ALB
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Here is David McLellan’s translation of that passage in the 1844 Paris Manuscripts where Marx is arguing against Creationism:
“But since for socialist man what is called world history is nothing but the creation of man by human labour and the development of nature for man, he has the observable and irrefutable proof of his self-creation and the process of his origin. Once the essential reality of man in nature, man as the existence of nature for man, and nature for man as the existence of man, has become evident in practical life and sense experience, then the question of an alien being, of a being above nature and man — a question that implies an admission of the unreality of nature and man — has become possible in practice. Atheism as a denial of this unreality, has no longer any meaning, for atheism is the denial of God and tries to assert through this negation the existence of man; but socialism as such no longer needs this mediation; it starts from the theoretical and practical sense-perception of man and nature as the true reality.” (Early Texts, pp. 156-7)
In his “Karl Marx. His Life and Thought” McLellan comments on this passage:
“Thus for socialist man the question of an alien being beyond man and nature whose existence would imply their unreality had become impossible. For him the mutual interdependence of man and nature was what was essential and anything else seemed unreal.” (pp. 122-3)
Just because something wasn’t socialist doesn’t mean that it was useless. The demands for free elections, freedom of speech, assembly etc and against a one-party dictatorship were good, as a degree of political democracy is essential for the growth of the working class trade union movement and the socialist movement. As you might agree (or, perhaps as an anarchist, not). The economic demands, for freedom of activity for small peasants and artisans, were realistic in the circumstances but were not socialism.
There’s nothing to be gained from describing something as socialist that wasn’t.
Here’s the Daily Express denouncing the noble Earl as “woke”:
I’m not sure I’m in the right thread.
Another gem from the 1920s.
The Party has a proud tradition of standing up to leftie student bullies. This, from 1973:
https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2014/01/eysenck-at-lse-socialist-defends-free.html
Look out for the article on “Cancel Culture” in next month’s Socialist Standard. If you want to order extra copies to sell outside your local students Union contact Head Office. Just be careful they don’t report you to your local Job Centre to try to get your benefits cancelled.
Didn’t they used to be called “the Loony Left”? But this lot seem really loony in implying that only a hunchback should be allowed to play Richard III. And they are more dangerous as they are open opponents of free speech and work to get people whose views they dislike sacked.
For those interested in a contemporary socialist commentary and analysis of events in 1921 all the issues of the Socialist Standard for that year are online here:
https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1921/
The suppression of the mutiny in Kronstadt doesn’t seem to have been given much publicity at the time. It was publicised later as a stick to beat Trotsky and the Bolsheviks — and a good one too as it showed how ruthless they were prepared to be to hold on to power and maintain their dictatorship. But I don’t think it can be said to have had any socialist content.
It was one of the events that forced Lenin to realise that the only way forward for Russia in the circumstances was the development of capitalism in one form or another and to adopt the New Economic Policy of what he called “state capitalism” as the development of capitalism in Russia under the control of the so-called “proletarian state”. That change of policy is commented on in detail in the series of articles on “Where Russia Stands”.
By coincidence in the course of scanning articles from the Socialist Standards of the 1920s I have just done one from August 1925 in which an opponent makes this criticism:
“Fifty years ago — which was an age of triumphant Science — it was widely believed that in matter and motion there had at last been placed in man’s hands the key to the interpretation of the universe and all its contents, including man himself. Fifty years ago that was ; but time in the interval has wrought many changes. Science, now wiser and less confident, recognises its limitations and confines itself to a description of things as they appear to us, being silent about them as in their ultimate nature they are. Materialism is no longer regarded as a truth of science.
Neither is materialism an established truth of philosophy. It amounts to no more than a philosophic speculation; and it is endorsed to-day by few thinkers of repute. The main reason for this, briefly expressed, is that the theory cannot reach its starting-point. Thought itself bars the way. You can never get to a position beyond thought where you are face to face with matter per se — where you have matter pure and simple — and then show thought evolving from it. Matter in its primordial form — the atom with its electrons — is always matter with an element of thought already present in it. Anyone who grasps the significance of this statement will at once see how precarious a basis materialism is for Socialism.”
You’d get more sense arguing with a flat-earther. A vote of all humanity to decide the nature of reality or the laws of physics or even if the Earth is flat. What a nutter.
Here’s the new birdie song
