100 Years of the Bolshevik Revolution

The Spontaneity of Capitalism Prabhat Patnaik

  The post-war restructuring of capitalism involving decolonization, the introduction of Keynesian demand management, and the institution of democracy based on universal adult suffrage, represented concessions made by the system to ward off the Communist threat which the enhanced prestige of the Soviet Union, the march of the Red Army across Eastern Europe, the sacrifices made by the Communists in the anti-fascist struggle all over Europe, and the Chinese Revolution had brought to the fore. True, the Yalta agreement had bound the Soviet Union into not supporting Communist ascendancy in Western Europe, in countries like France, Italy and Greece, in…

Marxist Theory and the October Revolution Prabhat Patnaik

Marx’s theory when it was first presented had a far more profound impact on intellectual life in Russia than anywhere else. True, in Germany the entire working class movement, far stronger than elsewhere (the German Social Democrats used to bring out as many as 86 daily newspapers in that country on the eve of the first world war), was directly influenced by Marx, but this is quite different from influencing intellectual life in general. By Marx’s own admission one of the most perceptive reviews of Capital had appeared in Russia; and Lenin attests to the fact that in the Russia…

The Leninist Conjuncture Prabhat Patnaik

The basic theoretical presumption underlying the October Revolution was that because inter-imperialist rivalry had unleashed an epoch of wars that forced workers of different imperialist countries to kill each other across the trenches, capitalism had reached a climacteric. It had become historically “moribund”, ushering in an era of social revolutions, which would not just be confined to the advanced capitalist countries but would also encompass the oppressed countries whose peoples too got dragged into these wars as “canon-fodder”. What could hold back such revolutions was vacillation on the part of some sections of the working class deriving from the pusillanimity…