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Not sure if this should be here or in 'Art' - moderators feel free to move it.
Here's a call for writing/thinking/action that I've received from some artist acquaintances. Answers on a postcard as detailed below: responses will be transferred to "a time card format" . All responses will be gathered together, translated in Finnish and Russian, documented and presented as an archive at the Lenin Museum in January 2003. With your permission, multiple copies of your response will be made so that visitors to the museum can take some ideas away. Please indicate in your e-mail if you are willing to let us make copies.
What is to be done?
Questions for the 21st Century
Lenin’s description of imperialism as the highest stage of capitalism now seems like a self-fulfilling prophecy. After the collapse of the Soviet bloc the total
spread of unregulated global capitalism is seen as inevitable. With this spread, a third of the world’s population lives on less than $2 a day and the poorest
countries in the world owe a $422 billion debt that can never be paid. Yet, events in Seattle, Genoa and elsewhere show that global capitalism can be
resisted. Do you think that Lenin’s ideas are of any use today? What are the burning social and political questions of our time?
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When Lenin wrote What is to be Done? in 1902, he mainly wanted to distinguish between radical revolutionary politics and the reformists who just wanted
to patch things up. Lenin was intolerant of questions that failed to really challenge the dominant political order. How can we provoke significant change
today and do you think any real shift can really happen under our present system?
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The Lenin Museum in Tampere is the site of Lenin and Stalin’s first meeting. Lenin’s ideas are often seen as leading inevitably to Stalinism and the terror of
the Soviet Empire. This has been called the Leninist Tragedy. At the scene of their meeting, is it possible to rescue some of Lenin’s ideas from this fate?
How can we prevent social change from turning into a situation where the same structures of power are re-established with different players at the top?
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In Tampere, 1906 Lenin made a pledge to honour the Finnish right to self-determination after the Bolshevik Revolution. Lenin believed that Marx’s
revolutionary ideas had to be adapted to the local and national conditions of workers rather than being imposed from above. In Lenin’s time, this
mobilisation of worker’s movements was the most effective way of achieving international solidarity. The phrase ‘workers of the world unite’ may now seem
like an impossible ideal since late capitalism has crushed union power and pitted the workers of the world against one another. Despite this gloomy picture,
from where you stand right now, what are the possibilities for social change today?
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In short, what is to be done?
Please e-mail your response in not more than 300 words to whatistobedone@excite.com or mail to:
What is to be Done? The Lenin Museum
Hämeenpuisto 28, FIN-33200 Tampere, FINLAND
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