Tariq Ali

One could add that the manufactured love for Churchill, and the uses made of him, came to embody the nostalgia for an Empire that was long gone.

One of the worst criminals Europe ever produced was Leopold of Belgium, whose ownership of and brutalities in the Congo led to the deaths of several million Africans.

The Bengal famine was no natural disaster but 'the direct product of colonial and wartime ideologies and calculations that knowingly exposed the poor of Bengal to annihilation through deprivation'; 'a grievous crime was committed in broad daylight', one that is still unacknowledged.

History handed Lenin a gift in the shape of the First World War. He grasped it with both hands and used it to craft an insurrection. It is revolutions that make history happen. Liberals of every sort, with rare exceptions, are found on the other side.

The assassination of the Austrian crown prince by a Serbian nationalist was the trigger for the conflict, not the underlying cause, comparable in modern times to the explosions of 9/11 that provided the pretext for the war on Iraq, the destruction of Libya, Syria and the Yemen and the total destabilisation of Afghanistan and Pakistan. The post 9/11 wars have lasted longer than the First and Second Wars put together.

Not even the largest party can 'make' or 'steal' a revolution, but the success of such an endeavor depends on the ability, lucidity, energy and single-mindedness of a revolutionary party when confronted with a prerevolutionary crisis.

Revolutionary periods invariably encompass a huge fluctuation of political consciousness that can never be registered accurately by any referendum.

Why is insurrection an art? Because an armed uprising against he capitalist state or occupying imperialist armies has to be choreographed with precision, especially during its final stages.