 A warm welcome to everyone for this very special panel event on the Russian Revolution and global development, lessons from the first 100 years. My name is Faisy Esmael, and I teach in development studies here at SOAS. We have an extremely knowledgeable and distinguished panel with us today to discuss not only what the Russian Revolution was about, but its lessons and its legacy. As many of you will know, the revolution began in February 1917 in the middle of the First World War, with a demonstration on International Women's Day demanding bread, peace, and land. It ultimately turned into a process in which workers, peasants, and soldiers began to take control of their own destinies. On the 25th of February, there was a general strike, and the Tsar ordered troops to attack the protests and arrest the leaders. On the 27th of February, the first army units mutinied and went over to the side of the revolution, which was a decisive moment as the Tsar was forced to abdicate. By October, workers, peasants, and soldiers were leading the greatest anti-capitalist uprising in history as ordinary people overthrew the state and started to run society for themselves. A new kind of democracy was epitomized in the Soviets, workers, peasants, and soldiers' councils, which were created to run the new state. And this would involve running the economy in the interests of working people, not the elite few. Political democracy was linked to economic democracy. Women won rights around divorce and abortion. Homosexuality was decriminalized. Oppress nations and nationalities had rights to secede, and there was an explosion of creativity in the arts and culture. This new society was showing the way towards emancipation for working people around the world and had the potential to provide for the free development of all. So the significance of the Russian Revolution can't be underestimated, and I think the lessons are instructive for struggles today. So we're very pleased that Tarak Ali, August Nims, and Tamas Kras can be here to explain and analyze this important event for us. So the way it will work is I will introduce each speaker in turn. They'll speak for about 20 to 25 minutes. We'll have a few rounds of questions from the floor, and then speakers will come back for last comments. If you're tweeting the hashtags, or if you'd like to just follow our tweets, are so asked dev studies, hashtag so asked dev studies, that's all one word, and ESRC. So first we hear from August Nims. August is professor of political science and African-American and African studies, and he's also a distinguished teaching professor at the University of Minnesota. He's a leading thinker on socialist strategy, race in the United States, and politics in Africa, and he's written numerous books, including a two-volume book on Lenin's electoral strategy. Marx, Tocqueville, and Race in America, and Marx and Engels, their contribution to the democratic breakthrough. And I should also say that August first came to SOAS in 1968 to do some research, and then he's been back numerous times. I think it's very nice to be able to welcome him again 50 years later. And so we're here from August. Thanks very much, Faiza. I want to thank you and Alfredo for inviting me to be here to participate, take part in this important discussion. I want to begin. I'm glad to see a clock on the back of the wall so I can be on the discipline here. I want to begin my comments with a couple of premises that I begin with in looking at the Bolshevik and the Russian Revolution. Firstly, to make sense of it, it has to be seen within global and historical context to appreciate its significance, to appreciate what was achieved 100 years ago. Second, my other premise is that a distinction must be made between a revolutionary process such as 1917 and the betrayal, the betrayal of a revolutionary process in the late 1920s. And the betrayal of a revolution need not impugn the revolution itself. The betrayal or overthrow of reconstruction, for example, radical reconstruction in the United States after the Civil War doesn't impugn what was achieved in that 10-year period, nor does the overthrow of the Paris Commune in April of 1871 impugn what the communists achieved in the 2 and 1 half years. And the same can be said about subsequent developments such as the events in Tahrir Square in 2011. So that's an assumption I'm making. And we can have a discussion later on about what happened, what explains the betrayal of the Bolshevik Revolution in the late 1920s. In other words, a counterrevolution is not prima facie evidence for something inherently problematic that something is inherently problematic with the revolutionary process itself. That has to be proven rather than assumed. I argue that political contingency best explains the Stalinist counterrevolution. All right. The big picture, the world in which we live today, that's what I begin with. And I'm referring, of course, to the crisis of late capitalism. And this is the world in which we live and which the defenders of capitalism admit that this is an unprecedented development. Some of them have taken the calling it secular stagnation. And many of them admit they have no solutions to the crisis. And there's been a political reaction. The Trump election, in many ways, along with other elections in Western Europe and elsewhere, are many ways, reactions, political reactions to the crisis. And what capitalists have in store to solving this crisis is what they've always done in the past. And that is to take it out on the backs of working people. And what's going on in Greece at this moment and also in Puerto Rico at this particular moment is what is foreshadowed for working people in the more advanced capitalist world. The working class is back at the central stage of politics. There were many people in the academy who had written off the working class and thought that that was a development from the past. And if you're in the world of postmodernism and you simply were not prepared for this particular moment in which we are living. The task for the working class then is in order to avoid this crisis being taken out of the hides of working people is how to take power. How does the working class take power? That's the question. And in my opinion, that's the significance of what the Bolsheviks did in October of 1917. I think for much of the post-World War II politics the revolutionary process was in the so-called Third World. And the Third World, in my opinion, that revolutionary process is in many ways has been having for quite some time. And the capitalist crisis that we are talking about now means that the working class in the advanced capitalist world becomes more and more at the center of the stage of world politics. And for that reason, it's my view that the big political problem that our side faces within the advanced capitalist countries is what is the relationship between the revolutionary process and electoral and parliamentary politics? If there was one thing that the Occupy movement revealed was how do you negotiate the streets and the electoral and parliamentary process? And this is a reality, unlike, I think, for the Third World, where the electoral and parliamentary process never had the weight and the significance it did for all kinds of historical reasons within the advanced capitalist countries. And I think it's important for us, we have an obligation to go back and understand where parliament's come from. And I can't think of any better place to begin that by beginning here in the UK, beginning in England, going back to the origins of parliamentary processes. And I think the English Civil Wars is a good place to begin. What the level has taught us, and especially what Gerard Winstanley taught us in 1649 about the limits of what would be called later bourgeois democracy. The fact that to as long as, and this was Winstanley's argument, as long as social inequalities exist, popular sovereignty can't be realized. As long as social inequalities exist, popular sovereignty, true democracy, can't be realized. And that insight, I think, is exactly the insight that the young Karl Marx and Frederick Engels arrived at 200 years later. How to make use of the electoral parliamentary process, I think there's no better place to begin than with Lenin. Lenin and what the Bolsheviks did over the course of not just 1917, but beginning in 1905 and 1906. And with Lenin drawing on the lessons from Marx and Engels, and especially, in my opinion, a most important document called the 1850 address of the central authority of the League, the Communist League, in 1850. I argue that that document, the 11-page document, served as the playbook for what Lenin would employ in 1917, if not 19 before. Lenin termed it revolutionary parliamentarism. That is, the electoral parliamentary road, not as an end in itself, not as an end in itself, but as a means to an end. To treat the electoral parliamentary arena as an end in itself is what Marx and Engels once referred to as parliamentary cretinism. To think that the electoral parliamentary road was the way to take power was to suffer from parliamentary cretinism. And I've supplemented, I think it's original, I've supplemented parliamentary cretinism with the term called voting fetishism. And voting fetishism is a mistaken belief that when you actually vote, you're actually exercising power. When you vote, what you're doing is registering a preference for something. Registering a preference is very important, is very important, but it's not exercising power. Power has to be taken. And even when we engage in mass protests and mass demonstrations, what we're doing is registering preferences. We're not exercising power. And what Lenin understood, drawing on the lessons of Marx and Engels is that the revolutionary path to power involves the actual taking of power. And at the same time, engaging in electoral and parliamentary activities can be an extremely important measure of when, when to resort to arm struggle. That was one of the central lessons in Marx and Engels' document of 1850. And Engels made