The life and ideas of Lenin

Lenin's understanding of the Marxist method allowed him to navigate the twists and turns on the road to revolution. Anyone seriously committed to fighting for socialism must learn from his life and ideas. In this talk, Rob Sewell will discuss the life and ideas of Lenin, and how we can follow in his footsteps.

#RevFest2021

[tanujSE]

Wish good times with struggle to Paul sewell

[dondonfrias]

Hope in the future the transcript is available

[tanujSE]

Red salute to Comrades
Wish you good health

[yavuzkestane]

Where did he teach the lesson? In the US?

[yani-]

So Good mite no watch allit Professor.

[AutonomousVoice]

“Less than five years after the Russian revolution, Lenin pondered why the new soviet order had quickly become so bureaucratic and oppressive. On his deathbed he somberly concluded that he had witnessed the resurrection of the old Tsarist bureaucracy to which the Bolsheviks “had given only a soviet veneer.” Lenin’s worst fears were soon realised with the massive bureaucratization of the soviet state and society during the Stalinist era, and the unleashing of what Isaac Deutscher called “an almost permanent orgy of bureaucratic violence.” – Maurice Meisner

[AutonomousVoice]

“We must raise the question of applying much of what is scientific and progressive in the Taylor system. The Soviet Republic must at all costs adopt all that is valuable in the achievements of science and technology in this field. We must organise in Russia the study and teaching of the Taylor system.” - Lenin

[AutonomousVoice]

"The state as an institution is designed to protect and enforce oppressive class relations, such as that of the bourgeoisie over the proletariat, not erode them. Allowing the state to continue to exist will not assist in dissolving such relations, only in perpetuating them in new and equally destructive forms . Without the state, such classes will be unable to enforce their will on the populous, and thus will not be able to continue their existence." - Nestor Makhno.

[eurofuturism]

Will you be presenting a documentary about the Holomodor soon?

[AutonomousVoice]

"This effort was made in the same way as the extremely centralised and Jacobin endeavour of Babeuf. I owe it to you to say frankly that, according to my view, this effort to build a communist republic on the basis of a strongly centralised state communism under the iron law of party dictatorship is bound to end in failure. We learn in Russia how communism cannot be introduced” - Petr Kropotkin on the Bolshevik regime in a message to western workers

[AutonomousVoice]

"A revolution which is inspired by state socialism and adopts this form even 'provisionally' and 'temporarily' is lost : it takes a wrong road down an ever steeper slope. All political power inevitably creates a privileged position for those who exercise it.

Having taken over the revolution, mastered it, and harnessed it, those in power are obliged to create the bureaucratic and repressive apparatus which is indispensible for any authority that wants to maintain itself, to command, to give orders, in a word : to govern.

All authority seeks to some extent to control social life. It's existence predisposes the masses to passivity, it's very presence suffocates any spirit of initiative. 'Communist' power is a real bludgeon. Swollen with 'authority' it fears every independent action. Any autonomous action is immediately seen as suspect and threatening, for such authority wants sole control of the worker. Initiative from any other source is seen as an intrusion upon it's domain and an infringement of it's prerogatives and, therefore, unacceptable."

- Volin

[christophergould]

A politics predicated on the Russian Revolution is like predicating football on Barnsley winning the FA cup which they last did in 1914.Or awaiting for the legendary village of Connemarra which comes alive for one day every hundred years

[AutonomousVoice]

“When the people are being beaten with a stick, they are not much happier if it is called "the People's Stick." – Mikhail Bakunin

[mitscientifica]

How did the man who wrote Grapes of Wrath ( a early Socialist Bible of sorts at the time ) and a life long Socialist, get Freedom and the Value of the the Individual’s Mind so right in one of his seminal novels, East of Eden:



“And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, ideology or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about. I can understand why a system built on a pattern must try to destroy the free mind, for that is one thing which can by inspection destroy such a system. Surely I can understand this, and I hate it and I will fight against it to preserve the one thing that separates us from the uncreative beasts. If the glory can be killed, we are lost.”


—John Steinbeck, Author and Life Long Socialist

[mitscientifica]

Let’s see what one of the most renowned Philosophers of the 20th Century learned about Socialism, who brought us both the Open Society concept, (beloved by socialists ) and Falsification Principle :

“I remained a socialist for several years, even after my rejection of Marxism; and if there could be such a thing as socialism combined with individual liberty, I would be a socialist still. For nothing could be better than living a modest, simple, and free life in an egalitarian society. It took some time before I recognized this as no more than a beautiful dream; that freedom is more important than equality; that the attempt to realize equality endangers freedom; and that, if freedom is lost, there will not even be equality among the unfree.”

- Karl R. Popper, Unended Quest: An Intellectual Autobiography