He was a sharp critic of anarchism, social democracy and Vladimir Lenin and Leninism. During the early years of the Russian revolution, Pannekoek gave critical support to the Bolsheviks, a position shared by fellow council communist Herman Gorter. He expressed misgivings about the authoritarian tendencies of Leninism, fearing for the socialist character of the Russian Revolution unless it should find a rectifying support in a proletarian revolution in the West. His later analysis of the failure of the Russian revolution was that after Lenin and the Bolsheviks came to power, they crippled the soviets. Instead of workers' councils, the Bolsheviks had instituted the rule of their party, which in Pannekoek's view is what led to the institution of the Bolsheviks as a new ruling class. He put his views forward in his 1938 book "Lenin als filosoof : een kritische beschouwing over de filosofische grondslagen van het Leninisme", originally published under the pseudonym J. Harper, translated in English as "Lenin as philosopher - a critical examination of the philosophical basis of Leninism" (1948).