Merge Marxism with the workers' movement!

Crisis of theory: Merge Marxism with the workers' movement!



I had merely administrative expectations of the discussion level in the FAQ thread, but geez, there are so many discussion topics in that single thread alone!

I have therefore took it upon myself to pluck out one of the discussion topics for a separate discussion (Luis, this is for you, since it relates very heavily to "the relationship between vanguard and mass," and since this happens to quote an ignored Theory thread of mine that I applied to another forum).

[And for folks waiting for me to start my anti-Trotskyist rant, here it is: Revisionist Trotskyism or Revolutionary Marxism.]

The words below - a reply to comrade Marmot - come from my application of a fundamental political theory, which has been forgotten by most self-proclaimed "revolutionary movements" today, specifically to modern "neo-fascism":



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Fascist Trade Unions

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showthread.php?t=67967

I was inspired by Rosa's thread in Workers' Actions on workers' activity in China and by one of the key points of Lars Lih's Lenin Rediscovered regarding the original "social democracy":

Originally posted by Me
Remember, the original idea behind "social democracy" was the merger of scientific socialism (then in its "Marxist" form) and the workers' movement!

This premise implies the separate origins of the socialist movement and the workers' movement, and since I read the review above several months ago, this caused me to ask my old question regarding the startling class demographics of neo-fascist parties in a Learning thread:

Is neo-fascism now a faux "workers' movement"?

I'd like to revise that question slightly (different places for quotation marks): Is neo-fascism now a "faux" workers' movement (ie, genuine but self-defeating)?

What about, for another example (two links), the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt?



Given the further implications posed by the questions above, I'd like to ask overall: what is a workers' movement?

I think the question above needs answers if we are to properly confront fascist trade unions.

And given my repetitive statement in that thread, I have come to a basic understanding of why I should reject the ICC's rejection of Lenin's theory of consciousness. When I first posted on this board, I thought that Luxemburg's "dialectic" of spontaneity and organization was more than enough to justify the vanguard party, but I didn't know about the preceding "merger" ("Kautskyist") precedent that was the fundamental basis of Lenin's argument.

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And given my repetitive statement in that thread, I have come to a basic understanding of why I should reject the ICC's rejection of Lenin's theory of consciousness. When I first posted on this board, I thought that Luxemburg's "dialectic" of spontaneity and organization was more than enough to justify the vanguard party, but I didn't know about the preceding "merger" ("Kautskyist") precedent that was the fundamental basis of Lenin's argument.

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Can you elaborate here, please?

By Lenin's theory of consciousness, do you mean that it is the task of intellectuals to introduce socialist ideas into the workers' movement - and that it can't come about organically from within the class?

^^^ Perhaps I got my semantics wrong there.

The point is that the whole mass of working-class folks by itself cannot develop this consciousness. It has to be either imported (petit-bourgeois intellectuals, with their literary works, and ESPECIALLY "coordinator"/managerial individuals per my Theory thread on modern class relations) or developed by informed segments of the working class.

Heck, look at me and my business studies (corporate finance, "the books," etc.): aiming specifically to penetrate into the coordinator/managerial class.

[Don't blame me on this: Lenin said stuff about workers having to learn how to manage the post-revolution, pre-socialist economy using rather capitalistic methods, including management accounting.]



P.S. - In the revolution for "revolutionary democracy," the petit-bourgeoisie (including peasants) is the historic ally of the working class. In the proper socialist revolution, it is the coordinator/managerial class that should be the historic ally (so much for parecon theorists like Michael Albert ).

K. I'm pretty broadly in agreement with you on that.

If I were to post this sucker in the obscure Study Groups area:

1) It wouldn't merit much discussion there because I skipped chapters; and
2) People would call me a "Kautskyite," in spite of this Lenin quote:

Only the fusion of socialism with the working-class movement has in all countries created a durable basis for both.

(Lenin, The Urgent Tasks of Our Movement)

Anyhow, I'll start:

Karl Kautsky: The Class Struggle (Erfurt Program)

Chapter 5: The Class Struggle

The original organizations of the proletariat were modeled after those of the medieval apprentices. In like manner the first weapons of the modern labor movement were those inherited from a previous age, the strike and the boycott.

But these methods are insufficient for the modern proletariat. The more completely the various divisions of which it is made up unite into a single working-class movement, the more must its struggles take on a political character. Every class-struggle is a political struggle.

