Great revolutions make history. Conservative resistance and counter-revolutions only delay their progress. The French revolution invented modern politics and democracy, the Russian revolution paved the way for the socialist transition, while the Chinese revolution connected the emancipation of those peoples oppressed by imperialism with the path to socialism. These revolutions are great precisely because they are bearers of undertakings that are far ahead of the immediate demands of their time. beacons that illuminate the still unfinished struggles of the peoples for the realization of these goals. It is impossible to understand the contemporary world by ignoring these great revolutions. To commemorate these revolutions, says Samir Amin, one needs both to assess their ambitions (the utopia of today will be the reality of tomorrow), and to understand the reasons for their temporary setbacks. Conservative and reactionary minds refuse to do so\u2014they wish us to believe that great revolutions have been nothing more than unfortunate accidents, that the peoples who have made them were carried away by their deceitful enthusiasm, diversions from the normal current of history. This collection of essays helps to situate the lessons of the October 1917 Russian Revolution from a perspective of 100 years.<\/p>\n
Egyptian economist and intellectual, Samir Amin (1931-2018), was one of the world\u2019s greatest radical thinkers \u2014a creative Marxist\u2019. He was the director of Third World Forum (Forum du tiers monde), Dakar and President of the World Forum for Alternatives. He published numerous books and papers, including The Law of Value and Historical Materialism, Eurocentrism \u2013 Modernity, Religion and Democracy: A Critique of Eurocentrism and Culturalism, Ending the Crisis of Capitalism or Ending Capitalism?\u2018, Global History \u2013 a View from the South and Russia and the Long Transition from Capitalism to Socialism<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Great revolutions make history. Conservative resistance and counter-revolutions only delay their progress. The French revolution invented modern politics and democracy, the Russian revolution paved the way for the socialist transition, while the Chinese revolution connected the emancipation of those peoples oppressed by imperialism with the path to socialism. These revolutions are great precisely because they are bearers of undertakings that are far ahead of the immediate demands of their time. beacons that illuminate the still unfinished struggles of the peoples for the realization of these goals. It is impossible to understand the contemporary world by ignoring these great revolutions. To commemorate these revolutions, says Samir Amin, one needs both to assess their ambitions (the utopia of today will be the reality of tomorrow), and to understand the reasons for their temporary setbacks. Conservative and reactionary minds refuse to do so\u2014they wish us to believe that great revolutions have been nothing more than unfortunate accidents, that the peoples who have made them were carried away by their deceitful enthusiasm, diversions from the normal current of history. This collection of essays helps to situate the lessons of the October 1917 Russian Revolution from a perspective of 100 years.<\/p>\n
Egyptian economist and intellectual, Samir Amin (1931-2018), was one of the world\u2019s greatest radical thinkers \u2014a creative Marxist\u2019. He was the director of Third World Forum (Forum du tiers monde), Dakar and President of the World Forum for Alternatives. He published numerous books and papers, including The Law of Value and Historical Materialism, Eurocentrism \u2013 Modernity, Religion and Democracy: A Critique of Eurocentrism and Culturalism, Ending the Crisis of Capitalism or Ending Capitalism?\u2018, Global History \u2013 a View from the South and Russia and the Long Transition from Capitalism to Socialism<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":3229,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"product_brand":[],"product_cat":[231],"product_tag":[233,164,232],"authors":[230],"publisher":[],"class_list":["post-3228","product","type-product","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","product_cat-revolutions","product_tag-china","product_tag-revolution","product_tag-russia","authors-samir-amin","first","instock","featured","taxable","shipping-taxable","purchasable","product-type-variable","has-default-attributes"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/darajapress.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product\/3228","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/darajapress.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/darajapress.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/product"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darajapress.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3228"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darajapress.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/darajapress.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"product_brand","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darajapress.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product_brand?post=3228"},{"taxonomy":"product_cat","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darajapress.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product_cat?post=3228"},{"taxonomy":"product_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darajapress.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product_tag?post=3228"},{"taxonomy":"authors","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darajapress.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/authors?post=3228"},{"taxonomy":"publisher","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darajapress.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/publisher?post=3228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}