November 6, 2025, to February 26, 2026 (register anytime)
Solidarity reading and discussion series
You are welcome to register for the class series even if you can’t attend every session. In December the session on December 4th will take up the 1917 Russian Revolution and on December 18 will discuss the rise of a Soviet bureaucracy.
November 2025 to February 2026 on Zoom
Thursday every 2 weeks (except Christmas break); 8pm ET / 5pm PT
The mythical “End of History” celebrated by capitalist economists and politicians with the collapse of the Soviet Union is now unquestionably itself… ended. The US empire is in perpetual crisis, along with global capitalism. And the twenty-first century has been defined by mass uprisings, revolts, and revolutionary movements that buck against an intolerable world order. Not only have these revolutions failed before the challenge of power, but authoritarianism has arisen and nutured its army from the discontented. Even over organization, power’s precondition, our movements have tripped and fallen.
The trouble is that it is not exactly clear which lessons socialists and our broader movements should draw from our long and difficult organizational histories. Some are wary of vanguard parties, while others are skeptical about big tent groups, and still others others warn that social movements without sustained organizational foundations are unsustainable.
This reading group will tackle problems of socialist organization by studying historical experiences of revolutionary parties and movements with curiosity and openness. It will consist of eight classes, spanning the history of socialist struggles beginning with the Paris Commune, through the Russian and Chinese revolutions, and concluding with critical discussions of the difficult experiments socialists in the United States have conducted with organizational models since the 1960s, up until today.
This discussion series is open to all Solidarity members, friends, and others in and around social and socialist movements who want to join in. You do not have to commit to the whole series in order to participate, and you do not have to read all the readings.
Each class’s readings are divided into “critical” and “archival” readings – with main readings being between 20 and 100 pages. The archival readings are primary sources drawn from debates from the historical struggles we are studying that week. We have also included movies and podcasts each week so participants who don’t have the inclination or capacity to do the readings also have a way to prepare for discussions each week.
Read whatever you’re able. We will begin each discussion with a presentation from special guest presenters, often from authors of the readings for the week, so all participants can catch up.
REGISTER. If you have any questions, email info@solidarity-us.org
Overview
- Week 1, November 6: Origins of organizational differences within revolutionary anti-capitalism, an overview of the debate
- Week 2, November 20: Lessons of the Paris Commune
- Week 3, December 4: 1917
- Week 4, December 18: Consequences of the rise of a Soviet bureaucracy in Russia and Spain
- Week 5, January 15: The Maoist party as protagonist
- Week 6, January 29: Results of the revolution that didn’t happen
- Week 7, February 12: Social movements and the party
- Week 8, February 26: Solidarity’s theory of organization (public panel)
Week 1: Origins of organizational differences within revolutionary anti-capitalism, an overview of the debate (Thursday November 6)
- Watch a video recording of Jason Dawsey and Ivan Drury Zarin’s presentations here, and listen to an audio recording here
- Read a report on the class discussion, “Currents of socialism from below in revolutionary movements, yesterday and today”
Presenters:
Jason Dawsey has an article honoring-anti-fascist resistance in the September/October Against the Current. Having studied modern European history, he is particularly interested in anti-Nazi resistance movements, the Holocaust and Trotskyism.
Ivan Drury Zarin is a socialist organizer, writer, and worker’s newsletter publisher who lives on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil Waututh nations, in Vancouver. He teaches history and labor studies at Fraser International College at SFU and is a paratransit bus driver and member of ATU Local 1724. Read Ivan’s presentation here.
Critical review
Hal Draper, “The two souls of socialism” (1966)
Daniel Guerin, “Three problems of the revolution” (1958)
A/V
Joel Geier, “Hal Draper and Revolutionary Marxism,” Socialism Conference presentation, July 2016.
Young Karl Marx (Film by Raoul Peck, 118 minutes, 2017) DOWNLOAD 1.1GB.
From the archive
Lenin, “Primitiveness of the Economists and the Organization of the Revolutionaries,” from What Is To Be Done? (1902)
Karl Kautsky, “Sects or class parties,” Neue Zeit, April 1909.
Karl Marx, “Address to the Central Committee of the Communist League” (London, March 1850)
Errico Malatesta, “Anarchy,” Freedom, 1891.
Georges Sorel, “The Socialist Future of the Syndicates” (1898)
Week 2: Lessons of the Paris Commune (November 20th)
Links to the recordings from the class
- Watch the video recording of Carolyn Eichner’s presentation here, and listen to the audio here
- Read a report on the class discussion, “What was the ‘Paris Commune form’ of state for working class women?”
