Reichman on Linden, 'Western Marxism and the Soviet Union: a Survey of Critial Theories and Debates Since 1917'
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Load more
Recommended publications
-
The Radical Infatuation with Western Marxism Or La Belle Dame Sans Merci?
Canadian Journal of Social and Political Theory/Revue canadienne de theorie politique et sociale , Vol. 6, No. 3 (Fall/Automne, 1982) . THE RADICAL INFATUATION WITH WESTERN MARXISM OR LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI? Rosaire Langlois Russell Jacoby, Dialectic of Defeat: Contours of Western Marxism, Cambridge University Press, 1981, p. X+202 One of the more striking characteristics of the re-orientation of social and political theory during the past fifteen years or so, has been the resurgence of interest in various types of Marxist theory.' Old theorists were rehabilitated- among them Lukacs and Gramsci-and new thinkers were embraced-notably, Althusser and Habermas . The old faith took on new trappings . This second coming of Marxism bore little resemblance to the old-fashioned version. The very foundations of classical Marxism-for example, the stress on the role of the economy and technology on the organization of social life-were cast aside with a corresponding exaltation of the role of the autonomous human subject . Innocent bystanders could be forgiven for wondering whether the uniqueness and perhaps even the coherence of Marxism had not been compromised altogether . The latest work of Russell Jacoby, while not intended as an encyclopaedic survey of all the theorists and issues within the "Western Marxist" tradition, attempts a partial stocktaking and affords an opportunity for a tentative assessment of the approach .z Jacoby writes as both scholar and passionate partisan. Not all, however, will share his continued enthusiasm. The Dialectic ofDefeat is, at one level, a work of intellectual history. As such, it is a quite interesting and significant effort . -
Socialism in One Country” Promoting National Identity Based on Class Identification
“Socialism in One Country” Promoting National Identity Based on Class Identification IVAN SZPAKOWSKI The Russian Empire of the Romanovs spanned thousands of miles from the Baltic to the Pacific, with a population of millions drawn from dozens of ethnic groups. Following the Russian Civil War, the Bolsheviks inherited the problem of holding together such a heterogeneous body. At the same time, they were forced to uphold Marxist ideology demanding worldwide revolution of the proletariat while facing the reality that despite the turmoil following the First World War no such revolution was forthcoming. In 1924 the rising Joseph Stalin, along with Nikolai Bukharin, devised the theory of “Socialism in One Country” which would become the solution to many of these problems facing the Bolsheviks. First of all, it proclaimed the ability of socialism to succeed in the Soviet Union alone, without foreign aid. Additionally, it marked a change from Lenin’s policy of self-determination for the Soviet Union’s constituent nations to Stalin’s policy of a compulsory unitary state. These non-Russian ethnics were systematically and firmly incorporated into the Soviet Union by the promotion of a proletariat class mentality. The development of the theory and policy of “Socialism in One Country” thus served to forge the unitary national identity of the Soviet Union around the concept of common Soviet class identity. The examination of this policy’s role in building a new form of national identity is dependant on a variety of sources, grouped into several subject areas. First, the origin of the term “Socialism in One Country,” its original meaning and its interpretation can be found in the speeches and writings of prominent contemporary communist leaders, chief among them: Stalin and Trotsky. -
The Bolshevil{S and the Chinese Revolution 1919-1927 Chinese Worlds
