<HTML> <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px"> From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood@panix.com> BrownBingb@aol.com wrote: >CB: What's it mean to be a Marxist in the USA in 2003 ? Why is being >a Marxist in 2003 in the USA less a fringe tendency than being a >Leninist ? Marxism is about an understanding of capitalism - the root of value production in exploitation, its transformation into a variety of phenomenal forms, the centrality of class, etc. etc.</BLOCKQUOTE> ^^^^^^^ CB: Does that tend toward the fringe or the mainstream ? Yes it is this, but don't you think Lenin got his emphasis on uniting this theory with practice FROM Marx ? Recall the Theses on Feuerbach in which Marx distinguishes himself from other materialists by his giving primacy to practical-critical activity. Recall the Manifesto of the Communist _Party_. Recall the First International, Marx's emphasis on his own practice. Leninism is just Marxism of the era just after Marx's life; and, by extension, in 2003 it is applying today the fundamentals of Marxism that you describe to our concrete situation with the purpose of changing the world , not just interpreting it. There's a new concrete situation, of course. Leninism is <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px"> mostly about political practice. You can be a Marxist and believe in vanguard parties or street parties as the central mechanism of political transformation.</BLOCKQUOTE> CB: Yes, Lenin would not make a dogma out of the vanguard party. The organizational form for catalyzing change in 2003 in the U.S. is not likely to be just like that for doing it in Russia in 1905. Also, Lenin did quite a bit of theoretical work, not just political practice. See _Materialism and Empirio-Criticism_, _Imperialalism_ et al. <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px"> Doug </BLOCKQUOTE> </HTML>