Presenter: Carolyn J. Eichner is Professor of History and Women’s & Gender Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. She is the author of Feminism’s Empire (Cornell University Press, 2022), The Paris Commune: A Brief History (Rutgers University Press, 2022) and Surmounting the Barricades: Women in the Paris Commune (Indiana University Press, 2004).
Critical review
Carolyn Eichner, “Florescence,” chapter two in The Paris Commune: A Brief History (2022)
A/V
“A Brief History of The Paris Commune with Carolyn Eichner,” Cosmonaut podcast interview (April 2022)
La Commune: Paris, 1871 (Film by the recently deceased revolutionary filmmaker Peter Watkins, 5 hours 45 minutes, 2000) Download the film here, with files in a folder. The folder includes two 3-hour .avi files, with separate subtitle files in the folder. This is playable with the free VLC media player, which you can download here.
From the archive
Introduction to the debate between Marx and Bakunin: Michael Lowy, “The Paris Commune of 1871,” in The Paris Commune: An Ode to Emancipation (Resistance Books, 2021)
Karl Marx, Civil War in France (1871)
Mikhail Bakunin, The Paris Commune and the Idea of the State (1871)
Week 3: 1917 (December 4)
Presenter: Paul Le Blanc has been active in the socialist movement for six decades. He is a member of Solidarity, the Tempest Collective, and Democratic Socialists of America. He serves on the editorial board of the Complete Works of Rosa Luxemburg (Verso). His most recent book is Lenin: Responding to Catastrophe, Forging Revolution (Pluto, 2023).
Critical review
Leon Trotsky, “The Congress of the Soviet Dictatorship,” in The History of the Russian Revolution (Monad Press, 1980)
Kevin Murphy, “From Compromise to Power,” Jacobin, November 2017.
Paul LeBlanc, Map of political currents in the Russian revolution (Unpublished chart, 2025), Reform policies of early soviet gov’t (Unpublished document, 2025), and Tentative Conclusions about Russia’s 1917 revolution (Unpublished document, 2025).
A/V
“October: The Story of the Russian Revolution,” China Meiville interview with Verso Books, May 19 2017.
October (Film by Sergei Eisenstein, 122 minutes, 1928) DOWNLOAD 3GB. This is playable with the free VLC media player, which you can download here.
From the archive
Lenin, Three articles from the eve of revolution: “Letter on Tactics” (April 8 and 13, 1917), “Task of the Proletariat in the Present Revolution” (AKA The April Theses, April 7, 1917), and “The Dual Power” (April 9, 1917), and “To the Population” (November 5 1917).
Erfurt Program, Social Democratic Party of Germany (1891)
Rosa Luxemburg, “The role of the mass strike in revolution,” chapter 7 in The Mass Strike, the Political Party, and the Trade Unions, 1906.
Week 4: Consequences of the rise of a Soviet bureaucracy in Russia and Spain (December 18)
Presenter: Suzi Weissman is an editor of Against the Current and Critique. She hosts “Beneath the Surface” program for Jacobin Radio and on Los Angeles’ KPFK radio. Weissman is the author of Victor Serge: The Course is Set on Hope and is currently active in defending Russian dissidents, particularly Boris Kargarlitsky.
Critical review
Suzi Weissman, “Viktor Serge’s Critique of Stalinism,” Against the Current, May-June 1988.
Viktor Serge, “Danger from Within,” Chapter 4 in Memoirs of a Revolutionary, 1901-1941 (New York Review Books, 2012, 1951)
A/V
The Spanish Civil War, part 1 and 2, Working Class History Podcast, June 2020.
Land and Freedom (Directed by Ken Loach, 1 hour 44 minutes, 1995).
From the archive
Repression of workers power in the USSR
Barbara C Allen, ed., The Workers’ Opposition in the Russian Communist Party: Documents, 1919-30 (Haymarket Books, 2022), selections: Theses of the Workers Opposition: Tasks of the Trade Unions, January 25 1921 (pages 137-147); AM Kollontai’s Diary Entries, March-April 1921 (pages 333-337); Protocol and resolution from a meeting of RCP(b) members who had belonged to the workers’ opposition, 8 July 1921 (pages 396-416).
CLR James, “Lenin and the Trade Union Debate in Russia (Parts 1-3),” in You Don’t Play with Revolution: The Montreal Lectures of CLR James (AK Press, 2009).
Suppression of the Spanish revolution
Murray Bookchin, “Reflections on Spanish Anarchism,” Our Generation, 1974.
