Re: [Marxism] Victoria Woodhull and dogmatic Marxism

[Brian Shannon <brian_shannon@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Jun 6, 2006, at 8:27 PM, Louis Proyect wrote:

> http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/american_left/woodhull.htm
> Marx, Woodhull and Sorge
>
> Dogmatic Marxism's hostility toward "non-class" demands has been
> around for a very long time, judging from the evidence of Timothy
> Messer-Kruse's "The Yankee International: 1848-1876." (U. of North
> Carolina, 1998) Furthermore, you are left with the disturbing
> conclusion that this problem existed at the very highest levels of
> the first Communist International, and included Marx himself.

Behind the greatly contrasting development of the socialist movement
in the U.S. and Russia lies the palpable sense of success that
infused the Russian socialists as they prepared the overthrow of
Czarism, feudalism, and capitalism, compared to the U.S. socialists
combatting still expanding imperialism and the long reactionary post
Civil War period, including the fascist counterrevolution against
African-Americans in the South and its extension in the North.

Lenin found in Marx the ideological tools to reach out to every
oppressed layer and he urged the socialists to push all the movements
forward. In the U.S., Victoria Woodhull and others, later including
the socialists of the IWW, fought along similar lines. Woodhull was
the first one in the U.S. to publish the Communist Manifesto. It
could be argued that Marx's support to Sorge is less significant than
Woodhull's support to Marx.

Marx and Engels were always opposed to every form of sectarianism
(despite language in private that matches some on Marxmail or worse).
For this reason, I wonder whether the association of Marx with the
practice of Sorge (and by extension DeLeon many years later), of
which he had only a limited knowledge, will bear the guilt by
association that Messer-Kruse (via Proyect) implies.

Besides, we have to remember that Dobbs anointed Jack Barnes while he
was right in front of him and that Marx and Engels had to depend
solely on trans-Atlantic mail from the parties that they knew.

Brian Shannon



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