Click on the headline to link to a Leon Trotsky Internet Archives online copy of his political obituary for German Social- Democratic Party and pre- World War I Second International leader, and a former co-thinker, the "pope" of Marxism in that era, Karl Kautsky. This is a good example of a model for the way to deal with the contributions of political opponents.
Markin comment:
First question: What do the murdered heroic Kansas abortion provider, Doctor George Tiller, the 17th century Puritan revolutionary poet and propagandist, John Milton, author of Paradise Lost, and the early 20th century labor and civil rights lawyer, Clarence Darrow, defender of “Big” Big Haywood and John Scopes, among others, have in common? Similar expertise in similar fields? No. Common political vision? Hell, no. Could it be that they, each in their own way, contributed to the store of our human progress? Well, yes. And also, by the way, they have all been honored on this American Left History site for those contributions. And nary a flea-bitten, hard-shell, broad-backed, barn-burning, blood-thirty, red meat, communistic, reds under every bed, Bolshevik bastard who wants to “nationalize” women and “eat babies” for breakfast among them.
Second question: What do the pre-World War II American communist renegade from Marxism, Max Shachtman, the old English socialist and novelist turned British imperial informer, George Orwell, and the German “pope” of pre- World War I Marxism in the Second International , Karl Kautsky have in common? I will not prolong the agony on this one because I have to make my point before the next millennium so it is that they have made contributions to our common socialist movement before they went over to the other, pro-capitalist, pro-imperialist side (one way or the other). And also, by the way, they have all been honored on this American Left History site for those contributions. And nary a flea-bitten, hard-shell, broad-backed, barn-burning, blood-thirty, red meat, communistic, reds under every bed, Bolshevik bastard who wants to “nationalize” women and “eat babies” for breakfast among them.
Third question: What do the old-fashioned 19th century French revolutionary and Paris Commune member, Louis–August Blanqui, the iconic American black liberation fighter, Malcolm X, and the old Industrial Workers of World (IWW-Wobblies) organizer extraordinaire, Vincent St. John, have in common? Again, I will cut to the chase; they were all, one way or the other, political opponents of Marxism. And also, by the way, they have all been honored on this American Left History site for those contributions. And nary a flea-bitten, hard-shell, broad-backed, barn-burning, blood-thirty, red meat, communistic, reds under every bed, Bolshevik bastard who wants to “nationalize” women and “eat babies” for breakfast among them.
Okay, by my count I see zero legendary Bolshevik names listed above. Names like Leon Trotsky, V.I. Lenin, N. Krupskaya, J. Sverdlov, Jim Cannon, John Reed, “Big” Bill Haywood, and so on. Oh, they have been honored in this space, profusely. Of course. (Although I do not believe that there was a flea-bitten, hard-shell, broad-backed, barn-burning, blood-thirty, red meat, communistic, reds under every bed, Bolshevik bastard who wants to “nationalize” women and “eat babies” for breakfast among them either, that was pure bourgeosi propaganda, always). And that is exactly my point here.
Let me back track on this one, a little. Recently I did a series of reviews of the work of American detective fiction writer, Dashiell Hammett. (see blogs, dated August 15-18, 2010). Beyond a review of his outstanding literary work I noted that Hammett was a prominent supporter of the Stalinized American Communist Party in the 1930s and 1940s. In that dead night of the "red scare", which many from that time and since would prefer to obliterate from American "democratic" memory, especially the memory of their own silence and complicity, just said no to the committees that wanted him to “name names.” He didn’t and paid the price for his courageous act. Others, including long time Stalinists and fellow–travelers squawked to high heaven before those committees, sometimes without the least bit of pressure. A simple acknowledgement of Hammett’s deed, noting along the way, that Hammett and our Trotskyist forbears were still political opponents at the end of the day seemed less than controversial.
Not so, at least from an e-mail that I received, claiming (for me) the mantle of Stalinophile for such a “tribute”. First, I assume that the person, for good or ill, had not read my "tributes” to arch-Stalinist American Communist Party supporters, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who I have termed “heroic” for their deeds in behalf of the Soviet Union, when those deeds counted. Or that if the person had deeds, like Hammett's, involving less than going to meet death fearlessly by Stalinists are not worthy of kudos. In any case, this person is all wrong.
Go back to the first question above where basically non-political types were noted for their contributions to human progress. That is the “missing link” to this person’s mistaken position. I could have gone on and on about various persons that have been honored in this American Left History blog. But that seemed to me to be unnecessarily hammering home the point. Here is the real point. We have had few enough occasions when our fellows get it right to narrow the parameters of what contributes to human progress. If we get too picky we are left with honoring Lenin, Trotsky, and a few other Bolsheviks. Oh yes, and, of course, those few of us who claim to be contemporary Bolsheviks- including, I presume, the heroic, non-Stalinophile, e-mail sender. Enough said.
