What is the relevance of tendencies, esp. as regards dialectical materialism?

[slum]

What is the relevance of tendencies? Isn't the whole idea of being a Leninist/Trotskyist/Stalinist/Hoxhaist/Maoist etc anachronistic and useless, especially when we consider that materialism is not deterministic and socialist revolutions will look different in different countries?

Why do we regard Lenin, Trotsky, (or Stalin if that's yr bag) et. al as anything other than other communists who attempted to interpret and change the world using the framework suggested by Marx and Engels? Lenin may have written a good deal of tactical theory for or Trotsky may have provided some analysis that was good (or bad) of a particular revolution at a particular historical moment and geographic space, but no one has 'evolved' or constructed a new framework that supersedes what we call "marxism" in any meaningful way.

What is the point of associating ourselves with some particular theoretical or practical strain of Bolshevism when the material conditions for the existence of the Bolshevik revolution have disappeared (and in the case of us in countries outside of Russia, may never have existed). Isn't fascination with Bolshevism as a model for revolutionary action in itself a violation of dialectical materialist understanding?

I hope this question makes sense, and I am asking honestly- I don't mean to offend anybody.

[Comrade #138672]

I believe that many of these tendencies arise out of the fact that revolutions look different in different countries (and different times). For example, Maoism was specific for China, Bolshevism was specific for Russia, etc. Some tendencies may be less specific, but I think it certainly has a lot to do with it.

[Nevsky]

It is important for the international communist movement to indentify tendencies correctly in order to dismiss the harmful ones and to uphold scientific marxism. For example, after the betrayal of the Second International, it was necessary that Lenin and the bolsheviks dissociated themselves from the traditional social-democracy.

Stalin's battle against trotskyite defeatism (yet another tendency) also helped winning WW2 as the Soviet Union was strong enough in its marxist-leninist self-conception to resist the hitlerite aggression. Furthermore, the fall of the communist Party in my country - the former party of Antonio Gramsci, now of the social democrats - taught me that the analysis and rejection of revisionist tendencies is absolutely crucial.

[slum]

I believe that many of these tendencies arise out of the fact that revolutions look different in different countries (and different times). For example, Maoism was specific for China, Bolshevism was specific for Russia, etc. Some tendencies may be less specific, but I think it certainly has a lot to do with it.


This is sensible, ty

So are, say, UK Leninists anticipating that a similar revolution would occur there even though the UK doesn't have workers councils/a peasant class/etc? Why would someone in the US ever be a Maoist?

When tendencies 'inherit' theory and praxis from earlier revolutionaries do they assume they also inherit the material conditions that made that theory practical?

and one more question, is combined and uneven development the primary reason revolutions take different forms? does c&ud mean that the working class is different somehow depending on what capitalist state you're looking at?

[slum]

It is important for the international communist movement to indentify tendencies correctly in order to dismiss the harmful ones and to uphold scientific marxism. For example, after the betrayal of the Second International, it was necessary that Lenin and the bolsheviks dissociated themselves from the traditional social-democracy.

Have social democrats ever even counted as a revolutionary socialist tendency, through? I thought they were just reformists, can we even consider them Marxists if they don't believe the working class is a revolutionary class, or if they advocate fighting against other workers in capitalists' wars?


Stalin's battle against trotskyite defeatism (yet another tendency) also helped winning WW2 as the Soviet Union was strong enough in its marxist-leninist self-conception to resist the hitlerite aggression. Furthermore, the fall of the communist Party in my country - the former party of Antonio Gramsci, now of the social democrats - taught me that the analysis and rejection of revisionist tendencies is absolutely crucial

Trotsky (and presumably Trotskyists) was a Marxist, though. Would you say that his rejection of the soviet union makes him equally as anti scientific marxism as social democrats?

I assume (and sorry if I assume incorrectly) that you are an M-L and consider Stalin's USSR a socialist state. The USSR is gone. How will adhering to Lenin and Stalin's model help you to build a socialist revolution in Italy in 2013, when the material conditions are very different from Russia in the early twentieth century?

[LOLseph Stalin]

I believe that many of these tendencies arise out of the fact that revolutions look different in different countries (and different times). For example, Maoism was specific for China, Bolshevism was specific for Russia, etc. Some tendencies may be less specific, but I think it certainly has a lot to do with it.

