Real Marxism and Secular Theology

[nom de guerre]

It is testament to the strength of the Spectacle that today the vast majority of those who self-identify as "Marxists" and communists are anything but. The commodity-form truly does turn the world on its head, and casts an illusion over us all.

To begin with, one must define what "real" Marxism is. If Marxism can be stripped down to a simple definition, it is a paradigm for understanding material reality and the bigger-picture developments of human history. It is built on the philosophical premise that god is a social construct, so the study of human history is the study of our material environments. Humans distinguished themselves from animals when we began producing our means of subsistence - evidence for this can be seen in the study of early languages, which developed as a way to keep track of tools for hunting and early agriculture. Marx concluded then that the development of human consciousness was determined by the environments we create as the products of our labor. From this idea is his famous maxim "social being determines consciousness." This is the philosophical base of Marxism, in the concept of the "species-being."

The great philosophical contradiction in Marxism is that, if being determines consciousness for humans today, one cannot truly be free because we are all subject to forces that determine our thoughts, our ideas, and our very nature as human beings. But because these forces are not supernatural, they are well within our capability to scientifically control. And because the forces are the productive powers of human beings, we know that revolution is the answer.

It is from here Marx built his great tool for us today: historical materialism. Histomat (as it will hence be referred to) is a tool for making sense of the past and present. Its assumption is that under class societies human consciousness is based on perceived material interest, or that people act the way they do because they expect to materially benefit by doing so. Histomat as traces the development of human history into several epochs, based on the organization of the productive forces in each time. Because histomat is a materialist paradigm, it argues that the ideas and consciousness of each epoch are determined by the relations of production at the time, which in turn is determined by the level of technological development. Marx's famous quip on the subject was to the effect of "the handmill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam mill, society with the industrial capitalist."

So histomat provides Marxists with both an organizational framework for understanding the past, and a methodology for understanding the present world around us. What it asks us to do is to look beneath the rhetoric we are faced with, and instead understand who benefits or tries to benefit, and what is really going on.

And, unfortunately, it is here that the vast majority of self-proclaimed "Marxists" fail.

To use an (possibly shoddy) analogy, we are all familiar with the Marxist concept of the base-superstructure dialectic. Well, Marxist theory uses histomat as its base - its core tool in its analysis. And the logical conclusion which arises atop of it are the "politics" one associates with Marxists - proletarian revolution, communism, etc.

Today, anyone who idealistically agrees with the politics of Marxism will call themselves a Marxist, without actually understanding Marxism as a metanarrative tool for thought. These people are fundamentally idealists - they only consider the superstructure, and consider it to be floating up in the air, disconnected from material reality; their ideals are formed first, and then they (selectively) use material evidence to back up their assertions. This is unscientific and thus anti-Marxist consciousness.

The perpetual worshipping at the corpse of Lenin is the greatest embodiment of this threat to genuine Marxism. The Bolshevik paradigm of vanguardist revolution is inherently a secular theology - it is an idealistic theory which mirrors religion in every facet. Let's take a Marxist look at how this is so, and then why.

First, let's identify the central thesis of the Leninist paradigm. Lenin argued that the working-class, due to its own underdevelopment, "needs" an elite group to rule them "for their own good", until they become conscious to rule on their own. The rulers in his paradigm are the "vanguard" - and theoretically represent the interests of the proletariat. This contradicts histomat in two significant ways: in the Marxist paradigm, the working-class becomes conscious through the immiseration of its conditions under capitalism, and only then is revolution possible; and that the revolution must be the work of the workers themselves.

It is obvious from reading over these forums that few self-proclaimed Leninists have never actually worked in a vanguard party. My own experience is limited to two: the "Trotskyist" Socialist Workers Party, and the "Maoist" Revolutionary Communist Party. I worked with the SWP and its youth group, the Young Socialists, for about three years. I even attended the 2005 Party convention at Oberlin College, for three days. The SWP is essentially a cult built around the writings of Jack Barnes and Mary-Alice Waters. The SWP bookstore in my local city was home to local Party forums, which generally consisted of ~10-15 people, only two of whom (besides myself) were under the age of 40, and most were significantly older. The SWP has a long, long history of factional disputes and of questionable policies. The former can be read about in any history of American "Communism", but the latter I can elaborate further here. Around 2000, the SWP sued the Marxist Internet Library for their free distribution of the writings of Trotsky, claiming their Party had the intellectual property rights to Trotsky's work in America. I'm sure I do not need to elaborate on how anti-communist this action was. And I was happy to learn they failed. More recently, however, Jack Barnes & Mary Alice-Waters (did I mention they're a couple?) sold their posh New York City loft for almost $2 million dollars. And while the SWP orders their rank-and-file members to live desolate lives so they can contribute their finances and time to the Party, the leaders are apparently exempt from this requirement. I stopped affiliating with the Party after questioning their undemocratic publishing techniques, and suggesting perhaps their "Marxism" needed updating. My departure was at their request.

My experiences with the RCP were (thankfully) briefer - they have almost no presence in my city, save organizing the WCW campaign. Their two members never would discuss the party's organization with me, paranoid to disclose anything but how many subscriptions of "Revolution" they have sold in our city. And I'm sure no one here needs to be told more about the Cult of Bob.

So I have seen the actual organizational praxis of two of most "important" vanguardist parties in the developed world - and they've been reduced to cults. Their "democratic" centralism the latter far outstrip the former. So let's take a Marxist look at why.

The origins of the Bolshevik paradigm for revolution are to be found in proto-capitalist Russia, circa 1900. Lenin himself was undeniably petit-bourgeois, as was most of the RSDLP. This is understandable - education in neo-colonial Russia was a class luxury. Lenin himself was a lawyer - representation was his job. And it is from his being as a lawyer that his inherently petit-bourgeois philosophy comes.

While of course one must not revere Marx's writings as "holy writ", Lenin's modification of Marxism was, essentially, to replace histomat with the ever-ambiguous "dialectical materialism" (a paradoxical phrase Marx himself never used), due to their continuity from the Second International. While histomat asserts that the development of the productive forces is subject to historical laws which are inescapable, Lenin threw the baby out with the bathwater and ignored this core of the Marxist metanarrative. Lenin was convinced that his party could represent the working-class, making revolution in their name and running the game until proletarian consciousness was advanced enough to "wither away" the state. His justification was that Russia was already capitalist, when he forgot that capitalism is an epoch that industrializes the means of production - which clearly was not finished by the beginning of the 20th century.

Lenin & co. in Russia openly admitted that their vanguard would have to preform the tasks of a bourgeois revolution before anyone could talk about socialism. The New Economic Policy was probably the most important capitalist development for Russia in the 20th century. The USSR (and its ilk) ended up producing state-monopoly capitalism built on the same productive organizational techniques of Fordism and Taylorism that the fascists used in Germany. No country ever witnessing a vanguardist revolution has ever moved beyond the "bourgeois-democratic" revolution; every country witnessing a vanguardist revolution has seen the inevitable open restoration of capitalism.

With the Marxist hermeneutic, this becomes increasingly clear - as a lawyer, Lenin's consciousness was based around the concept of representation, so of course his distortion of Marxism would be too. But the end results vindicate the assertions of histomat to begin with. And the petit-bourgeois roots of Leninism are displayed in the adoption of a bourgeois model for organization - the political party.

As I discovered through my work with a vanguard, Lenin's party model reproduces a certain division of labor in "making revolution" - every vanguard is very clearly divided into leaders and soldiers. The "central committee" is designated the task of developing an ideological line, while the rank-and-file members are soldiers commanded by the party to obey the aforementioned line. The soldiers are not encouraged to think for themselves, but instead to obey or get the boot, as happened with myself.

Working within this division creates a new type of consciousness hereafter referred to as secular theology. It is the logical conclusion of the idealist deviation of Leninism from Marx.

