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Rev Left Radio

What Is To Be Done? Understanding Communist Strategy

Oct 23, 2023
Breht O’Shea and Alyson, hosts of Upstream, discuss the relevance of Vladimir Lenin's 'What Is To Be Done?' and its applications in modern leftist movements. They explore the importance of disciplined organization, the limitations of spontaneous movements, the need for a revolutionary political movement, and the significance of building discipline and revolutionary theory for establishing a vanguard party.
01:54:41

Podcast summary created with Snipd AI

Quick takeaways

  • Marxists aim to seize existing infrastructure instead of building an alternative society from scratch.
  • Vanguardism recognizes the need for a revolutionary party to address a broader scope of issues beyond economic reform.

Deep dives

Solidarity Economy and Utopian Socialism

The concept of the solidarity economy can be seen as similar to utopian socialist movements, which focus on building an alternative society from the ground up. However, Marxism emphasizes that capitalism has already created the conditions for socialism by socializing labor and production. Instead of starting from scratch, Marxists aim to liberate these conditions from the constraints of private ownership through a revolutionary struggle and the seizure of existing infrastructure.

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