Lewis Higgins
c b wrote:
> CB: I'd say _The State and Revolution_ is a good one to read in
> conjunction with "Reds", especially for fundamental principles from
> Marx such as "dictatorship of the proletariat".
I'd say that Lenin's _The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism_ (1913) is the best thing he wrote and one of the best concise explanations of the fundamental principles of Marx:
<http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1913/mar/x01.htm>
^^^^^ CB: Yes, I agree the above is better on overall Marxism. I meant to say Marx's ideas pertinent to the insurrectionary phase of revolution; seizing of state power by the proletariat; Marx and Engels fundamental ideas about the state, specifically; well the state and revolution. Lenin is very precise (smiles).
This is good , too. http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/granat/ch01.htm
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/granat/
^^^^^^
Notice however that Lenin says absolutely nothing about the "dictatorship of the proletariat". It is only in 1917 and after that this concept becomes "the very essence of Marx's teaching", as Lenin put it in _State and Revolution_.
-- Lew
^^^^^^^ CB: Well "absolute" essence _with respect to the state and revolution_ . The "dictatorship of the proletariat" is Marx's term in a letter to Wedeymeyer, Marx and Engels "man in America".
Here is Lenin saying that in _The State and Revolution_:
3. The Presentation of the Question by Marx in 1852
In 1907, Mehring, in the magazine Neue Zeit[4] (Vol.XXV, 2, p.164), published extracts from Marx's letter to Weydemeyer dated March 5, 1852. This letter, among other things, contains the following remarkable observation:
"And now as to myself, no credit is due to me for discovering the existence of classes in modern society or the struggle between them. Long before me bourgeois historians had described the historical development of this class struggle and bourgeois economists, the economic anatomy of classes. What I did that was new was to prove: (1) that the existence of classes is only bound up with the particular, historical phases in the development of production (historische Entwicklungsphasen der Produktion), (2) that the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat, (3) that this dictatorship itself only constitutes the transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless society."[5]
In these words, Marx succeeded in expressing with striking clarity, first, the chief and radical difference between his theory and that of the foremost and most profound thinkers of the bourgeoisie; and, secondly, the _essence of his theory of the state._ (emphasis added -CB) "
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/ch02.htm#s3
Also another " essence " of Marx and Engels teaching concerning the state is that " The State: An Instrument for the Exploitation of the Oppressed Class", the title of one of Lenin's chapters.