Secular theology has its foundations in the leader-soldier division of the vanguard party. As the rank-and-file is not encouraged to think for itself, they are reduced to regurgitating slogans and mantras developed by the central committee. This is reproduced on this form by the "copy-paste" tendency of many posters here. The result is to unconditionally accept anything the leading caste says is true, regardless of whether it makes sense. There are several excellent examples of this.

The first can be seen with Lenin's assertion that "imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism." Lenin wrote the famous economic treatise in 1916, during the First World War. By 1919, it had become obvious that global capitalism was not on the verge of self-destruction. Today, it is even more obvious, as we Marxists have witness capital's regime of accumulation shift through its Fordist-Keynesian and neoliberal models. Yet Leninists still recite the mantra as justification - but for what? It's unarguable that we are not about to see worldwide proletarian revolution. The mantra has thus been reduced to sterile holy writ.

The most important example of the recitation of secular theology can be pinpointed in the Leninist assertion that "the vanguard is the proletariat." This mantra is designed to mask the leader-soldier juxtaposition in the vanguard party from the rank-and-file members. And this mantra has also clearly been demonstrated to be false - the worker in the Soviet Union had as little control over the productive processes as a worker in the United States. And the real vehicles for worker self-management, the soviet councils, were dismantled as soon as Spring 1917. But the most damning attribute of this second mantra is the contradiction it reveals in the Leninist analysis of 20th century history.

Secular theology today is dependent on its crutch of angelology and demonology. Leninists, deviating from the histomat assertion that the material forces are the engine of history, assert that their favorite revolution was "destroyed" by a particular villain. The Trotskyists point at Stalin, the Stalinists at Kruschev, the Maoists at Deng. "If only (X leader) had gotten his way and (Y leader) hadn't restored capitalism, we'd be in communism today!" The idealism of Leninism is blatant in that they have completely destroyed any semblance of material basis for the continued justification of their theories - they reside firmly on the "great man" conception of history, as if one man (or even a few) can override the material forces at work behind the scenes.

It is exactly the inability of Leninists to look behind the scenes which poses such a threat to real Marxists. Secular theology embraces anyone who wears a red beret, or flies a red flag, or talks about "socialism," regardless of what they're actually doing. Their pathetic personality-cheering has lead Trotskyists to rally behind Chavez, despite his neoliberal economic policies; has lead Maoists to embrace a peasant rebellion in Nepal which openly admits to only wanting to establish a bourgeois republic. It is for this reason that secular theology poses the single greatest threat to the continual theoretical development of Marxism today.

Thus, today, it is almost inane to discuss Marxism on these RevLeft forums. Inevitably, the thread becomes a slogan-shouting-match, meant only to reinforce the egos of the posters themselves. Secular theology has perverted the materialist base of Marxism, and thus must be amputated immediately in order for us to continue. Inevitably, the secular theologists will be moved to the "Religion" form - where they rightfully belong.

[supernaltempest]

Very well written and I agree with your points. And it's not just RevLeft, it's the entire Internet population.

[Die Neue Zeit]

The idealism of Leninism is blatant in that they have completely destroyed any semblance of material basis for the continued justification of their theories - they reside firmly on the "great man" conception of history, as if one man (or even a few) can override the material forces at work behind the scenes.

Another "orthodox Marxist," eh?

http://www.revleft.com/vb/limitations-directly-materialist-t68278/index.html

Excerpts:


I started off on this board by stating somewhere that Russia was already materially ripe for a traditional bourgeois revolution since the Crimean war, long before Stolypin became the prime minister (after "Bloody Sunday"), and before Lenin himself was born! Also, Russia was ripe for "revolutionary democracy" in the 1890s, thanks to the accelerated economic programs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_history,_1892-1917#Accelerated_industrialization) of one Sergey White (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Witte) (the developments being commented on in Lenin's The Development of Capitalism in Russia).

However, such revolutions (bourgeois-democratic or revolutionary-democratic) didn't happen spontaneously. As usual, "the devil is in the details."

...

I'll go back to the material above on capitalist development in Russia and introduce a fourth perspective (after "Great Men," "Ideology," and "strict/direct" materialism): organization. Simply put, Russia's masses were not sufficiently organized at that time to enact either a proper bourgeois-democratic revolution or a revolution for "revolutionary democracy" in their respective periods (post-Crimean War and under both Stolypin and White). The high levels of illiteracy certainly doesn't help the Ideologists' case or the "Great Men" folks (communication). By the time of March 1917, there were still high levels of illiteracy, but the high levels of regimentation and organization resulting from a third imperialist war in just sixty years (after the Crimean war and the Russian-Japanese war) and from the creation of soviets helped the revolutionary cause immensely. Also, although the Bolsheviks themselves were hardly the organized folks lionized by Soviet propaganda, the proliferation of soviets and factory committees helped the revolutionary cause immensely.

Sorry, but what you said above sounds a lot like economism. :(




Secular theology today is dependent on its crutch of angelology and demonology. Leninists, deviating from the histomat assertion that the material forces are the engine of history, assert that their favorite revolution was "destroyed" by a particular villain. The Trotskyists point at Stalin, the Stalinists at Kruschev, the Maoists at Deng. "If only (X leader) had gotten his way and (Y leader) hadn't restored capitalism, we'd be in communism today!"

How grossly inaccurate:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/lenin-stalin-and-t66656/index.html


So I went back to the three links above to find some cohesive attempt at analyzing the nature of the Soviet regime under various "leaders." In the third link above, I split the analysis of the superstructure into two parts: the "skeletal framework" (because without a strong framework, the whole building could still collapse on itself and become a pile of rubble above an otherwise strong base) and the "skin."

Note that this "skeletal framework" is nothing else but the very question of organization itself!



More on the subject of primitive accumulation referred to in the thread above:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/socialist-primitive-accumulation-t67536/index.html

[KC]

The Bolshevik paradigm of vanguardist revolution is inherently a secular theology - it is an idealistic theory which mirrors religion in every facet.

What is "vanguardist revolution"?


First, let's identify the central thesis of the Leninist paradigm. Lenin argued that the working-class, due to its own underdevelopment, "needs" an elite group to rule them "for their own good", until they become conscious to rule on their own. The rulers in his paradigm are the "vanguard" -

We covered this weeks ago (http://www.revleft.com/vb/kind-marxism-leninism-t66725/index3.html)

However, if you want to keep spouting your intellectual dishonesty by ripping quotes out of context, mischaracterizing what Lenin has said, practicing historical revisionism and then fail to respond to what I have to say because you are unable to defend your claims then I would be more than willing to go through it again.

The above quote, for example, about Lenin advocating Blanquism/substitutionalism was proven wrong by me and conceded by you.


You are correct that Lenin did not explicitly define the vanguard as having a substitutionalist role.
Source (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1036503&postcount=50)


It is obvious from reading over these forums that few self-proclaimed Leninists have never actually worked in a vanguard party.

Wow. So Leninists don't organize into vanguard parties? Kinda defeated your entire argument there.




It is obvious from reading over these forums that few self-proclaimed Leninists have never actually worked in a vanguard party. My own experience is limited to two: the "Trotskyist" Socialist Workers Party, and the "Maoist" Revolutionary Communist Party. I worked with the SWP and its youth group, the Young Socialists, for about three years. I even attended the 2005 Party convention at Oberlin College, for three days. The SWP is essentially a cult built around the writings of Jack Barnes and Mary-Alice Waters. The SWP bookstore in my local city was home to local Party forums, which generally consisted of ~10-15 people, only two of whom (besides myself) were under the age of 40, and most were significantly older. The SWP has a long, long history of factional disputes and of questionable policies. The former can be read about in any history of American "Communism", but the latter I can elaborate further here. Around 2000, the SWP sued the Marxist Internet Library for their free distribution of the writings of Trotsky, claiming their Party had the intellectual property rights to Trotsky's work in America. I'm sure I do not need to elaborate on how anti-communist this action was. And I was happy to learn they failed. More recently, however, Jack Barnes & Mary Alice-Waters (did I mention they're a couple?) sold their posh New York City loft for almost $2 million dollars. And while the SWP orders their rank-and-file members to live desolate lives so they can contribute their finances and time to the Party, the leaders are apparently exempt from this requirement. I stopped affiliating with the Party after questioning their undemocratic publishing techniques, and suggesting perhaps their "Marxism" needed updating. My departure was at their request.

