Ralph Dumain At 05:47 PM 3/28/2006 -0500, Charles Brown wrote: >CB: Marxism is fundamentally, before it gets to classes, concerned with >human material survival.
How can there be any distinction, unless you mean before there is class society, historically there were classless subsistence societies? I don't even understand this assertion. ^^^ CB; That's right. For the first 200,000 years of the existence of human society it was a classless society. Human mateial survival was achieved through a mode of production that did not have exploiting and exploited classes. In later years, Engels put a footnote in the first sentence of _The Communist Manifesto_ noting that it is the _written_ history that is a history of class struggles. Before that history is not a history of class struggles. ^^^ > In a section titled "History: Fundamental Condtions" they say: > >... life involves before everything else eating and drinking, a habitation , >clothing and many other things. The first historical act is thus the >production of material life itself. And indeed this is an historical act a >fundamental condition of all history, which today, as thousands of years >ago, must daily and hourly be fulfilled merely in order to sustain human >life." This quotation, however, does not support your contention. ^^^^^ CB: How not ? ^^^^^^ >With nuclear weapons , all human life is threatened. Nuclear war would mean >the common ruin of the contending classes. Averting nuclear war takes >priority , in Marxist logic, over even class struggle, to the extent that >class struggle is so sharp as to threaten nuclear holocaust. I'm well aware of Soviet propaganda. But this is not even what's in question. There's no real marxist logic here, though 'logic', or elementary common sense, there is. ^^^^^ CB: Yea, it's Marxist logic in that Marxism is materialism, and materialism sees perpetuating biological existence as a premise for everything else. Gorbachev understands materialism. > The main front of the class struggle during the existence of the Soviet > Union, was the >"Cold" War. I'm not sure what this means. ^^^^ CB: Let me explain it to you. ^^^^^^ A tautology? ^^^^^ CB: The subject is consistent with the predicate ? ^^^^^ I mean the Cold War was used as pretext for everything from counterinsurgencies against third world liberation movements and internal class struggles, as well as suppression of domestic dissent. But your phraseology suggests that the class struggle against capitalism was defined by the existence of the USSR as the main force on "our side." ^^^^^ CB: Sort of . The class struggle is international. The main advance of the worldwide workers' struggle was the Russian Revolution, the Soviet Union and the other socialist revolutions. So, imperialism confrontation with the Soviet Union and the other socialist was a main front in the class struggle, the SU being on the working class side of that. ^^^^^^ But even as a counterforce to western imperialism, the USSR was certainly not on our side, anymore than it was on the side of the Eastern European proletariat. ^^^ CB: Disagree. ^^^^ >So, I think Gorbachev had the better Marxist-materialist analysis at the >level of universal human values. At this level, Marxism is "one" with >"general humanitarian" values. You can't be serious. ^^^ CB: Maybe you're still not sure what this means. ^^^^^ Gorbachev provided no analysis at all. ^^^^ CB: Maybe you didn't read all the analysis he did in his enunciation of universal human values when he was General Secretary. ^^^^ Sure, any peasant knows if there's nuclear war, that's the end of the world. ^^^ CB: Peasant's are smarter than capitalist governments on this one. ^^^^^^ The point, however, is that the ideology of 'general humanitarian values' is not only an abdication of your Marxism-Leninism ^^^^^ CB: Whoops. You didn't mean Marxism-Leninism , did you ? As in the Soviet Union's "propaganda" ? Anyway, no it is Marxism at the level of fundamental materialism. Materialism looks at material and physiological survival first. So, it is a profound _affirmation_ of Marxism-Leninism. So, you subscribe to Marxism-Leninism ? ^^^^^ ^^^^^^ --which doesn't break my heart necessarily, but really the abdication of any serious analysis of anything. ^^^^ CB: Are you serious ? ^^^^^^ If the Soviet system had protected general humanitarian values all along, which it didn't, then an addendum counterposing them to the rhetoric of class struggle would have been superfluous. ^^^^^ CB: The Soviet Union protected quite a lot of humantarian values during its time. ^^^^^^ Marxism-Leninism expressed values in a dontrinaire, proprietary (Ironically) fashion, hence its collapse meant the revelation of its own provincialism and the need to expand its scope. Hence the rhetoric. The split between the Gorbachevites and the hard-line Stalinists also revealed the fault-lines of the western communist parties, including the CPUSA. Both sides were bankrupt. The Stalinist wing was killed off by its own dogmatic rigidity. But deep down, Stalinists aren't very different from social democrats. Both tendencies were dialectically fused within the western CPs anyway. ^^^^ CB: However, the Marxist-Leninists practiced Marxist values in the real world more than your Marxist grouping. _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list [email protected] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
