To Halt Climate Change, We Need an Ecological Leninism
 |
Jacobin is politically committed... Despite this almost constant onslaught of brayingly ill-informed and bellicose opinion disguised as news, we at Jacobin are the ones more often dismissed as “propagandists.”
As accusations go, it’s a fun one, in a retro sort of way. But... Is Jacobin propaganda, and if so, is that a bad thing?... Lenin viewed propaganda as critical to building the socialist movement. In his 1902 pamphlet What Is to Be Done? Lenin jokes—
"Comrade Martynov rises and, turning to me, says sternly:
“Permit me to ask you, has an autonomous editorial board the right to dream without first soliciting the opinion of the Party committees?”
He is followed by Comrade Krichevsky; who . . . continues even more sternly:
“I go further. I ask, has a Marxist any right at all to dream, knowing that according to Marx, mankind always sets itself the tasks it can solve and that tactics is a process of the growth of Party tasks which grow together with the Party?”The very thought of these stern questions sends a cold shiver down my spine and makes me wish for nothing but a place to hide in."
