Such hatred against Marx and… Stalin
Another book
that repeats old dogma in favour of capitalism
By Daniel
Paquet
dpaquet1871@gmail.com
“The ideas
of the ruling class are in every epoch (including today’s imperialism, -Ed.)
the ruling ideas: i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material
production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of
mental production, so that means of mental production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal
expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material
relationships grasped as ideas; hence of the relationships which make the one
class the ruling one, therefore, the ideas of its dominance. The individuals composing the ruling class
possess among other things consciousness, and therefore think. Insofar, therefore, as they rule as a class
and determine extent and compass of an epoch, it is self-evident that they do
this in its whole range, hence among other things rule also as thinkers, as
producers of ideas, and regulate the production distribution of the ideas of
their age; thus their ideas are the ruing ideas of the epoch.”[1]
Recently,
the British historian Gareth Stedman Jones published a new book on Karl Marx *;
sharing the same concern about Marxism, and especially in regard with the
alleged goal of Marx who longed t o ‘put an end to unfreedom, ‘”this notion of
Marxism that historian Isaiah Berlin ascribed to its founder when he wrote of
Marx that ‘his intellectual system was a closed one, everything that entered
was made to conform to as pre-established pattern.’ This is doubtless true of the so-called
‘dialectical materialism’ that became doctrinal orthodoxy in the Soviet Union
and its satellite states. (sic).”[2]
“Lenin,
better than anyone else, understood the great
importance of theory, particularly for a party such as ours, in view of
the role of vanguard fighter of the international proletariat which has fallen
to its lot, and in view of the complicated internal and international situation
in which it finds itself. (…)
Perhaps the
most striking expression of the great importance which Lenin attached to theory
is the fact that none other than Lenin undertook the very serious task of
generalizing, on the basis of materialist philosophy, the most important
achievements of science from the time of Engels down to his own time, as well as
of subjecting to comprehensive criticism the anti-materialistic trends among
Marxist. Engels said of
materialism: ‘With each epoch-making
discovery… it has to change its form… It
is well known that none other than Lenin accomplished this task for this own
time in his remarkable work Materialism
and Empirio-Criticism.”[3]
The
book-reviewer says also: “Before the
proletariat could develop into a mature class and become conscious of its
revolutionary task, he reasoned, it was necessary for capitalism to modernize
the world. (…)
And
industrial production would surge, condensing the two remaining classes into
opposed groups in anticipation of capitalism’s final crisis.”[4]
“Communism
differs from all previous movements in that it overturns the basis of all
earlier relations of production and intercourse, and for the first time
conscious treats all natural premises as
the creatures of hitherto existing men, strips them of their natural character
and subjugates them to the power of the united individuals. Its organization is, therefore, essentially economic,
the material production of the condition of this unity; it turns existing conditions
into conditions of unity. The reality,
which communism is creating, is only a product of the preceding intercourse of
individuals themselves. Thus the
communists in practice treat the conditions created up to now by production and intercourse as
inorganic condition, without, however,
imagining that it was the plan or the destiny of previous generations to give them in organic for the individuals creating
them.”[5]
So much for
the supposed ignorance of the proletariat, or its unconsciousness!
One of
Lenin’s thesis about the proletarian revolution expresses itself in the
following perspective: “The domination
of finance capital in the advanced
capital countries (which is the case of USA and Canada, members of the G8,-Ed.);
the issue of stocks and bonds as one of the principal operations of finance
capital; the export of capital to the sources of raw materials, which is one of
the foundations of imperialism; the omnipotence of a financial oligarchy, which
is the result of the domination of finance capital – all this reveals the
grossly parasitic character of monopolistic capitalism, makes the yoke of the capitalist trusts and syndicates
a hundred times more burdensome, intensifies the indignation of the working
class with the foundations of capitalism, and brings the masses to the
proletarian revolution as their only salvation.”[6]
(The theory
of class struggles) implied certain inevitability to the gathering processes of
historical change. It also left little room
for the possibility of independent revolution in less developed regions around
the globe, in the east or in the outer reaches of Europe’s empires. Marx’s universalism found its classic
expression in the ‘The Communist
Manifesto,’ (London, 1848, -Ed.) which declared that all nations must
submit ‘on pain of extinction’ to the forces of bourgeois modernity. (…)
After 1870,
however, Marx relaxed these strictures, in part because the failure of the
Paris Commune left him dismayed at the prospects for a Communist revolution in
the West.”[7]
We shall
not forget another aspect of the proletarian revolution which lies in an
earlier definition of communism.
