Study''], 1902), and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Hilferding Rudolf Hilferding] (''Das Finanzkapital'', 1910), and applied them to the new circumstances of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_World_War First World War] (1914–18) fought between the German and the British empires—which exemplified the imperial capitalist competition, which was the thesis of his book. This thesis posited that the merging of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banking banks] and industrial [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartel cartels] gave rise to [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finance_Capital finance capital]—the basis of imperialism, the zenith of capitalism. To wit, in pursuing greater profits than the home market can offer, business exports capital, which, in turn, leads to the division of the world, among international, monopolist firms, and to European states colonising large parts of the world, in support of their businesses. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperialism Imperialism], thus, is an advanced stage of capitalism based upon the establishment of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly monopolies], and upon the exportation of capital (rather than goods), managed with a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_financial_system global financial system], of which [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonialism colonialism] is one feature<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-91">[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Lenin#cite_note-91 .]</sup>

In accordance with this thesis, Lenin believed that Russia was being used as a tool of French and British capitalist imperialism in World War I and that its participation in the conflict was at the behest of those interests.