it very clear and subsequent pronouncements and so on. And I claim that no one understood that argument better than Lenin. So when the opportunity arose in 1905, 1906, to engage in electoral and parliamentary politics, Lenin jumped in at the occasion. And for the next 10 years, from 1905 to 1915, Lenin devoted a tremendous amount of time and energy to the electoral and parliamentary process. Again, not as an end in itself, but as a means in it to decide when is the most propitious, when is the best time for the working class to actually take power. So Lenin organized the parliamentary fractions of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in the four Dumas, in the four state Dumas, between 1906 and 1915, including organizing the Menshevik deputies in those four state Dumas. And Lenin took elections seriously. Lenin couldn't get enough of election returns. He had a pension for number crunching. Lenin loved to crunch numbers. And crunching those numbers, it gave him a sense about where's the strength of the revolutionary forces, what are our opponents doing, and most important, to help educate, to lay out your ideas. Again, if you go back to the document, the 1850 address of Marx and Engels, you will see in that 11-page document exactly what Lenin would put into play. An important ingredient in that strategy was independent working class political action. For Marx and Engels, that was the chief lesson of the 1848, 1850 revolutions of European spring, only if the working class is organized independently, independently of the bourgeoisie, in the petty bourgeoisie, is it possible for the working class to take power. And this is, in many ways, at the heart of the debates between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks, because the Mensheviks kept wanting to bend, kept wanting to bend to the petty bourgeoisie in the liberals. And Lenin wouldn't permit it. He wouldn't listen to it. He argued against it vociferously and so on about the importance of independent working class political action. So when 1917, February happened in 1917, the Bolsheviks, I'll argue, based upon that 10-year previous experience, were in the best position of all the currents, of all the currents to take advantage of the new opportunities. And this is why Lenin, in one of his first pronouncements and criticisms of the provisional government, he's lambasting the provisional government in February, March of 1917 for not allowing elections. Lenin wants elections. He loves elections. He wants elections to take place, because this is an opportunity for the working class to begin to assess its weight, its strength, and so on, to be able to test its ideas and to debate and compete with other forces. And in October, by the time you get to October, on the basis of these elections, Lenin is making the case based upon the elections to the Dumas and to the Soviets, not just the Soviets, but also to the Dumas. And looking at those elections, this is when Lenin calculates that this would be the best time to carry out the armed struggle to overthrow the provisional government. And for Lenin, we can get into this as Faisy mentioned. For Lenin, the best form of representative democracy is what was realized in the Soviets. The Soviets, for Lenin, were another example of what had happened in the Paris commune. For Lenin, the Paris commune is crucially an understanding representative democracy and his understanding of what's involved. But Lenin is employing both the Dumas, both the Dumas, and the Soviets to count their forces. So on October the 25th, I argued that the overthrow of the provisional government has done relatively bloodless. It's relatively bloodless, exactly because the Bolsheviks have been able to calculate on the basis of elections to the Dumas and to the Soviets what their strength was. And most importantly, of course, is the Dumas. The Soviets, I'm sorry, the Soviets representing the soldiers and the sailors. The soldiers and the sailors, Soviets. Those were crucial. And for Lenin, the soldiers and the sailors were workers in peasants in uniform. And having an idea of what the soldiers and the sailors are thinking politically was crucial in understanding the relative ease in which the provisional government was overthrown in October 1917. Lenin also paid attention to the constituent assembly. Contrary to the slanders about the constituent assembly, Lenin took the constituent assembly election seriously. He was one of the candidates. He was on the slate, the Bolshevik slate. He was very, very, he took those elections so seriously that it became important when the election returns, the electoral turns of the constituent assembly elections finally became available at the end of 1918. Lenin pulled over the data, the election returns of the constituent assembly to calculate the likely outcome of the Civil War. And he accurately predicted that the Soviet government would be victorious in the Civil War based upon the election returns, based upon the election returns to the constituent, to the constituent assembly. There are other important insights that we haven't had a time to get into about the Lenin's insight 1901, his little article, which is a preview to what is to be done, in which he argues that in a revolutionary situation, if the working class is not organized, it doesn't have its own political party. When a revolutionary explosion takes place, it's too late. It's too late to try to construct one in the middle of a revolutionary explosion. If you haven't prepared a editor, it's too late to try to create a revolutionary party in the middle of a revolutionary upsurge. Lenin's final pronouncement on the use of the electoral and parliamentary arena for revolutionary purposes, and this is when he comes up with the term revolutionary parliamentaryism. He's trying to distinguish that from what later social democracy, 21st century social democracy would understand those activities to be. His left wing communism, if you haven't read it recently, go back and read left wing communism. He's trying to make a case. He's trying to make an appeal to parties in the West, in Western Europe, and so on, to take the electoral parliamentary road seriously, but understand it's not an end in itself, but it's a means in it. And by this time, he's in critique with the anarchists who argue that involvement in the electoral parliamentary arena is simply a dead end. Marx and Engels had already argued with the anarchists on this particular issue, and Lenin elaborates on those arguments. One of the issues that Lenin had to deal with during the elections is the less evilism. He has fascinating writings on less evil politics. What happens when you've got a real fascist-like party? Do you block with the liberals to prevent the fascist-like party from being elected? Fascinating, fascinating discussions on the problem of less evilism. I mention this because this is one of the big problems that working class parties face in the world today. Certainly in the United States, the case I know better, the problem of a democratic party is the less evil. This is one of the conundrums, the constant conundrums for the progressive forces in the United States. I'm getting close to the end of my time, and so I want to end here and simply repeat that I think the lessons of what the Bolsheviks did in 1917 are as relevant today, if not more so, especially for those of us where we have opportunities. What didn't exist oftentimes in third-world countries, where we have opportunities to employ the electoral revolutionary arena, but to understand it not as an end in itself, not as an end in itself, as modern-day social democracy tends to do, but as a means turn in. Thank you, August. So now we'll hear from Tamás Kraus. Tamás is a professor in the Department of East European Studies in the Faculty of Humanities at Eutobus, Lorand University in Budapest. I hope I've got that right. He's one of the editors of a Hungarian quarterly journal of social critique and culture called Esmalet, and he's written a number of books on Bolshevism, The National Question, Stalin, Lenin, and Lukacs, and his book, Reconstructing Lenin, an Intellectual Biography, won the Isaac Deutsche Memorial Prize in 2015. And I should say, so he'll read his paper, but Mihai is here as well to translate for the questions afterwards. We'll understand that I need some help from my friend because my English is a very special type of English language, I call it, I call it Hungarian English, but I hope you will understand me. That's why I have to, I never read my lectures, but because of my English I have to read, sorry for that, but I have to read my paper. I choose a little bit funny title, some messages from Eastern Europe on the occasion of the century of the Russian Revolution, on the occasion of the centenary of the Russian Revolution. But I think that you will understand me because last time in November, you understood them. So I'm an optimistic man. The October socialist revolution gives the new power elites the willies in today's Eastern Europe, including the post-soviet states from Moscow to Budapest and so on. Basically, there are some reasons why this historic event is either discredited or hold back in our region in Eastern Europe, including Russia. All these willies follow from the intention to prevent people wanting to fight an alternative to the existing system. We have to know that the new power elite, which expropriated for themselves the accumulated state property that according to the constitution, all the state social disconstitution belong to the generations born after the revolution, wants people to forget even the memory of the Russian Revolution. The memory of the October Revolution drives us to undo everything. First of all, to reverse privatization of 89 change of regime. You remember that, what is it? That is why the revolution is not celebrated in Russia. Instead, any longer, instead, it is discredited by every possible means and is narrowed down to two narratives, to the terrain of violence and or utopia. The liberals and the nationalists exactly know that