Stephen KotkinStephen Mark Kotkin (born February 17, 1959) is an American historian, academic, and author. He is the Kleinheinz Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. For 33 years, Kotkin taught at Princeton University, where he attained the title of John P. Birkelund '52 Professor in History and International Affairs, and he took emeritus status from Princeton University in 2022.
Democratic revolutionA democratic revolution is a political science term denoting a revolution in which a democracy is instituted, replacing a previous non-democratic government, or in which revolutionary change is brought about through democratic means. According to Tocqueville, a democracy, as well as other forms of regimes, is a social condition. It holds a moral, philosophical, social and political orientation of a people. It is a way of behaving. This means that revolution in general shape behaviour.
Communist Party of VietnamThe Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV), also known as the Vietnamese Communist Party (VCP), is the founding and sole legal party of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Founded in 1930 by Hồ Chí Minh, the CPV became the ruling party of North Vietnam in 1954 and then all of Vietnam after the collapse of the South Vietnamese government following the Fall of Saigon in 1975. Although it nominally exists alongside the Vietnamese Fatherland Front, it maintains a unitary government and has centralized control over the state, military, and media.
Freudo-MarxismFreudo-Marxism is a loose designation for philosophical perspectives informed by both the Marxist philosophy of Karl Marx and the psychoanalytic theory of Sigmund Freud. It has a rich history within continental philosophy, beginning in the 1920s and 1930s and running since through critical theory, Lacanian psychoanalysis, and post-structuralism. Sigmund Freud himself only engages with Marxism in his 1932 New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, in which he hesitantly contests what he sees as the Marxist view of history.
CommunizationCommunization theory (or communisation theory in British English) refers to a tendency on the ultra-left that understands communism as a process that, in a social revolution, immediately begins to replace all capitalist social relations with communist ones. Thus it rejects the role of the dictatorship of the proletariat, which it sees as reproducing capitalism. There exist two broad trends within communization theory: a ‘Marxist’ one (exemplified by Gilles Dauvé, Théorie Communiste, and later, Endnotes) and an ‘anarchist’ one (represented by Tiqqun and The Invisible Committee).
Anti-capitalismAnti-capitalism is a political ideology and movement encompassing a variety of attitudes and ideas that oppose capitalism. In this sense, anti-capitalists are those who wish to replace capitalism with another type of economic system, such as socialism or communism. Socialism Socialism advocates public or direct worker ownership and administration of the means of production and allocation of resources, and a society characterized by equal access to resources for all individuals, with an egalitarian method of compensation.
History of the Soviet Union (1927–1953)The history of the Soviet Union between 1927 and 1953 covers the period in Soviet history from the establishment of Stalinism through victory in the Second World War and down to the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953. Stalin sought to destroy his enemies while transforming Soviet society with central planning, in particular through the forced collectivization of agriculture and rapid development of heavy industry. Stalin consolidated his power within the party and the state and fostered an extensive cult of personality.
MaoismMaoism, officially called Mao Zedong Thought by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), is a variety of Marxism–Leninism that Mao Zedong developed to realize a socialist revolution in the agricultural, pre-industrial society of the Republic of China and later the People's Republic of China. The philosophical difference between Maoism and traditional Marxism–Leninism is that a united front of progressive forces in class society would lead the revolutionary vanguard in pre-industrial societies rather than communist revolutionaries alone.
AutonomismAutonomism, also known as autonomist Marxism, is an anti-capitalist left-wing political and social movement and theory. As a theoretical system, it first emerged in Italy in the 1960s from workerism (operaismo). Later, post-Marxist and anarchist tendencies became significant after influence from the Situationists, the failure of Italian far-left movements in the 1970s, and the emergence of a number of important theorists including Antonio Negri, who had contributed to the 1969 founding of Potere Operaio as well as Mario Tronti, Paolo Virno and Franco "Bifo" Berardi.
German Revolution of 1918–1919The German Revolution of 1918–1919 or November Revolution (German: Novemberrevolution) took place in Germany at the end of the First World War. It began with the downfall of the German Empire and eventually resulted in the establishment of the Weimar Republic. The revolutionary period lasted from November 1918 until the adoption of the Weimar Constitution in August 1919.