Being not of the old list members I would very much appreciate being told the source of this extremely interesting document. Thanks in advance. Stephen Steiger steger2...@centrum.cz ______________________________________________________________ > Od: cdb1...@prodigy.net > Komu: marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu, a-l...@lists.econ.utah.edu > Datum: 25.06.2009 17:29 > Předmět: [Marxism-Thaxis] An anti-imperialist perspective >
Date: Tues, Jun 23 2009 12:45 pm by Julio The passages below are from an old (mid 1970s) document. Some list members will recognize the author. If you don't and are interested in locating the source, please e-mail me off-list. (Between * designates Italics from the author. Between _ designates my emphasis. Unbracketed ellipsis ... indicating quote discontinuity are the author's while bracketed ones [...] are mine.) IMHO, this is one of the most thought-provoking works in the classical Marxist tradition ever written. In the best intellectual tradition of Marx and Engels, the author grappled deeply and seriously with the existing conditions and ideologies, acknowledging their rationales, following their logic to the point where they forced him to a deeper and broader understanding of the issues. Like Marx's best works, it shows readers how a an engaged mind, committed to the struggle, sorts things out. I read it fresh in 1979, almost as soon as its Spanish version became available in Mexico. The first few chapters were divulged first in a short-lived Marxist journal named Teoría y Política published by a group of South American exiles. The entire work followed under Alfaguara. I re-read it a few times as an undergrad student in Cuba and discussed it at length with friends from -- I believe -- at least four continents, although I can now see how one-sided my concerns were. While some friends got really agitated about some of the -- IMO rather subsidiary -- propositions advanced in the work, some rendered irrelevant by subsequent developments (the bulk of the work is devoted to a critique of the Soviet socialist formation), the passages below taken on their own have maintained a large measure of relevance (not necessarily validity) all along. The tension at the center of the quoted section below has been splitting Marxists since Marx & Engels's times (e.g. the Irish and Slavic question). On a formal level, the issue reappeared in the late 19th century/early 20th century chasm between the early social-democrats (Lenin, Plekhanov, etc.) and the narodniki. (As shown below, on this matter, Lenin himself experienced a 180 degree turn over his political life. Just keep in mind the early concerns Lenin had about proving the political relevance of the social democracy in Russia in the light of Russia's backwardness. The young Lenin wasn't emphasizing the lack of capitalist development in Russia, but precisely the opposite. Naturally, with his responsibilities as head of the Soviet state, in the middle of a civil war, after a devastating world war, things looked quite differently.) At a deeper level, though, the controversy had intrinsic intellectual roots in Russian history (and other "backward" places), dating back to the conflict between the liberal modernizers and the ancestors of the populists. In their historical essays, E.H. Carr and Isaac Deutscher discussed the matter in some detail. Rosa Luxemburg clashed with the Polish, Galician, and Baltic nationalists on this very issue. Etc. My decision to post these passages in extenso is, of course, prompted by the current debate re. the Mousavi-Ahmedinajad conflict. IMO, the ideological cloak of the anti-imperialist struggle is secondary. The key thing is the social character of the movement and its *objective logic* (if I'm allowed to use that old Hegelian formula). It is of course twisted, ironic and shameful, historically speaking, that the global discredit of Marxism and -- more tragically and decisively -- the mechanical suppression of Marxists and socialists in central Asia and the Middle East (including here repression conducted by the very forces that now appear to lead the anti-imperialist resistance, blemishes and all) have limited its role in the local anti-imperialist struggles, which have turned instead to the ideological straight-jacketed form of political Islam. However, secondary doesn't mean unimportant. If the strictures of the religious integument have dulled beyond a point the anti-imperialism it portends, all bets are off. In that case, the triumph of the popular movement excited by Mir Hossein Mousavi or the aftermath may turn out to be the necessary precondition for a better political framework for the anti-imperialist struggle in Iran. I'd think that the risk has diminished with time, but history shows (including the history of Iran!) that even a large nation has difficulty escaping subordination to imperialism. It's not clear to me from my distance and ignorance whether this is already the case in Iran. It does disturb me to see the excited support that the Mousavi movement has elicited among the always suspect Western establishment. But that's not decisive. I have no answer to the vexing question. The matter is complex. No kidding. The left in, say, the West doesn't need to settle it as a precondition to unite in the local struggles ahead. Nothing human should be alien to us, but too much rancor in disputes that do not strictly pertain to our present and immediate circumstance strike me as a cop out. I'm hoping the quotes below highlight the inherent difficulty of the questions involved and humble us all a little. My mind on this has shifted and will continue to shift. Back and forth. And shifts on this tend to be wide