It is very difficult for the Marxist-Leninists to make an objective criticism of Anarchism as such, because by its nature it undermines all the suppositions basic to Marxism. If Marxism and , its variant which emerged during the Russian revolution, is held out to be the working class philosophy and the proletariat cannot owe its emancipation to anyone but itself, it is hard to go back on it and say that the working class is not yet ready to dispense with authority over it. Lenin came up with the idea of a transitional State, which would “wither away” over time, to go along with Marx’s “dictatorship of the proletariat.” The Anarchists expose this line as and sheer power grabbing. Over 75 years of Marxist-Leninist practice has proven us right. These so-called "" produced by Marxist-Leninist doctrine have only produced Stalinist s where workers have no rights, a new ruling class of technocrats and party politicians have emerged, and the class differential between those the state favored over those it didn’t created widespread deprivation among the masses and another class struggle. But instead of meeting such criticisms head an, they have concentrated their attacks not on the doctrine of Anarchism, but on particular Anarchist historical figures, especially Bakunin, an ideological opponent of Marx in the of s in the last century.
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What we don’t want or need is a group of authoritarians leading the working class, and then establishing themselves as a centralized decision-making command, instead of “withering away”; Marxist-Leninist states have perpetuated authoritarian institutions (the secret police, labor bosses, and the communist party) to maintain their power. The apparent effectiveness of such organizations (we‘re just as efficient as the Capitalists) masks the way that “revolutionaries” who pattern themselves after Capitalist institutions become absorbed by bourgeois values, and completely isolated from the real needs and desires of ordinary people. The reluctance of Marxist-Leninists to accept to accept revolutionary social change is, however, above all seen in Lenin’s conception of the party. It is a prescription to just nakedly seize power and put it in the hands of the Communist Party. The party that Leninists create today, they believe, should become the (only) “Party of the Proletariat” in which that class could organize and seize power. In practice, however, this meant personal and party dictatorship, which they felt gave them the right and duty to wipe out all other parties and . Both Lenin and Stalin killed millions or workers and peasants, their left-wing ideological opponents, and even members of the Bolshevik party. This bloody and treacherous history is why them is so much rivalry and hostility between Marxist-Leninist and Trotskyite parties today, and it is why the “workers’ states,” whether in Cuba, China, Vietnam, or Korea are such oppressive bureaucracies over their people. It is also why most of the East European Stalinist countries had their government overthrown by the and ordinary citizens in the 1980s. Maybe we are witnessing the eclipse of State communism entirely, since they have nothing new to say and will never get those governments-back again.
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Leninism is Marxism of the era of imperialism and the proletarian revolution. To be more exact, Leninism is the theory and tactics of the proletarian revolution in general, the theory and tactics of the dictatorship of the proletariat in particular. Marx and Engels pursued their activities in the pre-revolutionary period (we have the proletarian revolution in mind), when developed imperialism did not yet exist, in the period of the proletarians' preparation for revolution, in the period when the proletarian revolution was not yet an immediate practical inevitability. But Lenin, the disciple of Marx and Engels, pursued his activities in the period of developed imperialism, in the period of the unfolding proletarian revolution, when the proletarian revolution had already triumphed in one country, had smashed bourgeois democracy and had ushered in the era of proletarian democracy, the era of the Soviets.
In France, philosophers, historians, scientists, and writers are active protagonists in heated debates over humanism (is it the total rationalism of Stalinism, or Christian Humanism, or Existentialism?); which of the three is the heir to Hegel? Often intellectuals turn toward Marx and Lenin and Hegel. They meet Stalinism which spends incredible time, care, energy and vigilance in holding Marx and Lenin within the bounds of their private-property state-property philosophy. The Stalinists repeat interminably that dialectics is the transformation of quantity into quality, leaps, breaks in continuity, opposition of capitalism and socialism. It is part and parcel of their determination to represent state-property as revolutionary. In 1917, when the struggle in the working class movement was between reform and revolution, these conceptions may have been debatable. Today all arguments fade into insignificance in face of the actuality. The critical question today, which the Stalinists must avoid like the revolution, is how was the October Revolution transformed into its opposite, the Stalinist counter-revolution, and how is this counter-revolution in turn to be transformed into its opposite. This is the dialectical law which Lenin mastered between 1914 and 1917, the negation of the negation, the self-mobilization of the proletariat as the economics and politics of socialism. The Stalinist bureaucracy is determined that not a hint of the revolutionary doctrines of Hegel, Marx, Lenin should ever go out without its imprint, its interpretation. The social cooperativeness and unity of modern labor does not allow it any laxity from its cruel and merciless state-capitalist need to make the workers work harder and harder. No hint of the revolutionary struggle against bureaucracy must come to workers or to questing intellectuals. Yet every strand of Marx’s and Lenin’s methodology, philosophy, political economy, lead today directly to the destruction of bureaucracy as such.
