[Marxism] (fwd) Socialists and/or communists?

[Les Schaffer]

[forwarded for Einde ]



Joaquin Bustelo wrote:

<snip>
>
> I said, among other things, "Marx and Engels were never comfortable 
> with the
> term 'socialist' and somewhat chagrined that it came to be identified 
> with
> their followers, as Engels made a point of stressing late in his life 
> in the
> introductions to the Communist Manifesto, if I remember right."
<snip>

> I merely reproduce what it took me about 15
> seconds to find on the Internet. It is from Engels's 1888 introduction 
> to a
> new English edition of the Manifesto of the Communist Party:
>
> "The history of the Manifesto reflects the history of the modern
> working-class movement; at present, it is doubtless the most wide spread,
> the most international production of all socialist literature, the common
> platform acknowledged by millions of working men from Siberia to 
> California.
>
> "Yet, when it was written, we could not have called it a socialist
> manifesto. By Socialists, in 1847, were understood, on the one hand the
> adherents of the various Utopian systems: Owenites in England, 
> Fourierists
> in France, both of them already reduced to the position of mere sects, 
> and
> gradually dying out; on the other hand, the most multifarious social 
> quacks
> who, by all manner of tinkering, professed to redress, without any 
> danger to
> capital and profit, all sorts of social grievances, in both cases men
> outside the working-class movement, and looking rather to the "educated"
> classes for support. Whatever portion of the working class had become
> convinced of the insufficiency of mere political revolutions, and had
> proclaimed the necessity of total social change, called itself Communist.
> "It was a crude, rough-hewn, purely instinctive sort of communism; 
> still, it
> touched the cardinal point and was powerful enough amongst the working 
> class
> to produce the Utopian communism of Cabet in France, and of Weitling in
> Germany. Thus, in 1847, socialism was a middle-class movement, 
> communism a
> working-class movement. Socialism was, on the Continent at least,
> "respectable"; communism was the very opposite. And as our notion, 
> from the
> very beginning, was that "the emancipation of the workers must be the 
> act of
> the working class itself," there could be no doubt as to which of the two
> names we must take. Moreover, we have, ever since, been far from 
> repudiating
> it."
>
I'm afraid that the passage quoted by Joaquin doesn't bear the 
interpretation Joaquin puts on it. It was written in 1888 to explain why 
they called it "The COMMUNIST Manifesto" and referred to the meaning of 
the word socialism in 1848. In the passage cited above Engels was merely 
saying that he still held the same opinions as in 1848.

In 1884 With Engels' support Eleanor Marx, William Morris and Edward 
Aveling founded the Socialist League with Engels' active support after 
they split from H.M. Hyndman's Social Democratic Federation. In 1889 the 
Second International was founded again with the active support of 
Engels, who actively supported Eleanor Marx's intervention to ensure a 
unified International despite the fact taht two congresses had been 
called by opposing French tendencies.

In 1890 Engels  published a pamphlet called "Socialism: Utopian and 
Scientific" (or to translate the German title "The development of 
Socialism from utopia to science") in which he explicitly described 
Marxism as "scientific socialism", a term that had also been used in 
Anti-Dühring (the longer text from which it had been extracted). This 
work had been written in close collaboration with Marx. In the 1893 
Italian preface to the Manifesto contains the following statement: 
"Thus, if the Revolution of 1848 was not a socialist revolution, it 
paved the way, prepared the ground for the latter," i.e. he saw 
"socialist revolution" as the aspiration of his movement, whether it 
called itself communist, social democratic (as did many of the 
organisations in the International) or socialist.

None of these sound like a man uncomfortable with the designation 
"socialist".

Joaquin's mail also calls Lenin as a witness, citing his demand in the 
April Theses and elsewhere that the partyhe headed should change its 
name to "Communist Party". What Lenin was explicitly arguing about was 
changing the name of the "Russian SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC Labour Party" to 
"Russian Communist Party". He says nothing about the designation 
"socialist" - indeed he uses the words "socialist" and "socialism" quite 
extensively. The Bolsheviks and later the early Comintern had absolutely 
no problem with calling what they were fighting for "socialism".

And Eli Stephens raises a valid point about the meaning of the word 
"communism" today - at least in the minds of the majority of the 
population in Western countries (particularly English-speaking 
countries) or Eastern Europe. What it means in other parts of the world 
I can't judge.

Einde O'Callaghan