Re: Re: racism, eurocentrism (fwd)
True, Charles, but surely the important thing for a Marxist is a revolution that leads to socialism. And there Marx's contention that it could only occur in an advance capitalist country still holds. Rod Charles Brown wrote: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 04/14/00 05:59PM very true. plus Luxemburg.. Lenin and Trotsky were both champions of arguments against the Second Interntional-Menshevic claim that socialism couldn't take root in 'backward' places. CB: Also, Lenin predicted the revolution in the "East" would be bigger than the revolution in Russia. Today this prediction is valid. CB -- Rod Hay [EMAIL PROTECTED] The History of Economic Thought Archive http://socserv2.mcmaster.ca/~econ/ugcm/3ll3/index.html Batoche Books http://Batoche.co-ltd.net/ 52 Eby Street South Kitchener, Ontario N2G 3L1 Canada
Re: Re: racism, eurocentrism (fwd)
Revolution can "only occur in an advance capitalist country?". Which Marxists subscribe to this notion besides vulgar orthodoxs nowadays? This was *not* Marx's contention. Marx's circumstances were entirely different when he came closer to this idea, but he never explicitly put it. History *falsified* this distortion of Marx when Lenin corrected it in 1917. Both were true internationalists, and they were concerned with extending socialist revolution beyond Europe.. i don't see any eurocentricism with this. I agree with Charles, btw.. Mine True, Charles, but surely the important thing for a Marxist is a revolution that leads to socialism. And there Marx's contention that it could only occur in an advance capitalist country still holds. Rod Charles Brown wrote: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 04/14/00 05:59PM very true. plus Luxemburg.. Lenin and Trotsky were both champions of arguments against the Second Interntional-Menshevic claim that socialism couldn't take root in 'backward' places. CB: Also, Lenin predicted the revolution in the "East" would be bigger than the revolution in Russia. Today this prediction is valid. CB -- Rod Hay [EMAIL PROTECTED] The History of Economic Thought Archive http://socserv2.mcmaster.ca/~econ/ugcm/3ll3/index.html Batoche Books http://Batoche.co-ltd.net/ 52 Eby Street South Kitchener, Ontario N2G 3L1 Canada
Re: Re: racism, eurocentrism (fwd)
I'd say it more this way, Rod. There is no successful socialism without it eventually being a world revolution. But that doesn't mean that the world revolution starts everywhere at the same time. And directly to your point, and proven by the first efforts to build socialism in the 20th Century, even if the revolution first occurs in a "backward" capitalist country, as it did in Russia, that revolution must soon be followed by a revolution in an "advanced" capitalist country; and for the situation right now we might have to say within the G-7 Group, and maybe even the U.S. (given the world configuration now !). For the advanced capitalist bloc can use horrendous warfare based on its advanced mode of destruction, to thwart socialism in the backward countries. I think it was Engels and Marx's presumption that even in an advanced country, the revolution could not last if it did not become a world wide revolution. Anyway, isn't the current circumstance qualitatively different from the 19th Century and early part of the 20th in that inter-capitalist national and inter-imperialist rivalry has turned in to an effective unity, a unified bloc of the "advanced" capitalist countries ? So, to speculate, it may even be that the whole "advanced" bloc would have to be revolutionized, or rather would be in a revolution in that bloc because of its unity. CB Rod Hay [EMAIL PROTECTED] 04/18/00 01:28PM True, Charles, but surely the important thing for a Marxist is a revolution that leads to socialism. And there Marx's contention that it could only occur in an advance capitalist country still holds. Rod Charles Brown wrote: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 04/14/00 05:59PM very true. plus Luxemburg.. Lenin and Trotsky were both champions of arguments against the Second Interntional-Menshevic claim that socialism couldn't take root in 'backward' places. CB: Also, Lenin predicted the revolution in the "East" would be bigger than the revolution in Russia. Today this prediction is valid. CB -- Rod Hay [EMAIL PROTECTED] The History of Economic Thought Archive http://socserv2.mcmaster.ca/~econ/ugcm/3ll3/index.html Batoche Books http://Batoche.co-ltd.net/ 52 Eby Street South Kitchener, Ontario N2G 3L1 Canada
Re: Re: Re: racism, eurocentrism (fwd)
Rod Hay wrote: True, Charles, but surely the important thing for a Marxist is a revolution that leads to socialism. NO! This is to pretend that we access to a crystal ball. The important thing for a Marxist is revolution aimed at socialism. Whether it succeeds in maintaing itself to fit some blueprint is entirely irrelevant. There have been many socialist revolutions: nothing that happened in the Soviet Untion after 1917 or in Vietnam after 1946 or in China after 1949 or in Paris after 1871 can change the fact that these were socialist revoluttions -- and only our distant descendants (at a time when it is only of antiquarian interest) can say whether any of these revolutions failed. I was just reading in Eagleton's *Ideology of the Aesthetic," in which he mentions that Trotsky once claimed, "We Marxists have always lived in tradition" -- We *are* those "failed" revolutions (even those that "failed" before anyone ever heard of them -- and if/when a socialist revolution in one or more of the advanced capitalist countries it will have much to owe to those various "failed" struggles. Carrol And there Marx's contention that it could only occur in an advance capitalist country still holds. Rod Charles Brown wrote: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 04/14/00 05:59PM very true. plus Luxemburg.. Lenin and Trotsky were both champions of arguments against the Second Interntional-Menshevic claim that socialism couldn't take root in 'backward' places. CB: Also, Lenin predicted the revolution in the "East" would be bigger than the revolution in Russia. Today this prediction is valid. CB -- Rod Hay [EMAIL PROTECTED] The History of Economic Thought Archive http://socserv2.mcmaster.ca/~econ/ugcm/3ll3/index.html Batoche Books http://Batoche.co-ltd.net/ 52 Eby Street South Kitchener, Ontario N2G 3L1 Canada
Re: Re: Re: racism, eurocentrism (fwd)
This is closer to what I believe, Charles. But even so. It is likely that a revolution that starts anywhere but the US or Western Europe would quickly be bombed to oblivion. Even in US or Western Europe, it must be a mass democratic upheaval, rather than a small group coup d'etat. Rod Charles Brown wrote: I'd say it more this way, Rod. There is no successful socialism without it eventually being a world revolution. But that doesn't mean that the world revolution starts everywhere at the same time. -- Rod Hay [EMAIL PROTECTED] The History of Economic Thought Archive http://socserv2.mcmaster.ca/~econ/ugcm/3ll3/index.html Batoche Books http://Batoche.co-ltd.net/ 52 Eby Street South Kitchener, Ontario N2G 3L1 Canada
Re: Re: Re: racism, eurocentrism (fwd)
I can not think of any revolution that was not a mass democratic movement, if the meaning of revolution is not conflated with coup-d'etat, of course! Mine it was written: mass democratic movement rather than a small group coup d'etat. Charles Brown wrote: There is no successful socialism without it eventually being a world revolution. But that doesn't mean that the world revolution starts everywhere at the same time.
Re: Re: racism, eurocentrism (fwd)
very true. plus Luxemburg.. Lenin and Trotsky were both champions of arguments against the Second International-Menshevik claim that socialism couldn't take root in 'backward' places. Bill Burgess And on all the evidence, all three of them were wrong, and Martov and company were right... Brad DeLong
