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Richard Seymour wrote: > Another way in which what you've said is a non-sequitur is that there is > no such entity as "groups like the American SWP and the British SWP". > They are apples and oranges as regards their way of organising, their > internal culture, their relationship with others, etc etc. You have > experience of one, and not of the other, and I recommend that you don't > confuse the two. I am not talking about their ideology, obviously. I am talking about their understanding of "Leninism". > The party I joined and have been a member of for over a dozen years now > has /never/ evinced any obessesion with "revolutionary continuity" as > long as I have been around, and we do not pretend to be the "true" > successors to Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky (and Bukharin and Gramsci > and Luxembourg and various other interesting thinkers and > revolutionaries) - at least, if any member of the SWP has ever made such > a silly claim, I trust they are suitably embarrassed by it. John Molyneux, "The authentic Marxist tradition" The authentic Marxist tradition is not difficult to identify. It runs, from Marx and Engels, through the revolutionary left wing of the Second International (especially in Russia and Germany), reaches its height with the Russian Revolution and the early years of the Comintern, and is continued, in the most difficult circumstances possible, by the Left Opposition and the Trotskyist movement in the 1930s. The history and theory of this tradition has been so copiously analysed, defended and, where necessary, criticised by members of our own political tendency, [139] that only a few general observations are required here. It is a tradition whose leading representatives, after its founders, are clearly Lenin, Luxemburg and Trotsky, but they are surrounded by many figures of only slightly lesser stature – Mehring, Zetkin, the early Bukharin, James Connolly, John McLean, Victor Serge, Alfred Rosmer, and so on, as well as hundreds of thousands of working class fighters. It is a tradition which has sought always to unite theory and practice and therefore has never rested content with received wisdom or fixed dogma but has sought to apply Marxism to a changing world. Its most important contributions include theories of the party (Lenin), the mass strike (Luxemburg), permanent revolution (Trotsky), imperialism and the world economy (Luxemburg, Bukharin, Lenin and Trotsky), the counter-revolutionary role of Stalinism (Trotsky), fascism (Trotsky) and the restoration of the activist, dialectical element in Marxist philosophy (Lenin, Gramsci and Lukacs). It has been for most of its existence, with the exception of the revolutionary years of 1917–23, the tradition of a tiny minority. This is unfortunate but unavoidable. The ruling ideas are the ideas of the ruling class and the mass of workers reach revolutionary consciousness only in revolutionary struggle. The permanent co-existence of a mass Marxist movement with capitalism is therefore impossible. Its very presence constitutes a threat to the capitalist order which, if it is not realised, will be removed. It is therefore a tradition whose advances and retreats reflect, in the last analysis, the advances and retreats of the working class. It is not a monolithic tradition, but is characterised by vigorous debate (think of Luxemburg and Lenin on the party and the national question, or Lenin and Trotsky on the nature of the Russian Revolution, or the internal debates of the Bolshevik Party before and after 1917). Nor is it a tradition free from error (witness Trotsky's workers' state analysis of Russia). But it is united by the class basis on which it stands, the world working class [140], and therefore has been in an important sense cumulative, with each Marxist generation building on the achievements of its forebears. It is also our tradition. The traditions which the Socialist Workers Party in Britain and its international affiliates have sought to continue and develop over more than thirty years. Historical circumstances have not yet confronted us with the flames of war, revolution and counter-revolution. These are the conditions which put movements and theories to the test, revealing their inadequacies but also allowing them to achieve their full stature. Consequently, our achievements, theoretical and practical, appear small beer compared with those of our predecessors. Nonetheless, our major theoretical contributions and distinctive political positions – the state capitalist analysis of Stalinist states, the theory of deflected permanent revolution in the Third World, the analysis of the arms economy boom and the new economic crisis, the critique of the trade union bureaucracy – have two things in common: they have been developed as responses to real problems faced by the workers' movement in the struggle to change the world, and they have taken as their starting point and emphasise as their conclusion the fundamental principle of Marxism – the self-emancipation of the working class. In Left Wing Communism Lenin wrote that "correct revolutionary theory ... assumes final shape only in close connection with the practical activity of a truly mass and truly revolutionary movement", and the achievement of that unity is, of course, the major task that faces us in the future. full: http://www.marxisme.dk/arkiv/molyneux/realmarx/index.htm ________________________________________________ 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