pendulum swings, since many important conclusions follow from each alternative stance. But, "Only dead minds don't oscillate," wrote Isaac Deutscher. For example, during the 1990s, I took some distance from the reasoning below. Stuff related to my own personal trajectory, in Mexico in the early 1990s (after the Soviet Union failed), and then in the U.S. under Clinton. At the time, I remember discounting heavily Chomsky's categorical views on the militaristic slant of U.S. capital with regards to foreign and domestic policy. (In fairness, I'm referring to things Chomsky wrote prompted by the late 1980s Persian Gulf war, which I read with the benefit of the mid 1990s hindsight.) Assuming the inherently antagonistic form in which capitalism dissolves old conditions and introduces new ones, I thought (and still think) that the "neoliberal" globalization offered Mexico and other nations in Latin America a mixed bag that included opportunities for reducing international inequality. It wasn't automatic, but it was possible. In my mind, it was something like a recurrence of the 1850s-1910s expansion of Western capitalism. In Mexico, in the early 1990s, the whole thing appeared as a *political* swing so strong that -- in my thinking -- it had exhaust or weaken itself considerably, as a result of its own inherent contradictions, before the left could have a *political* clear shot. That, of course, didn't imply abandoning all struggles, particular the economic, day-to-day fork-and-knife fights for marginal improvements in the workers' working and living conditions, but the *political* scope of the struggle had to be downgraded or risk a worse backlash. (Clearly, Chavez took the exact opposite approach. He went for the political jugular in 1992. At the time and for a good while, his Quixotic gesture looked foolish to me. But, as history twists and turns, it turned out to be a learning experience for him and Venezuela, without which he and his country wouldn't be were they are now.) Looking at things from the perspective of the mid 1990s, it seemed to me that the vitality shown by the U.S. non-military economy and the whole thrust of the "neoliberal" globalization agenda (as opposed to the "neoconservatism" of the early 2000s) weren't entirely consistent with the view of a predominantly militaristic, parasytic U.S. (and, if I remember well Chomsky's remarks, British) economy. I remember thinking (and I believe I may have posted something about it on one of the usual lists) that we faced a sort of historical bifurcation, where the world train was being switched from the Lenin Track (1914-1989) back to the Marx Track (1850s-1914s). It was either my feverish imagination or the track switch prove not to be very robust since, with the selection of W and the U.S. reaction to 9/11, the train tripped back to the old Lenin Track. Anyway, with time, my views have become more mixed, which doesn't make them very amenable to a small set of categorical statements. Still, I can try to schematize my mental framework in a couple of sweeping statements: At the present time, the biggest danger ahead for humans doesn't arise from environmental decay or turbulent financial markets or even nuclear proliferation per se. These are, no doubt, serious dangers. But, ultimately, the biggest source of trouble lies in the abismal, persistent levels of *inequality*, especially (though not exclusively) international inequality. Imperialism, which continues to provide the current historical form of global capitalism, is an epi-phenomenon of international inequality. If the available data are to be trusted, judged according to this rough criteria, the main forces of progress in the last four or five decades have been Southeast Asia, China, India, and more recently Russia and some parts of Latin America. And the main forces of the historical reaction have remained virtually the same since colonial times: Western Europe and its offshots in other continents. Environmental decay and nuclear weapons are a problem mainly because they are embedded in a context of deeply rooted international inequality, which makes them explosive. Of course things are not so simple, but if I were to put my thought in a simple formula, I'd say that anything that contributes to reducing international inequality is very good and anything that helps increase international inequality is very bad. To which I add the Lincoln Question for reasons that will become obvious below: Whatever historical development is out there, Is it *of, by, and for* the working people? If the answer is no, then it winds up contributing to increasing inequality. And vice versa. (For limitations to the use of the Lincoln Criterion, see my speech at the NY Left Labor Project Collective on 6/11/09.) This is, in short, the rationale of my anti-imperialism. * * * The shifting of the main line of battle from the internal to the external contradictions of imperialism, which is reflected in the slogan "world countryside against the world town," perhaps dubious, but still highly significant, is of the greatest importance for a definition of all other positions in revolutionary programmes today. We must realize that _this was not expected by the classical Marxist tradition_. It has theoretical as well as practical implications for the Marxist conception of history. [...] It was only realistic of Marx to conclude in 1853 that the British rule in India would objectively tackle the task of creating the material foundations for a Western, i.e. capitalist, social order. The question was not "whether the English had a right to conquer India, but whether we are to prefer India conquered by the Turk, by the Persian, by the Russian, to India