October! : to commemorate the future

Michael Hardt, Sandro Mezzadra

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

2 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

The best way to commemorate October 1917 is by looking forward, not back—to remember the future. We have no desire to continue drawing up balance sheets of the Soviet experience, assessing its successes and failures, identifying when the revolution went wrong, defending it from detractors, denouncing those who betrayed it, or debating theories of “totalitarianism.” The time for all that has passed. The ideological clashes of the Cold War—which for decades both elevated and obscured all of those issues—and even the post– Cold War are now, thankfully, behind us. What remains important, instead, is to appreciate how the rupture opened by the October Revolution revealed new horizons for political thought and practice, making what was previously unthinkable the order of the day. It was the source of great theoretical and political innovation, and, indeed, vast territories of that unknown universe illuminated by the October Revolution still remain to be explored and experimented.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)649-668
Number of pages20
JournalSouth Atlantic Quarterly
Volume116
Issue number4
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2017

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