Even the bare requirements of the industrial struggle force the workers to make political demands. We have seen that the modern state regards it as its principal function to make the effective organization of labor impossible. Secret organizations are inefficient substitutes for open ones. The more the proletariat develops, the more it needs freedom to organize.

But this freedom is not alone sufficient if the proletariat is to have adequate organizations. The apprentices and journeymen of previous periods found it easy to act together. The various cities were industrially independent. In any given city the number of those engaged in any trade was comparatively small. They usually lived on one street and spent their leisure time at the same tavern. Each one was personally acquainted with all the rest.

Today conditions are radically different. In every industrial center there are gathered thousands of working-men. A single individual can know personally only a few of his comrades. To make this great mass feel its common interests, to induce it to act as one in an organization, it is necessary to have means of communicating with large numbers. A free press and the right of assemblage are absolutely essential.

The free press is made especially necessary by the development of modern means of communication. It is possible now for a capitalist to import strike-breakers from far-lying districts. Unless the workers can organize unions covering the entire nation, or even the entire civilized world, they are powerless. But this cannot be done without the aid of the press.

On this account, wherever the working-class has endeavored to improve its economic position it has made political demands, especially demands for a free press and the right of assemblage. These privileges are to the proletariat the prerequisites of life; they are the light and air of the labor movement. Whoever attempts to deny them, no matter what his pretensions, is to be reckoned among the worst enemies of the working-class.

We are going into a few topics here. To return to Luis' question of the relationship between the mass and the vanguard, relationships are symbiotic and not one-directional. What are the limitations of the vanguard within this relationship, culturally or otherwise?

^^^ I don't know the specific answer to that question myself. I did say in my "Revisionist Trotskyism or revolutionary Marxism" thread that may hint at the limitations of the vanguard:

The main idea of "Erfurtianism" is that the "workers' movement" component would have a better understanding of the need to have (and fight for) long-term goals, while articulating them separately for workers within to comprehend. Meanwhile, the "Marxist" component (the most effective manifestation being that of the vanguard party, naturally) would gain valuable insight in fighting for the immediate goals of the workers' movement, thus enhancing its support from the latter, to that decisive point wherein all those insights into fighting for immediate goals provide the necessary experience to be a most effective vanguard for the working class as a whole.

I haven't fully read Lars Lih's Lenin Rediscovered (let alone a single chapter of WITBD ), but if I remember correctly, he did say that Lenin knew of the difference between the bolded stuff of mine above and mere "economism" (short-term goals for their own sake). I think that one of the limitations of the vanguard coming into the relationship is its lack of comprehension of fighting for the goals (again, mostly immediate) of the workers' movement.



For example, I haven't seen much discussion on the globalization of trade/labour unions ( ), which is an immediate yet fundamental goal of the workers' movement (again, to be distinguished from Marxists ).

I've got a couple of articles on the globalization of unions:

Unions for a Global Economy

The United Steelworkers -- that venerable, Depression-era creation of John L. Lewis and New Deal labor policy -- entered into merger negotiations with two of Britain's largest unions (which are merging with each other next month) to create not only the first transatlantic but the first genuinely multinational trade union.

...

The story here, however, isn't the number of members but the adaptation of labor to the globalization of capital. The Ottawa declaration broke new ground, but the transnational coordination of unions has been building for more than a decade.

IBM Union’s Protest in Second Life Could Be a Trend Setting Event

The virtual strike in “Second Life” against IBM by the RSU union representing 9,000 workers in Italy is underway. And union officials see the avatar picks as setting a trend for the future.

However, what is believed to be the first virtual strike is more than workers’ avatars wearing strike T-shirts and carrying signs. The RSU and Union Network International have lined up support from other international unions, and IBM workers in 18 countries are expected to take part in today’s action.

And a couple of blogs, too:

Unions of the World, Unite!

It seems only logical that unions would begin to expand globally; they're already pretty far behind the corporations.

Tech Workers Of The World Unite! Or Not

Britain's Trade Union Congress--the country's umbrella labor group--wants to extend its reach to IT and call center workers in India. Its thinking: If business is going global, then unions also have to become multinational if they're to remain relevant and have a place in a Friedmanesque "flat world."

