October and the Theory of Communist Revolution: Social Creativity, Culture and Violence

ABSTRACT

October 1917 changed the world. The twentieth century became the epoch of socialist revolutions and, as the consequence of their victories and defeats (the paradox!), of the radical social reforms. The epoch of non-linear transformations of capitalism towards socialism and, broader, of the “realm of necessity” towards the “realm of freedom” started. And this is a challenge for all of us: for those who are creating socialist practices, and those who are thinking about socialist theory. This article is devoted to the last challenge and it deals with the most difficult problems of the theory of revolution in general and communist revolution in particular: the dialectic of social creativity and violence, destruction and creation, of political, economic, social changes on one hand; and the rebirth of culture—on another; interrelation of conformists and revolutionaries, and so on.

KEYWORDS:

• Revolution
• communism
• social creativity
• alienation
• culture

Acknowledgements

This article was translated into English by Renfrey Clarke.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on Contributor

Buzgalin Alexander, Doctor of Economic Sciences, is a professor at the Department of Political Economy of the Faculty of Economics, Lomonosov Moscow State University, editor-in-chief of the journals Voprosy Politicheskoy Ekonomii (Questions of Political Economy) and Alternatives, and coordinator of the Russian Association for Political Economy. His research areas include political economy, Russian economy, methodology of economic theory and inequality. He has published a number of articles in journals such as Cambridge Journal of Economics, International Critical Thought and Science & Society.

ORCID

Alexander Buzgalin http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3923-8385