Marx, Lenin, and the Revolutionary Experience: Studies of Communism and Radicalism in an Age of Globalization - Softcover

In this most welcome and refreshing contribution, Paul Le Blanc offers insightful and sympathetic assessments of Marx, Lenin, and currents ranging from Radical Christianity to Anarchism...this collection of clearly written as well as inspiring essays raises issues of universal interest.

–Michael Löwy, review in Against the Current

"The enormous value of Paul Le Blanc’s book is that he takes Lenin seriously. His goal is to provoke and persuade young radicals of today into more thoughtful reflection on the experiences of Lenin and the Russian Revolution, and to explore the insights these might offer today...Lenin remains an essential companion in the fight for a better world in the 21st century. "

–Mark Thomas, review in International Socialism

"Thoughtful, reflective, eclectic, and hesitant to provide straightforward solutions to the important questions it raises...The histories he provides are inspiring and moving, drawing on the best of left and labor scholarship, but also on creative literature and the arts more broadly..."

–Helen Scott, review in International Socialist Review

Marx, Lenin, and the Revolutionary Experience offers a fresh look at Communism, both the bad and good, and also touches on anarchism, Christian theory, conservatism, liberalism, Marxism, and more, to argue for the enduring relevance of Karl Marx, and V.I. Lenin as democratic revolutionaries. It examines the "Red Decade" of the 1930s and the civil rights movement and the New Left of the 1960s in the United States as well.

Studying the past to grapple with issues of war and terrorism, exploitation, hunger, ecological crisis, and trends toward deadening "de-spiritualization", the book shows how the revolutionaries of the past are still relevant to today's struggles. It offers a clearly written and carefully reasoned thematic discussion of globalization, Marxism, Christianity (and religion in general), Communism, the history of the USSR and US radical and social movements.