REPLY 65 the value of Lenin's theoretical contribution be treated as limited to grasping the conditions in Russia at the time; 2) the 'success' of the enterprise, i e, the actual identification of work that could fit into tradition so defined, is possible only by the assertion that the disjunction between theory and practice characteristic of these writings is both a product and evidence of the failure of Lenin's analysis to come to grips with the reality of the class struggle in Europe. The purpose of my article was precisely to show that Andersen, on the strength of assumptions of the first kind (occasional panegyrics to Lenin notwithstanding), claims to arrive at conclusions of the second sort on all crucial questions—the characterisation of Imperialism as an epoch, the nature of the State, etc. Ghosh and Basu are obviously unable to grasp the diiYerencc between a search for a tradition of Marxism that repudiates Leninist theory in all but its historically defined 'Russian' conditions, and the creative application and developement of the theory through the study of 'historical conjunctures', to use a phrase of which they are particularly fond. Consequently they naively claim that Andersen in identifying a "Western" Marxiam is undertaking a study of "Marxist thought as it evolved in Europe after Lenin's death". The difference-in the case of Anderson's account amounts to treating Lenin's analysis ef an epoch as one of a historical conjuncture, with the implicit recommendation that 'localised' Marxisms are not only desirable but positively essential for the sort of revolutionary victory that the Bolsheviks achieved under Lenin's leadership. And Ghosh and Basu would have us believe that this conclusion follows from Anderson's having strictly adhered to "Leninist norms". Ghosh and Basu assert that Leninism, for me ('and my ilk', I presume) is limited to "three gospels" and that I apparently believe that "State and Revolution exhausts all that has to be said about the State, just as Imperialism the Highest Stage of Capitalism exhausts all that has to be said about Imperialism". This is not really surprising for they believe that these writings have no value beyond the specificities of the debates that occasioned them. Thus State and Revolution is an anti-anarchist work and Imperialism, an anti-Kautskyian one. The former "casts light on the process of the withering away of the State" while the latter illustrates that "the imperialist epoch could not show a buoyant trend". Consequently they assert that Anderson "adheres strictly to Leninist norms" in casting light on "how the democratic facade of law may be used in the pre-revolutionary stage, or on the other hand of the seductivity of this institution and the consequent pitfalls for communist parties in these regimes" and on "periods of buoyancy within the long-run trend and its repercussions on the construction of theory". The fact that I have explicitly rejected this view of Andersen's text is dismissed as a consequence of my