the October Revolution means a new type of organizational model of society where power is taken away from the capital and bureaucracy and shifted to self-organizing communities of working people, both at the workplaces and in places of living. They do not need either capitalists, either bureaucrats any longer. I saw it even in the 70s and 80s that this fact is decided forever. I don't deny it. The anti-capitalist nature of the revolution here shows itself the most apparently because this new model throws away and destroys capitalist private property and production relations. It comes to light that the question of property is a question of power politics or power, the question of economy, the question of social organization of society at the same time. The October Revolution inherited accomplished Marx words. The knell of capitalist private property sounds, the expropriators are expropriated. This is the main message of the Russian revolution, lest we forget about its experiences. No wonder that the ruling classes in Eastern Europe are threatened even by the memory of the revolution. But we don't forget that by the end of the 1920s, it became clear even in the wider social strata that the socialist revolution of October, as Trotsky said, had frozen. This was widely documented in the contemporary literature at that time. I just refer here, for example, to the famous novel of Ilf and Petrov entitled The 12 Chairs. I think that everybody can read it in English. According to different interpretations, the Soviet revolution was damned or the Soviet revolution became savage or the revolution it degenerated or simply transformed into a modernizing revolution or the revolution transformed bureaucratic counterrevolution. The different definitions indicate different convictions, theories and concepts. You should know it. For example, in Lenin's book, Nikolai Ustralov, the former propaganda chief of white admiral Kolchak, was the first after the defeat of Kolchak, who glorified Lenin as the hero of the Russian modernizing revolution and argued that he needs to be placed to the pantheon of the Russian national heroes, heroes because he led Russia from the Middle Ages to the New Age. According to this, Lenin simultaneously embodies Peter the Great, Napoleon, Mirabeau, Danton, Pugachev and Robespierre together. In spite of all his admiration and praises, Ustralov is, however, silent on the most important and historically most original part of the legacy of Lenin and the October Revolution, its socialist character. He writes, as if he were the true master of the typical historians and ideologists of the contemporary age, who in the best case consider the aims of October to be utopian or in the worst case to compare Nazism with communism as if they were two forms of evil in modern history. American, English, ideologists, you know, all the time deal with this ideological fortification and our Hungarian ideologists also and Russians. The most significant and lasting evidence of the historical survival of the socialist character of October is the Soviet humanist culture which never broke with the revolution. This aspect of human development is particularly important for the international left because this was the starting point of its criticism of the deformed structures, the generated structures of Soviet development, the Gulag and the bureaucratic autocracy. First and foremost, the Russian Revolution realized the formerly, in quotation marks, utopian aspirations and ambitions of the lower social strata in many places of the world. The abolishment of illiteracy, unemployment, the extreme social inequalities, the introduction of free education and healthcare, the emancipation of women and minorities, et cetera. For example, you know that women had election rights in Soviet Russia after October Revolution, the second day, and homosexuals were free. Lenin colleague in the first Soviet government, I mentioned in today we can say minister of foreign affairs, he was a homosexual that wasn't a problem in the Soviet government in the first period of the Soviet development. I think that this is also very important even today. So, for a historical moment, millions of people believed that they are capable of creating a more human civilization which is open to the realization of a society without oppression, with social self-government and the liberation of wage labor, open to production without capitalists, summarizing. The humanist fundamental values of the revolution, social freedom, social equality, cooperative communal economy, grasp people's fantasy and soul at any place of the world. The October Revolution has a historical experience and memory as the methodology of the communal transformation of the world that survived the failure of state socialism as a practical experiment. And the other hand, the October Revolution had an enormous universal impact by giving fresh impetus to the national liberating movement and the anti-colonial struggle even until today. This influence originated in also in the triumph of over-Nazi Germany. All these, however, cannot divert our attention from the great dilemmas of the post-revolutionary era which Lenin, after Kluczewski, summarized in the following. Even Peter the Great drove barbarism out of Russia through barbaric means. The question which has been left to the present age is the following. Is it possible to drive out barbarism through non-barbaric means? I cannot offer an answer, but I'm convinced that the objective reasons and conditions of a new revolution, albeit in different forms and stages, can be found in many regions of the world system. And this is not an unconditionally optimistic conclusion. We have to put the question, namely, what is the greater utopia? To believe in the improvement of global capitalism or the ability of human civilization to surpass it. And at the end, I would like to say two words on Lenin's heritage today if you can follow my English. You understand? Great. Two words. The basic awareness that grew more determined in the course of Lenin's political practice was that... No, it happens very often. No, it's a no problem. Every day, it's no problem. So, not really. The basic awareness that grew more determined in the course of Lenin's political practice was that the social revolution and the transition to communism was becoming concretely possible. Because of this, Lenin's political heritage as a historical variant of Marxism is unique and unrepeatable. On the other hand, the original experience of revolutionary Syrian action, its methodology, played an undeniable, colossal role in the history of the 20th century. In our own time, under less than promising circumstances, there are attempts to refurbish Lenin's Marxism for the anti-globalist movement. The main reason for this is that the Russian revolutionary tradition of Marxism is the only one that offered for the time at least an alternative to capitalism. It alone made a bridge in the walls of capitalism, even if today that bridge seems to have been mended. The world situation in the last two decades demonstrates that the global dominance of capital has engendered new forms of resistance. These didn't write off Marxism as a theory and a movement. Indeed, they could not and instead in the search for alternatives, they keep running into Lenin's Marxism every step of the way. Thus, if we talk of Marxism, the stakes are higher than we may think for this heritage. This is the primacy of Lenin's Marxism is not a thing of the past. Slavoj Zizek has summarized the problem on Marx's footing. To repeat Lenin doesn't mean that we must repeat what he achieved, but rather what he was not able to achieve. By now, every serious sociologist and politician, he wrote, even Vatslav Haver admits, as Zizek notes, that bourgeois democracy has exhausted its own resources, that it is incapable of resolving the world's basic problems. But if Lenin makes this claim, then he is immediately accused of totalitarianism. Lenin's topicality resides in that he transformed his own historical experiences into a set of theoretical concepts which undermines and destroys any justification of bourgeois society. And in spite of the contradictions involved, provides a tool for those who still think in terms of the possibility of another more human world. Thank you. Everyone's very good with timing. Okay, so last we'll have Tarak. Tarak Ali has been a leading figure on the international left since the 1960s. He was central to the student movement and the anti-Vietnam War movement at the time, and he's written extensively on world history and politics. His works include The Obama Syndrome, The Clash of Fundamentalisms, and The Extreme Center, all published by Verso, and his forthcoming book, which you can get leaflets for on your way out if you haven't already, is The Dilemmas of Lenin, Terrorism, War, Empire, Love, Revolution. I think it'll be coming out in May this year. His contributions encompass film and theater scripts, novels, and published conversations. For many years, he's been an editor of New Left Review, and he's also a regular contributor to national media outlets and various magazines and newspapers. So, Tarak. Thank you. I'm not going to repeat what my colleagues have said because it's pointless. I agree in general with what Tamai said about Lenin. What I want to talk about is the impact of the Russian Revolution on the 20th century world. Because we can, you know, discuss many times what happened to the revolution, all the horrible things that were done in the 30s, etc., etc. But it's more interesting. We know all that, and that is the only thing that is effectively written about these days. But the most important thing about the Russian Revolution that needs to be understood is this. Of all the major revolutions that took place over the last centuries in European or Euro-Atlantic history, if one counts the American Revolution, the Russian Revolution was the last and probably the most important, even though it's disappeared from course lists or is discussed in a very cavalier way. It's not people are not