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In a message dated 1/17/2010 7:32:11 A.M. Pacific Standard Time, [email protected] writes: > Well, this may cause you to rethink your position, Shane, but I > agree with > you [and Bina] on the obsolescence of the notion of imperialism as > developed > by Lenin [and I think Lenin's analysis is more than obsolete-- it was > inadequate from the getgo]. > Let it never be said that I cannot tolerate agreement. Shane Mage Comment Although I have read Lenin’s "Imperialism" a dozen time, it was reviewed one again. There was nothing inadequate about Lenin's "Imperialism" when it was written that he does not mention in his later to be written forwards. Lenin’s "Imperialism" is fundamentally sound today, and an important historical document. What he gets profoundly right is the political appraisal of the new era of finance capital and its implications for the proletarian revolution. Lenin states this was his purpose in writing the book. I also reread Lenin’s intro to Bukarin’s "Imperialism." What stands out in remarkable detail is a political estimate and what would later be written and called the "split in socialism." Lenin called his book a popular outline because it’s first purpose was the mobilization of his party as an insurgent force rather than an academic text meant to exhaustively unravel all aspects of finance capital. Here is how Lenin sums up his purpose: IX. CRITIQUE OF IMPERIALISM By the critique of imperialism, in the broad sense of the term, we mean the attitude of the different classes of society towards imperialist policy in connection with their general ideology. …….. The questions as to whether it is possible to reform the basis of imperialism, whether to go forward to the further intensification and deepening of the antagonisms which it engenders. or backward, towards allaying these antagonisms, are fundamental questions in the critique of imperialism. Since the specific political features of imperialism are reaction everywhere and increased national oppression due to the oppression of the financial oligarchy and the elimination of free competition, a petty-bourgeois-democratic opposition to imperialism arose at the beginning of the twentieth century in nearly all imperialist countries. Kautsky not only did not trouble to oppose, was not only unable to oppose this petty-bourgeois reformist opposition, which is really reactionary in its economic basis, but became merged with it in practice, and this is precisely where Kautsky and the broad international Kautskian trend deserted Marxism. Lenin’s purpose is purely political meaning consolidating a doctrine of combat based on the new features of financial-industrial capital. A couple of years later Lenin would recast the national question into the national-colonial question and a doctrine of combat in the weak link in imperial reaction; the battle to draw the slaves of imperialism into the Soviet orbit and conditional support for colonial revolts based on a set of criteria. WL. ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: [email protected] Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
