Revolutionary Moments
In the first instance of the working class taking power and forming their own state, they established the precedent of the average-workers wage and immediate recall for representatives.
What is the Paris Commune (1871)?
Marx said “the history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of THIS”
What is class struggle?
“This transformation of competition into monopoly is one of the most important—if not the most important—phenomena of modern capitalist economy.”
What is Imperialism: the highest stage of capitalism, Vladimir Lenin?
This film illustrates the sharp class differences and competitive pressures of South Korean society and won the Palme d'Or in 2019
What is Parasite, Bong Joon-ho?
“Jocelyn Salmon” - Unofficial military lead of the Easter Rising
Who is James Connolly?
This is the name given to a revolutionary wave in 2011 which saw multiple regimes fall, including Ben Ali in Tunisia, Mubarak in Egypt, Gaddafi in Libya, and Saleh in Yemen
What is the Arab Spring?
Capital Vol. 1, Chapter 1, section 1 is devoted to these two aspects of the commodity.
“Let us not forget that revolutions are accomplished through people, although they be nameless. Materialism does not ignore the feeling, thinking, and acting man, but explains him.”
What is The History of the Russian Revolution, Leon Trotsky?
On April 15th, 1871, this organization was formed which insisted that everyone had the right to live and work amidst beauty.
What is The Federation of Artists (of the Paris Commune)?
“Rotten Yolks” - He was detained for a month in Amherst, Nova Scotia in 1917
Who is Leon Trotsky?
The Mackenzie–Papineau Battalion were a battalion of Canadians who traveled in secret to fight fascism in THIS conflict, against the wishes of the Canadian government, who at the time still supported fascism as an anti-communist force.
What is the Spanish Civil War (1937)?
An artisan appropriates to themselves the products of their own labour, i.e. the produces of private production. A capitalist appropriates to themselves the products THIS.
What is socialized production?
“The first act by virtue of which the State really constitutes itself the representative of the whole of society — the taking possession of the means of production in the name of society — this is, at the same time, its last independent act as a State.”
Socialism Utopian and Scientific or Anti-Duhrung, Freidrich Engles
It’s an account of the author’s experience fighting fascism in Spain as a member of a POUM militia
What is Homage to Catalonia, George Orwell?
“Vague Reach” - Reports say he was carrying a copy of Revolution Betrayed with him before his death in Bolivia.
Who is Che Guevara?
Two months before THIS historic event on the prairies, the Western Labour Conference in Calgary unanimously declared themselves ‘in full accord and sympathy with the aims and purposes of the Russian Bolshevik and German Spartacan Revolutions.’
What is the Winning General Strike (1919)?
The advance of industry… replaces the isolation of the labourers, due to competition, by the revolutionary combination, due to association… What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are THIS
What are it's own gravediggers?
“If the proletariat came to power, it could draw from Bernstein's theory the following 'practical' conclusion: to go to sleep.”
What is Reform or Revolution, Rosa Luxemburg?
Famous for her self-portraits, this painter and member of the Mexican Communist Party helped persuade President Cardenas to grant asylum to Trotsky in 1937
Who is Frida Kahlo?
"Guru ox marbles" - Taught Marxism and economics at the SPD's Berlin training centre
Who is Rosa Luxemburg?
An estimated 10 million workers were on strike in France during this revolutionary uprising which was ultimately crushed after betrayal by Communist and Socialist Party leadership.
What is May 68 (1968)?
Marx describes THIS when he says “All progress in capitalist agriculture…. in increasing the fertility of the soil for a given time, is a progress toward ruining the more long-lasting sources of that fertility…”
What is the metabolic rift?
“But capital not only lives upon labour. Like a master, at once distinguished and barbarous, it drags with it into its grave the corpses of its slaves, whole hecatombs of workers, who perish in the crises.”
What is Value, Price, and Profit, Karl Marx?
This novel is a devastating critique of capitalism through the story of an immigrant family in the Chicago meatpacking industry
What is The Jungle, Upton Sinclair?
“Rational Klaxon Deal” - she argued that the Bolshevik party needed more systematic work among women and called for special party structures to organize this.
Who is Alexandra Kollontai?