My experiences with the RCP were (thankfully) briefer - they have almost no presence in my city, save organizing the WCW campaign. Their two members never would discuss the party's organization with me, paranoid to disclose anything but how many subscriptions of "Revolution" they have sold in our city. And I'm sure no one here needs to be told more about the Cult of Bob.

So your assertion then is that since you had crappy experiences with two crappy organizations that all "Leninist" parties must be like this. Sorry, but that's not even an argument. Are you next going to claim that "Leninism" has "failed" because the CPUSA supports the democratic party?:rolleyes:


So I have seen the actual organizational praxis of two of most "important" vanguardist parties in the developed world

Get over yourself. You didn't experience shit; you experienced two crappy organizations, who can hardly be called moderately effective, much less "two of the most 'important' vanguardist parties in the developed world."


While histomat asserts that the development of the productive forces is subject to historical laws which are inescapable

Which laws are those?


Lenin threw the baby out with the bathwater and ignored this core of the Marxist metanarrative.

No he didn't. (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1899/devel/index.htm)

Marx proves you wrong as well:


Then again, even if the mass of the Russian peasants were ever so instinctively revolutionary, even if we imagined that revolutions could be made to order, just as one makes a piece of flowered calico or a teakettle — even then I ask, is it permissible for anyone over twelve years of age to imagine the course of a revolution in such an utterly childish manner as is the case here? And remember, further, that this was written after the first revolution made on this Bakuninist model — the Spanish one of 1873 — had so brilliantly failed. There, too, they let loose at several places simultaneously. There, too, it was calculated that practical necessity and the instinct of self-preservation would, of themselves, bring about a firm and indissoluble alliance between the protesting communities. And what happened? Every village community, every town defended only itself; there was no question of mutual assistance and, with only 3,000 men, Pavia overcame one town after another in a fortnight and put an end to the entire anarchist glory (cf. my Bakuninists at Work, where this is described in detail).

Russia undoubtedly is on the eve of a revolution. Her financial affairs are in extreme disorder. Taxes cannot be screwed any higher, the interest on old state loans is paid by means of new loans, and every new loan meets with greater difficulties; money can now be raised only on the pretext of building railways! The administration, corrupt from top to bottom as of old, the officials living more from theft, bribery and extortion than on their salaries. The entire agricultural production — by far the most essential for Russia — completely dislocated by the redemption settlement of 1861; the big landowners, without sufficient labour power; the peasants without sufficient land, oppressed by taxation and sucked dry by usurers; agricultural production declining by the year. The whole held together with great difficulty and only outwardly by an oriental despotism the arbitrariness of which we in the West simply cannot imagine; a despotism that, from day to day, not only comes into more glaring contradiction with the views of the enlightened classes and, in particular, with those of the rapidly developing bourgeoisie of the capital, but, in the person of its present bearer, has lost its head, one day making concessions to liberalism and the next, frightened, cancelling them again and thus bringing itself more and more into disrepute. With all that, a growing recognition among the enlightened strata of the nation concentrated in the capital that this position is untenable, that a revolution is impending, and the illusion that it will be possible to guide this revolution along a smooth, constitutional channel. Here all the conditions of a revolution are combined, of a revolution that, started by the upper classes of the capital, perhaps even by the government itself, must be rapidly carried further, beyond the first constitutional phase, by the peasants; of a revolution that will be of the greatest importance for the whole of Europe, if only because it will destroy at one blow the last, so far intact, reserve of the entire European reaction. This revolution is surely approaching. Only two events could still delay it: a successful war against Turkey or Austria, for which money and firm alliances are necessary, or — a premature attempt at insurrection, which would drive the possessing classes back into the arms of the government.
Source (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1874/refugee-literature/ch05.htm)

So is Marx now unmarxist as well?


Lenin was convinced that his party could represent the working-class

The Bolsheviks did represent the working class; how do you think they became a mass party?


His justification was that Russia was already capitalist, when he forgot that capitalism is an epoch that industrializes the means of production - which clearly was not finished by the beginning of the 20th century.

This is just a little simplistic. Have you ever read The Development of Capitalism in Russia?


Lenin & co. in Russia openly admitted that their vanguard

It wasn't "their vanguard".


Lenin & co. in Russia openly admitted that their vanguard would have to preform the tasks of a bourgeois revolution before anyone could talk about socialism. The New Economic Policy was probably the most important capitalist development for Russia in the 20th century.

And here's the historical revisionism.


No country ever witnessing a vanguardist revolution has ever moved beyond the "bourgeois-democratic" revolution; every country witnessing a vanguardist revolution has seen the inevitable open restoration of capitalism.

Comical coming from someone that considers the Cambodian revolution to have been a "Leninist" one.


And the petit-bourgeois roots of Leninism are displayed in the adoption of a bourgeois model for organization - the political party.

How should the vanguard organize itself? How should the proletariat as a whole organize itself?


As I discovered through my work with a vanguard, Lenin's party model reproduces a certain division of labor in "making revolution" - every vanguard is very clearly divided into leaders and soldiers.

You didn't work with a "Leninist" group or a "vanguard". You worked with two shitty pseudo-Marxist organizations.


The first can be seen with Lenin's assertion that "imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism." Lenin wrote the famous economic treatise in 1916, during the First World War. By 1919, it had become obvious that global capitalism was not on the verge of self-destruction.

Actually, it was.


Leninists, deviating from the histomat assertion that the material forces are the engine of history, assert that their favorite revolution was "destroyed" by a particular villain. The Trotskyists point at Stalin, the Stalinists at Kruschev, the Maoists at Deng. "If only (X leader) had gotten his way and (Y leader) hadn't restored capitalism, we'd be in communism today!"

"Leninists" don't do that; idiots do. Interesting that you are the one to bring this up, the person attacking Lenin.

[Dimentio]

Thus, today, it is almost inane to discuss Marxism on these RevLeft forums. Inevitably, the thread becomes a slogan-shouting-match, meant only to reinforce the egos of the posters themselves. Secular theology has perverted the materialist base of Marxism, and thus must be amputated immediately in order for us to continue. Inevitably, the secular theologists will be moved to the "Religion" form - where they rightfully belong.

Wonderful :D

You have made the most self-fulfilling prophecy yet.

[nom de guerre]

And the predictable copy/paste responses from Lennies...

Oh, and Zampano's response is particularly amusing: not only does he deny that Leninism is a revolutionary paradigm, but he mis-quotes Marx! Leave it to a Leninist to not be able to distinguish between a bourgeois revolution and a proletarian one. :D

[KC]

I didn't misquote Marx at all. Nice to know that you're still unable to respond to my arguments.

Why are you even here if you're not going to actually respond with something remotely substantial?

[nom de guerre]

Because Marx was saying that Russia was on the cusp of a bourgeois revolution. And he was right - his prediction was fulfilled with the October coup in 1917.

Also, Zampano illustrates my above thesis on Leninists - that they cannot distinguish between what their great leader says, and what actually happens. Lenin may not have ever announced that his vanguard was a substitute for an actual proletarian revolution, but that's the role it played.

[KC]

Because Marx was saying that Russia was on the cusp of a bourgeois revolution.

Yes, one that "must be rapidly carried further".


And he was right - his prediction was fulfilled with the October coup in 1917.

More historical revisionism.


Also, Zampano illustrates my above thesis on Leninists - that they cannot distinguish between what their great leader says, and what actually happens. Lenin may not have ever announced that his vanguard was a substitute for an actual proletarian revolution, but that's the role it played.

Of course, you're going to base your entire ideology on something you yourself can't even prove, and have even admitted there is no evidence for!

[nom de guerre]

Yes, one that "must be rapidly carried further".

