The most advanced ideas?
rs21 •Dan Swain has pitched in to the debates around what “Leninism” means today and historically, responding to Paul LeBlanc’s speech at the Dangerous Ideas festival. Dan sets out three different ways in which political ideas can be called “advanced”.
It seems to me that one of the greatest risks of contemporary Leninism is to confuse these three senses of ‘advanced ideas’, and in particular to think that the first two are sufficient for the third. To declare oneself a revolutionary is not meaningless; but we should not fall into the trap of thinking that doing so grants us automatic access to the kind of ideas which can only be formed through struggle.
► Read “The most advanced ideas?” here.
Note: This piece was published before rs21 was established as an independent organisation in January 2014. rs21 was founded by a group of people who had been in the opposition within the SWP and who left in response to its persistent mishandling of rape and sexual harassment allegations against a leading member.
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