Note: I did not mention this e-mail sender’s political affiliation although it was provided. Let us just put it this way. The organization that the person belongs to (and I am not sure the person knows all the organization’s history, it didn’t seem so) has a history of “bailing water” (my term)for the “progressive" wing of the Democratic party (whatever that is?) and wondered out loud why I did not honor the likes of California’s’ current Attorney General, Jerry Brown, Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums, Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich, ex-Georgia Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney,and so on. Jesus, give me a break. But, wait a minute, if the shades of old Dashiell Hammett were around today or those of some of his fellow reprobate Stalinists, those are the same kindreds that they would be kowtowing to, as well. Hey, I just tipped my hat to old Hammett I did not try to "steal" his "progressive/ popular front" political strategy. Strange bedfellows, indeed. Double, Jesus give me a break.
Showing posts with label revisionism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label revisionism. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Tuesday, June 01, 2010
From The Archives Of The “ Revolutionary History” Journal-Karl Kautsky's "The intellectuals and the workers"
Click on the headline to link to a "Wikipedia" entry for pre-World War I Marxist leader, Karl Kautsky.
The intellectuals and the workers
Karl Kautsky (1854-1938), the ‘Pope of Marxism’, wrote the following article when he was the major theoretician of the German Social Democracy. It first appeared in Die Neue Zeit (Vol.XXII, no.4, 1903), the journal which Kautsky edited from 1883 to 1917, and appeared in English in the April 1946 edition of Fourth International.
Part of the very problem which once again so keenly preoccupies our attention is the antagonism between the intellectuals and the proletariat.
My colleagues will for the most part wax indignant at my admission of this antagonism. But it actually exists, and as in other cases, it would be a most inexpedient tactic to try to cope with this fact by ignoring it.
This antagonism is a social one, it relates to classes and not individuals. An individual intellectual, like an individual capitalist, may join the proletariat in its class struggle. When he does, he changes his character too. It is not of this type of intellectual, who is still an exception among his fellows, that we shall deal with in the following lines. Unless otherwise indicated I shall use the word intellectual to mean only the common run of intellectual, who take the standpoint of bourgeois society and who are characteristic of intellectuals as a whole, who stand in a certain antagonism to the proletariat.
This antagonism differs, however, from the antagonism between labour and capital. An intellectual is not a capitalist. True, his standard of life is bourgeois and he must maintain it if he is not to become a pauper; but at the same time he has to sell the product of his labour, and frequently his labour power; and he is himself often enough exploited and humiliated by the capitalists. Hence the intellectual does not stand in any economic antagonism to the proletariat. But his status of life and his conditions of labour are not proletarian, and this gives rise to a certain antagonism in sentiments and ideas.
As an isolated individual, the proletarian is a nonentity. His strength, his progress, his hopes and expectations are entirely derived from organisation, from systematic action in conjunction with his fellows. He feels himself big and strong when he is part of a big and strong organism. The organism is the main thing for him; the individual by comparison means very little. The proletarian fights with the utmost devotion as part of the anonymous mass, without prospect of personal advantage or personal glory, performing his duty in any post assigned to him, with a voluntary discipline which pervades all his feelings and thoughts.
Quite different is the case of the intellectual. He fights not by means of power, but by argument. His weapons are his personal knowledge, his personal ability and his personal convictions. He can attain a position only through his personal abilities. Hence the freest play for these seems to him the prime condition for success. It is only with difficulty that he submits to serving as a part which is subordinate to the whole, and then only from necessity, not from inclination. He recognises the need of discipline only for the masses, not for the select few. And naturally he counts himself among the latter,
In addition to this antagonism between the intellectual and the proletarian in sentiment, there is yet another antagonism. The intellectual, armed with the general education of our time, conceives himself as very superior to the proletarian. Even Engels writes of the scholarly mystification with which he approached workers in his youth. The intellectual finds it very easy to overlook in the proletarian his equal as a fellow fighter, at whose side in the combat he must take his place. Instead he sees in the proletarian the latter's low level of intellectual development, which it is the intellectual's task to raise. He sees in the worker not a comrade but a pupil. The intellectual clings to Lassalle’s aphorism on the bond between science and the proletariat, a bond which will raise society to a higher plane. As advocate of science, the intellectuals come to the workers not in order to co-operate with them as comrades, but as an especially friendly external force in society, offering them aid.