You really think that an epoch's worth of technological development of the productive forces can be squeezed into six months? Idealism.

Of course, you're going to base your entire ideology on something you yourself can't even prove, and have even admitted there is no evidence for!

My "entire ideology" (which, btw, Marxism ain't ideology, it's methodology) is not based on a rejection of vanguardism. And there is overwhelming material evidence of the substitutionalism of vanguardism - look at fucking history, where every vanguard party thought they could substitute real proletarian self-organized insurrection with their "revolutionary will" - and they failed every time.

But, for you, because Lenin may not have blatantly stated as such, it's not true. Because, fundamentally, you are an idealist.

[Luís Henrique]

To begin with, one must define what "real" Marxism is.

There's no such thing as "real Marxism"; Marxism is what Marxists do of Marxism. Reinterpreting Marx will always be an interpretation, as false as any previous interpretation. The idea that a "real Marxism" subsists somewhere is just a version of what you are trying to denounce: a scholastic parody of Marxism.


If Marxism can be stripped down to a simple definition, it is a paradigm for understanding material reality and the bigger-picture developments of human history.

Evidently Marxism cannot be stripped down to a simple definition...


It is built on the philosophical premise that god is a social construct,

It is certainly not build on such premise. It is built on the premise that human history is a material history, in which no teleology intervenes - and from that, naturally, it follows that God does not exist. But it is no more built on your premise than a church is built on its coupole.


evidence for this can be seen in the study of early languages, which developed as a way to keep track of tools for hunting and early agriculture.

We don't know any early language, as they were not preserved in written form.


The great philosophical contradiction in Marxism is that, if being determines consciousness for humans today, one cannot truly be free because we are all subject to forces that determine our thoughts, our ideas, and our very nature as human beings. But because these forces are not supernatural, they are well within our capability to scientifically control. And because the forces are the productive powers of human beings, we know that revolution is the answer.

If being determined consciousness in such mechanical way, revolutions would be impossible.


It is from here Marx built his great tool for us today: historical materialism. Histomat (as it will hence be referred to) is a tool for making sense of the past and present.

Can we call it "historical materialism", instead of "histomat"?


Its assumption is that under class societies human consciousness is based on perceived material interest, or that people act the way they do because they expect to materially benefit by doing so.

This is a caricature, and a bourgeois one to boot.

People's actions are a lot more complicated than that. I am not typing this reply to you because I expect to materially benefit from it.


Histo[rical]mat[erialism] as traces the development of human history into several epochs, based on the organization of the productive forces in each time.

Which epochs are those, and to what "organization of the productive forces" do they correspond?


Because histo[rical]mat[erialism] is a materialist paradigm, it argues that the ideas and consciousness of each epoch are determined by the relations of production at the time, which in turn is determined by the level of technological development.

This is blatantly false. Evidently the productive relations at any time cannot be based on human will, but they certainly are not determined by the level of technological development, except in a negative, and extremely loose, way.


Marx's famous quip on the subject was to the effect of "the handmill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam mill, society with the industrial capitalist."

This is again what you promised us you would fight against: the pious and scholastic quoting of a sacred book, taken away from all context. The handmill does nothing; a feudal nobility is the creation of human actions in historically (and not merely technologically) determined circumstances.


To use an (possibly shoddy) analogy, we are all familiar with the Marxist concept of the base-superstructure dialectic. Well, Marxist theory uses histo[rical]mat[erialism] as its base - its core tool in its analysis. And the logical conclusion which arises atop of it are the "politics" one associates with Marxists - proletarian revolution, communism, etc.

I seriously doubt this is possible. The core of our politics is the defence of our material interests, not any analytical method. The method is an instrument for us, not the material basis in which our actions are founded.


Today, anyone who idealistically agrees with the politics of Marxism will call themselves a Marxist, without actually understanding Marxism as a metanarrative tool for thought.

Those post-modern neologisms suck, don't they?

If we agree that Marxism is a bare method, it becomes utterly inintelligible. As a crude method, it serves any material interests we wish. But it isn't designed to that effect; it is designed as a method for a specific class, to execute a specific task. So your analysis introduces an element of circularity. It is a method for a proletarian revolution, but we only know that a proletarian revolution is necessary because we have the method.


The Bolshevik paradigm of vanguardist revolution is inherently a secular theology - it is an idealistic theory which mirrors religion in every facet.

This should be broken into certain pieces. "The Bolshevik paradigm of vanguardist revolution" is an intellectual construction that should be analysed closely. In Lenin we find its intellectual foundation: the idea that socialist ideas come to the proletariat from the outside, as the process of concentration of capital dispossesses layer after layer of the petty bourgeoisie and even the bourgeoisie proper. This is of course an anti-Marxist idea. But in Lenin this is still linked to the idea that the proletarian vanguard is a tool for the revolution, not the other way round.

The evolution of such Leninist idea from its original formulation to the present state of things, in which we have about 3,435 different "proletarian vanguards", each of them acting as the guardian of the genuine method for proletarian revolution, however, is not the history of an intellectual process; it the history of a material process: the Russian Revolution and its further developments throughout the world. It is only through State power that it becomes a "secular theology", and if it was a "secular theology" from the start, it would never had attained State power.


First, let's identify the central thesis of the Leninist paradigm. Lenin argued that the working-class, due to its own underdevelopment, "needs" an elite group to rule them "for their own good", until they become conscious to rule on their own.

Lenin didn't argue that. Lenin argued that the constitution of the proletariat into a class needed the introduction of socialist ideas from outside, not that the proletariat could turn into a ruling class without having constituted itself as a class first. If we are to effectively fight against "the Leninist paradigm", we should first get right what such "paradigm" is, lest we wish to fight against windmills.


The rulers in his paradigm are the "vanguard" - and theoretically represent the interests of the proletariat. This contradicts histo[rical]mat[erialism] in two significant ways: in the Marxist paradigm, the working-class becomes conscious through the immiseration of its conditions under capitalism, and only then is revolution possible; and that the revolution must be the work of the workers themselves.

You misrepresent "the Marxist paradigm". Evidently, the working class does not become class conscious through its immiseration; it becomes class conscious through its fight against its immiseration. Once you confuse these two very different (and in many ways, opposite) things, you are left with two alternative paths, both of which are closer to "secular" (and even non-secular, as we shall see) "theology" than mere "Leninism".

The first path plays directly into substitutionism: the class is not revolutionary due to its historic role and its struggle, but due to its immiseration, its suffering. Through this, the proletariat becomes assimilated to a collective Christ, whose sufferings "save" us, and can be used to repress dissent: you shouldn't masturbate, because Jesus Christ suffered for you in the Cross, and each time you masturbate he suffers again; you shouldn't read Trotsky (listen to degenerate music, frequent bourgeois places, eat bourgeois food, etc) because the proletariat suffers when you do that.

The second path arrives at "secular theology" through a more convoluted path. As the immiseration of the proletariat is a process conducted not by the proletariat itself, but by the bourgeoisie, the role of the proletariat in the revolution becomes strictly passive. The attempts of the proletariat to fight back its immiseration become, under this quietist ideology, not only immaterial, but even contrary, to the building of proletarian class conscience: whenever the working class wins its small battles, obtaining wage rises, work day limitations, better work conditions, it hinders its own immiseration and hence its consciousness building. The main difference here is that while the first path above directly calls for an external intervention on behalf of the suffering class, now we have to wait for a mythical "secular" apocalypse: the Day, the oncoming Day, the Dawn, in which the proletariat will finally add up its miseries, its sufferings, into a coherent class consciousness, and rid itself from its chains...


So I have seen the actual organizational praxis of two of most "important" vanguardist parties in the developed world - and they've been reduced to cults. Their "democratic" centralism the latter far outstrip the former. So let's take a Marxist look at why.

To sum up, they are not important at all. They will never lead a revolution, proletarian or otherwise - on the contrary of the Bolshevik party. So we must conclude there is some difference between them and the Bolshevik party; the latter was a giant, the former are windmills.


