Orthodox Marxism
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Orthodox Marxism is the body of
Orthodox Marxism maintained that Marx's historical materialism was a science which revealed the laws of history and proved that the collapse of capitalism and its replacement by socialism was inevitable. The implications of this deterministic view were that history could not be "hurried" and that politically workers and workers' parties must wait for the material economic conditions to be met before the revolutionary transformation of society could take place.[2] For example, this idea saw the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) adopt a gradualist approach, taking advantage of bourgeois parliamentary democracy to improve the lives of workers until capitalism was brought down by its objective internal contradictions.
The use of "orthodox" to refer to Kautsky's line is primarily to distinguish it from the reformism of Eduard Bernstein. Such "revisionists" were reviled by the orthodox Marxists for breaking with Marx's thought.
Theory
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The emergence of orthodox Marxism is associated with the latter works of Friedrich Engels, such as the Dialectics of Nature and Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, which were efforts to popularise the work of Karl Marx, render it systematic and apply it to the fundamental questions of philosophy.[3] Daniel De Leon, an early American socialist leader, contributed much to the thought during the final years of the 19th century and the early 20th century. Orthodox Marxism was further developed during the Second International by thinkers such as Georgi Plekhanov and Karl Kautsky in Erfurt Program and The Class Struggle (Erfurt Program).
The characteristics of orthodox Marxism are:
- A strong version of the theory that the economic base (material conditions) determines the cultural and political superstructure of society. In its most extensive form, this view is called economic determinism, economism and vulgar materialism. A related variation is that of technological determinism.
- The view that capitalism cannot be reformed through policy and that any attempt to do so would only exacerbate its contradictions or distort the efficiency of the market economy (in contrast to socialist economy.
- The centrality of class as a process and the view that existing policymakers and government is largely and structurally beholden to the interests of the ruling class.[4] This view is called instrumental Marxism.
- The claim that Marxist methodology is a science.
- The attempt to make Marxism a total system, adapting it to changes within the realm of current events and knowledge.
- An understanding of ideology in terms of false consciousness.
- That every open class struggle is a political struggle.
- A pre-crisis emphasis on organizing an independent, mass workers' movement (in the form of welfare, recreational, educational and cultural organizations) and especially its political party, combining reform struggles and mass strikes without overreliance on either. [citation needed]
- The socialist revolution is necessarily the act of the majority (contrasted with vanguard party and democratic centralism).
Orthodox Marxism is contrasted with
Two variants of orthodox Marxism are
Variants
A number of theoretical perspectives and political movements emerged that were firmly rooted in orthodox Marxist analysis, as contrasted with later interpretations and alternative developments in Marxist theory and practice such as Marxism–Leninism, revisionism and reformism.
Impossibilism
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Impossibilism stresses the limited value of economic, social, cultural and political reforms under capitalism and posits that socialists and Marxists should solely focus on efforts to propagate and establish socialism, disregarding any other cause that has no connection to the goal of the realization of socialism.[8]
Impossibilism posits that reforms to capitalism are counterproductive because they strengthen support for capitalism by the working class by making its conditions more tolerable while creating further contradictions of their own,[9][10] while removing the socialist character of the parties championing and implementing said reforms. Because reforms cannot solve the systemic contradictions of capitalism, impossibilism opposes reformism, revisionism and ethical socialism.[11][9]
Impossibilism also opposes the idea of a vanguard-led revolution and the centralization of political power in any elite group of people as espoused by Leninism and Marxism–Leninism.
This perspective is maintained by the World Socialist Movement, De Leonism, and to some extent followers of Karl Kautsky and pre-reformist social democracy.
Leninism
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Kautsky and to a lesser extent Plekhanov were in turn major influences on
Orthodox Marxism is contrasted with later variations of Marxism, notably revisionism and Stalinism. In contrast to Stalin's idea of the socialism in a single backward country, orthodox Marxists said that Imperial Russia was too backwards for the development of socialism and would first have to undergo a capitalist (bourgeois) phase of development even if a Marxist party would head its government. Lenin urged a socialist revolution in Russia to inspire a socialist revolution in Germany and in the majority of the developed countries. His and Bukharin's New Economic Policy was to develop capitalism in Russia initially.[12]
Luxemburgism
Trotskyism
The tradition founded by
Anti-revisionism
Anti-Stalinist Left
Menshevism
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Menshevism refers to the political positions taken by the
Karl Kautsky and "Kautskyism"
Karl Kautsky is recognized as the most authoritative promulgator of orthodox Marxism following the death of Friedrich Engels in 1895. As an advisor to August Bebel, leader of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) until Bebel's death in 1913 and as editor of Die Neue Zeit from 1883 till 1917, he was known as the "Pope of Marxism". He was removed as editor by the leadership of the SPD when the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD) split away from the SPD. Kautsky was an outspoken critic of Bolshevism and Leninism, seeing the Bolsheviks (or Communists as they had renamed themselves after 1917) as an organization that had gained power by a coup and initiated revolutionary changes for which there was no economic rationale in Russia. Kautsky was also opposed to Eduard Bernstein's reformist politics in the period 1896–1901.
