Take the Democratic Revolution to the End!

Were the Bolsheviks the highest expression of Marxism? Did the Bolshevik project discredit other competing forms of Marxism? Or did the October Revolution change the meaning of Marxism itself? Is it necessary today to return to the writings of Rosa Luxemburg, Leon Trotsky, and Vladimir Lenin? Or would it be better to skip over the Second International and the October Revolution by simply returning to Marx's own writings? These as well as other questions relating to the legacy of the Second International and the October Revolution will be discussed and debated.

Presented by Ian Morrison

Saturday, December 4 at 7pm
Crown Center Room 530
Loyola University-Chicago
1001 W. Loyola Ave

"Before Marxism became 'bankrupt' in the form of Bolshevism it has already broken down in the form of social democracy, Does the slogan 'Back to Marxism' then mean a leap over the periods of the Second and Third Internationals -- to the First International? But it too broke down in its time. Thus in the last analysis it is a question of returning to the collected works of Marx and Engels. One can accomplish this historic leap without leaving one's study and even without taking off one's slippers. But how are we going to go from our classics (Marx died in 1883, Engels in 1895) to the tasks of a new epoch, omitting several decades of theoretical and political struggles, among them Bolshevism and the October revolution? None of those who propose to renounce Bolshevism as an historically bankrupt tendency has indicated any other course. So the question is reduced to the simple advice to study [Marx's] Capital. We can hardly object. But the Bolsheviks, too, studied Capital and not badly either. This did not however prevent the degeneration of the Soviet state and the staging of the Moscow trials. So what is to be done?" Leon Trotsky