---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: P. V. Srinivas <pv.srinivas@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, Aug 19, 2011 at 1:38 AM
Subject: [** MAOIST_REVOLUTION **] A Note on Indra Mohan Sigdel Basanta's paper on building a new type of Communist Party
To: MAOIST_REVOLUTION@yahoogroups.com
On Indra Mohan Sigdel 'Basanta's recent paper on building a new type
of Communist Party
A Note
While discussing the need for building a new type of communist party,
citizen Mohan Sigdel Basanta, following religiously the established
'communist' tradition, invariably started by invoking the twin-Marx
and Engels. Following.again, the same tradition our citizen seriously
misrepresented their position ,and for the same reason: making their
views and activities harmonious with those of the leaders of the
tradition.This note concerns two points in particular.,namely,the
question of party building and the question of
ideology.Unsurprisingly, the cirizen did not bother to offer any
textual evidence for his assertions on these questions.
He writes:Marx and Engels "worked hard to help building communist
parties in the individual countries and united the communist
revolutionaries in the world by constituting an organization, the
First International" Here,we submit, Marx and Engels are completely
Leninized with the First International anticipating the Third. What
does the recorded history show? It shows that the First International
was founded spontaneously entirely by the French and the English
workers joined by the German exiled workers in England. Marx had
nothing to do with its establishment. On the testimony of unarguably
the greatest Marx scholar of the last century and great humanist
David Riazanov-(later liquidated by Stalin on the charge of his
alleged 'Menshevik'activities, considered by definition
as'counter-revolutionary') we know that only on the insistence of two
workers Eccarius(German) and Whitlock(English, a former Chartist) it
was decided to christen the new society "International Workingmen's
Association". Marx was one of the invited guests on the platform at
the inaugural meeting(1864:September 14).This was the letter of
invitation verbatim for 'Mr.Marx':
" Dear Sir, the committee who have organized the
meeting respectfully request the favour of your attendance. The
production of this will admit you to the Committee Room where the
Committee will meet at half past 7. I am,sir, yours
respectfully,(signed)W.R.Cremer" (in Riazanov-'Karl Marx and
Friedrich Engels',1927,1973:p.148). Later Marx himself said that he
sat "as a mute figure on the platform(als stumme Figur auf der
Platform)".Afterwards Marx was accepted as a representtive of the
German workers and designated as a member of the sub-committee in
charge of drafting the rules of the International.Eventually he was
asked to draft the provisional rules of the new association. A firm
believer in workers'self-activity he would never claim to guide the
workers. Again,the "formation of the International was accomplished
without Engels and upto 1870 he took only an insignificant and
indirect part in it "(Riazanov,p.210). There is also no evidence for
our citizen's absurd claim that Marx and Engels helped build
'communist' revolutionaries.Though this is what the Third
International was doing, in fact this will be absolutely contradictory
to Marx's lifelong firm belief in workers' "self-activity", and what
he openly declared in his well-known "Inaugural Address" and
"Statutes" of the International:The emancipation of the working class
is the task of the workers themselves". For the working class itself
is revolutionary."The working class is either revolutionary or it is
nothing" as he wrote to one of his friends(1865, Feb.13). In the
report of the General Council of the International for its Brussels
Congress(1868) composed by him we read: "The International is not the
offspring of a sect or of a theory.It is the spontaneous product of
the proletarian movement, itself engendered by the natural and
irrepressible tendencies of the modern society"(our translation from
the French). What an unbridgeable gap between the First and the Third
International! The latter,however, should be praised for its
truthfulness :quite correctly it did not call itself workers'
international. It was really a communist international in the
post-1917 sense of the term.
Citizen Sigde l(Basanta) further writes:"they(Marx and Engels) worked
hard to develop ideology." Again, what does the record show?