The origins of the Bolshevik paradigm for revolution are to be found in proto-capitalist Russia, circa 1900. Lenin himself was undeniably petit-bourgeois, as was most of the RSDLP. This is understandable - education in neo-colonial Russia was a class luxury. Lenin himself was a lawyer - representation was his job. And it is from his being as a lawyer that his inherently petit-bourgeois philosophy comes.

This is evidently a caricature of Marxist analysis. Marx himself was no less petty-bourgeois than Lenin. It is in its intellectual praxis, not in the social origin of its founder, that we must find Leninism's flaws.


While of course one must not revere Marx's writings as "holy writ", Lenin's modification of Marxism was, essentially, to replace histo[rical]mat[erialism] with the ever-ambiguous "dialectical materialism" (a paradoxical phrase Marx himself never used), due to their continuity from the Second International.

Lenin's modification of Marxism was much simpler than that. Lenin came with a new theory of how the proletariat had access to class consciousness. In Marx (or Rosa Luxemburg), the working class becomes class conscious by fighting against capitalism; in Lenin, by being "reinforced" by petty-bourgeois and bourgeois defroqués that "bring Science" to the proletariat.


While histo[rical]mat[erialism] asserts that the development of the productive forces is subject to historical laws which are inescapable, Lenin threw the baby out with the bathwater and ignored this core of the Marxist metanarrative.

There are no such things as "inescapable historical laws", this is sheer teleology.


Lenin was convinced that his party could represent the working-class, making revolution in their name and running the game until proletarian consciousness was advanced enough to "wither away" the state.

This is what it became after decades. Lenin was convinced that his party could lead the proletariat into revolution, because its leading position within the class was the expression of the actual level of consciousness of the proletariat.


His justification was that Russia was already capitalist, when he forgot that capitalism is an epoch that industrializes the means of production - which clearly was not finished by the beginning of the 20th century.

Capitalism isn't "an epoch"; it is a mode of production, based on relations of production within society. It hasn't a teleological "task" of industrialising the means of production, and when the social conditions for it aren't given, it doesn't do it.

Lenin's analysis of Russian society was much more complex than stating that it was already capitalist; in fact, he always recognised that the Russian State was a feudal State (on the contrary, and curiously, it was the Mensheviks that insisted that Russia was already capitalist, and they took very strange consequences of it, namely that the Russian bourgeoisie would acceed to power on its own, the proletariat only needing to support it, instead of exerting an active role in the overthrowing of Tzarism...)


Lenin & co. in Russia openly admitted that their vanguard would have to preform the tasks of a bourgeois revolution before anyone could talk about socialism.

And if so, it seems they were right...


The New Economic Policy was probably the most important capitalist development for Russia in the 20th century. The USSR (and its ilk) ended up producing state-monopoly capitalism built on the same productive organizational techniques of Fordism and Taylorism that the fascists used in Germany.

You see, you first blame Lenin for misunderstanding Russia as a capitalist country (which he didn't); now you blame him for the outcome of a revolution that, according to yourself and your "inescapable historical laws" could only be a bourgeois revolution.


No country ever witnessing a vanguardist revolution has ever moved beyond the "bourgeois-democratic" revolution; every country witnessing a vanguardist revolution has seen the inevitable open restoration of capitalism.

And, according to your "inescapable historical laws", that was the desirable outcome.


With the Marxist hermeneutic, this becomes increasingly clear - as a lawyer, Lenin's consciousness was based around the concept of representation, so of course his distortion of Marxism would be too.

One wonders how Marx's own distortion of Marxism was any different.

You just proved that Marxism doesn't exist, and if it exists, it must be a "secular" (but why "secular"?) "theology": according to your own interpretation of Marxism, no one in the XIX could be a Marxist out of the material conditions then prevaling.


But the end results vindicate the assertions of histo[rical]mat[erialism] to begin with. And the petit-bourgeois roots of Leninism are displayed in the adoption of a bourgeois model for organization - the political party.

So, according to you, Lenin is guilty of obeying the "inescapable laws" of History...


As I discovered through my work with a vanguard, Lenin's party model reproduces a certain division of labor in "making revolution" - every vanguard is very clearly divided into leaders and soldiers.

You worked with two different (pseudo)"Leninist" parties. If a mathematician "worked" with only two prime numbers, he might conclude that half of the prime numbers are even, as 3 is odd, but 2 is not.

You must work a theoretical frame to come to such conclusion; empirical testing with such a reduced universe is insufficient.


The "central committee" is designated the task of developing an ideological line, while the rank-and-file members are soldiers commanded by the party to obey the aforementioned line. The soldiers are not encouraged to think for themselves, but instead to obey or get the boot, as happened with myself.

Yes, it is more or less what usually happens. However, it seems utterly disproportionate to bring into task the "inescapable laws" of History to nail the theoretical coffin of the RCP: their utterly petty-bourgeois nature should be explained in a much less ambitious theoretical frame.


Working within this division creates a new type of consciousness hereafter referred to as secular theology. It is the logical conclusion of the idealist deviation of Leninism from Marx.

It doesn't seem to follow. Leftist organisations that are explicitly non-Leninist do not differ much from the picture you painted of the SWP or the RCP, and when they do, it is not necessarily for better.

It seems to be the material consequence (and not the logical conclusion) of the fact that such organisations are embedded in a capitalist society, which very much presses its ideology and organisational practices even into the organisations that attempt to fight it.


Secular theology has its foundations in the leader-soldier division of the vanguard party.

Here you have reversed your analysis, at the risk of making it circular. Up to now, you were proposing that the leader-soldier division within "Leninist" organisations was the result of "secular theology", which in turn was caused by the class origin of its leaders. Now you are saying "secular theology" is caused by the leader-soldier division...


As the rank-and-file is not encouraged to think for itself, they are reduced to regurgitating slogans and mantras developed by the central committee. This is reproduced on this form by the "copy-paste" tendency of many posters here. The result is to unconditionally accept anything the leading caste says is true, regardless of whether it makes sense. There are several excellent examples of this.

No doubt, but the cause of this does not seem to be the "idealist deviation of Leninism from Marx". It seems to reproduce the situation that prevails in society at large, and it makes much more sence to admit that this is the "normal" thing to happen in a capitalist society, which can only be overcome by painstakingly fighting it in a daily basis, than to believe it is an artificial thing superimposed into people who would "naturally", even in a class society, act on behalf or their self-perceived self-interests.


The first can be seen with Lenin's assertion that "imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism." Lenin wrote the famous economic treatise in 1916, during the First World War. By 1919, it had become obvious that global capitalism was not on the verge of self-destruction. Today, it is even more obvious, as we Marxists have witness capital's regime of accumulation shift through its Fordist-Keynesian and neoliberal models. Yet Leninists still recite the mantra as justification - but for what? It's unarguable that we are not about to see worldwide proletarian revolution. The mantra has thus been reduced to sterile holy writ.

We don't seem to be about to see worldwide proletarian revolution. But this has nothing to do with capitalism having reached its highest stage or not. Revolution doesn't come out of an automatic mechanism unleashed by the progress of technology; it comes out from conscious class struggle against capitalism.

It is very true that many "Leninist" organisations have given up conjunctural analysis, and believe that the proclamation of "eras", "stages" or "epochs" of capitalism substitutes for it. It doesn't; the progress of capital accumulation does not give us a better compass to whether we are coming near a revolution as the number of strikes, demonstrations, and other class-struggle activities does.


The most important example of the recitation of secular theology can be pinpointed in the Leninist assertion that "the vanguard is the proletariat."

This assertion, evidently, is not Leninist at all.


Thus, today, it is almost inane to discuss Marxism on these RevLeft forums. Inevitably, the thread becomes a slogan-shouting-match, meant only to reinforce the egos of the posters themselves. Secular theology has perverted the materialist base of Marxism, and thus must be amputated immediately in order for us to continue.

Well, I hope you don't take my refutation of your theories as a "shouting match".

