I am a Marxist but not in the sense that I am pre-Lenin but I am post-Lenin. Fuck that sounds pretentious.
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Is anyone Marxist here ?
This may seem like a stupid question but is anyone actually Marxist here ? I get the impression that most people here are Marxist-Lennist.
Now i admire Lenin very much but I believe the reason why Marxist Lennist countries suffer problems with their economies is because it was under-developed before they went into socialism. Marx intended revolutions to occur in heavily industrialised countries with fully developed economies like UK, France, Germany and USA and was not based on the peasantry (unlike Lenin's revolution). The Mensheviks wanted to wait until capitalism reached a good level.
However, Marxist Lennism is a variant of Marxism which in Lenin went into socialism while the economy was still poor.
Am i the only person here who believes in Marxism and waiting for the economy to reach it's highest level and then go into socialism ? This way you are less likely to suffer food shortages ETC. This is what China is doing. They are gearing up their economy for socialism.
In short...........Do you believe in having a good economy before socialism ?
I am a Marxist but not in the sense that I am pre-Lenin but I am post-Lenin. Fuck that sounds pretentious.
"We are now becoming a mass party all at once, changing abruptly to an open organisation, and it is inevitable that we shall be joined by many who are inconsistent (from the Marxist standpoint), perhaps we shall be joined even by some Christian elements, and even by some mystics. We have sound stomachs and we are rock-like Marxists. We shall digest those inconsistent elements. Freedom of thought and freedom of criticism within the Party will never make us forget about the freedom of organising people into those voluntary associations known as parties."
--Lenin
Socialist Party (Debs Tendency)
I am Marxist, but not Leninist. There are lots of people who define themselves like that here.
Luís Henrique
The world is not as it is, but as it is constructed.
Falsely attributed to Lenin
Is Menshevism correct marxism?
“Where the worker is regulated bureaucratically from childhood onwards, where he believes in authority, in those set over him, the main thing is to teach him to walk by himself.” - Marx
"It is illogical and incorrect to reduce everything to the economic [socialist] revolution, for the question is: how to eliminate [political] oppression? It cannot be eliminated without an economic revolution... But to limit ourselves to this is to lapse into absurd and wretched ... Economism." - Lenin
"[During a revolution, bourgeois democratic] demands [of the working class] ... push so hard on the outer limits of capital's rule that they appear likewise as forms of transition to a proletarian dictatorship." - Luxemburg
“Well, then go forward, Tower of Bebel! [August] Bebel is one of the most brilliant representatives of scientific international socialism. His writings, speeches and works make up a great tower, a strong arsenal, from which the working class should take their weapons. We cannot recommend it enough… And if the [International] deserves to be named Tower of Bebel... well, then we are lucky to have such a Tower of Bebel with us.” - Vooruit
Well that is a pretty broad movement you are trying to categorize there, from people who supported WW1, to people who were left of the Bolsheviks.
Whilst many claim they are Marxist here, the only people I consistently see applying Marxist class analysis are ComradeRed and LSD (even though he is an anarchist)
People ramble on about scientific analysis but rarely demonstrate it themselves.
I don't think you've been formally introduced into the notion of the revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry, and its distinctiveness from a proper "proletocracy" (DOTP).
Two Tactics of Social-Democracy in the Democratic Revolution, Chapter 10
The Trade Unions and Trotsky's Mistakes
That last statement of yours can be more properly attributed to Trotsky. Lenin's RDDOTPP - a thoroughly Marxist theory for going into capitalism - was basically an acknowledgement that the bourgeoisie were/are incapable of performing their own tasks, and because of that the proles and petit-bourgeoisie have to do that for them.
I will admit that, for a short time between the two works, Lenin euphorically modified his theory to fit with Trotsky's, but by the time of the latter work, he realized his errors.
Last edited by Die Neue Zeit; 12th January 2008 at 23:44.
"A new centrist project does not have to repeat these mistakes. Nobody in this topic is advocating a carbon copy of the Second International (which again was only partly centrist)." (Tjis, class-struggle anarchist)
"A centrist strategy is based on patience, and building a movement or party or party-movement through deploying various instruments, which I think should include: workplace organising, housing struggles [...] and social services [...] and a range of other activities such as sports and culture. These are recruitment and retention tools that allow for a platform for political education." (Tim Cornelis, left-communist)
There is no doubt that certain economic precondtions have been met in order to build socialism. No one understood this better than the Bolsheviks. They recognised that capitalism is a world system - not one confined to regional or national boundaries - and that the revolution can succeed in Russia if, and only if, it signalled the begining of proletarian revolutions worldwide.
The Mensheviks, on the other hand, were bourgeois philistines who were as close to 'correct Marxism' as all other groups of counter-revolutionaries.
lol, didn't the RAF consider themselves Marxist-Leninist?
