Lenin and the Revolutionary Party

Lenin and the Revolutionary Party
Author: Paul Le Blanc
Publisher: Haymarket Books
Total Pages: 418
Release: 2016-02-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1608466779

For generations, historians of the right, left, and center have all debated the best way to understand V. I. Lenin’s role in shaping the Bolshevik party in the years leading up to the Russian Revolution. At their worst, these studies locate his influence in the forcefulness of his personality. At their best, they show how Lenin moved other Bolsheviks through patient argument and political debate. Yet remarkably few have attempted to document the ways his ideas changed, or how they were in turn shaped by the party he played such a central role in building. In this thorough, concise, and accessible introduction to Lenin’s theory and practice of revolutionary politics, Paul Le Blanc gives a vibrant sense of the historical context of the socialist movement (in Russia and abroad) from which Lenin’s ideas about revolutionary organization spring. What emerges from Le Blanc’s partisan yet measured account is an image of a collaborative, ever adaptive, and dynamically engaged network of revolutionary activists who formed the core of the Bolshevik party.

Myths of Demilitarization in Postrevolutionary Mexico, 1920-1960

Myths of Demilitarization in Postrevolutionary Mexico, 1920-1960
Author: Thomas Rath
Publisher: UNC Press Books
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2013-04-22
Genre: History
ISBN: 1469608359

At the end of the Mexican Revolution in 1920, Mexico's large, rebellious army dominated national politics. By the 1940s, Mexico's Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) was led by a civilian president and claimed to have depoliticized the army and achieved the bloodless pacification of the Mexican countryside through land reform, schooling, and indigenismo. However, historian Thomas Rath argues, Mexico's celebrated demilitarization was more protracted, conflict-ridden, and incomplete than most accounts assume. Civilian governments deployed troops as a police force, often aimed at political suppression, while officers meddled in provincial politics, engaged in corruption, and crafted official history, all against a backdrop of sustained popular protest and debate. Using newly available materials from military, intelligence, and diplomatic archives, Rath weaves together an analysis of national and regional politics, military education, conscription, veteran policy, and popular protest. In doing so, he challenges dominant interpretations of successful, top-down demilitarization and questions the image of the post-1940 PRI regime as strong, stable, and legitimate. Rath also shows how the army's suppression of students and guerrillas in the 1960s and 1970s and the more recent militarization of policing have long roots in Mexican history.

The Revolutionary Philosophy of Marxism

The Revolutionary Philosophy of Marxism
Author: Karl Marx
Publisher: Marxist Books
Total Pages: 552
Release: 2018-11-22
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN:

A Selection of Writings on Dialectical Materialism by Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky, Plekhanov, and Luxemburg, and Alan Woods. Edited by John Peterson with an Introduction by Alan Woods. On the bicentennial of his birth, Karl Marx’s ideas are more relevant than ever. While he is perhaps best known for his writings on economics and history, anyone who wishes to have a fully rounded understanding of his method must strive to master dialectical materialism, which itself resulted from an assiduous study and critique of Hegel. Dialectical materialism is the logic of motion, development, and change. By embracing contradiction instead of trying to write it out of reality, dialectics allows Marxists to approach processes as they really are, not as we would like them to be. In this way we can understand and explain the essential class interests at stake in our fight against capitalist exploitation and oppression. At every decisive turning point in history, scientific socialists must go back to basics. Marxist theory represents the synthesized experience, historical memory, and guide to action of the working class. The Revolutionary Philosophy of Marxism aims to arm the new generation of revolutionary socialists with these essential ideas.

Challenges of Party-Building in Latin America

Challenges of Party-Building in Latin America
Author: Steven Levitsky
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 573
Release: 2016-10-13
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1107145945

This book presents a new and conflict-centered theory of successful party-building, drawing on diverse cases from across Latin America.

Party and Class

Party and Class
Author: Tony Cliff
Publisher: International Socialism
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2017-07-25
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9781608465415

These essays show why we need something more than single-issue organizations, movement coalitions, if we are to achieve real change.

Bolshevism: The Road to Revolution

Bolshevism: The Road to Revolution
Author: Alan Woods
Publisher: Wellred Books
Total Pages: 829
Release:
Genre: History
ISBN: 1900007851

There have been a multitude of histories of Russia, either written from an anti-Bolshevik perspective, or its Stalinist mirror image, which both paint a false image of Bolshevism. For them, the Russian Revolution was either an historical ‘accident’ or ‘tragedy’, or is presented as the work of one great man (Lenin), who marched single-mindedly towards October. Using a wealth of primary sources, Alan Woods reveals the real evolution of Bolshevism as a living struggle to apply the method of Marxism to the peculiarities of Russia. Woods traces this evolution from the birth of Russian Marxism, and its ideological struggle against the Narodniks and the trend of economism, through the struggle between the two strands of Menshevism and Bolshevism, and up to the eventual seizure of power. 'Bolshevism: The Road to Revolution' is a comprehensive history of the Bolshevik Party, from its early beginnings through to the seizure of power in October 1917. This important work was first published in 1999, with material collected by the author over a thirty year period, and was republished to mark the centenary of the Russian Revolution. It represents the authoritative work on the building of the Bolshevik Party and can be used as a handbook for those involved in the movement today.

Revolution in the Air

Revolution in the Air
Author: Max Elbaum
Publisher: Verso Books
Total Pages: 416
Release: 2018-04-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 1786634597

The first in-depth study of the long march of the US New Left after 1968 The sixties were a time when radical movements learned to embrace twentieth-century Marxism. Revolution in the Air is the definitive study of this turning point, and examines what the resistance of today can learn from the legacies of Lenin, Mao and Che. It tells the story of the “new communist movement” which was the most racially integrated and fast-growing movement on the Left. Thousands of young activists, radicalized by the Vietnam War and Black Liberation, and spurred on by the Puerto Rican, Chicano and Asian-American movements, embraced a Third World oriented version of Marxism. These admirers of Mao, Che and Amilcar Cabral organized resistance to the Republican majorities of Nixon and Ford. By the 1980s these groups had either collapsed or become tiny shards of the dream of a Maoist world revolution. Taking issue with the idea of a division between an early “good sixties” and a later “bad sixties,” Max Elbaum is particularly concerned to reclaim the lessons of the new communist movement for today’s activists who, like their sixties’ predecessors, are coming of age at a time when the Left lacks mass support and is fragmented along racial lines. With a new foreward by Alicia Garza, cofounder of #BlackLivesMatter.

Revolutions: a Very Short Introduction

Revolutions: a Very Short Introduction
Author: Jack A. Goldstone
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 177
Release: 2023
Genre: History
ISBN: 0197666302

"In the 20th and 21st century revolutions have become more urban, often less violent, but also more frequent and more transformative of the international order. Whether it is the revolutions against Communism in Eastern Europe and the USSR; the "color revolutions" across Asia, Europe and North Africa; or the religious revolutions in Iran, Afghanistan, and Syria; today's revolutions are quite different from those of the past. Modern theories of revolution have therefore replaced the older class-based theories with more varied, dynamic, and contingent models of social and political change. This new edition updates the history of revolutions, from Classical Greece and Rome to the Revolution of Dignity in the Ukraine, with attention to the changing types and outcomes of revolutionary struggles. It also presents the latest advances in the theory of revolutions, including the issues of revolutionary waves, revolutionary leadership, international influences, and the likelihood of revolutions to come. This volume provides a brief but comprehensive introduction to the nature of revolutions and their role in global history"--