For Marx and Engels ' ideology' was not at all a complimentary term
which they would like to own. Marx and Engels did not set out to
create a new ideology as opposed to bourgeois ideology, what Marx and
Engels did was to found "new materialism"(cf.Marx's tenth thesis on
Feuerbach), and Marx's aim,based on " materialist and,therefore,
scientific method" was precisely to demystify all ideologies—including
the "ideological representations" of "abstract natural science which
excludes historical process"-- by revealing how "conditions of real
life" give rise to these " intellectual representations" ( the
expressions within quotation marks are from Capital, vol.1,chapter on
' Machinery and Big Industry').His theoretical work is in the realm of
science, not ideology, aimed to "revolutionize science" and to lay
down "scientific" foundation(letter to Kugelmann 28.12.1862).What Marx
was doing was the exact opposite of creating "false consciousnsness"
or the inverted representation of reality which is what ideology is
all about.Marx and Engels underlined that in "all ideology human
beings and their relations appear to stand on their head, as in a
camera obscura"( German Ideology).Years later ,again, Engels wrote to
Mehring:"Ideology is a process which is carried out by the so-called
thinker ,of course consciously ,but with a false consciousness"
(14.07.1893).It is ironical that the proclaimed disciples of Marx and
Engels denigrated only what they called ' bourgeois ideology' as
opposed to which they glorified and posited as a new ' proletarian
ideology'. This is another example of misrepresenting the ideas of
Marx and Engels by the 'Marxists'.
The Bolsheviks under Lenin, citizen Sigdel (Basanta) further claims,
were "capable of accomplishing a socialist revolution in Russia".There
is no evidence that these people "accomplished" any "socialist
revolution" in Russia in the sense of Marx.What they did "accomplish"
was the seizure and usurpation of political power not from the
'Provisional Government' but from the working people's own,
spontaneously created self-governing revolutionary organs-the
councils, under the slogan "all power to the soviets"(Orwellian
Newspeak). In fact the councils existed only for a few months before
submitting to the single Party dictatorship ending genuinely free
elections and recalls, and in fact all serious political dissent till
the end of the régime, ushering in "a night that had no dawn" to
borrow the words of the great Russian poetess Anna Akhmatova. For
argument's sake let us assume that it was really a socialist
revolution that occurred in Russia. This would literally mean that the
working people, the overwhelming majority of the land, fully conscious
of their own strength, became its real masters. Then how to explain
that this 'socialism' evaporated so easily without any notable popular
resistance, of which,again there is no evidence. A whole people giving
up their power earned through their own hard earned conscious
struggle without serious resistance has no precedence in the annals of
humanity. A facile explanation by way some kind of 'betrayal' by
one or a few individuals,however powerful, would simply not do.
by Paresh Chattopadhyay
------------------------------------
From: P. V. Srinivas <pv.srinivas@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, Aug 19, 2011 at 1:38 AM
Subject: [** MAOIST_REVOLUTION **] A Note on Indra Mohan Sigdel Basanta's paper on building a new type of Communist Party
To: MAOIST_REVOLUTION@yahoogroups.com
On Indra Mohan Sigdel 'Basanta's recent paper on building a new type
of Communist Party
A Note
While discussing the need for building a new type of communist party,
citizen Mohan Sigdel Basanta, following religiously the established
'communist' tradition, invariably started by invoking the twin-Marx
and Engels. Following.again, the same tradition our citizen seriously
misrepresented their position ,and for the same reason: making their
views and activities harmonious with those of the leaders of the
tradition.This note concerns two points in particular.,namely,the
question of party building and the question of
ideology.Unsurprisingly, the cirizen did not bother to offer any
textual evidence for his assertions on these questions.
He writes:Marx and Engels "worked hard to help building communist
parties in the individual countries and united the communist
revolutionaries in the world by constituting an organization, the
First International" Here,we submit, Marx and Engels are completely
Leninized with the First International anticipating the Third. What
does the recorded history show? It shows that the First International
was founded spontaneously entirely by the French and the English
workers joined by the German exiled workers in England. Marx had
nothing to do with its establishment. On the testimony of unarguably
the greatest Marx scholar of the last century and great humanist
David Riazanov-(later liquidated by Stalin on the charge of his
alleged 'Menshevik'activities, considered by definition
as'counter-revolutionary') we know that only on the insistence of two
workers Eccarius(German) and Whitlock(English, a former Chartist) it
was decided to christen the new society "International Workingmen's
Association". Marx was one of the invited guests on the platform at
the inaugural meeting(1864:September 14).This was the letter of
invitation verbatim for 'Mr.Marx':
" Dear Sir, the committee who have organized the
meeting respectfully request the favour of your attendance. The
