Re: [Marxism] Comintern (The Stalinist-Hoxhaist World Party)
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == more detailed discussion of Wang from International Viewpoint, an organ of the Usec Fourth International: http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article251 http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article251a excerpt pertinent to this discussion: Quixotically, Wang and Chen Duxiu tried to win armed forces to a policy of resistance combined with rural revolution. The CCP, hundreds of times bigger and with a decade of military experience and some Soviet support, effortlessly eclipsed them. After the war, the Trotskyists resumed their campaign for radical democracy and class struggle in the cities. They were as if blind to Mao’s peasant armies, poised by 1949 to seize power everywhere on the mainland. Wang spent the first years of his exile reflecting on the causes of the Maoist victory and the Trotskyist defeat. In a departure from Trotskyist orthodoxy, he found that a real revolution had indeed taken place under Mao. He criticized his own group’s failure to develop armed forces and mobilize the peasants as one part of their activities. Yet he continued to question the overwhelmingly military thrust of Maoist strategy, which he feared in some ways was just another link in China’s endless chain of wars followed by tyrannical restorations. Instead, he argued for the centrality of the industrial workers and the intelligentsia, new urban classes that offered a way of unlocking the cycle with an experiment in democratic communism. Other Trotskyists around Peng Shuzhi, in exile in the United States, denounced Wang for ’capitulating’ to Stalinism. The row was symptomatic of the Trotskyists’ fractiousness, which left them even more vulnerable to their many enemies. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Comintern (The Stalinist-Hoxhaist World Party)
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == And there sure wasn't one in Korea in 1950. On Thu, Apr 15, 2010 at 1:15 PM, S. Artesian sartes...@earthlink.netwrote: The reason it didn't happen in 1949? Despite Mao's pretensions, there was NO alliance with the bourgeoisie. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Comintern (The Stalinist-Hoxhaist World Party)
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Zheng Chaolin: Chen Duxiu and the Trotskyists Chen Duxiu told Peng Shuzhi that if Qu Qiubai had been on the Central Committee in Shanghai, Zheng Chaolin would never have ended up in such a way. ... www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/china/zheng.htm - Cached - Similar On Apr 16, 2010, at 3:34 PM, Tom Cod wrote: Shane: Zhen Duxiu (founder of the May Fourth Movement and then of the Chinese Communist Party) who wound up imprisoned by the Maoist Stalinists for the rest of his life, for one. Well, Wikipedia indicates that he was imprisoned by the Kuomintang, not the CCP, was released and then died during the war in 1942, not that he wasn't a decent and worthy person. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Comintern (The Stalinist-Hoxhaist World Party)
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Concerning Mao, let's not forget murdering over 70 million people. Correct idea? Correct practice? Correct dialectic? According to Chang and Halliday, Mao would add to the 5-year plans, 5-year repression plans, claiming on the eve of each new red terror that 5% (or 10% or 20%) of the Chinese population was reactionary and had to be eliminated. When party officials told him that taking away 60% of peasants' crops would result in mass starvation (38 million people died during the great leap forward and the cultural revolution), he would scream : You cannot obey my orders because of your conscience ? What nonsense ! Conscience is anti-Marxist. Marxism is brutality ! Brutality and more brutality ! or People will not obey us because they love us ! They will obey us because they are terrified of us ! or Teenagers must become accustomed to brutality. They must become the most brutal element in our society.. etc. Correct idea? Correct practice? Correct dialectic? Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Comintern (The Stalinist-Hoxhaist World Party)
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == No. All ideas are not ideologies. Marxism is neither an idea nor an ideology. Capitalism is not an idea, nor is it an ideology. Political economy, capitalism's self-justification, is an ideology, in that it obscures the material functioning, and of, capital. - Original Message - From: Tom Cod tomc...@gmail.com Yeah but aren't all ideas ideological to the extent they are ideas, even the methodology of materialist analysis which itself could be reified into an idealist construct. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Comintern (The Stalinist-Hoxhaist World Party)
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == I think that's right, although capital either as equipment/tools/realty (fixed capital) or money or financial instruments are surely objects, but as you say, ones that are part of the social system we call capitalism On Wed, Apr 14, 2010 at 8:34 AM, Matt Bewig matt2...@gmail.com wrote: Not to be picky, but I would argue that capitalism is not a thing, but a characteristic pattern of social relationships arising from the separation of labor from ownership of the means of production, which are things whose owners pay wages to workers in exchange for their labor power. This is why, I believe, Marxism has always taught that capital is best understood as a relationship rather than as a thing. Matt Bewig Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Comintern (The Stalinist-Hoxhaist World Party)
