Marx’s support for Chechen rebels against Russia

[Blanquist]

Why is it okay for marx to support backward peoples who are not lead by the most progressive movements

but if today a socialist says he supports the chechens hes not even considered a socialist?

"but the chechens are lead by ilamists and capitalists!' so what? back then they were lead by landlords and ilamists.

not saying i support anything, just asking a question

[hatzel]

backward peoples

Cut it out. Cut it right out.

[Ostrinski]

I'd say national liberation movements were more applicable in the 19th century than the 21st.

[Blackscare]

Why is it okay for marx to support backward peoples who are not lead by the most progressive movements

but if today a socialist says he supports the chechens hes not even considered a socialist?

"but the chechens are lead by ilamists and capitalists!' so what? back then they were lead by landlords and ilamists.

not saying i support anything, just asking a question


I'm not going to make a comment about the topic per se, but I would like to say that "Islamist" (with an S, not ilamist) movements that we think of today did not exist in Marx's time. Islam existed, yes, but "political Islam" of the type that now dominates the Chechen Nat-Lib movement was not a thing in Marx's time. People Marx supported may have been Muslim, but they were not Islamists.



You can't have a proper discussion if you're not absolutely clear with the terms that you use.

[Blanquist]

I'd say national liberation movements were more applicable in the 19th century than the 21st.

why? chechens had more rights not to be oppressed by Russia then, but today they have to live under the russian boot?

[Admiral Swagmeister G-Funk]

I've never thought that it was okay for Marx to support anything without critical assessment. You're assuming that Marx was always right.

[Blanquist]

I've never thought that it was okay for Marx to support anything without critical assessment. You're assuming that Marx was always right.

He was.

[Admiral Swagmeister G-Funk]

He was.
Here's your issue.

[Igor]

Why is it okay for marx to support backward peoples who are not lead by the most progressive movements

but if today a socialist says he supports the chechens hes not even considered a socialist?

Don't do this. And besides, who exactly is saying it's okay for Marx? I mean, I'm pretty sure most of those who don't support national liberation struggles are going to condemn Marx for that statement and most of those who support national liberation struggles are going to agree with Marx here. It's that simply really, Marx isn't really someone we all agree with on all matters.

[Blackscare]

He was.

You can't be serious.

[Aurora]

Without a quote or context it's difficult to analyze properly but Marx and Engels lived in an age where the bourgeoisie could still play a revolutionary role, if only barely. A lot of countries didn't have a workers movement or even a proletariat and in this context i believe they sometimes supported the progressive bourgeoisie where they were fighting for the democratic revolution.

Today is different, the world market rules and the bourgeoisie in backward countries are too weak and unwilling to carry out their historic tasks, where applicable the only class capable of leading the democratic revolution is the proletariat.

Again it's hard to know without the context, i've never read what Marx wrote about Chechnya.

Another thing Marx and Engels often did was support what they considered to be progressive countries against reactionary ones which may be the case here, Russia was the bastion of reactionism in Europe after all, another case was the Mexican-American war where Engels considered the US to be playing a progressive role against the backwardness of Mexico.

While the USA may have played a progressive role then, i don't know to be honest, the USA today no longer plays such a role, on the contrary it holds back development.

Hope that helps some.

Cut it out. Cut it right out.

What? There's nothing wrong with backward peoples or backward countries etc it's just calling reality like it is and i think you can safely assume on a communist forum that it's not used in a racist way but in the way Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky etc used it, to refer to a lower level of development in economy, politics or culture.

[hatzel]

What? There's nothing wrong with backward peoples or backward countries etc it's just calling reality like it is and i think you can safely assume on a communist forum that it's not used in a racist way but in the way Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky etc used it, to refer to a lower level of development in economy, politics or culture.

It's not 'just calling reality like it is,' and if you seriously think it is then you can join 'Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky etc.' in seriously needing to up your game and ditch the bullshit rhetoric, ya dig?

Even (though I don't think that word's really suitable, because it suggests I might find this somewhat unexpected, when in truth I don't) on a communist forum I can't 'safely assume' anything in this regard. I'd probably be a happier chappie if I could, but the evidence to the contrary is both incessant and overwhelming, so what else can I do?

Example:


a lower level of development in economy, politics or cultureBammmmm there's a bullet through my heart right there all this talk of 'development'...

