The aims of this essay are (A) to examine the extent to which Marx, Engels and Lenin believed in revolution by peaceful means and what was their attitude towards the phenomenon of war, and (B) to reflect on the different interpretations of their writings, discerning between three schools of thought. It is argued that Marx and Engels considered violence only as an instrument of secondary importance and desirable insofar as there is no other alternative to change the (...) system. It is further contended that while they, in the course of years, adopted a more moderate position regarding the use of violence, Lenin's viewpoint radicalized as the possibility of a revolution in Russia became real. As years went by Lenin affirmed not only the use of violence but also the resort to terrorist activities. Unlike Marx and Engels he became an ardent supporter of all types of terror. (shrink)

Today there is a great interest in reconstructing Lenin's thought concerning the relation between vangard and masses. Lenin's definitive theses on the problem are seen to have been outlined in his famous and much discussed work, What Is to Be Done? which, for some, remains the only scientific answer to the problem (not fully developed by Marx and Engels) of the passage from “class-in-itself” to “class-for-itself.” For others, this work, impregnated by intellectualism and idealism, is seen as (...) a classic of the Stalinist era and is held to be the root of all the bureaucratic deviations of the Soviet experience. (shrink)

During the twentieth century a number of competing accounts of Lenin’s theory and practice have sought to reclaim its true meaning from ossification under Stalinism. One account popular today is the Hegelian-Marxist interpretation of Lenin’s Philosophical Notebooks written in 1914 and 1915. According to thinkers such as Raya Dunayevskaya and Kevin Anderson, Lenin’s notebooks on Hegel’s Science of Logic represent a radical break from classical dialectical materialism. For these Hegelian-Marxists, Lenin’s acerbic remarks on Engels’s and (...) Plekhanov’s dialectics reveal him as the forerunner of Georg Lukács and Herbert Marcuse and represent a thoroughgoing reconceptualization of the dialectics of revolution. In this article I submit these arguments to the test of a fine grained textual analysis. I conclude, opposite to the Hegelian-Marxist narrative, that Lenin neither intended to nor accomplished a refoundation of Marxist dialectics in 1914. The notion of quantity-quality leaps Lenin adds to his works.. (shrink)

"Prophecy by magic is a myth. But prophecy by science is a fact." With these words, Lenin begins his article "Prophetic Words" [Prorocheskie slova], in Poln. sobr. soch. [Complete Works], Vol. 36, p. 472. Written in the middle of 1918, a very difficult time for the young Soviet republic, it is devoted entirely to Engels' forecast three decades earlier of the possible outcomes of a world war. With amazing forecasting ability, Engels described the destruction and upheavals that (...) war would cause, the downfall of capitalist empires and the inevitable triumph of the proletariat. Engels warned the kings and statesmen of the capitalist class: "If you unleash forces with which you will not subsequently be able to contend, then, no matter how things develop, at the end of the tragedy you will be a ruin, and the triumph of the proletariat will either already have been won or in any case be inevitable.". (shrink)

Sophisticated Marxists have always been aware of the important contributions to literary criticism of Marx, Engels, Trotsky and Gramsci. Yet, except for Lukács, there has been almost no discussion of Lenin's great interest in literature. This paper glances at some of the contemporary evidence of Lenin's concern with the classic Russian novelists — especially Tolstoy, to whom he devoted four essays (his only works of formal literary criticism). Lenin placed great emphasis from the earliest days of (...) the revolution on building a popular library system and on publishing good fiction cheaply. He also had an informed interest in language and was a life-long opponent of literary censorship. In this connection, his struggle against the sectarianism of the Proletkult movement is recorded. (shrink)

A hundred years have passed since publication of the first edition of Engels's book The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, which Lenin regarded as "one of the basic works of modern socialism." Engels's interest in the remote past of mankind and Lenin's evaluation of his work were, of course, not coincidental. They may be explained by the tremendous role played by the concept of primitive history in a general materialist understanding of the (...) universal historical process. What was the nature of this very first term in the sequence of socioeconomic formations, this cornerstone of the Marxist concept of universal history? When did private property, antagonistic social classes, and state power, separate from the people, emerge, and what were they, original and permanent institutions, or historically determined institutions of human communal life? These problems are clearly of great philosophical importance. They were, and continue to be, the arena of a bitter ideological struggle, and inevitably attracted the most conscientious attention of the founders of scientific communism. (shrink)

