To be annoyingly accurate, Marx still held the belief that the west would be the first to revolt and establish socialism, as they had reached the higher reaches of capitalism first. He hadn’t lived to see the contemporary period of imperialism Lenin had, where a bunch of competing developed capitalist nations split the world and warred over it with each other, nor had Lenin lived to see the end-result of that war, one where the US Empire stands unquestionably on top while the rest are vassalized, nor the current stage where the US Empire is crumbling beneath its feet.
In other words, Lenin, Nkrumah, Cheng Enfu, or Michael Hudson would all be strong contenders over Marx for theory on why the west in particular is the biggest obstacle for socialism globally.
He isn’t useless, he often makes good points. He isn’t as good as Lenin, or modern Marxist-Leninists, but his analysis in Super-Imperialism is useful, even with his biases.
madeline pendelton described trotskyism as effectively useless because they’ve never been successful historically and i guess i took that to mean that they were useless in general.
Trotskyism is often just Marxism-Leninism, but anti-AES for nonsense reasons IMO. Some Trotskyist critique of capitalism and imperialism is good still, and Hudson is one of the better ones, though not perfect by any stretch. Trotskyism isn’t a particularly coherent ideology at a theoretical level, and is mostly distinguished by what it opposes.
I really like his books, honestly just got my friend a copy of The Destiny of Civilization. I guess I should warn him it’s got some trot pov, kinda forgot that about Hudson
Yeah I agree. I also think that in terms of the US and the settler colonies it wasn’t until even the 70s and 80s with people like Fanon and Sakai really explaining why settlers and colonists will side with empire over the working class due to the material benefit from empire. While Settlers and Sakai definitely has some issues the description of labor aristocracy stuck with me and explained what I saw when I lived in the US.
The concept of a labor aristocracy existed with Lenin, but Fanon in particular delved into the psychology of nationalist revolt against colonialism and imperialism, and Sakai with why the US Empire in particular has a settler-garrison, essentially. For a more broad concept of the modern labor aristocracy, I like how Nkrumah describes it as exporting of the heightened contradictions of late-stage capitalism from core to periphery. It’s only really recently that conditions in the US Empire have begun to decay enough that the class interests of the working class there have become more genuinely aligned with the working classes abroad. Quantity into quality, etc. etc.
To be annoyingly accurate, Marx still held the belief that the west would be the first to revolt and establish socialism
Marx himself in his research felt Russia could move straight into communism.
In the postscript to the second German edition of Capital – which the author of the article on M. Shukovsky knows, because he quotes it – I speak of “a great Russian critic and man of learning” with the high consideration he deserves. In his remarkable articles this writer has dealt with the question whether, as her liberal economists maintain, Russia must begin by destroying la commune rurale (the village commune) in order to pass to the capitalist regime, or whether, on the contrary, she can without experiencing the tortures of this regime appropriate all its fruits by developing ses propres donnees historiques [the particular historic conditions already given her]. He pronounces in favour of this latter solution. And my honourable critic would have had at least as much reason for inferring from my consideration for this “great Russian critic and man of learning” that I shared his views on the question, as for concluding from my polemic against the “literary man” and Pan-Slavist that I rejected them.
To conclude, as I am not fond of leaving “something to be guessed,” I will come straight to the point. In order that I might be qualified to estimate the economic development in Russia to-day, I learnt Russian and then for many years studied the official publications and others bearing on this subject. I have arrived at this conclusion: If Russia continues to pursue the path she has followed since 1861, she will lose the finest chance ever offered by history to a nation, in order to undergo all the fatal vicissitudes of the capitalist regime.
Not skip straight to what we know of as communism, ie a global system of collectivized production and distribution, just that they could begin what we call now socialism earlier. Marx still believed that the west would be the first to transition to socialism.
Marx still believed that the west would be the first to transition to socialism.
And Marx literally directly contradicts you on this. This letter comes after the publication of Capital, and Marx is explicitly stating the opportunity to not have to become a capitalist country.
Now what application to Russia can my critic make of this historical sketch? Only this: If Russia is tending to become a capitalist nation after the example of the Western European countries, and during the last years she has been taking a lot of trouble in this direction – she will not succeed without having first transformed a good part of her peasants into proletarians; and after that, once taken to the bosom of the capitalist regime, she will experience its pitiless laws like other profane peoples. That is all. But that is not enough for my critic. He feels himself obliged to metamorphose my historical sketch of the genesis of capitalism in Western Europe into an historico-philosophic theory of the marche generale [general path] imposed by fate upon every people, whatever the historic circumstances in which it finds itself, in order that it may ultimately arrive at the form of economy which will ensure, together with the greatest expansion of the productive powers of social labour, the most complete development of man. But I beg his pardon. (He is both honouring and shaming me too much.) Let us take an example.
