“The Proletarian Revolution
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The Significance and Shortcomings of Karl Marx
Class, Race and Corporate Power Volume 6 Issue 2 Article 3 2018 The Significance and Shortcomings of Karl Marx Chris Wright Hunter College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/classracecorporatepower Part of the Political Science Commons Recommended Citation Wright, Chris (2018) "The Significance and Shortcomings of Karl Marx," Class, Race and Corporate Power: Vol. 6 : Iss. 2 , Article 3. DOI: 10.25148/CRCP.6.2.008310 Available at: https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/classracecorporatepower/vol6/iss2/3 This work is brought to you for free and open access by the College of Arts, Sciences & Education at FIU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Class, Race and Corporate Power by an authorized administrator of FIU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The Significance and Shortcomings of Karl Marx Abstract In this essay I explain both why Karl Marx remains an important thinker and why he is in some respects inadequate. I focus on the central issue of 'materialism vs. idealism,' and briefly explore ways in which contemporary intellectuals still haven't assimilated the insights of historical materialism. In the last section of the paper I examine the greatest weakness of Marxism, its theory of proletarian revolution, and propose an alternative conceptualization that both updates the theory for the twenty-first century and is more faithful to historical materialism than Marx's own conception was. Keywords Karl Marx, Marxism, socialism Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. This article is available in Class, Race and Corporate Power: https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/ classracecorporatepower/vol6/iss2/3 I often have occasion to think that, as an “intellectual,” I’m very lucky to be alive at this time in history, at the end of the long evolution from Herodotus and the pre-Socratic philosophers to Chomsky and modern science. -
Remaking Italy? Place Configurations and Italian Electoral Politics Under the ‘Second Republic’
Modern Italy Vol. 12, No. 1, February 2007, pp. 17–38 Remaking Italy? Place Configurations and Italian Electoral Politics under the ‘Second Republic’ John Agnew The Italian Second Republic was meant to have led to a bipolar polity with alternation in national government between conservative and progressive blocs. Such a system it has been claimed would undermine the geographical structure of electoral politics that contributed to party system immobilism in the past. However, in this article I argue that dynamic place configurations are central to how the ‘new’ Italian politics is being constructed. The dominant emphasis on either television or the emergence of ‘politics without territory’ has obscured the importance of this geographical restructuring. New dynamic place configurations are apparent particularly in the South which has emerged as a zone of competition between the main party coalitions and a nationally more fragmented geographical pattern of electoral outcomes. These patterns in turn reflect differential trends in support for party positions on governmental centralization and devolution, geographical patterns of local economic development, and the re-emergence of the North–South divide as a focus for ideological and policy differences between parties and social groups across Italy. Introduction One of the high hopes of the early 1990s in Italy was that following the cleansing of the corruption associated with the party regime of the Cold War period, Italy could become a ‘normal country’ in which bipolar politics of electoral competition between clearly defined coalitions formed before elections, rather than perpetual domination by the political centre, would lead to potential alternation of progressive and conservative forces in national political office and would check the systematic corruption of partitocrazia based on the jockeying for government offices (and associated powers) after elections (Gundle & Parker 1996). -
Ten Canons of the Proletarian Revolution
Ten Canons of the Proletarian Revolution New York Labar New$ Cornpan7 (Soclalfet Labor Partp) 45 Rose St., New Yark 1988 THE CREED OF A REVOLUTrONIST. Dare to be a Daniel, Dare to stand alone, Dare to have a purpose firm, Dare to make it known. -P&4 Ems of Damid Bs Lum. cwwmB 1905, HewYorL;~Nc~p"s& All rights reMmed. The Ten Canons of a Revolutionist are, as they originally stand, part of the second part-The Warning of the Gracchi--of 'Two Pages from Roman His- tory," being lessons deduced from blunders or weak- nesses of the two Gnccbi brothers in their struggle with the Roman patriciate. Beyond a doubt, these Ten Canons are the clearest, the most concise outline of con- duct of:the ProIetarian Revolution that have ever been permed They amount practically to a code of revolu- tionary conduct and tactical ethics. Because of this, we have considered it valuable and proper to publish them in handy pamphlet form by themselves, so that the rest of the material, however significant in itself, shall not detract attention fmm these revoIutionary canons, so important and essential that they ought to be engrayed on the mind of every revolutionist, the "leaders" as well as the rank and Me. The srrmqth, the cool, relentless and unassaabble logic of each of these rules of conduct, could never at any time fail to strike the revaIutionist, bur it is only since the Praletarian Revolution actually got into action that we can fully appreciate these revolutionary "ten commandments." So concrete are they that they might the rocks by the lure of the Cadmmt -