At any rate, you're an economist...not a revolutionary communist. If you actually agreed with Marx and Engels, you'd know that the conditions for revolution exist in every country in the world today. Your first world chauvinism is deeply mistaken, it's the superexploited proletariat and peasantry in the third world that are the most revolutionary...which is why you have People's War in places like Nepal, Bhutan, India, Peru...etc, but don't even have real revolutionary communist parties in places like the U.K.
Vanguard1917 and SovietPants: Why did you have to resort to polemics?
"A new centrist project does not have to repeat these mistakes. Nobody in this topic is advocating a carbon copy of the Second International (which again was only partly centrist)." (Tjis, class-struggle anarchist)
"A centrist strategy is based on patience, and building a movement or party or party-movement through deploying various instruments, which I think should include: workplace organising, housing struggles [...] and social services [...] and a range of other activities such as sports and culture. These are recruitment and retention tools that allow for a platform for political education." (Tim Cornelis, left-communist)
I disagree here. Marx's works were based on the proletariat not the peasantry. Marx rejected the idea of a revolution occuring in less developed countries based on the peasantry. Am i a "economist" ? What would happen if you went into socialism with a collapsed economy ? Starvation and famines that's what.
I find your disdain for Bolshevism highly ironic considering your name, RAF. Also, the word is Leninist, not Lennist.
And I agree (as usual) with Soviet Pants.
Sovietpants seems to be implying............"who cares about the state of the economy; we'll just go into socialism anyway!". Without a thought of the consquences. Well un-Marxist.
You can certainly do an economic determinist reading of Marx, based on an unscientific method of picking out quotes from "sacred texts."
But then, how do you explain Marx's support for less-developed agrarian Ireland against more-developed industrial Britain and Marx's hypothesis that the Russian peasant commune could be the basis for socialist agriculture?
Also, what does it mean to be a Marxist?
Does it mean accepting everything Marx ever wrote? Or does it mean accepting the science of revolution developed by Marx and applying that science to social reality? I would say that it is the second.
So what if Marx "intended" for revolutions to occur first in Western Europe? We know now that particular thesis of his was wrong.
Every science is continually advanced to higher stages as our knowledge of reality is deepened. The science of revolution developed by Marx was raised to higher stages by Lenin and Mao. In order to be a Marxist today, one must be a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist.
"I learned during [the fight against the colonial war in Algeria] that political conviction is not a question of numbers, of majority. Because at the beginning of the Algerian war, we were really very few against the war. It was a lesson for me; you have to do something when you think it's a necessity, when it's right, without caring about the numbers." - Alain Badiou
Also................I don't have a dislike for Maxist-Lennism. I'm just simply stating basic Marxist theory and it's applications, which alot of you seem to have a problem with.
I'm a Marxist. Leninism has brought nothing but Bourgeoise revolution.
That's the exact reason why I hate Leninists.
But now we must pick up every piece
Of the life we used to love
Just to keep ourselves
At least enough to carry on
I am an advocate of historical materialism which leaves me unable to follow Lenin's line.
The idea that revolution must occur first in the countries with the higher level of productive forces is not basic Marxist theory. It is a religious reading of Marx based on quote-picking. And it is contradicted by other quotes.
"I learned during [the fight against the colonial war in Algeria] that political conviction is not a question of numbers, of majority. Because at the beginning of the Algerian war, we were really very few against the war. It was a lesson for me; you have to do something when you think it's a necessity, when it's right, without caring about the numbers." - Alain Badiou
Well both Lenin and Mao as a result of their economic policies, ended up causing famines because the economy collapsed and there were food shortages. Was this have happened with a Marxist approach ? I very much doubt it.
I might as well bang my head against a brick wall here.
It is basic Marxist theory. Marx continually mentions the word "PROLETARIAT" in which Marx meant the industrial workers and in which they represent the masses. In Marx's time, the industrial workforce in Russia were not in the masses as Russia was still in the early stages of capitalism. The use of the word "proletariat" means he was taking about highly industrialised countries..............which Russia wasn't at that time.
Being orthodox to any theory is not going to guarantee that famines, and so on, don't occur.
Assessing the conditions and applying the most practical methods to suit those conditions is what will do that.
And even so, to blame it simply on Lenin and Mao's economic policies -particularly Lenins- is a bit unfair on your part, I'd say, as it was quite a chaotic period following the revolution, what with the civil war and all.
"The sun shines. To hell with everything else!" - Stephen Fry
"As the world of the spectacle extends its reign it approaches the climax of its offensive, provoking new resistances everywhere. These resistances are very little known precisely because the reigning spectacle is designed to present an omnipresent hypnotic image of unanimous submission. But they do exist and are spreading.", The Bad Days Will End.
"(The) working class exists and struggles in all countries, and has the same enemies in all countries – the police, the army, the unions, nationalism, and the fake ‘socialism’ of the bourgeois left. It shows that the conditions for a worldwide revolution are ripening everywhere today. It shows that workers and revolutionaries are not passive spectators of inter-imperialist conflicts: they have a camp to choose, the camp of the proletarian struggle against all the factions of the bourgeoisie and all imperialisms." -ICC, Nation or Class?
