This may be the funniest book about Lenin ever published, a generalization difficult to prove because there have been thousands of books about Lenin in hundreds of languages.
What do Lenin's writings show us about theory breaking into practice, and how might the politics explained or implied in these writings inform our grasp of what is to be done now? How are his concepts of imperialism and self-determination relevant?
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A look back on the key revolutionary more frequently worshiped on the left than read, Ali's Lenin biography includes his last years' observation that "we knew nothing," insisting that the revolution had to be renewed lest it wither and die.
What do we celebrate, then, when we look back at 1917? What have we learned?
Gaining social control over the economic life of society - achieving socialism, in a word - requires not only that we know that the democratic republic is the staging ground for such change. It also requires that we recognize that the evidence of the future we want is visible and "invading" our present, to borrow a term from C. L. R. James, in forms that exist in the current conditions of our social life.
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In Germany heads fall - Lenin's head still needs to be kept buried, and Berlin's once-popular gay mayor bows out. Another head featured in the press belongs to a man who is certainly not gay nor a Lenin. Sadly, current references to Vladimir Putin, evoke all too sharply recollections of German language used against every Russian leader since the start of World War I a hundred years ago.
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