There's a serious lack of learning from history on this board. Don't get offended, don't get defensive; it's true. And it's totally understandable. But that doesn't make it positive; it's something that needs to change.
It's great that everyone here is interested in discussing current events, socio-political trends, and 21st century academic thought. These are all important things to be knowledgeable about. Every good socialist should have their eyes and ears to the ground; to the mood in society, the machinations of the ruling class, and the ideas of those thinkers who have platforms.
But it's not enough. A good socialist should also take the time to educate themselves on history; on previous revolutionary efforts, their successes and their failures.
This year is 100 years since the Bolshevik revolution in Russia. It was the first (and arguably one of, if not the, only) times that the working class has risen up and collectively seized state power from the ruling class. The events that unfolded after October 1917 are vital to study too, and it is a question intimately linked to this one: how did they do it?
On the centenary of this momentous historical event, all good socialists should take the time to study the events of 1917, and to draw the revolutionary conclusions from those events. We should all read the works pertaining to this event by the men involved; Lenin, Trotsky, and others. We should all read analysis of the event afterwards, from as many points of view as you can - and importantly, from solid, strong socialist perspectives.
A lot has changed since 1917, and to spend your time only buried in the works of Lenin would be a fruitless task. You're all doing great work in educating yourselves politically on the current state of affairs, on trends in thought, on capitalism today. This is all vital. But only a novice scientist would begin an experiment without first familiarizing himself with previous attempts at such experiments, even if those previous experiments were done under different conditions.
ITT: We discuss and post literature related to the Russian Revolution of 1917.