encouraged to read or write about it, etc. This is why I feel that even writing about the Russian Revolution, not to mention Lenin is in today's world an act of resistance, intellectual resistance to society where memory is constant, historical memory is constantly under attack. One brief point about the Russian Revolution, what differentiates it from the previous two big revolutions in European history, the English and the French revolutions is that these revolutions were not accidental but were revolutions that probably would have taken place sooner or later at some stage regardless of the characters involved. The point I'm making is that Danton, Robespierre and the person who inherited this mantle in uniform, Napoleon would have found other people to take their places. The same is probably true of the English Revolution. Cromwell was after all planning, fed up, disgusted with the state of things in this country. He was planning to settle in New England to retreat, to go leave this country alone and take his family there. In other words, become a migrant if not a refugee. Napoleon was thinking seriously just prior to the outbreak of the Revolution of going and seeking service in the Tsarist Imperial Army. That's where he thought he would be able to play a good role which he probably would have been able to since he would not have confronted that army in the future. The Russian Revolution is a conscious revolution. It is made by people who have determined that this is the way they want to go. And it's in this that Lenin plays an absolutely key role. I mean the role of individuals in history is hotly debated amongst liberals, Marxists, conservatives alike. It's an interesting subject. And I would say that without Lenin's presence there would have been no socialist revolution in Russia. There would have been a revolution of sorts. Whether that revolution would have lasted, we don't know. Or for how long? Because one of the things that has to be answered I think very strongly today is the impression given by the dominant ideology that had this Bolshevik monstrosity not existed the movement after February 1917 would have slowly created in Russia a democratic state leaving aside the fact that technically speaking there were no democratic states in the world at the time. Britain, France, etc. were hardly democratic since half the population women were denied the right to vote. So it was a very truncated democracy even then. But leaving that aside the notion that this would have gently flowed into the river of democracy, etc. doesn't make sense if you understand what the situation in Russia was. The two alternatives that emerged in late 1917 especially after September was not Lenin or some abstract form of democracy it was Lenin or military dictatorship led by Kornilov, Kolchak, Denikin backed by the Ant-Ant bars and designed to throw everything back and had that happened you probably would have seen a Judeo side in that Russia before you observed it in Germany. Because anti-Semitism was rife the black hundreds were organized from the Tsarist palace organized by generals organized by many of those who later participated in the Civil War. So this is a notion that needs really to be dealt with and done away with that had they not taken power the alternative would somehow have been incredibly pleasant and glittering. That is anyone who's read Russian history and serious conservative historians actually acknowledge this. That is not the case. It would not have happened. So this revolution, the second aspect of it is carried through as the first of a chain of revolutions that are going to completely transform Europe. They write all the Bolsheviks, left Mensheviks and are convinced that Russia on its own cannot push through everything that needs to be pushed through in order to make the transition to socialism. For that they need one or two other big European countries in particular Germany. The German revolution is what the Bolshevik leadership is backing on. And when that revolution doesn't take place for contingent reasons, there's a debate too on that. Why didn't it happen? And there are a variety of reasons. But one reason it didn't take place is because the rulers of Germany and the rulers of Europe and the rulers of the United States were only too aware of what was likely to happen if the war wasn't quickly brought to an end and the local left in Germany was not crushed. That was partially their response to the Russian Revolution. So they made sure that that happened. And the same people in many cases who carried out the executions of, assassinations of Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebner were the ones who participated in and promoted the triumph of fascism in Germany. So these things are related and we can't separate one from the other. Despite all the horrors that happened after the Russian Revolution, some things were preserved. And one of those things, as Thomas has pointed out, was in how ever-neuter, truncated form the Red Army, which effectively destroyed the backbone of the Third Reich during the Second World War. The two key battles, Kursk and Stalingrad were bombed by this army, after which it was impossible for the Germans' fascism to rise again. This, too, is virtually ignored now. You know, it was Private Ryan's war. The Russians didn't play a big role in it at all. I mean, if you ask people why did we win the war, all sorts of reasons will be given. That's the thing worth understanding. The third thing, and the most important, of course, is that the impact of this revolution was not simply in Europe. The Russian Revolution created a new wave of nationalist revolutionaries, communist revolutionaries all over the world, primarily in China and in India and throughout South America. The candidate for the left in the Ecuadorian presidential elections, who won the first round of the elections last week, his name, in case you didn't know, is Lenin Moreno. And I hope he wins the second round, too, next week's time, but in any case, so the impact of this revolution was very deep and very profound. And the Chinese Revolution was, of course, very different from the Russian Revolution in the sense that forced by defeat, history, Japanese invasion, the Chinese revolutionaries had to go into the countryside of their army there and fight a long war based on the peasants, which got them peasant support almost from that time onwards, from the late 20s onwards, and they took the cities with popular support, but with the support also of an overwhelming majority of the population. The Russian Revolution was essentially an urban affair. The peasants were very recalcitrant, pathetic to semi-anarchists, right-wing anarchist groups like the old social revolutionaries, but what radicalized the peasants was the First World War. They were the troops, they were the soldiers, and as they saw what was happening to them, to their families at home, famines, usage as cannon fodder, the combination of Bolshevik agitation and the peasants who in uniform were feeling the same thing on the battlefields did it. I think the imperialist war, the First World War fought by the different imperial powers, broke up the Tsarist state as it broke up for other empires by the way, but it provided such a savage blow against the Tsarist state that there was no way a determined political party was not going to win. And it's the combination of these events that made the Russian Revolution and it's the staying power of the state created by their revolution despite all the criticisms one can make of it that made it possible for the revolutions in Asia, the Chinese Revolution, the Vietnamese Revolution, subsequently in South America, the Cuban Revolution, the last of the revolutions that developed as a result of, in a long term, of the Russian Revolution and in the Second World War, the Yugoslav Revolution, the only revolution which took place. There could have been one in Greece as well, vetoed and sabotaged. And I don't mention the immediate wave of revolutions which happened in Europe, with uprisings in Budapest, a seizure of power by Belakon, by the Munich uprising, by the uprising in Berlin, etc., etc. Internationally, the Russian Revolution was responsible for the victories in China, for the victories in Vietnam, simply on the level of demagoguery. Even when the advice being given by Moscow to the Chinese leadership or the Vietnamese leadership was totally wrong, those leaders had enough power and enough independence not to reply and fight with Russia openly but to do what they considered had to be done. They were not dogmatic in that sense. And of course the Cubans likewise, they only came to socialism after the Revolution and were kept going, as we know with the support of the post-Soviet state, of the Soviet state. That's what kept those revolutions going. So the 20th century was Lenin's century. It was the century of the Russian Revolution. And there's no point in denying it. It's now history. Just like even though it's closer to us, it is history now. And we study it, or we should study it like we study, though we don't enough, the English Revolution or the French Revolution. It's part of that great wave of revolutions that took place. And if you even compare what happened after the defeats of these other revolutions I mean we know perfectly well what happened. That after the restoration and later Britain became the sort of stronghold of reaction determined to crush any upheaval that was taking place in Europe. After the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo in 1815, the Congress in Vienna, the Congress of Victors said the one thing that will never happen in Europe again is another revolution. And yet 1848 there were revolutions. In 1871 there was the Paris Commune. In 1905 there was the first Russian Revolution. In 1917 there were two Russian revolutions. So it didn't quite work out like that. Now by saying this, I'm not arguing or saying that we're going to have repeats of these revolutions. No revolution repeats another. They are all different in character for a variety of