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Balhorn presents a simplistic and exaggerated caricature of Bolshevik political perspectives in order to dismiss revolutionary socialism in favor of Sunkara's 'more realistic' reformism. Balhorn should study Lenin's "Left Wing Communism: An Infantile Discorder" published in June 1920 based on the developments in the international class struggle and Lenin's thinking just about one year after the founding of the Communist International. IMO if there had been a Bolshevik party in Germany during WWI there would have been a socialist revolution in Germany soon after the German government had been defeated. Balhorn also ignores the actual history of class struggles around the world for the last century. Reading Balhorn will mislead you about the real opportunities for socialist revolution in China in the 1920s (or what happened after WWII), in Spain and France in the 1930s, all over southern Europe as WWII ended, in France, Italy and Portugal in the latter 1960s/1970s. According to Balhorn nothing significant happened in Cuba or Chile in the last century - or anywhere else in Asia, Africa or 'Latin America.' Except for also being blind to the class struggle in Europe, Balhorn might justifiably be accused of Eurocentrism... On Sun, Mar 3, 2019 at 8:30 AM Louis Proyect via Marxism <[email protected]> wrote: > > (Nothing disgusts me more than young Marxist scholars grouped around > Jacobin like Eric Blanc and this Die Linke member trying to promote work > in the Democratic Party through obscure historical references. This > article is a reasonably astute presentation of the problems of the > Comintern making points that I have made myself but ends up with this > glob of reformist pablum toward the end.) > . . . > full: > https://jacobinmag.com/2019/03/comintern-lenin-german-revolution-ussr-revolution _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