For Lassalle, who coined the aphorism on science and the proletariat, science, like the state, stands above the class struggle. Today we know this to be false. For the state is the instrument of the ruling class. Moreover, science itself rises above the classes only insofar as it does not deal with classes, that is, only insofar as it is a natural and not a social science. A scientific examination of society produces an entirely different conclusion when society is observed from a class standpoint, especially from the standpoint of a class which is antagonistic to that society. When brought to the proletariat from the capitalist class, science is invariably adapted to suit capitalist interests. What the proletariat needs is a scientific understanding of its own position in society. That kind of science a worker cannot obtain in the officially and socially approved manner. The proletarian himself must develop his own theory. For this reason he must be completely self-taught, no matter whether his origin is academic or proletarian. The object of study is the activity of the proletariat itself, its role in the process of production, its role in the class struggle. Only from this activity can the theory, the self-consciousness of the proletariat, arise.
The alliance of science with labour and its goal of saving humanity, must therefore be understood not in the sense which the academicians transmit to the people the knowledge which they gain in the bourgeois classroom, but rather in this sense that every one of our co-fighters, academicians and proletarians alike, who are capable of participating in proletarian activity, utilise the common struggle or at least investigate it, in order to draw new scientific knowledge which can in turn be fruitful for further proletarian activity. Since that is how the matter stands, it is impossible to conceive of science being handed down to the proletariat or of an alliance between them as two independent powers. That science, which can contribute to the emancipation of the proletariat, can be developed only by the proletariat and through it. What the liberals bring over from the bourgeois scientific circles cannot serve to expedite the struggle for emancipation, but often only to retard it.
The remarks which follow are by way of digression from our main theme. But today when the question of the intellectuals is of such extreme importance, the digression is not perhaps without value.
Nietzsche’s philosophy with its cult of superman for whom the fulfilment of his own individuality is everything and the subordination of the individual to a great social aim is as vulgar as it is despicable, this philosophy is the real philosophy of the intellectual; and it renders him totally unfit to participate in the class struggle of the proletariat.
Next to Nietzsche, the most outstanding spokesman of a philosophy based on the sentiments of the intellectual is Ibsen. His Doctor Stockmann (An Enemy of the People) is not a socialist, as so many believe, but rather the type of intellectual who is bound to come into conflict with the proletarian movement, and with any popular movement generally, as soon as he attempts to work within it. For the basis of the proletarian movement, as of every democratic movement, is respect for the majority of one’s fellows. A typical intellectual a la Stockmann regards a “compact majority” as a monster which must be overthrown.
From the difference in sentiment between the proletarian and the intellectual, which we have noted above, a conflict can easily arise between the intellectual and the party when the intellectual joins it. That holds equally even if his joining the party does not give rise to any economic difficulties for the intellectual, and even though his theoretical understanding of the movement may be adequate. Not only the very worst elements, but often men of splendid character and devoted to their convictions have on this account suffered shipwreck in the party.
That is why every intellectual must examine himself conscientiously, before joining the party. And that is why the party must examine him to see whether he can integrate himself in the class struggle of the proletariat, and become immersed in it as a simple soldier, without feeling coerced or oppressed. Whoever is capable of this can contribute valuable services to the proletariat according to his talents, and gain great satisfaction from his party activity. Whoever is incapable can expect great friction, disappointment, conflicts, which are of advantage neither to him nor to the party.
An ideal example of an intellectual who thoroughly assimilated the sentiments of a proletarian, and who, although a brilliant writer, quite lost the specific manner of an intellectual, who marched cheerfully with the rank-and-file, who worked in any post assigned to him, who devoted himself wholeheartedly to our great cause, and despised the feeble whinings about the suppression of one's individuality, as individuals trained in the philosophy of Nietzsche and Ibsen are prone to do whenever they happen to be in a minority - that ideal example of the intellectual whom the socialist movement needs, was Wilhelm Liebknecht. We might also mention Marx, who never forced himself to the forefront, and whose hearty discipline in the International, where he often found himself in the minority, was exemplary.
Karl Kautsky
The intellectuals and the workers
Karl Kautsky (1854-1938), the ‘Pope of Marxism’, wrote the following article when he was the major theoretician of the German Social Democracy. It first appeared in Die Neue Zeit (Vol.XXII, no.4, 1903), the journal which Kautsky edited from 1883 to 1917, and appeared in English in the April 1946 edition of Fourth International.
Part of the very problem which once again so keenly preoccupies our attention is the antagonism between the intellectuals and the proletariat.
