Lenin

A little while ago, I read a biography of Lenin. What's interesting about Lenin, from a Stoic point of view, is that's he is a great example of someone who had many of the attributes of a great Stoic, but also fell short of the Stoic ideals in very fundamental ways. The great drive of Lenin's life was for revolution in Russia, a revolution specifically according to his ideas. And to have a revolution the way he wanted it, he of course had to be in charge. He devoted his life to this revolution. He betrayed his friends, and sacrifices his morals to achieve his goals. He succeeded because, first of all, he was brilliant and capable, and second of all, he wanted it more than anyone else. Enemies like the Mensheviks could have triumphed, perhaps, but they weren't ready to sacrifice everything to the cause. Lenin was.

A Stoic could not have made these sacrifices, I think, because there is nothing important enough that it would require compromising his ethics. Those ethics are all we as humans have, and trading them off for a better chance of controlling the world around us is fundamentally un-Stoic.

Like the Greek and Roman Stoics of old, Lenin did risk his life for his beliefs, and was in fact exiled and jailed because of them, on several occasions. But he was missing out on one of the key aspects of Stoicism, which is to understand and properly judge things. I think this is the fundamental problem that caused him to believe that his revolution and his power were the things most important, when in fact they could not have been.