Marx vs. Lenin

[redstar2000]

On occasion, I'm not above a little self-flattery concerning my critique of Leninism...it doesn't seem to me that too many others have anticipated a lot of the things I've said about them.

But recently, my attention has been drawn (by the left-Menshevik Julius Martov) to some things that Marx and Engels had to say...both about Leninist parties and about the kinds of states they inevitably give rise to.

I know it appears "theological" to argue from "quotations"...and, as you know, I normally don't do that.

But just this once...

The Party and the Masses


If conditions have changed in the case of war between nations, this is no less true in the case of the class struggle. The time of surprise attacks, of revolutions carried through by small conscious minorities at the head of masses lacking consciousness is past. Where it is a question of a complete transformation of the social organisation, the masses themselves must also be in on it, must themselves already have grasped what is at stake, what they are fighting for, body and soul.

Introduction to Karl Marx's The Class Struggles in France, 1848-1850 (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1895/03/06.htm) by Frederick Engels (1895) (emphasis added)

This strongly suggests a very limited role for a "communist party"...surely far less ambitious than the Leninists proposed in the 20th century or now.

If the masses "must be conscious" (of the communist goal) then the "communist party" would simply dissolve itself (more or less rapidly) into the masses in the course of the revolutionary process.

Leninists might respond that it is not sufficient for the masses to be conscious of the goal of communism; they need "instruction" on "how" to get there...instruction by Leninist "experts", of course. But "instruction" is not the same as "command" -- which is what Leninists really intend.

Nor does "instruction" require a "disciplined core" of "leaders". Anyone of normal intelligence can learn the basics of communism and "instruct" others as interest grows.

The Party and the Revolution


The Blanquists fared no better. Brought up in the school of conspiracy, and held together by the strict discipline which went with it, they started out from the viewpoint that a relatively small number of resolute, well-organized men would be able, at a given favorable moment, not only seize the helm of state, but also by energetic and relentless action, to keep power until they succeeded in drawing the mass of the people into the revolution and ranging them round the small band of leaders. This conception involved, above all, the strictest dictatorship and centralization of all power in the hands of the new revolutionary government.

On the 20th Anniversary of the Paris Commune (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/postscript.htm) by Frederick Engels (1891) (my emphasis)


Doesn't this parallel Lenin's outlook from October 1917 until his death? And haven't Leninists advocated this ever since...and implemented it whenever they had the opportunity?

They will force the proletariat to be "communist"...whether they like it or not. All "for their own good", of course. Think of it as ideological "toilet training".

What happens when Leninism fails?


All revolutions up to the present day have resulted in the displacement of the rule of one class by the rule of another; but all ruling classes up to now have been only small minorities in relation to the ruled mass of the people.

As a rule, after the first great success, the victorious minority split; one half was satisfied with what had been gained, the other wanted to go still further, and put forward new demands, which, partly at least, were also in the real or apparent interest of the great mass of the people. In isolated cases these more radical demands were actually forced through, but often only for the moment; the more moderate party would regain the upper hand, and what had been won most recently would wholly or partly be lost again; the vanquished would then cry treachery or ascribe their defeat to accident.

Introduction to Karl Marx's The Class Struggles in France, 1848-1850 (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1895/03/06.htm) by Frederick Engels (1895) (emphasis added)

Isn't this the constant lament of contemporary Leninists? "We were stabbed in the back" by Stalin or by Khrushchev or by Tito or by Chou en-Lai or by...whoever (the list is very long). "The revolution was betrayed!"

What really happened?


Incidentally, if the bourgeoisie is politically, that is, by its state power, “maintaining injustice in property relations”, it is not [i]creating it. The “injustice in property relations” which is determined by the modern division of labour, the modern form of exchange, competition, concentration, etc., by no means arises from the political rule of the bourgeois class, but vice versa, the political rule of the bourgeois class arises from these modern relations of production which bourgeois economists proclaim to be necessary and eternal laws. If therefore the proletariat overthrows the political rule of the bourgeoisie, its victory will only be temporary, only an element in the service of the bourgeois revolution itself, as in the year 1794, as long as in the course of history, in its “movement”, the material conditions have not yet been created which make necessary the abolition of the bourgeois mode of production and therefore also the definitive overthrow of the political rule of the bourgeoisie. The terror in France could thus by its mighty hammer-blows only serve to spirit away, as it were, the ruins of feudalism from French soil. The timidly considerate bourgeoisie would not have accomplished this task in decades. The bloody action of the people thus only prepared the way for it. In the same way, the overthrow of the absolute monarchy would be merely temporary if the economic conditions for the rule of the bourgeois class had not yet become ripe. Men build a new world for themselves...from the historical achievements of their declining world. In the course of their development they first have to produce the material conditions of a new society itself, and no exertion of mind or will can free them from this fate.

Moralizing Criticism and Critical Morality 1847 (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/10/31.htm) The italics are Marx's; the bold is my emphasis.

This "nugget" is from a very obscure text that I had never come across before...but it makes a point that I have repeatedly raised: material conditions prevail!

The strength of "will" that the Leninists emphasize so much is futile if the material conditions for communist society are not present. Since all of the Leninist parties that actually made their own revolutions made them in semi-capitalist or pre-capitalist countries, they made them "in the service of the bourgeois revolution itself."

As we have seen.

Today, the only remaining viable Leninist parties are Leninist-Maoists...which lead or strongly influence peasant rebellions in a number of "third world" countries. What will happen if they win?

Marx just told you.

:redstar2000:

The Redstar2000 Papers (http://www.redstar2000papers.vze.com)
A site about communist ideas

[commie kg]

Excellent little compilation. I've always wanted to make one of these threads, but never had the time. I'm saving it to a word file to look at every once in awhile.

[SonofRage]

I look forward to reading the rebuttals of the Leninists. Good job Redstar. Although I think this falls into the "duh" category for a lot of us as far as the arguments against Leninism, it's interesting to see it written by Marx himself. Very nice.

[The Feral Underclass]

...but of course none of this really matters, because Lenin did the best he could under the circumstances :rolleyes:

I like reading you're posts. They have a sarcastic 'i told you so' feel to them. It must really piss the leninists off to be so wrong, all the time.

Thanks for this, this will be a great help in the future.

[Lardlad95]

This was more important than helping me debate my cappie older brother?

[sanpal]

Originally posted by The Anarchist [email protected] 17 2004, 09:35 AM
It must really piss the leninists off to be so wrong, all the time.

I think you must take the differense between Lenin and leninists (people who name himself as leninist). It is very likely that Lenin clearly understood this part of marxism (which in redstar's post). But he was under great temptation to obtain the proletarian revolution "astride" on bourgeois revolution.You can find and read Lenin's argument for proletarian revolution in Russia where Lenin argued against menshevik Sukhanov.

Lenin understood and acknowledged his own mistake when NEP was proclaimed. Perhaps the leninists consider that Lenin hadn't done any mistakes.

[Morpheus]

Redstar, why is it okay for you to disagree with Marx on certain topics (like Dialectics, or the need for a transitional state) but any deviation by Leninists from Marx is some awfull sin? If you can disagree with Marx why can't they? There are certainly major problems in their theory, but these have nothing to do with whether or not that was Marx's position. That only matters if your'e engaged in hero-worship of Marx, treating Marx like some sort of prophet. I'm pretty sure Leninists disagree with Marx's racism, should they also be condemned for that? Showing that Marx disagreed with Leninism does not refute Leninism. Posts like yours just provide further evidence that Marxism is really a pseudo-religion.