conquered by the Briton." For while "there cannot ... remain any doubt that the misery inflicted by the British on Hindustan is of an essentially different and _infinitely more intensive kind_ than all Hindustan had to suffer before," England had still brought about "the greatest, and, _to speak the truth_, the only *social* revolution ever heard of in Asia." "The question is, can mankind fulfil its destiny without a fundamental revolution in the social state of Asia?" But because the history of British rule in India scarcely displayed anything beyond the destruction of the traditional social structure, "The Indians will not reap the fruits of the new elements of society scattered among them by the British bourgeoisie till in Great Britain itself the now ruling classes shall have been supplanted by the industrial proletariat, or till the Hindus themselves shall have grown strong enough to throw off the English yoke altogether." This last mentioned alternative, however, is evidently uncharacteristic of Marx's future perspective, and the outcome of the Indian uprising a few years later proved him right in this. It was also without any further consequences that Engels made a more favourable assessment of the chances of the Taiping movement in China, fighting as this did with more suitable methods. The two friends ultimately held firmly to the general rule with which Marx ended his concluding essay on India: "When a great social revolution shall have mastered the results of the bourgeois epoch, the market of the world and the modern powers of production, and subjected them to the common control of the most advanced peoples (*sic*), only then will human progress cease to resemble that hideous pagan idol, who would not drink the nectar from the skulls of the slain." For Russia, for example, Marx held that such a revolution in the West would actually provide the possibility of a comprehensive social reorganization along the lines of the Chinese people's communes of today. The traditional village communities were to join together on a regional basis, and to take over and apply the industrial achievements of a now socialist West on this broader scale. The same basic position is repeated in Engels' final statement of 1894 on the prospects of the Russian revolution: "However, it is not only possible but inescapable that once the proletariat wins out and the means of production pass into common ownership among the West-European nations, the countries which have just managed to make a start on capitalist production, and where tribal institutions or relics of them are still intact, will be able to use these relics of communal ownership and the corresponding popular customs as a _powerful_ means of considerably shortening their advance to socialist society.... But an inevitable condition of this is the example and active support of the hitherto capitalist West.... And this applies not only to Russia but to all countries at the pre-capitalist stage of development. However, this will be relatively easiest done in Russia, where a part of the native population has already assimilated the intellectual fruits of capitalist development..." The overthrow of Tsarist despotism would "also give a fresh impulse to the labour movement in the West, creating for it new and better conditions for struggle and thereby advancing the victory of the modern industrial proletariat, a victory without which present-day Russia, whether on the basis of the community or of capitalism, cannot achieve a socialist transformation of society." History has furnished a decisive corrective to this original Marxist prognosis. While the capitalist order is already in a third phase of its internal contradictions, _and *moving* in them instead of succumbing to them_, as Marx predicted for its first phase, and Lenin conclusively for its second, many peoples in the precapitalist countries have set out on their own road towards socialism. The proletarian revolution in the West did not take place; and its appearance in the form previously anticipated has become ever more improbable. The nature and character of a revolution are only determined up to a certain point by the programme and heroism of its vanguard, who can only achieve the first steps. The Soviets of 1905 and 1917 continued the Paris Commune, but after them this continuity was broken. Today, adherence to the hope of a classical socialist overthrow in the West must lead to _a pessimism that is actually groundless_. _The revolutions in Russia and China, in the Balkans and in Cuba, have probably contributed not less but rather more to the overall progress than the proletarian revolutions hoped for in the West could have done_. Marxism, in other words, set out on a different journey, via Russia to Asia, Africa and Latin America, a route associated with the names of Lenin, Mao Tse-Tung, Nkrumah and Castro. _It represents today something incomparably greater and more diverse than in the era of Marx_, and also in regard to its significance for Europe. It is not a question of its "purity," but rather that it can simply no longer be monopolized as a tool for study and for changing social realities. (The variety of these must be stressed, so as to understand _the differentiation_ of Marxist thought as something *positive*.) Historical materialism itself prohibits us from judging whether conditions in the Soviet Union, People's China, etc. realize "authentic Marxism," though it can explain why the official representatives of the various tendencies struggle for sole possession of the truth. What is authentic is not the letter of theory, but the historical process. If Leninism already represents in its theory, and especially in its