I have not looked at Bottomore's dictionary since giving it away in 2004. I
will run to the bookstore and locate a copy and look at it. Anyone that
publishes a Marxist glossary enters into extreme controversy with every
single segment of the Marxist current. The most difficult aspect of the
project
is staying on focus. The focus is a real audience and creating an
organizing tool that is educational. There are comrades better equipped for
many
reasons to take the lead on this project and all have refused. The reason is a
desire to produce a glossary that sounds like how the American proletariat
think things out in real time. For instance the American proletariat does
not react to the word “mediate” or “interpenetration.” Trade Unions
mediate relations between their members and their employers. Trade Unions were
initially organized to protect the wages and conditions of labor from
pressure of their members employers for profits. Because of the lost ground of
union over the past 30 years “mediate” becomes a concept meaning union
enhance wages and this experience has not been true for almost twenty years.
The need for the glossary arose in the course of holding classes -
educationals, with first a group of young people and recruiting a few older -
retired workers, pushed into action over health care. Let me give a real time
example of the conceptual problem of the American mind. Here is the agreed
upon basic description of dialectical materialism:
Dialectal materialism:
Dialectal materialism is an approach and method to the study of a real
world in constant change. A materialist approach begin with the real material
world. The world is knowable and our knowledge of its laws develops -
evolves, from a lower to a higher level. Society contains laws of development
moving society from a lower to a higher level. Change in society is based on
development of the productive forces and social relations of production. The
constant changes and interaction between productive forces and social
relations prevents us from knowing everything at any particular moment. But
that is no excuse for not accepting and learning about what is real. On the
contrary, it inspires a serious Marxist to constantly study. The materialist
approach is combined with the dialectical method, treating all phenomena in
nature and society as dialectical. The basic laws of materialist
dialectics are:
This had to be rewritten The reaction to the term dialectical materialism
was fascinating and mind boggling. Everyone would demand to know its meaning
and treated the term with hostility. We reversed the words and all the
hostile reactions disappeared. The second line was changed and the terms “real
material world” was reduced to “material world.” The reason is that
people reacted to real material world with the ideology “what is real to you
might not be real to me,” meaning experience. Ralph, I was fucked up because “
real world” was meant to deliver a concept of a world existing outside the
individual human body, mind and sense perception. People already
understand the world is real, but experienced individually. Soon as the
formulation
was changed a different the concept of dialectical materialism was better
understood.
Here is the rewrite:
Dialectal materialism: (materialist dialectics)
Materialist dialectics is an approach and method to the study of a real
world in constant change. A materialist approach begin with the material
world. The world is knowable and our knowledge of its laws grows from a lower
to
a higher level. Society is knowable, containing economic laws moving
society from a lower to a higher level. Change in society is based on
development of the productive forces. Its constant change prevents us from
knowing
everything at any particular moment. But that is no excuse for not accepting
and learning about what is real. On the contrary, it inspires a serious
Marxist to constantly study. The materialist approach is combined with the
dialectical method, treating all things in nature and society as dialectical.
The basic laws of materialist dialectics are:
OK
Every understood materialist dialectics in a common way. No one understood
what it meant but there was a common reaction seeking clarification. Then
we had to create a clear picture of the difference between democracy and
political liberty. You say “political liberty” and the white proletarians
react positively but not the blacks and browns. Blacks and browns react to the
word democracy with the identical emotional intensity as the white
proletarians.
It was like shit. A Marxist glossary cannot be a small Marxist dictionary
of terms but must be a historical narrative of the American ideology and
experience viewed through a Marxist lens. “Marxist lens” produced a different
reaction from “Marxist standpoint” of “Marxist point of view.”
Dig how equality was articulated:
Equality:
Under conditions of feudal society, the demand for equality and to become a
citizen, a town person with inalienable rights, rather than a serf
attached to a master was very revolutionary. Under conditions of capitalist
society the demand for equality is a demand for justice; to reform the system
in
favor of the individual or oppressed peoples and different segments of the
population. Equality is a demand for political liberty and to be treated
the same as ones economic and social peers and before the law. The demand for
equality is limited to the norms of political liberty at a given moment.
Thus, Gays seeks to be treated no different from “straights” -
heterosexual, proletarians even if these proletarians live in poverty and
destitution.
Blacks rightfully fought against legal, illegal segregation, the lynch rope
and to share in the political liberty of the larger Anglo population, even
if most of this population was on the edge of poverty. Equality in our
history contains within it an expression of the demand of all commodities to
be treated the same in the market place. One commodity is no different than
the other as values or the product of labor. Communism goes further than
demanding equality and demands emancipation from commodity production. (see
commodity production).
Then a quote from Engels is presented with a link to his writing.
No way on earth the above definition of equality could grip the masses 30,
20 or even ten years ago. The further we advance into a desegregated
society, and of course the election of Obama, the more the American mind opens
and accepts new ideas. Communism and Marxism are new ideas to the American
mind.