The Bolshevil{s and the Chinese Revolution 1919-1927 Chinese Worlds Chinese Worlds publishes high-quality scholarship, research monographs, and source collections on Chinese history and society from 1900 into the next century. "Worlds" signals the ethnic, cultural, and political multiformity and regional diversity of China, the cycles of unity and division through which China's modern history has passed, and recent research trends toward regional studies and local issues. It also signals that Chineseness is not contained within territorial borders overseas Chinese communities in all countries and regions are also "Chinese worlds". The editors see them as part of a political, economic, social, and cultural continuum that spans the Chinese mainland, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, South East Asia, and the world. The focus of Chinese Worlds is on modern politics and society and history. It includes both history in its broader sweep and specialist monographs on Chinese politics, anthropology, political economy, sociology, education, and the social science aspects of culture and religions. The Literary Field of New Fourth Artny Twentieth-Century China Communist Resistance along the Edited by Michel Hockx Yangtze and the Huai, 1938-1941 Gregor Benton Chinese Business in Malaysia Accumulation, Ascendance, A Road is Made Accommodation Communism in Shanghai 1920-1927 Edmund Terence Gomez Steve Smith Internal and International Migration The Bolsheviks and the Chinese Chinese Perspectives Revolution 1919-1927 Edited by Frank N Pieke and Hein Mallee -
Trotsky and the Problem of Soviet Bureaucracy
TROTSKY AND THE PROBLEM OF SOVIET BUREAUCRACY by Thomas Marshall Twiss B.A., Mount Union College, 1971 M.A., University of Pittsburgh, 1972 M.S., Drexel University, 1997 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Pittsburgh 2009 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH FACULTY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES This dissertation was presented by Thomas Marshall Twiss It was defended on April 16, 2009 and approved by William Chase, Professor, Department of History Ronald H. Linden, Professor, Department of Political Science Ilya Prizel, Professor, Department of Political Science Dissertation Advisor: Jonathan Harris, Professor, Department of Political Science ii Copyright © by Thomas Marshall Twiss 2009 iii TROTSKY AND THE PROBLEM OF SOVIET BUREAUCRACY Thomas Marshall Twiss, PhD University of Pittsburgh, 2009 In 1917 the Bolsheviks anticipated, on the basis of the Marxist classics, that the proletarian revolution would put an end to bureaucracy. However, soon after the revolution many within the Bolshevik Party, including Trotsky, were denouncing Soviet bureaucracy as a persistent problem. In fact, for Trotsky the problem of Soviet bureaucracy became the central political and theoretical issue that preoccupied him for the remainder of his life. This study examines the development of Leon Trotsky’s views on that subject from the first years after the Russian Revolution through the completion of his work The Revolution Betrayed in 1936. In his various writings over these years Trotsky expressed three main understandings of the nature of the problem: During the civil war and the first years of NEP he denounced inefficiency in the distribution of supplies to the Red Army and resources throughout the economy as a whole. -
Theory in Weberian Marxism: Patterns of Critical Social
THEORY IN WEBERIAN MARXISM: PATTERNS OF CRITICAL SOCIAL THEORY IN LUKÁCS AND HABERMAS* Harry F. Dahms 1 ABSTRACT For Weberian Marxists, the social theories of Max Weber and Karl Marx are complementary contributions to the analysis of modern capitalist society. Combining Weber's theory of rationalization with Marx's critique of commodity fetishism to develop his own critique of reification, Georg Lukács contended that the combination of Marx's and Weber's social theories is essential to envisioning socially transformative modes of praxis in advanced capitalist society. By comparing Lukács's theory of reification with Habermas's theory of communicative action as two theories in the tradition of Weberian Marxism, I show how the prevailing mode of "doing theory" has shifted from Marx's critique of economic determinism to Weber s idea of the inner logic of social value spheres. Today, Weberian Marxism can make an important contribution to theoretical sociology by reconstituting itself as a framework for critically examining prevailing societal definitions of the rationalization imperatives specific to purposive-rational social value spheres (the economy, the administrative state, etc.). In a second step, Weberian Marxists would explore how these value spheres relate to each other and to value spheres that are open to the type of communicative rationalization characteristic of the lifeworld level of social organization. INTRODUCTION Since the early 1920s, the function of theory in Western Marxism has undergone a major transformation.1 So far manifesting itself as an increased willingness and ability in 2 modernist critical social theories to confront societal complexity, this change points toward a qualitatively different way of relating diverse social-theoretical projects to each other. -
