Lenin
Paul Le Blanc: The great Lenin debate -- history and politics
Lenin "favoured an organisation that functioned like a democratic, cohesive, activist collectivity".
Communist International's Fourth Congress: revolutionary fulcrum of the modern world
Toward the United Front, Proceedings of the Fourth Congress of the Communist International, 192
John Riddell: Toward the United Front -- the Fourth Congress of the Communist International (audio)
June 28, 2012 -- A talk presented by John Riddell to the US International Socialist Organization's Socialism 2012 gathering in Chicago, on June 28, 2012. The recording is also available at Wearemany.org, where it first appeared.
Click HERE for more articles on the history of the Communist International.
William Dudley (Big Bill) Haywood, US labour movement leader, marching with strikers in Lowell, Massachusetts, circa 19
Lars Lih: Bolshevism and revolutionary social democracy
Lenin.
By Lars Lih
New voices and new views on revolutionary history
By John Riddell
May 28, 2012 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal/johnriddell.wordpress.com -- Some familiar issues were addressed with originality and new vigour at the Historical Materialism conference in Toronto on May 11–13. Attendance at the three sessions on revolutionary history, organised by Abigail Bakan (Queen’s University), ranged between 30 and 75 of the 400 conference participants.
Given that eight of 11 presentations had a European focus, the discussions were opened fittingly by Montreal scholar Daria Dyakonova with a paper on a little-studied aspect of revolutionary history here in Canada: the birth of communism in Quebec.
The pioneers of this movement faced objective obstacles, including severe repression and formidable opposition by the Catholic Church. In addition, Dyakonova explained, “after Lenin and especially after 1929”, the Canadian Communist Party’s “policies were determined from Moscow”. The line dictated by the leadership of the Communist International (Comintern) was “often at odds with national or local needs”.
Lars Lih: How Lenin's party became (Bolshevik)
By Lars T. Lih
[Click HERE to follow the entire debate on Lenin.]
By Paul Le Blanc
April 5, 2012 -- Weekly Worker, posted at Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal with permission -- I would like to respond to two problematical contentions advanced by Pham Binh in his article ‘Wanting to get Lenin wrong’ (Weekly Worker, March 29, 2012). One of these contentions is about my motivation for disagreeing with his interpretation of Lenin’s thought, and the other has to do with a historical question -- when the Bolsheviks became a separate party. This is part of an extended debate having to do with history and politics (Lenin and the Bolsheviks; tasks facing socialists today). My own contributions touching on these questions can be found at http://links.org.au/taxonomy/term/579.