Not that it really matters, but you are selectively choosing only to highlight one aspect of Marx's thought. There are many other aspects which are much closer to Leninism. Some examples:

"The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the state, i.e., of the proletariat organized as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible.

Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionizing the mode of production.

These measures will, of course, be different in different countries.

Nevertheless, in most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable.

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralization of credit in the banks of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state.
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state; the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
8. Equal obligation of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children's factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, etc." - Communist Manifesto

"What we have to deal with here is a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerges. Accordingly, the individual producer receives back from society -- after the deductions have been made -- exactly what he gives to it. What he has given to it is his individual quantum of labor. For example, the social working day consists of the sum of the individual hours of work; the individual labor time of the individual producer is the part of the social working day contributed by him, his share in it. He receives a certificate from society that he has furnished such-and-such an amount of labor (after deducting his labor for the common funds); and with this certificate, he draws from the social stock of means of consumption as much as the same amount of labor cost. The same amount of labor which he has given to society in one form, he receives back in another.

Here, obviously, the same principle prevails as that which regulates the exchange of commodities, as far as this is exchange of equal values. Content and form are changed, because under the altered circumstances no one can give anything except his labor, and because, on the other hand, nothing can pass to the ownership of individuals, except individual means of consumption. But as far as the distribution of the latter among the individual producers is concerned, the same principle prevails as in the exchange of commodity equivalents: a given amount of labor in one form is exchanged for an equal amount of labor in another form." - Critique of the Gotha Program

"Between capitalist and communist society there lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat." - Critique of the Gotha Program

"each political party sets out to establish its rule in the state, so the German Social-Democratic Workers' Party is striving to establish its rule, the rule of the working class." - Engels, from Anarchism and Anarcho-syndicalism, p. 94 (a collection of writings on anarchism & syndicalism by Marx, Engels and Lenin).

"I say on the contrary; the social movement will lead to this decision that the land can but be owned by the nation itself. To give up the soil to the hands of associated rural labourers, would be to surrender society to one exclusive class of producers.

The nationalisation of land will work a complete change in the relations between labour and capital, and finally, do away with the capitalist form of production, whether industrial or rural. Then class distinctions and privileges will disappear together with the economical basis upon which they rest. To live on other people's labour will become a thing of the past. There will be no longer any government or state power, distinct from society itself! Agriculture, mining, manufacture, in one word, all branches of production, will gradually be organised in the most adequate manner. National centralisation of the means of production will become the national basis of a society composed of associations of free and equal producers, carrying on the social business on a common and rational plan. Such is the humanitarian goal to which the great economic movement of the 19th century is tending." Marx, Nationalization of Land 1872http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/04/nationalisation-land.htm

Notice, in the last quote, how society would remain highly centralized in Marx's vision even after the state had "withered away." And notice in the next to last quote how Engels equates the seizure of power by the Party with seizure of power by the working class. What they advocated was really state-capitalism, no matter how libertarian you try to make them. Marxists treat Marx & Engels writings the way Christians treat the Bible, they "interpret" it so it says what they want it to say.

[roman]

Morpheus is exactly right on this and I am suprised to see Redstar qoute mongering. Very few readers would take Marx's works as a complete monolithic system, most understand it as a patchwork that sometimes contradicts itself. So what if you can pull an anti-Leninist Marx by highlighting a few passages out of the thousands of pages he wrote. There is a social democratic Marx, an Anarchist Marx, a Leninist Marx, and a Maoist Marx. So what is your point rs? Is your point that you dug up a couple qoutes? As someone who comes out of the Maoist tradition, I say "so what!" Even if you could make the case that the social democratic or syndicalist reading of Marx coheres more with the entire corpus of his works, again, I say "so what!"

It is a very dogmatic approach to argue Marx can be qouted against Lenin, so therefore Leninism is wrong. Marx was writing at a particular time and place; he really never developed (although you can find hints in his works) an indepth understanding of modern imperialism and its affect on the evolution of capitalism. And, he never really came to the right conclusions about the organizational techniques to be used against imperialism.

As I have said before to redstar: Marx was wrong or incomplete on many topics.

Redstar's "gotcha!" is only hot air.

On a side note to Morpheus: To say all Marxism is qusi-religion is stupid. You can find cultish and qusi-religious approachs among all kinds of movements. Anarchism has its cultish qusi-religious trends also: Primitivists, Crimethinkers, etc. I would contend that the only reason it seems like the communist movements have more of this is because the communist as a whole have weilded more influence and been the center of the revolutionary struggle since 1917. I would also contend that the majority of parties that claim to be Marxist aren't at all qusi-religious, but social democratic, pragmatic, and, parlimentary. There is also a whole trend of revolutionary Marxism, especially in the 3rd world, that isn't tied down to qusi-religious worship of cannonical texts. I would also say that a reason the Amerikkkan new communist movment of the 60s became so cultish wasn't because they were Marxists or Maoists or whatever. It was because they were operating without a revolutionary social base. They were twisting in the wind. They were still dreaming that the Amerikkkan white working class could be revolutionary.

[Scottish_Militant]

I like reading you're posts. They have a sarcastic 'i told you so' feel to them. It must really piss the leninists off to be so wrong, all the time.

What do you mean 'piss the Leninists off? I thought the bottom line was that we are all revolutionary socialists fighting for the transformation of society. On this forum you have anarchists, marxists, leninists, trotskyists, stalinists, maoists with varied opinions on certain topics, but with one common goal - socialism.

I think Redstars post is informative and well thought out, and I look forward to reading the feedback he should get. But i'm sure his intention was not simply to 'piss the Leninists off', surely we are above all that?

[Scottish_Militant]

Whilst I'm here I'd be aswel offering a few quotes to this discussion, Marx and Engels on Russia.


"Apart from Germany and Austria the country on which we should focus our attention remains Russia., The government there, just as in this country is the chief ally of the movement. But a much better one that our Bismarck, Stieber and Tessendorf. The Russian court party, which is now firmly in the saddle, tries to take back all its concessions made during the years of the "new era" that was ushered in 1861, and with genuinely Russian methods at that. So now again, only "sons of the upper classes" are to be allowed to study, and in order to carry this policy out all others are made to fail in the graduation examinations. In 1873 alone this was the fate that awaited 24,000 young people whose entire careers were blocked, as they were expressly forbidden to become even elementary school-teachers. And yet people are suprised at the spread of "nihilism" in Russia. … It almost looks like the next dance is going to start in Russia. And if this happens while the inevitable war between the German-Prussian empire and Russia is in progress- which is very likely-repercussions in Germany are also inevitable." Written London October 15th, 1875; Engels, Frederick; "Letter to August Bebel in Leipzig; In: "Marx-Engels: Selected Correspondence"; Moscow; 1982; p.282.


"Such events are however maturing in Russia where the vanguard of the battle will engage in battle. This and its inevitable impact on Germany is what one must in our opinion wait for., and then will also come the time for a grand demonstration and the establishment of an official, formal International which however can no longer be a propaganda society but only a society for action".
Written London February 10th, 1882; Engels, Frederick; "Letter to Johann Phillip Becker in Geneva; In: "Marx-Engels: Selected Correspondence"; Moscow; 1982; p.328-329.


