Marx and Republicanism. ‘Citizen Marx’ by Bruno Leipold

February 2025 Forums General discussion Marx and Republicanism. ‘Citizen Marx’ by Bruno Leipold

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  • #256178
    DJP
    Participant

    For anyone found my Zoom and Summer School presentations about socialism and republican freedom interesting the below imagary may be of interest. Here we have the first English translation of the Communist Manifesto counterposed with the republican symbol of the liberty cap (and also a fasces before its cooption by the Fasicts)

    The Red Republican

    I wasn’t aware of this masthead until I saw it in Bruno Leipold’s brand new book ‘Citizen Marx’. For more about that book there is an audio interview here: https://pca.st/x7862uvd

    Leipold’s book is highly recommended.

    https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691205236/citizen-marx

    #256179
    Lew
    Participant

    This may be of interest. I’ve tried doing a search (top right) but as usual I can never find what I’m looking for. So I’ve copied and pasted the book review below.

    Helen Macfarlane. A Feminist, Revolutionary Journalist, and Philosopher in Mid-Nineteenth-Century England. By David Black, Lexington Books, 2004.

    In Austria she was radicalized by the revolutions of 1848 which swept through Europe. On her return to Britain she took up revolutionary journalism under the pseudonym Howard Morton for the Chartist leader George Julian Harney. It was in Harney’s weekly newspaper Red Republican in 1850 that Macfarlane produced the first English translation of what became known as the Communist Manifesto. In the German original it was called Manifesto of the Communist Party but in the Red Republican its title was German Communism: Manifesto of the German Communist Party. Black is critical of this name change because the insertion of the word “German” into the title twice over “de-emphasises its internationalist thrust.” But this misses the point of the change, a reason the Red Republican seems to have understood but which is now widely misunderstood. That is, while the theoretical parts of the Manifesto have universal application the practical proposals (particularly at the end of Section 2) were put forward with Germany in mind at that time. That is why Marx and Engels later said that some parts of the Manifesto, particularly in Section 2, were obsolete (see the Preface to the German edition of 1872).

    In the Red Republican version of the Manifesto, some parts are missing and others changed mainly to suit its English readership. In the 1888 English translation, supervised by Engels, the famous opening line begins: “A spectre is haunting Europe. The spectre of Communism.” But in Macfarlane’s translation this becomes: “A frightful hobgoblin stalks throughout Europe. We are haunted by a ghost. The ghost of Communism.” Black states that her use of “hobgoblin” rather than “spectre” is unfortunate, but it is possible that her English readers at that time more readily understood the hobgoblin metaphor.

    Marx called Macfarlane “a rare bird” – “the only collaborator on his [Harney’s] spouting rag who had original ideas.” She was the first person to translate and explain in English the work of the German philosopher Hegel. She wrote a few other articles for the Red Republican in the 1850s but almost nothing is known of Macfarlane in the years before or after. What seems certain however is that Macfarlane was the first British Marxist, a generation before that term came into use.

    #256180
    DJP
    Participant

    Thanks that is an interesting looking book.

    The thrust of “Citizen Marx” is that the republican influence on Marx’s thinking has been largely overlooked. Marx started his political life as a radical republican and when he came over to communism he kept hold of the republican idea of freedom as not being under an uncontrolled power. Because of this his communism was democratic in contrast to the anti-political communism of those before him.

    #256181
    ALB
    Keymaster

    One in the eye, then, for those “left communists” like Internationalist Perspective who reject the whole concept of democracy as capitalist.

    They throw out the baby of democracy as an organisational and decision-making form along with the bathwater of democracy as a form of the capitalist state. See:

    https://libcom.org/article/towards-critique-democratic-form-draft-b-york

    The title tells it all but work your way through the text if you have the time.

    But IP are not the only ones to come out with this sort of stuff.

    #256182
    DJP
    Participant

    “One in the eye, then, for those “left communists” like Internationalist Perspective who reject the whole concept of democracy as capitalist.”

