I have never had any credentials as an orthodox Marxist. I rather doubt whether I am a Marxist, or whether there is any point in proclaiming that one is today. My point was that Bernstein thought he was an orthodox Marxist, which he did. So, indeed, did Kautsky, even after he was sidelined by 1914, the war, and the Russian revolution. B differed with Luxemburg and K with Lenin mainly about the means to acheive socialism and to keep it in power. And given the firm commitment of both thinkers _to_ socialism, understood as both of them understood it in classical MArxisn terms (which _I_ reject), it is inconceivable taht either of thenm would ever have supported a right wing bourgeois politician. Some historical counterfactuals are ludicrous or indecipherable. That one is not. --jks
>
>Leo, Bernstein was a Marxist who thought he was very orthodox. And he
>wouldn't have voted for Gore if he was the last candidate on earth. --jks
>
>
>Come on, Justin, you know better than this kind of silliness. We are
>talking
>about Bernstein, not Kautsky, and Bernstein was quite clearly _not_ an
>orthodox Marxist. His major contribution to socialist thought was a
>critique
>of what he understood, rightly or wrongly, to be orthodox Marxism -- which
>is
>precisely what sent Kautsky, Luxemburg, Lenin, Et. Al. into the
>stratosphere
>over it.
>
>And speculating what a Bernstein might have done if he somewhere were
>transported via time machine into the United States more than a century
>later
>seems designed to show just how useless such historical counterfactuals
>are.
>
>Surely you can find a better way of securing your credentials as an
>orthodox
>Marxist here.
>
>Leo Casey
>United Federation of Teachers
>260 Park Avenue South
>New York, New York 10010-7272 (212-598-6869)
>
>Power concedes nothing without a demand.
>It never has, and it never will.
>If there is no struggle, there is no progress.
>Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation are men who
>want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and
>lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters.
>-- Frederick Douglass --
>
>
>
>
>
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