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Leftists and Communists have damaged the Socialist movement as much as the right-wing did

category international | anarchist movement | opinion / analysis author Tuesday October 04, 2016 05:57author by Zaher Baherauthor email Zaarif1 at yahoo dot co dot ukauthor address UK- London Report this post to the editors

There are many people from leftists, communists , socialists and some of the anarchists believe that Marxism and Leninism are two different things . They think that Lenin has distorted Marxism. My article here explains with evidence that whatever Lenin said and did have been originated from Marx . It tells you that Marxism has contributed greatly in damaging the socialist/ anarchist movement as much as the rightwing did.
The article analysis the role of technology, Proletariate , political party, bourgeoisie, nature and environment , revolution and nation question in view of Marx and connecting Lenin to him.
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Leftists and Communists have damaged the Socialist movement as much as the right-wing did

By: Zaher Baher

Sep 2016

The last century has seen a couple of historical catastrophes that continue to present day and the world still suffers from their fallout. The first one was so-called the Bolshevik revolution (Bolshevism) and the second was the “Iranian revolution”. While none of them was revolution, in fact both stopped the revolution in the half way.

The first catastrophe has lasted almost for 80 years, it engaged nearly half of the world and its shade still looms over our heads. The second one helped to build religion political parties and their militia in the region, especially in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Afghanistan. This has caused deepest fear and wariness for its main rival, Saudi Arabia. To the Iran/Iraq war, incoming of Mujahidin, Taliban, al-Qaeda in Afghanistan then Isis and the current wars between Sunni and Shia, Sunni and Sunni and Sunni and the “infidels”, the “Iranian revolution” contributed greatly. Dark time triggered by this movement is here to stay and nobody knows for how long.

Both of them were recognised and defined by many people, including the leftists and Communists themselves, as two different events/directions. The first one as a left and the second as a right-wing, while both of them were the enemy of socialism/anarchism. Both of them were the main obstacles to reach the socialism destination. While both of them built upon their own principles, in practice both are being hostile to socialism, so recognising them by left or right for me in that aspect does not make a sense. In addition both have a common principal “Ideology” that has given them strength and power.

In this article I mainly elaborate and highlight the communists and its ideology’s base, Marxism. Here I want to explain briefly the source of hostility to socialism that the leftists and Communists have relied on and the affected realms.

1 Left in the past and present:
Leftists, from social democrats, the socialist political parties, green parties to the working class/labour parties throughout the world never could become revolutionary forces to take the society towards major changes. Their slogans and demands, like freedom, social justice and equality have vanished as soon as they reached power. The Leftists’ struggle in non industrialised countries was represented the guerrilla’s war. In a sense of analyzing radical struggle, they never got anywhere or just simply built something, what in many cases was worse than the previous one.

In industrialised countries their struggle was the parliamentary election system. Once they reached power, they were unable to fulfil what they promised to people, so they betrayed those who voted for them. There is no doubt that among them there were faithful and dedicated people that their actual motivation to involve politics was to serve people, especially among the social democrats or labour parties. There were Marxist-Leninist people within these groups and most of the time they have/had more radical manifesto than their own party.

The power of people in political parties is very limited and they only project the illusion of changes, eventually disappointing their own supporters.

The socialist, the very radical people inside these political parties, in reality have left no doubt that, whether deliberately or not, they serve this system much better than their right-wing colleagues. They do that by prolonging the system; by deceiving people that their life can be improved step by step through the historical lie of election. They tell them this is the only way to make improvement, so there is no another way, no third way.

The experience and the realities proved while the leftist or socialists are in power, they are not only quelling the spirit of revolution among people, in fact they demoralise them, even killing their normal drive for resistance. In Europe, especially in UK, the period when Labour Party has been in power the number of the protests and strikes decreased compared to when Tory Party were in power.

The link below shows how the strikes in UK since 1970s are decreasing and becoming less effective as well. Since 1990 each year the number of the strike actions and their effectiveness dropped apart from 2011 as it was slightly different. The link also shows the reasons why there are fewer strikes every year although I personally disagree with the author’s reasoning. http://isj.org.uk/why-are-there-so-few-strikes/

For many of the leftists, especially the Communists, distorting of the socialist movement for not achieving socialism go back to ‘Stalin’. A minority thinks Stalin has done nothing except prolonging Lenin’s period and his theory.

