Trotsky over Mauss: Anthropological Theory and the October 1917 Commemoration

Birth of Karl Marx, 200 years. The first publication of Das Kapital, 150 years. The Russian and German Revolutions, 100 years. Paris and Prague 1968, 50 years. In a sense, 2017 and 2018 seem over-determined. No escape, not even for those who are not interested in the timeline of the Left and/or live through other temporal narratives, like Vladimir Putin, who kept open talk of the revolutionary centennial in Russia to almost zero.Putin serves as a pointer for the larger contemporary context: The Western and Southern Left has willfully chosen amnesia of the Russian revolution too, and that since long. The same reformist Left is also at the end of its shelf life, paralyzed before the choices it is forced to make between participatory capitalism on terms dictated by globalized capital and participatory democracy cum popular sovereignty.