"I am proud to know that there is a party among the youth of Russia which frankly and without equivocation accepts the great economic and historical theories of Marx and has definitely broken with all the anarchist and also the few existing Slavophil tendencies of its predecessors…. What I know or believe I know about the situation in Russia makes me think that the Russians are fast approaching their 1789. The revolution must break out any day. In these circumstances the country is like a charged mine which only needs a single match to be applied to it. Especially since March 13 (Editor- the assassination of Tsar Alexander 3rd) This is one of the exceptional cases where it is possible for handful of people to make a revolution, i.e., by giving a small impetus to cause a whole system (to use a metaphor of Plekhanov’s) is in more than labile equilibrium, to come crashing down, and by an action insignificant of itself to release explosive forces that afterwards becomes uncontrollable. Well, if ever Blanquism – the fantastic idea of overturning an entire society by the action of a small group of conspirators – had a certain raison d’être, that is certainly so now in St.Petersburg. Once the spark has been put to the powder… the people who laid the spark to the mine will be swept along by the explosion …. Suppose these people imagine they can seize power, what harm does it do? .. To me the important thing is the impulse in Russia should be given, that the revolution should break out. Whether this or that faction gives the signal, whether it happens under this flag or that is a matter of complete indifference to me. If it were a palace conspiracy it would be swept away tomorrow. In a country where the situation is so strained, where the revolutionary elements have accumulated to such a degree, where the economic conditions of the people become daily more impossible, where every stage of social development is represented, from the primitive commune to the modern large scale industry and high finance, where all these contradictions are arbitrarily held in check by an unexampled despotism, a despotism which is becoming more and more unbearable to the a youth in whom the dignity and intelligence of such a nation are united-when 1789 has once been launched in such a country, 1793 will not be far away." Written London April 23 1885;
Engels, Frederick; "Letter to Vera Ivanovna Zasulich in Geneva"; In: "Marx-Engels: Selected Correspondence"; Moscow; 1982; pp.361-363.


"There is a letter by Engels dated April 6th 1887: "On the other hand it seems as if a crisis is impending in Russia. The recent attentates rather upset the apple cart. "The army is full of discontented conspiring officers (Lenin adds: Engels at that time was impressed by the revolutionary struggle of the Narodnaya Volya organization; he set his hopes on the officers and did not yet see the revolutionary spirit of the Russian soldiers and sailors, which was manifested so magnificently eighteen years later..) I do not think things will last another year; and once it (the revolution breaks out in Russia, then hurrah!" A letter of April 23 1887: "in Germany there is persecution after persecution of socialist. It looks as if Bismarck wants to have everything ready so that the moment the revolution breaks out in Russia, which is now only a question of months, Germany could immediately follow her example."
Lenin V.I: "Preface to The Russian Translation of Letters By Johanne Becker, Joseph Dietzgen, Frederick Engels, Marl Marx and others to Friedrich Sorge and Others"; (April 1907); In Collected Works"; Volume 12; Moscow; 1962; p.377.

[The Feral Underclass]

Morpheus

The question is not whether Lenin deviated but whether he blatantly distorted what Marx was saying to fit his own desire for revolutioanry struggle.

Actually, in my experience on che-lives the leninists look at Leninism as their religion and neurotically defend it and their guru by using Marxism as a justification. Most of the leninists on here believe greatly that leninism is pure Marxism in practice and that Lenins was "a true marxist." It is embarresing for them, and very amusing for us when people like Redstar show quite clearly that actually, that's bollocks, and in fact Leninism is a deviation, or better still, a complete distortion.

Have you noticed that none of these leninists who rant these things have bothered to join the thread. I wonder why that is?

Keep it coming I say!

[The Feral Underclass]

Originally posted by [email protected] 18 2004, 09:17 AM
What do you mean 'piss the Leninists off? I thought the bottom line was that we are all revolutionary socialists fighting for the transformation of society.
I agree.


On this forum you have anarchists, marxists, leninists, trotskyists, stalinists, maoists with varied opinions on certain topics, but with one common goal - socialism.

I would say my goal was to achieve communism.


I think Redstars post is informative and well thought out, and I look forward to reading the feedback he should get. But i'm sure his intention was not simply to 'piss the Leninists off', surely we are above all that?

It's ok to have a dig every once in a while. We have to learn not to take each other so seriously. This is a message board after all.

I never claimed that redstars intention was to piss of the leninists. What I said was "It must really piss the leninists off to be so wrong, all the time."

[peaccenicked]

Lenin, Vladimir llyich (1870-1924): A Russian revolutionary who guided the first great socialist revolution, founded the Russian Communist party and the Comintern [3rd International]. Lenin made many contributions to socialist theory. Perhaps the two more important of which is his principles of organization to make the revolution and his strategy to prevent counter revolution after taking state power. Syzmanski has summarized Leninism as an organizational vanguard to make the revolution: (1) recruitment of energetic, hard working respected and militant people into the vanguard party, (2) commitment and enthusiastic execution of party policy, (3) a thorough knowledge of existing social conditions in which the party must work and the internal situation at all levels of the party, (4) coordination of all activities of all members, (5) full democracy within the party, (6) flexibility in strategy and tactics in advancing the revolution, (7) the proper mix of openness and secrecy and (8) an appreciation of the role of leadership. Marxists-leninists parties are to be disciplined, dedicated and determined. After the seizure of state power, the major role of the socialist state is suppression of the former ruling strata, control over demoralized workers, over the petite bourgeois, the peasantry and the lumpenproletariat. Lenin's theory of imperialism and the conditions of colonial exploitation makes leninism widely accepted in third-world liberation movements today (1977).


From www.public.iastate.edu (http://www.public.iastate.edu)

Comrades learn for your self avoid the anarchist/left communist fantasy island . Share your own authority with the world.
Workers dont gain power then lie down in front of the reactionaries.

[Scottish_Militant]

It's ok to have a dig every once in a while. We have to learn not to take each other so seriously. This is a message board after all.

A fair point, but a few weeks ago this was one of your "digs"



THE PROBLEM WITH YOU PEOPLE IS THAT YOU CAN'T IMAGINE OR COMREHEND THAT YOU MIGHT BE WRONG. YOU COULD NEVER, FOR ONE MINUTE BELIEVE THAT REDSTAR OR ANYONE ELSE COULD BE RIGHT...YOU'D RATHER RESULT TO SAYING STUPID AND HURTFUL THINGS THAN EVEN THINK THAT SOMEONE ELSE MIGHT BE RIGHT..THAT'S YOUR FUCKING DOWNFALL...BECAUSE WHILE YOU SIT BELIEVEING YOU'RE RIGHT THE REST OF THE WORLD IS PASSING YOU BY AND LAUGHING AT YOU!

YOU'RE NOT IMPORTANT...YOU'RE NOT SIGNIFICANT, YOUR STUPID, IGNORANT, NAIVE LITTLE CHILDREN WHO CAN NOT EVEN BEGIN TO CONCEPTUALIZE THE SUFFERING IN THE WORLD...YOU LIVE IN YOUR MIDDLE CLASS LIVES PRETENDING TO FIGHT FOR THE WORKERS, PRETENDING TOI FIGHT FOR THE OPPRESSED...WELL YOU'RE NOT FOOLING ANYONE AND YOU JUST LOOK FUCKING PATHETIC...