But let me ask you, are the material conditions for "amputating" "secular theology" ripe? Because we wouldn't want to go into a "vanguardist" effort to suppress something before it is its time, would we?


Inevitably, the secular theologists will be moved to the "Religion" form - where they rightfully belong.

Who are the "secular theologists", and how do we recognise them?

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

You really think that an epoch's worth of technological development of the productive forces can be squeezed into six months? Idealism.

Of course, you're going to base your entire ideology on something you yourself can't even prove, and have even admitted there is no evidence for!

My "entire ideology" (which, btw, Marxism ain't ideology, it's methodology) is not based on a rejection of vanguardism. And there is overwhelming material evidence of the substitutionalism of vanguardism - look at fucking history, where every vanguard party thought they could substitute real proletarian self-organized insurrection with their "revolutionary will" - and they failed every time.

But, for you, because Lenin may not have blatantly stated as such, it's not true. Because, fundamentally, you are an idealist.

Is this the shouting contest you were predicting?

Luís Henrique

[KC]

You really think that an epoch's worth of technological development of the productive forces can be squeezed into six months? Idealism.

You're going to have to take that up with Marx, then.


My "entire ideology"

Redtsarism


is not based on a rejection of vanguardism.

Not judging by your posts here.


And there is overwhelming material evidence of the substitutionalism of vanguardism

1. No there isn't.
2. Your replacement of "Leninism" with vanguardism doesn't mask your intended statement at all.

[nom de guerre]

So Luís Henrique says I'm making generalizations. I guess he forgot that applying the Marxist hermeneutic presumes stepping back and looking at the general tendencies of the bigger picture. He seems to disregard the entirety of Marx's early work; I assume it's too "humanist" for his Bolshevik appetite.

Here is, again, where the vanguardists deviate from a materialist analysis. Marx argued in his early years that human nature is to produce our needs, our very means of subsistence for survival. Animals scavenge or hunt, but they do not produce anything (except shit). Human beings, on the other hand, labor to make objects to satisfy present and future needs - or to trade with one another. Consequently, the production of objects to satisfy our current needs creates new needs in the future, effectively developing our consciousness. It is for this reason that our identity is intrinsically linked to our labor.

I'm sure that, for you, Luís, Marx's earlier musing on the "species-being" is troublesome for it can contradict your ideology of choise. But without the "species-being", your conception of alienation is divorced from material reality. For you, communism is a moral imperative, another example of the idealist roots of the Lenin fanclub.

Earlier in this thread I was accused of being an "orthodox" Marxist. I'm sure to many of you, this may be true. I see Marxism as being a metanarrative, a paradigm which is not just economic, historical, political, or philosophical - but as a hermeneutic which rests on many pillars which stand in each different study. As a metanarrative, the strength of Marxism is in its totality as a world-view - it becomes a useful tool for understanding most everything.

This is not to say that everything Marx said is correct. But such a view requires that one take the time to understand the development of Marxism as a paradigm for oneself - a process that I find, as I continue with it, makes more and more sense as I go along. But I'm sure you'll accuse me of some such reductionism, as you did here:


This is again what you promised us you would fight against: the pious and scholastic quoting of a sacred book, taken away from all context. The handmill does nothing; a feudal nobility is the creation of human actions in historically (and not merely technologically) determined circumstances."First of all, I did not use that quote as "divine" source of my knowledge - it's a brief summarization of the concept, squeezed into as few a words. But what you're effectively arguing is that there are "human actions" which "historically determine" what we see, but they're not the fact that we labor. For we Marxists, feudal social relations determine feudal consciousness - and those social relations are effectively the organization of property, which, in those days, was had its foundation in the distribution of land, and the production of agriculture.. So what, may I ask, are those "human actions", if not the organization of the products of our labor?


Which epochs are those, and to what "organization of the productive forces" do they correspond?For this, I refer you to Marx's The German Ideology, which basically begins by identifying three epochs - tribal, ancient, and feudal. Tribal life has been elaborated on by subsequent Marxists (possibly Engels, I admit I forget) as to encompass what we today understand as "primitive communism"; ancient encompasses the slave-societies of the early Empires, as Marx unfortunately termed "oriental" despotisms; feudal is obvious. But subsequent Marxists have developed the historical materialist conception into finer detail.

The point is that the social constructs that are built to organize our societies are determined by the level of development in the capability to produce. For example, how could a country move from feudalism to capitalism without an "industrial revolution" - obviously without the technological development of machinery (using steam-power), mass-production is impossible. This failure to understand the material premise of the Marxist paradigm vindicates my initial assertion. As such, I'm not going to exert the effort in "quote-by-quote" bickering - you've already shown me, and any informed readers, that your ideology is a-historical and not Marxist.

Thankfully, Zampano offered us something as well:


You're going to have to take that up with Marx, then.

Further evidence that the secular theologists cannot distinguish Lenin's contributions to theory from Marx's - likely because they've never read the latter!

Within the historical materialist paradigm, social constructs serve to develop the productive forces - naturally, as humans, we're going to want to produce more of, well, everything. So the imperative of our known history, so far, is essentially the progression from scarcity towards producing an abundance. Bourgeois revolutions are social constructs that developed when the social construct had become obsolete, causing more stress onto the collective whole than it was adequately producing subsistence.

To develop the productive forces forward to the point where an abundance of commodities is possible, a necessary prerequisite for the sustainability of a communist society, is a process which, evidently, is taking centuries. Marx never once said this can occur in less than a year - it was Lenin who asserted so. But no longer can you falsely attribute Lenin's assertions to Marx: Marx never wrote about a "vanguard party", he never said a bourgeois revolution can be fulfilled in six months, and he never argued for a dictatorship over the proletariat - which is all you fucking vanguardists, historically, have ever amounted to.

This is, again, an excellent example of how Leninism is a bastard deviation of the Marxist paradigm. It is "Marxian" in appearance, but idealist in nature - that is, its politics and rhetoric are similar, but they dump Marxism as a historical understanding, and are leave with idealist bullshit. Just because your ideology is derived from the Marxist paradigm, doesn't mean it is Marxist. But if you think so, perhaps we should all start calling ourselves "Smithist-Hegelian-Marxists", or some other such ridiculous hyphenation (MLM anyone?) :lol:

[KC]

I think you calling Luis "Leninist" just destroyed any semblance of credibility you had left.

[Luís Henrique]

So Luís Henrique says I'm making generalizations.

I guess I could have said that, but, as a matter of fact, I didn't.


He seems to disregard the entirety of Marx's early work; I assume it's too "humanist" for his Bolshevik appetite.

That's really funny. First, its your approach to Marxism that is decidedly anti-Humanist; to Marx, human beings make their own history, albeit not under the conditions of their choice. To you, history seems to be the product of abstract forces, particularly of technological forces.

It is evident that there is some evolution in Marx's work; he didn't just pop as a completely developed author at twenty-some years. But the Althusserian myth of an "epistemological rupture" between the young Marx and the old Marx seems false to me. Neither Marx broke with his youth's idealism, as Althusser suggests, nor did he become somewhat cynical or more mechanicist in his materialism, as others seem to suppose. As a young man, Marx decided that the key to the understanding of modern, capitalist, society was the study of its economic development and functioning. And he put himself into work, in order to study precisely that. So the "old Marx" is little more than some decades of systematic analysis of capitalism put into task to attain goals designed by the "young Marx". There never was a "way to Damascus" for Marx - or if it was, he choose his path before any major works, after the Neue Rheinische Zeitung was repressed.

And my appetite may be many different things, but Bolshevik it is not.


Here is, again, where the vanguardists deviate from a materialist analysis. Marx argued in his early years that human nature is to produce our needs, our very means of subsistence for survival.

I am yet to see where I deviate from such ideas.


I'm sure that, for you, Luís, Marx's earlier musing on the "species-being" is troublesome for it can contradict your ideology of choise.

Why do people in this board have this strange belief that they can read my mind?


