ALB
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That’s a later, revised edition brought out in 1970 but with the cover of the 1950 one. I have dug out my copy of the 1970 one with a view to sending you its front cover to put there instead. I will send you it later today. The text if the 1950 version is not there .
“A techno-feudalistic society”
Another example of how the word “feudalism” has come to be associated with directly political forms of economic exploitation. It was the ideologists of bourgeois revolutions that made “feudalism” a dirty word, so using it in this way is a tribute to their success. There are better words to describe this sort of thing, which don’t give credit to these ideologues and which they won’t like, such as “crony capitalism” and “oligarchy”.
Incidentally, I think the old Deleonist SLP of America used to call the state capitalist USSR “industrial feudalism”.
Yes, that is where we have explicitly stated that we disagree with the political stance taken up by Marx and Engels and that they were wrong.
Their justification for taking up these positions was that Tsarist Russia was a threat to the “European Revolution” by which they meant not the socialist revolution but the revolution to establish and consolidate capitalist political conditions, ie political democracy in a nation- state, throughout Western and Central Europe.
This led them to take up the aberrant political positions you mention — and other such as support for the Franco-British-Turkish side in the Crimean War, opposition to all Slav nationalism (except Polish — they saw an independent Poland as a buffer between Tsarist Russia and Europe ) since those speaking Slavic languages and practising Orthodox Christianity were seen as actual or potential tools of Russia, taking sides in European wars (in fact in all wars as in the US-Mexican one you mention).
Marx had what can be called an obsession about Tsarist Russia, arguing that it had been plotting for centuries to conquer the world and advancing a conspiracy theory that the British Prime Minister Lord Palmerston was a Russian agent.
What Engels wrote about the non-Polish Slavs was also completely out of order, though I think he meant they should be Germanised rather than literally exterminated. Incidentally, no wonder Kautsky should object as he was half-Czech and had been a Czech nationalist before he became a socialist.
In their attitude towards Russia and the other Slavs (except the Poles) they were behaving as old 48ers as those German bourgeois democrats and nationalists who were involved in the abortive German Revolution in 1848-9 were known. And they were wrong. But, as was to be expected, they were products of their time.
The explicit repudiation by the Party of these positions taken up by Marx and Engels is in chapter 13 of the original 1950 edition of our pamphlet The Socialist Party and War. Unfortunately it is not in the pamphlet section on this site. Maybe I will scan it as it should be ( unless somebody else wants to volunteer).
“I like the idea of a world without wage-labour and where everything is free.”
Like Marx then, though of course he didn’t think up either idea but learned them from already existing movements that capitalist conditions had thrown up. in the 1830s and 1840s. Before him workers had raised the demand “Abolish the Wages System” and critics of capitalism had called for “from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs”. Another reason for not over-doing the word “Marxism”. When describing us I deliberately put this in inverted commas for this reason as well as to indicate that we employed the same language and analysis to back up these demands that Marx did (though not because he did), as I’m sure you recognised.
No. But it was a bit of a journalistic flourish introduced by “it seems that”. What he was getting at was the (apparently) unchanging nature of Chinese society. A bit like his famous (?) comment about the idiocy of rural life. I don’t think he “despised” people in China. In fact he was seeing them as victims of the opium trade.
I was wondering when you would find that one on a right wing “anti-communist” site ! Lafargue’s wife was Marx’s daughter Laura so this was obviously a private joke. Also the German word was Neger which can also be translated as Negro.
All these quotes date from the mid-century when they had come to the conclusion that capitalism still had a long way to develop before it would have built up the material basis for a world socialist society. So they supported the further and most rapid development of capitalism to bring this about and removing the obstacles to it. That’s not our situation but it was theirs.
That was the language widely employed in the 19th century. Marx’s contemporary the pioneer cultural anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan even incorporated it in to his theory of social evolution (from Savagery through Barbarism to Civilisation), on which Engels based much of his The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Society
Of course we wouldn’t use that terminology today but rather Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age, etc or even Asiatic Mode of Production, Ancient Slave Society, Feudalism, Capitalism, Socialism.
