Examines Lenin's writing on the relationship between trade unions and the Communist party and on the relation between reform and revolution to better understand the theories and principles underlying Communist tactics in the trade union movement in the United States.

The Russian Revolution of 1917 was one of the pivotal events in world history, and the Russian Bolshevik Party played a central role in that revolution. This book by British socialist Tony Cliff (1917-2000) traces the building of that party and, in particular, the work of its main architect, Lenin.

"A tribune of the people reacts to every manifestation of tyranny and oppression, no matter where it appears." The authors of this book--Karl Marx, V.I. Lenin, Leon Trotsky, Farrell Dobbs, and Jack Barnes--draw on generations of revolutionary struggles by working people to explain why organizing to strengthen the unions is not only essential to the fighting unity and political striking power of the working class. It's central to building a revolutionary proletarian party as well. But the activity of a workers party neither begins nor ends there. It begins by extending the party's political reach in all directions, to cities, towns, and farms. By exchanging views and experiences with all layers of workers, farmers, and other toilers--irrespective of skin color, language, religion or sex. By broadening cultural horizons and knowledge of history and the world. A tribune of the people uses every manifestation of capitalist oppression to explain why it's workers and our allies who can and will--in the course of struggles by the unions and beyond--lay the foundations for a world based not on violence and competition, but on solidarity among working people worldwide.

Vladimir Ilich Lenin (1870-1924) was the founder of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks), inspirer and leader of Bolshevik Revolution (1917), and the architect, builder, and first head (1917-24) of the Soviet State. He was the founder of the organization known as Comintern (Communist International) and the posthumous source of "Leninism," the doctrine codified and conjoined with Marx's works by Lenin's successors to form Marxism-Leninism, which became the Communist worldview. If the Bolshevik Revolution is - as some people have called it - the most significant political event of the 20th century, then Lenin must for good or ill be regarded as the century's most significant political leader. Not only in the scholarly circles of the former Soviet Union but even among many non-Communist scholars, he has been regarded as the greatest revolutionary leader and revolutionary statesman in history, as well as the greatest revolutionary thinker since Marx.