reasons. They have some things in common. They have their radical phases. They have their counter-radical phases. But they don't stop. And revolutions are what makes history more forwards. And even when it moves backward it can't move or it doesn't move as backward as it was prior to the revolution. The last attempt to do this, of course, is in our lifetimes. That from the 90s to now euphoric over the fact that the Soviet Union had ceased to exist or that the Chinese had embraced the capitalist road, everything that had been accepted by the social democratic parties with the approval largely of the capitalist classes that dominated was that in order to keep the revolution at bay you have to make reforms. You create your health services that offer free health. You give free education to people. You make all these things free so that people feel, well, what's the need for a revolution? And whereas in the Soviet Union after Khrushchev and in much of Eastern Europe you had a system of what I call social dictatorships, political dictatorships with a social base that was effectively social in terms of subsidized necessities on every level which people in Eastern Europe missed today. There's no doubt about it. So after the collapse of all that they said we can do what we want to do. It was very interesting. Just after the Wall Street crash of 2008 there was a big discussion, what are we going to do? They didn't go back. They refused to go back. They refused to even agree to a tiny bit of social democracy and I think an American economist, Robert Reich who was in Clinton's government, I saw him being interviewed in 2008 in the United States and he was asked and he said, well, the reason we don't need to do anything or he said the reason they don't need to do anything is very simple. There's no alternative. We had to in the 30s because there was Russia. Now there's no alternative. We can do what we want and we get away with it. So privatizations and the way in which society is run today on every level virtually are a result of the fact that there is no alternative even a bad alternative an anti-capitalist alternative. So they feel they can get away with murder and the people who have challenged them are of course the social movements with varying degrees of successes and the people who've challenged them more effectively are the right, the reactionary semi-populist right-wing forces mobilized by politicians of the right and extreme right which have given us Trump in the United States making very exaggerated promises to his people which he will not be able to fulfill and we'll see what happens then and we are now watching from across the channel what is going on in France with the mainstream center parties collapsing around their ears Holland for weeks was on 4%. I mean these rogues in this country attack Corbin for being on whatever percent he is they don't look at what their own politicians are on who've created this situation and this is why in some ways the debates in the Russian Revolution the aphorisms of Lenin one in particular comes to mind politics is concentrated economics and how can we argue against that? I mean you look at it all around that is what politics is which is why democracy itself is under attack because all the parties offer or mainstream parties offer the same thing the right basically offers the same thing but they add to it some populist demands like helping the poor, creating a new infrastructure Marine Le Pen says we're not going to far from more privatizations we're going to take back what should be the heritage of the French people which is nationalized industries state control of this, that and the other she says that and yet in all the constituencies which the Le Pen has won the local, the mayor's elections and the cities they've cancelled free milk so you know it's very interesting the rhetoric they're using and what they'll be able to deliver and if they don't deliver anything there will be mayhem both in the US and in parts of Europe where the far right is growing not to mention this country with its current government so it's this crisis because while communism may have disappeared or what was called communism or the Soviet Union or all that world the world is still in a state of acute crisis capitalism hasn't disappeared and the arguments that were developed by the Bolshevik leaders and theoreticians Lenin primarily, Batrotsky, Bukharin against capitalism still hold but the changes taking place in the social structures in the sociology of the western world are such that other means means related more to the needs of the day to day bearing in mind what has happened to the world will be required in order to defeat capitalism it is no good having a political anti-capitalism that is what we have on offer I say this, you know, I support all these movements and demonstrations and resistance but to have a political anti-capitalist movement is a contradiction in terms so at some stage, at some level we will need political instruments we will need political parties of a new type and as long as that remains true and that will remain true as long as capitalism exists then Lenin's insistence on the primacy of politics on the primacy of the political that you fight people ultimately by challenging their ideas and not simply by actions but through ideas will remain a necessity for our world Thanks to all of our speakers so we'll open up the floor to questions don't feel like you have to make a long drawn out contribution you can ask a very simple question what you might think is a very basic question yeah, we'll just take a few of them and then get our panellists to respond okay, so let's take this gentleman in the front here and then you my question is for Tarek Sab my question is for Tarek Sab and I wanted to ask about you compare the Russian revolution to what happened and then compare it to what happened in India later on so if you were referring to the anti-colonial movement don't you think that that was strictly or largely elitist in character or if you were talking about the movements of Indira Gandhi and Horto Sab then weren't they just populist movements and nothing more? Thanks Sorry, can you repeat succinctly the question? I wanted to ask, you compare what happened in Russia and then what happened in India later on just to clarify what were you referring to? I'm honest, yeah We'll just take a few and then... Yeah, but I would like to get the question though I'm sorry, you know what happened in Russia after the revolution in Russia Yes, that's what you want to know, yeah So there's a woman at the back there Did I see a hand? A woman's hand? No? Okay, there The man in the blue sweater Thank you Thank you very much, it was really interesting and I have a couple of questions for the panel So the first one is regarding the role of violence is seen as force to bring about the alternative society Could you speak into the mic? Yes, sorry Because like as Engels Marx wrote, well Engels in particular violence or force is a midway of every old society pregnant with a new one So I want to know your opinion about the role of force in bringing about the alternative society So the alternative to capitalist society And then the second one is to what extent is possible and conceivable to undertake the way towards this new society by a single actor a single individual or actor like in the international system for instance And if not, is it needed a block of actors to work together to make this possible? Thank you Thanks There's a gentleman over there Just there, behind you Kiran There, yeah Hi there, I just wanted to ask the panel First of all, thank you very much for the talk It was great I wanted to ask the panel Derek Ali spoke about the world being in crisis right now Especially with the Trump phenomenon, etc What were you hoping for, slash thinking How would you assume any counter Not revolution, but anything that happens as a result of this Any left pressure, any reactionary circumstance or occasion, how do you think it will come about and what do you think needs to be done Thank you Thanks First of all, my name is Amanullah Khan I congratulate you that you have such a learned scholarly speaker and a comrade known worldwide for his revolutionary ideas What I want to ask him, he knows a lot and he has spoken very well that does he foresee a kind of a tidal way of a world revolution and if he really foresees it how long does it take what does he think, how long will it take How many countries will come under revolutionary sway, you know because the aggression of imperialism and other powers are also becoming very, very aggressive and more aggressive, you know Okay, thanks and the woman beside him, yep Hello, thank you for your talk Could I just ask if you have any thoughts about Lenin's writings in the work of Ali Shariati and the Iranian Revolution and your thoughts on that Thank you Thanks Thank you for the presentations and the speeches My question is, I'm here I have questions basically on the question of modernization and economic production, productivity I was reading a couple of days ago Lenin's writing on the move towards the higher stage of communism and it was basically the whole, not the whole project is based on the requirement of having such a high productivity economically that the withering away of the state is possible but the disconnection between the manual intellectual labor is in the end abolished and all that so there is a lot of emphasis and a lot of importance for economic productivity now that people around the world are thinking from the left side how to be critical about capitalism and capitalist development how can we, what kind of alternative can the left think of in terms of not emphasizing on productivity and all the degradation of society and the environment that comes with it at the same time having a project based on increasing productivity in order to emancipate and liberate society so this is the dilemma that echo feminists or anarchists always have as a first question for socialist revolutionaries and I want to know your opinions