Felix Morrow, “The masses struggle against fascism despite the People’s Front, Feb 16 to July 16 1936″ and “Counter Revolution and Dual Power,” chapters 6-7 in Revolution and Counter Revolution in Spain (Pathfinder Press, 1974).
Week 5: The Maoist party as protagonist (January 15)
Presenter: Rebecca Karl is a professor of modern history at New York University and president of NYU’s AAUP chapter. Her most recent books are China’s Revolutions in the Modern World: A Brief Interpretive History, Revolution and its Narratives: Socialist Literary and Cultural Imaginaries in China (1949-1966), co-translated and co-edited with Xueping Zhong and The Birth of Chinese Feminism: Essential Texts in Transnational Theory, co-editor and co-translator with Lydia Liu and Dorothy Ko.
Critical review
Rebecca Karl, “The May Fourth Movement (1919) and Cultural Revolution,” and “Interlude: Uneven and Combined—China in the 1920s,” in China’s Revolutions in the Modern World (Verso, 2020)
Nigel Harris, “Workers in the 1950s,” and “The Working Class After the Cultural Revolution,” in The Mandate of Heaven: Marx and Mao in Modern China.
Wang Zheng, “Feminist Contentions in Socialist State Formation: A Case Study of the Shanghai Women’s Federation,” in Finding Women in the State: A Socialist Feminist Revolution in the People’s Republic of China, 1949-1964. (University of California Press, 2017).
A/V
Gregor Benton, “Prophets Unarmed: Chinese Trotskyists in War, Jail, and the Return from Limbo,” Facultat De Tradiccio panel presentation on his 2017 book.
Red Sorghum (Hong GaoLiang film about war and the degeneration of revolution in China, 1988) Streaming here.
From the archive (*Special focus on women in the revolution)
Caroline Lund, “Women in the Chinese Revolution,” International Socialist Review, June 1970.
Chen Pi-Lan, “Letter about women in the Chinese revolution,” (September 1974)
Chen Pi-lan, “Examining the problem of women’s suicide,” Tung-Fang Tsa Chih, Vol 33 No 6, 1936.
Mo Chen, “The Invisible Chinese Activists,” Against the Current, May/June 2022.
Jiling Duan, “Sanba: Chinese feminists in struggle: Maoist past, coercive present,” Against the Current, March/April 2024.
Week 6: Results of the revolution that didn’t happen (January 29)
Presenter: Dianne Feeley is a retired autoworker and editor of Against the Current. She first demonstrated against police brutality in 1960 and became a socialist in 1967.
Critical review
Max Elbaum, “Bodies on the Line: The Culture of a Movement,” and “Rival trends try party building, round two,” chapter 8 and 11 in Revolution in the Air: Sixties Radicals turn to Lenin, Mao, and Che (Verso Books, 2002).
Dan Georgakas and Marvin Surkin, “Black Workers’ Congress,” and “Stop the Robberies, Enjoy Safe Streets: STRESS,” chapters 7 and 8 in Detroit I Do Mind Dying: A Study in Urban Revolution (South End Press, 1998; Haymarket Books, 2012).
Barry Sheppard, “The turn derails,” “An alternative path for the turn,” “Faction fight and split,” chapters 26-28 in The Party, Volume 2: Interregnum, Decline, and Collapse, 1873-1988 (Resistance Books, 2012).
A/V
Bring the War Home, Mother Country Radicals podcast (June 2022)
Finally Got The News (Documentary about the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, 56 minutes, 1970) (Streaming)
From the archive
Peter Camejo, “Against Sectarianism: The evolution of the Socialist Workers Party, 1978-1983,” Self published pamphlet, 1983.
Hal Draper, “Anatomy of the Micro-Sect,” Unpublished document circulated privately in 1973.
Farrel Dobbs and George Novak, “The organizational character of the Socialist Workers Party” (1965), page 436-459 in Bryan Palmer and Paul LeBlanc, US Trotskyism 1928–1965 Part III: Resurgence: Uneven and Combined Development. (Haymarket Books, 2018).
Joel Geier, “The Task for Socialists: Building the Revolutionary Party,” International Socialist Pamphlet, 1974.
Daniel Bensaid, “Crying for Argentina,” chapter 10 in An Impatient Life: A Memoir (Verso Books, 2013).
Eric Hobsbawm, “Vietnam and the Dynamics of Guerrilla War,” New Left Review, September/October 1965.
Week 7: Social movements and the party (February 12)
TBA
Week 8: Solidarity’s theory of organization (Closing panel, February 26)
TBA