OUT NOW:
LENIN 2017
REMEMBERING, REPEATING, AND WORKING THROUGH
BY V. I. LENIN AND SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK
PART OF THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION 1917 SERIES
“Like Socrates on steroids. Breathtakingly perceptive.”
– Terry Eagleton
https://www.versobooks.com/books/2469-lenin-2017
———-
V. I. Lenin’s originality and importance as a revolutionary leader is most often associated with the seizure of power in 1917. But, in this new study and collection of Lenin’s original texts, Slavoj Žižek argues that his true greatness can be better grasped in the last two years of his political life. Russia had survived foreign invasion, embargo and a terrifying civil war, as well as internal revolts such as the one at Kronstadt in 1921. But the new state was exhausted, isolated and disorientated. As the anticipated world revolution receded into the distance, new paths had to be charted if the Soviet state was to survive.
With his characteristic brio and provocative insight, Žižek suggests that Lenin’s courage as a thinker can be found in his willingness to face this reality of retreat unflinchingly. In today’s world, characterized by political turbulence, economic crises and geopolitical tensions, we should revisit Lenin’s combination of sober lucidity and revolutionary determination.
———-
“The excitable fluency, ursine congeniality and gleeful readiness to provoke and offend all feed the sense of authentic spontaneity and energy that has made Žižek something like European philosophy’s punk icon, packing out auditoriums around the world.”
– Josh Cohen, New Statesman
“Few thinkers illustrate the contradictions of contemporary capitalism better than Slavoj Žižek, one of the world’s best-known public intellectuals.”
– John Gray, New York Review of Books
“A gifted speaker—tumultuous, emphatic, direct—he writes as he speaks.”
– Jonathan Rée, Guardian
“Such passion, in a man whose work forms a shaky, cartoon rope-bridge between the minutiae of popular culture and the big abstract problems of existence, is invigorating, entertaining and expanding enquiring minds around the world.”
– Helen Brown, Daily Telegraph
———-
HARDBACK: September 2017 / 272 pages / ISBN 9781786631886 / $19.95 / £12.99 / $25.95 (Canada)
LENIN 2017 is available at a 20% discount (hardback) on our website. Purchasing details here: https://www.versobooks.com/books/2469-lenin-2017
For more information on university inspection/desk copies visit: http://www.versobooks.com/pg/desk-copies
———-
Visit Verso’s website for information on our upcoming events, new reviews and publications and special offers: http://www.versobooks.com