Learning to Swim in Stormy Weather” Was first Published July 31, 2011, at Winterends.Net
Greece’s Communist Organization: LearningLearning toto SwimSwim inin StormyStormy WeatherWeather by Eric Ribellarsi Also includes “The in!uence of the Chinese Revolution on the Communist Movement of Greece” by the Communist Organization of Greece (KOE), 2006 KASAMA ESSAYS FOR DISCUSSION “Greece’s Communist Organization: Learning to Swim in Stormy Weather” was first published July 31, 2011, at winterends.net. Winter Has Its End is a team of reporters traveling during the summer of 2011 to places in the world where people are rising up. “!e influence of the Chinese Revolution on the Communist Move- ment of Greece” was published by the Communist Organization of Greece (KOE), May 2006 Published as a Kasama Essay for Discussion pamphlet August, 2011 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States Licence. Feel free to reprint, distribute or quote this with attribution. Cover photo illustration by Enzo Rhyner/original photo by Eric Ribellarsi Kasama is a communist project that seeks to reconceive and regroup for a profound revolutionary transformation of society. website: kasamaproject.org email: [email protected] 80045_r2 08.11 Greece’s Communist Organization: Learning to Swim in Stormy Weather by Eric Ribellarsi We in Kasama, and many others, have been en- Great and energetic hopes often masked under- gaged for several years now in trying to imagine new lying naiveté and fracture lines that would inevitably ways to fuse revolutionary ideas with the popular dis- come to the fore: How should these popular move- content of the people. It is part of what drew our Win- ments view the existing army (in Egypt), or the intru- ter’s End reporti ng team to Greece and what draws sive Western powers (in Libya), or problems of defin- us now to discuss the Communist Organization of ing specific solutions, or the organizational problems Greece (known as the KOE, and pronounced ‘Koy’). -
The Revolutions of 1989 and Their Legacies
1 The Revolutions of 1989 and Their Legacies Vladimir Tismaneanu The revolutions of 1989 were, no matter how one judges their nature, a true world-historical event, in the Hegelian sense: they established a historical cleavage (only to some extent conventional) between the world before and after 89. During that year, what appeared to be an immutable, ostensibly indestructible system collapsed with breath-taking alacrity. And this happened not because of external blows (although external pressure did matter), as in the case of Nazi Germany, but as a consequence of the development of insuperable inner tensions. The Leninist systems were terminally sick, and the disease affected first and foremost their capacity for self-regeneration. After decades of toying with the ideas of intrasystemic reforms (“institutional amphibiousness”, as it were, to use X. L. Ding’s concept, as developed by Archie Brown in his writings on Gorbachev and Gorbachevism), it had become clear that communism did not have the resources for readjustment and that the solution lay not within but outside, and even against, the existing order.1 The importance of these revolutions cannot therefore be overestimated: they represent the triumph of civic dignity and political morality over ideological monism, bureaucratic cynicism and police dictatorship.2 Rooted in an individualistic concept of freedom, programmatically skeptical of all ideological blueprints for social engineering, these revolutions were, at least in their first stage, liberal and non-utopian.3 The fact that 1 See Archie Brown, Seven Years that Changed the World: Perestroika in Perspective (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 157-189. In this paper I elaborate upon and revisit the main ideas I put them forward in my introduction to Vladimir Tismaneanu, ed., The Revolutions of 1989 (London and New York: Routledge, 1999) as well as in my book Reinventing Politics: Eastern Europe from Stalin to Havel (New York: Free Press, 1992; revised and expanded paperback, with new afterword, Free Press, 1993). -
'Left-Wing' Communism: an Infantile Disorder
Resistance Marxist Library ‘Left-Wing’ Communism: An Infantile Disorder V. I. Lenin 2 ‘Left-Wing’ Communism: An Infantile Disorder Acknowledgement: “The Communist Parties and Parliamentarism” © Pluto Press, London; reprinted by permission. Resistance Books 1999 ISBN 0909196 88 5 Published by Resistance Books, resistancebooks.com Contents Introduction by Doug Lorimer................................................................ 5 I. A popular exposition of Bolshevik strategy & tactics...................................... 5 II. The origin & development of Bolshevism...................................................... 6 III. Parliamentary democracy & the proletarian revolution................................. 8 IV. The German Revolution and the German communists............................... 10 V. Marxism & the working-class vanguard........................................................ 13 VI. Winning over the vanguard & winning over the masses.............................. 18 VII. Mass action & tactical compromises............................................................. 20 VIII. Mass action & the united-front tactic............................................................ 23 I. In What Sense We Can Speak of the International Significance of the Russian Revolution .........................27 II. An Essential Condition of the Bolsheviks’ Success ...... 30 III. The Principal Stages in the History of Bolshevism ....... 33 IV. The Struggle Against Which Enemies Within the Working-Class Movement Helped Bolshevism Develop, Gain -
