PEN-L message, Re: EMH

In a message dated 6/24/2004 9:06:54 AM Central Standard Time, nomorebounces@xxxxxxx writes:

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Marxism-Leninism is a dead ideology!

I count the seconds... :)

Everyone has their own brand and definition of Marxism Leninism, although I most certainly believe that it is dead for complex and specific reasons. Just as Lenin was held on display long after he died, Marxism Leninism is still on display in various intellectual circles.

Above all we are talking about a doctrine of combat as distinct from simply the method Marx deployed to arrive at this theory of the societal advance driven by changes in the mode of production.

Leninism is a form of industrial ideology and revolutionary combat down to its organizational forms no matter how one defines the forms of organization. This does not mean that there is nothing relevant in Lenin's many writings.

I most certainly would not try and apply the program Karl Marx outlines in the Communist Manifesto to today and in this sense the doctrine of Marx's strategy and tactics for 1848 are outdated.

Actually, I would resist rasing the slogan of the late 1970s and early 1980s of "Jobs, Peace and Equality," and most certainly reject out of hand the 1930s slogan of "Black and White Unite and Fight."

My general approach is to try and better understand the world on the basis of fighting to change it in a certain direction. The "direction" contains a lot of economic logic and how people react and understand what is in front of them.

The economic categories called classes - however one defines them, have undergone lots of change since the time of Marx and Lenin (in their form) and some classes no longer exist in a real way.

The forms of capital in its mode of accumulation has changed over the past decades. The industrial working class and industrial classes have changed in the sense that they are on longer on the wave of ascendency based on the expansion of the industrial system proper.

If all the fundamental conditions - in their inactivity, that gave rise to or was the basis for the emergence of Marxism Leninism are undergoing transformation, it seems to me that an ideology or doctrine that arose to address a specific boundary in history automatically becomes obsolete.

It not like we have large political groups in American society advocating the industrial concentration of the past period of history because the industrial structures of society are undergoing profound change.

Actually, it seems to me that Leninism (Marxism-Leninism) died twenty years ago - definitely and on a world scale. I was not a pallbearer but closed the Church doors after the casket was carried out.

What is needed today is a doctrine of the American Revolution.

Melvin P.