LBird
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Thomas More wrote: “Loneliness can often… actually be preferable…”
I think that The Guardian article is arguing against precisely that conclusion.
The social production of ‘loneliness’ (and by implication other so-called ‘individual psychological’ states)?
DJP wrote: “In his later work about the Russian Mir, it actually looks like he thought otherwise.”
In relation to this issue, I can recommend “Marx and Russia: The Fate of a Doctrine” by James D. White.
Of course, even looking at this issue, raises the question of Marx’s ‘materialism’, and the development of his views.
A development that clearly diverged from Plekhanov and Lenin (and arguably Engels, even Marx’s own earlier views).
BD, I think most Liverpool fans are prepared to give Alonso a few years to settle, because he knows what’s required, and neither he nor us knows yet whether he can make the ‘big jump’. Klopp was given time, and he came as an outsider, unlike Alonso. It’s a risk, but what new manager wouldn’t be?
As for Lenin, I too “think we should let the old conspirator to rot without comment”, and HIS IDEAS, too.
Ooops… you can’t go THAT far, eh? [joke]
I broadly agree with what you’ve posted, Bijou Drains, and I’m sure you can guess with what unposted issues I’d disagree with you.
I’m inclined to let Almamater have his thread back, as he wishes, and leave undiscussed why the SPGB agree with Lenin, regarding those unposted issues.
Thanks for your comradely post.
Almamater wrote: “I came to the conclusion that we do not need philosophy and philosophers, and that Marx left philosophy and dialectic in some period of his life, and for me, he is an anthropologist instead of a philosopher.”
Fine.
So why engage in philosophical debates with those Marxists who ‘come to the conclusion’ that discussing Marx’s politics and philosophy is fundamental to understanding Marx?
And I’ve not insulted, sub-estimated or denigrated anyone, not even you, on this thread.
I’m interested in why Lenin is considered by many supposed ‘Marxists’ to be a follower of Marx, when any reading and comparison of Marx’s and Lenin’s respective political philosophies shows no link at all.
But… some links can be shown between Lenin and Engels… don’t you find that curious?
And… that the SPGB, although denigrating (correctly, in my view) Lenin, also seem to share some of those links between Lenin and Engels?
Further, ONE of those links seems to be a sharing of Lenin’s method of attacking the man, not the ball, in political and philosophical debates.
Or, was that a trait of both Engels AND Marx themselves? If so, is it a good practice to continue? Does it further comradely discussions between democratic socialists?
Almamater wrote: “If Lenin was a follower of them, why Plekhanov and Kautsky opposed Lenin and Lenin tried to discredited them and wrote against them ?”
I’ll leave you to think about which issues Lenin followed Plekhanov, Kauksky (and Engels), and about which issues Plekhanov and Kautsky opposed Lenin, and about which issues Lenin opposed Plekhanov and Kautsky.
The world of politics and philosophy is a bit more complicated than you seem to think, and it’s a shame that you’re not willing to discuss these complications.
FWIW, I’d look more to Bogdanov and Lunacharsky as ‘followers of Marx’. Mainly, unlike Plekhanov, Kautsky and Lenin, they looked to the masses and democracy as solutions to our political and philosophical problems.
Hiya BD, annoyingly to some, I’m still about, all’s well, and Klopp’s leaving behind a great legacy, which might even be improved by Alonso!
To keep my derail short (since it’s attracted complaints already), the problems with ‘Marx’ pre-date all the thinkers/groups you’ve mentioned, and includes the SPGB. The die was cast well before 1903. But… heads-in-sand, and all that…
Thanks for your kind comment.
Almamater wrote: “And the debate on this thread is about Lenin, it is not about Engels or Kautsky”
Yes, but if Lenin was a follower of Engels, Kautsky and Plekhanov, rather than Marx, wouldn’t that be relevant to the argument that Lenin and the Bolsheviks (and Trotskyists and Stalinists) can teach us nothing about Marx’s democratic social productionism?
But… if you want to close that line of inquiry, that’s OK by me. I’ll leave the thread to you, unless you ask me to continue.
Almamater wrote: “The Marxists Humanist have spent years attacking Engels and Kaustky and they have never published the real conceptions of Marx and they continue supporting Lenin and the bolsheviks coup”
Some points:
1. The ‘Marxist Humanist‘ seem to be irrelevant to our debates today, then, if you are correct that they support Lenin in any way whatsoever;
2. Asking critical questions about the Marx/Engels relationship is not ‘attacking Engels’. I’ve praised Engels many times before – just not his understanding of Marx’s philosophy;
3. ‘the real conceptions of Marx’ is precisely the issue at point – what were they, and did they differ from Engels’?Almamater wrote: “What the world knew and has known is a distortion made by Lenin and the Bolsheviks, and their followers…”
Certainly, Lenin(ism) is a ‘distortion’, at the very least, but the ‘distorting’ began well before Lenin’s contribution.
Until serious and fundamental questions are asked about the differences between Marx and Engels (and then Kautsky and Plekhanov), the ‘real’ Marx will remain ‘by and large unknown’.
It’s a task that has only relatively recently even been started, and Marx has been dead nearly 142 years.
Perhaps it’s already too late.
chelmsford wrote: “Barltrop made the telling point that if it were not for the Bolshevik revolution, today Marx would be as well known as Lassalle or Duhring or Proudhon to name but three. He would be by and large unknown.”
On the contrary, I think that Lenin and the Bolshevik revolution have ensured that Marx has remained ‘by and large unknown’.
Lenin was the successor to Engels’ mistaken views, and Kautsky’s and Plekhanov’s mangling of Marx’s democratic social productionism.
Lenin almost exclusively quoted Engels, rather than Marx.
The ‘Marx’ we supposedly ‘know’ today is far removed from Marx’s democratic views.
DJP quoted Marx: “Once upon a time a valiant fellow had the idea that men were drowned in water only because they were possessed with the idea of gravity.”
Yes, it’s a good argument against ‘idealists’, DJP. I subscribe to Marx’s view, too.
But what has it to do with Marx’s view, that we produce, and can thus change, our world?
For example, if humanity was both ‘possessed with the idea of’ scuba gear, and socially produced and used it, we wouldn’t ‘drown in water’.
I’m sure Marx would recognise that scuba gear is a socio-historical product, and that we could change it for some other more advanced technology in the future.
Until ‘materialists’ engage with what Marx was actually arguing, his views will remain a closed book to them. The 18th century was a long time ago, and it’s time for workers to take up Marx’s insights, about democratic social production.
DJP wrote: “As our experience of the world has to be mediated through the concepts we make of it … the question arises that when we are theorising are we just self-referentially referring to these concepts or is there a way that these concepts are influenced by the real world.”
The use of the term ‘experience’ begins from a ‘passive’ conception of our world, that the ‘real world’ actively impinges upon us.
Marx started from an ‘active’ conception, which followed the German Idealists, in that the ‘active subject’ CREATES its own ‘object’.
Thus, our concepts are created by us (not from ‘objective’ action upon us), and used to ‘create’ OUR world, a ‘world-for-us’. If our concepts prove to be useless for us in our conscious activity to produce our world, we discard them.
Therefore, as Marx famously argued, we can CHANGE ‘it’, ‘it’ being our creation.
Any ‘real world’ that WE know, is OUR ‘real world’. ‘It’ is our socio-historical product.