Not for Distribution
6 The decline of the legitimate monopoly of violence and the return of non-state warriors Cihan Tuğal Introduction For the last few decades, political sociology has focused on state-making. We are therefore quite ill equipped to understand the recent rise of non-state violence throughout the world. Even if states still seem to perform more violence than non- state actors, the latter’s actions have come to significantly transform relationships between citizens and states. Existing frameworks predispose scholars to treat non-state violence too as an instrument of state-building. However, we need to consider whether non-state violence serves other purposes as well. This chapter will first point out how the post-9/11 world problematises one of sociology’s major assumptions (the state’s monopolisation of legitimate violence). It will then trace the social prehistory of non-state political violence to highlight continui- ties with today’s intensifying religious violence. It will finally emphasise that the seemingly inevitable rise of non-state violence is inextricably tangled with the emergence of the subcontracting state. Neo-liberalisation aggravates the practico- ethical difficulties secular revolutionaries and religious radicals face (which I call ‘the Fanonite dilemma’ and ‘the Qutbi dilemma’). The monopolisation of violence: social implications War-making, military apparatuses and international military rivalry figure prominently in today’s political sociology. This came about as a reaction to the sociology and political science of the postwar era: for quite different rea- sons, both tended to ignore the influence of militaries and violence on domestic social structure. Political science unduly focused on the former and sociology on the latter, whereas (according to the new political sociology) international violence and domestic social structure are tightly linked (Mann 1986; Skocpol 1979; Tilly 1992). -
Marxism and the Solidarity Economy: Toward a New Theory of Revolution
Class, Race and Corporate Power Volume 9 Issue 1 Article 2 2021 Marxism and the Solidarity Economy: Toward a New Theory of Revolution Chris Wright [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/classracecorporatepower Part of the Political Science Commons Recommended Citation Wright, Chris (2021) "Marxism and the Solidarity Economy: Toward a New Theory of Revolution," Class, Race and Corporate Power: Vol. 9 : Iss. 1 , Article 2. DOI: 10.25148/CRCP.9.1.009647 Available at: https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/classracecorporatepower/vol9/iss1/2 This work is brought to you for free and open access by the College of Arts, Sciences & Education at FIU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Class, Race and Corporate Power by an authorized administrator of FIU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Marxism and the Solidarity Economy: Toward a New Theory of Revolution Abstract In the twenty-first century, it is time that Marxists updated the conception of socialist revolution they have inherited from Marx, Engels, and Lenin. Slogans about the “dictatorship of the proletariat” “smashing the capitalist state” and carrying out a social revolution from the commanding heights of a reconstituted state are completely obsolete. In this article I propose a reconceptualization that accomplishes several purposes: first, it explains the logical and empirical problems with Marx’s classical theory of revolution; second, it revises the classical theory to make it, for the first time, logically consistent with the premises of historical materialism; third, it provides a (Marxist) theoretical grounding for activism in the solidarity economy, and thus partially reconciles Marxism with anarchism; fourth, it accounts for the long-term failure of all attempts at socialist revolution so far. -
KDE Civics Test Manual
Civics Test and Administration Manual 1 Table of Contents Introduction.............................................................................................................................................................. 3 Statutory Requirements ........................................................................................................................................... 3 Civics Test ............................................................................................................................................................... 3 Test Administration ................................................................................................................................................. 3 Which Grade Takes the Test? .............................................................................................................................. 3 Accommodations ................................................................................................................................................. 4 Implementation Options ...................................................................................................................................... 4 Scoring the Test ....................................................................................................................................................... 5 Recording Results .................................................................................................................................................... 5 Suggested -