Racism is tackled head on in a new way. Under the index racism is (see
color factor) . Color factors ends with (see white supremacy and white
chauvinism)
Color factor:
The color factor was presented as a question of race and race was defined
as groups within humanity living and existing at different evolutionary
stages of human development. There are no biological races amongst humanity.
The is only the human race as a species. There are no evolutionary different
in humanity only differences in development of the productive forces and
the social organization of labor that flows from lower and higher degrees of
development of means of production. Thus, racism is mental justification
for the super exploitation of a population group. At different points in
American history racism was directed against the Irish, Italian and Slavic
workers. This kind of racism did not present itself as the color factor. The
color factor becomes an index for a form of racism that is actually white
supremacy and white chauvinism. The color factor is just that, a factor or
shades of difference amongst humanity. (see white chauvinism and white
supremacy)
Within question this glossary is partisan and a non-Marxist-Leninist
document. A decision will be made whether to include an index called “
Marxism-Leninism.” At this point I have voted against it, but the majority will
is
going to decide such an issue. Also Stalinism or Stalinists are not indexes,
with most comrades agreeing not to include these terms. There was an opinion
to include something called the Stalin period, which I voted against. Most
comrades wanted an index for Trotskyism, which I voted against. On another
list there was extreme reaction against the Leninism index. The so-called
Marxist-Leninist all but called for my beheading and claimed Lenin further
developed materialist dialectics. I was basically called a revisionist rat
for speaking of the October Revolution as a successful insurrection of a
class. I was told October was not an insurrection but a revolution. Thus,
there is an index for insurrection and revolution and then social revolution.
Obviously, those content with Stalin’s definitions of Leninism, which I do
not reject or object to as a historical definition appropriate at the time
it was written, will find the definition below anti-Marxism-Leninism. .
Check out the Leninism index.
Leninism: named after the leader of the Soviet Communists Bolsheviks,
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. Lenin was the singular central leader of Russian
revolutionaries who led the October Revolution - insurrection, of 1917. As
leader
of the Bolshevik Party, he was premier of the USSR during its initial years
(1917–24), during which the Bolsheviks fought the Russian Civil War (1917–
24) while working to establish the foundation of a socialist economic
system in a semi–feudal country.
As a politician, Vladimir Lenin was a prolific writer, and persuasive
orator. As a political scientist he worked out the principles to establish a
"party of a new type" capable of leading the proletariat in the contest for
political power. As a Marxist, Lenin’s doctrine of "the party of a new type"
and proposed resolution of colonial policy is at the heart of the doctrine
baring his name. Leninism was a doctrine of combat within Marxism in the
era of the rise of finance capital, the first world imperialist war,
transformation of the national question into the national-colonial revolution
and
proletarian revolution as a path to complete the transition from feudalism
to industrial society. Lenin defined the economic task of the Soviet
government as building the foundation for an socialist society in a country of
peasants.
OK, this is why I called out for you Ralph, in particular. Your bullshit
detector is finely tuned. I am not in the mood for a bunch of crap about the
role of Lenin’s Materialism and Empiro Criticism in the evolution of
articulating materialist dialectics. I have had enough of the Marxist-Leninists
dogma and protecting of Leninism as if Lenin was ones prom date or midnight
date. I am 100% shut off from political Trotskyism and their insufferable
eloquence in defense of petty bourgeois nonsensical concepts of the
proletariat and proletarian revolution. Basically, this crew is ideological
syndicalists (council communists or anarcho - syndicalists), but they do not
know
this. I do plan to float a draft over to the local folks of Workers World.
Their action orientation is refreshing and gives them a narrative not
hostile to the American mind. Plus, I do not hate on much of the writing of
Sam
Macry.
Not many older Marxists are going to like this glossary including some of
the contributors. What is liked is the real effort behind creating the
first popular Marxist glossary to appear in America in 60 years. It is also
worth noting that 90% of those involved in the actual process are black
Marxists that happen to be 100% industrial workers and 100% retired workers
with
between 30 and 40 years at either Chrysler, Ford General Motors or the old
tank plant - General Dynamics. A group of industrial workers, Marxists to
boot, could not carry out such a task before no matter of what gender, color
or ethnic heritage.
The last great surge of Marxism in America was carried out by basically
European immigrants in the 1910 - 1920 period. These guys, many undocumented
workers and intellectuals carried the ball and scored. Today a hereditary
proletariat and deeply native crew of Marxists, born of the last period
fighting to define the moment are seeking to carry the ball we inherited. In
is
on the Marxist backs of these European immigrants we stand. The ball was
passed to us by none other than late Dave Moore.
_http://www.politicalaffairs.net/index.php/article/articleview/4956/_
(http://www.politicalaffairs.net/index.php/article/articleview/4956/)
We will never repudiate our history, we will never surrender. Our caskets
are already paid for and as Obama puts matters, at this defining moment we
are going to blaze a new path.
WL.
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