In several parts of Capital I allude to the fate which overtook the plebeians of ancient Rome. They were originally free peasants, each cultivating his own piece of land on his own account. In the course of Roman history they were expropriated. The same movement which divorced them from their means of production and subsistence involved the formation not only of big landed property but also of big money capital. And so one fine morning there were to be found on the one hand free men, stripped of everything except their labour power, and on the other, in order to exploit this labour, those who held all the acquired wealth in possession. What happened? The Roman proletarians became, not wage labourers but a mob of do-nothings more abject than the former “poor whites” in the southern country of the United States, and alongside of them there developed a mode of production which was not capitalist but dependent upon slavery. Thus events strikingly analogous but taking place in different historic surroundings led to totally different results. By studying each of these forms of evolution separately and then comparing them one can easily find the clue to this phenomenon, but one will never arrive there by the universal passport of a general historico-philosophical theory, the supreme virtue of which consists in being super-historical.
Yes, he is suggesting that they could skip capitalism and enter what we understand to be socialism. He isn’t wagering that they would, just that they could if the commune movement succeded in supplanting the rising capitalist class, which your sources shows that Marx’s expectation was that capitalism will in fact rise. Here:
If Russia continues to pursue the path she has followed since 1861, she will lose the finest chance ever offered by history to a nation, in order to undergo all the fatal vicissitudes of the capitalist regime.
Marx did not think Russia could go straight to what we understand today to be communism, or “upper stage communism” as Marx puts it. Just that they could skip capitalism and begin socialism right from the commune movement.
And you’re entire response was denying this by suggesting Marx only thought this could happen in western, capitalist societies, which is flatly wrong. You aren’t even understanding the contention, nor responding to it.
Ah, I see the problem. I never said Marx said socialism could only begin in western, capitalist societies. Here’s what I actually said:
To be annoyingly accurate, Marx still held the belief that the west would be the first to revolt and establish socialism
Notice how I didn’t say he thought it was only possible in western, capitalist countries. I specifically said that he thought that they would be the first. In the case of the commune movement in Russia, he said they were essentially squandering a very real chance to avoid that same path of development, not that he believed Russia would be first.
In short, the strawman you made of my point is indeed flatly wrong, and if I had said what you thought I said I would agree that it was indeed wrong. But I didn’t make that point.
“The very existence of the Russian commune is now threatened by a conspiracy of powerful interests,” he noted—but if that threat is defeated, it “may become the direct starting-point of the economic system towards which modern society is tending; it may open a new chapter that does not begin with its own suicide.”14
Marx and Engels repeated that argument the next year in their preface to the second Russian edition of the Communist Manifesto.
In Russia we find, face-to-face with the rapidly flowering capitalist swindle and bourgeois property, just beginning to develop, more than half the land owned in common by the peasants. Now the question is: can the Russian obshchina, though greatly undermined, yet a form of primeval common ownership of land, pass directly to the higher form of Communist common ownership? Or, on the contrary, must it first pass through the same process of dissolution such as constitutes the historical evolution of the West?
The only answer to that possible today is this: If the Russian Revolution becomes the signal for a proletarian revolution in the West, so that both complement each other, the present Russian common ownership of land may serve as the starting point for a communist development.
Marx and Engels did not study Russian conditions out of academic curiosity. On the contrary, they believed that Russia, once the heartland of backwardness and reaction, had become “the vanguard of revolutionary action in Europe,” so understanding it was a political necessity. This understanding fueled their consistent support for radical populists who took action against the Tsarist regime, and caused them to distance themselves from people who were limited to analysis and commentary. Their approach was motivated, as Marx wrote in another context, by the conviction that “every step of real movement is more important than a dozen programs.”
I don’t know why you’re continuing to double and triple-down. We agree that Marx believed Russia could have sidestepped capitalist development and gone straight from feudalism to the communalist movement to socialism to communism. However, he did not think this was more likely than revolution in western Europe. He simply saw it as it was, a great but likely squandered opportinity.
In other words, if Marx believed there was a 75% chance the revolution would first come to western Europe, and a 25% chance it would come to Russia, it is correct to say that he believed it would most likely come first to western Europe. It is, therefore, equally incorrect to say that he believed it could only happen in western Europe, as you allege I say (but I have disproven this), as it would be to say that Marx believed it would happen in Russia first (as you appear to be saying).