However, if we look at the history and reality properly, we reach a conclusion that we cannot blame Stalin and Lenin for that because all of what Lenin did was originated from Marx and Engels.

Let’s briefly look at the excuses of those who believe Lenin and Marx were different from one another as if Lenin has distorted Marx’s theory and idea:

Organisation and working class party:

One of the factors pushed Lenin to build a political party was transferring a class consciousness to working class. He did not believe that the class consciousness emerges from external conditions and their actual impact on working class itself. He also believed in controlling the working class through the strict discipline of political party as he did not believe in the spontaneous movement of working class. He thought the spontaneous movement is chaotic and does not get the working class anywhere.

For victory of the revolution Lenin believed building a revolutionary political party is essential and also believed the communists are the most conscious people. This was the reason for him to build his party outside of the workers. So the Vanguard party is the best tool of the revolution and to build the Dictatorships of Proletariat. In his famous book “what can be done?” he lied down the plans and principles for Bolshevik Party and made it as main guideline for the party members to work on and go by it.

Lenin has got the idea of building the working class party form Marx. Marx in the Manifesto of the Communist Party said “The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to other working class parties “

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/commun...2.htm

Clearly in this short line Marx tells us: a) the communists and the workers are different. b) The working class can have their own political parties.

John Molyneux, academic, writer and one of the former leading SWP in Briton and now in Ireland has written various articles about Lenin and his theory. I regard him as one of the best people who has excellent knowledge about Lenin, Trotsky and Marx and can connecting them in respect of analyzing many issues. I refer here to him in some of his writings about the working class political party. In the link below he said “But when one speaks of Marx’s theory of the party, the subject is not political parties in general, but the revolutionary party which has as its aim the overthrow of capitalism – specifically one is talking about Marx’s concept of a proletarian political party, because, of course, it was his view that ‘the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class ..” He continuous writing and says “...Indeed Marx often suggests that the workers cannot be regarded as a class in the full sense of the word until they have created their own distinct party. Thus we find in The Communist Manifesto that ‘the organization of the proletarians into a class, and consequently into a political party, is continually being upset Again by the competition between the workers themselves’ [11], and in the decision of the London Conference (1871) of the First International that ‘the proletariat can act as a class only by constituting itself a distinct political party’. [12] This basic idea remained central to the theory and practice of both Marx and Engels from the mid-1840s to the end of their lives” in the same writing Molyneux carry on, he refers to Marx who said “This constitution of the proletariat into a political party is indispensable to ensure the triumph of the Social Revolution and of its ultimate goal: the abolition of classes. [45]”

https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/writers/molyneux/...1.htm

Lenin and Marxists-Leninists wanted to share their idea and principles with the working class to debate the working class struggles and transferring them the socialist consciousness, but as the history since then shows in practice they have controlled them and while they were in power they exploited and suppressed them.

2 State, Centralism and Authority
In regard to the above, there are leftists and Communists again who believe that what Lenin did was not originated from Marx and Engels. In my opinion that is not true. In fact Marx and Engels persisted on centralism and authority. In the first and second International Workers’ Organisation as the central and authoritarian organisation, the messages sent out and order the working class was “ Workers of the world, unite!“. Marx himself was on the top position in this organisation. It was then when Marx insisted on having a central authority in the organisation which was rejected by Bakunin. Bakunin believed that centralism in organisation suppresses the spontaneous action and revolutionary enthusiasm. This was one of the reasons that made Marx remove Bakunin and his comrades from the organisation.

Marx believed after taking over control of the means of production there will be a temporary period of transition from the socialist society to Communism. Marx made his theory about that very clear in 1870 in his book, Critique of the Gotha Programme “The transitional period is essentially a period of revolutionary change. “Between capitalist and communist society,” wrote Marx, “lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other.”24.. Although Marx in this book clearly talked about the authority but the foundation of this ideas has back to 1843 “In fact, in The German Ideology itself, the theory of proletarian dictatorship (not yet given this name) is presented rather clearly: ”. . . every class which is aiming at domination, even when its domination, as is the case with the proletariat, leads to the abolition of the old form of society in its entirety and of domination in general, must first conquer political power in order to represent its interest in turn as the general interest, which in the first moment it is forced to do.”18 Marx and Engels, The German Ideology, 52-53. Please see the link below.

