The Lenin Method of Running and Winning Electoral Campaigns in Turbulent Contexts: Mobilizing Social Discontent and Turning it into Electoral Victory

Abstract

The article describes the method of propaganda and political agitation used by Vladimir Ilich Lenin to promote the Bolshevik revolution in the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics during the second decade of the 20th century. Subsequently, the Lenin method is presented, adapted to modernity and applied to electoral campaigns in democracy, carried out under turbulent contexts. Subsequently, an analysis is offered on how this method of making and winning elections has been used in eleven different cases of successful presidential electoral campaigns: Mexico, Paraguay, United States of America, Panama, Peru, Chile, Colombia, Brazil and Argentina. The methodology used is that of a bibliographic-documentary review, with a descriptive and comparative character, which is carried out in the light of the experience in the presidential campaigns of eleven American countries. Finally, it is concluded that the mobilization towards the ballot box of the anger and social unrest generated by the existence of a turbulent context to defeat the adversaries, on which the Leninist method is based, is an extremely powerful and useful strategy to gain access to positions of power in systems based on competition and political plurality.