To be annoyingly accurate, Marx still held the belief that the west would be the first to revolt and establish socialism, as they had reached the higher reaches of capitalism first. He hadn’t lived to see the contemporary period of imperialism Lenin had, where a bunch of competing developed capitalist nations split the world and warred over it with each other, nor had Lenin lived to see the end-result of that war, one where the US Empire stands unquestionably on top while the rest are vassalized, nor the current stage where the US Empire is crumbling beneath its feet.
In other words, Lenin, Nkrumah, Cheng Enfu, or Michael Hudson would all be strong contenders over Marx for theory on why the west in particular is the biggest obstacle for socialism globally.
i’m surprised he’s made the list; i thought he was a useless trotskyist.
He isn’t useless, he often makes good points. He isn’t as good as Lenin, or modern Marxist-Leninists, but his analysis in Super-Imperialism is useful, even with his biases.
madeline pendelton described trotskyism as effectively useless because they’ve never been successful historically and i guess i took that to mean that they were useless in general.
Trotskyism is often just Marxism-Leninism, but anti-AES for nonsense reasons IMO. Some Trotskyist critique of capitalism and imperialism is good still, and Hudson is one of the better ones, though not perfect by any stretch. Trotskyism isn’t a particularly coherent ideology at a theoretical level, and is mostly distinguished by what it opposes.
I really like his books, honestly just got my friend a copy of The Destiny of Civilization. I guess I should warn him it’s got some trot pov, kinda forgot that about Hudson
Yeah I agree. I also think that in terms of the US and the settler colonies it wasn’t until even the 70s and 80s with people like Fanon and Sakai really explaining why settlers and colonists will side with empire over the working class due to the material benefit from empire. While Settlers and Sakai definitely has some issues the description of labor aristocracy stuck with me and explained what I saw when I lived in the US.
The concept of a labor aristocracy existed with Lenin, but Fanon in particular delved into the psychology of nationalist revolt against colonialism and imperialism, and Sakai with why the US Empire in particular has a settler-garrison, essentially. For a more broad concept of the modern labor aristocracy, I like how Nkrumah describes it as exporting of the heightened contradictions of late-stage capitalism from core to periphery. It’s only really recently that conditions in the US Empire have begun to decay enough that the class interests of the working class there have become more genuinely aligned with the working classes abroad. Quantity into quality, etc. etc.
Marx himself in his research felt Russia could move straight into communism.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/11/russia.htm
https://guilfordjournals.com/doi/10.1521/siso.2018.82.1.67
Not skip straight to what we know of as communism, ie a global system of collectivized production and distribution, just that they could begin what we call now socialism earlier. Marx still believed that the west would be the first to transition to socialism.
And Marx literally directly contradicts you on this. This letter comes after the publication of Capital, and Marx is explicitly stating the opportunity to not have to become a capitalist country.
Yes, he is suggesting that they could skip capitalism and enter what we understand to be socialism. He isn’t wagering that they would, just that they could if the commune movement succeded in supplanting the rising capitalist class, which your sources shows that Marx’s expectation was that capitalism will in fact rise. Here:
Marx did not think Russia could go straight to what we understand today to be communism, or “upper stage communism” as Marx puts it. Just that they could skip capitalism and begin socialism right from the commune movement.
And you’re entire response was denying this by suggesting Marx only thought this could happen in western, capitalist societies, which is flatly wrong. You aren’t even understanding the contention, nor responding to it.
Ah, I see the problem. I never said Marx said socialism could only begin in western, capitalist societies. Here’s what I actually said:
Notice how I didn’t say he thought it was only possible in western, capitalist countries. I specifically said that he thought that they would be the first. In the case of the commune movement in Russia, he said they were essentially squandering a very real chance to avoid that same path of development, not that he believed Russia would be first.
In short, the strawman you made of my point is indeed flatly wrong, and if I had said what you thought I said I would agree that it was indeed wrong. But I didn’t make that point.
And he literally contradicts this, not just in this but his other research and letters, and even later editions of the communist manifesto.
https://monthlyreview.org/articles/marx-and-engels-and-russias-peasant-communes/
I don’t know why you’re continuing to double and triple-down. We agree that Marx believed Russia could have sidestepped capitalist development and gone straight from feudalism to the communalist movement to socialism to communism. However, he did not think this was more likely than revolution in western Europe. He simply saw it as it was, a great but likely squandered opportinity.
In other words, if Marx believed there was a 75% chance the revolution would first come to western Europe, and a 25% chance it would come to Russia, it is correct to say that he believed it would most likely come first to western Europe. It is, therefore, equally incorrect to say that he believed it could only happen in western Europe, as you allege I say (but I have disproven this), as it would be to say that Marx believed it would happen in Russia first (as you appear to be saying).