Marxism

[anomaly]

A while back, a resident Leninist called TragicClown made the claim that Marx supported even more centralization than did Lenin. At first, I was extremely skeptical, but she is right (sort of): when one looks at certain parts of Marx's works, one can interpret that to mean Marx supported a great amount of centralization indeed. (using other writings, of course, I could say the opposite)

So, my question is to any self-described 'Marxists' on this board: is TragicClown right? Did Marx support even more centralization than Lenin?

[Lamanov]

No!

[Thread link] (http://www.revolutionaryleft.com/index.php?showtopic=47909&view=findpost&p=1292044122) Posted by DJ-TC in response to Marxism-Leninism Mar 30 2006, 02:52 PM:

[...]

How Marx changed his opinion on "centralization" it could be seen from these lines he wrote in his Civil War in France in 1871, envisioning what the whole revolutionary France might have (and should have) looked like:


Originally posted by Marx+--> (Marx)[T]he rural communes of every district were to administer their common affairs by an assembly of delegates in the central town, and these district assemblies were again to send deputies to the national delegation in Paris, each delegate to be revocable and bound by the mandat impératif [formal instruction of his constituents].[/b]

[link] (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/index.htm)

In his 'Adress', an earlier draft, he goes further [emphasis added]:


Originally posted by [email protected]
The Commune — the reabsorption of the state power by society as its own living forces instead of as forces controlling and subduing it, by the popular masses themselves, forming their own force instead of die organised force of their suppression — the political form of their social emancipation, instead of the artificial force (appropriated by their oppressors) (their own force opposed to and organised against them) of society wielded for their oppression by their enemies.


Marx
[A]ll France organised into self-working and self-governing communes [...] the suffrage for the national representation not a matter of sleight-of-hand for an all-powerful government, but the deliberate expression of organised communes, the state functions reduced to a few functions for general national purposes.

Such is the Commune — the political form of the social emancipation, of the liberation of labour from the usurpations (slave-holding) of the monopolists of the means of labour, created by the labourers themselves or forming the gift of nature. As the state machinery and parliamentarism are not the real life of the ruling classes, but only the organised general organs of their dominion, so the Commune is not the social movement of the working class and therefore of a general regeneration of mankind, but the organised means of action.

[link] (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/drafts/ch01.htm)

[...]

Anyone who thinks that Marx would support the "strong hand / iron discipline" centralized dictatorship, or any form of centralization other than one needed for simple allready-made-decision activity for the purpose of communal cooperation should do some serious reading before making a priori conclusions.

[redstar2000]

This has come up before in a variety of contexts. Before the "battle of the quotations" begins, I would just like to remind people that Marx did not so much "support" centralization as he observed it taking place at an accelerating pace in his own time.

Indeed, the increasing centralization of capital was one of his key predictions...and one which has turned out very well indeed!

Likewise readily observable was the centralization of production...the construction of larger and larger factories. In my opinion, Marx must have thought that bringing together larger and larger numbers of workers would have a "radicalizing" effect on the proletariat...giving them a "sense of strength" in their own visible numbers.

The 19th century was a period of national centralization as well...and this was widely thought to be "progressive" and even "inevitable". The unification of Italy and the partial unification of Germany had a major impact on European opinion...including that of Marx and Engels.

Marx is "on record" as having wished that the Paris Commune was more centralized than it was. And Engels wrote a detailed critique of a Spanish rebellion in which anarchists were heavily involved, arguing that the failure of the various centers of rebellion to unite their efforts led "inevitably" to their military defeat.

Of course, there is nothing in Marx or Engels that bears even a remote resemblance to the Vanguard Party of Lenin or to the Party Despotism of the USSR.

To Leninists, this represents an "inadequacy" of Marx and Engels that was "corrected" by Lenin.

To non-Leninists, it represents a significant departure from Marx's understanding of how proletarian revolution "would happen" and how a post-capitalist society would "emerge".

As time has passed, it is increasingly puzzling why Leninists cling so desperately to "Marx's robes"...as they have moved further and further away from Marx's whole paradigm in almost all respects. They still use some of the terminology...but the whole way they look at the world would strike Marx as utterly bizarre.

As it does me. :lol:

http://www.websmileys.com/sm/cool/123.gif

[Lamanov]

Not only that Red. The "national centralization" also ment the centralization of market which would not only "pace up" the development process, but the destruction of old feudal and "market/customs zone" particularization. It would all "make the world smaller" for united proletarian action.


Do you people know what Germany (http://www.siue.edu/~jandris/genealogy/images/germany1834.gif) looked like in time when Communist Manifesto was written?

He analyzed the centralist process from the perspective of social development, but not from a revolutionary perspective.

[anomaly]

I pretty much agree with both of you, but I am nevertheless curious of some resident Leninist opinions.