    Yes, this is another good angle for demonstrating the differences between those who followed Lenin, which includes left communists, and what Marx actually wrote.

    #256183
    DJP
    Participant

    “One in the eye, then, for those “left communists” like Internationalist Perspective who reject the whole concept of democracy as capitalist.”

    So far I only scan read through it. Is their claim that you wouldn’t need democracy because socialism would be some kind of conflict-free, natural harmony of interests?

    #256184
    ALB
    Keymaster

    As far as I can work out, the IP writer opposes some species of “communitarianism” to democracy (seen as a posited on individualism — the “counting of noses” as Bordiga and Mussolini put it). At least that is what I understand from this passage:

    “Here we want to oppose communitarian to democratic, one seeks to establish or defend the organic bonds of community and the other seeks political domination with the assistance of an ideology that has it roots in class division and ultimately in the capitalist value-form itself.”

    It’s seems to be anti-democracy rather than pro anything. As he says:

    “This text does not pretend to offer “practical” solutions to the collective organization necessary for self-liberation but rather to orient future discussion and experimentation in collective action. But, we will assert that democracy, even in its “pure” form, is not a step towards liberation but rather the principle mode through which capital keeps resistance contained within the political.”

    He seems to have been influenced by the ideas of Jacques Camette that communism is a new form of community, as set out in this article:

    https://libcom.org/article/communism-affirmation-new-community-notes-jacques-camatte-chamsy-el-ojeili

    Anyway, as you say, it has nothing to do with “what Marx actually wrote” as well as being practically incomprehensible in parts.

    #256188
    DJP
    Participant

    Is there any mention of how they see people making binding decisions? Or is there no need for a decision-making structure since everything naturally and harmoniously arises from the ‘communitarian’ “organic bonds of community”? Even anarchists such as Malatesta would have laughed at this stuff as hopelessly naive.

    If you take ‘democracy’ to mean liberal representative democracy or simple majoritarianism then there is something you can say against these. But of course that is not the only thing that ‘democracy’ can mean.

    #256192
    adri
    Participant

    Yes, this is another good angle for demonstrating the differences between those who followed Lenin, which includes left communists, and what Marx actually wrote.

    I’m sure some left communists admire Lenin to some extent, but that really doesn’t characterize most left communists today or historically. Lenin, after all, did write an entire pamphlet (“Left-Wing” Communism: An Infantile Disorder) criticizing the people to the left of him, including left communists in the UK like Pankhurst, which she actually commented on. Other left communists like the Russian Gavril Miasnikov also openly criticized Lenin and the dictatorial policies of the Russian Communist Party while Lenin was still alive, which he later paid for by being murdered by Stalin. The left communists who emphasize worker councils and workers’ control over production are perfectly in line with the writings of Marx, such as Marx’s commentary on the Paris Commune. The Leninists who emphasize centralizing decision-making in the hands of a small group of “professional revolutionaries,” on the other hand, are more like the Blanquists who Engels critiqued in his Refugee Literature:

    Engels wrote: Blanqui is essentially a political revolutionary, a socialist only in sentiment, because of his sympathy for the sufferings of the people, but he has neither socialist theory nor definite practical proposals for social reforms. In his political activities he was essentially a “man of action”, believing that, if a small well-organised minority should attempt to effect a revolutionary uprising at the right moment, it might, after scoring a few initial successes, carry the mass of the people and thus accomplish a victorious revolution. […] Since Blanqui regards every revolution as a coup de main by a small revolutionary minority, it automatically follows that its victory must inevitably be succeeded by the establishment of a dictatorship—not, it should be well noted, of the entire revolutionary class, the proletariat, but of the small number of those who accomplished the coup and who themselves are, at first, organised under the dictatorship of one or several individuals. (MECW 24, p. 13)

    #256193
    DJP
    Participant

    Here’s something Marx actually said…

    “Considering,

    That this collective appropriation can arise only from the revolutionary action of the productive class – or proletariat – organized in a distinct political party;

    That a such an organization must be pursued by all the means the proletariat has at its disposal including universal suffrage which will thus be transformed from the instrument of deception that it has been until now into an instrument of emancipation;

    The French socialist workers, in adopting as the aim of their efforts the political and economic expropriation of the capitalist class and the return to community of all the means of production, have decided, as a means of organization and struggle, to enter the elections with the following immediate demands….”

    https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/05/parti-ouvrier.htm#n9

    Not something you’d see a council communist write.

