Now available on Mehring Books
Why Study the Russian Revolution? Volume II: Toward Workers Power and World Socialist Revolution
Mehring Books is pleased to announce the publication of the second volume of the International Committee of the Fourth International’s centennial lectures: Why Study the Russian Revolution? It is available for online purchase at Mehring.com. The two volumes examine the background, history, consequences and enduring relevance of the Russian Revolution, the most significant event of the 20th century.
The second volume includes the final four lectures in the ICFI lecture series, tracing the course of the revolution from the July Days through the conquest of power by the working class under the leadership of the Bolshevik Party in October. The final lecture by David North reviews the place of the October Revolution in world history. The volume also includes several supplementary essays and lectures by North, including “The October Revolution and Historical Truth.”
The two volumes will contribute immensely to the education of an entire generation of workers and young people in the critical political and theoretical issues necessary for the building of a socialist movement today.
As David North states in the lecture introducing the first volume:
There is not a single significant social problem that can be solved within the framework of capitalism. Indeed, the logic of capitalism and the nation-state system, which forms the basis of imperialist geopolitics, is leading inexorably to yet another global war, this time fought with nuclear weapons. Nothing can stop the descent into disaster but the renewal of the conscious struggle for world socialism. This, above all, is why it is necessary to study the Russian Revolution.
Order your copy of Why Study the Russian Revolution? today at Mehring Books:
This volume includes the first five lectures delivered by members of the International Committee of the Fourth International to mark the centenary of the Russian Revolution. The first lecture, “Why Study the Russian Revolution,” by WSWS International Editorial Board Chairperson David North, explains the unique character of the revolution and its enduring significance.
The other lectures are “The Legacy of 1905 and the Strategy of the Russian Revolution” by Fred Williams; “War and Revolution: 1914-1917” by Nick Beams; “Spontaneity and Consciousness in the February Revolution” by Joseph Kishore; and “Lenin’s Return to Russia and the April Theses” by James Cogan.
The volume also includes several additional important lectures and essays on revolutionary theory and historical falsification by David North, including “Philosophy and Politics in an Age of War and Revolution.”
This volume includes the last four lectures delivered by members of the International Committee of the Fourth International to mark the centenary of the Russian Revolution. These are “From the July Days to the Kornilov Coup: Lenin’s The State and Revolution,” by Barry Grey; “On the Eve of Revolution: The Bolshevik Party and the Mass Movement of the Working Class,” by Tom Carter; “Lessons of October: The Political Crisis within the Bolshevik Party on the Eve of the Seizure of Power,” by Chris Marsden; and “The Place of the October Revolution in World Politics,” by David North.
The volume also includes several lectures and essays by David North that relate to the lasting significance of the Russian Revolution, and the 2015 lecture given by North at Leipzig University, “The October Revolution and Historical Truth,” introducing the German edition of his work The Russian Revolution and the Unfinished Twentieth Century.