“Communism
is for us not a state of affairs
which is to be established, an ideal to
which reality (will) have to adjust itself.
We call communism the real movement which abolished the present state of
things. The conditions of this movement result
from the premises now in existence. (…)
The
proletariat can thus only exist world-historically,
just as communism, its activity can only have a world-historical’ existence. World-historical existence of individuals,
i.e., existence of individuals which is directly linked up with world history.”[8]
To minimize its shortcomings, the author
concluded: “Like all intellectual
legacies, Marx’s work remains open to new interpretation.”[9]
Another
founder of Marxism-Leninism (and leader of a socialist society under construction left us with a very deep – indeed-
heritage which nears by Marx’s
contribution is Joseph Stalin; furthermore this political figure was leading
the conception of a country that left the horizon of capitalism quite rapidly.
“The main
features and requirement of the basic economic law of modern capitalism might
be formulated roughly in this way: the
securing of the maximum capitalist profit through the exploitation, ruin and
impoverishment of the majority of the population of the given country, through
the enslavement and systematic robbery of the peoples of other countries,
especially backward countries, and, lastly, through wars and militarization of
the national economy, which are for the obtaining of the highest profits. (…)
(He
adds): “The essential features and
requirements of the basic law of socialism might be formulated roughly in this
way: the securing of the maximum satisfaction of the constantly rising material
and cultural requirements of the whole of society through the continuous
expansion and perfection of socialist production on the basis of higher
techniques.”[10]
“Though the
capitalist mode of production was progressive at a definite stage in the
development of human society, it later became a brake on social progress due to
the intensification of the built-in contradiction between the productive forces
ad production relations. This was
revealed, in particular, in the conflict between the social nature of
production and the private form of appropriation. During the socialist revolution effected by
the proletariat in alliance with the peasantry and other sections of the
working people, capitalism is supplanted by the new, socialist mode of
production, which represents the economic mode basis of the new, communist socio-economic system. (…)
Marx viewed society’s transition from one
system to another as an intrinsic law of human history in general.”[11]
Blog: La Nouvelle
Vie Réelle, www.lnvr.blogspot.com
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Réelle, www.laviereelle.blogspot.com
[1] Marx,
Engels and Lenin, On Historical
Materialism, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1972, page 44
[2] Gordon,
Peter E., Karl Marx, The man, not the
ideologue, A Book Review, The New
York Times, International Edition, Thursday 20, 2016, page18; *Karl Marx. Greatness and Illusion. By
Gareth Stedman Jones. Illlustrated. The Belknap Press-Harvard University Press.
[3] Stalin, J.
V., The Foundations of Leninism,
Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1975, page 20
[4] Ibidem, Gordon, page
18
[5] Ibidem, Marx, Engels, Lenin, page 64
[6] Ibidem, Stalin, page
23
[7] Ibidem, Gordon, page
18
[8] Tucker,
Robert C., The Marx-Engels Reader,
W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 1972, page 162
[9] Ibidem, Gordon, page
18
[10] Stalin, J.
V., Economic Problems of Socialism in
the U.S.S.R., Foreign Languages
Press, Peking, 1972, Reprinted in the U.S.A., 2012, pages 34, 36
[11] Sheptulin,
A. P., Marxist-Leninist Philosophy,
Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1978, page 512
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