In fact the type and the reason of state that Marx and his successors wanted to establish are really not important at all. Any type of state whether is small or big, proletariat or bourgeois state; all of them need bureaucratic administrations, police, military, courts and law and the spies’ network or institutions.

In reply to Marx, Bakunin said in his book: Statehood and Anarchy, “If there is a state, then there is domination and consequent slavery. A state without slavery, open or camouflaged, is inconceivable—that is why we are enemies of the state. What does it mean, ‘the proletariat raised to a governing class?’”26. Marx responded, “It means that the proletariat, instead of fighting in individual instances against the economically privileged classes, has gained sufficient strength and organisation to use general means of coercion in its struggle against them…”27. Then Bakunin asks, “Will all 40 million [German workers] be members of the government?”28 Marx’s response, “Certainly! For the system starts with the self-government of the communities.”29

When Marx writes about the proletarian power and the peasantry he says “the proletariat... must, as the government, take the measures needed... “30, see the link below

http://www.marxisthumanistinitiative.org/alternatives-t....html

However, from very beginning Bakunin idea and attitudes towards state were clear and never hidden; he made the following caustic remark about Communism “I detest communism, because it is the negation of liberty and because I can conceive nothing human without liberty. I am not a communist because communism concentrates and’ absorbs all the powers of society into state, because it necessarily ends the centralization of property in the hand of the state, while I want the abolition of state”

http://www.politicalsciencenotes.com/political-ideas/co.../1207

Alas what Bakunin predicted about Marx’s state, after almost a half century the Communist and the Bolshevik party proved to be true.

Many Marxists deny that what came in Critique of the Gotha Programme, has anything to do with state. However, both Marx and Engels in other statements or correspondences were insisting on power and centralism. Even for some countries or places Marx accepted election as the Parliamentary system can be a peaceful period to exchange the power “Did they not advocate participation in bourgeois elections, and the election of workers’ candidates into parliament? In fact, in certain countries, they even thought that a working class parliamentary majority could be used for a peaceful transition to socialism”62

http://www.marxisthumanistinitiative.org/alternatives-t...e.htm

A couple of issues were very important for Marx: centralism and industrialisation. He was very keen on having them. He always thought these two are main foundations for establishing socialism. That is why both Marx and Engels became a great advocate of centralism in the politics and in working places as well. They never denied this fact; I have already mentioned centralism in regards of their politics above.

They believed that working in factory is good for the workers. Engels praised the factory “as a school for hierarchy, for obedience and command” (Ecology or Catastrophe, the life o Murray Bookchin, By Janet Biehl), P 190.

In another book, Bookchin says “Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were centralists – not only politically but socially and economically. They never denied this fact, and their writings are studied with glowing encomiums to political, organisational, and economic centralisation. As early as March 1850 in the ‘Address of the Central Council to the Communist League’, they called upon the workers to strive not only for ‘the single and indivisible German republic, but also strive in it for the most decisive centralisation of power in the hands of the state authority ‘ lest the demand be taken lightly , it was repeated continually in the same paragraph, which concludes: ‘As in France in 1793, so today in Germany the carrying through of the strictest centralisation is the task of the really revolutionary party’.” The Murray Bookchin Reader Edited By Janet Biehl, P140.

On the same page Janet wrote: The same theme reappeared continually in later years. With the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War, for example, Marx wrote to Engels “The French need a thrashing. If the Prussians win, the centralisation of state power will be useful for the centralisation of the German working class”

On the personal level, Marx also was arrogant and authoritarian. He has not made much effort and was not ready to unite with those who differed with him, even they if they did not have significant differences. Anybody who reads his correspondences with his opponent, like Proudhon, Bakunin, Max Stirner and the others realises that.