Yes, it looks as if US capitalist class have got fed up with the antics of the president of their executive committee as ruling class. All the more reason, not to intervene to help them out.
Meanwhile Pluto Press have sent us publicity for some of their books about the election in which they say:
“Neither candidate will implement the reforms necessary to blunt the sharp edges of capitalism.”
Very revealing. That’s all leftists want : “to blunt the sharp edges of capitalism”. But of course no one can do that, at least not for long, not even Bernie. It’s the whole system of capitalist class ownership and production for profit that has to go.
“I haven’t read any Marx or Engels beyond index research since my twenties.”
So, you at least were one applicant who had read Marx before applying to join! And I imagine that one of your motivations for joining was that we were “Marxist”.
I don’t think much of your attempt to back up your outrageous slur that Marx “despised” the peoples that “the Europeans colonised for capitalism”. In that passage you have dug up he is not saying that the Chinese are biologically inferior as your italics were presumably meant to imply.
The whole article can be found here so that people can judge for themselves:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1853/06/14.htm
Anybody know which events in China in 1853 Marx was referring to as ”the revolution in China?”
I didn’t mean “have to have read” in the sense of a requirement but as a fact. Why on Earth would somebody want to apply to join the Party if they hadn’t familiarised themselves with our case? In any event, to apply to join you have to sign that you agree with the Declaration of Principles which is clear a class struggle document, It also mentions “the order of social evolution”, a reference to the materialist conception of history.
Clearly, to join, you have to accept ideas that are called “Marxist” even if you don’t realise (and don’t need to realise) this. But once you’re in you are encouraged to read Marx and Engels or popularisations of their ideas. Otherwise, how could you be equipped to take part in discussions about the origins of capitalism on the terms in which we are discussing them …
I think you are bending the stick too far the other way, Robbo. Of course you don’t have to have read Marx to join the Party but you do have to have read Party pamphlets and other literature and these do reflect the labour theory of value, the materialist conception of history and that socialism will come about as a result of the class struggle of the working class.
I don’t think anybody would be turned down just because they couldn’t explain the difference between labour and labour power. If, on the other hand, they explicitly stated that they didn’t agree with the LTV but accepted some other theory there might be a problem. If you denied the class struggle you wouldn’t stand a chance. And, as you know, if you are religious and deny materialism then you don’t get in either.
Once in, members are entitled to express what views they like and can criticise the labour theory of value or that the working class will establish socialism. They wouldn’t be accused of acting against the interests of the Party for that. But these will remain personal or minority views. Some views would be unacceptable, racism or sexism for instance.
However, the Socialist Standard, as the Party’s official journal, expresses the majority view and would not publish an article critical of the labour theory of value or of the materialist conception of history. On the contrary, it carries articles supporting and explaining these (like your current series of articles).
So, the Party is clearly in the Marxist tradition even if we (no more than Marx for that matter) don’t really like the word “Marxist” as it suggests that some Great Man thought it all up which of course is against the whole MCH which sees ideas as arising from particular social circumstances. Basically, when we refer to ourselves as Marxists it’s to show that we are not anti-Marxists. Which we aren’t.
TM: “Yet Marx dismissed Chinese civilisation as barbarism and superstition. He appreciated capitalism and Europe, but despised the people and lands the Europeans colonised for capitalism. Millennia of their history and achievements was as nothing to him. For him, capitalism shocked the barbarous, stupid and ignorant into civilisation.”
I agree with Marcos on this one.That’s a vile libel on Marx.
We don’t agree with everything Marx did or said. And when we agree with what he said it is not because he did.
But we don’t blacken his name like die-hard apologists for capitalism who hate the words socialism or communism do, which is where that lie comes from.
Of course Marx didn’t “despise the people and the lands the Europeans colonised for capitalism“. He was a socialist not a racist. That’s a provocation too far.
Apparently a fly won the vice-presidential debate (as the least awful?):
Another shorter article by him here.As I said he seems to know his stuff:
