Marxist Movement Research Articles

The Sino-Soviet Ideological Struggle in Latin America

While it is true that the Chinese Communists are making a late entry into Latin America, the degree of appeal of the Peking position is indicative of two significant trends within the hemispheric Marxist movement. First, the original orthodox Communist parties have not been as aggregative as they should have been to keep up with the growth of groups committed to radical change. Second, the Chinese have provided an important facade for a Marxist approach to revolution that is fresher and less tarnished than has been provided by the older party organizations.

The Deradicalization of Marxist Movements

Marxism-Leninism, as the Soviet Marxist ideology is called, has never been wholly static; it has evolved over the years by a process of accretion, elimination and redefinition of dogma. But in the first post-Stalin decade, there were changes of unusual scope and significance in this sphere, accompanying and in some ways mirroring the general processes of systemic change which Stalin's death precipitated in Soviet society. This paper seeks to interpret the post-Stalin Soviet ideological changes, especially as they bear upon the politics of world revolution. In doing so, it attacks the broader theoretical problem of what goes on in radical political movements and their ideologies as these movements settle down and accommodate themselves to the existing world. For some such tendency appears to be involved in the Soviet case.The year 1956 was the watershed of post-Stalin ideological change in the U.S.S.R. In the Central Committee's report to the Twentieth Party Congress—the first congress held after Stalin's death—Nikita Khrushchev announced a series of doctrinal innovations affecting particularly the line of Communist Marxism on international relations and the further development of the world Communist revolution. One was the revision of the Leninist thesis on the inevitability of periodic wars under imperialism. On the ground that the world-wide forces for peace were now unprecedentedly strong, it was proclaimed that wars, while still possible, were no longer fatally inevitable even though “imperialism” continued to exist in large areas. Not only could the antagonistic socio-economic systems peacefully coexist; they could and should actively cooperate in the maintenance of peaceful relations. At the same time, coexistence was a competitive process, economics being the principal arena of competition.

Axelrod and Kautsky

The intimate friendship between Pavel Borisovich Axelrod and Karl Kautsky, stretching over almost half a century, had an important bearing on the Russian Social Democratic movement and international socialism. Kautsky, who, after Engels’ death in 1895, became the most authoritative exponent of Marxism and the major theorist of the Second International, followed developments in Russia with interest and leaned heavily on Axelrod in forming his opinions about events in that country and its Social Democratic Party. The German socialist's curiosity was aroused not only because he recognized, as early as the 1890s, the potential importance of the Marxist movement in Russia but also because Russian Marxists were especially eager to obtain his advice. “Whenever a controversial question arose,” wrote the Menshevik Rafael Abramovich, “whenever a problem emerged, the first thought [among Russian Social Democrats] was always: What would Kautsky say about this? How would Kautsky resolve this question?“

Political Dualism and Italian Communism

The poverty of philosophy, for Marx, was its formalism. The social sciences, in contrast, are blessed with the ability to adjust theory to experience. In our study of Marxist movements, however, we lack precisely the marxian flexibility we need to overcome a patrimony of ideology, misinformation and rigidity. Writers like Duverger and Selznick, for example, talk about “devotee parties” and “organizational weapons” without considering that their terminology may in some cases be misleading.The devotee party, writes Duverger, “represents a change from the conception of the party as a class; it is the party conceived as the elite.” Its members pledge their “whole human being” to the party while its structure focuses upon “unceasing propaganda and agitation,” to the detriment of parliamentary activity. Duverger leaves no doubt that his archetype of the devotee party is the Communist Party. What he never asks, however, is whether a Communist Party may be anything but a devotee party.With a similar focus, Philip Selznick describes “the combat party,” whose peculiar property is its “competence to turn members of a voluntary association into disciplined and deployable political agents,” and its “adoption of subversion” and “penetration and manipulation of institutional targets.” While the model is most relevant in societies in which Communist doctrine is remote and unappealing to the population, Selznick, like Duverger, holds that it “provides a fair interpretation of the Communist vanguard or combat party, wherever it is found.”

Party Genealogy and the Soviet Historians (1920–1938)

To map out a convincing genealogy of the Russian revolutionary Marxist movement (and, from 1903, of its Bolshevik wing) was always a concern of its leaders. Revolutionary Marxism made its Russian debut with Plekhanov's bookletSocialism and the Political Struggleonly in 1883, some thirty-five years after theCommunist Manifestoand almost sixty years after the Decembrist uprising. It was thus a latecomer both to European Marxism and to the Russian revolutionary movement. How was it to define its own relationship to these forerunners? To emphasize only the Marxist heritage meant to isolate the young movement from the formidable tradition of revolt already built up in Russia. But to identify the emergent Marxist movement too fully with this tradition would undermine its claim to be possessed of a new message, to be the prophet of a new age.