[JC1]

I'd like to point out that the working class has alway's organizied in a centralizied manner.

In Paris, the rebeling worker's did not organize atomizied workplaces but orginizied a commune for the whole city.

The Russian woker's didn't just orginize solitary factory committee's, or just regional soviet's, but they linked up in a National Congress of Soviet's.

Worker's, when orginizing union's, dont just orginize solitary local's, but link up into big union's and federation's.

The Working Class, by defualt, organize's in a collective manner. Anarchist's, not being worker's, oppose centralizied, collective action's.

[Cult of Reason]

I am pretty sure that the workers of the CNT and FAI of 1936 were Anarchists.

[Morpheus]

Originally posted by [email protected] 9 2006, 09:54 PM
In Paris, the rebeling worker's did not organize atomizied workplaces but orginizied a commune for the whole city.

The Russian woker's didn't just orginize solitary factory committee's, or just regional soviet's, but they linked up in a National Congress of Soviet's.

Worker's, when orginizing union's, dont just orginize solitary local's, but link up into big union's and federation's.

The Working Class, by defualt, organize's in a collective manner. Anarchist's, not being worker's, oppose centralizied, collective action's.
Just because there's collective action and coordination between different groups doesn't mean there's centralization. Centralization is more than just coordination, it's a particular form of coordination in which a few people give the orders and the rest of us do what they decided. The soviet system, when first set up, was decentralized although it later became centralized. Some unions are centralized, others are not. The Paris Commune had a mix of centralization and decentralization. Most anarchists are workers, and we are advocates of collective (but not centralized) action. You either don't understand anarchism, or are intentionally misrepresenting it.

[Scars]

Originally posted by [email protected] 9 2006, 10:03 PM
I am pretty sure that the workers of the CNT and FAI of 1936 were Anarchists.
The CNT were and are Anarcho-Syndicalists, the FAI's name- Iberian (Iberia = Spain and Portugal) Anarchist Federation sums up what they were.

As for Marx and centralisation, Marx said little about what post-revolutionary society would be like. I would say that he'd probably be equally supportive of centralisation as Lenin was, although in a different form. Less dictatorial than Blanqui, more than Proudhonists (the two most influental groups in teh Paris Commune, Marxist played a tiny part in the Commune itself)

[Cult of Reason]

The CNT were and are Anarcho-Syndicalists, the FAI's name- Iberian (Iberia = Spain and Portugal) Anarchist Federation sums up what they were.

Don't patronise me, that is what aristocracy is for. I was just pointing out to JC1 that his assertion that Anarchists were not workers was erroneous.

[YKTMX]

Well, it's hard to say how much, or how little, "centralization" Marx advocated because he never, as we know, said much about the post-capitalist society. It's also difficult because "centralization" is such a polysemous concept. He saw the types of workers' organisations that arose from the Paris Commune as some kind of indication of what the workers' state would look like. In fact, Engels put it even more strongly.


Of late, the Social-Democratic philistine has once more been filled with wholesome terror at the words: Dictatorship of the Proletariat. Well and good, gentlemen, do you want to know what this dictatorship looks like? Look at the Paris Commune. That was the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.



He also saw, as we know, the failures of the Commune. A tiny island of workers' rule in a sea of belligerent imperialism. Its weaknesses, its problem and its contradictions.

I think Marx's view of what socialism is, is summed up by this little bit from the 'Class struggles in France'.

Socialism is the declaration of the permanence of the revolution, the class dictatorship of the proletariat as the necessary transit point to the abolition of class distinctions generally, to the abolition of all the relations of production on which they rest, to the abolition of all the social relations that correspond to these relations of production, to the revolutionizing of all the ideas that result from these social relations.


Marx certainly believed in state power, he believed in the dictatorship of the proletariat, he believed in Communists throwing themselves into the existing working class movements and parties and not forming insignificant "sects". He believed in the Communist Party - a organisation of the working class which has as its sole purpose the destruction of capitalism and the construction of socialism. This is tradition was protected and enhanced by Lenin, Trotksy, Rosa Luxemburg and others.

And we are, or we should be, the heirs of this tradition.

[Scars]

Originally posted by [email protected] 10 2006, 12:14 AM

The CNT were and are Anarcho-Syndicalists, the FAI's name- Iberian (Iberia = Spain and Portugal) Anarchist Federation sums up what they were.

Don't patronise me, that is what aristocracy is for. I was just pointing out to JC1 that his assertion that Anarchists were not workers was erroneous.
I wasn't patronising you, the way you phrased the sentence made it sound like you were unsure of what you said (which was essentially correct, they were both Anarcho-somthing).

I apologise for any unintentional offence caused.

[Cult of Reason]

Sorry, I am just tired and irritable at the moment.

[OneBrickOneVoice]

Didn't Lenin privatize a bunch of stuff during the famine?