On Tue, 17 Jan 2012 05:58:19 -0800 c b <cb31450 at gmail.com> writes:
> Jim F:
>
> Dr. King is a perfect example of what this country does to the
> memories of radicals once they have been safely dead a while. And
> he
> is not the only one that this happened to. One thinks of Thomas
> Paine
>
> ^^^
>
> CB: Lenin's discussion below always reminds me of what has happened
> to ML King.
>
>
>
>
> "What is now happening to Marx's theory has, in the course of
> history,
> happened repeatedly to the theories of revolutionary thinkers and
> leaders of oppressed classes fighting for emancipation. During the
> lifetime of great revolutionaries, the oppressing classes
> constantly
> hounded them, received their theories with the most savage malice,
> the
> most furious hatred and the most unscrupulous campaigns of lies and
> slander. After their death, attempts are made to convert them into
> harmless icons, to canonize them, so to say, and to hallow their
> names
> to a certain extent for the “consolation” of the oppressed classes
> and
> with the object of duping the latter, while at the same time
> robbing
> the revolutionary theory of its substance, blunting its
> revolutionary
> edge and vulgarizing it. Today, the bourgeoisie and the
> opportunists
> within the labor movement concur in this doctoring of Marxism. They
> omit, obscure, or distort the revolutionary side of this theory,
> its
> revolutionary soul. They push to the foreground and extol what is
> or
> seems acceptable to the bourgeoisie. All the social-chauvinists are
> now “Marxists” (don't laugh!). And more and more frequently German
> bourgeois scholars, only yesterday specialists in the annihilation
> of
> Marxism, are speaking of the “national-German” Marx, who, they
> claim,
> educated the labor unions which are so splendidly organized for the
> purpose of waging a predatory war! "
>
> http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/ch01.htm
I am surprised that Lenin made no mention of the so-called Legal Marxists (i.e. Pyotr Struve, Nikolai Berdyaev, Sergei Bulgakov,Mikhail Tugan-Baranovsky and Semyon Frank) who took up (and pushing to its extreme) Plekhanov's thesis that before Russia could ever hope to become socialist, it would have to undergo a, perhaps, prolonged capitalist stage of development first. Therefore, in their view, Russian Marxists should concern themselves primarily with the building of capitalism in Russia. While, initially, these people were members of the Russian Social Democratic and Labor Party (alongside people like Plekhanov, Martov, and Lenin), they eventually drifted over to the Cadets (Constitutional Democrats), who were the main liberal party in Russia at that time. Thus they examplified how Marxism could be turned into an apologetic for capitalism.
Jim Farmelant http://independent.academia.edu/JimFarmelant www.foxymath.com Learn or Review Basic Math ____________________________________________________________ 60-Year-Old Mom Looks 27 Mom Reveals Free Wrinkle Trick That Has Angered Doctors!