For you, communism is a moral imperative,

No, it is not a mere moral imperative; it is the only way out of capitalism, and it is the project that corresponds to the material interests of the class I belong to - the working class.


another example of the idealist roots of the Lenin fanclub.

I am not a member, sorry.


Earlier in this thread I was accused of being an "orthodox" Marxist.

Certainly not by me. I don't think that "orthodox Marxism" is a meaningful phrase, and anyway I think you are a quite different thing - a neomenshevik, if I bothered to find a label for it.


I'm sure to many of you, this may be true. I see Marxism as being a metanarrative, a paradigm which is not just economic, historical, political, or philosophical - but as a hermeneutic which rests on many pillars which stand in each different study. As a metanarrative, the strength of Marxism is in its totality as a world-view - it becomes a useful tool for understanding most everything.

This is maybe how you conceive your own understanding of Marxism, but it does not seem to correspond to what it comes out of such understanding in the form of your writing. When you write, it seems that your approach to Marxism is one of economic reducionism, ie, that you see history, politics, and philosophy as determined by economy. I would say that such view is as un-Marxist, and false, as Lenin's false analysis of class-consciousness or Lenin's belief that the proletarian organisations' tendency to degeneration can be countered by organisational measures.


First of all, I did not use that quote as "divine" source of my knowledge - it's a brief summarization of the concept, squeezed into as few a words.

Didn't you? Let's see:


Because histomat is a materialist paradigm, it argues that the ideas and consciousness of each epoch are determined by the relations of production at the time, which in turn is determined by the level of technological development. Marx's famous quip on the subject was to the effect of "the handmill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam mill, society with the industrial capitalist."

Emphasys mine.

So, even if the quote isn't the divine source of your "knowledge", it is used to illustrate a reductionist view: the ideas and consciousness of each epoch are determined, via the intermediate step of relations of production, by the level of technological development. The way you quote Marx, yes, is as to illustrate the view. It is what Thomas Aquinas would do with the Bible: he developed his own reasoning, and then proceeded to find in the Bible a quote that would match his conclusions - as a "brief summarization of the concept, squeezed into as few a words", not as the "'divine' source of" his "knowledge".


But what you're effectively arguing is that there are "human actions" which "historically determine" what we see, but they're not the fact that we labor.

Evidently, unless your conception of "labour" is wide enough to accommodate different things as war, political intrigue, administration, revolt, etc.


For we Marxists, feudal social relations determine feudal consciousness - and those social relations are effectively the organization of property, which, in those days, was had its foundation in the distribution of land, and the production of agriculture..

I see you seem to be no longer arguing the point that those relations were determined by the technological level of development.

Feudal societies were class societies. There is, therefore, no "feudal consciousness", but only the nobles' consciousness, the peasants' consciousness, the priests', the villains', etc. And as it is easy to see, there isn't even one consciousness for each of these classes - there are always internal differences among each of them. These differences cannot be traced back to generic social differences between individuals of each class.


So what, may I ask, are those "human actions", if not the organization of the products of our labor?

War, rebellion, repression, leisure, etc.


For this, I refer you to Marx's The German Ideology, which basically begins by identifying three epochs - tribal, ancient, and feudal. Tribal life has been elaborated on by subsequent Marxists (possibly Engels, I admit I forget) as to encompass what we today understand as "primitive communism"; ancient encompasses the slave-societies of the early Empires, as Marx unfortunately termed "oriental" despotisms; feudal is obvious. But subsequent Marxists have developed the historical materialist conception into finer detail.

Including Marx himself in his Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations. It is clear that the sketch given in The German Ideology is but a sketch; it cannot substitute for in-depth study of actual pre-capitalist societies.


The point is that the social constructs that are built to organize our societies are determined by the level of development in the capability to produce. For example, how could a country move from feudalism to capitalism without an "industrial revolution" - obviously without the technological development of machinery (using steam-power), mass-production is impossible.

Yet it is clear that the opposite is what has happened. Without a political revolution that overthrew the feudal nobility and its State, there was no way a real industrial revolution could be enacted. And so, very clearly, the English Revolutions and the French Revolution, which, both, established bourgeois States (similarly to what happened in Switzerland and the Netherlands), happened in pre-industrial societies, which only became industrialised after the nobility being deposed. It was only in "belated" countries such as Germany and Russia that industrialisation started before a political bourgeois revolution, and that only out of the desperate attempts of the feudal nobilities of these countries to keep up with Northwestern Europe technological superiority in war (Germany became a capitalist society due to the process, the only stance that seems to follow your screenplay; Russia failed and was doomed to a much more bloody process). Even other "belated" countries, like Japan and Italy, went through bourgeois political revolutions before their respective industrialisations.


This failure to understand the material premise of the Marxist paradigm vindicates my initial assertion. As such, I'm not going to exert the effort in "quote-by-quote" bickering - you've already shown me, and any informed readers, that your ideology is a-historical and not Marxist.

Sorry, but you have not the monopoly of Marx interpretation. You are not the Great Inquisitor; so, step down from your pedestal, and start educating yourself.

...................

I notice, by your reply to Zampanò, that you are still committed to fulfill your prophecy about a shouting contest.

Luís Henrique

[KC]

Within the historical materialist paradigm, social constructs serve to develop the productive forces

What is a social construct, how does it "serve to develop the productive forces" and what does this at all have to do with a materialist class analysis?

For now I'm going to assume a "social construct" is one of these "epochs" that you are discussing, such as capitalism. Let's take capitalism as an example. Your statement would then read "capitalism serve[s] to develop the productive forces".

This statement is incredibly flawed for various reasons. First, it completely does away with any materialist class analysis of what capitalism is and why it is the way it is. Capitalism "serves" no person and no aim; it is merely a particular mode of production that society has taken in order to maintain the conditions of bourgeois rule. To claim that capitalism is able to "serve" a particular development is to give capitalism itself consciousness as a single being, devoid of any class analysis and independent of itself. This is obviously much worse than vulgar Marxism; it isn't Marxism at all.

To you, capitalism is a means, a path towards developing the productive forces; to Marxists, capitalism is an end, or a result of class struggle. The development of the productive forces is fueled by the class struggle; in striving to maintain its position as the ruling class, the bourgeoisie is forced to develop its means of production ever further, to pay workers less, to compete, to monopolize. It is in this struggle for the survival of itself (for the bourgeoisie can only now survive as the ruling class) that the productive forces are developed.


naturally, as humans, we're going to want to produce more of, well, everything.

Really? Why is that? Where did you even get this assumption from? Humans always want "more"? This sounds like something I'd hear in bourgeois economics 101; care to elaborate?


So the imperative of our known history, so far, is essentially the progression from scarcity towards producing an abundance.

"The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles."
-Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto, Part 1, Sentence 1

Once again your focus on the development of the productive forces is completely devoid of any semblance of Marxist analysis. It trivializes the class struggle and puts in its place a set of abstract 'rules' with which society 'develops the productive forces'. In other words, it's completely bullshit.


Bourgeois revolutions are social constructs that developed when the social construct had become obsolete

What the fuck does this even mean? "Bourgeois revolutions developed when the feudal epoch had become obsolete?" Then why didn't you just say that instead of trying to sound intelligent?


To develop the productive forces forward to the point where an abundance of commodities is possible

This is already possible. It was possible 100 years ago.


Marx never wrote about a "vanguard party"

Yes he did. Just because he didn't coin the term doesn't mean that he didn't write about it. Let's define vanguard first:

Vanguard: Groups of people who are more resolute and committed, better organised and able to take a leading role in the struggle.

So let's see what Marx wrote about such people:

"The Communists, therefore, are on the one hand, practically, the most advanced and resolute section of the working-class parties of every country, that section which pushes forward all others; on the other hand, theoretically, they have over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the lines of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement."
-Karl Marx, Manifesto of the Communist Party, Part 2

Wow, he's talking about the vanguard in the Manifesto of the Communist Party!


he never said a bourgeois revolution can be fulfilled in six months

This doesn't even make sense.


he never said a bourgeois revolution can be fulfilled in six months

I already showed you that he believed the Russian bourgeois revolution could "be rapidly carried further" (his exact words).