History and the philosophy of science have played a very important role in dialectical materialism; their results have been destined to support the correctness of the ideas of Marxist philosophers, especially in their application in historical materialism.From this point of view, the circumstances of the origin of the works of the Marxist classics cannot be neglected: Engels wrote hisDialectics in Nature in the period of classical physics, and Lenin published hisMaterialism and Empirio-Criticism at the beginning of the 20th (...) century when our modern physics first began: shortly before the publication of Lenin's book, Röntgen and Becquerel discovered new kinds of radiation, Balmer published his ideas concerning the regularity of the hydrogen spectrum, Plank wrote his first articles about the elementary quantum and Einstein published his three famous articles (1905). (shrink)

Marx's Rebellion Against Lenin is a representative of the contemporary revitalization of the thought of Marx. It fulfils this task in three ways. First, it overthrows the dialectical materialism of Engels and of Stalinist Bolshevism by exploring 18th century historical thought and illustrating how these Enlightenment historians and political theorists first explored method of historical explanation that were later adopted by Marx. It is shown that contrary to the theory of Stalinist Bolshevism, Hegel was a vital influence on (...) Marx. Second, Levine's book represents Marx as an exponent of Classical Humanism. Marx did not define communism as a form of materialism, as economic egalitarianism, but rather related communism to the Classical ethics of Aristotle, to the Aristotelian ideas of polis citizenship and the ethics of distributive justice. Third, it is argued that the 17th and 18th Century Enlightenment was not simply a liberal center extolling property, individual rights and capitalism. Instead it is shown that the 17th and 18th century Enlightenment was divided between an Enlightenment Center and an Enlightenment Left, with the Enlightenment Left challenging the domination of capitalism and private property. Marx's Rebellion Against Lenin traces the flow of the theories of the Enlightenment Left into Marx and in doing so liberates Marxist thought from its imprisonment in 19th century materialism and relocates it within the traditions of Classical Humanism. (shrink)

This paper analyzes the scenario for a post-revolutionary society as developed in Lenin’s “The State and Revolution.” Lenin heavily relies on Marx and Engels’s metaphors of waking up and falling asleep: Post-revolutionary society is marked by a grand awakening and a conversion of dreams into reality, while the State is said to fall asleep or wither away. Lenin applies these metaphors yet applies them in a strangely inverted manner. Instead of embracing agency, he argues for a (...) new regime of “habit,” which has sedating effects on humans, while the state survives its demise and returns under the title of “administration.” Lenin’s plea for “habit” and “administration” is discussed in a broader context of other philosophical accounts reaching from Kant to Hegel, Max Weber, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Hannah Arendt and beyond. These critical considerations lead to some general findings on the status of moral agency in revolutionary change. Trotsky’s account of permanent revolution with its experimentalist and theatrical implications is a case in point here. The paper concludes by discussing the intricate relation between revolution, democracy, and the state. (shrink)

Natural science, and physics as a branch of it, poses the goal of depicting nature as it is, without arbitrary additions by the intelligence cognizing it. This basic spirit of natural science explains why its outstanding representatives, subjectively remote from conscious dialectics, unconsciously apply its principles and postulates as they discover laws of nature and create new theories. One need only recall Engels' words on the discovery of the periodic table by Mendeleyev, who "by unconsciously employing Hegel's law of (...) transition from quantity into quality, performed a major feat in science." The same may be said, mutatis mutandis, about the creation of the theories of relativity and quantum mechanics. (shrink)

In his article "Marxism and Revisionism," Lenin pointed out that Marxist theory "had to fight at every step in its journey of life." The history of the development of Marxism is one of the struggle against streams of various socialist ideas. Marxism developed in the struggle. In the 1840s Germany was on the eve of a bourgeois democratic revolution. In order to mobilize the proletariat and the broad masses of the people to participate in the impending democratic revolution, the (...) bourgeoisie had first of all to bring the theory of revolution into the workers' movement, combine the theory of revolution with the workers' movement, and found a proletarian revolutionary party on the basis of this combination. However, at that time, not only in France and Britain but also in Germany there were various socialist schools and ideas and "genuine socialism" was one of the influential socialist schools. Up to 1864 the "genuine socialists" vigorously disseminated their philistine viewpoint in the Union of Justice Advocates and hindered the founding of a proletarian revolutionary party. In order to arm the proletariat with the theory of revolution, win over the Union of Justice Advocates to their side, and turn the union into a real proletarian revolutionary party which would be armed with scientific socialism, Marx and Engels put up a firm struggle against various socialist schools which were hostile to scientific socialism, particularly against "genuine socialism," which had great influence in the Union of Justice Advocates, and theoretically smashed the "genuine socialist" school. In this struggle, Marx and Engels exposed the real class nature of the philistine theory, thoroughly refuted its erroneous viewpoints, particularly the "genuine socialist" flapdoodle about "love," smashed this school, and eliminated this school's evil effects on the workers' movement. Today it is still highly pertinent for us to study the writings and letters of Marx and Engels during the struggle. (shrink)

Marxism is an intrinsically critical and revolutionary theory. It was formed and developed in its integration with the proletarian struggle for revolution and its struggle against streams of various anti-Marxist ideas. As Lenin said, it had to fight at every step in its development.

