Dérive

I’m searching for the essence of Marx’s concept of socialism, the essence of Marxism, one might say. That essence - the thread weaving through all of Marx’s work, and much of Engels’ too - is criticism, or, critique. As a younger Marx wrote in 1843, “…if constructing the future and settling everything for all times are not our affair, it is all the more clear what we have to accomplish at present: I am referring to ruthless criticism of all that exists, ruthless both in the sense of not being afraid of the results it arrives at and in the sense of being just as little afraid of conflict with the powers that be.” Marx’s socialism - his understanding that the working class is the world-transforming force of history - emerges from criticism of religious critique: man alienates himself in religion, but what is it about material existence that compels man to seek this flight from reality? It’s the conditions of modern industrial labor. Marx’s most fundamental critique arguably lies in his e...

In my blurb for this presentation, I wrote the following:  Socialism is the period of workers’ political rule during the transition from a class society (capitalism) to a classless society (communism). A radical republican and keen observer of the labor movement, including the events of the Paris Commune, Marx explained why this necessary period of workers’ political rule would take the form of a social republic. In short, Marx understood socialism as the fullest expression of democracy. This statement makes more than one claim regarding “what did Marx mean by socialism?” First, that socialism is a transition period between capitalism and communism. I’m not going to talk about this point. Second, this transition period is necessary and involves working-class political power. I’m also not going to talk about this point. What I am going to talk about is the fact that Marx was a radical republic and observer of the Paris Commune, and that these reasons are part of why he understood s...

After 1848, Marx understood the movement of the working class as the only existing force for democracy. The workers, to paraphrase Karl Kautsky, need democracy like any human needs light and air. Why is the working class movement compelled - like a human is compelled to seek air - to champion democracy? First, it is only in a society with basic democratic rights - freedom of speech, of the press, and of association, for example - that the working class can organize itself and win the rest of society to its side. Second, it became clear during the Paris Commune of 1871 that the working class, once it took power, could only maintain that power if it organized society as a social republic. We can say, then, that the working class needs democracy to take power and maintain power during the transition period out of capitalist society. Marx’s democratic republicanism has been lost, and along with it, the memory of the socialist movement as a force not for Stalinism, but as a champion of soc...

Karl Marx did not invent the working class struggle. He did not invent the word “socialism” or the socialist movement. The industrial working class was already struggling by the 1830s, and there were, to use Hal Draper’s phrase, lots of “existing socialism” on the scene already. What Marx did do was ground the socialist movement in the very bedrock of bourgeois society. Class society is riddled with contradictions. These contradictions - between socialized production and the private accumulation of social surplus (capital); between the promises of bourgeois society (freedom and self-actualization through labor, fair exchange on the market) and the reality of industrial society (permanent unemployment, destitution, and death by overwork) - were and would continue to compel the working class to act. And when it did act, it had the potential, if organized into a political party and guided by socialist theory, to do nothing less than begin human history. Capitalism, understood Marx, is p...

How should socialists in a party use their position in bourgeois political bodies? When should a socialist party engage in electoral politics, and when should they abstain? When is it acceptable to make a compromise, and when does a compromise become unacceptable? Overall, what positive and negative lessons can be learned from the theory and practice of Kautsky and Liebknecht and the SPD, Lenin and the RSDLP, and (a bit) from the independent socialist Alexander Millerand in France? Lenin's Preface Liebknecht’s work is important for the RSDLP in the context of the elections to the second Duma. (Elections begin in late 1906 and the Duma runs from February to June of 1907). The RSDLP can learn from Liebknecht on the question of forming agreements with rival parties. Here in Russia, we are concerned about forming a block with the Cadets. The cadets (moderate constitutional democrats - CD = ‘ka’ ‘deh’) were in the majority during the first duma. They were originally more to the left but...