Funny, comrade, no Kautsky pic in our usergroup?
Only ultra-lefts take it out of context though. It's just Marx and Engels mocking the idealism of the Hegelians and Owen's and Fourier's conception of socialism as a "good idea" divorced from material reality. Anyway, from Marx and Engels' other writings, especially the published ones(only small parts of the German Ideology manuscript were published by the German Social-Democracy, Riazanov prepared the whole thing for publishing only by 1932), deal with this issue and what we there is more in line with our own views. The quote is somewhat similar to Bernstein's ultimate expression of opportunism, but only on a first superficial glance, imo.
I find issues with Marx's "real movement which abolishes the present state of things" quote and the context of it because it is eerily similar to Bernstein's "the movement is everything, the goal nothing" quote.
For the record, here was and is a reminder of my programmatic solution to the business unionism problem: http://www.revleft.com/vb/private-se...045/index.html (an excerpt from my work, really)
That's fine, actually. Emphasize the economist part!
http://www.revleft.com/vb/group.php?groupid=1059 I have created an anti-Trotskyism group. I'm not satisfied with the group description however, do you have any suggestions? You have a talent for writing concise descriptions.
The Chinese "New Left" can't dump Mao because his tenure was long enough. Despite his cozying up to the "national" bourgeoisie and to the Suharto scum, they feel that during his tenure he contributed key stuff. As for the Russian left, Stalin's tenure was longer, domestic economic development policy had an impact, and he personally had a more active and positive military role after the Battle of Moscow (Stalin's Wars) than is credited by many historians. And yes, Lassalle, Stalin, and Mao all had explicitly authoritarian streaks.
In that Trotsky thread? I still don't understand why Russian comrades should use Stalin as their Lassalle instead of Lenin. You mention Mao and China but I think the equivalent of Russian comrades adopting Stalin as a Lassalle in China would be the New Left adopting Lin Biao or Deng as their Lassalle instead of Mao, comrade.
Good debate, comrade. I posed the Lassalle question because I see parallels with, say, Mao being adopted by the Chinese "New Left" as their national Lassalle.
Draper had some very misguided views on the original Socialist International, to say the least. As for Halle, there were two left tendencies, a pro-Comintern one and an independent one. They didn't unite to boot out the right wing first.