Gorbachev's ascent to power in the Soviet Union in 1985 and the events that followed appear to have led to a dramatic decline in philosophers' interest in Marxist philosophy. The magnitudes of philosophical literature on Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Hegel recorded in annual volumes ofThe Philosopher's Index have all been shrinking in recent years. In the 1992 volume, the share of the publications on Marx within all philosophical publications has dropped to almost one-third of what it was on (...) average in the 1981–1985 volumes, on Engels and Lenin to about one-fifth, and on Hegel to about two-thirds. (shrink)

La problématique des rapports entre l’agriculture et le capitalisme resurgit à intervalles réguliers, et suscite des controverses entre des chercheurs se réclamant, de près ou de loin, de Marx et de ses continuateurs. Des deux côtés de la Manche, la fin des années 1960 et le début des années 1970 constituent un moment important de redécouverte, de discussion et de réinterprétation des travaux marxistes sur la question paysanne et agraire. Pourtant, le débat en France à cette époque tranche nettement avec (...) celui qu’on peut observer au sein du « peasants seminar » de la School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) de Londres. Ce regain d’intérêt pour la paysannerie et l’agriculture s’accompagna en Angleterre d’une relecture des thèses classiques de Marx, d’Engels, de Lénine ou encore de Kautsky. Il ne s’agissait pas de « jeter le bébé marxiste avec l’eau du bain », comme ce fut le cas en France, mais bien de prolonger et d’enrichir l’analyse marxiste classique et de l’actualiser dans un contexte marqué par les luttes anticoloniales, la remise en cause du « productivisme », et la remise en question du modèle soviétique. (shrink)

The thesis of this paper is that even some of the most fundamental concepts of Marxism have been used and abused to fit their advocates' purposes. More specifically, the interpretation of the concept of the "dictatorship of the proletariat" has been subject to a dual development. First, the dictatorship of the proletariat has come to denote an increasingly violent regime. Second, the term has been used to refer to a rule exercised by an ever smaller segment of society. This paper (...) seeks to analyze and elucidate this much disputed and frequently misunderstood Marxist concept. In the first part Marx's use of the term is examined. The second section explores how the same concept was explicated in the writings of some of the most important first generation Marxist thinkers and "practitioners" like Engels, Lenin, Kautsky, Bukharin, and Stalin. Following the summary of my findings I attempt to formulate some meaningful generalizations about the usage of the concept by Marxist thinkers. (shrink)

Marx and Engels inherited and developed the 18th Century notion of ideology as distorted consciousness. Although they did not speak explicitly of a proletarian ideology, they did develop the elements which Lenin then elaborated. His failure to develop a theory of ideology has left this task to contemporary Marxists (e.g., Althusser) and Marxist-Leninists (e.g., Choruc), who often do this in the process of criticizing non-Marxist theories. A lively discussion took place in the 1960's in Poland (Schaff and Bauman) (...) and in the Soviet Union (Jadov and Julina). One of the results has been to cast doubt on the systemic validity of the principle of party-mindedness (partijnost'). (shrink)

Focusing on David B. Riazanov career and his pioneering efforts in producing a complete edition of the works of Marx and Engels, the article explains why Riazanov’s variety of Marxism was unacceptable to the Soviet regime, and why from 1924 Lenin was credited with being an outstanding Marxist theoretician, whereas previously he had been regarded only as a skilled political activist. The concept of Leninism as a new stage of Marxism was put forward by Bukharin and elaborated on (...) by Stalin and Zinoviev. Georg Lukács attempted to show that Lenin’s thought had the internal coherence that Bukharin postulated. In support of Lenin’s theoretical credentials, his ‘Philosophical Notebooks’ began to be published from 1925. However, neither Riazanov nor his associate Abram M. Deborin subscribed to the official doctrine that Leninism was a new and higher stage of Marxism. For this stance they fell victim to Stalin’s repression. (shrink)