My colleagues will for the most part wax indignant at my admission of this antagonism. But it actually exists, and as in other cases, it would be a most inexpedient tactic to try to cope with this fact by ignoring it.
This antagonism is a social one, it relates to classes and not individuals. An individual intellectual, like an individual capitalist, may join the proletariat in its class struggle. When he does, he changes his character too. It is not of this type of intellectual, who is still an exception among his fellows, that we shall deal with in the following lines. Unless otherwise indicated I shall use the word intellectual to mean only the common run of intellectual, who take the standpoint of bourgeois society and who are characteristic of intellectuals as a whole, who stand in a certain antagonism to the proletariat.
This antagonism differs, however, from the antagonism between labour and capital. An intellectual is not a capitalist. True, his standard of life is bourgeois and he must maintain it if he is not to become a pauper; but at the same time he has to sell the product of his labour, and frequently his labour power; and he is himself often enough exploited and humiliated by the capitalists. Hence the intellectual does not stand in any economic antagonism to the proletariat. But his status of life and his conditions of labour are not proletarian, and this gives rise to a certain antagonism in sentiments and ideas.
As an isolated individual, the proletarian is a nonentity. His strength, his progress, his hopes and expectations are entirely derived from organisation, from systematic action in conjunction with his fellows. He feels himself big and strong when he is part of a big and strong organism. The organism is the main thing for him; the individual by comparison means very little. The proletarian fights with the utmost devotion as part of the anonymous mass, without prospect of personal advantage or personal glory, performing his duty in any post assigned to him, with a voluntary discipline which pervades all his feelings and thoughts.
Quite different is the case of the intellectual. He fights not by means of power, but by argument. His weapons are his personal knowledge, his personal ability and his personal convictions. He can attain a position only through his personal abilities. Hence the freest play for these seems to him the prime condition for success. It is only with difficulty that he submits to serving as a part which is subordinate to the whole, and then only from necessity, not from inclination. He recognises the need of discipline only for the masses, not for the select few. And naturally he counts himself among the latter,
In addition to this antagonism between the intellectual and the proletarian in sentiment, there is yet another antagonism. The intellectual, armed with the general education of our time, conceives himself as very superior to the proletarian. Even Engels writes of the scholarly mystification with which he approached workers in his youth. The intellectual finds it very easy to overlook in the proletarian his equal as a fellow fighter, at whose side in the combat he must take his place. Instead he sees in the proletarian the latter's low level of intellectual development, which it is the intellectual's task to raise. He sees in the worker not a comrade but a pupil. The intellectual clings to Lassalle’s aphorism on the bond between science and the proletariat, a bond which will raise society to a higher plane. As advocate of science, the intellectuals come to the workers not in order to co-operate with them as comrades, but as an especially friendly external force in society, offering them aid.
For Lassalle, who coined the aphorism on science and the proletariat, science, like the state, stands above the class struggle. Today we know this to be false. For the state is the instrument of the ruling class. Moreover, science itself rises above the classes only insofar as it does not deal with classes, that is, only insofar as it is a natural and not a social science. A scientific examination of society produces an entirely different conclusion when society is observed from a class standpoint, especially from the standpoint of a class which is antagonistic to that society. When brought to the proletariat from the capitalist class, science is invariably adapted to suit capitalist interests. What the proletariat needs is a scientific understanding of its own position in society. That kind of science a worker cannot obtain in the officially and socially approved manner. The proletarian himself must develop his own theory. For this reason he must be completely self-taught, no matter whether his origin is academic or proletarian. The object of study is the activity of the proletariat itself, its role in the process of production, its role in the class struggle. Only from this activity can the theory, the self-consciousness of the proletariat, arise.
The alliance of science with labour and its goal of saving humanity, must therefore be understood not in the sense which the academicians transmit to the people the knowledge which they gain in the bourgeois classroom, but rather in this sense that every one of our co-fighters, academicians and proletarians alike, who are capable of participating in proletarian activity, utilise the common struggle or at least investigate it, in order to draw new scientific knowledge which can in turn be fruitful for further proletarian activity. Since that is how the matter stands, it is impossible to conceive of science being handed down to the proletariat or of an alliance between them as two independent powers. That science, which can contribute to the emancipation of the proletariat, can be developed only by the proletariat and through it. What the liberals bring over from the bourgeois scientific circles cannot serve to expedite the struggle for emancipation, but often only to retard it.
The remarks which follow are by way of digression from our main theme. But today when the question of the intellectuals is of such extreme importance, the digression is not perhaps without value.
