“Socialist Planning Beyond Capitalism”

[ALB]

How can people like him — in fact all left and council communists and other assorted libertarian communists — get away with this when after Marx wrote the passage they misquote or misinterpret he made it clear in a speech a year later that he thought that it might even be possible in some countries and in certain conditions for the working class to win political power by peaceful means:

“Someday the worker must seize political power in order to build up the new organization of labor; he must overthrow the old politics which sustain the old institutions, if he is not to lose Heaven on Earth, like the old Christians who neglected and despised politics.
But we have not asserted that the ways to achieve that goal are everywhere the same.
You know that the institutions, mores, and traditions of various countries must be taken into consideration, and we do not deny that there are countries — such as America, England, and if I were more familiar with your institutions, I would perhaps also add Holland — where the workers can attain their goal by peaceful means.”

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/09/08.htm

Of course this is Marx’s view and it doesn’t make it right just because he said so. But these people want to claim the authority of Marx for something they advocate but which he did not.

Why don’t they come out openly and say that Marx was wrong on this point?

[DJP]

For one thing the “use of parliament= reformist and extra parliamentary activiy= revolutionary” people have simplicity and romanticism on their side. The revolutionary use of parliament argument requires more explanation, especially since the “socialist” parties that have engaged in parliamentary activiy have tended to be reformist and leadership based.

[Author]

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