[Persnickety]

I’m a little confused as to why you’d think that that was what I was saying. As it happens, I truly don’t know whether Marx would have supported the Bolsheviks. Its a little bit academic as Lenin and Marx were men of their own time and their own times were very different. If I were to play the parlour game of ‘what if’ then I’d guess Marx would have been so utterly disgusted by what had become of the 2nd international (not that he even knew such a thing existed before he died) that he might have been susceptible to a degree of sympathy for the Bolsheviks, albeit fleetingly. As I say, though, we’ll never know.

[Persnickety]

You’re telling me there is someone called Carne Ross?   Carne?… Ross?… 🤨

[Persnickety]

I agree Wez. I think the “wealth” of erroneous and down right reactionary ideas that masquerade as “The Left” and have done since before Marx came on the scene confirm the vital importance of Marx’s work. He was not a great man of history. The fact is that the theory, regardless of who wrote it, is of paramount importance. Newton, Einstein and Darwin are little more than the historically contingent spring from which the already bubbling water escapes but the water is still the key ingredient to life. Someone would have got there had they not but that is entirely beside the point.

…and this brings us back to the original riddle. A necessarily rounded understanding of the science of economics, politics and philosophy is a momentous undertaking for a working class that does not possess the pre-requisites for such study.

As to the question of how I was radicalised? A complicated mix of factors that started to some degree with my upbringing that combined grinding poverty and rudimentarily class conscious parents, mixed with the distrust of authority that comes with being abused, brutalised and neglected. That combination of class awareness and a desire for fairness, justice and solidarity and human kindness created the Socialist you speak to here.

[Persnickety]

That’s a mighty big claim. I don’t want to seem like I’m venerating Marx, I’m certainly not. Marx was a man. He got some things right and some things wrong and its feasible that had he not undertaken his great work that some others (perhaps sharing the labour) would have done in his place. None the less, I find it a very difficult thing to believe, that the required knowledge for a Socialist revolutionary (however you wish to define that word) can be viewed as simply acquired. This seems to me to fall into the traps that Marx warned against. A lack of perspective and a lack of understanding is exactly what besets the politically active working class. What is the average working class Social Democrat that thinks themself a Socialist but someone suffering from illusions as a result of an incomplete or absent political education. What is your average young, wide-eyes and bushy tailed Leninist if not naive and uneducated? There is a chicken and egg problem here that I’m trying to solve. The working class is beset by political ignorance and apathy. The route out of this malaise has to be a combination of activity and education but there are plenty of avenues that they can follow (Social Democracy, Anarchism, Movementism or the Leninist Left) that provide activity without the education. How is it possible to intervene at the moment of awakening when their curiosity and hunger for understanding is at its most keen before they are snapped up by the reactionary elements of the Left, or are sucked back down again into lethargy and apathy?

[Persnickety]

With respect, Alan, I don’t think that that really answers the question. The issue that I raise is that clearly Marx felt that it was worth investing all of his life in developing a theory which would be a weapon in the hands of the only revolutionary class, which in turn was the only revolutionary agent capable of saving humanity from itself. If we are not to merely repeat the mistakes of the Chartists and the Levellers before them, which I think is the natural course of events if you don’t develop a rich understanding of concepts such as the State, Capital, Social Formation and Historic change, then we need the working class to equipped with a fairly advanced grasp of the aforementioned concepts and with not a small mattering of knowledge of our own history so we avoid the mistakes of, for example, the Bolsheviks and those they inspired. The level of education of the class is terrifying low before we even get to Marxism.

[Persnickety]

You see, this I don’t understand. If that were true then Marx was largely superfluous. Working class consciousness predated Marx, revolutionarism predated Marx, Socialism predated Marx. What Marx added was specifically the scientific theories which enable an analysis of the human condition under Capitalism (Alienation), Capital’s exploitation of Labour, the process of social change (Historical Materialism) and, I would argue, a beginning to a mature analysis of the state.

These are all superfluous to everyday life, anti-Capitalist protest and agitation for Socialism but what, if anything, is meant by everyday life, anti-Capitalism and Socialism without recourse to theory?

[Persnickety]

Having thought about it, Dave, I don’t know if you’ve got that right. Marx certainly didn’t think it was simple. He spent decades trying to educate his peers out of bad economics and bad politics. For example, consider his disagreements with the Lassallians stemming from their misunderstandings on the nature of the state and socialist economics.

[Persnickety]

Thanks, Dave B. No disrespect to those that answered before you but those responses seem a tad rehearsed, if that makes sense. I’m not looking for catechisms, proselytisms, or rote polemics.

Dave, can it really be that simple though? If it were as simple to understand and as intuitive as you say then surely the SPGB would be doing a whole lot better than it is. I certainly don’t mean that as a snarky comment.

[Persnickety]

Thanks for the reply but I don’t think that that really grapples with what I was trying to ask. I think painting the theoretical demands as minimal is grossly underestimating the challenge that we face. Marx is not simple, neither are the intellectuals that followed him. Capital is a torture to read, for example. I just don’t see the regular people that I know reading it under any circumstances. Its also all very well giving people simplified pamphlets that give them a digestible version of the heavy tomes but then there still exists a huge intellectual disparity between those that can use their keener knowledge to undermine the masses that have a superficial knowledge.

[Persnickety]

Thanks for the pointer Alan. I’m reasonably familiar with the SPGB’s politics. I wouldn’t want to commit to any party without having first developed my own understandings to a degree where I could genuinely say that it was the definite vehicle for my own political aims.

[Author]

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