Friday Teleconference Questions for SEIU President Andy Stern

Consistent with my own suspicion of sweeping, comprehensive solutions, especially ones that involve a government that can turn on a dime from beneficent to brutish, it seems to me that the internationalization of unions, especially an internationalization into countries with younger labor forces that could make healthcare plans actuarially very sound, would be a powerful tool for union recruiting in the United States, as well as a way to make labor standards in other countries, particularly those in developing nations, far better than they are now. Offering Americans a more sound, more secure healthcare coverage basis (with, perhaps, an umbrella provided by the federal government) would attract dues-paying workers here at home; bringing higher labor standards to other countries would afford workers there a better life; and globalization of labor unions would make them politically more robust to the particulars of any given government in any given country and could, in fact, become a bulwark against tyranny. As grand as all of that sounds, I would submit that, unless unions in the United States are willing to reach out, take control of the labor side of globalization, and use it to their advantage for their members, then that globalization is going to remain in the exclusive control of corporate interests and the governments bought and paid for by those anti-worker interests.

Anyhow, what is the potential for the globalization of the labour movement, in and of itself, as well for the purpose of raising class consciousness (probably through a highly organized international communist party proper)?

Comrades, so we’ve decided to the face the number one issue of today’s crisis of theory—class consciousness; I applaud anyone who is willing to express an opinion on this matter as it is a key component in reaching the truth. Because of the immaturity of our opinions—which nine-tenths of us are immature—we will stumble on this issue. When we lay out opinions, we will put out phrases such as ‘first things first’. Where in terms of practical necessity, that particular component is actually third or fourth. This is excusable and I hope none of us will keep quiet out of fear, or, conversely, I hope none of us would be so arrogant as to denounce every other person’s opinion as ‘revisionist’, ‘opportunist’, ‘fascist’, ‘Trotskyite’, ‘Stalinist’, etc. “There is no Trotskyism or Stalinism anymore”! Because there is only an immature revolutionary Marxist movement—a movement that is struggling for maturity and against rotting and stale theories.

Because as Marxists we have a more mature understanding of the class portion of class-consciousness, our first task is to clarify what consciousness means. While not the most reliable means of research, I traced the term consciousness back to ancient Greece. It is likely that the term can be found in other antiquitous societies, and perhaps even before.

The term comes from a specific group of ancient Greece—philosophers. The philosophers were predominantly older freemen of Greek ethnicity. This group used consciousness as a term meaning to pass judgment—to take a position on an issue. The freemen were a class alongside slaves, soldiers, peasants, and aristocrats. The democracy at Athens had stripped them of their power. They could regain power through aristocratic class or by siding with the peasant and slave classes. (In a way, the philosophers represent the original petty-bourgeoisie.)

The Platonic faction aligned themselves with the aristocracy. In order to re-establish the political hegemony of the philosophers, he articulated his theory of the Republic. Plato joined philosophy with political power. For Plato, his positions were both believed and true for his class.

Likewise, we find in the root of the modern term class-consciousness, the German klassenbewusst, a similar understanding. The ‘bewusst’ portion of the term means aware, deliberate, intentional, self-conscious, and self-aware. Class-consciousness is class-awareness and class-motivated action. But this consciousness is not a learned phenomenon; consciousness is the organic product of class struggle. Class-consciousness arises in the dialectical process of the class struggle of the proletariat fighting for political demands and at the same time organizing itself as the proletariat.

This organizing of the proletariat spawns a stratum of organic intellectuals. Because of organization, they work towards organizing. They are the ones who work to change the political terrain in order to raise the level of self-awareness of the working class and aim at developing deliberateness in class action. There is a second type of organic intellectual—those, who like myself, come from ebbs in the class struggle. They come from working class backgrounds, are young—perhaps, so young that they have yet to join the class of wage-laborers. Their encounter with class-consciousness is intellectual. They have passed judgments according to the works of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Luxemburg, etc. They are the most eager and the most idealistic members of the working class but simultaneously the least experienced and most immature. There needs to be a circular flow of knowledge from organic-intellectual proletarians to and from organic-intellectual proletarians.

In addition to the two types of organic intellectual, there is the artificial proletarian intellectual. For example, out of the three founding fathers of revolutionary Marxism, only Dietgzen was proletarian (and he often floated in-between the working class and petty-bourgeoisie). Marx was a middle-class journalist, and Engels was a factory owner.