practice, a considerable "revision" of the orthodox doctrine, that is the great merit of the founder of the Soviet Union. Lenin's view of the revolutionary possibilities of the Asian peoples was rendered more acute right from the beginning by his understanding of the semi-Asiatic character of social relations in Russia. As early as 1900, when the Russian reactionary and liberal press were accompanying Tsarist participation in the imperialist police action against the so-called Boxer rebellion in China with a campaign of hatred against the barbarian Chinese, those enemies of culture and civilization, Lenin stressed, as he was repeatedly to do later, the similarity of the social problems facing the peoples of Russia and China: "The Chinese people suffer from the same evils as those from which the Russian people suffer -- they suffer from an Asiatic government that squeezes taxes from the starving peasantry and that suppresses every aspiration towards liberty by military force; they suffer from the oppression of capital, which has penetrated into the Middle Kingdom." The term "Asiatic" here describes a specific form of relations of domination. In the same sense, Lenin was later to write: "In very many and very essential respects, Russia is undoubtedly an Asian country and, what is more, one of the most benighted, medieval and shamefully backward of Asian countries." Against the background of this historical affinity, he observed how the Russian revolution of 1905 was followed by very similar events in Turkey, Persia and above all in 1911 in China, while India and Indonesia also began to stir. There could be no doubt, Lenin concluded in 1908, that the European policies of robbery and oppression would steel the Asian peoples for a victorious struggle against their oppressors. The Russian revolution had *two* great international allies, one in Europe (the modern proletariat) and one in Asia. In 1913 he gave an article the significant title "Backward Europe and Advanced Asia," and wrote earlier the same year: "The awakening of Asia and the beginning of the struggle for power by the advanced proletariat of Europe are a symbol of the new phase in world history that began early this century." If the mention of Asia was initially contingent, it indicated none the less the beginning of a shift of emphasis. In considering the historical destiny of Marxism in the same year 1913, Lenin emphasized with respect to the new "source of great world storms opened up in Asia": "It is in this era of storms and their 'repercussions' in Europe that we are now living.... Certain people who were inatentive to the conditions preparing and developing the mass struggle were driven to despair and to anarchism by the lengthy delays in the decisive struggle against capitalism in Europe.... The fact that Asia, with its population of eight hundred million, has been drawn into the struggle for these same European ideals should inspire us with optimism and not despair.... After Asia, Europe has also begun to stir...." Characteristic of Lenin's position is his reference to the way that the philosophical and political slogans of the anti-imperialist liberation struggle derive from the ideals of the bourgeois and the proletarian revolution in Europe. The new role of Asia in no way meant that "light shines only from the mystic, religious East." "No, quite the opposite. It means that the East has definitely taken the Western path," which Russia had itself embarked upon. At least at the theoretical level, Lenin continued to the last to hold the conviction that "the social revolution in Western Europe is maturing before our eyes." But after 1917, while the Bolsheviks _waited passionately_ for the outbreak of the revolution in the West, and in Germany in particular, which was to come to the relief of the Russian October and secure its future, a different orientation came more and more to the fore. In November 1919 Lenin developed the following idea in addressing representatives of the Communist organizations of the East: since the imperialists would not allow the European revolutions to take their course easily and swiftly, and since the "old socialist compromisers are enlisted on the side of the bourgeoisie," "the socialist revolution will not be solely or chiefly a struggle of the revolutionary proletarians in each country against their bourgeoisie -- no -- it will be a struggle of all the imperialist-oppressed colonies and countries, of all dependent countries, against international imperialism." The programme of the Russian Communist Party was based on the union of the civil war in the advanced countries with wars of national liberation. "It is self-evident that _final_ victory can be won _only_ by the proletariat of _all the advanced countries_ of the world, and we, the Russians, are beginning the work which the British, French or German proletariat will consolidate. But we see" -- and _this is a completely new formulation_ -- "that they will not be victorious without the aid of the working people of all the oppressed colonial nations, first and foremost, of Eastern nations. We must realize that the transition to communism cannot be accomplished by the vanguard alone." The task Lenin proposes, therefore, is to "translate the true communist doctrine, which was intended for the Communists of the more advanced countries, into the language of every people," and "our Soviet Republic must now muster all the awakening peoples of the East and, together with them, wage a struggle against international imperialism." In March 1923, when he wrote his final testamentary essay, "Better Fewer, but Better," Lenin took a decisive step further. "Shall we be able," he asked, "to hold on with