Incorrect. There is nothing Marx about “communism growing out of socialism”. He only refers to “higher” and “lower” phases of communism. The idea that “socialism grows into communism” was a revision by Lenin to try and explain how the Russian agrian feudalism was suppose to go to communism while skipping industrial capitalism.
What Marx refers to as the lower phase of communism is precisely what’s understood to be socialism in the context of Marxism today. Meanwhile, your definition is itself incorrect. What Lenin refers to is the stage after the revolution where society transitions from capitalism towards a communist society. A great explanation of that can be found here;.
I’d be curious of your opinion on this video. I know the title will not make you happy but it extensively quotes Marx directly: https://youtu.be/rRXvQuE9xO4
It directly talks about Marx’s concept of higher and lower phase communism and how this differs from the Leninist revision.
It seems to me that the video agrees that both Marx and Lenin had the same general idea of what communism is and the path there. The critique at the end of the video largely focuses on Stalin and the attempts to establish socialism in one state. However, the video also acknowledges that it would be practically impossible to establish anything resembling communism while capitalism remains the dominant ideology in the world.
In my opinion the video outlines the basic ideas correctly, however it also fails to address an important point which is that Marx focused on theory first and foremost. He provided a critique of capitalism and ideas for how a communist society could work.
Lenin ran an actual revolution and focused on the practical aspects of the transition from capitalism. Lenin should be viewed as making the ideas of Marx concrete and bringing them into practice. As the video notes, Lenin very much agreed with Marx on the goals of communism.
In my view, using Marx as orthodoxy goes directly against the idea of dialectical thinking championed by Marx himself. Ideas have to be put into practice to have value, and then the learning from implementing ideas have to be reintegrated back into theory.
Given that, Marx cannot be seen as a higher authority than Lenin because Lenin actually did the work of putting the ideas into practice and evolved the theory based on the results.
It’s also worth noting that Lenin started out with many idealistic notions that he was eventually dissuaded of by reality. Lenin’s document on NEP is a great example of this.
For example, the video talks about Marx recognizing the dangers of centralized authority, yet it doesn’t address the fact that without such authority reactionary elements will fight to restore capitalism as we’ve seen happen time and again.
I think the video does some hair splitting regarding what is considered socialism and what is not. We can call the time of the dictatorship of the proletariat pre-socialism, or transitionary state, or whatever. What we choose to call it does not obviate the necessity of this stage. As long as capitalism remains the dominant ideology in the world, it’s hard to see how any society can transition past this stage.
This is the elephant in the room that people arguing against Lenin’s approach need to address. To date, we don’t have any examples of working alternatives for overthrowing capitalism. Perhaps different approaches are possible, but none have been demonstrated to work in practice.
So, while I agree there is much to be learned from USSR both in terms of its success and its mistakes, I don’t really see how a fundamentally different approach could be viable. I think that instead of throwing the baby out with the bath water, it’s more productive to focus on what aspects of USSR allowed for opportunism and its ultimate destruction.
I’m not arguing that for Marxist orthodoxy. I’m arguing about the historically contingent fact of what Marx said. As in the question that is being discussed above is not “what’s true socialism?” (a nonsense question because words are maps not territories) but rather “what did Marx say about lower and higher phases of communism and did he distinguish between socialism and communism in his use of vocabulary?”
And he didn’t. That distinction in terminology is a revision my Lenin. You might agree with that revision. That’s fine. I’m not arguing it’s right or wrong, just the historical use of the terminology.
As the video notes, Marx clearly talked about a transitional period which Lenin termed as socialism. It’s fair to note that the term was popularized by Lenin, but my point is that the concept does not originate with Lenin.
Ideas have no independent existence from people. This is idealistic thinking. Historically contingent facts about what people actually wrote, said, or did is concrete reality. Arguments about where ideas originate apart from historically contingent facts is not materialist.
Attributing Lenin’s writings to Marx is counter to historical fact. If you want to say that Lenin based his idea off Marx and that Marx had statements that provided inspiration but it’s another thing entirely to argue that somehow through some magic immaterial process a some true platonic form of “idea” persisted between one person and another and only became fully articulated with Lenin.
Ideas have no independent existence from people. This is idealistic thinking.
Not sure where you’re suggesting I’m arguing otherwise. What I actually said was that Lenin built on the ideas Marx put forward, and fleshed these ideas out through the process of implementing them. There is no disagreement between Marx and Lenin.
