Revolution in the 21st Century

by Chris Harman

'Revolution in the 21st Century' answers vital questions for those who want to change the world - but aren't sure it's still possible.

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction, History

128 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 2007

About the author

British journalist and political activist for the Socialist Workers Party.

Harmann was involved with activism against the Viet Nam war but became controversial for denouncing Ho Chi Minh for murdering the leader of the Vietnamese Trotskists.

Harman's work on May 1968 in France and other student and workers uprisings of the late 1960s, The Fire Last Time, was recommended by rock band Rage Against the Machine in their album sleeve notes for Evil Empire.

Reviews

[حسام آبنوس · Rating 4 out of 5]

راست‌ها مشغول بلعیدن هستند

برای دومین مرتبه خواندم و خب برخی ایده‌ها را دوست داشتم و برخی به نظرم بیشتر حرافی بود و تکرار باید باید‌ها! و مخاطب بایدها روشن نبود ولی در مجموع کتابی است که در بخش‌هایی جرقه‌هایی روشن می‌کند تا بتوان صورت‌بندی گروه‌ها و جریا‌ن‌ها در دنیای امروز را مشاهده کرد. امتیازی هم که می‌دهم از باب جسارتی است که در زدن حرف‌هایی از جنس چپ نو دارد آن هم در روزگاری که راست‌ها مشغول بلعیدن جهان هستند.

[Mahdi · Rating 2 out of 5]

کتاب تخصصی برای اهالی سیاست و نه عمومی برای همه مردم

ادبیات چپ همیشه جذاب بوده و هست اما چون منطبق بر یک ساختار عملیاتی نیست و فقط در حد حرف باقی می ماند، زیاد کاربرد ندارد. در این کتاب هم حرف های قشنگ و حتی درستی گفته شده و به نقد سرمایه داری پرداخته اما باز هم جایگزینی ارائه نشده است

در مجموع برای اهالی سیاست و دانشجویان این حوزه به منظور آشنایی با چپِ مدرن کتاب مناسبی به نظر می رسد

[Dina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent. But i doubt revolution will happen in USA. They are so completely mentally and physically enslaved, and i tried for years to speak the truth, or at least to shake them up. Useless. Now, i just want to be happy. Let the people sort our their own mess.

[Martin Empson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading Chris Harman's Revolution in the 21st Century for a second time nearly 15 years after it was first published I am struck by how much has changed, and how much has remained the same. The book was written in a decade when the anti-capitalist and anti-war movements swept the world, and mass uprisings shook many parts of the world, including Bolivia, which Harman devotes some pages too. A few years later the Arab Spring exploded, and much of those events fit exactly the dynamics described in this short book. Sadly Harman died just before the Middle Eastern revolutions. But his book serves as a guide to those events and much more. In barely 130 pages he shows the revolutionary dynamic of the working class engaged in its relentless battle with capital, the role of reformism and the importance of revolutionary organisation. He touches on wider debates - capitalism and ecological disaster, democratic planning, State Capitalism and so much more. If the world Harman described in 2007 has changed - its done so for the worse. The concentration of wealth is worse, inequality higher, war and environmental destruction growing. But Harman paints a vision of an alternative and a strategy for getting there. A handbook for fighting Capitalism in 2022 and beyond.

My 2007 Resolute Reader review of Chris Harman's Revolution in 21st Century

[Subvert · Rating 3 out of 5]

"By the time you read this, the resistance will have found fresh forms of expression and shaken the established order in new ways - and the numbers beginning to seek political answers outside those offered by the existing system will have grown". Just a quote from the introduction of this short book on the need for a socialist revolution in the 21st century. And Chris Harman has been proven absolutely right there. He finishes the book by writing about the Bolivian unrest of 2004/2005 that was going at that time, but the revolutionary fervour have come much closer to home now.

This book is meant to be an introductory text on the need for a revolution in the 21st century. An idea that is still quite alien to most progressives in the West, but also an idea that suddenly has become increasingly prominent with the uprisings all over the world in the last couple of years. It's introductory and many different issues on which entire books have been written are addressed in a single paragraph. Consequently most of it didn't have enough depth to really satisfy me. Sometimes it is a bit too simple and I could go on nitpicking on these issues here, but that would be unfair as it is a logical consequence of the book being a 126 pages. And some of it is brilliant though. I did feel the need to underline some parts of the text. He takes up all the usual counter arguments to the necessity of revolution in small hihgly readable book.

Chris Harman was one of the leading members of the Socialist Workers Party and this book is then also an argument for a revolutionary party like the SWP and structures as the International Socialist Tendency. This part of the book was of the most interest to me as I haven't made up my mind on the need for organizing ourselves in Trotskyist revolutionary parties. I'm not a member of any of these organizations myself and not too acquainted with all the debates on how they should be like, so I was curious how Chris Harman's (and SWP) argument goes.

He argues for setting up worker councils, arguing that the diminishing role of them in the Russian Revolution through the increased central authoritarianism (as a result of civil war and foreign pressure) is where it went wrong. But also for an organization with a degree of centralization in order to coordinate actions and provide a coherent response to the ruling class in a constantly changing struggle. This kind of thinking is the opposite of the anarchist philosophies rampant in the occupy movement for instance, but it does make sense when thinking about it when you truly want to go all the way with a revolution and actually defeat the status quo. It comes however with a constant sort of "party line" of which I'm allergic and a membership organization automatically create an inside and outside of activists, with those on the outside often skeptical of the agenda of those from the inside, as the members always seek to 'recruit' the outside activists.

So yes, I don't know. Again, it's a book that takes up many question and thereby brings up many questions as well. It provides a good base for discussion I suppose.

[Mehrnaz · Rating 1 out of 5]

تکراری و حوصله‌سربر‌.