Forum Post: Vladimir Lenin's 1914 encyclopaedia article, "Karl Marx"
Posted 13 years ago on Oct. 30, 2011, 9:02 p.m. EST by SandyEnglish
(60)
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Vladimir Lenin's 1914 encyclopaedia article, "Karl Marx"
This work, written from July-November 1914 for publication in one of Russia's most popular encyclopedias, contains a general overview of the Marxist doctrine as well as a biographical sketch of Marx. It is perhaps the most comprehensive overview of Marxism in so short a document, and is infused with Lenin's distinctive polemical vein; here, as in all of his writings, Lenin defends the international and revolutionary essence of Marxism at a time when the majority of the leaders of the Second International were contorting Marx's teachings into a doctrine of reformism and lining up behind their ruling classes in the First World War.
Preface
This article on Karl Marx, which now appears in a separate printing, was written in 1913 (as far as I can remember) for the Granat Encyclopaedia. A fairly detailed bibliography of literature on Marx, mostly foreign, was appended to the article. This has been omitted in the present edition. The editors of the Encyclopaedia, for their part, have, for censorship reasons, deleted the end of the article on Marx, namely, the section dealing with his revolutionary tactics. Unfortunately, I am unable to reproduce that end, because the draft has remained among my papers somewhere in Krakow or in Switzerland. I only remember that in the concluding part of the article I quoted, among other things, the passage from Marx's letter to Engels of April 16, 1856, in which he wrote: "The whole thing in Germany will depend on the possibility of backing the proletarian revolution by some second edition of the Peasant War. Then the affair will be splendid." That is what our Mensheviks, who have now sunk to utter betrayal of socialism and to desertion to the bourgeoisie, have failed to understand since 1905.
N. Lenin
Branson, Jobs, Zuckerberg- his trip is conning users of FaceBook to create RatBook that any scvmbag with a gripe can secretly gather weaponizable information on you, destroying your privacy in order to "fit in" Gates got state of california traffic contracts given to him. So even "if" these types didn't come from "super-rich" backgrounds, they still came from privledge. Privledge that most- conned, carrot and sticked, etc don't come from and rarely attain or are accepted into. Address the caste fallacies here and the Failure Programming that creates, guarantees it. "less is more" and other pithy bullshit one liners... reliance on or weaponization of or with.
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I am not per se against it, but, after all that has happened in the last decades, a voice for the tiny number of the rich and powerful should be under review by the working class.
Steve Jobs Bill Gates Mark Zuckerberg
None of them were born rich. The "Rich and Powerful" come and go all the time now. It's not like Pharaoh, the God king, is demanding we build a Pyramid.
Even Richard Branson isn't born into a megarich family. http://sexliesandhollywood.com/richard-branson-water-skiing-with-a-nude-model He does well.
Well, actually, it is just like that. the form of class society is different, and the modern capitalist one developed out of the ancient forms. We are not enslaved to an individual, but we have no choice to but to sweat or to starve at the behest of a tiny class. That class remains in power. We build their skyscrapers, write their code, and and the surplus we create is stolen from us. No individual is to blame, but all the more reason the entire profit system and system of class exploitation needs to be replaced with the democratic and rational control of the world economy.
You don't have to do anything. No one is going to kill your family if you refuse a job, you just won't get paid. If you own your own land, you can grow your own food, farm animals, make your own cloths, raise your family, treat your medical problems but.. phew.. that's a lot of work. You are better off just working and taking advantage of the 10,000 year old system we designed to make our lives easier and reward people who work hard.
Check it: http://www.details.com/culture-trends/career-and-money/200907/meet-the-man-who-lives-on-zero-dollars
So it''s back to the neolithic? Sorry, but in modern society, almost no one has these options. We have to work for one capitalist or another, and even as small business people or farmers, we have to buy from the conglomerates and trade on a market on odds stacked against us. Yes because we "just won't get paid" Apparently you don't realize that this is social misery not so unlike having a gun put to your head. At the moment, one small class is pistol-whipping another, much larger class.
I completely understand. One class wants to overthrow the other class so they can do things their way. Either way, there will be a lower class and an upper class who makes decisions.
Fortunately; you don't have to have a "revolution" to over throw that class, you just need to become a sizable economic force. Which requires work, lots of it.
Forcing them to give their money away is just going to create another economic class that will do the exact same thing. And such is human history.
The social misery of today is more the responsible of the individual, who borrows more than he can afford, saves no money, takes recreational drugs regardless of the mental consequences, and spends all his free time watching TV and playing video games. Instead, we could easily be farming some of our own food or building our houses larger to increase the value.
