We are still on Marxism - barely begun. If there are "pauses", it is because I'm mulling things over in my mind, revisiting old ideas. Marx will take a chunk of time, not only because I consider myself a "Marxian socialist", but because no discussion of socialism is possible without at least some understanding of Marx's contributions.

In the midst of this, I got the note below, from a member of the Socialist Party in North Carolina. My response to Jim's letter is not meant as an attack on ISO (the International Socialist Organization - primarily a student formation) and I want to stay well away from seeming to judge one group or another. Perhaps later. For now I am trying to write "outside of any caucus in the Socialist Party and any bias I might have as a member of the SP". The reason for running Jim's letter will be seen in my response, following his note.

Subj: ISO Battles

David,

Hey Buddy... Sure wish you'd been around yesterday... Local comrades and I attended the SURGE conference (The same annual symposium which you attended last year), and we found ourselves engaged in an identical "What Is Socialism" workshop with the very same ISO representatives.

I'm afraid we did not handle them as well this year.... They launched into their rhetoric on Marxism, and the glory of the Bolshevik Revolution, and the importance of educating the Working Class on the History of Socialism... I tried to explain the hopelesssness of applying the Bloshevik condition to present day US circumstances, but they called my "Exception of the US an Apologist attitude"... I related my frustrations in my personal Union building experiences... Trying to bring in the UAW against traditional Southern resistance is hard enough without giving my co-workers a primer on the Lenin/Stalin difference, and they claimed I was "Doing the Working Class a Disservice by not teaching them Real History"... And finally when I asked them how many Counter-Revolutionaries they would kill to implement Bolshevik-Style policies, they laughed indulgently at my 'exaggerations' and said I mistook Revolution for "Revolutionary Reformism".

Sigh.

Perhaps your email series could address this communication issue? How do we apply Socialist ideas to US governance without remaining shackled to the errors of the past, and how do we articulate that position to True Believers? How do we reconcile our need to organize around Socialist principles without alienating our neighbors, coworkers, and friends? And How On Earth do we tackle the issue of Counter-Revolutionary resistance without getting into particulars? I mean... Geez... This country is fairly bursting with guns... How do the ISO (and others) think we could effect serious and sudden change, focused on the establishment of a Bolshevik model, without encountering armed resistance?

Just a few thoughts for consideration.

Regards,
Jim

A RESPONSE AND THE PROBLEMS OF "CRUDE OR VULGAR MARXISM"

The problem with anyone who speaks only from the texts of Marx, as if they were sacred, a set of rules that could be applied to any and all current problems, is that this begins a process not of "scientific socialism" (in itself, as outlined in the last "chapter", a suspect term) but of something close to Marxism as a religion. (It is further confused by adding Lenin to the mix - though that is a very separate topic for some time down the road).

Karl Marx was one of the great figures of the 19th century, standing alongside Sigmund Freud, and Charles Darwin. Each of these men changed how humanity viewed itself.

Darwin horrified society by suggesting that humans were only another species of animal, that had evolved from the same general family line that includes monkeys and the great apes. Today we accept that - even a casual observation of the great apes tells us it is obvious! But in Darwin's time, the concept that nature, by a process of natural selection, had determined which species would live, which would die, and how they would change, and that we ourselves were not exempt - this was deeply offensive to a great many people. Today we know the situation is more complex, that the matter of spontaneous genetic mutation is more involved than Darwin had realized. But that is nitpicking - Basically Darwin was right, and he opened a huge door to our understanding of our world and ourselves.

Sigmund Freud, in suggesting that humans were governed by unconscious impulses and desires - that many of our most important decisions were made for reasons of which we were not conscious - seemed to be teaching nonsense. How could things of which we were not conscious have an impact on our lives? To make matters worse, Freud suggested that our sexual drives lay behind most of our actions, and much of the structure of our civilization. Taken together with the sensitivies already outraged by Darwin, Freud seemed to be adding insult to injury.

Yet I think educated people today accept the basic concept of Freud's teaching - that our conscious mind is only a part of our "total mind", and that our sexual drives are as important to us as food. Just as it is hard to find an "orthodox Freudian" today, it is equally hard to find a competent figure who would dismiss him. (Even the current reliance on chemistry to deal with psychological problems was anticipated by Freud in his writings). What is fascinating about both Freud and Darwin are that they showed us things so obvious we are reminded that genius consists in seeing what is before our eyes.

So with Marx. There can be no "orthodox" Marxist - a contradiction in terms. The whole value of what Marx taught lies above all in his method - observation, analysis, a study of facts. It was not "scientific" in the accepted sense of science, but it was the foundation of sociology, and about as scientific an approach as we can use in examining this strange animal - the human being. Where, prior to Marx, historians had seen history as a series of events driving by great individuals - Kings, Queens, Emperors - a Marx showed us that vast forces lay behind the rise and fall of empires, that the figures on which history had focused were much less important than the processes which brought them into play.

Prior to Marx, history was a great drama in which we were involved passively, playing a part that had been assigned us by our class, our race, our sex, or the geography of our birth. We could observe history. We could "speak our lines"as if it was a stage play - but our lines were written by others. We couldn't change them.

Marx showed us that the pyramids, the Great Wall of China, the mysteries of the Incas, the wonders of Athens - all had a relationship to the material world, to the mode of production, and most of all, to who controlled the means of production. The dynasties were a reflection of this deeper reality. The wars and crusades were occcasioned by conflicts over very material things.

And if, in fact, Marx was true, then we could cease to be merely a player in a drama others had written - we could write our own lines, and help to shape our own future. Yes, history was a record of conflict, with less glory and more brutality than we had imagined, but armed with the insights provided by Marx and Engels, we could - even if to only a very small extent - help to shape that history.

I'm reminded of a line from a poem by Kenneth Patchen, in which he wrote:

"A narrow line.
Walking on the beautiful ground.
A ledge of fire."

There is not much any of us can do alone - just a narrow line of possible change, forward or backward, a ledge of fire - but there is so much we can do together.

If Marx deprived us of our Gods and in a sense left us alone in the universe, he left us with the awareness that what happened to us depended on all of us. Not on Kings, but on you, on me, on us together. A terrible burden. No wonder Marx isn't so popular.

But to "codify" Marx, to "box Marx in" is to destroy the vitality he represented. Marx and Engels lived and thought and wrote at the time of the Industrial Revolution. Yet even as these men's lives drew to an end, a new revolution, the Technological Revolution, was unfolding. And long after their deaths, unforseen by them (because it depended on breakthroughs in the areas of physics and mathematics that hadn't yet occured) came the Cybernetic Revolution. Because Marx was a genius one would love to know what he would make of the world today - the one thing certain is that he would not feel bound to stand behind everything he had thought and written in the middle of the 19th Century.

If Marx is to be honored at all, it will be by observation of conditions here and now, where we live, in this world. On the other questions Jim raised - "how do we make change", and is the Bolshevik approach foolish for this country - I'll wait unless we are done with this short introduction to Marx.

Next parts of #3 - Marx, Democracy, and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat

- Dialectical Materialism

- Class War

- Labor