A Century of 1917S: Ideas, Representations, and Interpretations of the October Revolution, 1917–2017 * Andrea Graziosi
Harvard Ukrainian Studiesa 36, century no. 1–2 (2019):of 1917s 9–44. 9 ONE HUNDRED YEARS AFTER THE REVOLUTION A Century of 1917s: Ideas, Representations, and Interpretations of the October Revolution, 1917–2017 * Andrea Graziosi Introduction he celebrations of the 1917 centenary were striking for both their diversity and the diminishment of the event they commemorated, Tfrom Moscow’s low-key celebrations,1 to the missing or halfhearted remembrances organized in the former Soviet and socialist countries, to the West’s many platitudes—all of them stridently contradicting the initial energy of 1917. Embarrassment and hollowness were the key words in Russia, where, in 2017, 1917 was presented either as a “world historical event” illustrating the country’s greatness and importance by the very fact that it had taken place there, or it was buried under occasional studies of local events, with very little room left over for ideas. In the remain- ing post-Soviet states, as well as in the former socialist countries, silence often fell on what was until recently a hot terrain of polemics * This essay is based on a lecture that I delivered at the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute on 6 November 2017, “Rethinking the 1917 Revolution,” as well as on a presentation that I gave at the 100th Anniversary Roundtable “The Bolshevik Revolution and Its Legacy in the USSR, Post-Soviet Russia, and the West,” organized by the Davis Center on the following day. The idea for this essay came from the way I reconstructed the interpretations of the Soviet experience in the chapter “What is the Soviet Union?” in my Histoire de l’URSS (Paris: PUF, 2010; Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2016). -
List of Members
Delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Union for the Mediterranean Members David Maria SASSOLI Chair Group of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats in the European Parliament Italy Partito Democratico Asim ADEMOV Member Group of the European People's Party (Christian Democrats) Bulgaria Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria Alex AGIUS SALIBA Member Group of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats in the European Parliament Malta Partit Laburista François ALFONSI Member Group of the Greens/European Free Alliance France Régions et Peuples Solidaires Malik AZMANI Member Renew Europe Group Netherlands Volkspartij voor Vrijheid en Democratie Nicolas BAY Member Identity and Democracy Group France Rassemblement national Tiziana BEGHIN Member Non-attached Members Italy Movimento 5 Stelle François-Xavier BELLAMY Member Group of the European People's Party (Christian Democrats) France Les Républicains Sergio BERLATO Member European Conservatives and Reformists Group Italy Fratelli d'Italia Manuel BOMPARD Member The Left group in the European Parliament - GUE/NGL France La France Insoumise 24/09/2021 1 Sylvie BRUNET Member Renew Europe Group France Mouvement Démocrate Jorge BUXADÉ VILLALBA Member European Conservatives and Reformists Group Spain VOX Catherine CHABAUD Member Renew Europe Group France Mouvement Démocrate Nathalie COLIN-OESTERLÉ Member Group of the European People's Party (Christian Democrats) France Les centristes Gilbert COLLARD Member Identity and Democracy Group France Rassemblement national -
Socialism and War.Pdf
SOCIALISM AND WAR SOCIALISM AND WAR BY G. ZINOVIEV and V. I. LENIN INmRNATIONAt PuBmHEIH NEW YO= 5 0. ~PAam~~ ..A b i'PamBrwa~l~f0~0F1905 7. Bs.smlr 8. -rao~hAm k ~T*sraoa.ra~Fnmm~~mO~~rmou 10. T# dP1Dr. CON-= IL Taa; THUEL~~~CAT AS^ rn How To FbeElr h ES wu.rae Bwrawns hm STAYS Po-? IS.OlrmcEvsoF~ 14 ST- llrtr Rmo~trmo~ I5.~~~arsrsTmorcAPm~ In Prcp~& w CQ~:Aw IIIrAnTm Dm- EmmIclb hmm- -O=K Am THE R~~EADxmU%SKf WoTA~CB OF TEE ~.DEHoQ~~~m PB]L Dzuommc Rmotrno~ TgC Nm*c Qumzon mFmmF~m-~ . , p. ~S~~MP.* . OF 3WUBM Am TBS WM OP l$U&lP% ;, OfSocialitato~W~ . 9 ~ofWarkh~ofMod!mt~.. '3 .. U 'Writ mmng dm S1awBoIdem fa&e Wm . ~and~of~verp,18 --,?ai b Folh camthd olh (k,PdIs1 .- Mem$* ............ f4 .~e.of~.1.. l5 .*..l5 r -Whtlehid-Chatl~*l,, . • - 16 '-lmsBasr~Mdf~. , . , a. 11 A FdseRefmm~ta+db*.. ..17 1 &~pof~~~d.. l9 - phion. .......... I9 ~whhtbOppo~banAn~$dfhp Wdmwith %la'NatfaPal Bourguo* d clam............. m . .$antd+l. ........... 2l IhSIogan of Mmxb ,bdm Slogan of hlfgnm- aryQd-]Dam~ ........ 2# ~1eufF~in~~.. rn ~ofnr~~.6 . 33 war ..**.****. H< 1 ~~~F~SI~..... *, s . ~PfNakteW~.... .S -- 3-- - 7-&----<.- - 4 n. ~~~cDP~W~. .na ThaBoqdhandthaWtrr. 27 %Working Clam adthe War . 2B % ksia~~Sd-Watio Wu1: Fraction in h Imperial Duma and the War . 30 TkB -uCTIOH OF THE ?~TIOBU. MktW of tha Social-Chrtu* and of the "Cmtre'' 34 strta of Mhin the OppoAtion . 36 The RWSdl-Demdc Uour Party and tho Third International .