People in the world do better today, than they did in the 1930's. America might be in a down turn, but the rest of the world, especially China and India, are doing much better as a result of better labour laws, more business, and strong sales and innovation.
You aren't a victim of slavery. America is just a victim of lazy.
This victim of lazy is the most overworked developed nation in the world. http://20somethingfinance.com/american-hours-worked-productivity-vacation/
We're also the most unequal.
We are victims of class warfare that's been being waged by neoliberals for 30-40 years.
We're sooo lazy that we won't even ask for time off. There doesn't have to be a law in place for you to take a vacation or to work less hours. Just do it. If you're valuable to the company they will respect your wishes. Much like Google has incorporated a very lenient work schedule into their employee model.
Popular myth of the rich. In fact read one of your own author Kevin Phillips a founder of the new right in the 70's, says in fact most of the real wealth in America is earned the old fashion way , its inherited!
And what's wrong with that? You are just going to leave your kids in the street and wish them good luck, or let them get into debt?
Those three examples did not inherit their wealth.
I never said all of today's 1% had inherited their wealth. Phillip's just used statistics to pt. out the fact that MOST wealth was in fact not earned, that's all. Unless you consider being born earning it?
"The whole thing in Germany will depend on the possibility of backing the proletarian revolution by some second edition of the Peasant War. Then the affair will be splendid."
I guess National Socialism was splendid.
I guess the USSR and the Gulags were splendid.
This thread tells what the OWSers are all about: communism.
Thanks for the post.
Oh yay another idiot falling for Hitler's propaganda usage of "socialism" for his rabidly anti-communist, anti-egalitarian ideology.
So true. The Nazis loved taking popular Socialist phrases like "WORK will make you Free" and doing things like putting this popular saying over the entrance of every Nazi slave labor camp. ( Arbeit Mach Frei) Today's American right does the same thing with its use of Orwellian framing and phrases.
Let's put sample size on the list of things you don't understand.
The reactionary right who have no sense of history are the only ones that are "all about" communism. A few questions: Do you agree with the conclusions of the members of the Second International? Do you agree with the position on the USSR taken by the Left Opposition? Exactly what aspect of Nazi Germany or gulag era USSR displays proletarian control of the means of production? And finally, did you drop out of school in the 4th grade, or the 5th?
BTW I loove your name.
Chimptastic.
Fantastic.
Well I do have a PhD.
When did you stop your edoocation?
Or are you one of those permanent students who never got a real job?
Very interesting and thorough response, you should write a book.
Hah hah. Permanent student I see. ABD in Russian and Slavic History probably.
You can get a job at Wal mart I bet.
Lenin began the struggle against Stain in 1922. Go read his "Testament" please, In 1936, Stalin framed up and executed Lenin's closest co-thinkers. He killed over 900,000 Soviet communists between 1937 and 1939. Trotsky, who continued Lenin's policy in the face of bitter repression by the Stalin, was murdered by the Soviet secret police in Mexico in 1940.
Had Lenin been alive in 1932, it is quite likely that he would have prevailed against the Stalinist policy of splitting the Socialist and Communist parties and allowing the fascists to come to power.
And if you think Nazism was aimed at anything besides smashing the German working class and socialism and preserving German capitalism, or that Hitler's "National Socialism" had anything to do with the mass socialist movement that had existed in Germany since the 1870s, well, all I have to say that you need a library card. Even the name is lie. Socialism cannot be and refuses to be national.
Please do a bit of reading about epochal struggle genuine Marxism took up against both Stalin and Hitler. Learn the names, starting with Trotsky.s, of the many who gave their lives to put the working class in power. The historical truth is fodder for our own struggles today against the 1%
Old ideologies are better off dead like their leaders. The idea is great, but the solution is the same. Violence.
Why? Has society aged so fundamentally since the 1930s? Do we or do we not live with the same basic set of social relations that caused two World Wars, the great depression and fascism? And are were merely dusting off books or have the parties of the past not lived on, in the case of Marxism, uninterruptedly? These old ideas are very much the newest.
As to violence, everyone can see where that comes from. Look no father than the mayors of Oakland, Denver, New York, Chicago, and their silent partner in Washington.
Socialism and Capitalism can't co exist. Socialism won't work unless everyone agrees to work hard and create this world.
People are too selfish to work together for a better society. It just won't happen. We have evolved past the form of ants.
In other news; democracy is one of the oldest idea's out on the market and it has certainly survived the test of time, without nearly the life loss of socialism's failure.
Trotsky. With a pick axe. In the conservatory.
Socialism is socialism, is communism, is Obama.
All strains of the same thing.
Time for a revolution.
Get on board the Hermain Cain train, the first African-American President in history!