_The Algebra of Revolution_ is the first book to study Marxist method as it has been developed by the main representatives of the classical Marxist tradition, namely Marx and Engels, Luxembourg, Lenin, Lukacs, Gramsci and Trotsky. This book provides the only single volume study of major Marxist thinkers' views on the crucial question of the dialectic, connecting them with pressing contemporary, political and theoretical questions. John Rees's _The Algebra of Revolution_ is vital reading for anyone interested in gaining (...) a new and fresh perspective on Marxist thought and on the notion of the dialectic. (shrink)

The interpretation of Hegel has been a focal point of philosophical controversy ever since the beginning of the twentieth century, both among Marxists and in the major European philosophical schools. Yet despite wide differences of emphasis most interpretations of Hegel share important similarities. They link his idea of Reason to the revolutionary and rationalist tradition which led to the French Revolution, and they interpret his dialectic as implying a latently atheist and even materialist world outlook. Lucio Colletti directly challenges this (...) picture of Hegel. He argues that Hegel was an essentially Christian philosopher, and that his dialectic was explicitly anti-materialist in both intention and effect. In contrast to earlier views, Colletti maintains that there is no contradiction between Hegel’s method and his system, once it is accepted that his thought is an exercise in Absolute Idealism stemming from a long Christian humanist tradition. He claims, on the contrary, that intellectual inconsistency is rather to be found in the works of Engels, Lenin, Lukás, Kojève and others, who have attempted to adapt Hegel to their own philosophical priorities. Colletti places his argument in the context of a broad re-examination of the whole relationship between Marxism and the Enlightenment, giving novel emphasis to the relationship between Marxism and Kant. He concludes by re-asserting the importance in Marxism of empirical science against the claim of “infinite reason,” while at the same time showing how Marx did transform key ideas in Hegelian thought to construct a consistently materialist dialectic. (shrink)

Stalin was a Marxist, but a certain kind of Marxist who selected out of the body of work of Marx, Engels, and Lenin a non-democratic and inhumane form of Marxism leaving out the humanist and democratic aspects of the original Marxist programme. The means he chose to build what he considered a socialist society fatally tainted the goal of a society in which working people make the fundamental decisions that determine their lives.

This essay will first present a vignette of Luxemburg’s life and work, referring to classic and recent biographies. Following that, section 3 examines concepts of the state and nation in Hegel, Marx, Engels, and Lenin. The subject of section 4 is Luxemburg’s substantial work of political economy, The Accumulation of Capital. It is a most significant achievement, analyzing the contradictions of the capitalist state and its role in driving imperialist expansion and colonialism. Section 5 traces how Luxemburg’s political (...) economy in Accumulation underwrites her interventions in the heated debates over Polish independence. And section 6 concludes with remarks on Luxemburg’s significance for philosophy and political thought. (shrink)

The Algebra of Revolution is the first book to study Marxist method as it has been developed by the main representatives of the classical Marxist tradition, namely Marx and Engels, Luxembourg, Lenin, Lukacs, Gramsci, and Trotsky. This book provides the only single volume study of major Marxist thinkers' views on the crucial question of the dialectic, connecting them with pressing contemporary, political and theoretical questions. This title available in eBook format. Click here for more information . Visit our (...) eBookstore at: www.ebookstore.tandf.co.uk. (shrink)

Ce recueil se veut un instrument de travail à l'intention de ceux qui s'interrogent sur les idéologies, ce qu'elles sont, d'où elles viennent et à quoi elles servent. Michel Simon y a réuni un certain nombre de textes qui ont marqué l'histoire et la réflexion sur l'idéologie et les idéologies et qui sont proposés comme autant de points de repères : Marx, Engels, Lénine, Lukacs, Mannheim, Korsch, Gramsci, Althusser chez les marxistes, mais aussi Jean Baechler et Pierre Ansart. Un (...) commentaire d'accompagnement situe ces textes dans leur contexte et fournit les explications nécessaires tandis que des tableaux récapitulatifs donnent une vue d'ensemble de chaque auteur. (shrink)

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel und die Weiter- und Höherenentwicklung seiner Ideen, von A. Abusch.-G.W.F. Hegel und seine Zeit (1770-1831). Eine Chronik.-G.W.F. Hegels Werke in Erstausgaben.-Aus Werken Hegels.-Marx, Engels, Lenin über Hegel.-Hegel Literatur in der DDR 1949-1969.-Hegel Literatur zum Hegel Jahr 1970.-Veranstaltungen aus Anlass des 200. Geburtstages von G.W.F. Hegel am 27. August 1970.