Another book that repeats old dogma in favour of capitalism
By Daniel Paquet dpaquet1871@gmail.com
“The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch (including today’s imperialism, -Ed.) the ruling ideas: i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that means of mental production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas; hence of the relationships which make the one class the ruling one, therefore, the ideas of its dominance. The individuals composing the ruling class possess among other things consciousness, and therefore think. Insofar, therefore, as they rule as a class and determine extent and compass of an epoch, it is self-evident that they do this in its whole range, hence among other things rule also as thinkers, as producers of ideas, and regulate the production distribution of the ideas of their age; thus their ideas are the ruing ideas of the epoch.”[1]
Recently, the British historian Gareth Stedman Jones published a new book on Karl Marx *; sharing the same concern about Marxism, and especially in regard with the alleged goal of Marx who longed t o ‘put an end to unfreedom, ‘”this notion of Marxism that historian Isaiah Berlin ascribed to its founder when he wrote of Marx that ‘his intellectual system was a closed one, everything that entered was made to conform to as pre-established pattern.’ This is doubtless true of the so-called ‘dialectical materialism’ that became doctrinal orthodoxy in the Soviet Union and its satellite states. (sic).”[2]
“Lenin, better than anyone else, understood the great importance of theory, particularly for a party such as ours, in view of the role of vanguard fighter of the international proletariat which has fallen to its lot, and in view of the complicated internal and international situation in which it finds itself. (…)
Perhaps the most striking expression of the great importance which Lenin attached to theory is the fact that none other than Lenin undertook the very serious task of generalizing, on the basis of materialist philosophy, the most important achievements of science from the time of Engels down to his own time, as well as of subjecting to comprehensive criticism the anti-materialistic trends among Marxist. Engels said of materialism: ‘With each epoch-making discovery… it has to change its form… It is well known that none other than Lenin accomplished this task for this own time in his remarkable work Materialism and Empirio-Criticism.”[3]
The book-reviewer says also: “Before the proletariat could develop into a mature class and become conscious of its revolutionary task, he reasoned, it was necessary for capitalism to modernize the world. (…)
And industrial production would surge, condensing the two remaining classes into opposed groups in anticipation of capitalism’s final crisis.”[4]
“Communism differs from all previous movements in that it overturns the basis of all earlier relations of production and intercourse, and for the first time conscious treats all natural premises as the creatures of hitherto existing men, strips them of their natural character and subjugates them to the power of the united individuals. Its organization is, therefore, essentially economic, the material production of the condition of this unity; it turns existing conditions into conditions of unity. The reality, which communism is creating, is only a product of the preceding intercourse of individuals themselves. Thus the communists in practice treat the conditions created up to now by production and intercourse as inorganic condition, without, however, imagining that it was the plan or the destiny of previous generations to give them in organic for the individuals creating them.”[5]
So much for the supposed ignorance of the proletariat, or its unconsciousness!
One of Lenin’s thesis about the proletarian revolution expresses itself in the following perspective: “The domination of finance capital in the advanced capital countries (which is the case of USA and Canada, members of the G8,-Ed.); the issue of stocks and bonds as one of the principal operations of finance capital; the export of capital to the sources of raw materials, which is one of the foundations of imperialism; the omnipotence of a financial oligarchy, which is the result of the domination of finance capital – all this reveals the grossly parasitic character of monopolistic capitalism, makes the yoke of the capitalist trusts and syndicates a hundred times more burdensome, intensifies the indignation of the working class with the foundations of capitalism, and brings the masses to the proletarian revolution as their only salvation.”[6]
(The theory of class struggles) implied certain inevitability to the gathering processes of historical change. It also left little room for the possibility of independent revolution in less developed regions around the globe, in the east or in the outer reaches of Europe’s empires. Marx’s universalism found its classic expression in the ‘The Communist Manifesto,’ (London, 1848, -Ed.) which declared that all nations must submit ‘on pain of extinction’ to the forces of bourgeois modernity. (…)
After 1870, however, Marx relaxed these strictures, in part because the failure of the Paris Commune left him dismayed at the prospects for a Communist revolution in the West.”[7]
We shall not forget another aspect of the proletarian revolution which lies in an earlier definition of communism.
“Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality (will) have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolished the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence. (…)
The proletariat can thus only exist world-historically, just as communism, its activity can only have a world-historical’ existence. World-historical existence of individuals, i.e., existence of individuals which is directly linked up with world history.”[8]
To minimize its shortcomings, the author concluded: “Like all intellectual legacies, Marx’s work remains open to new interpretation.”[9]
Another founder of Marxism-Leninism (and leader of a socialist society under construction left us with a very deep – indeed- heritage which nears by Marx’s contribution is Joseph Stalin; furthermore this political figure was leading the conception of a country that left the horizon of capitalism quite rapidly.
“The main features and requirement of the basic economic law of modern capitalism might be formulated roughly in this way: the securing of the maximum capitalist profit through the exploitation, ruin and impoverishment of the majority of the population of the given country, through the enslavement and systematic robbery of the peoples of other countries, especially backward countries, and, lastly, through wars and militarization of the national economy, which are for the obtaining of the highest profits. (…)
(He adds): “The essential features and requirements of the basic law of socialism might be formulated roughly in this way: the securing of the maximum satisfaction of the constantly rising material and cultural requirements of the whole of society through the continuous expansion and perfection of socialist production on the basis of higher techniques.”[10]
“Though the capitalist mode of production was progressive at a definite stage in the development of human society, it later became a brake on social progress due to the intensification of the built-in contradiction between the productive forces ad production relations. This was revealed, in particular, in the conflict between the social nature of production and the private form of appropriation. During the socialist revolution effected by the proletariat in alliance with the peasantry and other sections of the working people, capitalism is supplanted by the new, socialist mode of production, which represents the economic mode basis of the new, communist socio-economic system. (…)
Marx viewed society’s transition from one system to another as an intrinsic law of human history in general.”[11]
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[1] Marx, Engels and Lenin, On Historical Materialism, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1972, page 44
[2] Gordon, Peter E., Karl Marx, The man, not the ideologue, A Book Review, The New York Times, International Edition, Thursday 20, 2016, page18; *Karl Marx. Greatness and Illusion. By Gareth Stedman Jones. Illlustrated. The Belknap Press-Harvard University Press.
[3] Stalin, J. V., The Foundations of Leninism, Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1975, page 20
[4] Ibidem, Gordon, page 18
[5] Ibidem, Marx, Engels, Lenin, page 64
[6] Ibidem, Stalin, page 23
[7] Ibidem, Gordon, page 18
[8] Tucker, Robert C., The Marx-Engels Reader, W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 1972, page 162
[9] Ibidem, Gordon, page 18
[10] Stalin, J. V., Economic Problems of Socialism in the U.S.S.R., Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1972, Reprinted in the U.S.A., 2012, pages 34, 36
[11] Sheptulin, A. P., Marxist-Leninist Philosophy, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1978, page 512
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