Please Explain The Various Theories

[DReaver13]

I have only been debating politics for maybe a month and a half now. I have a copy of the Communist Manifesto, Capital Vol. 1 and Lenin : What is to be done?

I have read a little, but it gets quite confusing. Will someone just clarify the basics.

What was Marx's aim and what does Marxism state to be its main purpose?

Does Marx advocate communism or socialism?

What does Leninism state and how does it differ from Marxism.

Does Lenin advocate communism or socialism?

If either of them advocated communism, what was their definition of it? Ownership by all? Material equality?

Where does Trotskyism stand, as I know nothing about his ideas.

Does the left wing have a philosophy underlying it? Capitalists seem to draw on objectivism and Ayn Rand, is there a communist equivalent?

Thanks, help would me MUCH appreciated as I am trying to forumlate my own theory.

[YKTMX]

Click here (http://www.che-lives.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=25786)

[Djehuti]

Originally posted by [email protected] 8 2004, 04:22 PM
I have only been debating politics for maybe a month and a half now. I have a copy of the Communist Manifesto, Capital Vol. 1 and Lenin : What is to be done?

I have read a little, but it gets quite confusing. Will someone just clarify the basics.

What was Marx's aim and what does Marxism state to be its main purpose?

Does Marx advocate communism or socialism?

What does Leninism state and how does it differ from Marxism.

Does Lenin advocate communism or socialism?

If either of them advocated communism, what was their definition of it? Ownership by all? Material equality?

Where does Trotskyism stand, as I know nothing about his ideas.

Does the left wing have a philosophy underlying it? Capitalists seem to draw on objectivism and Ayn Rand, is there a communist equivalent?

Thanks, help would me MUCH appreciated as I am trying to forumlate my own theory.
"What was Marx's aim and what does Marxism state to be its main purpose?"

Marxism is a tool for analysism of capitalism.
You need to know, to fight.

"Does Marx advocate communism or socialism?"

Both i would say. Socialism is for me like a name for all the theories (and in some extention ideologies) that strives for the communist society.

Communism is a material movement within the proletarians that is moving towards a society without classes, nor state nor private property.

"What does Leninism state and how does it differ from Marxism."

The main difference is their view on the proletarians, the working class and the party. While Marx saw the party as the material party, the working class as class, Lenin saw the party as a formal party of an elite leading the proletarians.
Lenin (and almost all marxists of his time) also had a much more objectivistisk view on the capitalist economy then marx.

"If either of them advocated communism, what was their definition of it? Ownership by all? Material equality?"

They saw communism as a society is a society without private property (machines, forests, roads, whatever), classes and a state.

"Where does Trotskyism stand, as I know nothing about his ideas."

Basicly the same as Lenin, and not really to far from Stalin either in my humble opinion. Still trotskyites and marxist-leninists (stalinists) fight over things that happened 70-80 years ago. While there is differences between Trotskij and Stalin (Stalin was even more deterministic, and believed in "socialism in one land") I think there is more that unites them.

"Does the left wing have a philosophy underlying it? Capitalists seem to draw on objectivism and Ayn Rand, is there a communist equivalent?"

I hope not. I really hate all that damn moral shit. We are not moralists, we are not ideologists. We are marxists. We study reality, and know that it exists independent of what we think of it. We are scientists (not preachers), or atleast we should be.

[monkeydust]

What was Marx's aim?

Marx's personal aim?

I would say it was not merely to illustrate why Communism is desirable, but also why it is inevitable. He demonstrated this in a number of complex writings, which have been hugely influential over time.

Marx's work encompasses philosophy, soicology, history, political theory and economics. The wide scope of Marxist theory and its purportion to explain the world as a whole has been a large factor in its ideological attraction.


What does Marxism state to be its main purpose?

That's pretty debatable.

I'd say the central feature of Marxism is the "abolition of private property", indeed, that's what was said to be Communism's central tenet in the Manifesto. According to Marx, class, being derived from relation to the "means of production", was a consequence of private property. In essence, the abolition of private property would supposedly create a classless society because no single class would own the "means of production" and be able to shape a state to its own ends.

This is, of course, a simplification, to describe a "main purpose" of Marxism is almost impossible to do here. I suggest you read as much of Marx's work as you have time to; in so doing you will familiarize yourself with what Marxism is all about.


Does Marx advocate communism or socialism?


He doesn't necessarily advocate one or the other.

Marx stands back and says that they are each inevitable stages in the development of human society. He thus says that both Socialism and Communism will happen as part of the longer march of history; he doesn't really comment on one being "better than the other".

Though it should be emphasized that Marx thought Socialism to be the "Road to Communism". He did not see Socialism as an end in itself.


What does Leninism state and how does it differ from Marxism.


The central feature of Leninist ideology is that the working class cannot achieve "class consciousness" by itself. Lenin believed that workers, left to their own devices could, at best, achieve "trade union consciousness".

Consequently Lenin argued that the proletariat needed a "party vanguard", a few select intellectuals such as himself that would be the "guiding light" on the path to revolution. Lenin believed that he and others would lead workers as a whole to revolution, as they did in 1917.

He also strongly rejected notions of reform, which in his later life, Marx sometimes seems to have supported.


Does Lenin advocate communism or socialism?


Again, both.

Like Marx, he felt that Socialism was the path to Communism and that the Socialist state would "wither away". You'll find that the majority of this board do not support his assertions in this respect.


If either of them advocated communism, what was their definition of it? Ownership by all? Material equality?


Communism, as they imagined it, was defined broadly as a classless society with no state as such, where material inequality and disparities in material wealth are insignificant and where property, most importantly the "means of production", are collectively owned.

On the whole, though, Marx was fairly vague about what any Communist world would look like. He seems to have thought it impossible to predict, and that any attempt to do so in detail was merely worthless conjecture.


Where does Trotskyism stand, as I know nothing about his ideas.


Trotsyism was one of the two main intellectual branches off of Leninism, the other being Stalinism.

Trotsky was extremly hostile to Stalin and his ideas. Trotskyism has generally been noted for its internationalism. Trotsky thought that any revolution would have to be followed by similar ones across the world. this was in sharp contrast to Stalin's idea of "Socialism in one country"

Perhaps Trotsky's most central theme was that of "permanent revolution". There's a summary of this idea here (http://www.trotsky.net/trotsky_year/permanent_revolution.html).


Does the left wing have a philosophy underlying it? Capitalists seem to draw on objectivism and Ayn Rand, is there a communist equivalent?


Well, not as such. Though in many ways a philosopher himself, Marx once remarked (in his Theses on Feuerbach) that "Philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the pont, however, is to change it."

Nonetheless, Marxism can be said to incorporate a number of philosophies, most notably that of Hegel, and his dialectical conception of history. This essentially states that each historical epoch is characterized by internal contradictions which cause it to change.

[Djehuti]

monkeydust: I agree with most, but Marx was not a determinist, nor a schematist.
Those stages; feodalism, capitalism, communism (Marx never spoke of "socialism") whatever, is nothing but a simplification of the development of history so far, and there is accually more ways of production then these major ones, and communism is neither inevitable, nor the last society. Though we cannot deny that there is a large important tendency towards communism in the capitalist society, and the bourgeoisie cant never once and for all defeat the proletarians.

[Pedro Alonso Lopez]

Capitalism is in no way based on Ayn Rannds ideas (she is not a recognised philosopher, more of a cult leader).

For a good description of the rise of capitalism, the one we have today read Marx's The German Ideology.