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == I dunno, he was a principal leader of one of the biggest social revolutions in human history. On Wed, Apr 14, 2010 at 11:01 AM, S. Artesian sartes...@earthlink.netwrote: They sure don't come from Mao's ding dong school of pseudo-dialectics. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Comintern (The Stalinist-Hoxhaist World Party)
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == And do you think that revolution was a product of correct ideas? Of his pontification on dialectics? And his opening to the west in 1972? Correct idea? Correct practice? Correct dialectic? The Cultural Revolution? Correct idea? Correct practice? Correct dialectic? The Great Leap Forward? Correct idea? Correct practice? Correct dialectic? Uncritical support of Sukharno in Indonesia, disarming, more or less, communists in Indonesia prior to the Suharto coup? Correct idea? Corect practice? Correct dialectic? Consciousness being transformed into matter? A universe of change? Geez, I can't think of any more effective way to rob Marx's dialectic of its strength, its specificity in analyzing the concrete social relations of production, than by turning it into a metaphysical philosophy of universal change, which of course is a philosophy of the abstract incapable of dealing with the concrete-- or, short version, turning it into an ideology. In the meantime, FRB has released its Beige Book at: http://www.federalreserve.gov/fomc/beigebook/2010/20100414/default.htm My take: treading water while waiting for the levee to break. - Original Message - From: Tom Cod tomc...@gmail.com Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Comintern (The Stalinist-Hoxhaist World Party)
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Yeah but aren't all ideas ideological to the extent they are ideas, even the methodology of materialist analysis which itself could be reified into an idealist construct. In that regard, I had an interesting encounter with a roommate circa 1981, who was an ostensible follower of Ayn Rand and objectivism when we lived in this house who kept harassing this hippie guy who also lived there. His basis was that this Head wasn't in touch with Objective Reality but it was clear to me both from his ideas and his demeanor that this guy wasn't either, objective reality being a construct of ethereal right wing prejudices in his mind, so I pointed out to him that I didn't know who was more delusional, in fact I thought he was (see this counter, this is reality buddy, not some fucking idea in your head about Ayn Rand, Barry Goldwater or the myths of John Galt). His objectivism was shown later when he became a sucker for the Amway scam (unlike me, who to him lacked motivation to succeed). On Tue, Apr 13, 2010 at 12:52 PM, S. Artesian sartes...@earthlink.netwrote: Here's the problem-- you think the present condition of capitalist America may be the result of Randian libertarian thinking. Marxists will tell you, after telling you Marxism is no ideology, that the libertarian thinking is a result of the codition of capitalist America. Difference between ideology and materialist analysis; small difference perhaps, but it's all the difference. - Original Message - From: Christian cchrist...@bellsouth.net Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/tomcod3%40gmail.com Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Comintern (The Stalinist-Hoxhaist World Party)
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == On 4/12/2010 6:39 PM, S. Artesian wrote: In general, and in particular, I advise staying clear of ideologies. Marx's analysis and it revolutionary impact is highly unideological, highly concrete. Stalinism is a bit more than a personality cult, having a bit more responsibility for what happened to the prospects for the international socialist revolution than, say, Bakuninism, or Ayn Randism. I get to thinking sometimes that the present state of affairs in capitalist America may be the result of Randian libertarian thinking among the ruling class and most of the working class. Also, I speculate that the present sorry state of most of the so-called Left throughout the world is due more to crypto-Bakuninism than to Leninism per se. I think Marx would disagree with your opinion about his work's impact being highly unideological. Marx's work may have practical significance but it never ceases, not for a moment, to be ideological. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Comintern (The Stalinist-Hoxhaist World Party)
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == What you mean crypto-bakunisist? http://www.struggle.ws/anarchism/writers/anarcho/Proyect_reply.htmhttp://www.struggle.ws/anarchism/writers/anarcho/Proyect_reply.html On Mon, Apr 12, 2010 at 4:35 PM, Christian cchrist...@bellsouth.net wrote: Also, I speculate that the present sorry state of most of the so-called Left throughout the world is due more to crypto-Bakuninism than to Leninism per se. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