Attributing Lenin’s writings to Marx is counter to historical fact.
That’s not what I’m doing as I’ve explained in great detail above.
it’s another thing entirely to argue that somehow through some magic immaterial process a some true platonic form of “idea” persisted between one person and another and only became fully articulated with Lenin.
That’s just a straw man you’re making that has nothing to do with anything I said.
Not sure where you’re suggesting I’m arguing otherwise. What I actually said was that Lenin built on the ideas Marx put forward, and fleshed these ideas out through the process of implementing them. There is no disagreement between Marx and Lenin.
Marx and Lenin are not the same person. Lenin built off of Marx but what he espoused is not identical to Marx. To treat Marx’s ideas as if they have some independent reality apart from his articulation, as if Lenin could be said to have somehow fulfilled and brought to fruition it’s true final platonic Form is an idealist ontological view.
Lenin and anyone else interpreting or reading Marx are by definition in some capacity transforming whatever idea they’re inspired by.
Here’s another somewhat creative way to illustrate this argument I’m making:
Let’s actually look at the word “inspire”. Etymologically comes from the Latin for “to breathe into”. To “inspirit” a thing. https://www.etymonline.com/word/inspire
Spirit? A spirit? A ghost? What?
This concept of spirit is old. It’s relevant in a lot of Bible translation stuff. The greek equivalent is “pneuma” (the basis for the word pneumonia since this concept of spirit has been tied with this concept of breathing animating force for something)
If I breathed out and you breathed in some of the air I breathed in, would you say you now are breathing my breathe? Maybe, but I wouldn’t. I would say you’re breathing the air that I blew out as part of my process breathing. But the breathing part is tied to the thing I’m doing. The physical concrete reality of my actions. You can put air in a bottle because it is a substance but a “breathe” isn’t something that exists as substance in isolation from it’s form. The “team spirit” isn’t a substance, it’s a particular set of concrete relationships within a team. Marx’s “spirit” that inspired Lenin is not Lenin’s spirit.
Treating spirit like it’s some concrete reality is Hegel, it’s idealistic, it’s not materialist at all. It’s reification ( in the general rather than specifically Marxist sense). Marx wrote a concrete set articulations of his ideas. His articulations inspired other people. But other people’s interpretations and reinventions of his articulations is not identical to his articulations.
I know some of this etymology stuff sounds a bit goofy but it helps to have some of the background on how the ideal/materialism debate originally evolved out of the greek and latin writers that came before.
Incorrect. There is nothing Marx about “communism growing out of socialism”. He only refers to “higher” and “lower” phases of communism. The idea that “socialism grows into communism” was a revision by Lenin to try and explain how the Russian agrian feudalism was suppose to go to communism while skipping industrial capitalism.
What Marx refers to as the lower phase of communism is precisely what’s understood to be socialism in the context of Marxism today. Meanwhile, your definition is itself incorrect. What Lenin refers to is the stage after the revolution where society transitions from capitalism towards a communist society. A great explanation of that can be found here;.
I’d be curious of your opinion on this video. I know the title will not make you happy but it extensively quotes Marx directly: https://youtu.be/rRXvQuE9xO4
It directly talks about Marx’s concept of higher and lower phase communism and how this differs from the Leninist revision.
It seems to me that the video agrees that both Marx and Lenin had the same general idea of what communism is and the path there. The critique at the end of the video largely focuses on Stalin and the attempts to establish socialism in one state. However, the video also acknowledges that it would be practically impossible to establish anything resembling communism while capitalism remains the dominant ideology in the world.
In my opinion the video outlines the basic ideas correctly, however it also fails to address an important point which is that Marx focused on theory first and foremost. He provided a critique of capitalism and ideas for how a communist society could work.
Lenin ran an actual revolution and focused on the practical aspects of the transition from capitalism. Lenin should be viewed as making the ideas of Marx concrete and bringing them into practice. As the video notes, Lenin very much agreed with Marx on the goals of communism.
In my view, using Marx as orthodoxy goes directly against the idea of dialectical thinking championed by Marx himself. Ideas have to be put into practice to have value, and then the learning from implementing ideas have to be reintegrated back into theory.
Given that, Marx cannot be seen as a higher authority than Lenin because Lenin actually did the work of putting the ideas into practice and evolved the theory based on the results.
It’s also worth noting that Lenin started out with many idealistic notions that he was eventually dissuaded of by reality. Lenin’s document on NEP is a great example of this.