production of this will admit you to the Committee Room where the
Committee will meet at half past 7. I am,sir, yours
respectfully,(signed)W.R.Cremer" (in Riazanov-'Karl Marx and
Friedrich Engels',1927,1973:p.148). Later Marx himself said that he
sat "as a mute figure on the platform(als stumme Figur auf der
Platform)".Afterwards Marx was accepted as a representtive of the
German workers and designated as a member of the sub-committee in
charge of drafting the rules of the International.Eventually he was
asked to draft the provisional rules of the new association. A firm
believer in workers'self-activity he would never claim to guide the
workers. Again,the "formation of the International was accomplished
without Engels and upto 1870 he took only an insignificant and
indirect part in it "(Riazanov,p.210). There is also no evidence for
our citizen's absurd claim that Marx and Engels helped build
'communist' revolutionaries.Though this is what the Third
International was doing, in fact this will be absolutely contradictory
to Marx's lifelong firm belief in workers' "self-activity", and what
he openly declared in his well-known "Inaugural Address" and
"Statutes" of the International:The emancipation of the working class
is the task of the workers themselves". For the working class itself
is revolutionary."The working class is either revolutionary or it is
nothing" as he wrote to one of his friends(1865, Feb.13). In the
report of the General Council of the International for its Brussels
Congress(1868) composed by him we read: "The International is not the
offspring of a sect or of a theory.It is the spontaneous product of
the proletarian movement, itself engendered by the natural and
irrepressible tendencies of the modern society"(our translation from
the French). What an unbridgeable gap between the First and the Third
International! The latter,however, should be praised for its
truthfulness :quite correctly it did not call itself workers'
international. It was really a communist international in the
post-1917 sense of the term.
Citizen Sigde l(Basanta) further writes:"they(Marx and Engels) worked
hard to develop ideology." Again, what does the record show?
For Marx and Engels ' ideology' was not at all a complimentary term
which they would like to own. Marx and Engels did not set out to
create a new ideology as opposed to bourgeois ideology, what Marx and
Engels did was to found "new materialism"(cf.Marx's tenth thesis on
Feuerbach), and Marx's aim,based on " materialist and,therefore,
scientific method" was precisely to demystify all ideologies—including
the "ideological representations" of "abstract natural science which
excludes historical process"-- by revealing how "conditions of real
life" give rise to these " intellectual representations" ( the
expressions within quotation marks are from Capital, vol.1,chapter on
' Machinery and Big Industry').His theoretical work is in the realm of
science, not ideology, aimed to "revolutionize science" and to lay
down "scientific" foundation(letter to Kugelmann 28.12.1862).What Marx
was doing was the exact opposite of creating "false consciousnsness"
or the inverted representation of reality which is what ideology is
all about.Marx and Engels underlined that in "all ideology human
beings and their relations appear to stand on their head, as in a
camera obscura"( German Ideology).Years later ,again, Engels wrote to
Mehring:"Ideology is a process which is carried out by the so-called
thinker ,of course consciously ,but with a false consciousness"
(14.07.1893).It is ironical that the proclaimed disciples of Marx and
Engels denigrated only what they called ' bourgeois ideology' as
opposed to which they glorified and posited as a new ' proletarian
ideology'. This is another example of misrepresenting the ideas of
Marx and Engels by the 'Marxists'.
The Bolsheviks under Lenin, citizen Sigdel (Basanta) further claims,
were "capable of accomplishing a socialist revolution in Russia".There
is no evidence that these people "accomplished" any "socialist
revolution" in Russia in the sense of Marx.What they did "accomplish"
was the seizure and usurpation of political power not from the
'Provisional Government' but from the working people's own,
spontaneously created self-governing revolutionary organs-the
councils, under the slogan "all power to the soviets"(Orwellian
Newspeak). In fact the councils existed only for a few months before
submitting to the single Party dictatorship ending genuinely free
elections and recalls, and in fact all serious political dissent till
the end of the régime, ushering in "a night that had no dawn" to
borrow the words of the great Russian poetess Anna Akhmatova. For
argument's sake let us assume that it was really a socialist
revolution that occurred in Russia. This would literally mean that the
working people, the overwhelming majority of the land, fully conscious
of their own strength, became its real masters. Then how to explain
that this 'socialism' evaporated so easily without any notable popular
resistance, of which,again there is no evidence. A whole people giving
up their power earned through their own hard earned conscious
struggle without serious resistance has no precedence in the annals of
humanity. A facile explanation by way some kind of 'betrayal' by
one or a few individuals,however powerful, would simply not do.
by Paresh Chattopadhyay
------------------------------------
Palash Biswas
Pl Read:
http://nandigramunited-banga.blogspot.com/
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