Lenin, master revolutionary strategist.

(ROME) Real leftists like to cite Lenin. To quote Marx is to delve into the theory of Socialism/Communism. But Lenin is another cup of tea. You get into Lenin and you’re in revolution. When you read Lenin’s The State and Revolution, which contains the core of Leninist thought, you are no longer in the world of socio-economic theory. This powerful text offers insights into Leninist policies and elaborated Lenin’s interpretation of Marxism, above all the class conflict, the crushing of the bourgeois state and the establishment and role of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Reading Lenin today is to enter the realm of the overthrow of Capitalism and the transition from Capitalism to Communism. Fantasy? Not many years ago such words seemed like maniacal ravings. But that was before the shit hit the fan in the bourgeois capitalist world, right smack in its heart on Wall Street. The images of capitalism digging its own grave seemed to many the theoretical wishful thinking of a handful of radical eccentrics. But today? Lenin’s writings now read like contemporary political thought. The younger Trotsky noted in his autobiography, My Life, that “Lenin, although he was firmly entrenched in the present, was always trying to pierce the veil of the future.” That quality underlines the difference between Lenin and many of his contemporaries and marks him as the true revolutionary. Continue reading »