Re: [Marxism] RE: Who is David Cobb?

["Paul H. Dillon" <illonph@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

This speaks to the problem directly.  Who are the workers in 2004?
Obviously not the industrial proletariat Marx talked about when he gave this
Address in the years before he had even studied political economy.  Who are
the worker's candidates in 2004?   Are NASCAR dad's workers?  well isn't
their candidate W?  And another problem of anachronism (something neither
Marx nor Engels were ever really guilty of but very attent to the context in
which an utterance was made or position taken ditto Lenin)  is the entirely
different character of elections in 1850 and 2004.  But what I really don't
understand is the election that Marx is referring to.  Is that an internal
election within the Communist League which wasn't yet the workers party??
Was it a national election in England??  And what would exactly be
comparable to a candidate of the Communist League today, someone from a
group that had stood at the head of the only revolutionary class, the
proletariat??  Who??  Is that question even really relevant in todays much
more complex system of class relationships engendered minimally by the
privileged position of the American (and European?) working class in the
context of the globalized capitalist system?


----- Original Message -----
From: <Rdkrnstdt@xxxxxxx>
To: <marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, July 16, 2004 8:43 PM
Subject: Re: [Marxism] RE: Who is David Cobb?


> Karl Marx and Frederick Engels
> Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League
> London, March 1850
> "Even where there is no prospect of achieving their election the workers
must
> put up their own candidates to preserve their independence, to gauge their
> own strength and to bring their revolutionary position and party
standpoint to
> public attention. They must not be led astray by the empty phrases of the
> democrats, who will maintain that the workers' candidates will split the
democratic
> party and offer the forces of reaction the chance of victory. All such
talk
> means, in the final analysis, that the proletariat is to be swindled. The
> progress which the proletarian party will make by operating independently
in this
> way is infinitely more important than the disadvantages resulting from the
> presence of a few reactionaries in the representative body..."
>
> at www.marxists.org\archive\marx\works\1847\communist-league\1850-ad1.htm
>
> _______________________________________________
> Marxism mailing list
> Marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism


_______________________________________________
Marxism mailing list
Marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism