A chaser remains a chaser? What's a "chazer"??
Is this like a tiger doesnt change its stripes or something?

Cheers, Ken Hanly

----- Original Message ----- 
From: Louis Proyect <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Sunday, July 21, 2002 9:14 AM
Subject: [PEN-L:28270] Re: citation on reforms


> Chris Burford wrote:
> 
> > "Marxism alone precisely and correctly defines the relation between 
> > reform and revolution. Marx was able to see this realtion only from 
> > one aspect, namely in the conditions preceding the first to any extent 
> > permanent and prolonged victory of the proletariat, if only in one 
> > countrey. In those conditions, the basis fo the proper relation was: 
> > reform is the by-prdouct of the revolutionary class struggle of the 
> > proletariat............Before the victory of the proletariat, reforms 
> > are a by-product of the revolutionary class struggle."
> >
> > I believe I recall Louis Proyect asserting that we would not get very 
> > far by quoting Lenin, but I cannot remember the context. However if he 
> > wishes to assert that real Marxists are not in favour of reforms, he 
> > might strengthen his position by citing a source, otherwise it might 
> > just appear a loaded assertion as to who is a real Marxist and who is 
> > an unreal marxist.
> 
> I went ahead and consulted the Collected Lenin to put the above quote in 
> context. A month later, Lenin wrote an article titled "Let there be no 
> Confusion" that expanded on the relationship between reform and 
> revolution. He wrote:
> 
> "Comrade Vzyanikov appears in his muddle-headed way to have fallen off 
> the three-legged stool whose leftmost leg he sawed off himself chasing 
> after European decadent opportunist trends. Ptooey, I say. When I say 
> reforms, I mean specifically and unalterably and to a moral certainty 
> that this does not include junkets by bourgeois imperialist oppressors 
> and their bootlicking 'friends' in the middle-class, especially Mario 
> del Bono, that renegade from Marxism who tossed principles aside to 
> justify capitalist exploitation in the Levantine. When del Bono told 
> Figaro that the introduction of ice-making machinery into the Upper 
> Volta was a sign of progress, any revolutionary-minded worker would have 
> raised his fist in agreement with the hoary Russian oath: "A chazer 
> bleibt a chazer".
> 
> (Collected Works, V. 23, p. 457)
> 
> -- 
> 
> Louis Proyect
> www.marxmail.org
> 
> 

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