    But of course just because Marx wrote something doesn’t mean it’s eternally correct.

    The SPGB is different here in that it doesn’t stand on a platform of immediate reforms.

    #256194
    DJP
    Participant

    As that Pankhurst article makes quite clear the “left communists” fell for both the mythology of the Russian Revolution and their own wishful thinking.

    Council Communism is a little different and came later, ironically after the council idea had faded into obscurity.

    #256195
    adri
    Participant

    Here’s something Marx actually said…

    Marx and Engels never limited their tactics to parliamentary means nor argued that workers’ strategies should be everywhere the same, especially considering the different modes of production found throughout the world of the nineteenth century. Here, for example, is also “something Marx actually said” (emphasis is mine):

    Marx said: You know that the institutions, mores, and traditions of various countries must be taken into consideration, and we do not deny that there are countries—such as America, England, and if I were more familiar with your institutions, I would perhaps also add Holland—where the workers can attain their goal by peaceful means. This being the case, we must also recognize the fact that in most countries on the Continent the lever of our revolution must be force; it is force to which we must some day appeal in order to erect the rule of labor.

    Taking nineteenth-century Russia, for instance, which had no parliament or democratic institutions until after the 1905 Revolution (with the Duma that emerged from that Revolution largely being a complete farce), both Marx and Engels expressed their belief in how Russia could possibly avoid capitalist development on the basis of the Russian peasantry/commune. Engels also emphasized, in the same series of articles under the title of Refugee Literature cited above, how the outbreak of a proletarian revolution in Western Europe would be crucial to facilitate Russian peasants’ emancipation (my emphasis again):

    Engels wrote: It is clear that communal ownership in Russia is long past its period of florescence and, to all appearances, is moving towards its disintegration. Nevertheless, the possibility undeniably exists of raising this form of society to a higher one, if it should last until the circumstances are ripe for that, and if it shows itself capable of developing in such manner that the peasants no longer cultivate the land separately, but collectively; of raising it to this higher form without it being necessary for the Russian peasants to go through the intermediate stage of bourgeois small holdings. This, however, can only happen if, before the complete break-up of communal ownership, a proletarian revolution is successfully carried out in Western Europe, creating for the Russian peasant the preconditions requisite for such a transition, particularly the material things he needs, if only to carry through the revolution, necessarily connected therewith, of his whole agricultural system. It is, therefore, sheer bounce for Mr. Tkachov to say that the Russian peasants, although “owners”, are “nearer to socialism” than the propertyless workers of Western Europe. Quite the opposite. If anything can still save Russian communal ownership and give it a chance of growing into a new, really viable form, it is a proletarian revolution in Western Europe. (MECW 24, p. 48)

    As the quotes above illustrate, the idea that Marx and Engels argued for creating a socialist/communist society solely through the ballot box or parliamentary means is simply not supported by their writings.

    #256196
    ALB
    Keymaster

    Nothing wrong with that. Nobody here is arguing that a socialist/communist society can be be created “solely” through the ballot box. Obviously workers will need to organise outside parliament too to be ready to keep production going while and after capitalist control is ended.

    #256197
    adri
    Participant

    As that Pankhurst article makes quite clear the “left communists” fell for both the mythology of the Russian Revolution and their own wishful thinking.

