Date: Sat, 15 Nov 1997 20:34:47 -0500 (EST)
From: louisgodena-AT-ids.net (Louis R Godena)
Subject: M-I: Re: The 'good' of Marxism 



Charlotte Keyes:

>You have been criticized for deprecating theory, especially Marxian theory.
>Yet, is "Marxism", after a century and a half, any more apprehensible to 
>the average person than, say, the laws of Copernicus, or the prophesies of
>the Domesday Book?   Marx, for most people today, lives only within the
four >walls of academia...


Precisely my point.  Most of the people I work with can dissemble
complicated machines within a few hours (and put them back together again).
Yet, are they willing to sit down and learn concepts like abstract and
concrete labor, or commodity fetishism, or constant and variable capital?
No.  It is simply not relevant to their day to day appetites.  Yet, you take
someone like Malecki or Austin, people who, practically speaking, can't even
add two and two, and they can go and on and on *ad infinitum* about the most
obscure esoterica relating to the Marxist schema.  Tell me; if given your
druthers, which would you rather have on hand in changing society?  

The answer, to me, is obvious. 

Yet, if the average Palestinian or Nepalese or Angolan cannot find in Marx a
congenial avenue to political independence, or to better economic
circumstances, or to, at least, a working comprehension of why exploitation
exists, then "Marxism", as you have defined it, is, in practical terms,
useless.  A paperworker in Fitchburg once challenged me thus: since Marx
held the view, expressed most presciently in the preface to the *Critique of
Political Economy*, that "no social form perishes until all the productive
forces for which it provides scope have been developed," it appeared to my
interlocutor to follow, paradoxically enough, that in backward countries at
least the interest of the nascent proletariat was to promote the most rapid
development of capitalism and capitalist exploitation at its own expense.
To my fellow worker (I was doing a millwright job at his plant), Marx was
unforgivably inconsistent.  Since capitalism was, apparently,  continuing to
go from strength to strength, any attempt to forestall its development by
making, prematurely, a socialist revolution seemed, by orthodox "Marxist"
lights, evil or muddle-headed.  

Conudrums like these occur throughout each society today.  Peruvians are not
so much concerned with the development of "productive forces" in Lima, as
they are with the day to day life amdist the vile, omnipotent slums that
mark 80% of the city.  They are attracted to revolution, not by Marx's
theories of development, but rather by the prospect of a Leninist
"democratic dictatorship", through which, by virtue of the device of
unrelenting violence against an oppressive State, some degree of autonomy
and economic empowerment can be won for their communities and for
themselves.  Practical action, leading to realizable results, is what most
immediately motivates the masses into making their own history, and not the
wielding of abstract theory.  Once the immediate objective has been
attained, or is within hailing distance of being attained, more theoretical
considerations may then be entertained.  In the case of Palestine, or Nepal,
or the Philippines, or Peru, it is the Leninist *organization* -- the flesh
and blood expression of immediate practicalities-- rather than Marxian
*theory* that commands attention.  Whether Hamas, or "Sendero Luminoso", or
the New Peoples Army, it is the Leninist form, rather than the Marxist
theory, that is at center stage.

Which brings me back to my original point.  It is commonplace to praise
Lenin's realism, his flexibility, his practical common sense in judging what
could and what could not be done at the given moment; and all these
qualities he possessed in a pre-eminent degree.  But perhaps the most vivid
impression I have after re-reading his major works is the amazing
intellectual power and consistency of purpose which runs through them.  His
tactical readiness to compromise, to tack, to retreat when it became
necessary was an enormous asset to the politician.  But what is infinitely
more striking is that he seems to have known from the first where he was
going and how he intended to get there, and that when he died in 1924 the
revolution was firmly established on foundations which he had begun to dig
thirty years before. 

Lenin eschewed the Narodniks by conceiving the party of the proletariat, he
deprecated the "legal Marxists" by building a party of action as well as of
theory, and he stood against the "economists" with a party with a political
as well as an economic program.  His model still resonates among the
billions of the world.

Louis Godena   



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