Instrumental Marxism
Instrumental Marxism is a theory derived from classical Marxism which reasons that policy makers in government and positions of power tend to "share a common business or class background, and that their decisions will reflect their business or class interests".[4]
Criticism
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There have been a number of criticisms of orthodox Marxism from within the socialist movement. From the 1890s during the Second International,
[O]rthodoxy refers exclusively to method. It is the scientific conviction that dialectical materialism is the road to truth and that its methods can be developed, expanded and deepened only along the lines laid down by its founders. It is the conviction, moreover, that all attempts to surpass or 'improve' it have led and must lead to over-simplification, triviality and eclecticism.[23]
In parallel to this,
In the postwar period, the New Left and new social movements gave rise to intellectual and political currents which again challenged orthodox Marxism. These include Italian autonomism, French Situationism, the Yugoslavian Praxis School, British cultural studies, Marxist feminism, Marxist humanism, analytical Marxism and critical realism.
See also
- Classical Marxism
- Impossibilism
- Instrumental Marxism
- Left communism
- Luxemburgism
- Materialist conception of history
- Marxian economics
- Marxism–Leninism
- Marxist revisionism
- Menshevik
- Real socialism
- Scientific socialism
- Technological determinism
References
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- ISBN 978-0415198776.
- S2CID 145499456.
- ^ a b Goldstein, Joshua S. (2004). Whitworth, Sandra (ed.). International Relations (Canadian ed.). Toronto: Pearson Education. p. 147.
- ^ Wiener, Philip P. (ed.). Dictionary of the History of Ideas. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons., in Kindersley, R. K. (1973–74). Marxist revisionism: From Bernstein to modern forms. Retrieved 28 April 2008 – via University of Virginia Library.
- ^ Rooke, Mike. "Marxism is Dead! Long Live Marxism!". What Next Journal.
- ^ Howard, M.C.; King, J. E. "State Capitalism in the Soviet Union" (PDF). History of Economics Review. Thought Society of Australia.
The same point was made, in the United Kingdom, by the leadership of the remorselessly orthodox Socialist Party of Great Britain.
- ^ "Impossiblism". Marxists Internet Archive.
- ^ a b Browne, Waldo R., ed. (1921). "Impossiblism, Impossibilist". What's What in the Labor Movement: A Dictionary of Labor Affairs and Labor Terminology. New York: B. W. Huebsch. p. 215.
- ^ Marx, Karl; Engels, Friedrich (March 1850). "Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League". Marxists Internet Archive. London. Retrieved 5 January 2013.
However, the democratic petty bourgeois want better wages and security for the workers, and hope to achieve this by an extension of state employment and by welfare measures; in short, they hope to bribe the workers with a more or less disguised form of alms and to break their revolutionary strength by temporarily rendering their situation tolerable.
- ^ Rosenstone, Robert (November 1978). "Why is there no socialism in the United States?" (PDF). Reviews in American History.
- ISBN 978-0875484495.
Lenin is urging a socialist revolution in Russia, against the traditional Marxists who argue that Russia is too backwards for anything but a bourgeois revolution.
- ^ Nettl, J. P. (14 January 2019). "The many interpretations of Rosa Luxemburg's legacy: An excerpt from J.P. Nettl's re-issued biography of Rosa Luxemburg". Verso Books. Archived from the original on 19 January 2021. Retrieved 29 October 2021.
- S2CID 143284323.
- ^ Roesch, Jennifer (September 2012). "Spontaneity and organization". International Socialist Review (85). Archived from the original on 18 January 2022.
- ^ Mattick, Paul (1949). "Spontaneity and Organisation". Marxists Internet Archive.
- ^ Luxemburg, Rosa (1940) [1918]. "The Problem of Dictatorship". The Russian Revolution. Translated by Wolfe, Bertram. New York: Workers Age Publishers – via Marxists Internet Archive.
- ^ Hallas, Duncan (1973). "Do We Support Reformist Demands?". International Socialism. Retrieved 14 November 2013 – via Marxists Internet Archive.
- ^ "Restoration of Capitalism in the Soviet Union". Archived from the original on 13 January 2016. Retrieved 15 April 2016.
- ^ "A Critique of Soviet Economics". Archived from the original on 3 March 2016. Retrieved 15 April 2016.
- ^ "Class Struggles in China by Bill Bland". Archived from the original on 6 June 2010. Retrieved 18 September 2010.
- ^ "Menshevik". Marxists Internet Archive. Retrieved 9 October 2013.
- ^ Lukács, Georg (1967) [1919]. "What is Orthodox Marxism?". History & Class Consciousness. Translated by Livingstone, Rodney. Merlin Press – via Marxists Internet Archive.
Orthodox Marxism, therefore, does not imply the uncritical acceptance of the results of Marx's investigations. It is not the 'belief' in this or that thesis, nor the exegesis of a 'sacred' book. On the contrary, orthodoxy refers exclusively to method.
- ^ Torres, Marco (1 May 2008). "The science that wasn't: The orthodox Marxism of the early Frankfurt School and the turn to Marxist Critical Theory". Platypus.