VIJAY PRASHAD examines why in 2018 Washington started to take an increasingly belligerent stance towards ‘near peer rivals’ – Russa and China – with far-reaching geopolitical effects
Marxism-Leninism and the Russian Revolution
MARY DAVIS examines Lenin’s contribution to Marxist theory and practice and how it relates to the great events of 1917
ROGER McKENZIE looks back 60 years to the assassination of Malcolm X, whose message that black people have worth resonated so strongly with him growing up in Walsall in the 1980s
At least 1.5 million tons of crude oil has been spilt in the Niger Delta since 1958, writes PAVAN KULKANI
ANDREW MURRAY surveys a quaking continent whose leaders have no idea how to respond to an openly contemptuous United States
Based on his experience of Haringey Council Councillor MARK BLAKE believes only a radical policy rethink will reconnect councils with the alienated constituencies they are supposed to serve
Last week the CPUSA launched a new Rapid Response project aimed at mobilising a popular resistance to policies enacted by the new government. CAMERON HARRISON explains
LENIN is commonly perceived solely as a revolutionary activist who applied Marxist theory to the practice of revolution — a successful one! However this is not the whole story. Lenin was an important theoretician who developed Marxist theory in three important and linked areas.
First, Lenin’s theoretical construction of the October Revolution itself. The two revolutions in 1917 were planned and executed through the combination of theory and practice. As George Lukacs put it, the October Revolution was the point at which “theory bursts into praxis.” This was not a spontaneous “uprising,” it was carefully planned in accordance with Marxist theory applied concretely to Russian reality.
Second, Lenin’s theory of imperialism. Lenin himself gave the briefest possible definition of imperialism as the monopoly stage of capitalism. “Imperialism is capitalism at that stage of development at which the dominance of monopolies and finance capital is established; in which the export of capital has acquired pronounced importance; in which the division of the world among the international trusts has begun, in which the division of all territories of the globe among the biggest capitalist powers has been completed.”
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STEVE ANDREW relishes a history of Lenin’s childhood and adolescence that gives a useful insight his personality
GAVIN O’TOOLE applauds a uniquely nuanced people’s history of the revolutionary period, told from below
ANDREW MURRAY recommends two titles that popularise Lenin as a person and revolutionary theoretician and practitioner