Marxism and Marxist Movements in Latin America in Recent Soviet Historical Writing

Marxism and Marxist Movements in Latin America in Recent Soviet Historical Writing

Marxism and Marxist Movements in Latin America in Recent Soviet Historical Writing

ship. The elaboracte debate that this change generated in the Soviet Union in 1956-1957 was reflected largely in the pages of Voprosy lstorii. Prof. Cyril Black has discussed this shift in emphasis in Soviet historical writinig and its signiiificance for the work of contemporary Soviet historialls in his essay, Ilistory and Politics in the Soviet Uiiioii.1 Black points out that: The general line of the party's directives to historians has been that they should contribute to the promotion of communismn at home and abroad by deinonstrating in the light of Marxist-Leninist methodology how societies have evolved in the past and how they aire evolving today. More specifically, this contribution calls for a major effort to interpret the Soviet Union as the first country to solve the problemys involved in the evolution from socialism to communisrmi. It also calls for a niuch greater concentration than hitherto on such problems as the developimenit of the Communist mnovement in other countries. . . . The role of historical scholarship is thus to assist the party in its task of promotinig conmiiiunisin at home and abroad by elabortiting a credible theory according to which developments in all societies mnust conform to the Marxist-Leniinist doctrine todiay and tomorrow as inflexibly as they have in the past. In short, the historianis are called upon to make a vital contribution in the retalm of scholarship to the continuing propaganda campiign in which the party is engaged. In the Stalin era this canmpaign was essentially defensive and Russian-oriented. In the Khrushchev era it is much more aggressive and it devotes significant attention to the non-Russian world.2

Bonapartist Workers during the Second Empire

In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries militant and class-conscious European and American workers have generally supported democratic and socialist movements and parties. Workers attracted by antidemocratic and reactionary organizations and regimes have usually come from the dregs of their class, from Marx's famous Lumpenproletariat (true, the leadership has often included disappointed ex-Marxists). At times, however, this generalization must be qualified. Today, for example, the trade unions that favor Peron in Argentina include the kind of activist worker usually to be found in Social Democratic and Marxist movements. During the final decade of the Second Empire a somewhat similar attitude towards an anti-democratic regime emerged among some French workers. In the 1860's a significant minority of workers, often better educated than the average and with a long record of service to the working class, urged support of the Second Empire and often became devoted followers of Napoleon III. This article examines the motives and the activities of such Bonapartist inclined workers.

Some Liberal Marxists and Left-Wing Catholics in Contemporary Poland

The Polish left-wing Catholics, who are to be dealt with in this paper, are not the confessed fellow-travellers, who were at the height of their influence during the Stalinist period. They are rather the members of the “Znak” parliamentary group and others associated with the Catholic weekly, Tygodnik Powszechny, which comes close to being the mouthpiece of the Polish Primate, Cardinal Wyszyński. The left-wing Catholics to be considered, therefore, have been dependent for their activities on the comparatively tolerant attitude of Polish Communist leadership. So it will be logical and convenient to deal with the liberal Marxists first.Rosa Luxemburg, the greatest intellectual leader that the Polish Marxist movement has so far produced, was murdered in 1919. Yet she was so typical of Polish Communism, and she exerted so great an influence on the character that it has assumed, that a brief reference to her will be made by way of introduction. She was an outstanding revolutionary and a great woman, combining such varied qualities as physical and mental courage, great energy and powers of endurance, and unusual oratorical gifts, with more characteristically feminine attributes, such as a deep sensitivity and love of beauty in all its forms. She could stand up to Lenin when she differed from him, but she commanded his respect. However, what concerns us most here is that her deep Marxist convictions were tempered by liberal elements characteristic of what would now be called Western democracy.

One Road from Marx: On the Vision of Socialism, and the Fate of Workers' Control, in Socialist Thought

In 1899 a little-known, now long-forgotten, Polish revolutionist named Waclaw Machajski published a small book, The Evolution of Social Democracy, which provoked consternation in the nascent Marxist movement in Russia. Its thesis was that the new messianism of socialism masked an ideology of discontented intellectuals, and that the new socialist society would simply replace one ruling class with another, so that the workers would still remain exploited, albeit this time by a new class of professional leaders.

The Historical Role of Marxism and the Soviet System

NO analyst of Soviet Communism has failed to express surprise that a Marxist movement should have triumphed in a prevailingly agrarian society. Equally trite has been the observation that the Russian Marxists have not been able to solve the problem of the peasant and his full integration into their socialist system. Marx was a city boy, we are told, and that is why Nikita Khrushchev, the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, has to spend his time discussing the failure of Soviet agriculture to keep up with the industrial sector of the economy. We are left with a truly confusing picture. Marxism, on its own premises designed as a movement for fully industrialized societies, comes to power or is a serious contender for power in societies that are mainly agrarian, while mature industrial countries adhere perversely to something (but something that is definitely non-Marxist) variously described as “the social welfare state,” “liberal capitalism,” and the like. Perhaps Marx was wrong and—for reasons unforeseen by him—his system is peculiarly suitable to what we now term “backward” countries, with predominantly agrarian economies and a low standard of living. Then why cannot Marxism solve its central problem of the agrarian economy? Or is it perhaps merely one form of Marxism—Soviet Communism—which is thus incapacitated? No wonder that scholars, first secretaries, and the rest of us tend to become confused.

World War I and the Marxist Movement of Poland

World War I and the Marxist Movement of Poland

Social Democrats Versus "Social Patriots": The Origins of the Split of the Marxist Movement in Poland

Social Democrats Versus "Social Patriots": The Origins of the Split of the Marxist Movement in Poland