I'D LIKE TO SEE YOU PEOPLE IN THE REAL WORLD...I'D LIKE TO SEE YOU SURVIVE ON YOUR OWN...I'D LIKE TO SEE YOU COPE WITH POVERTY OR WITH HIV...YOU PEOPLE MAKE ME SO ANGRY, BECAUSE WITH ALL YOUR TALKING AND ALL YOUR THEORIZING...FOR ALL YOUR BULLSHIT YOU HAVE NOTHING TO OFFER...NOTHING AT ALL EXCEPT VENOM...GOD, I ONLY HOPE YOU NEVER HAVE TO SUFFER BECAUSE THEN YOUR LITTLE BUBBLE WILL TRULY BURST AND YOU'LL HAVE TO LOOK AT REALITY IN ALL IT'S GLORY AND YOU'LL SHIT YOURSELF WITH FEAR....GROW UP...GET OUT INTO THE WORLD AND DO SOMETHING...INSTEAD OF TALKING ABOUT IT YOU FUCKERS!!!

[The Feral Underclass]

Originally posted by [email protected] 18 2004, 11:59 AM

It's ok to have a dig every once in a while. We have to learn not to take each other so seriously. This is a message board after all.

A fair point, but a few weeks ago this was one of your "digs"



THE PROBLEM WITH YOU PEOPLE IS THAT YOU CAN'T IMAGINE OR COMREHEND THAT YOU MIGHT BE WRONG. YOU COULD NEVER, FOR ONE MINUTE BELIEVE THAT REDSTAR OR ANYONE ELSE COULD BE RIGHT...YOU'D RATHER RESULT TO SAYING STUPID AND HURTFUL THINGS THAN EVEN THINK THAT SOMEONE ELSE MIGHT BE RIGHT..THAT'S YOUR FUCKING DOWNFALL...BECAUSE WHILE YOU SIT BELIEVEING YOU'RE RIGHT THE REST OF THE WORLD IS PASSING YOU BY AND LAUGHING AT YOU!

YOU'RE NOT IMPORTANT...YOU'RE NOT SIGNIFICANT, YOUR STUPID, IGNORANT, NAIVE LITTLE CHILDREN WHO CAN NOT EVEN BEGIN TO CONCEPTUALIZE THE SUFFERING IN THE WORLD...YOU LIVE IN YOUR MIDDLE CLASS LIVES PRETENDING TO FIGHT FOR THE WORKERS, PRETENDING TOI FIGHT FOR THE OPPRESSED...WELL YOU'RE NOT FOOLING ANYONE AND YOU JUST LOOK FUCKING PATHETIC...

I'D LIKE TO SEE YOU PEOPLE IN THE REAL WORLD...I'D LIKE TO SEE YOU SURVIVE ON YOUR OWN...I'D LIKE TO SEE YOU COPE WITH POVERTY OR WITH HIV...YOU PEOPLE MAKE ME SO ANGRY, BECAUSE WITH ALL YOUR TALKING AND ALL YOUR THEORIZING...FOR ALL YOUR BULLSHIT YOU HAVE NOTHING TO OFFER...NOTHING AT ALL EXCEPT VENOM...GOD, I ONLY HOPE YOU NEVER HAVE TO SUFFER BECAUSE THEN YOUR LITTLE BUBBLE WILL TRULY BURST AND YOU'LL HAVE TO LOOK AT REALITY IN ALL IT'S GLORY AND YOU'LL SHIT YOURSELF WITH FEAR....GROW UP...GET OUT INTO THE WORLD AND DO SOMETHING...INSTEAD OF TALKING ABOUT IT YOU FUCKERS!!!
That's not the whole text...Nothing I said in that was for a dig. It was fact.

[Kez]

you dont give up do you, you accuse people of 101 things and still dont see what your doing.

Stop being an angry, you accuse people of apathy, and yet you have one of the highest post counts on the board. If your so bothered, lead by example and do it your way.

[The Feral Underclass]

Originally posted by [email protected] 18 2004, 12:41 PM
you dont give up do you,
Communist_Revolutionary made a comment, refering the post I made a few weeks ago. I simply answered him. If it hadnt been for him I would never have mentioned it.


you accuse people of 101 things and still dont see what your doing.

I accuse people of things when I think they are wrong. Just like you do. Then it is up to the person to prove me wrong. That is the purpose of debate and this message board.


Stop being an angry,

I am not an angry..well, not all of the time.


you accuse people of apathy, and yet you have one of the highest post counts on the board.

Then that makes two of us.


If your so bothered, lead by example and do it your way.

I am!

[redstar2000]

Redstar, why is it okay for you to disagree with Marx on certain topics (like Dialectics, or the need for a transitional state) but any deviation by Leninists from Marx is some awful sin?

I did not say that the Leninists have "sinned" for disagreeing with Marx. The question is not whether or not someone has "departed from 'holy Marxism'", it is was Marx right about this particular question.

In fact, you obviously miss the whole point of my post: that Marx and Engels correctly anticipated the consequences of a Leninist approach to revolution.


Notice, in the last quote, how society would remain highly centralized in Marx's vision even after the state had "withered away." And notice in the next to last quote how Engels equates the seizure of power by the Party with seizure of power by the working class. What they advocated was really state-capitalism, no matter how libertarian you try to make them.

How can you have "state capitalism" without production for profit, exchange of commodities for money, wage-labor, etc.? That doesn't make any sense.

As to Engels' comment on German Social Democracy, aren't you forgetting something? That party was a mass parliamentary party...the very opposite of Lenin's vanguard of "professional experts in revolution". I'm sure that both of us, if we could travel back in time and see how it actually operated on a daily basis, would probably find it pretty bureaucratic...but that's a different kind of criticism.

No one today who is serious about the abolition of class society advocates social democracy.


Marxists treat Marx & Engels writings the way Christians treat the Bible, they "interpret" it so it says what they want it to say.

With one difference, at least on my part. Unlike the pious, I'm not simply interested in the "holy words"...I want to know what those guys said because they were right about a whole lot of stuff.

Which is not to say that they were not also wrong about many things as well. Your attitude seems to be a continuation of the feud between Marx and Bakunin; you "like" Bakunin so Marx must be "no good" and "all Marxists" are openly or secretly plotting a centralized state despotism.

Really, Morpheus, the breadth of your knowledge of revolutionary history is admirable (it often exceeds my own by a considerable margin) and I always find your posts instructive. But your stubborn prejudice against Marx -- against the very possibility that he might have been right about anything -- is, frankly, unworthy of an otherwise thoughtful revolutionary.


It is a very dogmatic approach to argue Marx can be quoted against Lenin, so therefore Leninism is wrong.

This mis-reading of my post is similar to the one by Morpheus. I do not think that Leninism is "wrong" "because" it differs from Marx. That would indeed be a "theological" argument and it's one that I've never made (at least consciously).

At times, I have said that Leninism is a variant of Marxism. In other places, I have suggested that Leninism is an idealist distortion of Marxism.

As I noted above and will repeat here: I thought these quotes from Marx and Engels were of interest because they correctly anticipated Leninism and its consequences.


As I have said before to redstar: Marx was wrong or incomplete on many topics.

As a general statement, I completely agree. Were they right about this?