3 Working class and Technology
Marx was very concerned about the revolution and insisted that it was the task of working class only. He, in other words, thought the advanced technology and industrialisation creates a strong working class that will be ready for the revolution. This was the reason why we see almost his main writings and studding being about industrialisation, capital, added value, working class and its class struggle with bourgeoisie to prove that the future of socialism can only be in the hand of Proletariat. This means that any society must go through the advanced capitalism before heading to socialism. This is the reason for Marx to be very hopeful about Proletariat to the point “Marx had written that if the working class ever accepted capitalism as natural, then all hopes for revolution would be lost” Ecology or Catastrophe, Edited By Janet Biehl, P285.

While Marx connected the strengths of Proletariat to advanced technology, he did not hide his feeling and happiness even if that would happen through destroying many people’s life, displacing many thousands more, the environment, causing starvation and unemployed. The best example was East India Company, while this company in the end became an empire on its own and ruled a very large area of India.

Janet Billie in the same book on page 60 drawing our attention to what Bookchin remarkably said about Marx’s idea and thought “Marx had considered it capitalism ‘historical mission to develop technology to the point where it could provide for humanity’s material needs” In the same book on page 190 she wrote what Bookchin says “Marx had even thought capitalism, by destroying earlier economic forms and developing technology, had played a historically progressive role. He thought class society had been historically necessary to achieve humanity’s ultimate liberation. Such notions, Bookchin wrote, made Marxism, all appearance to the contrary, ‘the most sophisticated ideology of advance capitalism’.”

David Graeber in his new book: The Utopia of Rules on page 121 and 122 talks about Marx’s idea of technology and profit that actually did not come out true especially if it concerns revolution in the area of means of production. He says “ Marx’s specific argument was that, for certain technical reasons, value, and therefore profits, can only be extracted from human labour. Competition forces factory owners to mechanise production, so as to reduce labour costs, but while this is to the short-term advantage of the individual firm, the overall effect of such mechanization is actually to drive the overall rate of profit of all firm down. For almost two centuries now, economists have debated whether all this is really true. But if it is true the otherwise mysterious decision by industrialist not to pour research funds into the invention of the robot factories that everyone was anticipating in the sixties , and instead to begin to relocate their factories to more labour-intensive, low-tech facilities in Chain or the Global South, makes perfect sense”

Graeber in the same book on page 143 says “...that capitalism is in its nature technologically progressive. It would seem that Marx and Engels in their giddy enthusiasm for the industrial revolution of their day were simply wrong about this. Or to be more precise: they were right to insist that the mechanisation of industrial production would eventually destroy capitalism, they were wrong to production market competition would compel factory owners to go on with mechanisation anyway”

Even knowing that Proletariat was a minority within the society, Marx put a huge task on it. Not just fulfilling the revolution and even not controlling the state only; in fact he believed that the workers should have and set up their own committees in the factories and the other places of work to control the production and other issues. This means giving the authority to a minority of people to overrule the majority; in other words, power to minority on the expense of majority. The power and authority, whatever its size anywhere that means there is no social justice, no equality and no freedom.

Murray Bookchin in his interview with Janet Billie explained this point very well “ ...Well unless the worker in an enterprise really begin to see themselves primarily as citizens rather than workers, then we are opening up the very strong possibility that they will claim at the expense of the popular assembly. To the extent that you withdraw power from the popular assembly and give to work place, to that extent you open cracks in the unity of the popular assembly and increase the possibility that the workplaces itself will act as subversive element in relation to the popular assembly. let me put it simply: The more power the workplace has, the less power the popular assembly has - and the less power the workplace has, the more power the popular assembly has.” The politics of Social Ecology, Libertarian Municipalism, Edited by Janet Billie, Page162.

In regards to the definition of Proletariat for Marxist today, especially the Marxists in Middle East they need to clarify themselves. If they accept the same definition as Marx had in his day of Proletariat then that is quite far from the reality and they will be disappointed about the revolution. If they agree that everybody wherever they work and whatever they do including students, pensioners and disabled people are workers, and then in this case they should review their understanding of Proletariat.

However, it might not be very important really how they define proletariat. What important is we know and very clear is the working class is much weaker and the hope of the revolution by them very slim than the time was Marx alive. Here, we can say that Marx’s prediction by increasing the quantity and quality of proletariat along side of advance technology, strong capitalism and getting frequent economic crisis that for him as coming a sign of the revolution did not happen.

