The Soviet Textbook of Marxist Philosophy 1937, prepared by the Leningrad 
Institute of Philosophy is available here.

http://www.directdemocracy4u.org/

under Soviet Library section.

1941_A Textbook of Marxist Philosophy_The Leningrad Institute of.pdf

It is a largish file not converted to text.

For the communist cause.

A. Onal


--- On Thu, 1/4/10, [email protected] <[email protected]> wrote:

> From: [email protected] <[email protected]>
> Subject: Re: [MLL] UAW membership drops/Soviet Textbook
> To: [email protected]
> Date: Thursday, 1 April, 2010, 11:08
> 
> In a message dated 3/31/2010 8:19:22 A.M. Pacific Daylight
> Time, 
> [email protected]_
> (mailto:[email protected]) 
> writes: 
>  
> > I am only curious about what the numerical figure of
> the UAW was  during 
> and just after WW II as this was the "heyday" of
> industrialization and  the 
> beginning of its decline which compared with today's
> stattistics would  
> certainly provide a clear reference of how
> industrialization was was in the  
> process of transformation and giving rise to "emergent
> evolution" as M. 
> Shirokov  explains is dialectical materialism,
> revealed as evolutionary 
> materialism, that  "recognizes the emergence of new
> qualities at different levels."  (A 
>  Textbook of Marxist Philosophy, 1937, M. Shirokov,
> Leningrad Institute of  
> Philosophy) <
>  
>  
> Reply
>  
> The Soviet Textbook of Marxist Philosophy 1937, prepared by
> the Leningrad  
> Institute of Philosophy under the Direction of M. Shirokov
> hold a special 
> place  in the hearts of the Marxists of our generation
> (baby boomers) and the 
> Soviet  proletariat of the late 30s to at least early
> 1980s. The Textbook 
> was reprinted  by the old Communist League July 
> 1974. Perhaps this text was 
> one of those  documents Comrade F580 referred to as
> part of their "40 days 
> and 40 days" of  Marxist study during the period
> leading to the formation of 
> the old Communist  Labor Party. 
>  
> The comrades in the "center" knew what they were doing
> then; they know what 
>  they are doing know. The Marxist study guide F580 was
> given has been 
> improved  many times and exist right know and
> available  on line at 
> _http://www.scienceofsociety.org/_ (http://www.scienceofsociety.org/) .  
> There is also
> a 
> much more comprehensive guide covering the revolutionary
> process  since the 
> French Revolution. 
>  
> The CLP expressed the specific configuration of our working
> class movement  
> in the period of which it was formed. This was the era in
> which the 
> national  liberation movements were closing out a the
> dominant expression of the 
> class  struggle world wide. These national colonial
> movement did not disappear 
> but ran  their historical course. The CLP expressed
> this aspect of the 
> world proletarian  revolution as the colonial
> revolution was expressed amongst 
> the minority and  national minority section of the
> proletariat in the 
> imperial center of capital.  Today a new kind of
> proletarian movement has emerged 
> and revolutionaries must  fight to always expressed
> the specific features of 
> the proletariat in motion.  That is why the CLP was
> liquidated. Marxism was 
> not liquidated, only a  historically spent
> organizational form. 
>  
> Textbook along with "Political Economy" issued by the
> Institute of  
> Economics of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1954 and
> 1955 revised  addition), 
> are rare gems in Marxist exposition and the battle for the
> Marxist  lens. 
> Both books are never to far away from me.  My edition
> of the  Political 
> Economy is 1957 Lawrence & Wishart London. 
>  
> 
> II. Textbook has a historical character, written in a
> period of  political 
> combat against Trotskyism. Stalin’s "Dialectical and
> Historical  
> Materialism," including as a chapter in History of the CPSU
> (B) 1939,   stands heads 
> and tails over any concise exposition of materialist
> dialectics  produced 
> between 1928 and his death. Stalin wrote for the world
> proletariat, in  a way 
> translatable into any language without dilution. His genius
> was  appropriating 
> the living dialectic and then articulating dialectical
> process in  the 
> specific way in which the world proletariat think things
> out. That is why he  
> was the leader of a class rather than enlightened and
> extremely intelligent  
> people. There are thousands, probably millions of
> individuals smarter than us 
>  insurgent Marxists. Some freaking kid comes along and
> revolutionizes the 
> world  with a new and different insight. We are not
> theoreticians of 
> humanity. We are  leaders of a class in combat. 
>  
> "Textbook"  does contain certain historical errors.
> That is to say,  
> "Textbook" contains no theory and political errors
> observable in the period in  
> which it was produced, pre-WW II.  But sixty years
> later, with the advance  of 
> science and the technological revolution, historical
> weaknesses have come 
> to  be pretty obvious. 
>  
> The question of antagonism is one such weakness. The
> exposition of the  
> relationship - dynamic interactivity, between quantity and
> quality giving way 
> to  qualitative change is another. In my mind this
> means Chapter XI "The 
