reform and rev

["Charles Brown" <CharlesB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

 reform and rev
by Rakesh Bhandari
21 January 2002 18:15 UTC

>
>
>CB: The difference between Marx and others is the Russian, Chinese
>and other  socialist revolutions.  We are studying Marx because of
>the Bolsheviks and the Russian Rev.

Please Charles speak for yourself.


^^^^^^^^^

CB: Tax the rich ! Return to the Golden Age of the Early 50's !
Rooseveltian reforms resulted in a 90% tax rate for the highest incomes in the U.S. and an economic golden age.

^^^^^^^


For one thing, I do not think Marx developed a theory of the transfer
of value in and through the world market that gives expression to
revolutionary aspirations of national revolts in which peasants,
petty bourgeoisie and the proletariat have been engaged.


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CB: Lenin filled in this part of the theory. It's Marxism-LENINISM. ( See Lenin's writing on National Liberation and Self-Determination)

^^^^^^



The Cuban
revolution was not waged against a pure advanced capitalism by a pure
proletariat of the sorts imagined by Marx in his theoretical work.
This has erroneously led some Marxists to dismiss outright such
revolutions (say the Cuban and Sandinista revolutions) as nationalist
reaction and to ridicule first world supporters of them as "third
worldists", but to combat this view one has to in fact go beyond
Marx's theory of a pure capitalism (no trade, only two classes, etc)
to show that without protection in the real world market weaker
national capitals are as a result of the tranfer of value in
circulation subject to devaluation and endemic crisis, which in turn
lead to financial/debt crises. Some orthodox Marxists would dismiss
this kind of theory of dependency because it is "circulationist", but
it is in fact a development of Marx's theory of production price in
the third volume of Capital.

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CB: Do Council Communists support the Cuban revolution ?

Please name the orthodox Marxists who dismiss the Cuban and Sandinista revolutions.

Marxism-Leninism has a fully developed theory of colonialism and neo-colonialism.

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The reason why so many Marxists have difficulty in understanding the
progressive thrust of many third world revolutions has been that they
only study Marx, and do not beyond him. Two people who have tried to
go beyond Marx here are Guglielmo Carchedi and  Enrique Dussel from
whose latest book (edited by the way by Fred Moseley) I draw in the
above.

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CB: Most Marxists go beyond Marx following Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and Fidel Castro, et al.

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Second, it is patently absurd to say that Marx was not studied before
the revolutions that you mention and imply that people would have
ceased studying Marx if not for those revolutions.


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CB: It is highly likely that Marx would be studied much, much, much, much... less without the Russian, Chinese, etc. revs.  Name another mid-19th Century social scientist ( besides Engels ) who has the kind of influence that Marx still has.




Rakesh

Towards An Unknown Marx: A Commentary on the Manuscripts of 1861-63
(Routledge Studies in the History of Economics, Volume 34) by Fred
Moseley, Yolanda Angulo (Translator), Enrique D. Dussel