Trotsky, Leon | 1914-1918-Online
Trotsky, Leon By Ian D. Thatcher Trotsky, Leon Russian revolutionary communist Born 26 October 1879 in Yanovka, Russian Empire Died 21 August 1940 in Coyoacan, Mexico Leon Trotsky's communist leadership was partially responsible for bringing about the October Revolution of 1917, after which Russia exited the First World War. Starting as an activist, he became People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs and People’s Commissar for War in the first Soviet government. Trotsky's commitment to international revolution clashed with Joseph Stalin’s theory of socialism for his country. He used his journalistic experiences on the front to inform his eventual leadership of the Red Army. Table of Contents 1 Background 2 Marxist interpretations of World War I 3 The 1917 Russian Revolution Selected Bibliography Citation Background Leon Trotsky (1879-1940) arouses passion in admirers and critics in a life that is hotly contested. The First World War was an important and eventful period in his life. He was a revolutionary activist and journalist in Switzerland, France, Spain, and America, before returning to Russia after the fall of Nicholas II, Emperor of Russia (1868–1918). Well-known in European radical socialist circles, his writings appeared in left and liberal newspapers, chiefly Nashe Slovo (Our Word), Kievskaya Mysl (Kievan Thought), and Novyi Mir (New World). His fame spread considerably when he was minister of foreign affairs and war in the Soviet government following the October Revolution of 1917. Marxist interpretations of World War I Marxist interpretations of World War I Trotsky interpreted the origins of the First World War in the framework of Marxist economic and class analysis. -
The Fromm-Marcuse Debate Revisited
351 The Fromm-Marcuse debate revisited JOHN RICKERT Department of Philosophy, University of Texas, Austin Erich Fromm has long been out of fashion.' Although Fromm was a lifelong critic of capitalist society as well as the figure chiefly responsible for the Frankfurt Institute's integration of Marx and Freud, few studies of Western Marxism examine his work in any detail;2 articles about his writings rarely appear in the leading journals of the left;3 and his death in 1980 has, as far as I know, brought forth few attempts by scholars in this country to examine what his legacy might be.4 The neglect of Fromm's contribution is due in part5 to the interpreta- tion placed on his work by his former colleagues at the Institute of Social Research - most notably, Herbert Marcuse.6 In his famous "Critique of Neo-Freudian Revisionism," Marcuse argued that although Fromm's early work is indeed radical, his later psychology is essentially conform- ist in character. In rejecting Freud's libido theory and certain elements of his metapsychology, Fromm, H. S. Sullivan, and Karen Homey, Mar- cuse wrote, had deprived psychoanalysis of its most critical concepts, stripped it of a "conceptual basis outside the established system" (Eros and Civilization,7 hereafter cited as EC, p. 6), and in its place offered an idealistic ethic that preached adaptation to the status quo. Since the renaissance of critical theory in the 1960s, Marcuse's essay has set the tone for the left's reading of Fromm's work. The aim of the pres- ent article is to challenge this interpretation by arguing that it fundamen- tally distorts both the general tenor and specific content of Fromm's thought. -
Marxism, Ecology, and Contemporary Architectural Theory