Nietzsche’s philosophy with its cult of superman for whom the fulfilment of his own individuality is everything and the subordination of the individual to a great social aim is as vulgar as it is despicable, this philosophy is the real philosophy of the intellectual; and it renders him totally unfit to participate in the class struggle of the proletariat.
Next to Nietzsche, the most outstanding spokesman of a philosophy based on the sentiments of the intellectual is Ibsen. His Doctor Stockmann (An Enemy of the People) is not a socialist, as so many believe, but rather the type of intellectual who is bound to come into conflict with the proletarian movement, and with any popular movement generally, as soon as he attempts to work within it. For the basis of the proletarian movement, as of every democratic movement, is respect for the majority of one’s fellows. A typical intellectual a la Stockmann regards a “compact majority” as a monster which must be overthrown.
From the difference in sentiment between the proletarian and the intellectual, which we have noted above, a conflict can easily arise between the intellectual and the party when the intellectual joins it. That holds equally even if his joining the party does not give rise to any economic difficulties for the intellectual, and even though his theoretical understanding of the movement may be adequate. Not only the very worst elements, but often men of splendid character and devoted to their convictions have on this account suffered shipwreck in the party.
That is why every intellectual must examine himself conscientiously, before joining the party. And that is why the party must examine him to see whether he can integrate himself in the class struggle of the proletariat, and become immersed in it as a simple soldier, without feeling coerced or oppressed. Whoever is capable of this can contribute valuable services to the proletariat according to his talents, and gain great satisfaction from his party activity. Whoever is incapable can expect great friction, disappointment, conflicts, which are of advantage neither to him nor to the party.
An ideal example of an intellectual who thoroughly assimilated the sentiments of a proletarian, and who, although a brilliant writer, quite lost the specific manner of an intellectual, who marched cheerfully with the rank-and-file, who worked in any post assigned to him, who devoted himself wholeheartedly to our great cause, and despised the feeble whinings about the suppression of one's individuality, as individuals trained in the philosophy of Nietzsche and Ibsen are prone to do whenever they happen to be in a minority - that ideal example of the intellectual whom the socialist movement needs, was Wilhelm Liebknecht. We might also mention Marx, who never forced himself to the forefront, and whose hearty discipline in the International, where he often found himself in the minority, was exemplary.
Karl Kautsky
Saturday, April 03, 2010
*From The "Max Shachtman Internet Archives"- "The Genesis Of Trotskyism" (1933)
Click on the headline to line to a "Max Shachtman Internet Archive" online copy of his 1933 work, "The Genesis Of Trotskyism".
Markin comment:
In his prime, under the guidance of James P. Cannon in the American Communist Party, especially in their work in the International Labor Defense, and later as a leader of what became the Trotskyist party in the United States, the Socialist Workers Party, Max Shachtman, knew how to "speak" Marxism. Later, after he turned the task of 'socialism' over to the U.S. State Department and kindred forces, he was still facile as a writer but the politics became ugly, very ugly, except perhaps to the late American Federation Of Teachers President, Albert Shanker. Here is an example of "high" Shachtman.
Markin comment:
In his prime, under the guidance of James P. Cannon in the American Communist Party, especially in their work in the International Labor Defense, and later as a leader of what became the Trotskyist party in the United States, the Socialist Workers Party, Max Shachtman, knew how to "speak" Marxism. Later, after he turned the task of 'socialism' over to the U.S. State Department and kindred forces, he was still facile as a writer but the politics became ugly, very ugly, except perhaps to the late American Federation Of Teachers President, Albert Shanker. Here is an example of "high" Shachtman.
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
The Latest From The "International Bolshevik Tendency" Website- "Imperialist Troops Out Of Haiti"- A Guest Commentary
Click on the title to link to the "International Bolshevik Tendency" Website for the article listed in the headline.
Markin comment:
This entry is placed here specifically because of its intersection with the controversy between the Internationalist Group and the ICL/Spartacist League/U.S. over the latter organization's not calling for "Imperial Troops out of Haiti" in the midst of the recent earthquake disaster there. Check the Websites of those organizations, or my February 2010 archives, for their earlier polemics on the issue.
Markin comment:
This entry is placed here specifically because of its intersection with the controversy between the Internationalist Group and the ICL/Spartacist League/U.S. over the latter organization's not calling for "Imperial Troops out of Haiti" in the midst of the recent earthquake disaster there. Check the Websites of those organizations, or my February 2010 archives, for their earlier polemics on the issue.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
*The Latest From The Internationalist Group Website
Click on the headline to link to the Internationalist Group Website.
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