What I know or believe I know about the situation in Russia makes me think that the Russians are fast approaching their 1789....Well, if ever Blanquism -- the fantastic idea of overturning an entire society by the action of a small group of conspirators -- had a certain raison d’être, that is certainly so now in St. Petersburg...Suppose these people imagine they can seize power, what harm does it do?...when 1789 has once been launched in such a country, 1793 will not be far away."

Yes, Engels did anticipate 1917...both February and October. But his question about "what harm can it do" suggests that he forgot what Marx had written (and I quoted) 38 years earlier. Not to mention what he himself would write six years later (which I also quoted).

It did quite a bit of harm.


Comrades, learn for yourself, avoid the anarchist/left communist fantasy island. Share your own authority with the world.

People should always learn for themselves. The working classes will determine what is "fantasy" and what is not.

------------------------

I'm a little surprised that some folks seemed to regard my initial post in this thread as a "dig" or a "gotcha". If I wanted to play that kind of game, I would post it in Chit Chat.

A materialist analysis of Leninism is, I think, very useful...especially by the founders of historical materialism themselves.

:redstar2000:

The Redstar2000 Papers (http://www.redstar2000papers.vze.com)
A site about communist ideas

[Scottish_Militant]

That's not the whole text...Nothing I said in that was for a dig. It was fact.

Going slightly off topic here but how exactly was it "fact"?

Have you ever met the people this post was directed at? Do you know what class they are? Or what kind of political work they do?

I've heard you are off to Africa (I assume to do some sort of political work?) for this you should be congratulated, and I wish you every success. I also would advise you however that we don't all have to go to Africa to be "doing something". As I've already said, I am a working class person with a trade and a job, I do as much work in my union and my local community as possible, this is no more or no less important to any other comrades political activities in the 'real world', at the end of the day we're all in it together and our theoretical differences should never reach the height of some of the things that have been said.

[The Feral Underclass]

Originally posted by [email protected] 18 2004, 02:10 PM
Going slightly off topic here but how exactly was it "fact"?
I don't know. I could be wrong. Am I? No one attempted to prove me wrong. Except highlight my point.


Have you ever met the people this post was directed at?

No


Do you know what class they are?

TCOTR is middle class by his own admission. I am not sure about Kez.


I've heard you are off to Africa (I assume to do some sort of political work?)

Yes i am :D But to do humanitarian work.


for this you should be congratulated, and I wish you every success.

Thank you.


I also would advise you however that we don't all have to go to Africa to be "doing something".

I absolutly agree and never suggested that should be the case.


As I've already said, I am a working class person with a trade and a job, I do as much work in my union and my local community as possible, this is no more or no less important to any other comrades political activities in the 'real world',

Comednable. But I never disputed that you didn't or that it was any more or less important than anyone else.


at the end of the day we're all in it together and our theoretical differences should never reach the height of some of the things that have been said.

I have admitted that I was inflammotary to Kez and to others and I was repremanded for my sectarianism. I do not think what I said was untrue in regards to the people it was aimed at, but of course I am more than happy to be proven wrong. Some would say that neither of them need to justify themselves to me. Again, I agree, they don't. I will apologize for being so dramatic and inflammatory but I do not think what I said was entirely unreasonable.

As for working along side people with theoretical differences. I am an anarchist. I am more than happy to stand next to a leninist on a united front cause but lets not live in some romantic ideal that we can all somehow get along and fight the revolution together. Lets talk on a grand scale of fighting a revolution. lets talk hypthetically. When the revolution comes there are going to be two fundamental ways to fight it and to organize it. We are going to get to a point during or after a revolution where we agitate the workers to fight the state, capitalist and leninist. That is just the nature of anarchism. It isnt something to be shocked or suprised about. We oppose the state, no matter what form, and just like history has proven, these words of unionism are baseless and hollow. Because when it comes to the crunch, when the shit hits the fan, one of us is going to loose, and history all ways points to the anarchists...why, because the leninists shoot us in back...Betrayed every time!

[Morpheus]

Originally posted by [email protected] 18 2004, 06:22 AM
On a side note to Morpheus: To say all Marxism is qusi-religion is stupid. You can find cultish and qusi-religious approachs among all kinds of movements. Anarchism has its cultish qusi-religious trends also: Primitivists, Crimethinkers, etc.
Those aren't religious. They may be stupid, but they're not religious. If you want to see religious anarchists, look at the anarcho-Christians or the anarcho-Pagans.


I would also contend that the majority of parties that claim to be Marxist aren't at all qusi-religious, but social democratic, pragmatic, and, parlimentary.

I don't see why that means it can't also be quasi-religious.


There is also a whole trend of revolutionary Marxism, especially in the 3rd world, that isn't tied down to qusi-religious worship of cannonical texts.

Every third world Marxist movement that came to power had quasi-religious concepts and usually ended up establishing a cult of personality. Marxism is inherently quasi-religious by virtue of the fact that it's named after Marx. Movements named after people are inherently quasi-religious as they view that person as a sort of prophet. Any ism named after a person should be rejected on the grounds of hero-worship. I prefer to think for myself, instead of following old dead people. This criticism also applies to anyone who calls themselves a Bakuninist, Proudhonist or Makhnovist, but no one calls themselves that anymore. In Marx's case it's even worse because he was a racist uber-authoritarian who supported British Colonialism.

[Morpheus]

Originally posted by [email protected] 18 2004, 02:03 PM
I did not say that the Leninists have "sinned" for disagreeing with Marx. The question is not whether or not someone has "departed from 'holy Marxism'", it is was Marx right about this particular question.

In fact, you obviously miss the whole point of my post: that Marx and Engels correctly anticipated the consequences of a Leninist approach to revolution.
"I did not say that the Catholics have 'sinned' for disagreeing with Jesus. The question is not whether or not someone has "departed from Jesus" it is was Jesus right about this particular question.

In fact you obviously miss the whole point of my post: that Jesus correctly anticipated the consequences of a Catholic approach to Christianity."

Your attempts to avoid it only reinforce the fact that you have a semi-religious viewpoint. It doesn't matter what Marx thought, your obsession with what he thought is further evidence of your semi-religious outlook. You don't ask what Blanqui thought or what Fourier thought, because those aren't your prophets. And obviously Marx & Engels couldn't have anticipated the results of Leninism because Leninism didn't exist until decades after they died. The most you can say is that they said certain things which, with an appropriate interpretation, could maybe be viewed as predicting things associated with Leninism. But they never actually refered to Leninism, so this is tenous at best and all such statements can be given alternative interpretations. For example, you quote Engels, "the vanquished would then cry treachery or ascribe their defeat to accident." and say, "Isn't this the constant lament of contemporary Leninists? "We were stabbed in the back" by Stalin or by Khrushchev or by Tito or by Chou en-Lai or by...whoever (the list is very long). "The revolution was betrayed!"" Could one not say the same about Marxists? "Lenin betrayed Marx!" Perhaps you could respond that you have a material analysis of what went wrong in Russia & elsewhere, but so could any Trotskyist.

