Sources and Component Parts of Marxism
We
have said, while discussing Machiavelli, that communism does not discard the
past, but grows out of it. This week the main item is Lenin’s “Three Sources and
Three Component Parts of Marxism” (download linked below). This piece
of writing, though extremely short, manages to embrace the whole of philosophy,
politics and economics. For these reasons it is highly popular with teachers
and students.
Lenin’s
purpose is to show how comprehensive Marxism is, and that Marxism is on the
“highroad of development of world civilisation”.
He
puts the matter like this:
“…there is nothing
resembling "sectarianism" in Marxism, in the sense of its being a
hidebound, petrified doctrine, a doctrine which arose away from the highroad of
development of world civilisation. On the contrary, the genius of Marx consists
precisely in the fact that he furnished answers to questions which had already
engrossed the foremost minds of humanity. His teachings arose as a direct and
immediate continuation of the teachings of the greatest representatives of
philosophy, political economy and socialism.”
One
may appreciate this point, without necessarily accepting every simplicity in
this highly compressed account. It is a scheme of understanding, almost like a
diagram. It raises many questions, for example:
- Is there any
such thing as “Marxism”, in the sense described here by Lenin as “complete
and harmonious” and “an integral world conception”? Karl Marx did not
think so. From his own point of view, Marx had hardly completed a small
part of what lay before him; and he refused the label “Marxist”.
- In what sense
was Marx’s philosophy materialist? Did Marx see human beings first and
foremost as arrangements of molecules – i.e. as an “extension” of
material? Or is the actual point of Marx’s philosophy and politics to give
the free human subject priority over the material, objective world in
which it must toil for its development? Scholars still debate these
questions.
- In what sense
did Marx have an economic doctrine, or an economic theory? It is true that
the question of surplus value is at the core of Marx’s Capital, Volume 1. But
is that work therefore an economic text-book? Or is it really what Marx
called it: A Critique of Political Economy? In other words, is it not
anti-economics, rather than economics?
When
it comes to politics, there is no doubt that “the struggle of classes as the basis and the motive force of the whole
development”, as Lenin puts it. So there is a lot that is good in the “Three
Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism”. But it is only a start and it
does not absolve anyone from the necessity of further study.
It
is pleasing that in this short, packed piece Lenin still has time to mention
South Africa (in his last paragraph), and that news of proletarian organisation
in our country had already reached Lenin in 1913.
Please download and read this very short text
via the following link:
Further
reading:
Socialism, Utopian and Scientific,
Engels, 1880 (16229 words)
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