about it Should we get the question? Should we start with answering the question? Yeah, I'm not sure I fully understood all of the questions but there was one about what happened after I think there was a couple of questions related to what happened after 1917 I subscribe to the view basically Leon Trotsky's analysis that a counter-revolution eventually took place in the Soviet Union that became increasingly visible by the end of the 1920s and what that counter-revolution consisted of was the usurpation of political power which had briefly been in the hands of workers and peasants the usurpation of that power by the bureaucracy and in fact, Lenin's last pronouncement shortly before his final incapacitating stroke his characterization of the Soviet Union was a bureaucratically distorted worker state Lenin never called the Soviet Union socialist he never called it a socialist society and he was simply following the lead of Marx and Engels who also understood that in order for a socialist outcome to take place in the Soviet Union the Russian revolution would have to move westward it would have to move to a major capitalist power and Germany was the likely place that could happen indeed as we were discussing as Tark mentioned earlier Germany came closer three times having a socialist revolution and the defeat in my opinion the defeat of those efforts paved the way for the fascist solution so the outcome of the Soviet Union was a counter-revolution political power had briefly been in the hands of workers and peasants the bureaucracy had usurped it and that's what was in place it was a Stalin's bureaucratic cast and it had international implications if we have time we can talk about the common turn what happened within the communist international that would have in my opinion negative features eventually for many of the aspiring revolutionaries in other countries in the third world Thanks, Thomas I asked a lot of words behind and I think that I can say something may be interesting on the different questions I tried to answer on the different questions together starting point of Lenin and the Russian Marxists and not only Bolsheviks but Mensheviks before 1917 that any kind of revolution in Russia even when Marxist Mensheviks also saying so that revolution can be anti-capitalist nothing else this came out of the specific historical situation of Russia this revolution can be repeated even today, tomorrow, any time in Russia we need only one very important system of circumstances at the consciousness of the working class people but who will follow the communists today after the collapse of state socialism it's a very big question how to organize people after this failure this is the question and nobody knows the answer because working class movement has to find out something big political parties and important political parties do not exist without working class movement Lenin was nothing as a political force before 1917 but they had an organization which could meet that time the biggest working class and peasant movements in the world you cannot order or you cannot create a revolution just because you desire it yeah, you understand that? which one should you know? Nazakaz in Russian order, on order you cannot make revolution on order to order, thank you to order without working class movement there will never be any kind of revolution you see, I am against the mystification of the working class the working class can support even fascist movements you see, we know the German history it depends on us that this working class movement which kind of direction we choose in Hungary for example today I write these fascists in the parliament at 85% you know this is a fact and then we have to think about that and another one, the community as a starting point of Lenin against capitalism you see, I admired the movement on Saturday I spoke about that occupying movement in New York 100 million people in Italy under Berlusconi many years etc etc the capital is not afraid of this kind of occupying they are not afraid of occupying of streets and squares etc this is a very good thing for the media very big business, television Lenin knew that the capital is afraid of one thing when the Soviets, when the workers' councils occupy the work places this is the only thing in Italy, as a historian I can say see, Spain 36, 37, 38 Russia, Hungary, 1956 etc Italy, 1920, 1921 before Mussolini, why came Mussolini because of the workers' councils etc and after that workers control the work places you can occupy the different things because the working class and the people has adequate organizations this is most important in theory, at Marx and Lenin socialism's theory of Marx and Lenin the party doesn't exist as a term in socialism no party no any kind of bureaucratic apparatus only before why found out the American politology at last sentence that we lived 40 years in Eastern Europe in communism even Janosz Kada never spoke about that he said that we try to construct socialism even Brezhnev he was not a clever guy Sulslob either but he was the main ideologist never spoke, they found out instead of communism developed socialism you see because they knew that this is not communism why they found out this word to discredit everything that's all, they wanted politologists and our finance people by the regime, by the system to discredit everything but his leftist socialist etc, the October revolution Tarek? after the second world war and the changes brought about it there was a reformist wave in the Eastern European countries and inside the Soviet Union itself it was after all the 20th party congress and Khrushchev speech denouncing the crimes of Stalin and opening up the Gulag like releasing political prisoners which created a new situation inside the Soviet Union itself as well and it triggered off the Hungarian revolution of 1956 where people said fine we accept all that and we want a different form of government and they were arguing in 1956 there was a Soviet in Budapest basically they were arguing for democratic rights that is what they argued for as they did in Czechoslovakia in 1968 and Lenin in one of his last writings was very very sharp he said we didn't know everything very sharply, we thought we knew everything we didn't know everything we made mistakes and serious mistakes and the state he said the wretched despicable czarist state bureaucracy that we wanted to destroy not only have we not been able to destroy it but this bureaucracy is proving attractive to segments of the Bolshevik party itself that's what he wrote and he said in order to start again we have to renew, constantly renew the revolution, the people who came after Stalin's death you know Khrushchev Gorbachev I mean Khrushchev was not stupid but he didn't have the guts or the power to renew the revolution that would have meant an upheaval and Gorbachev renewed it unfortunately by handing it over to global capitalism thinking they'd give him a few crumbs so there were possibilities which were not taken advantage of and the Russian workers Soviet workers didn't feel they had a stake in this regime anymore they didn't come out there were no huge mobilizations on demonstrations for either side it's not the case that there were big demonstrations in Russia saying yes we want to be ruled by oligarchs, no that didn't happen but nor were there big mobilizations saying we want the other because people could see the other had failed to offer, the bureaucracy had imploded bankrupt, no ideas left and many of them in the 19th century became oligarchs and bureaucrats former heads of the Young Communist League buying our properties not just in Moscow but in London so that we can't avoid it's happened, there's no good in thinking that anything can be right one of the things Lenin always used to argue was that recognize reality don't make up things if you suffered a defeat say it's a defeat and how to pull out of that defeat and that is the face we're in it's a long long transition to something we're not sure where is it a transition to but I wouldn't I accept what you say about the Occupy movements and the street demonstrations they are small things but it's important they take place because from them people of the Occupy movement try and see well this isn't worked, they're not done they try and see what might work, Bernie Sanders might work so already after the Occupy movement you had in the United States a mass movement of young people but not exclusively young people who accepted that they were socialists but what they meant by that was social democrats but that's a big step forward in the United States and they gathered round to Sanders and here one has to say had Sanders an alternative vision to even create something outside the Democratic Party it would have been a small step forward that's what we, it's the transitions to other transitions, we saw a similar process here with the Corbyn campaign recruiting up to half a million members of the Labour Party, new young members how long it lasts we don't know probably as long as Corbyn lasts inside the Labour Party as its leader it showed a desire of people young people for something different and that I don't think is going to go away of course from there the leap to revolution is huge and as I stress when I first spoke even the Russian Revolution itself even the February Revolution leave alone October might not have happened had Russia not been in the First World War it was that First World War which disintegrated and began to break up Russian society to create February and then a continuation of that war which meant a huge surge of support for the Bolsheviks and by the way it was only when the Bolsheviks had a majority of the two largest elected Soviets in the country Petrograd in Moscow that they decided to make the bid for power and at the same time elections to the constituent assembly were taking place and though the majority of the peasants voted for the social revolutionaries giving them I think about 13 million votes 10 million votes were cast mainly in the cities now 10 million is not a coup d'etat