File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1997/marxism-international.9710, message 326


From: "Rebecca Peoples" <wellsfargo-AT-tinet.ie>
Subject: M-I: Re: Marx and Lenin
Date: Wed, 15 Oct 1997 19:51:42 -0700


James writes:

Since Marx did not hold to any such tenet, it comes as no surprise that
Lenin's theory of imperialism is a development of Marx's theory, not a
reversal of it. Are we really to believe that as rigorous and polemical
a thinker as Lenin would have sought to hide his differences with Marx
by smooth phrases and insincere flattery if he really did disagree with
him? Jim holds Lenin in a contempt that he does not deserve - whatever
one thinks of  Lenin's policies and theoretical development, even his
harshest critics agree that he was a model of intellectual honesty.

I write:
If this is so then how come there is virtually no reference or use of
the value concepts of Capital? Lenin had no conception of  commodity or
capital as social relations of production. He had not got a clue as to
to the essential meaning of Capital in terms of value relations.

It is in my opinion this fundamental theoretical weakness which has
such devasting political consequnces and is linked in with the 
anti-marxist nature of Lenin and Trotsky.

This is partly why I have never subscribed to Leninism or what is
called trotskyism. However if I am proven worng it would make life
esier for me because then I could join one of the leninist outfits that
dominate the radical left. So please James prove me wrong.

Rebecca





Trotsky suffered from a similar fundamental shortcoming.




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