If we look at the reality considering working class even the people’s movement are in a very low level, except in France and Greece. Even the actual struggles in these two countries are not to achieve anything new, in fact to maintain, to keep what they had before. This made me for the last 10 years to think that the economic crisis has not been capitalism crisis, it was our crisis. To clarify my point I wrote a long article in Oct of 2015 under the title: Is Capitalism in Crisis, or Are We?

http://zaherbaher.com/2015/12/14/is-capitalism-in-crisi...e-we/

Technology and its Role: As I mentioned above technology and its advances were very important for Marx and Marxists in building socialism. For them advanced technology was a historical development and condition to tackle scarcity of production and also to create dynamic revolutionary force, proletariat. If we look into this topic closely we can make several points. First: Marx had no doubt that a strong proletariat emerge from an advanced technology and advanced technology is necessary for industrialising society; finally full industrialisation creates socialism. This was how Marx has seen his final goal and that was also the reason as to why Marx thought the bourgeois is a revolutionary class and recommended the proletariat to offer its support. Even now many of the Marxists think the bourgeois is revolutionary. Second: this analysis by Marx became the foundation for Lenin, Stalin and their successors to work on to clarify Marx’s point better and put it in practice in real world. With help of Marx’s theory they have divided the history of human beings society in respect to arriving of socialism into 5 to 6 stages. It started from primitive society, slavery, feudalism, capitalism, socialism and then communism. This division clarified the role of proletariat and technology as even more important. They insist on that talking about building socialism in the non advanced economy countries was dream and not practical.

Technology and the quantity and quality of proletariat in fact are not even a secondary condition for emerging revolution and reaching socialism/anarchism society. The grounds for this revolution are existing classes and hierarchical society dominated by the tiny minority of elites. This condition has left the majority of people either having nothing or very little and the elites having everything. This kind of societies existed throughout the history since the class society appeared, so it is really not important whether that tiny minority in that society was named feudal, bourgeois or capitalist. It is very true the societies have been changed through the means of production but the exploitation, suppression, class and hierarchy society were always there. The above was the main ground for emerging revolutions regardless of the type of the society that people lived in.

In general the Communist, Bolshevik parties in the world struggled to make bourgeois more stronger and to work on industrialising the society, even if their slogans praised socialism. This was the reason for those parties to cooperate with the so called “patriotic bourgeois” to establish different kind of powers: socialist state, patriotic democracy state, popular democratic state, communist state. In few pre-capitalist countries, like Iraq, the Communists even participated in governments. They were trying to transform the society into socialist one, skipping the capitalist phase (the non- Capitalist path of development). In Iraq the Iraqi Communist Party, ICP, had a pact with Ba’ath party over 5 years between 1973 to end of 1978.

So whatever happened in Lenin period and after him, we will see its root in Marx’s theory and idea.

In my opinion this thinking of proletariat and advanced technology as necessary for the society to go through capitalism in order to reach socialism/anarchism greatly damaged our movement for the last 170 years. It is also quite obvious this idea has made the Marxists ideologist blind, as they cannot see the realities, pen their mind, think on their own rather than following someone who died 133 years ago. They now need to ask themselves if Marx’s revolution theory connects to the role of proletariat and industrialisation that means the revolution in the none industrialising countries will not be happening. More questions here are how this revolution can happen even in the industrialised countries? Is it through vanguards, even if history proved they are the suppressors of the revolutions rather than liberators? Let’s say it will be happened through them; but how do you transfer the society into full power through the Dictatorships of Proletariat, to Communism, classless society? The Marxists can only respond to these questions quoting Marx’s bible, not through the reality.

4 Technology, Nature, Environment and Ecology:
Marx and Engels exceptionally highly valued technology, for their own purpose. No doubt it was on the expense of environment, nature and whatever creatures live on the planet. Marx saw human beings precious and valuable to the extent of subduing the nature and dominating it by the human beings for their interests. In this point Marx shares his interest with Qur’an because both of them believe that the nature has been created to serve human being. This was the reason for Marx to produce his infamous line when he says “Human being is the most valuable capital in the world” According to this statement the other creatures are not very important, In other words, we can sacrifice them for the sake of human being’s interests.

