Lenin

In this chapter from his forthcoming book, John Riddell offers a lucid presentation of the Comintern’s strategic orientation and a serious-minded engagement with Daniel Bensaïd thinking on such questions.

Dmitry Pozhidaev — Lenin’s vision of the national question was far from assimilationist; it was a dialectical approach that recognised proletarian internationalism could only be built on respect for national and cultural differences.

James Doughney interrogates some commonly held beliefs and assumptions about monopoly capital, surplus profits and the export of capital — and explains why they are not coherent.

Hanna Perekhoda revisits Lenin’s pre-1917 writings on the right of nations to self-determination from the perspective of his Ukrainian contemporary, Lev Yurkevych.

Michael Pröbsting — Imperialism today is not a system characterised by “antagonistic cooperation” but rather by antagonistic contradictions.

James Doughney — It is hard to avoid thinking that any attempt to airbrush Lenin’s ‘Imperialism’ is a form of avoidance behaviour in the face of awkward but stubborn facts.

Greg Godels argues that the road to defeating imperial aggression — US or any other — is to win the working class to the fight with a class-oriented program that attacks the roots of imperialism: capitalism.

Raju J Das — The Indian mainstream left faces a paradox: while support for socialistic principles is on the rise, it appears to be in decline.

Michael Pröbsting — Contrary to Claudio Katz’s claims that world capitalism is domination of a single US-led “Empire”, it continues to be characterised by inter-imperialist rivalry.

Raju J Das — As fascist movements get stronger, the question of revolutionary compromise by socialist organisations assumes greater urgency.

Ilya Matveev — Ideology is the crucial factor in Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, which cannot be accounted for simply with reference to contradictions of capital accumulation or geopolitics.

Paul Le Blanc — Those who share Lenin’s commitments have a responsibility to adapt his perspectives to what has unfolded over the past hundred years. In doing so, we must face a key aspect of Trumpism’s superiority as a global political force.