This volume is a collection of Lenin's writings on the crucial question of the position of revolutionary Marxists towards war and, more specifically, in relation to the First World War.When the war broke out in 1914, the Socialist International betrayed its own anti-war resolutions and gave wholehearted support to the imperialist slaughter.Lenin started a battle, against the stream, to defend the working-class principles of internationalism, explaining that the war was an i...

Lenin's writings from 1917 are a marvellous insight into the Bolshevik leader's thinking in this crucial year.1917 witnessed a series of dramatic turns that propelled the Bolsheviks, the most revolutionary party in history, from some 8,000 members to a mass force of 400,000 in just nine months.Following the February Revolution, Lenin was forced to rearm the Bolsheviks with a new perspective of socialist revolution. With skilful tactics and a bold approach, he presided over th...

This vivid selection, compiled and introduced by Tamara Deutscher, written by Lenin and those who knew him, brings us the revolution in his everyday life - the man who lived by politics but not by politics alone.Here, we see the Lenin of leisure as well as work, geared to his life's purpose and yet enjoying to the full all the pleasures of a healthy human existence - neither the humourless, monolithic cult hero of Soviet mythology nor the bogeyman of official anti-communism. What d...

Fired up by the outbreak of the First World War and outraged by the capitulation of most socialist parties to the demands of national bourgeoisies, Lenin sought to understand the deeper roots of the crisis of the world movement. The result was Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, which went on to become a core text for the international communist movement. But Lenin also sought to break with the Eurocentrism of the socialist movement, which tended to look down with disdain at or s...

Lenin's originality and importance as a revolutionary leader is most often associated with the seizure of power in 1917. But, Zizek argues in his new study and collection of original texts, Lenin's true greatness can be better grasped in the very last couple of years of his political life. Russia had survived foreign invasion, embargo and a terrifying civil war, as well as internal revolts such as at Kronstadt in 1921. But the new state was exhausted, isolated and disorientated in the face...

Vladimir Lenin (speaking Russian) was the main theoretician and practical leader of the Bolsheviks. He was voted the Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR. Leon Trotsky was a Communist theorist, prolific writer, and leader in the 1917 Russian Revolution. Josef Stalin (speaking Russian) was the General Secretary of the Russian Communist Party and a key leader in World War II.

"The pamphlet… outlined a broad plan of organisation in which everyone would find a place for himself, become a cog in the revolutionary machine, a cog, which, no matter how small, was vital to the working of the machine. The pamphlet urged the necessity of intensive and tireless efforts to build the foundation that had to be built if the Party was to exist in deeds and not in words…" (Nadezhda Krupskaya, Reminiscences of Lenin.)First published in early 1902, What Is to Be Done? re...

The Bolsheviks led the workers to power in the October Revolution of 1917. To ensure its survival, they grappled with the task of spreading the revolution beyond Russia.'Left-Wing' Communism: An Infantile Disorder was written in 1920 to educate the newly-formed communist parties of the Third International, and to correct theultra-left, sectarian trends that infected many of them. Inspired by the Revolution and repelled by the betrayals of social democracy, these communists h...

"Democracy for an insignificant minority, democracy for the rich — that is the democracy of capitalist society."The question of the state is not something that normally occupies the attention of most workers. This is no accident. The state would be of no use for the ruling class if people did not believe that it was something harmless, impartial and above the interests of classes or individuals. However, Marxism teaches us that the state is an instrument for the oppression of the e...

During the First World War, Lenin found himself isolated, but he was not afraid to fight against the stream. He dedicated all his strength to educating and training the Bolsheviks on the basis of the genuine ideas of Marxism. His masterpiece, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism, is an immortal monument to his work in the vital field of theory.No book has ever explained the phenomena of modern capitalism better. Indeed, all of Lenin's predictions concerning the concentratio...

In this classic text, Lenin brilliantly explains the fundamental principles of the materialist philosophy of Marxism. He defends them against idealist attacks from the subjective idealism of Machism, a philosophical trend, which at Lenin's time was becoming very fashionable, even within the workers' movement.Step by step, layer by layer, quoting at length from the many trendy philosophical and scientific publications of the day, the book exposes idealism in all its guises. The aim ...

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin can be considered on of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century. Here is his fascinating and world changing treatise on socialism and religion.