I cannot recall Lenin writing a lot about ecology or environment like how Marx did. Even Marx has not written as much as Peter Kropotkin and Murray Bookchin have. However, whatever Marx wrote about this issue, showing his concern, in practice he was very hostile to nature by praising and advocating technology so much. Marx wanted the nature to be dominated by the human being and this can only happened in his view by having advanced technology. He did not pay any attention to damage and destruction of natural environment. He did not mind killing animals, birds and other creatures with displacing many more. He missed the need of balance between technology and nature. He ignored the fact that while nature in many ways serves people and the society and then in return it should be served by the Human being as well.

What is clear today is the whole natural disasters including raising global temperature are being created by mankind through the advanced technology for more money and profit. I believe many of us agree that this is a clear hostility towards nature.

5 Self-Determination and Nation State:
Marx and Engels talked and wrote a lot about various issues. As the nationalism and national movements at their time were a hot issue they tried to link it to proletariat question so that they could not avoid discussing it.

At the time there was Poland issue back to 1795 and Ireland that for a few centuries was a colony of Great Britain and from 1801 became a part of it. There was also the Jewish question, in addition to Hungary, Slovaks, and Czech and Bulgarian issues as well.

When the Bourgeois revolution in France in Feb 1848 happened, it pushed Marx and Engels towards giving more attention to national question and their expectation from Bourgeois class. Their definition for Bourgeois revolution was Democratic Bourgeois Revolution, struggling for nation’s freedom. So we should not be surprise to hear their opinion of the Bourgeois “At this time, Marx and Engels believed the bourgeoisie could play a historically progressive role by sweeping away feudalism, despite clear signals that it was prepared to compromise with the old order because it feared the power of the growing working class that allied itself to the anti-feudal struggle”. Marx and Engels did not pause here, when they spoke about Germany and its connection with Poland, they clarified their attitude about the National issue and laid down a duty for the Proletariat “Referring to the struggle in Germany at the time, Marx and Engels explained that this meant the working class must "fight [together] with the bourgeoisie whenever it acts in a revolutionary way, against the absolute monarchy, the feudal squirearchy, and the petty bourgeoisie".3

http://links.org.au/node/164

Of course they believed that support or even union of proletariat and bourgeoisie in the anti-feudal struggle would be in the interest of working class, creating next step towards socialism

In Poland question, Marx and Engels were very much in favor of the Polish after seeing a clear exploitation and suppression; they supported them in their right of Self-Determination. In Nov 1847 in commemorating the 1831 Polish revolt in London meeting, Engels had a speech about the liberating Poland. He said “We Germans have a particular interest in the liberation of Poland. German princes have profited from the partition of Poland and German soldiers are still exercising oppression in Galicia and Posen [parts of Poland]. It must be the concern of us Germans, above all, of us German democrats, to remove this stain from our nation. A nation cannot be free and at the same time continue to oppress other nations. Thus Germany cannot be liberated without the liberation of Poland from oppression by Germans. And for this reason Poland and Germany have a common interest, for this reason Polish and German democrats can work together for the liberation of both nations”.5 (see: the previous link)

What is amazing here although above was Engels’ opinion about Poland as one of the “great historic nations" but in the meantime he did not approve the same right for some of other nation, like, Southern Slavs. His justification was “ Engels' view was based on the firm materialist reasoning that the various southern Slav peoples were not yet nations — were not oppressed as nations — and therefore could not exercise a self-determination independent of the reactionary Prussia-Austria-Russia axis (...) Apart from the Poles, the Russians and at most the Turkish Slavs, no Slav people has a future, for the simple reason that all the other Slavs lack the primary historical, geographical, political and industrial conditions for independence and viability. (...) While Engels noted the capitalist tendency towards centralization and the establishment of large states, he underestimated the countervailing tendency for small nations to fight against national oppression and for independent states of their own — that the path to the elimination of national boundaries might first have to go through a proliferation of them — a fact that Lenin was later to recognize” (The same previous link.)

