Critique Conference 2016
Published: 05 May 2016
The Russian Revolution will be 100 years old in 2017. We live in an epoch when both the Russian elite/bourgeoisie and the international ruling class are intent on wiping out any reference to it other than as an unfortunate coup d’etat, made by a band of fanatical far leftists. History has been rewritten yet again to resurrect all the falsehoods of the time, depicting the Revolution as a time in which terror and crimes against humanity were commonplace. The counter-revolution conducted by Stalinism is projected backwards to 1917.
The Critique conferences for the next 2 years (2016, 1017) will raise a series of aspects of the Russian Revolution in a global context. For Marxists, the Russian Revolution opened up a new period in human history, when the decline of capitalism moved from an objective form into human consciousness. As Trotsky rightly argued, the betrayal of the German Social Democrats prevented the Russian Revolution becoming a European and ultimately a human revolution. As a result, the world has been projected into a long period of transition between capitalism and socialism, with accompanying complex transitional forms. War has played a critical role in maintaining stability.
The theme of this year's conference is War and Capitalism and the speakers include Raquel Varela, Savas Matzas, Hillel Ticktin, Yassamine Mather.
For more information email: yassamine.mather@glasgow.ac.uk