_________________

Points so far to which you have failed to respond:


What is "vanguardist revolution"?


Wow. So Leninists don't organize into vanguard parties? Kinda defeated your entire argument there.


Which laws are those?


The Bolsheviks did represent the working class; how do you think they became a mass party?


Comical coming from someone that considers the Cambodian revolution to have been a "Leninist" one.


How should the vanguard organize itself? How should the proletariat as a whole organize itself?

I'll pose another question: What should the working class of Russia done at the time? What should the Bolsheviks have done at the time?

[Die Neue Zeit]

Yet it is clear that the opposite is what has happened. Without a political revolution that overthrew the feudal nobility and its State, there was no way a real industrial revolution could be enacted. And so, very clearly, the English Revolutions and the French Revolution, which, both, established bourgeois States (similarly to what happened in Switzerland and the Netherlands), happened in pre-industrial societies, which only became industrialised after the nobility being deposed. It was only in "belated" countries such as Germany and Russia that industrialisation started before a political bourgeois revolution, and that only out of the desperate attempts of the feudal nobilities of these countries to keep up with Northwestern Europe technological superiority in war (Germany became a capitalist society due to the process, the only stance that seems to follow your screenplay; Russia failed and was doomed to a much more bloody process). Even other "belated" countries, like Japan and Italy, went through bourgeois political revolutions before their respective industrialisations.

I wonder why "orthodox Marxists" can't understand this when calling Leninists revisionists - ie, ComradeRed's remark regarding the idea of capitalism "evolving" into socialism (I think that Bernstein was referring to a specific form of capitalist structure with the political superstucture of bourgeois democracy, and not to the capitalist mode of production itself) under the DOTP proper.

[As discussed in the "Stamocap" thread, another comrade has agreed with me that the DOTP is still firmly rooted in the capitalist mode of production, which precedes both the socialist and the communist modes of production.]

Anyhow, as for the bourgeois historical equivalent of the DOTP, what about mercantilism (evolving into industrial capitalism after the political revolutions)?

[Luís Henrique]

Anyhow, as for the bourgeois historical equivalent of the DOTP, what about mercantilism (evolving into industrial capitalism after the political revolutions)?

Hm, no. Mercantilism always came before the bourgeois revolutions. The bourgeois equivalent of the "dictatorship of the proletariat" were the jacobin dictatorships in France, England (Cromwell) and Italy. But the bourgeois revolution has no real "equivalents" in proletarian revolution; the two processes are extremely different in nature.

Addressing your points in a more general way, the fact that industrial revolution was a result of bourgeois political revolution rather than its cause doesn't mean necessarily that feudal relations of production stood in place after the fall of the feudal State.

In fact, capitalist relations of production were already starting to appear before the fall of the feudal State; it is characteristic of such transitional process that capitalist and feudal relations of production could exist side by side (along, which is probably more important, with simple production of commodities) under the feudal State. I don't think this is possible in the transition from capitalism to socialism.

After the fall of the feudal State, feudal relations of production were abolished (like in France or Switzerland) or slowly transformed into capitalist relations of production (like in England, Germany, or Italy). They have been always more resilient in agriculture; like I pointed in another thread, land private ownership under capitalism is always somewhat abnormal, due to the fact that land is a means of production that is not the result of a process of production itself. But even then, bourgeoisie and landed oligarchy are both exploitive classes; they have more in common between them than either can have with the proletariat (if we use Orwell's metaphor, it is easier for the men in the landed aristocracy to become bourgeois pigs, than it is to us proletarian pigs to become bourgeois men).

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

[As discussed in the "Stamocap" thread, another comrade has agreed with me that the DOTP is still firmly rooted in the capitalist mode of production, which precedes both the socialist and the communist modes of production.]

If we could recognise that, we would probably have a better grasp on how to make the transition from capitalism to socialism than the usual voluntarist or mechanicistic ideas...

Luís Henrique

[Die Neue Zeit]

^^^ Why don't you chime in with more than just $0.02 in the "Stamocap" thread?

[PRC-UTE]

So Luís Henrique says I'm making generalizations. I guess he forgot that applying the Marxist hermeneutic presumes stepping back and looking at the general tendencies of the bigger picture. He seems to disregard the entirety of Marx's early work; I assume it's too "humanist" for his Bolshevik appetite.

This is quite a weak attack. For even if it was true that he was a Bolshevik, that wouldn't make him wrong. Or right. There are many variations of Leninist thinking out there, and many blatantly contradict one another.

Your basic ideas remind me of DeLeon's (who was discredited and rejected by the actual workers' movement).

[nom de guerre]

Vanguard: Groups of people who are more resolute and committed, better organised and able to take a leading role in the struggle.

Every vanguardist fancies himself a leader of the proletariat. Proletarian revolution will have no leaders.

[KC]

Every vanguardist fancies himself a leader of the proletariat. Proletarian revolution will have no leaders.Why do you even bother replying if you're not even going to attempt to save your pitiful attempt at an argument? You do realize that it just shows how indefensible your position actually is, right?

As for what you said above, how cute! We've already gone over this, though, and even after the sad truth is pointed out to you you can't handle it. Let me again quote Marx:


The Communists, therefore, are on the one hand, practically, the most advanced and resolute section of the working-class parties of every country, that section which pushes forward all others; on the other hand, theoretically, they have over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the lines of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement.

So again, you are in contention with Marx himself. Revolutions take organization, and if you don't have people that are willing or able to organize, then it won't happen. It's just that simple.

My suggestion to you? Grow up, get involved in organizational work and read some Lenin. Maybe some day you'll actually understand what he's saying (or Marx, for that matter).

You're more than welcome to go back and respond to my past posts if you are truly interested in debating these subjects, but it seems you're more interested in mindless sloganeering and flaming than saying something constructive. In which case I would be more than happy to respond to your next load of vile piss in kind.

[nom de guerre]

Why do you even bother replying if you're not even going to attempt to save your pitiful attempt at an argument? You do realize that it just shows how indefensible your position actually is, right?

Actually, I've had little time at a computer for the last week, seeing as I do have a real life. Also - I don't like just repeating myself to deaf ears. It gets tiresome - and doesn't negate my point, but does rather reinforce it. Revolution will of course see organization, but the very idea of communist revolution presupposes that the leader-mentality inherent in class society is obsolete. And to get to the point where the workers will make the revolution themselves (the part of Marx you vanguardists choose to ignore), a rejection of the leader-mentality is necessary. But your c/p job on the Manifest reinforces two things: one, that all you can do is copy and paste, since your quote nowhere states that the masses need leaders; and two, that vanguardism is a secular theology whose adherents can only mindlessly repeat slogans as if they're gospel.

[Luís Henrique]

Actually, I've had little time at a computer for the last week, seeing as I do have a real life. Also - I don't like just repeating myself to deaf ears. It gets tiresome - and doesn't negate my point, but does rather reinforce it. Revolution will of course see organization, but the very idea of communist revolution presupposes that the leader-mentality inherent in class society is obsolete. And to get to the point where the workers will make the revolution themselves (the part of Marx you vanguardists choose to ignore), a rejection of the leader-mentality is necessary. But your c/p job on the Manifest reinforces two things: one, that all you can do is copy and paste, since your quote nowhere states that the masses need leaders; and two, that vanguardism is a secular theology whose adherents can only mindlessly repeat slogans as if they're gospel.

nom-de-guerre, you have predicted in your first post in this thread that it would degenerate into a "shouting contest". I have strived hard to avoid that, trying to put up reasoned arguments against your views. You have up to now carefully avoided any substantiated reply to my points, though you have not been above some "shouting" against me.

I am taking that you are not really interested in debating your opinions; if we don't take them as revealed truth, you get offended and respond in what is, indeed, some kind of "shouting contest", or do not reply at all.

Luís Henrique