Marxists have always displayed a doctrinaire and opinionated mindset of moral superiority. To Marxists and Leninists, the unaligned, such as Social Democrats, German Nazis, Italian Fascists, or any other deviant political organization, were branded as adversaries and were repeatedly accused of lining up with other right-wing teammates. According to this logic, if one did not get pre-approved by the monolithic praxis of the Communist Party in Russia, due to a different interpretation of socialism, one had to be subjected to charges of blasphemy, betrayal or counter-revolutionary activities. This lack of Marxist-Leninist certification has driven many faithful socialists into the ranks of heretical or adversarial socialist movements. In this sense, these heretical deviants might be better classified as ‘socialist-lite,’ ‘moderate socialists,’ or as economist Murray Rothbard dubbed fascists and Nazis, ‘right-wing socialists.’
Marxism-Leninism considers all questions in their historical settings. Marxism-Leninists view bourgeois nationalism under the given historical conditions. Drawing a distinction between its different objective roles, they decide what different attitudes the proletariat should take toward it. In the early period of capitalism, the national movement led by the bourgeoisie had as its objective the struggle against oppression by other nations and the creation of a national state. This national movement was historically progressive, and the proletariat supported it. In the present period, such bourgeois nationalism still exists in the colonial and semi-colonial countries. This variety of nationalism also has a certain objective progressive historical significance.
Our comrades must understand that we study Marxism-Leninism not for display, nor because there is any mystery about it, but solely because it is the science which leads the revolutionary cause of the proletariat to victory. Even now, there are not a few people who still regard odd quotations from Marxist-Leninist works as a readymade panacea which, once acquired, can easily cure all maladies. These people show childish ignorance, and we should enlighten them. It is precisely such ignorant people who take Marxism-Leninism as a religious dogma. To them we should say bluntly, “Your dogma is worthless.” Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin have repeatedly stated that our theory is not a dogma but a guide to action. But such people prefer to forget this statement which is of the greatest, indeed the utmost, importance.
Though there are several different “schools” of Anarchist though, revolutionary Anarchist or Anarchist-Communism is based upon the class struggle, but it does not take a mechanist view of the class struggle taken by the Marxist-Leninists. For instance, it does not take the view that only the industrial proletariat can achieve Socialism, and that the victory of this class, led by a “communist working class party” represent the final victory over Capitalism. Nor do we accept the idea of a "worker’s state." Anarchists believe that only the peasants, workers and farmers can liberate themselves and that they should manage industrial and economic production through , , and farm cooperatives, rather than with the interference of a patty or government.
Marxism-Leninism holds that each of the two stages in the process of cognition has its own characteristics, with knowledge manifesting itself as perceptual at the lower stage and logical at the higher stage, but that both are stages in an integrated process of cognition. The perceptual and the rational are qualitatively different, but are not divorced from each other; they are unified on the basis of practice. Our practice proves that what is perceived cannot at once be comprehended and that only what is comprehended can be more deeply perceived. Perception only solves the problem of phenomena; theory alone can solve the problem of essence. The solving of both these problems is not separable in the slightest degree from practice. Whoever wants to know a thing has no way of doing so except by coming into contact with it, that is, by living (practicing) in its environment. In feudal society it was impossible to know the laws of capitalist society in advance because capitalism had not yet emerged, the relevant practice was lacking. Marxism could be the product only of capitalist society. Marx, in the era of laissez-faire capitalism, could not concretely know certain laws peculiar to the era of imperialism beforehand, because imperialism, the last stage of capitalism, had not yet emerged and the relevant practice was lacking; only Lenin and Stalin could undertake this task. Leaving aside their genius, the reason why Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin could work out their theories was mainly that they personally took part in the practice of the class struggle and the scientific experimentation of their time; lacking this condition, no genius could have succeeded.
The modern revisionists, donning a cloak of Marxism-Leninism, are actually wantonly adulterating Marxism-Leninism, emasculating Marxism-Leninism of its revolutionary soul, repudiating the historic necessity for proletarian revolution and proletarian dictatorship in the period of transition from capitalism to communism, negating the leading role of the proletarian Party, substituting hypocritical bourgeois "supra-class" viewpoints for Marxist-Leninist viewpoints of class analysis, and substituting bourgeois pragmatism for dialectical materialism. They are trying their utmost to benumb the revolutionary will of the working class, to tamper with the essential contents of socialism and communism as strictly defined by Marxism-Leninism and in fact to restore or preserve capitalism. Under such circumstances, the militant task of all Marxist-Leninists is not to evade the challenge of modern revisionism, but to unite in defence of the purity of Marxism-Leninism, to smash this attack completely, to hold aloft the red banner of revolution, and to show the proletariat and the working people the correct direction for struggle and the road to victory.
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