These types are idealistic like the latter type of organic intellectuals but artificial proletarian intellectuals often come from romanticists, utopian socialists, and postmodernists divisions of the universities. Marx and Engels were prolific readers of Hegel before they were socialists. Up until 1843-1844 both were romantic liberals attached to the radical segment of the German bourgeoisie. It was their encounter with the Parisian workers’ secret societies that ruptured their connections with the past. These artificial proletarian intellectuals become so intimate with the working class that they have nine-tenths of their lives more in common with their working comrades than they do their own family.

Comrades, so we’ve decided to the face the number one issue of today’s crisis of theory—class consciousness

Hmmm... I thought that the crisis of theory revolved around the lack of clarity regarding the post-revolution order (and I elaborated more on this in the Theory threads "How should we be led?" and "Stamocap"). That Marx intentionally ignored this was a fundamental mistake on his part, since the immediate post-revolution order is still in the capitalist mode of production, having not yet reached the socialist mode of production.

I suppose the crisis of theory is two-fold: one relating to revolutionary Marxism (clarity regarding long-term goals), and the other relating to the workers' movement (willingness to fight for workers' immediate goals instead of shouting "economist" and "reformist" ad nauseum without a proper understanding of those two words).

Because of the immaturity of our opinions—which nine-tenths of us are immature—we will stumble on this issue. When we lay out opinions, we will put out phrases such as ‘first things first’. Where in terms of practical necessity, that particular component is actually third or fourth. This is excusable and I hope none of us will keep quiet out of fear, or, conversely, I hope none of us would be so arrogant as to denounce every other person’s opinion as ‘revisionist’, ‘opportunist’, ‘fascist’, ‘Trotskyite’, ‘Stalinist’, etc. “There is no Trotskyism or Stalinism anymore”! Because there is only an immature revolutionary Marxist movement—a movement that is struggling for maturity and against rotting and stale theories.

Regarding the opinions of members of this user group: certainly. Unfortunately, there is always revisionism, sectarianism, and opportunism (at least for many of those on the outside looking in, if not most). I was inspired to do my "Revisionist Trotskyism or revolutionary Marxism" thread mainly because, in the Trot forum, there is a thread on revisionism (in which they unsurprisingly demonstrated a fundamental misunderstanding).

While not the most reliable means of research, I traced the term consciousness back to ancient Greece. It is likely that the term can be found in other antiquitous societies, and perhaps even before.

*snip*

Plato joined philosophy with political power. For Plato, his positions were both believed and true for his class.

Holy crap! That's a lot of history for me to learn!

For example, out of the three founding fathers of revolutionary Marxism, only Dietgzen was proletarian (and he often floated in-between the working class and petty-bourgeoisie). Marx was a middle-class journalist, and Engels was a factory owner.

I'm not sure if mystical dialectics is really all that relevant to the class struggle, though.

Nevertheless, I was always under the impression that Plekhanov coined the term "dialectical materialism." That's strike two for me.

The main idea of "Erfurtianism" is that the "workers' movement" component would have a better understanding of the need to have (and fight for) long-term goals, while articulating them separately for workers within to comprehend. Meanwhile, the "Marxist" component (the most effective manifestation being that of the vanguard party, naturally) would gain valuable insight in fighting for the immediate goals of the workers' movement, thus enhancing its support from the latter, to that decisive point wherein all those insights into fighting for immediate goals provide the necessary experience to be a most effective vanguard for the working class as a whole.

I haven't fully read Lars Lih's Lenin Rediscovered (let alone a single chapter of WITBD ), but if I remember correctly, he did say that Lenin knew of the difference between the bolded stuff of mine above and mere "economism" (short-term goals for their own sake). I think that one of the limitations of the vanguard coming into the relationship is its lack of comprehension of fighting for the goals (again, mostly immediate) of the workers' movement.

What kind of insights are you talking about? Cultural realities, immediate limitations of working peoples, something else? At the very least I generally agree that an immersion into this relationship needs to take a form as you describe so that it can be built on a foundation of mutual respect for both parties.

^^^ I guess the "immediate limitations of working peoples" is the best answer. I did mention the globalization of unions, and since you're with the Left-Communist group, you should be open to the possibility that, in spite of the "unconscious" nature of national, provincial, and local unions (left-communists oppose unions and their "bourgeois nature"), judgment should not be passed on a phenomenon that has yet to exploit its full potential!

Well I am a member of an international trade union. That member group is open to left communists as well as sympathizers, and I tend to think of myself more as the latter.

