Written: After the volanic eruption in May 1902 at the port of St. Pierre.
First Published: Leipziger Volkszeitung, May 15, 1902.
Translated: David Wolff, News & Letters, Jan.-Feb. 1983.
Online Version: mea 1996; marxists.org 1999.
Transcribed: Dave Hollis/Brian Baggins.
Mountains of smoking ruins, heaps of mangled corpses,
a steaming, smoking sea of fire wherever you turn, mud and ashes – that
is all that remains of the flourishing little city which perched on the
rocky slope of the volcano like a fluttering swallow. For some time the
angry giant had been heard to rumble and rage against this human presumption,
the blind self-conceit of the two-legged dwarfs. Great-hearted even in
his wrath, a true giant, he w... (From: Marxists.org.)
“Indeed how do these people propose to run a factory, operate a railway or steer a ship without having, in the last resort, one deciding will, without single management they do not tell us[1]
Engels
Since the Nineteenth century Marxism and anarchism have confronted each other as the two dominant strains of revolutionary thought. Some Marxists claim that in fact Marxism is not a statist or vanguardist ideology. Like all Marxists they also generally dismiss anarchism as utopian, marginal and nonscientific.
The aim of this article is to show that Marx and Engels were deeply ambiguous on the nature of the state and the party, and that the criticisms by anarchists of them were and remain valid.Far from being utopian anarchism has th... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
I
Some years ago, shortly after Frederick Engels died, Mr. Eduard Bernstein, one of the most prominent members of the Marxist community, astonished his colleagues with some noteworthy discoveries. Bernstein made public his misgivings about the accuracy of the materialist interpretation of history, and of the Marxist theory of surplus value and the concentration of capital. He went so far as to attack the dialectical method and concluded that talk of a critical socialism was impossible. A cautious man, Bernstein kept his discoveries to himself until after the death of the aged Engels; only then did he make them public, to the consequent horror of the Marxist priesthood. But not even this precaution could save him, for he was assailed ... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Source: Western Socialist, Boston, USA, November-December 1955; Transcribed: by Adam Buick.
Classical economy, whose beginning is usually traced to Adam
Smith, found its best expression and also its end in David Ricardo. Ricardo, as
Marx wrote, “made the antagonism of class-interest, of wages and profits,
of profits and rent, the starting-point of his investigation, naively taking
this antagonism for a social law of nature. But by this start the science of
bourgeois economy had reached the limits beyond which it could not pass,”
for a further critical development could lead only to the recognition of the
contradictions and limitations of the capitalist system of production. By doing
what could no longer be done by bour... (From: Marxists.org.)
Whereas Keynes’ preoccupation with monetary questions was based on his
desire to make the capitalist system work more efficiently, Marx’s
relative neglect of these issues stemmed from his goal of formulating a theory
of capital development. This labor theory of value evolved out of his criticism
of classical value theory.
In order to yield regulatory results, the market automatism presupposes a
principle on which exchange is based, a principle that explains prices and
their changes. If a price is given, it may vary in the interplay of supply and
demand, but the question of what determines prices remains. For the
classicists, price derived from value and value was determined by the labor
incorporated in commodities. T... (From: Marxists.org.)
Source: Western Socialist, Boston, USA, March-April, 1958; Transcribed: by Adam Buick.
MARXISM AND FREEDOM. FROM 1776 UNTIL TODAY. By Raya Dunayevskaya. New York, 1958, pp. 384, $6.00.
In writing this strange book the author’s intentions were
no doubt the best. But there is a wide gap between intentions and performance.
And although Dunayevskaya’s interpretation of Marxian doctrine is
occasionally true and eloquent, the book as a whole is an embarrassing,
scatterbrained hodge-podge of philosophical, economic and political ideas that
defy description and serious criticism. It may, however, serve as an example of
how Marxism cannot be “reexamined” and thus recovered from the
Russians.
The impulse for writi... (From: Marxists.org.)
As of the 7th Congress of the FdCA of 1st October 2006, this document ceases to be part of the FdCA’s Basic Strategy.
Anarchist Communist Criticism of “Real Socialism”
The Bolshevik model for the construction of communism already showed signs of crisis with Lenin’s introduction of the NEP. This was no sudden, unexpected crisis. It had been presaged by certain political and governmental choices in the wake of October 1917, in particular:
the liquidation of the governing coalition of all those forces which supported the revolutionary transformation of the country. The consequence of this act was the suppression of the institutional environment which hosted the dialectic and debate between the various political ... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Firstly it is essential to define both sets of ideas. What is anarchism? What is Marxism? For the moment I have decided to ignore all the latter-day disciples of both sets of ideas. So I will not talk about the various Stalinist, Leninist and social democratic developments of Marx’s ideas. These have already been well dealt with in previous issues of this paper. Instead I wish to concentrate on the basic ideas of Marx and Engels.
Back to basics
For the anarchist point of view I will use the writings of Bakunin. He was Marx’s consistent opponent and his basic arguments are accepted by most anarchists. Neither Marx or Bakunin were ever entirely consistent and the latter’s writings are very fragmentary, however this seems... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Source: International Review, vol. 2, No. 6, Aug. 1937, pp. 90-6; Transcribed: by Thomas Schmidt.
ASIDE FROM minor criticism directed at the series of economic studies
undertaken by the Brookings Institution under the general heading Income
and Economic Progress, these publications have been widely hailed as an
important contribution to contemporary economic research. A few details in the
studies have met with opposition on the part of some economists. The computing
methods and the results have been challenged by others. Still, looking at the
whole work from a general point of view, one may venture to say that even the
Marxist will be ready to pay homage to the Institution and to the authors of
the series, to which there has rec... (From: Marxists.org.)
Source: Marxism. Last Refuge of the Bourgeoisie? by Paul Mattick, edited by Paul Mattick Jr., published by Merlin Press, 1983; Transcribed: by Andy Blunden, for marxists.org 2003. Proofed: by Brandon Poole, 2009.
In Marx’s conception, changes in people’s social and
material conditions will alter their consciousness. This also holds for Marxism
and its historical development. Marxism began as a theory of class struggle
based on the specific social relations of capitalist production. But while its
analysis of the social contradictions inherent in capitalist production has
reference to the general trend of capitalist development, the class struggle is
a day-to-day affair and adjusts itself to changing social conditions. The... (From: Marxists.org.)
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