Lenin and the Present Tense.

In the Translator's Notes to the 1991 version of Lenin's The State and Revolution, Robert Service posits that Lenin refers to Marx using present tense (his example is that Lenin frequently wrote "Marx writes") because "[Lenin] wanted to emphasize that Marx was no dead prophet in the eyes of Bolsheviks." I wanted to explore -- as I read the book -- different ways to interpret Lenin's use of present tense, particularly as it pertains to how many writers use Literary Present to establish immediacy rather than to deify historical actors and events. My theory is that Lenin, in mixing into his political tract both examples of formal and informal writing style (Service's Introduction, xxiii), wanted to have his reverence of Marx both ways too. In other words, Lenin uses Literary Present because he wants Marx to be both political and literary, an author in character; and he wants Marx to have the immediacy that Lenin's contemporaries perhaps seek to deny him (Marx).