[A Marxist Historian]

Why is it okay for marx to support backward peoples who are not lead by the most progressive movements

but if today a socialist says he supports the chechens hes not even considered a socialist?

"but the chechens are lead by ilamists and capitalists!' so what? back then they were lead by landlords and ilamists.

not saying i support anything, just asking a question

Who says that somebody who supports the Chechens vs. Putin is not a socialist? Putin sure as hell is no socialist!

Or are you talking about the Chechens during WWII?

Then the answer is because this is the twenty-first century, not the nineteenth. Things change.

Back in Marx's time, the Tsarist Empire was the main reactionary force in Europe vs. democratic, bourgeois revolutions. So rebels against it were automatically progressive. Marx even supported the Ottoman Empire in its wars vs. Tsarist Russia, not just Islamic rebels. I think (any experts on this?) so did Blanqui, by the way.

Now, we're in the era of imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism, and there can not be any democratic bourgeois revolutions anymore, only proletarian revolutions vs. capitalism if you want democracy. Things have changed.

So, since Russia is capitalist and imperialist these days, what with the collapse of the Soviet Union, whereas Chechen rebels during WWII could not have been supported if they were allied with Hitler, nowadays the right of the Chechens to national self determination is key, so yes, they deserve support in a military sense, despite their reactionary politics, just like the Taliban in Afghanistan vs. America.

And unlike the Taliban's Mujahedeen predecessors and cothinkers, fighting against an Afghan Revolution backed by the USSR, a bureaucratically deformed state but nonetheless a workers state.

Clear?

-M.H.-

[A Marxist Historian]

[QUOTE=Aurora;2479634]...
Another thing Marx and Engels often did was support what they considered to be progressive countries against reactionary ones which may be the case here, Russia was the bastion of reactionism in Europe after all, another case was the Mexican-American war where Engels considered the US to be playing a progressive role against the backwardness of Mexico.

While the USA may have played a progressive role then, i don't know to be honest, the USA today no longer plays such a role, on the contrary it holds back development...

[QUOTE]

Yes, Marx (not Engels) really did say at one point he was for the US vs. Mexico in 1848, I've seen the quote. He was dead wrong.

Why was he dead wrong? Because at the time he didn't fully understand how basic slavery was to ante-bellum America, and that the war was really about expanding slavery, something definitely not "progressive" in any way, shape or form.

So Abraham Lincoln, who opposed the war on the floor of Congress, had a better position on that war than Marx did.

I've heard the claim made that the statement, in the context of a heated polemic, was just Marx being satirical. I'd like to believe that is true, but I doubt it.

Nobody's perfect. There are no tin gods for revolutionaries, including Marx. Real revolutionaries do make mistakes, and then learn from them. The stuff Marx wrote during the Civil War proves that he had a totally correct understanding ofthe issues involved by then, and maybe even had learned from his mistake over the Mexican-American War.

-M.H.-

[Robocommie]

and i think you can safely assume on a communist forum that it's not used in a racist way

No, I don't think you can. Just because we consider ourselves Commies doesn't mean we're automatically enlightened, open-minded individuals. In fact if anything there's a self-righteousness in the militant left that can probably serve as a big fucking blind spot to a lot of different kinds of chauvinism.

[Nox]

Why is it okay for marx to support backward peoples who are not lead by the most progressive movements

Chechen independence was (and still is) a National Liberation movement, just like Palestinian independence. Many Marxists support National Liberation movements because they believe it gives the proletariat of the nation in question a better position from which to make the transition to socialism. Or something along those lines. I do not agree with this logic, however I do have sympathy for some National Liberation movements, Chechen independence being one of them.

[A Marxist Historian]

What? There's nothing wrong with backward peoples or backward countries etc it's just calling reality like it is and i think you can safely assume on a communist forum that it's not used in a racist way but in the way Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky etc used it, to refer to a lower level of development in economy, politics or culture.

Saying that a country or even a prenational entity like the Chechen lands is economically or socially backward is one thing. Talking about "backward peoples" is another matter.

And assuming that there is no racism on Revleft is, well, dangerous. This is a very white forum, which doesn't even have a separate page about black liberation. Indeed the page about "discrimination" (a very bourgeois term) has remarkably little about the "discrimination" black people undergo, it's mostly about every other form of discrimination and is pretty damn sparse.

-M.H.-