[lbo-talk] Austerity In The Face Of Weakness

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Tue Sep 7 11:32:49 PDT 2010


Ted Winslow wrote:
>
> c b wrote:
>
> > the Bolsheviks raised the consciousness of the masses significantly.
> > Marx and Engels are clear that the socialist revolution will be
> > different than past revolution precisely on this point of the
> > consciousness of the masses.
>
> What Marx and Engels are clear about in the passages from the Theses on Feuerbach and the German Ideology I just again reproduced is that a "vanguard" - the "Bolsheviks" - can't "educate" the masses in the way required.
>
> What "educates" them in the required way is a particular kind of "revolutionary practice," the kind required to bring about the "all-round development of individuals."

The Bolsheviks, reasonably but we know inaccurately, thought they were instistuting a socialist revolution, and differed among themselves as to the meaning of that intention in the absence of a revoution in the developed capitalist nations.

And Marx & engels were a bit euro-centric themselves (more later on this).

But crucial here is to allow for the fact that, a century later, we know so much more than M&E, Lenin, or Stalin/Trotsky could know, and we have to give more allowance to the actual conditons in which they operted than, I think, either Charles or Ted do here.

The revolutiobn M&E wanted, I think, could only occur (if it was to occur) in a world in which the capitalist system was world-wide. What the Russian and Chinese Revolutions _did_ accomplish was to bring their nations into the 20th-c, contribute to the wars of liberation of the mid-20th c., and thus make possible the present world -- in which it is possible to begin thinking seriusly, on firmer ground, of the Revolution posited by M&E. All Glory to the Bolsheviiks! but let's not use them as _our_ model. Ted is right that, for the Revolution we need, a Vanguard Party will not do. But to project that back to the Russia of 1905 or the China of 1935 is seriusly ahistorical.

Carrol



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