Lenin, National Liberation and Palestine
Gus Woody reviews Imperialism and the National Question recently published by Verso.
An introduction to Lenin and Leninism
We are marking the hundredth anniversary of Lenin’s death by reprinting an essay by American socialist historian Paul Le Blanc, in which he explains the different components of what has come to be called ‘Leninism’.
Review | Ben Lewis, ‘Karl Kautsky on Democracy and Republicanism’
Is it time to re-evaluate renegade Kautsky? Andreas Chari reviews a new collection.
Learning from the Second International: a review of Reform, Revolution and Opportunism
Mike Taber’s new collection exposes fissures within the Second International.
Revolutionary Reflections | Moving towards an ecological Leninism
The urgency of the climate crisis has led some on the left to turn towards ‘ecological Leninism’ – but we need greater clarity on what this means.
Global fever
The Covid-19 pandemic is a foretaste of the approaching climate catastrophe. Andreas Malm’s electrifying new book looks at both these crises and asks what we’ll need to do to face them down.
Video: Climate, coronavirus and capitalism
A video of a discussion on Andreas Malm’s forthcoming book ‘Corona, Climate, Chronic Emergency: War Communism in the Twenty-First Century’, introduced by Gareth Dale.
What’s left of Lenin?
150 years after the birth of V.I. Lenin, Leninism offers us urgent and fundamental lessons about what it means to practise politics in capitalist society.
The Unconquerable Inscription
To mark Lenin’s 150th birthday, The Artful Doodler has made a short film of Bertolt Brecht’s poem ‘The Unconquerable Inscription’ (1934).
A statement on the centenary of the October Revolution
rs21 celebrates the Revolution as a high-water mark in human history.
Reviewing BBC Radio 4’s coverage of the Russian revolution
Martin Crook analyses the presentation of the Russian revolution by the BBC, questioning the accuracy of a review that blames the revolution for the sins of Stalinism.
After 1917: Civil war and ‘modernising counter-revolution’
The Russian Revolution not only provides the most far reaching example of a socialist revolution in history, it also changes our understanding of counter-revolution.
Video: Mike Haynes – dreams, utopias and messy realities of Russia in 1917
Watch Mike Haynes’ humorous and enlightening talk for Leicester rs21 on the dreams, utopias and messy realities of the Russian revolution.
Social histories of 1917
Estelle Cooch, a history teacher in South London, reflects on an unusual series of history lectures that have drawn a new generation into exploring the Russian Revolution. This article was first published in the summer 2017 edition of the rs21 magazine. ‘The percentage of freaks among people in general is very considerable, but it is […]
Interview: Women in the Revolution
Estelle Cooch interviews Katy Turton author of Forgotten Lives – the role of Lenin’s sisters in the Russian Revolution The role of women in the February Revolution is relatively well known about, but how involved were women in the events of October? As you would expect, women were participants in the October revolution, but they […]
The flight of the young eagles – art of the Russian revolution
Mike Thompson visits Revolution: Russian Art 1917-1932 at the Royal Academy and finds amazing art in an establishment exhibition. Photo: Tom Michaelson Artists under Russia’s Tsarist regime operated in a contradictory society. They had access to the most innovative ideas of the avant-garde, but within a context where the vast majority had no access to art. […]
Lenin, Rosa Luxemburg and Ernest Mandel
American socialist Paul Le Blanc responds to a recent article from Charlie Post as part of a continuing debate about Lenin and Leninism As the radicalisation process works its way through the diverse and recomposing working class of our planet, young activists (as well as the not-so-young) continue to wrestle with questions of how best […]
Leninism?
Charlie Post, a supporter of Solidarity, a US revolutionary socialist organisation, continues a discussion on what is meant by ‘Leninism’ today Two developments have sparked a renewed debate on revolutionary socialist organisation. On the one hand, the emergence of “new left parties” and the continued crisis of the self-identified revolutionary left, of which the recent […]
A critical engagement with the young Bensaïd
This piece was first presented by Jonas Liston at the recent Historical Materialism Conference in London. On first reading Daniel Bensaïd’s memoirs, An Impatient Life, two things stood out to me: a heterodox politics with an absolute confidence in the key tenets of revolutionary Marxism, combined with a willingness to engage with new and old ideas and modes […]
How can we change the world if we can’t change ourselves?
In a piece presented at the recent Historical Materialism Conference in London, Panagiotis Sotiris addresses the challenges facing the anti-capitalist left in Europe. The anticapitalist Left in Europe is in crisis. From the crisis of the International Socialist Tendency, to the political implosion of the New Anticapitalist Party in France, and from the fragmentation of the […]
How to learn from Lenin
Barnaby Raine examines the relevance of one of Lenin’s key works ‘The State and Revolution’. Originally published in the Autumn 2014 issue of the rs21 magazine. Just months before stunning the world with its first socialist revolution on a national scale, a rebel leader returned from exile in Switzerland to the upheavals of Russia in […]
Is Leninism dead?
Phil Gasper member of the editorial board of the International Socialist Review and is editor of The Communist Manifesto: A Road Map to History’s Most Important Political Document continues a discussion on Leninism, responding to a recent article from Ian Birchall. What, if anything, do revolutionary socialists today have to learn from the experience and […]
The changing face of imperialism
Ukraine and Syria have put imperialism back at the top of the political agenda. Rob Owen traces the theory of imperialism and charts the trajectory of US imperialism in recent years.
What’s to be done now? A review of Paul Le Blanc’s Unfinished Leninism
Jonas Liston reviews an essential collection of essays on Lenin and Leninism today (photo of Paul Le Blanc by Alex Bainbridge) The difficult experiences of the revolutionary left recently have led many to question core aspects of Marxist politics – in particular the legacy of the Russian revolutionary Lenin and the organisation he played a key […]
Paul Le Blanc replies to Ian Birchall on Lenin and Leninism
Paul Le Blanc, author of Unfinished Leninism, has replied to Ian Birchall’s discussion article on Leninism over at SocialistWorker.org. In an article titled Leninism, No? Paul sets out “a sense of what I mean by Leninism, as utilised in my own writings”: In his commitment to a fusion of the struggles of the workers and […]
Lenin: Yes! Leninism: No?
A discussion article by Ian Birchall, historian and author of Tony Cliff: a Marxist for his time It is currently a commonplace on the left and not-so-left to announce that Leninism is dead. Indeed, one might wonder why it is necessary to keep repeating the point. Nobody is writing articles to explain that alchemy or social […]
rs21 political weekend: Revolutionary organisation and the working class
Charlie Hore writes: Just over 80 people made it to the final session of the rs21 political weekend, a session that was as much about demonstrating the breadth of the weekend as an attempt to sum it up. Ian Birchall began by with a CLR James quote new to most of us: ‘Lenin – not […]
rs21 Political Weekend: What is revolutionary leadership?
Caliban’s Revenge discusses a session at the rs21 political weekend on the question of the role of ‘leadership’.
Joel Geier on Zinoviev v Lenin
Joel Geier from Chicago, in a piece originally written for the ISO, argues that the distortions inflicted upon the Bolsheviks by Zinoviev fatally weakened the party prior to Stalin’s coup de grace.