humanities Article Is Green the New Red? Marxism, Ecology, and Contemporary Architectural Theory Curtis Swope Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, Trinity University, 1 Trinity Place, San Antonio, TX 78212-7200, USA; [email protected] Abstract: This essay examines the role of Marxist concepts in recent architectural theories of ecology using two architecture firms, Estudio Teddy Cruz and Sauerbruch Hutton (SH), as case studies. In their writings, Cruz and SH mobilize the critique of capital, a dialectical materialist understanding of history, and the Frankfurt School’s critique of functionalist culture for the theorization of sustainable design. Their work has two vital ramifications for current sustainability discourses in two different fields which this essay seeks to bridge. For Marxist theorists concerned about ecology but averse to Western Marxism because of its supposed idealism, Cruz and SH show anew the importance of aesthetic concerns to conceptions of the environment. For design scholars accustomed to thinking of Marxism as having been absorbed into broader debates about cultural studies, the architects’ theories have the potential to recentralize the left-wing inheritance through its adaptation to concerns of ecology. In addition, in the essay’s conclusion, I reflect briefly, as a suggestion for further research, on how Cruz’s and SH’s architectural practice and theories might productively be analyzed in light of the terms of the Adorno-Benjamin debate of the 1930s over the political status of the cultural products of capital. Can eighty-year old discussions of the potentially revolutionary and retrograde qualities of mass cultural objects be relevant to radical thought in the age of climate change. -
Leon Trotsky
Chapter Thirteen ‘Social Democracy and Revolution’ (25 November [12 November], 1905) Leon Trotsky In 1929, Leon Trotsky published The Permanent Revolution in response to Stalinist attacks on his book Results and Prospects, written in 1906. According to Stalinist propaganda of the 1920s, Lenin condemned Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution at the time of the 1905 revolution for ‘under-estimating’ the peasantry. In this volume, we have pointed out in several places that Trotsky did indeed reject Lenin’s slogan of ‘the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry’ on the grounds that the peasants would be unable to produce a coherent political party to serve as a reliable ally of Social Democracy. In terms of the historical evidence, Trotsky showed greater foresight on this matter than Lenin. After the Bolsheviks signed the Brest-Litovsk Treaty in 1918, only a handful of Left SRs continued to support the revolutionary government, and, in August 1918, it was a Socialist Revolutionary, Fanya Kaplan, who attempted to assassinate Lenin. The debate over permanent revolution only resurfaced after Lenin’s death in 1924 because Stalin wrapped his claim to succession in the slogan of ‘Socialism in One Country’. Trotsky was said to lack confi dence in the revolution’s long- 448 • Leon Trotsky run survival because a) he had always premised success on an international revolution, and b) he was still under-estimating the need for support from the peasantry, whom he allegedly proposed to tax excessively in order to fi nance industrialisation. Countless volumes have been written on the debate over socialism in one country, and this is not the place to review them.1 In the fourth chapter of Permanent Revolution, Trotsky summarised the position he had taken in 1905 by quoting the fi nal lines of the article we have translated here: The complete victory of the revolution signifi es the victory of the proletariat. -
Varieties of the Transcendental in Western Marxism*
PROBLEMI INTERNATIONAL,Varieties of the vol. Transcendental ATEIZEM3, no. 3, 2019 in© WesternSociety for Marxism Theoretical Psychoanalysis Varieties of the Transcendental in Western Marxism* Slavoj Žižek In the last decades, the distrust of Western Marxism is growing among the few remaining radical Leftist theorists, from Perry Anderson and Wolfgang Fritz Haug to Domenico Losurdo whose main reproach is that Western Marxism lost contact with the Third World revolutionary movements. (Losurdo, who wrote a book rehabilitating Stalin, also considers Deng Xiaoping’s reforms an example of authentic Marxist politics.) From the Western Marxist standpoint, it is, of course, the Third World Communist radical- ism which lost contact with the authentic emancipatory content of Marxism. It is interesting to note that Western Marxism (rebaptized “Cultural Marxism”) is also the target of the ongoing counterattack of the alt-right against political correctness: the alt-right interprets the rise of Western Marxism as the result of a deliberate shift in Marxist (or Communist) strategy. After Communism lost the economic battle with liberal capitalism (waiting in vain for the revolution to arrive in the developed Western world), its leaders de- cided to move the terrain to cultural struggles (sexuality, feminism, racism, religion, etc.), systematically undermining the cultural foundations and values of our freedoms. In recent decades, this new approach proved unexpectedly efficient: today, our societies are caught in the self-destructive circle of guilt, unable to defend * The author acknowledges the project (“The Structure and Genealogy of In- difference,” J6-8263) was financially supported by the Slovenian Research Agency. 5 Slavoj Žižek their positive legacy. -