Your first quote is bogus because October wasn't carried through "by small conscious minorities at the head of masses lacking consciousness" and I don't believe Lenin would characterize his vanguardism like that. Engels is overemphasizing the degree to which the Blanquists, in 1871, emphasized conspiracy & dictatorship. Also, the advocacy of dictatorship & centralization by Leninists comes straight from Marx & Engels, who also advocated dictatorship & centralization. Sure, you can also find quotes from them which put them in a more libertarian light but the same is true of Lenin. State & Revolution was as democratic & libertarian as anything Marx said. Your final quote actually shows that Marx was wrong. It took 70 years for the USSR to fall and it only fell because the US was stronger & was able to outcompete it. IIRC, Marx never predicted that a "dictatorship of the proletariat" would result in something like Stalinism. But many rival socialists did predict that implementing Marx's ideas would result in something similar to what we now call stalinism. I've yet to see a solid arguement defending the position that a classless society is impossible in a pre-industrial society. There's historical evidence to contradict it.

It doesn't really matter what Marx said. What matters is what ideas are right and wrong. That's obviously not what your'e doing here, as you are just presenting quotes which you percieve to be critical of Leninism without really posting all the evidence, arguements, etc. they used to back up their position (which would probably require posting each of the essays in full). You haven't offered much evidence yourself to back up those positions, either, just claimed that Marx & Engels said it. From a historical perspective, what matters is what Marx's followers believed more than what the historical Marx believed. You are being semi-religious, whether you are conscious of it or not.


How can you have "state capitalism" without production for profit, exchange of commodities for money, wage-labor, etc.? That doesn't make any sense.

The program put forth by Marx called for things like state banks, nationalization of transportaiton, centralization of the means of production in the hands of the state, pay based on the amount of work performed, etc. Looks like state-capitalism to me. Supposidly this was to be a "transitional stage" of unspecified length but even after this transitional state society would still be highly centralized & authoritarian. This would lead to a class system, with the bureaucrats on the top dominating the rest of us below. Given his transitional stage, it would almost certainly take the form of centralized capitalism. The state would "wither away" and classes would be abolished in name only. It would probably end up something like Libya, where the state officially no longer exists but in reality it is most definately does.


As to Engels' comment on German Social Democracy, aren't you forgetting something? That party was a mass parliamentary party...the very opposite of Lenin's vanguard of "professional experts in revolution".

First of all, that quote was meant to show that Engels was not adverse to a one-party state and that the equation of the rule of the party with the rule of the workers did not originate with Lenin. Thus a strong similarity between his views & Lenin's views.

Second, the differences are not as great as you make it out to be. If you read What is to Be Done Lenin draws on ideas developed by German Social Democracy and quotes approvingly from Kautsky. In practice parties formed along Lenin's vanguardist lines, if they do not remain minor sects, become social democratic parliamentary parties under conditions of bourgeois democracy. It is only when bourgeois democracy does not exist, when it cannot be a mass parliamentary party, that the Vanguard party is really capable of leading a revolutionary movement.


I'm sure that both of us, if we could travel back in time and see how it actually operated on a daily basis, would probably find it pretty bueaucratic...but that's a different kind of criticism.

We don't need to travel back in time. There were anarchists & syndicalists of the time period who criticized it along those lines.


With one difference, at least on my part. Unlike the pious, I'm not simply interested in the "holy words"...I want to know what those guys said because they were right about a whole lot of stuff.

A Christian could say the same thing. "I'm not simply interested in the "holy words"...I want to know what Jesus said because he was right about a whole lot of stuff." And Marx was actually wrong about a whole lot of stuff, the main underpinings of his philosophy was crap, actually. "Dialectical materialism", the Labor Theory of Value, his revolutionary program, his theory of history and much else has been disproven. There is nothing of value in Marx which hadn't already been said by someone else.


Your attitude seems to be a continuation of the feud between Marx and Bakunin; you "like" Bakunin so Marx must be "no good" and "all Marxists" are openly or secretly plotting a centralized state despotism.

This has nothing to do with me "liking Bakunin", there were some huge errors in his philosophy, he wasn't much of a theorists, & he was an anti-semitite. His criticisms of Marx, however, were correct. Marx himself was certainly plotting a centralized state despotism and even you must admint that the immense majority of his followers did so as well. In the decades prior to 1917 many anarchists (not only Bakunin) made many criticisms of Marx. They predicted that if Marx's program were to be implemented it would result in what we saw everywhere Leninists came to power. Those criticisms were based on Marx's philosophy, not Lenin's. If Leninism has nothing to do with Marxism, if the problems of Leninism are not rooted in Marx, then why should such predictions be so accurate? Every ideology experiences some changes after it comes to power, I could put quotes from Lenin pre-October and post-October side by side and show how much the two contradict each other.

Your position is rather like calling yourself a "Hiterlist" and then claiming that you don't hate Jews and you don't advocate a centralized statist despotism.


Really, Morpheus, the breadth of your knowledge of revolutionary history is admirable (it often exceeds my own by a considerable margin) and I always find your posts instructive. But your stubborn prejudice against Marx -- against the very possibility that he might have been right about anything -- is, frankly, unworthy of an otherwise thoughtful revolutionary.

Your hero worship of a racist is unworthy of an otherwise thoughtful revolutionary. And anyone who adopts a label named after that person is hero-worshipping that person. RCP members deny being hero-worshippers, too. Also I don't have a "prejudice" against Marx, I'm hostile towards Marx. Prejudice is, an adverse judgment or opinion formed beforehand or without knowledge or examination of the facts. I know the facts, I've read all of Marx's major works (some of them repeatedly) and am probably more familiar with the relevant history than you are.

The only reason you even read Marx is because of Lenin. If a different faction had come to power in 1917 Marx would be about as popular as Louis Blanc. During his lifetime Marx was just one of many radical thinkers. His main claim to fame is that a whole bunch of totalitarian states used him to legitimize their rule. As a result lots of people read Marx and few of his contemporaries and think that he's saying lots of new things. He didn't and he never claimed he did. Marx built off the works of others, he was not the great genuis who invented all sorts of ideas as most contemporary admirers portray him. If a different faction had come to power in 1917 few would have ever heard of Marx. It wasn't until the end of his life that anything resembling a "Marxist movement" existed and it wasn't really until after he died that real, large Marxist movements came into existence. Those movements were largely limited to the West, non-western socialism was generally anarchistic. And even within the west, Marxism competed with anarchism (and in some countries other forms of socialism) - it wasn't dominate except in a few countries. It was only after Leninism was born out of 1917 that Marxism became a global movement, eventually coming to dominate the world revolutionary movement. Were it not for 1917 Marxism would have died in the 1920s. Without Leninism, Marxism would no longer exist. It would have been like Blanquism or Fourierism, it became popular in a handfull of countries for a while and then died out.

You name any figure and, if you look hard enough, you can find a statement they made was correct. There were some things Hitler believed I'm sure everyone here would agree with, such as that the world is not flat. But that doesn't change the fact that he was full of shit. The same is true of Marx, who inspired some of the worst nightmares of the last century.


I have suggested that Leninism is an idealist distortion of Marxism.

Much as Marxism is a materialist distortion of Hegelianism. Marxism retains much of it's idealist heritage - or would you care to explain how exchange value is not an idealist concept?


A materialist analysis of Leninism is, I think, very useful

A materialist analysis of Marxism inevitably comes to the conclusion that Leninism is Marxism in power.

