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Tag Archives: Lenin

Interchange – Voting for Revolution: Lenin At the Ballot Box

It’s become increasingly clear that the American Dream is dead.  Good riddance. Long ago Friedrich Engels identified economic mobility (said “dream” of wealth) in the US as a key barrier to class consciousness. Welcome to your waking hours, America. Today we explore the question, “Can Electoral politics lead the way to Revolution?” Marx, Engels, and Lenin insisted on the value …

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Interchange – Leon Trotsky, or The Revolution Betrayed

Our show today is another in our series on the Russian Revolution of 1917. This time our focus is on Leon Trotsky. Our music throughout is by the 80s English, socialist, skinhead, soul, punk group, The Redskins. We open with “Lev Bronstein.” The dream of socialism as an organizing principle has been deemed an inevitable failure — and logically undemocratic …

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Interchange – Understanding Stalin: The Russian Revolution (Part Two)

In the conclusion of Hiroaki Kuromiya’s 1991 short biography of Stalin, he tells us what might be all we need to know of Stalin’s worldview: first, Stalin underlined the following passage in Trotsky’s 1920 Terrorism and Communism, “If human life in general is sacred and inviolable, we must deny ourselves not only the use of terror, not only war, but …

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Interchange – The Past Is Uncertain: The Russian Revolution (Part One)

It’s October 24th 2017, nearly 100 years ago to the day in 1917*, Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov became Chairman of the Council of People’s Commisars in Russia. Ulanov is better known to us as Lenin. Michel Foucault said in 1977 that “It is the desirability of the revolution which causes a problem today.” Well, that today being 40 years ago, and …

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