    I’m not quite sure what the SPGB’s initial reaction to the Russian Revolution was, but a large number of socialists of different persuasions in fact welcomed the abolition of tsarist rule and the later overthrow of the Kerensky government, including anarchists like Goldman and Berkman. It was the betrayal of this revolution by the Bolsheviks/Russian Communist Party (e.g. their suppression of the Kronstadt revolt and weakening of the soviets) that socialists like Pankhurst and other left communists began to critique as events unfolded. (The objective conditions facing Lenin and the Russian Communist Party, together with the failure of revolution to spread in Western Europe, also undeniably played a significant, though by no means decisive, role in some of their policies.) While Pankhurst is critical enough in her comments on Lenin’s pamphlet, she became even harsher in her language over time, especially as the anti-working-class nature of the Russian Communist Party became more apparent to her. See for example what Pankhurst was writing about the so-called “workers’ government” in Russia by 7 July 1923, while commenting on the “Manifesto of the Unemployed Workers’ Organisation”:

    Pankhurst wrote: One phrase has crept into the manifesto of the Unemployed Organisation which requires discussion. It is a phrase of which all Communists have made use, both of late and also since the days of Marx, Engels and Bachunin [Bakunin]. We refer to the term “the dictatorship of the proletariat.” This in its original use meant the rigid suppression of the middle and upper classes in so far as they may endeavour to resist the coming of Socialism and to combat the popular will.

    Latterly, under the inspiration of Russian bureaucrats, the term “dictatorship of the proletariat” has been used to justify the dictatorship of a party clique of officials over their own party members and over the people at large. So far has the dictatorship been carried [out] that the parties submitting to it have become utterly sterile as instruments of education and action. In Russia the dictatorship has robbed the revolution of all it fought for; it has banished Communism and workers’ control.

    As I mentioned in my first post, it’s wildly inaccurate to dismiss left communists as “followers of Lenin” when the name “left communist” itself was used to describe people who were to the left of Lenin and the policies of the Bolsheviks/Russian Communist Party. One can hardly characterize Pankhurst as a “follower of Lenin,” as you originally claimed that all left communists were, when she wrote about how he and the Russian Communist Party had “banished communism and workers’ control” in Russia.

    #256198
    Citizenoftheworld
    Participant

    I have not read the book yet, but he is not the only one who have presented those ideas, and it was also discussed when we had the Yahoo groups forum, the problem is that the Leninists are using that conception in order to justify the workers state and that Marx supported the existence of a republic, but they are based on what Engels expressed that the democratic republic was much better for the development of socialists ideas within a capitalist society

    I understand that when they were very young, both ( Marx and Engels ) they were petty bourgeois liberals and they were influenced by bourgeois conceptions, and then when they obtained more political maturity, and after the Commune of Paris they changed several of their old conceptions and abandoned some of their blanquist stand and opt for workers participating in the capitalist limited democracy, which the Leninists call bourgeois democracy

    Personally, I think they were more influenced by the French Anarchists in order to become socialists and many of their conceptions came from the French Anarchists, for me, the communist manifesto is not a communist document, it was revolutionary during their time but several of the concepts expressed in that documents were abandoned by them, and still there are many so called marxists who have not moved away further than the communist manifesto

    https://jacobin.com/2024/12/marx-communist-republicanism-historical-context. How Karl Marx became a
    communist. I think Marx and Engels became communist when the came into contact with the Anarchists

    https://www.marxists.org/archive/rubel/1973/marx-anarchism.htm

    The Internationalist Perspective, the internationalists tendency, and the International Communists Currents are left communists and Leninists but sometimes they write good articles, and they have taken correct stands on several world issues, I would not reject them completely and sometimes I have seen them supporting some of our point of view

    Marx and Republicanism: An Interview with Bruno Leipold

    He has done the same thing that has been done by the Marxist humanists and the followers of Raya Dunayeskaya by dividing Marx into the Young Marx when he was a so called Hegelian and then the matured Marx who became a humanist, or Lenin who also became two personalities, one before 1914 and another person after 1914 when he was done research on the betrayal of the second international and he started to read Hegel Science of Logic.

    I prefer to visualize Marx and Engels when they were politically inmature and then they became more matured when they started to be influenced by external political and economic events,

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