For example, the video talks about Marx recognizing the dangers of centralized authority, yet it doesn’t address the fact that without such authority reactionary elements will fight to restore capitalism as we’ve seen happen time and again.
I think the video does some hair splitting regarding what is considered socialism and what is not. We can call the time of the dictatorship of the proletariat pre-socialism, or transitionary state, or whatever. What we choose to call it does not obviate the necessity of this stage. As long as capitalism remains the dominant ideology in the world, it’s hard to see how any society can transition past this stage.
This is the elephant in the room that people arguing against Lenin’s approach need to address. To date, we don’t have any examples of working alternatives for overthrowing capitalism. Perhaps different approaches are possible, but none have been demonstrated to work in practice.
So, while I agree there is much to be learned from USSR both in terms of its success and its mistakes, I don’t really see how a fundamentally different approach could be viable. I think that instead of throwing the baby out with the bath water, it’s more productive to focus on what aspects of USSR allowed for opportunism and its ultimate destruction.
I’m not arguing that for Marxist orthodoxy. I’m arguing about the historically contingent fact of what Marx said. As in the question that is being discussed above is not “what’s true socialism?” (a nonsense question because words are maps not territories) but rather “what did Marx say about lower and higher phases of communism and did he distinguish between socialism and communism in his use of vocabulary?”
And he didn’t. That distinction in terminology is a revision my Lenin. You might agree with that revision. That’s fine. I’m not arguing it’s right or wrong, just the historical use of the terminology.
As the video notes, Marx clearly talked about a transitional period which Lenin termed as socialism. It’s fair to note that the term was popularized by Lenin, but my point is that the concept does not originate with Lenin.
Ideas have no independent existence from people. This is idealistic thinking. Historically contingent facts about what people actually wrote, said, or did is concrete reality. Arguments about where ideas originate apart from historically contingent facts is not materialist.
Attributing Lenin’s writings to Marx is counter to historical fact. If you want to say that Lenin based his idea off Marx and that Marx had statements that provided inspiration but it’s another thing entirely to argue that somehow through some magic immaterial process a some true platonic form of “idea” persisted between one person and another and only became fully articulated with Lenin.
Not sure where you’re suggesting I’m arguing otherwise. What I actually said was that Lenin built on the ideas Marx put forward, and fleshed these ideas out through the process of implementing them. There is no disagreement between Marx and Lenin.
That’s not what I’m doing as I’ve explained in great detail above.
That’s just a straw man you’re making that has nothing to do with anything I said.
Marx and Lenin are not the same person. Lenin built off of Marx but what he espoused is not identical to Marx. To treat Marx’s ideas as if they have some independent reality apart from his articulation, as if Lenin could be said to have somehow fulfilled and brought to fruition it’s true final platonic Form is an idealist ontological view.
The Author is Dead dude.
Lenin and anyone else interpreting or reading Marx are by definition in some capacity transforming whatever idea they’re inspired by.
Here’s another somewhat creative way to illustrate this argument I’m making:
Let’s actually look at the word “inspire”. Etymologically comes from the Latin for “to breathe into”. To “inspirit” a thing. https://www.etymonline.com/word/inspire
Spirit? A spirit? A ghost? What?
This concept of spirit is old. It’s relevant in a lot of Bible translation stuff. The greek equivalent is “pneuma” (the basis for the word pneumonia since this concept of spirit has been tied with this concept of breathing animating force for something)
If I breathed out and you breathed in some of the air I breathed in, would you say you now are breathing my breathe? Maybe, but I wouldn’t. I would say you’re breathing the air that I blew out as part of my process breathing. But the breathing part is tied to the thing I’m doing. The physical concrete reality of my actions. You can put air in a bottle because it is a substance but a “breathe” isn’t something that exists as substance in isolation from it’s form. The “team spirit” isn’t a substance, it’s a particular set of concrete relationships within a team. Marx’s “spirit” that inspired Lenin is not Lenin’s spirit.
Treating spirit like it’s some concrete reality is Hegel, it’s idealistic, it’s not materialist at all. It’s reification ( in the general rather than specifically Marxist sense). Marx wrote a concrete set articulations of his ideas. His articulations inspired other people. But other people’s interpretations and reinventions of his articulations is not identical to his articulations.
I know some of this etymology stuff sounds a bit goofy but it helps to have some of the background on how the ideal/materialism debate originally evolved out of the greek and latin writers that came before.