In regards to Ireland Marx had different opinions. In a letter to Engels in 1867, Marx said "I used to regard Ireland's separation from England as impossible (...) I now think it inevitable, although federation may follow separation." He continued and said “I long believed it was possible to overthrow the Irish regime by way of the English working class ascendancy. A deeper study has now convinced me of the opposite. The English working class will never achieve anything before it has got rid of Ireland”.

I quoted Marx and Engels in respect of National Question to draw the reader’s attention to the fact that Lenin has got his opinions and principles from Marx. It is not his own theory; however, we should acknowledge that Lenin has done this in practice. The statement of “Self-Determination” became an article in the plan and program of Bolshevik alike parties in the world. He has written a lot about this issue in very detail especially in his famous book, Lenin and National Liberation in the East. This book has become a guide for the Communist people although in many countries the Communist parties have sacrificed the principle of Self-Determination to diplomatic relation between Russia at the time with the “Patriotic Government”. In some of the countries the Communist Parties have sacrificed this principle because they got on very well with the Ruler Bourgeois. Obviously in this circumstances the only interest the Communist party was concerned was the old Russia’s interest and clearly it was at the expense of their own people.

Conclusion:

Lenin followed Marx in whatever he has done and said. Some of the analyzing from Marx for the Marxists became a Bible, but this is not right because many of Marx’s writings and predictions have not come out truth, in fact they damaged the socialist movement badly. The Marxists should have reviewed Marx rather than sacred him. Marx’s times in term of Proletariat and technology were very much different from now. Many of Max’s writings and predictions were wrong for his time and are still wrong now. Marx had a great fear about the scarcity of necessary production to sustain the life of people, this was one of his reasons of defending the technology and also technology for him has a great role in coming revolution. The life proved that this was not true as well. His definition for proletariat as only a revolutionary class might for his period was right, but certainly now have been proved wrong. Not only they cannot unite in one day action even they cannot unite in one office, in one section, department (of course there are reasons for this). Working class like the rest in the society are the main protectors of this system, it is them who hold the system tied and keep it intact. What important for them are their jobs even if that comes at the expense of killing innocent people in other countries and destroying their lands. We can see this fact today very clearly; any of us can bring up many examples. Again setting up committees and assemblies only from the working class and them to be in control is wrong. We want everybody should have a power not just the workers alone.

Marx and Marxists have been believing in political revolution and taking power from the top, while the revolution should be social revolution starts from the bottom of the society and should cover every single area. The ecology issue is very important too; to certain extent if the revolution does not cover that area then the revolution will be failed. We also cannot talk only about class issue without addressing the hierarchy issue seriously.

In dividing history of human beings in respect of arriving socialism, like how Lenin and Stalin developed later, Marxists are wrong. This theory has caused a lot of problems for the countries in which the Communist parties betrayed the socialism by cooperation with the Bourgeois Ruler in the country and take a part in the dictator government or setting up their own one.

author by alan johnstone - socialist party of Great Britainpublication date Sat Oct 15, 2016 18:03author email alanjjohnstone at yahoo dot co dot ukauthor address n/aauthor phone n/aReport this post to the editors

It is of course not incumbent upon a Marxist to dot the i and cross the t of Marx's work. He was not infallible and that has been correctly pointed out by the author on his views on nationalism. But could we say Bakunin is above all criticism or Proudhon?

But the three main Marxist theories can be restated as:

The political theory of class struggle

The materialist theory of history

The labour theory of value

The validity of those Marx’s theories is independent of Marx the man.

Rather than resort to SWP for authority especially Molyneux who writes that in the workers' state technical specialists will perform their work with a gun at their heads if they don't cooperate, wouldn't it have been better to appeal to the anti-Bolshevik Marxists such as Pannekoek and Mattick and Korsch

Pannekoek dissects Lenin's philosophy here
https://www.marxists.org/archive/pannekoe/1938/lenin/

Rubel has an interesting essay to read on Marx the anarchist
https://www.marxists.org/archive/rubel/1973/marx-anarch...m.htm

And on the topic of transitional period and the contrast with the Trotskyist understanding of it, this is worth a read.

http://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2010/02/my....html

The author is from the World Socialist Movement, perhaps the last survivors of the Impossiblist tradition that could scarcely be described as authoritarian in its organisational structure
http://www.worldsocialism.org/

Related Link: http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/
 
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