the state and revolution by vladimir lenin

Liberalism fundamentally lacks the language to resist Marxist demands. But in his book Conservatism: A Rediscovery, Yoram Hazony described a “dance of liberalism and Marxism”. The odd thing is that the post-1960s liberal settlement was supposed to be about maximising freedoms of all kinds. In his book Koba the Dread, Martin Amis recounts how a political opponent said of Vladimir Ilyich that he could not deal with a man “who, even in his sleep, dreams of nothing but revolution.” Amis observed: “that is what they want, steely ones… the politicisation of sleep… They want politics to be permanent and circumambient.” They will never leave you alone. Lenin understood that a totalitarian society required the politicisation of everything. The chief executive of KLM airlines asks people to take fewer flights for the sake of Net Zero a new label on Nescafé jars reminds instant-coffee drinkers to celebrate “gender diversity”.Įvery major institution in this country now has virtually the same opinion, a groupthink so ubiquitous that we forget how recent the development is: in AJP Taylor’s refrain, “until August 1914 a sensible, law-abiding Englishman could pass through life and hardly notice the existence of the state beyond the post office and the policeman”. Like in early East Germany, private companies still exist, but they increasingly understand that their role is to support the state and its ideology. As 2023 began, our graduates received their new-year alumni magazines, featuring refreshingly identical opinions on sustainability, migration, decolonisation. We had Royalist Oxford and Parliamentarian Cambridge later came UCL, the “Godless college of Gower Street” King’s College London was the Tory response. Once upon a time, different institutions believed in different things.

The state and revolution by vladimir lenin