Which just brings up another important point. If these ideologies are country specific then shouldn't we be working on new ideas to apply to our own countries? Like I don't see how the peasants war of Maoism would work in Europe, for example.

[AConfusedSocialDemocrat]

Thus the need for Eurocommunism!

[slum]

Which just brings up another important point. If these ideologies are country specific then shouldn't we be working on new ideas to apply to our own countries? Like I don't see how the peasants war of Maoism would work in Europe, for example.

This was essentially my question, ty for wording this in a sensible way.

I replied to Nevsky but it doesn't appear to be showing up? I know I'm still under ten posts but it's been like two days. Have I committed some kind of faux-pas?

[Comrade #138672]

This is sensible, ty

So are, say, UK Leninists anticipating that a similar revolution would occur there even though the UK doesn't have workers councils/a peasant class/etc? Why would someone in the US ever be a Maoist?Yeah, it would not be the same.


When tendencies 'inherit' theory and praxis from earlier revolutionaries do they assume they also inherit the material conditions that made that theory practical?Not necessarily. Perhaps some of the material conditions, but not all of them.


and one more question, is combined and uneven development the primary reason revolutions take different forms? does c&ud mean that the working class is different somehow depending on what capitalist state you're looking at?I think it does mean that.


Which just brings up another important point. If these ideologies are country specific then shouldn't we be working on new ideas to apply to our own countries? Like I don't see how the peasants war of Maoism would work in Europe, for example.That is indeed an important point. We would have to use a different strategy in Europe of the 21st century. This does not mean that some (or perhaps most) strategies and lessons of Leninism, Maoism, etc. aren't useful to us, but we have to at least adapt them to modern material conditions. From all that a new tendency is possibly derived. To be honest, I'm still unsure about what kind of direction this tendency should be headed.


Thus the need for Eurocommunism!Perhaps a new form of anti-Reformist Eurocommunism. The workers from different countries in Europe definitely have to join forces. Now even more than ever. We also need to crush all Nationalist movements in Europe.

[subcp]

If you venture outside the realm of the edifice that put walls up around theory and practice after the Bolshevik, Albanian or Chinese experiences, you'll find plenty of groups and people that have kept Marxism a living science.

You're right though. We aren't going to be doing the revolution of 1917 over again.

[Labor Aristocrat Killer]

You need a Leninist analysis in order to even recognize (much less defeat) the social-chauvinist and opportunist Labor Aristocracy. Without the Labor Aristocracy, the capitalist class could not maintain control over the working class.

Leninism is about learning how to understand the "tendencies" of the "Left," to recognize the social-chauvinists and opportunists for what they are, and how to struggle against them and expose them as the lackeys of imperialism that they are to the workers.

[Labor Aristocrat Killer]

To quote Lenin:



“We are leaders elected by the masses, “ Comrade Crispien continues. This is a formal and erroneous point of view, since a struggle of trends was clearly to be seen at the latest Party congress of the German Independents. There is no need to seek for a sincerometer and to wax humorous on the subject, as Comrade Serrati does, in order to establish the simple fact that a struggle of trends must and does exist: one trend is that of the revolutionary workers who have just joined us and are opposed to the labour aristocracy; the other is that of the labour aristocracy, which in all civilised countries is headed by the old leaders. Does Crispien belong to the trend of the old leaders and the labour aristocracy, or to that of the new revolutionary masses of workers, who are opposed to the labour aristocracy? That is a question Comrade Crispien has failed to clarify.


Here we must ask: how is the persistence of such trends in Europe to be explained? Why is this opportunism stronger in Western Europe than in our country? It is because the culture of the advanced countries has been, and still is, the result of their being able to live at the expense of a thousand million oppressed people. It is because the capitalists of these countries obtain a great deal more in this way than they could obtain as profits by plundering the workers in their own countries.



Comrades, Serrati has said that we have not yet invented a sincerometer—meaning by this French neologism an instrument for measuring sincerity. No such instrument has been invented yet. We have no need of one. But we do already have an instrument for defining trends. Comrade Serrati’s error, which I shall deal with later, consists in his having failed to use this instrument, which has been known for a long time.

