A detailed analysis of Marx's views concerning Russia, the prospects of revolution there, and whether or not Russia could hope to skip over a capitalist stage of development can be found in Teodor Shanin, *Late Marx and the Russian Road: Marx and the "Peripheries of Capitalism"* (Monthly Review Press, 1984).
---------- Original Message ---------- From: Jim Farmelant <farmelantj at juno.com> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Cc: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Obama's betrayal of hope Date: Tue, 1 Dec 2009 21:47:47 -0500
On Tue, 1 Dec 2009 16:59:00 -0800 (PST) Chris Doss
<lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com> writes:
> In fact, if Marx or Engels were president, given their views on India
> and Scotland and the Mexican-American War, and given their belief in
> the abiding awesomeness of Western European civilization and general
> contempt for non-Western European societies, I think they would be
> all for the Afghan War. They would think Obama was a wuss who should
> be spreading capitalism (the prerequisite for socialism) more
> vigorously, destroying backward, rural Afghan society and bringing
> it into the modern age. You know, like the Soviets were doing (minus
> the spreading capitalism part).
I think that might have been for the younger Marx & Engels, but by the time they reached their mature years they had largely shed such colonialist views. Engels after all once toasted to the success of the Mahdi in Sudan, in his battle to drive the British out of there.
Marx in his old age did not think it necessary that all countries go through a capitalist stage before becoming socialist. In fact when his young Russian Marxist disciple Georgii Plekhanov appealed to him to come out against the Narodniks, Marx after much study gave his provisional support to the Narodniks, to the consternation of Plekhanov.
Jim F.
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