SA wrote:
>
> Carrol Cox wrote:
>
> > You can't begin to understand these movements until you get rid
> > of the notion that at ANY STAGE, early or late, they were "inspired by
> > Marxism."
>
> First, you're putting "inspired" in quotes as if I said it. It was Shag
> who used the word, not me.
>
> Second, I didn't say *anybody* was or was not "inspired" by Marxism. I
> said the Marxism of Kautsky and his followers was not the Marxism of Shag.
>
O.K. I think your point here is correct, so I will revise.
There has never been a Marxist Social Movement, a Movement that can be explained by fitting it to _anyone'_s conception of Marxism, including Kautsky's.
Secondly, Kautsky and his followers did not constitute a social movement; they wre an electoral party that also engaged in varius other reform activities. There had been a social movement in Russia in 1905 -- which Lenin but not Trtossky understood. Trotsky, looking to the future, proclaimed that there would never be another Father G and thye "Marxists" must plan how they could fulfill his role. Lenin asked rhetorically, Why does T say there will never be another Father G, Trotsky says this because he is a windbag. There will never be another social movemnt (not Lenin's term here) unless there are hundreds of Father Gs!
In other words, Leniin but not Trotsky recognized that social movements/revolutions were largely created and carried forward by non-Marxists.
You cannot understand history if you think those who change history start out with "new" ideas. The NEW ideas always come in the wake of history, explaining it. So (you? shag? both?) are right when you say the social movements of the last two centuries (I'm expanding your point) were "inspired" (moved, powered, organized, theorized) in terms of Englightenment ideas, not Marxist ideas.But in each of these movements, some elements 'rose' to Marxism and there followed a period of rich Marxist thought, which was then more or less forgotten in the Interval that followed, until a new social movement (still enlightentment inspired) arose which generated elements who went back to that rich period of Marxist thought and explained what they were doing in those terms. The first of these periods occurred in the 1850s, following the defeat of the revolutions of '48, and the Marxist who went back to the drawing board was a fellow name Marx.
Carrol