Name: February 1917 Part 1 - Duncan Hallas by The Bookmarks Marxism Sound Archive
Duration: 22 min 39 s
Description: First of a two part talk on the February 1917 revolution in Russia. Duncan Hallas introduces the great dress rehearsal for the October revolution.

Colin Barker in an interesting talk about Socialism and emotions given at Marxism at the Millennium.
He talks about the great emotions released at the high points of class struggle.
Colin was a long time member of the SWP and a lecturer in Manchester.
This was recorded 24 years ago on cassette tape.
Problems with the volume and quality are in the original.

Marxism 2000

Socialism And Emotion In Politics

First of a two part talk on the February 1917 revolution in Russia. Duncan Hallas introduces the great dress rehearsal for the October revolution.

February 1917 Part 1 - Duncan Hallas

An important debate from Marxism 1987 on how Marxists understand how things change.
Transcript of Harman article here:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/harman/1986/xx/base-super.html

"In the social production of their life, men enter into definite relations that are independent of their will, relations of production which correspond to a definite stage of development of their material productive forces.
The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real basis on which rises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite form of social consciousness.
The mode of production of material life conditions the social, political and intellectual life process in general.
It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.
At a certain stage in their development the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or – what is but a legal expression for the same thing – the property relations within which they have been at work hitherto.
From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into fetters. Then begins an epoch of social revolution.
With the change of the economic foundation the entire immense superstructure is more or less rapidly transformed.
In considering such transformations, a distinction should always be made between the material transformation of the material conditions of production, which can be determined with
the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, aesthetic or philosophical – in short ideological – forms in which men become conscious of the conflict and fight it out.
... We do not judge a period of transformation by its consciousness; on the contrary this consciousness must itself be explained from the contradictions of material life, from the existing conflicts between the social productive forces and the relations of production.
In broad outlines Asiatic, ancient, feudal, and modern bourgeois modes of production can be designated as progressive epochs in the economic foundation of society"
[Karl Marx: from the Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy].

Base and Superstructure

Debate: Base And Superstructure with Harman, Hallas, Callinicos and Barker

From 1977. Chris Harman here attempts to recover Gramsci from the Eurocommunist interpretation prevalent at the time.
Although this talk is mainly a polemic against the Marxism Today view of Gramsci, Harman provides a clear guide to Gramsci's though and revolutionary intentions.

Marxism 77

2020

Buy books on Gramsci

Antonio Gramsci - Chris Harman

Sound archive of recordings of meetings at Marxism Festival from the 1970's.
Most were originally recorded on cassette tape.
Curated by Dave Gilchrist

February 1917 Part 1 - Duncan Hallas

The Bookmarks Marxism Sound Archive

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