Re: the overtly anti-semitic Jobbiks in Hungary, recent New Yorker article recounts the tale of Jobbik's leader discovering he is Jewish.
On Tue, Nov 12, 2013 at 2:25 PM, Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:
> Lenin, Trotsky, & Stalin may have misunderstood Marx, as innumerable
> Marxists have, but they were all three better "Marxists" than WS could
> pretend to be. I have disagreed with Marv, but he is certainly correct
> here.
>
> Carrol
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org]
> On Behalf Of Marv Gandall
> Sent: Tuesday, November 12, 2013 1:00 PM
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Bruce Bartlett: " I think it is only a matter of
> time before the Tea Party morphs into unapologetic fascism"
>
> On 2013-11-12, at 1:14 PM, Wojtek S <wsoko52 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Joanna: "Trotsky and Lenin were keenly aware of this, and a good deal
> > of organizing went on to make sure that they would have the support of
> > the military."
> >
> > [WS:] My point exactly. Whether they called themselves "Marxist" is
> > irrelevant to my argument which pertains to Marxist theory explaining
> > historical event purely in terms of broadly defined classes.
>
> I didn't understand that to be your point. I understood you to be
> suggesting, as you have done previously, that the military - meaning the
> military high command - drove radical political change from the top, rather
> than it being the result of class struggles from below.
>
> In fact, in successful revolutionary situations, it splits along class
> lines, with junior officers and the ranks typically refusing to obey the
> instructions of the general staff to repress an insurgency.
>
> This was well understood by Marx, Engels, and subsequent generations of
> Marxists, who regarded the conduct of revolutionary agitation within the
> armed forces as decisive. I'm sure Joanna's reference was not to the
> military as a whole in the Russian Revolution but to its lower ranks, who
> were urged by the Bolsheviks to "turn their guns" against the Tsar's
> commanders. Where insurrections failed, it was mostly owing to the
> inability
> of the revolutionary leadership to entice the mostly peasant conscript
> armies to their side.
>
> Where class struggles have erupted, they have been mirrored inside the
> armed
> forces. "The military" is no more monolithic an institution than is "the
> nation".
>
> > --
> > Wojtek
> >
> > "An anarchist is a neoliberal without money."
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