V. I. Lenin - Revolution at the Gates: Selected Writings of Lenin from 1917

First published by Verso 2002
Introduction and afterword Slavoj iek 2002
Original Lenin texts: see p. vii
Paperback edition first published by Verso 2004
Reprinted by Verso 2011 as part of the Essential iek series

All rights reserved

The moral rights of the author have been asserted

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ISBN-13: 978-1-84467-714-6
eBook ISBN: 978-1-84467-818-1

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S LAVOJ IEK was born in Ljubljana, Slovenia, in 1949, and is a professor at the European Graduate School, International Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, University of London, and a senior researcher at the Institute of Sociology, University of Ljubljana. He has been a visiting professor at Columbia University and the University of Paris VIII, as well as at a number of other prestigious institutions on both sides of the Atlantic.

In his native Slovenia, he was a prominent political figure in the 1980s. He wrote a regular column for the newspaper Mladina and, in 1990, finished fifth in the election for the nations four-person presidency. His international reputation as a writer and philosopher was secured in 1989 with the publication of The Sublime Object of Ideology, a book that applied the authors original distillation of Lacan and Marx to an analysis of agency and modern ideology. A string of much lauded works has followed, including Repeating Lenin (1997), The Ticklish Subject (1999), Iraq: The Borrowed Kettle (2004) and Living in the End Times (2010).

As well as providing original insights into psychoanalysis, philosophy and radical political theory, he has, through employing his extraordinary scholarship to the examination of popular entertainment, established himself as a witty and deeply moral cultural critic. He has been the subject of two feature-length documentaries, Slavoj iek: The Reality of the Virtual (2004) and iek! (2005). He also presented and wrote the three-part British TV documentary A Perverts Guide to Cinema (2006).

His compelling, charismatic presence and puckish sense of the absurd have prompted the press to dub him the Elvis of cultural theory and an intellectual rock star. However, these jocular monikers belie a seriousness of purpose that has been nothing short of startling in an era marked by despondency and disengagement on the Left. More than an academic or theorist, iek has the gravitas and drive of a breed once thought extinct: the revolutionary. He has made philosophy relevant again for a whole generation of politically committed readers.

THE ESSENTIAL IEK
A series of classic philosophical texts from Verso

Did Somebody Say Totalitarianism? Five Interventions in the
(Mis) Use of a Notion
The Fragile Absolute
The Plague of Fantasies
Revolution at the Gates, iek on Lenin: The 1917 Writings
The Sublime Object of Ideology
The Ticklish Subject

Also available from Verso by the same author:

In Defense of Lost Causes
First as Tragedy, Then as Farce
Iraq: The Borrowed Kettle
Lacan: The Silent Partners
Living in the End Times
Welcome to the Desert of the Real

Lenins texts are reprinted from: V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, 4th English edition, 42 volumes, Moscow: Progress Publishers 1964.

1 Letters from Afar, vol. 23, pp. 295342. Written March 726 1917. Translated from the Russian by M. S. Levin, Joe Fineberg and others. Edited by M. S. Levin.

2 The Tasks of the Proletariat in the Present Revolution (April Theses), vol. 24, pp. 219. First published in Pravda no. 26, 7 April 1917. Translated from the Russian and edited by Bernard Isaacs.

3 On Slogans, vol. 25, pp. 18592. Written in mid-July 1917. First published in pamphlet form in 1917. Translated from the Russian and edited by Stephan Apresyan and Jim Riordan.

4 The Impending Catastrophe and How to Combat It, vol. 25, pp. 32369. First published at the end of October 1917 in pamphlet form. Translated from the Russian and edited by Stephan Apresyan and Jim Riordan.

5 One of the Fundamental Questions of the Revolution, vol. 25, pp. 37077. First published on 27 September 1917. Translated from the Russian and edited by Stephan Apresyan and Jim Riordan.

6 The Bolsheviks Must Assume Power, vol. 26, pp. 1921. Written 2527 September 1917, first published in 1921. Translated from the Russian by Yuri Sodobnikov and George Hanna. Edited by George Hanna.

7 Marxism and Insurrection, vol. 26, pp. 227. Written 2627 September 1917, first published in 1921. Translated from the Russian by Yuri Sodobnikov and George Hanna. Edited by George Hanna.

8 The Tasks of the Revolution, vol. 26, pp. 5968. First published in Rabochy Put nos 20 and 21, 9 and 10 October 1917. Translated from the Russian by Yuri Sodobnikov and George Hanna. Edited by George Hanna.

9 The Crisis Has Matured, vol. 26, pp. 7485. Sections IIII and V first published on 9 October 1917 in Rabochy Put no. 20, sections IV and VI first published in 1924. Translated from the Russian by Yuri Sodobnikov and George Hanna. Edited by George Hanna.

10 Advice of an Onlooker, vol. 26, pp. 17981. Written 21 October 1917, first published in Pravda on 7 November 1920, signed An Onlooker. Translated from the Russian by Yuri Sodobnikov and George Hanna. Edited by George Hanna.

11 Letter to Comrades, vol. 26, pp. 195215. First published in Rabochy Put nos 40, 41, and 42, 1, 2 and 3 November 1917. Translated from the Russian by Yuri Sodobnikov and George Hanna. Edited by George Hanna.

12 Meeting of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers and Soldiers Deputies, vol. 26, pp. 23941. First published in Izvestia no. 207, 26 October 1917. Translated from the Russian by Yuri Sodobnikov and George Hanna. Edited by George Hanna.

The arabic-numbered footnotes are editorial; the Roman-numeral footnotes are Lenins own.

Slavoj iek

The first public reaction to the idea of reactualizing Lenin is, of course, an outburst of sarcastic laughter. Marx is OKtoday, even on Wall Street, there are people who still love him: Marx the poet of commodities, who provided perfect descriptions of the capitalist dynamic; Marx of Cultural Studies, who portrayed the alienation and reification of our daily lives. But Leninno, you cant be serious! Doesnt Lenin stand precisely for the failure to put Marxism into practice, for the big catastrophe which left its mark on the whole of twentieth-century world politics, for the Real Socialist experiment which culminated in an economically inefficient dictatorship? So, if there is a consensus among (whatever remains of) todays radical Left, it is that, in order to resuscitate the radical political project, we should leave the Leninist legacy behind: the ruthless focusing on the class struggle, the Party as the privileged form of organization, the violent revolutionary seizure of power, the ensuing dictatorship of the proletariatare all these not zombie-concepts to be abandoned if the Left is to have any chance in the conditions of post-industrial late capitalism?