> Nodal Line  of Measurements" - brilliant in itself,
> suffers from the same 
> historical  error.  Page 172 presents an
> exposition of antagonism that I adhered 
> to and  fought for on line only to have to end up
> repudiating it. 
>  
> (I am in the process of moving and everything is packed up
> or I would scan  
> the page and we look at it collectively. My scanner - not
> the book, is 
> packed.  The two classics get hand carried.) 
>  
> The question of antagonism is presented on page 174 as
> "non-antagonistic  
> contradictions" and "antagonistic contradictions." Loyal
> beyond comprehension 
>  Chairman Mao popularized this presentation in his "On
> Contradictions" and 
> "On  the Correct handling of Contradictions among the
> people." 
>  
> "Rally Comrades" approach is different. In social life
> there are no  
> "non-antagonistic contradictions" and "antagonistic
> contradictions." Discovery  of 
> this historical error goes back to the polemics within the
> Sino-Soviet 
> split  and the 1970s struggle for revolutionary
> Marxism in America. In the 
> theory  journal of the Communist Labor Party -
> "Proletariat," an article appeared 
> in  1978, explaining why contradictions cannot become
> antagonistic based on 
>  revisionist ideology. I will not repeat the article, but
> the crux of it 
> was that  either a contradiction was antagonistic in
> its emergence or it was 
> not.  Contradictions do not flip flop back and forth
> between antagonism and  
> non-antagonistic based on human will  or "the
> correcting handling of  
> contradiction among the people." 
>  
> There is only contradiction as self contained motion. In
> class society the  
> contradiction between means of production and relations of
> production are  
> resolved on the basis of antagonism. Antagonism emerges as
> a form of 
> resolution  rooted in the long history of private
> property. Contradiction between 
> nobility  and serf is not resolved by the serf
> defeating the nobility and 
> constituting  itself as ruling class or the dominant
> form of the contradiction. 
> The  contradiction that is nobility and serf is
> incapable of resolution 
> based on the  internal poles constituting the
> contradiction. 
>  
> A new quality must appear in the society of the serf and
> nobility that is  
> birthed in antagonism to both, as both express old means
> and relations of  
> production.  An easy way to say this in standard
> English is that a quality  
> must emerge external to and existing outside  the
> feudal property relation  
> and its superstructure.. Such a new quality was the
> emergence of a new  
> contradiction express as bourgeois and proletariat, as
> these new classes  
> expressed new means and relations of production. 
>  
> "Rally Comrades" presents the proposition as thus: the
> incremental  
> (quantitative) addition of a new quality into an existing
> process is the basis  for 
> qualitative change. Quantity does not simply get "bigger"
> and burst the  
> "seams" of an existing process demanding qualitative
> change. The quantitative  
> addition of a new quality into an existing process (system)
> takes place  
> incrementally or quantitatively. At a certain stage in this
> incremental  
> additions of a new quality, a nodal point - line, is
> reached where the process  
> leaps forward and a new qualitative definition is formed. 
>  
> Comrade F580, loyal to a fault, basically writes what I
> believed for much  
> of my life concerning dialectics and the relations between
> quantity and 
> quality.  In fact the old Communist League taught both
> of us in the same way. 
> Nelson, at  the heart of the CL and CLP inherited his
> outlook, as did all 
> communist of his  generation, from the Textbook. Then
> Nelson came to grips with 
> American history  and the revolution in the means of
> production taking place 
> in his lifetime. 
>  
> III. 
>  
> "Antagonism and contradiction are by not means the same.
> "Under socialism  
> the fist will vanish, the second will remain." 
>  
> The second is contradiction. 
>  
> "If we remove the private property character from
> productive forces," Lenin 
>  may have pondered, "the contradiction between means of
> production and 
> relations  of production," (which express the
> spontaneous development of means 
> of  production colliding with old relations
> consolidate based on an old  
> technology)  "society development and leaps will no
> longer have to be  resolved 
> as nullification and annihilation of a property form." 
>  
> The Soviet Textbook then quotes Marx on page 175. 
>  
> "It is only in the order of things." says Marx "in which
> there will be no  
> more classes and class antagonism, that social evolutions
> will cease to be  
> political revolution." 
>  
> Contradiction expressed as the unity and struggle of means
> of production  
> and relations of production will exist after the
> establishment of communism 
> and  even its higher phase. This contradiction will
> not require a form of 
> resolution  demanding the annihilation of a class of
> property holders. 
>  
> "Antagonism and contradiction are by not means the same.
> Under socialism  
> the fist will vanish, the second will remain." (Lenin) 
>  
> WL. 
>  
> 
> .
> 
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