[Nevsky]

Have social democrats ever even counted as a revolutionary socialist tendency, through? I thought they were just reformists, can we even consider them Marxists if they don't believe the working class is a revolutionary class, or if they advocate fighting against other workers in capitalists' wars?

I would certainly not include them in the revolutionary socialist category. Just look at the german social democratic history for example. Not only did they betray the revolutionary leftist current of the post-WW1 years, they even allied with fascist murderers who killed Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht and other revolutionary comrades. Nowadays, german social democrat Per Steinbrück receives millions of euros for his lectures while poverty spreads through Europe.



Trotsky (and presumably Trotskyists) was a Marxist, though. Would you say that his rejection of the soviet union makes him equally as anti scientific marxism as social democrats?

I assume (and sorry if I assume incorrectly) that you are an M-L and consider Stalin's USSR a socialist state. The USSR is gone. How will adhering to Lenin and Stalin's model help you to build a socialist revolution in Italy in 2013, when the material conditions are very different from Russia in the early twentieth century?

Yes, you were correct about my own tendency. I do believe that Trotsky was a marxist, not "fascist" or whatever some M-Ls occasionally call him. He was an idealist and a defeatist, though, at the wrong time and in the wrong place. Some of his ideas are still valuable for marxism. In fact, I agree with his observations on art development in socialism:

"However, does not an excess of solidarity, as the Nietzscheans fear, threaten to degenerate man into a sentimental, passive, herd animal? Not at all. The powerful force of competition which, in bourgeois society, has the character of market competition, will not disappear in a Socialist society, but, to use the language of psycho-analysis, will be sublimated, that is, will assume a higher and more fertile form. There will be the struggle for one’s opinion, for one’s project, for one’s taste. In the measure in which political struggles will be eliminated – and in a society where there will be no classes, there will be no such struggles – the liberated passions will be channelized into technique, into construction which also includes art. Art then will become more general, will mature, will become tempered, and will become, the most perfect method of the progressive building of life in every field. It will not be merely “pretty” without relation to anything else." (Literature and Revolution, Chapter 8)

As a M-L I don't see any contradiction to scientific marxism here. To the contrary, it is an important hint at how leftist cultural development might look like. I would certainly like my italian M-L revolution not to scare off young and promising artists or intellectuals who would feel oppressed by a strict socialist realism e.g.

[slum]

If you venture outside the realm of the edifice that put walls up around theory and practice after the Bolshevik, Albanian or Chinese experiences, you'll find plenty of groups and people that have kept Marxism a living science.

You're right though. We aren't going to be doing the revolution of 1917 over again.

All these realms are new and mysterious to me, just trying to find my way around.

Do you have any reading recommendations, especially ones where theorists address modern global capitalism and the western "service economies" from a scientific Marxist perspective?

[slum]

To quote Lenin:

Here we must ask: how is the persistence of such trends in Europe to be explained? Why is this opportunism stronger in Western Europe than in our country? It is because the culture of the advanced countries has been, and still is, the result of their being able to live at the expense of a thousand million oppressed people. It is because the capitalists of these countries obtain a great deal more in this way than they could obtain as profits by plundering the workers in their own countries.

This makes a lot of sense to me re: why real workers consciousness seems so easily misdirected in the U.S. (the only place I know).

As much as I like Lenin, (he was the first Marxist I read and seems eminently sensible) why must one be a 'leninist a la 1917' in order to see, by a basic marxist analysis, that certain people regardless of their talk have a different relationship to the means of production than do revolutionary workers? That these people will likely always lean towards their own class interests and in the case of trade union leaders, towards conservatism (since they exist to negotiate with, not overthrow, capitalism)?

I hope I'm not arguing minutiae here. I mean to say that all of these theorists have contributed to our understanding of the marxist method, but that since maxism is based on materialism, and our material situations differ by time and place, isn't it anachronistic to go about our practice as if we were still in their material circumstances?

[slum]

I would certainly not include them in the revolutionary socialist category.

R.I.P. Rosa. now I've likely pissed off all the social democrats. sorry/not sorry.



As a M-L I don't see any contradiction to scientific marxism here. To the contrary, it is an important hint at how leftist cultural development might look like. I would certainly like my italian M-L revolution not to scare off young and promising artists or intellectuals who would feel oppressed by a strict socialist realism e.g.

Thank you for your reply! I agree with you and Trotsky on art, but this isn't really what I was asking. Isn't the contradiction with scientific marxism in assuming that, although the material conditions that produced the bolshevik revolution are not true for modern Italy, that a similar revolution could nonetheless emerge from what is now a capitalist parliamentary republic? And since the ultimate goal is classless (and thus stateless) communism, not just a socialist state, and the USSR was never that, why adopt the M-L tradition at all? Surely something went wrong.

As an "artist" I appreciate your commitment to not imprison me and my brethren for our bourgeois abstract schools ;)1

[Nevsky]

Isn't the contradiction with scientific marxism in assuming that, although the material conditions that produced the bolshevik revolution are not true for modern Italy, that a similar revolution could nonetheless emerge from what is now a capitalist parliamentary republic? And since the ultimate goal is classless (and thus stateless) communism, not just a socialist state, and the USSR was never that, why adopt the M-L tradition at all? Surely something went wrong.

Sticking to M-L tradition doesn't mean going through the exact same revolution as the bolsheviks or doing exactly the same as Stalin's regime did in the USSR. It means that certain principles of marxism (and the leninist theory/practical application) which are vital for the further advancement towards communism need to be affirmed. Some of these "eternal" priciples should serve as the frame within the revolutionaries reinvent themselves according to the objective material conditions of their specific struggle.

I'll give you a historical example for the difference between individual application of M-L and evident deviation from it. Take the Ceausescu regime for instance; Nicolae Ceausescu called himself a marxist-leninist on several occasions but he always emphasized that every nation has the right to develop socialism according to its specific conditions. However, said concept turned out to be an obvious nationalist deviation from true marxism, whereas Enver Hoxha's party built up socialism in Albania according to the country's own conditions and culture without degenerationg into mere nationalism (obviously, the extreme isolationism and disconnection from the global socialist movement still lead to its collapse).

[slum]

Sticking to M-L tradition doesn't mean going through the exact same revolution as the bolsheviks or doing exactly the same as Stalin's regime did in the USSR. It means that certain principles of marxism (and the leninist theory/practical application) which are vital for the further advancement towards communism need to be affirmed. Some of these "eternal" priciples should serve as the frame within the revolutionaries reinvent themselves according to the objective material conditions of their specific struggle.

OK, I think I see now. So for Leninists, for example, the need for a vanguard party falls into this category. Thanks for being patient in explaining this to me- I was mainly trying to figure out if there were actual political differences between tendencies beyond stances on the nature of historical socialist adventures (bad word, can't think of a better one) and it seems there is plenty. I imagine there's still some dispute within each tendency which principles are universal and which are specific.



I'll give you a historical example for the difference between individual application of M-L and evident deviation from it. Take the Ceausescu regime for instance; Nicolae Ceausescu called himself a marxist-leninist on several occasions but he always emphasized that every nation has the right to develop socialism according to its specific conditions. However, said concept turned out to be an obvious nationalist deviation from true marxism, whereas Enver Hoxha's party built up socialism in Albania according to the country's own conditions and culture without degenerationg into mere nationalism (obviously, the extreme isolationism and disconnection from the global socialist movement still lead to its collapse).

I don't know anything about either of these historical points but it's certainly something to look into. It seems like the "M-L tradition" has had more instances of attempted real-world application than I knew about, so clearly there's a lot more to be learned here about what are and are not 'eternally applicable' principles.

[subcp]

All these realms are new and mysterious to me, just trying to find my way around.

Do you have any reading recommendations, especially ones where theorists address modern global capitalism and the western "service economies" from a scientific Marxist perspective?

While far from perfect, sometimes the Marxist-Humanist Initiative and News & Letters have thought provoking economic analysis (particularly MHI member Andrew Kliman- I'd highly recommend his book 'The Failure of Capitalist Production'- which dissects a lot of Trot economic theory, and clearly demonstrates the tendency of the rate of profit to fall as well as an analysis of the crisis of 2007-2008).

Articles like the one below from the non-Tiqqun communisation milieu put a lot of emphasis on contemporary analysis and theory (particularly regarding the return of crisis from the late 1960's/early 1970's):

http://riff-raff.se/texts/en/sic1-the-historical-production-of-the-revolution-of-the-current-period

In general, I'd recommend avoiding anything that finds something positive in the regimes of the 20th century.