it is a huge huge number of people so this idea it was a coup carried out by a handful how can you do that had it been a coup it wouldn't have worked because two members of the Bolshevik Central Committee opposed to the insurrection had already published its debate what impact did that have? NIL because society had disintegrated to such a large degree they knew what the Bolsheviks were doing they didn't hide it they said it openly we're going to make the revolution they didn't give the date but then two dissident members gave the date that didn't have any impact surveillance both the Bolshevik and Menshevik Central Committees packed with Ukrana, tsare secret police agents some of them played a nasty role did that stop it? No because when there is an elemental mass movement and upheaval it's difficult to stop it because the counter-revolution is temporarily very weak which is why there was hardly any violence in 1917 that came after so this notion of this being anti-democratic is not the case without that support they wouldn't have succeeded in getting any further and that is worth recognizing and the huge tragedy one of the things we haven't discussed is what they did with Lenin after his death was to make him into a Byzantine icon he wasn't even read I've spoken to Muno later members of the Central Committee I said did you ever read Lenin? No he was interpreted for us don't read him so his books weren't read, his writings weren't read where he says very concretely things which assault numerous things that were being done especially on the national question and the right of the Georgians the right of other nationalities for independence he was very strong on that his first big row was on this question and one last point I'll make which is it's true they were banking on the European revolution absolutely true which didn't happen so what did they do? Lenin was still alive when the German Revolution had failed what did they do? I just read a few months ago there was something on my book exchanges between Lenin and Trotsky on what? on India and Trotsky with nothing better to do on his civil war train suddenly has this brainwave in the middle of the night where he thinks there are only 30,000 or so British troops in India occupying India how many volunteers would we need to defeat them? they actually considered sending a special Red Army battalion to defeat and crush the British in India I'm glad they didn't because it wouldn't have been so easy because it was not just the troops but a whole network of alliances the British had built but they were thinking about that they were discussing China and saying just because the European business has ended that doesn't mean the rest of the world isn't there in India it's in their writings so this notion of them being Eurocentric is nonsense it was the least Eurocentric revolution in the world and they wanted it to spread globally Europe they wanted because of its economic development which could be used not just for Russia but for the world at large that is the way they thought that is how their minds worked they didn't like it but they were rock solid internationalists and that's what we must remember about them and celebrate and I say this deliberately because sometimes I get very angry especially in the United States you know we know what Trump is extreme right-wing demagogue etc etc but on some questions he is continuing what other American presidents have done Republicans and Democrats and what angers me is that for many liberal citizens and people who went to occupy who over the eight years of the Obama administration didn't open their mouths let Obama invade seven countries let him drone virtually half the Muslim world is fine or it's not fine but we won't think about it but the minute this idiot comes and starts saying things people get angry and they should get angry but it would have been more difficult for Trump to start doing this had he not inherited the war policies of Nixon Reagan the Russians Bush and Obama because they had been doing that long before him that's what's created the vacuum in which these people rise We'll, Thomas wanted to make a point and August wanted to make a point as well and then we'll take a couple more questions and then we'll wrap up Very shortly three small things Revolution and Putsch the bourgeois historiography writes about the Russian Revolution as a Putsch all the time, this is a common place Kuh, sorry, in English Kuh this Putsch, we say it in Hungarian and in Russian Summer of 1917 10 million workers peasants and soldiers were organized in the Soviets and the Bolshevik Party membership was some thousand maybe some 10,000 people Summer of 1917 and in October 20 million people were organized in the Soviets on different levels what kind of Kuh is it the second this Art Academy of Art in London, very interesting Soviet exhibition but how does the bourgeois propaganda work? The British imperialism is very interesting even in this place they criticize descriptions under the pictures and placards posters, etc that revolutionaries made these kind of mistakes and that kind of mistakes and fame, etc all the idiotism and any words about that the British German, French, American, etc imperialism attacked the Soviet Russia and somebody wrote something about the feminine Russia which was hypocrisy hypocrisy of yours here in England it's great that's great but more sophisticated than the Hungarians in Hungary they lie 25 hours a day, they lie 24, they lie 25 and the third thing the Soviet Union and perspectives about you spoke about the betrayal as a term, maybe you are right but it's not a betrayal this is a class struggle when the upper stratums of the Soviet society the party elite decided to restore the Soviet Union because they wanted their privileges organizing in a new mode privatization, capitalism the second issue of capitalism that was the myth after that and you were absolutely right that they constructed a new Russia which is much worse than the old wars seeing from looking at this development from below I often in Russia this is really a big capitalistic catastrophe after that to repeat and the left wing organization they want to improve capitalism after that that this new capitalism is worse than the old state socialism was who believes in a new capitalist I don't know what, this is not a leftist today I think this is something else you know no good capitalism this is an idiotism, utopianism this has no sense I can't say it because I'm nearly 70 no good capitalism genocidal capitalism exists everywhere this is the world system this is the core of capitalism I think the world became worse more wars, more bloodshed et cetera et cetera and I do not defend the old communist elite do you understand me I see August I just wanted to quickly endorse what Tarek said about the Obama administration which we should never forget about in the protests that have been taking place since the Trump asked him to office one of the things that revolutionary forces have to do is that one they need to go to these protests need to talk to young people and so on and to disabuse them especially of ideas about the democratic party the less evil democratic party raised a question, well if you are against Trump what are you for it's not enough to be Trump what are you actually for so it's important to be at those discussions to remind them about indeed the Obama administration's foreign policy the deportation so Obama at a certain moment in his administration was known as the chief deporter of immigrant workers so what Trump is doing with these deportations is a follow-up to what the Obama administration was doing so the biggest problem we face in the United States politically on the left is the lesser two evils that's the biggest problem that we've got to help people overcome and to really think about what's involved in a real working class a working class alternative to business as usual thanks August thanks August okay I see a question there and there and there and there okay so we'll start with Alpa and then over here we'll just take those questions I think and then and then wrap up so I don't want you shifting in your seats thanks very much I thought it was a great panel I'd just like to ask Tarak Ali the question that I believe this young man in front of you was trying to ask earlier what do you think is the legacy of Lenin in India and I ask this because I think it's a very interesting question given that in India today there is an armed Marxist Leninist Maoist revolutionary struggle still going on that is consistently despite all of its problems and all the problems within it has been fighting before it's low caste, it's Dalits and it's the Vasis and that in May this year will have been burning in the country for 50 years so yeah I'd just like to like you to address his question thanks so there's one up there oh sorry and then you sorry thank you it was a really interesting talk I would like to focus on the thing that Tarak Ali said that after the 90s and especially after the financial crisis it became really obvious that there wasn't an alternative political idea and as Lenin said you have to fight in the political arena and the sphere of ideas and I agree that there wasn't a whole new vision that we had like communists for example but we had little ideas some like things that are now being termed identity politics cultural appropriation the whole privilege discourse and so on and after the failings of what is called in America the left there is a widening debate about if working a working class alternative is compatible with identity politics with this whole discourse and I think this kind of debate is going to be even more present as time passes and I'd like to think I'd like to know what do you think about these questions what are these ideas compatible with a working class alternative or they are a hindrance at the last resort because I think especially in the American left context that's going to be one of the most important debates that are going to happen and then over there and that will be all this is