our small and very small peasant production, and in our present state of ruin, until the West-European capitalist countries consummate their development towards socialism?" After surveying the contradictions between the rich imperialist states, he reached the conclusion that "the outcome of the struggle will be determined by the fact that Russia, India, China, etc., account for the overwhelming majority of the population of the globe," a majority schooled and trained for the struggle by capitalism itself. He then indicated what he saw as the basic contradiction and central task of the epoch introduced by October: "*To ensure our existence until the next military conflict between the counter-revolutionary imperialist West and the revolutionary and nationalist East, between the most civilized countries of the world and the Oriental backward countries which, however, comprise the majority, this majority must become civilized.* We, too, lack enough civilization to enable us to pass straight on to socialism, although we do have the political requisites for it." Two months earlier he had written: "If a definite level of culture is required for the building of socialism... why cannot we begin by first achieving the prerequisites for that definite level of culture _in a revolutionary way_, and *then*, with the aid of the workers' and peasants' government and the Soviet system, proceed to overtake the other nations?" In this way, therefore, Lenin derived from the enforced circumstances which the Russian revolution had arrived at by its isolation the programmatic basis of subsequent development. For the heroes of the Second International, who charged the Bolsheviks with violating "Marxist orthodoxy," and their imitators of today, Lenin offered the following consideration: "Our European philistines never even dream that the subsequent revolutions in Oriental countries, which possess much vaster populations and a much vaster diversity of social conditions, will undoubtedly display _even greater distinctions_ than the Russian revolution." What singular Leninists, then, are those who would today play schoolmaster to the Chinese revolution, the revolution of a good quarter of humanity! Marx only touched in passing on the question as to how the non-European peoples were to appropriate the achievements of the epoch of private property, i.e. the wealth of Europe with its industrial preconditions. It seems that he did not realize the full implications of either the tremendous material gap or the gap at the level of the subjective factors, the historical human types, between Europe and the colonized sector of the globe. The characteristic drama of the present, which we denote with the abstract term "development," would have been no less a problem if the hopes of the European socialists had been fulfilled -- on the contrary! Both Hegel and Marx liked to refer to the unexpected, unforeseen breakthrough of a historical necessity as the "cunning of reason." Should we not see such a cunning of reason at work in the fact that the masses of the "Third World" have anticipated the revolt of Europe? The peoples of the backward countries today are involved in a race with catastrophe, a catastrophe which could claim far more victims than the molten iron of the Russian revolution -- and needless victims at that. Revolutions such as the Russian and the Chinese are the precondition for victory over hunger. One of the earliest ideas of Marxism, that the "overthrowing" class, or the formerly oppressed classes, needs the revolution _as its own action_, in order _to "rid itself of all the muck of ages and become fitted to found society anew_," is _nowhere more valid_ than for those doubly oppressed peoples whom capitalism found at a lower stage of social development. What they need is not bread from Canada, but rather bread from Asia, from Africa, and for this they need a new form of life, similarly non-capitalist to that in the Soviet Union and in China. How else are the colonized peoples to overcome their inferiority complex, to find on a massive scale the new consciousness and self-consciousness required for their ascent, except through a revolutionary liberation of their own? The external conditions for this may be favoured by the existence of other socialist powers, but the popular masses of the Southern hemisphere can _in no case_ be freed from outside. What they initially require most of all, for their material reconstruction is _a strong state_, often one that is in many respects despotic, in order really to overcome the inherited inertia. And such a state power can only draw its legitimation and authority from a revolution, and thus put a stop to the decay and corruption characteristic of the old "Asiatic mode of production." This state power *must* be in charge of any "development aid" that comes from outside with technical knowledge, and is therefore always inclined to fall into the old colonial manner. There are very few people like Norman Bethune. That is why state power resulting from liberation must be established _before_ any European advisers proclaim a "*Communauté*." It must take the same attitude towards advisers of this kind as the young Soviet power did to bourgeois specialists. And if such advisers are now coming from the Soviet Union itself, as well as from other countries tied to it, the same arrangements must apply to them too, until they have given proof of their internationalist solidarity and fraternity. For the history of the liberation movement since the Second World War has proved irrefutably that the pace and the effect of emancipation for the masses depend on the achievement of precisely this state of affairs. Let us try and imagine