[Morpheus]

Originally posted by The Anarchist [email protected] 18 2004, 09:22 AM
The question is not whether Lenin deviated but whether he blatantly distorted what Marx was saying to fit his own desire for revolutioanry struggle.
I haven't seen any evidence that he "deviated" more from Marx than any other Marxist. He certainly deviated less than RedStar2000. I certainly haven't seen evidence that he intentionally misrepresented what Marx said.


Actually, in my experience on che-lives the leninists look at Leninism as their religion and neurotically defend it and their guru by using Marxism as a justification. Most of the leninists on here believe greatly that leninism is pure Marxism in practice and that Lenins was "a true marxist." It is embarresing for them, and very amusing for us when people like Redstar show quite clearly that actually, that's bollocks, and in fact Leninism is a deviation, or better still, a complete distortion.

Which is like criticizing right-wing Christians by using bible quotes to point out how they disagree with it and how the bible is really a left-wing libertarian work.

[peaccenicked]

lets get real.
http://listserv.cddc.vt.edu/marxists/www.m.../1938-sp01.html (http://listserv.cddc.vt.edu/marxists/www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/spain/1938-sp01.html)

[The Feral Underclass]

Originally posted by Morpheus+Mar 19 2004, 04:53 AM--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (Morpheus @ Mar 19 2004, 04:53 AM)
The Anarchist [email protected] 18 2004, 09:22 AM
The question is not whether Lenin deviated but whether he blatantly distorted what Marx was saying to fit his own desire for revolutioanry struggle.
I haven&#39;t seen any evidence that he "deviated" more from Marx than any other Marxist. He certainly deviated less than RedStar2000. I certainly haven&#39;t seen evidence that he intentionally misrepresented what Marx said.


Actually, in my experience on che-lives the leninists look at Leninism as their religion and neurotically defend it and their guru by using Marxism as a justification. Most of the leninists on here believe greatly that leninism is pure Marxism in practice and that Lenins was "a true marxist." It is embarresing for them, and very amusing for us when people like Redstar show quite clearly that actually, that&#39;s bollocks, and in fact Leninism is a deviation, or better still, a complete distortion.

Which is like criticizing right-wing Christians by using bible quotes to point out how they disagree with it and how the bible is really a left-wing libertarian work. [/b]
I&#39;m sorry, I fail to see your point. What I said is not unreasonable and I find it hard to see how you can argue my point.

Leninists think that Lenin was a great Marxist who turned pure Marxism into a practicaly reality when actually he didn&#39;t. I don&#39;t care if they wish to revise Marxism, fine. But that isn&#39;t what these people do. They demand that we accept that Leninism is pure Marxism in practice. When actually it isnt. I find it funny. Nothing more, nothing less.

[Scottish_Militant]

Leninists think that Lenin was a great Marxist who turned pure Marxism into a practicaly reality when actually he didn&#39;t. I don&#39;t care if they wish to revise Marxism, fine. But that isn&#39;t what these people do. They demand that we accept that Leninism is pure Marxism in practice. When actually it isnt. I find it funny. Nothing more, nothing less.

Another generalisation. I am a Leninist and have never stated the above, you can be quite steriotypical at times. Thats like me saying "Anarchists wear stupid clothes" (which in fairness most of you do :P but thats not the point)

Have you no scientific arguments?

[The Feral Underclass]

Originally posted by [email protected] 19 2004, 09:58 AM

Leninists think that Lenin was a great Marxist who turned pure Marxism into a practicaly reality when actually he didn&#39;t. I don&#39;t care if they wish to revise Marxism, fine. But that isn&#39;t what these people do. They demand that we accept that Leninism is pure Marxism in practice. When actually it isnt. I find it funny. Nothing more, nothing less.

Another generalisation. I am a Leninist and have never stated the above, you can be quite steriotypical at times. Thats like me saying "Anarchists wear stupid clothes" (which in fairness most of you do :P but thats not the point)

Have you no scientific arguments?
I wasn&#39;t making a genralization, I was stating what I had experienced. Which is what I said to Morpheus in the previous post....stop butting in :P

I am sure you are not, and I am sure the movement is full of thousands of people just like you. Saying that "in my experience on che-lives the leninists look at Leninism as their religion and neurotically defend it and their guru by using Marxism as a justification" is not the same as saying All Leninists eat babies&#33;&#33;&#33; (which in fairness most of you do :P but thats not the point)

And, actually, I am quite sensible dressed most of the time...Let&#39;s stop argueing about this now please...and be friends

*extends his hand in friendship*

[redstar2000]

Marxism is inherently quasi-religious by virtue of the fact that it&#39;s named after Marx. Movements named after people are inherently quasi-religious as they view that person as a sort of prophet. Any ism named after a person should be rejected on the grounds of hero-worship.

An extraordinary sentiment...but there&#39;s no accounting for taste.

What makes "isms" religious or quasi-religious is not their names, of course, it&#39;s what they do and how they think.

Marx and Engels themselves referred to their views as "scientific socialism"...but somehow I don&#39;t think you&#39;d like that term either.

Do you also reject Darwinism?


I prefer to think for myself, instead of following old dead people.

Is it their age or the fact that they&#39;re dead that offends you?

I am just as much in favor of people thinking for themselves as you are; but to flatly refuse instruction from all humans who have gone before us as a matter of principle strikes me as...simply foolish.


In Marx&#39;s case it&#39;s even worse because he was a racist uber-authoritarian who supported British Colonialism.

Yes, he shared many of the Euro-centric prejudices of 19th century European thought...though you exaggerate to the point of caricature. His era was also one in which it was widely thought that a centralized state was "progressive"...though you exaggerate his views again. He was most certainly not an "uber-authoritarian", either in his theory of communist society nor in his practical work in the First International (Bakunin&#39;s contentions to the contrary notwithstanding).


It doesn&#39;t matter what Marx thought; your obsession with what he thought is further evidence of your semi-religious outlook.

Oh? And what of your "anti-obsession"? There may be no "gods" in your outlook, but the "devil" (Marx) pops up all over the place.

How about a little rational discourse here. If you think that everything Marx had to say is irrelevant, fine. You can say that in a single sentence.

There are a great many others who think a great deal of what Marx had to say is very relevant indeed...and that does not make them "religious". It sometimes does...but that&#39;s not an inevitable outcome.

If you want to criticize a particular Marxist analysis or position on a question, I have no problem with that...hell, I do it myself.

Nevertheless, it seems to me that considering the totality of the work of Marx and Engels, they came up with the "best ideas" about how history works...in fact, they have no real rivals in that regard.

Your view, on the other hand, seems to be that "things just happen"...usually on the basis of the personal virtue or villainy of the participants. There is no and cannot be any coherent theory of history.

I don&#39;t find that very useful.


Could one not say the same about Marxists? "Lenin betrayed Marx&#33;" Perhaps you could respond that you have a material analysis of what went wrong in Russia & elsewhere...

No, I&#39;m not saying that "Lenin betrayed Marxism" because I don&#39;t look at history through the prism of "virtue" and "villainy".

And I&#39;m not saying that "I" have a material analysis of what went "wrong" in Russia and elsewhere; I&#39;m saying Marx and Engels did&#33;


Your first quote is bogus because October wasn&#39;t carried through "by small conscious minorities at the head of masses lacking consciousness" and I don&#39;t believe Lenin would characterize his vanguardism like that.

Here we must continue to disagree. Your view is that October was a genuine mass uprising and mine is that it was a coup carried out by "a small conscious minority".

I think Lenin would have agreed with me about this...but even if he wouldn&#39;t have, contemporary Leninists certainly do characterize themselves as conscious minorities leading victorious "revolutions" "on behalf of the masses".

Indeed they go even further (as you know&#33;) to say that "without them" proletarian revolution is "impossible".


State & Revolution was as democratic & libertarian as anything Marx said.

Not surprising...it was a "copy & paste" job from the writings of Marx and Engels. It had no connection with anything Lenin wrote before or, especially, after October...nor any connection with Lenin&#39;s actual practices after October.

The "libertarian Lenin" is a myth.


It took 70 years for the USSR to fall and it only fell because the US was stronger & was able to outcompete it.

Some Leninists have recently been raising that "explanation" as well. It&#39;s absurd on its face, of course.

From 1949 to 1976, the Leninists controlled two huge countries, rich in population and resources (not even counting eastern Europe).

The idea of American "power" causing these regimes to fail (without ever firing a shot) is ludicrous.

Marx said they would act to "clear the way for the bourgeois revolution itself".

That&#39;s what happened.


Marx never predicted that a "dictatorship of the proletariat" would result in something like Stalinism.

Actually I think there are a couple of places where he refers to the possibility of "communist revolutions in backward countries" that would result in "Prussian socialism" or "barracks communism".

And what was Stalin, anyway, but a Russian speaking "Napoleon III"? That is, a despot that laid the foundations of modern French (Russian) capitalism.


I&#39;ve yet to see a solid argument defending the position that a classless society is impossible in a pre-industrial society. There&#39;s historical evidence to contradict it.

Is that why you don&#39;t like Marx? Does he interfere in some way with a personal vision of yours? Do "rural utopias" appeal to you?

If that&#39;s the case, your animosity is certainly understandable. Except for a few idle speculations late in life, Marx had no time for such nonsense.

Frankly, neither do I.


The program put forth by Marx called for things like state banks, nationalization of transportation, centralization of the means of production in the hands of the state, pay based on the amount of work performed, etc. Looks like state-capitalism to me.

Indeed, but not in the passage that you quoted...which was a description of communist society and included none of those things.

If it is your wish to argue that Marx and Engels were wrong about the "transitional state" (and Bakunin was right)...hey, I agree with you.

And have said so, often&#33;

If you want to use that error as a "peg" on which to hang your rejection of everything that Marx and Engels said...hey, I think that&#39;s really dumb.


...but even after this transitional state, society would still be highly centralized & authoritarian.

Now you&#39;re just making stuff up.


The state would "wither away" and classes would be abolished in name only. It would probably end up something like Libya, where the state officially no longer exists but in reality it most definitely does.

I have no idea what to make of this assertion. Libya???


First of all, that quote was meant to show that Engels was not adverse to a one-party state and that the equation of the rule of the party with the rule of the workers did not originate with Lenin.

Well, I suppose so...but if your "one party" is actually composed of nearly all of the working class, is internally democratic (or reasonably so), etc., then by late 19th century standards, I can see why Engels would consider this a decent approximation of "the dictatorship of the proletariat".

Engels&#39; "one party" and Lenin&#39;s "one party" were rather different animals, don&#39;t you think?


If you read What is to Be Done? Lenin draws on ideas developed by German Social Democracy and quotes approvingly from Kautsky. In practice parties formed along Lenin&#39;s vanguardist lines, if they do not remain minor sects, become social democratic parliamentary parties under conditions of bourgeois democracy.

I agree. The illusions that Engels had about late 19th century social democracy (and bourgeois democratic institutions in general) were dispelled in 1914...at least in the eyes of rational people.

As I said in my last post, no one who is serious about communism has any further interest in social democracy.


Marx himself was certainly plotting a centralized state despotism...

Good grief&#33;


If Leninism has nothing to do with Marxism, if the problems of Leninism are not rooted in Marx, then why should such predictions be so accurate?

Because, consciously or not, the "predictions" were actually rooted in material reality...as was Leninism itself.

We&#39;ve seen examples on this board. People look around them and see "the masses" are not revolutionary, even if it would be in their "objective interests" to be revolutionary.

So what to do? Do it "for them" and then, when you have power, "make them" be "revolutionary" whether they want to or not.

The "iron logic" of historical materialism seems extraordinarily difficult for people to really grasp "in their guts" (I don&#39;t except Marx and Engels themselves from that, at least on occasion).

A "conscious minority" that rules "in the name of the people" -- no matter what its intentions might be -- inevitably becomes a despotism. It might be extremely harsh or it might be relatively benign...but despotic it will definitely be.

Thus the "accuracy" of the anarchist predictions relate not to Marx or Marxism but to the rule of a "conscious minority" of any kind...even anarchist&#33;

Despots "have their uses" in pre-capitalist societies. In the modern capitalist world, there is simply no acceptable substitute for the rule of the conscious working class.

It may yet take quite a while for that consciousness to emerge...if so, those are the breaks.

All you ever achieve by trying to "kick-start" history is an injured foot.


Your position is rather like calling yourself a "Hitlerist" and then claiming that you don&#39;t hate Jews and you don&#39;t advocate a centralized statist despotism.

Charming comparison. :o


Your hero worship of a racist is unworthy of an otherwise thoughtful revolutionary.

Yeah, Marx demonstrated his "racism" by his "enthusiastic support" of the Confederacy, didn&#39;t he? :lol:


The only reason you even read Marx is because of Lenin. If a different faction had come to power in 1917, Marx would be about as popular as Louis Blanc.

Well, perhaps. I think Marx&#39;s reputation grew pretty steadily after his death and, even inspite of all the despotisms that called themselves "Marxist", interest seemed to be sustained and is perhaps even growing again.

But whether Marx achieved or retained his "eminence", many of his ideas would have re-emerged.

Your views to the contrary notwithstanding, many of those ideas are very good ones.


Marx built off the works of others, he was not the great genius who invented all sorts of ideas as most contemporary admirers portray him.

Everyone "builds off the works of others". He did not claim to be "a great genius who invented all sorts of ideas" and he is hardly responsible for the panegyrics of some of his "admirers".

But I would say he was certainly a genius, at least as that word is commonly used. He put together a paradigm (based on the works of others) that has stood "the test of time" better than any of its contemporaries or anything that has been developed since.

Granted that it "has problems" (the labor theory of value being outstanding). Granted that some of it was just the nonsense of his era (dialectics, race, etc.) which can be discarded. Granted that his varying notions of a "transitional state" can be attributed to the backwardness of the 19th century working class (even in the most advanced capitalist countries)...notions that are no longer relevant and will become even less so.

With all those errors, shortcomings, problems, etc., there is still no viable replacement for the Marxist paradigm.

Maybe there should be. Maybe, someday, there will be. As Newton was replaced by Einstein, maybe someday Marx will find his "Einstein". I&#39;d be delighted if that were to happen...and so would Marx.


The same is true of Marx, who inspired some of the worst nightmares of the last century.

Yes, I&#39;ve heard it said that Pol Pot read in Marx about the "abolition of the difference between the city and the countryside" and decided that the best way to achieve this worthy aim was to kill all the city-dwellers.

Marx, you bastard&#33; :lol:


A materialist analysis of Marxism inevitably comes to the conclusion that Leninism is Marxism in power.

Once more, good grief&#33; :blink:

:redstar2000:

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