[PEN-L:28274] Re: Re: citation on reforms

["ken hanly" <khanly@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

A chaser remains a chaser? What's a "chazer"??
Is this like a tiger doesnt change its stripes or something?

Cheers, Ken Hanly

----- Original Message -----
From: Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Sunday, July 21, 2002 9:14 AM
Subject: [PEN-L:28270] Re: citation on reforms


> Chris Burford wrote:
>
> > "Marxism alone precisely and correctly defines the relation between
> > reform and revolution. Marx was able to see this realtion only from
> > one aspect, namely in the conditions preceding the first to any extent
> > permanent and prolonged victory of the proletariat, if only in one
> > countrey. In those conditions, the basis fo the proper relation was:
> > reform is the by-prdouct of the revolutionary class struggle of the
> > proletariat............Before the victory of the proletariat, reforms
> > are a by-product of the revolutionary class struggle."
> >
> > I believe I recall Louis Proyect asserting that we would not get very
> > far by quoting Lenin, but I cannot remember the context. However if he
> > wishes to assert that real Marxists are not in favour of reforms, he
> > might strengthen his position by citing a source, otherwise it might
> > just appear a loaded assertion as to who is a real Marxist and who is
> > an unreal marxist.
>
> I went ahead and consulted the Collected Lenin to put the above quote in
> context. A month later, Lenin wrote an article titled "Let there be no
> Confusion" that expanded on the relationship between reform and
> revolution. He wrote:
>
> "Comrade Vzyanikov appears in his muddle-headed way to have fallen off
> the three-legged stool whose leftmost leg he sawed off himself chasing
> after European decadent opportunist trends. Ptooey, I say. When I say
> reforms, I mean specifically and unalterably and to a moral certainty
> that this does not include junkets by bourgeois imperialist oppressors
> and their bootlicking 'friends' in the middle-class, especially Mario
> del Bono, that renegade from Marxism who tossed principles aside to
> justify capitalist exploitation in the Levantine. When del Bono told
> Figaro that the introduction of ice-making machinery into the Upper
> Volta was a sign of progress, any revolutionary-minded worker would have
> raised his fist in agreement with the hoary Russian oath: "A chazer
> bleibt a chazer".
>
> (Collected Works, V. 23, p. 457)
>
> --
>
> Louis Proyect
> www.marxmail.org
>
>