Personally my opinion of unions isn't quite as radical as the ICC today. Although it may be blasphemous to say around here, I find myself more in agreement with RAAN in regards to trade unions:

Weighted down by bureaucracy and internal hierarchies, unions exist well within the sphere of bourgeois law, often acting as another system of control over the heads of the oppressed. This is made all the worse by the fact that, like the vote, capitalist trade unions provide the illusion of power and representation, while at the same time strengthening the bourgeois order by recognizing it as a legitimate force to be negotiated with. Nevertheless, unions have been and remain almost the single greatest single expression of class-consciousness. Though we recognize the flaws and authoritarian nature of top-down unions, it would be a fatal mistake for us to completely ignore or reject these "workers' organizations".

We must be clear in our analysis: it is not the union that makes us strong, but the self-consciousness of the proletariat as a class entirely independent and with wholly different interests than those of the ruling-class.

Any situation where involvement in a labor union may accelerate such a realization of class-consciousness is welcome. Because unions are capable of bettering the lives of workers, they must be supported in their struggles against the bosses. However, the ultimate goal towards which we strive is organization and consciousness along class, not union, lines.

As Leo once correctly pointed out on the raan forums, left communist's historical criticism of trade unions came at a time when union membership and participation was relatively high compared to what we are seeing right now. The idea of "transcending" to "revolutionary unions" from trade unions was a lot more relevant.

But to reject them in today's political climate just strikes me as inappropriate, and possibly a good example of what we are talking about in terms of building a relationship between a vanguard and mass that is at least founded on a mutual understanding of abilities, limitations, and potentials.

^^^ Interesting. I did read stuff by Lenin regarding "red" and "yellow" unions. I take it this is the context of the original left-communist criticism of trade unions, no?

In any event, how is what you said "blasphemous" in this user group? It's more likely that it's "blasphemous" to left-communists.

^^^ Interesting. I did read stuff by Lenin regarding "red" and "yellow" unions. I take it this is the context of the original left-communist criticism of trade unions, no?

Marmot would be a better man to ask than me. He has a much stronger theoretical understanding of left communism than I do.

In any event, how is what you said "blasphemous" in this user group?

Oh, I was talking about daring to summon up the imagery of RAAN.

Hmmm... I thought that the crisis of theory revolved around the lack of clarity regarding the post-revolution order (and I elaborated more on this in the Theory threads "How should we be led?" and "Stamocap"). That Marx intentionally ignored this was a fundamental mistake on his part, since the immediate post-revolution order is still in the capitalist mode of production, having not yet reached the socialist mode of production.

I would say there a three major crises (1) the lack of understanding what class consciousness means; (2) the confusion of strategy and tactics; and (3) poor foresight into the future (including post-revolution organization).

I would say there a three major crises (1) the lack of understanding what class consciousness means; (2) the confusion of strategy and tactics; and (3) poor foresight into the future (including post-revolution organization).

^^^ We learn new things everyday (thanks for clarifying)!

[So THAT's where your remarks in the "Two Tactics" study thread of mine come into the picture!]

However, I don't know where class consciousness fits in: Marxism, the workers' movement, or both?



BTW, I propose a new-yet-not-so-new term to describe the merger of Marxism and the workers' movement: social proletocracy.

Commentary on the above portion of Kautsky's "The Class Struggle":

In like manner the first weapons of the modern labor movement were those inherited from a previous age, the strike and the boycott.

But these methods are insufficient for the modern proletariat.

Here, Kautsky brilliantly rebutts economist arguments (such as those of the petit-bourgeois anarchist-turned-reformist LSD) at a time when "economism" was not yet discredited.

The more completely the various divisions of which it is made up unite into a single working-class movement, the more must its struggles take on a political character. Every class-struggle is a political struggle.

I don't know if invoking Maslow's hierarchy of needs is appropriate here:

Physiological
Safety
Love/Belonging
Esteem
Self-actualization

While the third element is irrelevant, the minimum demands address the first two. Next, the reformist demands probably address esteem. At the top, revolutionary demands address self-actualization over alienation.

Even the bare requirements of the industrial struggle force the workers to make political demands. We have seen that the modern state regards it as its principal function to make the effective organization of labor impossible.

Hence Comrade chimx's Politics thread on the Employee Free Choice Act, and my thread on minimum wage laws, to name a few.

Secret organizations are inefficient substitutes for open ones. The more the proletariat develops, the more it needs freedom to organize.

Even the revolutionary Marxist Lenin realized that Bolshevik clandestinity was really an exception to the rule, barring any sort of markedly increased authoritarianism in the developed capitalist world in the future. Even then, the Russian proletariat was a tiny minority.

But this freedom is not alone sufficient if the proletariat is to have adequate organizations. The apprentices and journeymen of previous periods found it easy to act together. The various cities were industrially independent. In any given city the number of those engaged in any trade was comparatively small. They usually lived on one street and spent their leisure time at the same tavern. Each one was personally acquainted with all the rest.

Today conditions are radically different. In every industrial center there are gathered thousands of working-men. A single individual can know personally only a few of his comrades. To make this great mass feel its common interests, to induce it to act as one in an organization, it is necessary to have means of communicating with large numbers. A free press and the right of assemblage are absolutely essential.

All the more true in the modern era of the Internet...

The free press is made especially necessary by the development of modern means of communication. It is possible now for a capitalist to import strike-breakers from far-lying districts. Unless the workers can organize unions covering the entire nation, or even the entire civilized world, they are powerless. But this cannot be done without the aid of the press.

On this account, wherever the working-class has endeavored to improve its economic position it has made political demands, especially demands for a free press and the right of assemblage. These privileges are to the proletariat the prerequisites of life; they are the light and air of the labor movement. Whoever attempts to deny them, no matter what his pretensions, is to be reckoned among the worst enemies of the working-class.

The bolded text above stresses Kautsky's predating of another revolutionary Marxist and his radical "one big union" idea: James Connolly.

Sorry for detracting from the study topic above, but this has to be said...

Finally, I can quote a major revolutionary Marxist theorist in modern times, Comrade Boris Kagarlitsky:

http://books.google.ca/books?id=SoTI...=gbs_summary_r

The masses who made the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917 were not inspired by Marxist ideas either. People followed the Bolsheviks not because Lenin and Trotsky had a more developed theory of socialism, but because the Bolsheviks put forward the slogans of peace, land and social justice. What works is not ideology but a concrete programme. It would have been a different matter if the Bolsheviks had not managed in good time to formulate their slogans that expressed the interests of the masses - if they had not been Marxists, and had not had an exceptional grasp of the dynamic of the revolutionary process and of the class struggle.

So long as the struggle against oppression is not at the same time a struggle for a new society, it is doomed to defeat. Indeed, the reality is even worse; the discrediting of progressive utopianism in mass consciousness can have only one, inevitable result: its place will be taken by a reactionary utopia.

Unless there is a clear idea of the goal, it is impossible to work out either strategy or tactics. Lenin considered that the main service rendered by social democracy at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries was to unite Marxism with the workers' movement. This explosive mixture really did shake the world. Lenin, as a genuine follower of the traditions of Enlightenment, was convinced that proletarian consciousness would readily penetrate the masses with the help of the intelligentsia. In reality the process was mutual. The masses could not elaborate theory, but without links to the mass movement theory becomes ossified. When Marx's ideas became the ideology of the workers' movement they underwent a transformation and became Marxism.

...

Marxism has indeed suffered a historic defeat. However, this did not come at the end of the 1980s when the Berlin Wall fell, but much earlier, when theory again became detached and isolated from the movement. This did not happen only in the East with the founding of Stalinist "Marxism-Leninism." As early as the 1930s Marxism in the West became the province of academic circles, while for social democracy and the communist parties the general "classical" formulae remained no more than dead letters.

In the 1990s the rituals were discarded. This was easy because it had been a long time since anyone had given any thought to their meaning. We returned to the starting point, then theory and the mass movement were quite disconnected. But the two are not separated by an insurmountable wall. The fact that a significant layer of workers has only a very dim notion of socialist ideas does not mean that these ideas should not be propagated.

...

Marx began by trying to cleanse the socialist project of utopianism. He did not succeed completely, for the simple reason that there is invariably a utopian dimension for any social idea and in any project. However, Marx's decisive contribution to political theory lay in the fact that he showed the necessity and possibility of abandoning utopian day-dreaming in favour of seeking practical change. Rejecting pragmatism, the Marxist tradition proclaimed the need to unite idealism (in terms of fidelity to aims and principles) with the political realism of concrete actions.

Finally, something to say in my "Social Proletocracy: the revolutionary merger of Marxism and the workers’ movement" portion of The Class Struggle Revisited!

And another article:

Fuse workers’ movement and Marxism