also a question related to the final comment about the politics and the struggle of ideas could you say something about the importance of conflict within the Bolshevik party prior to the Russian Revolution to actually bring about unity within the party because I have a feeling that contemporary struggles were very often based on a unity that is about lowest common denominator and we're very afraid to have conflict within the organizational processes afraid of splits afraid that if you criticize someone's ideas too much you will break the unity and actually that results in a relativism that basically all ideas are equally valid and while everyone may have the right to say their ideas the better ideas have to win themselves out over the less good ideas and that's a political struggle in itself and it seems we're very reluctant to engage in that in contemporary struggles Thanks and the final question over there behind you, yeah Hi, just a final point of what you said I think at the beginning you are all saying that obviously we criticize capitalism we don't have much time now to go further into details it's very unjust and a model of growth and we would like to further on our socialist ideas as you laid out but don't you think that actually unfortunately in this historical moment Trump attacks it the growth of China capitalism is the winning model which is being exported in all over the world and let's not forget the dictates from IMF and the structural adjustments say on Greece or Puerto Rico I think as you said in the beginning what are happening these days though there is strict progress and so on and so forth I don't think there's been a real alternative to it so I believe unfortunately capitalism is still a force to deal with and it's not being defeated at all Thanks, ok so we'll go August Tamash and Tarek but can I just say two minutes each and then we'll wrap up the question of internal debate and democracy within the Bolsheviks I think the Bolsheviks were exemplary on this question the democratic centralism was alive and real within the Bolshevik Party the Bolshevik Party Act current in my opinion practice more democracy than any other current leading up to the Bolshevik Revolution and Lenin often times was on the minority positions on many a question he was disciplined once because of his views and so on but there was a lively debate that took place within the Bolshevik Party and that continued after the revolution until the 10th Party Congress that faithful decision to suspend tendencies and factions that decision that was made in 1921 Trotsky said later in hindsight that decision to suspend factions and tendencies paved the way for the Stalinist counter-revolution and Trotsky said he would still have voted the same way given the circumstances in which the Bolsheviks found themselves in 1921 so yes this question of internal debate and democracy is extremely important and it's related to the other question about India and I want to relate to that by looking at commentary one of the tragedies of Stalinization is that any political parties that came into existence had called themselves Marxist Leninists that affiliated with commentary after 1928 were miseducated about Leninist norms up until the 4th Congress there was internal debate in commentary between different sections and so on Moscow didn't control anything that would change after 1928 and sadly any party that came into commentary after that period of time was much more likely to be miseducated when it comes to Leninist norms the only exception I know we don't have time to get into it in my opinion is the Cuban case and the reason why the Cubans is the exception is that Fidel Castro's current 26th movement it was formed in 1955 as an alternative to the Stalinist Party in Cuba it was an alternative that in my opinion is what explains the differences what makes Cuba the exception okay thanks August, Thomas? very briefly I have one sentence to this young who asked about the contradictions in the leftist organizations you know the what kind of political discussions do you think? because in the main questions an organization is united this is not a big problem I don't think everybody thinks this is no problem first question does this organization exist? if everybody knows this is not a business this problem when you came to the power when you in the power before the power only money and the power which can kill an organization nothing else not the discussions Trotsky and Lenin could meet each other in 1970 but they had very big fights in the ideological level on political level before the revolution and they could unite because they understood what to do so this is not a real problem if this organization knows what to do not to dissolve in the capitalism this is the and the other sectarianism between the scull and carib this no serious principle sentence against the contradictions not this is the real problem maybe you could not understand what I said it's too short thanks Tarek the question on India is an important one the legacy of Lenin I'm afraid never totally reached India it came via intermediaries which was the Soviet regime in the late 20s and 30s and so by the time the Indian Communist Party was formed Lenin's actual legacy Leninism if you like had already been deformed, twisted and made into what it was in Russia and that is all they read too all the textbooks came from the Soviet Union and the classics were short history the Communist Party, the Soviet Union the problems of Leninism written by committees in Stalin's name etc. and these were the books on which they were educated and in some cases that form of running an organization tied up completely with the old traditions of hierarchy and patriarchy that existed in India of one person a guru giving the instructions to the others listening people couldn't break from that and it entered into that mode the Maoists were different I have to say and the movements you talk about which are today fighting in parts of India with the peasants these were movements which came into being largely after the success of the Chinese Revolution or broke with the Moscow Orthodoxy they made many mistakes themselves admit but they always remained pretty close and embedded to the people I just give you one example about eight, nine years ago maybe a bit longer the Indian government sent a delegation of top civil servants to Andhra Pradesh to ask the Maoists what they want what do you want, we are prepared to negotiate and the Maoist leaders emerge from the underground with white beards and crutches in some cases surrounded by about 50,000 supporters who sat outside the civil service building in Hyderabad and they said to the Maoist leaders what do you want, tell us what you want and the Maoist leaders had come well prepared they said we want these sections of the Indian constitution implemented we want these promises made from 1951 to 1962 in all the manifestos of the congress party implemented and the civil servants said these are your demands, they said yes implement them and the situation will be transformed etc etc the civil servants went back and the Maoists went back they said we can't stay talking to you because the cops have been attacking peasant activists again so bye bye meanwhile we wait for you to do it so they have learned something and they are the only people that are fighting but the communist parties the traditional communist parties in India now in a state of crisis has to be said they became like social democratic parties and that was that to the comrade who posed the question about capitalism is it still strong? of course no one is saying it's on the eve of being overthrown but people who thought that somehow all was well that has been proved wrong too after the 2008 crash the notion that this form of capitalism that exists or even milder forms can solve any real problems for the bulk of the people that nobody believes now hence you have these sharp upheavals electorally which if the left doesn't participate in or doesn't try and win over you create you have big vacuums created that's the thing so obviously I'm very strongly in favour of doing whatever needs to be done however small the movement however limited its demands now because there's nothing else you know Lenin was even in voting in elections to insurance societies because he understood perfectly well that anything that opens up the situation in Tsarist Russia is positive I mean the one big legacy that we suffer from which has already been mentioned is that this style of creating a single party ban on factions ban on discussions which by the way didn't just affect the Stalinist movement it affected various segments of the Trotskyist movement as well as we know I mean you know we know it affected everyone this has been a huge tragedy for the left as a whole and we have to learn from it to operate in that particular shape or form it's not necessary but that's a bit different from the attack on clandestinity because the Bolsheviks and some left-wing Mensheviks had to be clandestine in order to exist and people said well what lessons does it have for us today and I say I don't know but there might come times again and there are times in the world where you have to be clandestine and certainly the resistance movements during the Second World War used this approach of clandestinity they were trained on it in order to create a resistance that fought back against the Third Reich where did that tradition come from it came from the Soviet Union and it came from Bolshevism and that's why the Yugoslavs won that's why the Greeks were on the verge of victory that's why the Moscow had to put heavy pressure on the Italian movement to cave in and capitulate so it's not that everything that it was wrong and this clandestinity will happen again I mean it might take the form of people actually writing letters and having them delivered Can I stop you there? Thanks everyone for coming you're more than welcome to join us for a small drinks reception in the SCR in the first floor in the main building Thanks everyone for coming