Trotskyism Emerges from Obscurity: New Chapters in Its Historiography
IRSH 49 (2004), pp. 279–292 DOI: 10.1017/S002085900400152X # 2004 Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis REVIEW ESSAY Trotskyism Emerges from Obscurity: New Chapters in Its Historiography Jan Willem Stutjeà Bensaı¨d,Daniel. Les trotskysmes. Deuxie`me e´d. [Que sais-je?, 3629.] Presses Universitaires de France, Paris 2002. 128 pp. A 6.50. Charpier, Fre´de´ric. Histoire de l’extreˆme gauche trotskiste. De 1929 a` nos jours. Editions 1, Paris 2002. 402 pp. A 22.00. Marie, Jean-Jacques. Le trotskysme et les trotskystes. D’hier a` au- jourd’hui, l’ideologie et les objectifs des trotskystes a` travers le monde. [Collection L’Histoire au present.] Armand Colin, Paris 2002. 224 pp. A 21.00. Nick, Christophe. Les Trotskistes. Fayard, [Paris] 2003. 618 pp. A 23.00. The Trotskyist Fourth International went through many quarrels and splits after its foundation in 19381 – understandably, given the political and social isolation in which the movement generally functioned. Its enemies to its left and right crowded the Trotskyists into an uncomfor- tably narrow space. Trotskyists’ intense internal discussions functioned as a sort of immune response, which could only be effective if theoretical and à Jan Willem Stutje is working on a biography of Ernest Mandel (a project of the Free University of Brussels under the supervision of Professor E. Witte) with support from the Flemish Fund for Scholarly Research. 1. For bibliographies of Leon Trotsky and Trotskyism, see Louis Sinclair, Trotsky: a Bibliography (Aldershot, 1989); Wolfgang and Petra Lubitz (eds), Trotsky Bibliography: An International Classified List of Publications About Leon Trotsky and Trotskyism 1905–1998, 3rd compl. -
Trotsky: Platform of the Joint Opposition
Platform of the Joint Opposition-Contents Leon Trotsky Platform of the Joint Opposition 1927 The on-line publication of this important document was originally accomplished in 1998 for the Trotsky Internet Archive (TIA). The version, printed originally in an edition by Pathfinder Press, was ordered by Pathfinder Press attorneys to be removed. Pathfinder Press was once a Trotskyist publishing company but has for many years been operated within the norms of a commercial publishing house that jealously guards it's copyrights, even to the detriment of the distribution of the documents it seeks to control. This occurred in the fall of 2000. The TIA was able to obtain another translation of a 1973 translation of The Platform of the Joint Opposition from Index Books, a socialist publisher in Britain that was only too happy to have the TIA distribute, for free over the Internet, this document. Index Books acquired the stock and copyrights of New Park Publications, which for decades had been Britains biggest publishers of Leon Trotsky until it folded in 1984-85. —David Walters, Director, Trotsky Internet Archive This version was transcribed in the winter of 2000-2001 by David Walters Contents Forward — From New Park Publications and the Transcriber Chapter 1 Introductory remarks http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1927/opposition/index.htm (1 of 2) [06/06/2002 15:00:23] Platform of the Joint Opposition-Contents Chapter 2 The Situation of the Working Class and the Trade Unions Chapter 3 The Working Class and the Trade Unions Chapter 4 State industry and the building of Socialism Chapter 5 The Soviets Chapter 6 The National Question Chapter 7 The Party Chapter 8 The League of Communist Youth Chapter 9 Our international situation and the war danger Chapter 10 The Red Army and the Red Fleet Chapter 11 Real and pretended disagreements Chapter 12 Against opportunism-for the unity of the party The photos on the cover of the New Park Publications version of The Platform of the Joint Opposition shows the leadership and initial signatories of the Platform.