Jun 26, 2022
Parker, James, Rudy and Cliff join for a discussion on the
context of Lenin's State and Revolution, and how those
ideas were applied in the early years of the Soviet government. We
start by discussing the context of the book, especially in
relationship with the recent audiobook by Kautsky on Democracy
and Republicanism. We continue by discussing the debates in
the Second International around the Paris Commune, the Immediate
Genesis of the Book during the First World War, the text itself and
its surrounding context, the ways in which the principles of the
book were implemented after 1917, and why the early RSFSR
government gave way to the dictatorship of the politburo.
References:
Étienne Balibar - On the Dictatorship of the
Proletariat
Lara Douds - Inside Lenin's Government
Ideology, Power and Practice in the Early Soviet State
Shiela Fitzpatrick - The Russian Revolution
Neil Harding - Lenin's Political Thought
Alexander Rabinowitch - The Bolsheviks in Power: The first year of
Soviet rule in Petrograd
S. A. Smith - Red Petrograd: Revolution in the Factories,
1917-1918
Mark von Hagen - Soldiers in the Proletarian Dictatorship: The Red
Army and the Soviet Socialist State, 1917-1930