Leninism
Amilcar Cabral's theory of class suicide and revolutionary socialism - Tom Meisenhelder
"The notion of 'class suicide' by the petty-bourgeois leadership at first glance may sound unrealistic but it is much less so than the most popular competing images of socialist revolution in the Third World..."
This is a most difficult time for revolutionary socialists. The rapid collapse and disintegration of the Soviet Union, the electoral defeat of the Sandinistas, the many problems of Cuba, and the demise of revolutionary Marxism-Leninism in Africa all force a serious questioning of basic ideas and strategies. It is a time when global capital seems to rule nearly unchallenged throughout the world.
The state and counter-revolution - Negation
A 1972 article by Negation, in the United States debunking the myths of Leninism and the New Left in particular.
They confront the fact that state-capitalism, the state-management of production and society, the rule over society by the class of the state, the bureaucracy, is still almost universally confused with "communism" as Marx defined it, due in part to the conspiracy of silence and distortion which unites the capitalists of both "East" and "West".
Worlds apart: socialism in Marx and in early Bolshevism
Paresh Chattopadhyay's article on Marx and the divergence of the Bolsheviks from his conception of socialism.
A Provisional Overview
Listen, Marxist! - Murray Bookchin
Murray Bookchin's best-known leaflet, Listen, Marxist! was aimed predominantly at students influenced by the Maoist Progressive Labor Party which was heavily (and highly destructive) active in the mass Students for a Democratic Society movement in 1960s and 70s America. His criticisms of "Marxism" and Marxist terminology are not applicable to Marxism as a whole, but some do apply to the crude politics of the PLP. Despite this significant shortcoming, we reproduce the document here due to its importance in terms of the left and libertarian left in the US
Contra State and Revolution
Contra State and Revolution
Review of "What Is To Be Done? New Times and the Anniversary of a Question"
Review of:
What is to be Done? New Times and the Anniversary of a Question
Werner Bonefeld and Sergio Tischler, Eds.
Lenin as philosopher
Pannekoek's classic work analyses Lenin's philosophical views as being determined by the historical circumstances they emerged from; the battle against religious dominance in 19th century Russia. This made Lenin's simplistic materialism quite different from Marx's. Pannekoek illustrates that dualistic conceptions of a vanguard party as a 'consciousness' leading the working class 'body' are rooted in the philosophical underpinnings of Lenin's bourgeois materialism.
At the source of The Critique of Political Economy - Paresh Chattopadhyay
Paresh Chattopadhyay's review of a collection of Marx and Engels' notebooks.
"Karl Marx - Exzerpte und Notizen: Sommer 1844 bis Anfang 1847" in Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels "” Gesamtausgabe (MEGA) vierte Abteilung. Band 3. Akademie Verlag, Berlin 1998, pp. 866.
Reviewed by Paresh Chattopadhyay*
Suicide for Socialism? - Brinton on the Jonestown massacre, 1978
Maurice Brinton's analysis of the bizarre mass suicide of a socialist cult led by American Jim Jones in Jonestown, Guyana. Discusses political sects in general.
'We're gonna die for the revolution. We're gonna die to expose this racist and fascist society.
Militancy - Highest stage of Alienation
Since the occupation movement of May '68, we have seen a whole collection of small organisations which claim to follow Trotskyism, Maoism or anarchism, developing to the left of the Communist Party and the C.G.T [1].
Review: Carry on Recruiting
'The politics and practice of the SWP negate its claim to be revolutionary'. Have Trotwatch nailed the Leninists?
Why the SWP dumped the 'downturn' in a 'dash for growth'
Trotwatch. £2.95 AK Press. ISBN 1 873176 02 3.
"Many people find a critique of Bolshevism boring. Unfortunately even one's uninteresting enemies can be powerful."- Call It Sleep.
Lenin In England
Lenin In England
Mario Tronti
Despite its title, this article is not about' England as such. It marks, in 1964, one of the early points in the continuity of political theory that reaches through our book to the most recent works of Toni Negri (Domination & Sabotage); it also marks an early point of the continuity of the political practice of the working class, in the sense that Tronti's affirmation that "a new era in the class struggle is beginning" must be closely related to the renewed experience of class autonomy expressed in the events of Piazza Statuto in 1962 (see the final section of this book).