what the peoples still under pre-capitalist conditions and colonial exploitation would have obtained if the West European proletariat at the turn of the century had anticipated the liberating revolutions outside of Europe. Can we assume that a spirit of human solidarity, the practice of equality towards all who bear the human countenance, would have immediately and unreservedly been achieved? The working classes of Europe are objective participants in colonialism, and this was never without its ideological effects. At the Stuttgart Congress of the Socialist International in 1907, a clause in the draft resolution that the Congress did not condemn all colonial policy on principle, since under socialism this could have a civilizing effect, was rejected by only a narrow majority. Lenin also reported how the attempt was made in the Congress's commission on the colonial question "to ban the immigration of workers from backward countries (coolies -- from China, etc.)." "This is the same spirit of aristocratism," Lenin observed, "that one finds among workers in some of the 'civilized' countries, who derive certain advantages from their privileged position, and are, therefore, inclined to forget the need for international class solidarity." The immediate, trade-union interests of the Western working classes, who would have developed a considerable need to catch up, both materially and culturally, and would not have been as driven to solidarity from the foreign policy standpoint as was the poor Soviet republic, could have been kept on reins only by the most extreme revolutionary consciousness and selflessness. The bureaucracies of the social-democratic parties and trade unions, however, tended rather to cultivate colonialist prejudices. For the sharpened awareness of the present-day reader, even Frederick Engels' position is not completely free from a certain "expert" European arrogance, as can be seen for example in many of his articles on the Indian insurrection of 1857-9. More than a few authorities of the Western labour movement would have had a good try at teaching the "savage" and "half-civilized" peoples how to behave, and after the first unsuccessful attempts to spread a Protestant work ethic in Asia and Africa, withdrawn angrily like the righteous guardian from his ungrateful ward. The labour bureaucracies were all inclined, at the very least, to an _educational colonialism_. And nothing is more likely than that the peoples affected would have been forced to turn against such hypothetical socialist governments -- even if under somewhat more favourable conditions than before, and with a European left-socialist minority on their side. Above all, we must repeat once more that _these peoples have an unconditional *need to rebel for themselves*, if they are to reshape their society_. They must begin by taking a cultural distance from Europe, even while assimilating its technical achievements. For the export of European civilization is _colonialist to the roots, even if pursued by a workers' government_. Neither Russia nor China would have managed to attack their own problems of development at such pace, with such an unleashing of the human productive forces, if they had not been forced to solve them in revolutionary self-preservation against a hostile environment. If a socialist or communist order, as we have since had to realize, cannot be based on material preconditions that are merely provincial in character, then _the task of overcoming the lack of civilization which Lenin referred to must be fulfilled by the revolutionary peoples themselves, by creating the labour discipline they need in the course of their struggle, this being the major world-historical task in preparing for socialism_. _*With the revolutions in Russia and China, with the revolutionary process in Latin America, in Africa and in India, humanity is taking the shortest route to socialism*_. There, in the "East," the real wretched of this earth have awakened. The role of the working class, who gave the decisive impulse to the Russian revolution and who obviously have a task in Europe, must be seen afresh in this context. Moreover, even their revolution in Europe would not have led directly to the socialism for which Marx hoped, but far more probably to the phenomenal form so familiar to us, which Bakunin already feared from the look of the Prusso-German Social-Democrats and the style of leadership in the International. Time and again, our bureaucratic centralism is explained in terms of Russian backwardness, though _in fact_ this is only responsible for certain excesses. In so far as the hierarchichal apparatus of functionaries of the workers' organizations is the potential state machine, what this is preparing is not a new Paris Commune, but rather a state monopoly freed from capitalism. We can envisage the state monopoly tendency better, a tendency which is coming to form the object of the liberation struggle the world over, if we compare this modern transition period towards classless society with the ancient economic despotism which was the predominant form of entry into class society. This is a further reason why the history and present developmental tendencies in the East are of particular interest to us. We shall see that the character of this epoch, as it develops into the "conflict between the counter-revolutionary imperialist West and the revolutionary and nationalist East," is the present consequence of all former world history. On the essential points, it needs only the further development of the premises already provided by Marx and Engels in their materialist overview of historical evolution. _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis