S8 Ep256: LENIN'S INNOVATION: REVOLUTIONARY DEFEATISM AND GLOBAL CIVIL WAR Colleague Professor Sean McMeekin. Focusing on Vladimir Lenin, this section examines how he radicalized Marx's vision through

LENIN'S INNOVATION: REVOLUTIONARY DEFEATISM AND GLOBAL CIVIL WAR Colleague Professor Sean McMeekin. Focusing on Vladimir Lenin, this section examines how he radicalized Marx's vision through the concept of "revolutionary defeatism." Lenin believed that disastrous imperial wars, like World War I, should be welcomed as catalysts to turn international conflict into domestic civil war. His goal was to spark a chain reaction of global civil wars until the "proletarian revolution" was achieved. Unlike socialists who sought reform through elections, Lenin demanded a "vanguard" of professional revolutionaries to impose doctrine from the top down. McMeekinhighlights Lenin's ruthlessness, noting that he suppressed his own appreciation for music to avoid becoming sentimental, believing the political vision required an unyielding hardness to operationalize Marx's theories into a strategy of perpetual war. NUMBER 3