I noticed that in the Communist Manifesto, the platform is very state-centric and advocates and advocates nationalization and progressive tax, while in the Critique of Gotha Program he says that the state should have no role in education and that progressive income taxes are merely the machinations of government and should not be part of any socialist program.
pic unrelated
Yes. The Paris Commune informs his later view of revolution.
In Critique of the Gotha program he does say that "Government and church should rather be equally excluded from any influence on the school", but then again later he says that in a newly-formed socialist state workers would not receive the full value of their labor (in terms of labor-vouchers or however he's imagining these things would be kept track of) because some amount needs to be deducted for things like "cover for replacement of the means of production used up", and "reserve or insurance funds against accidents", and he goes on to add that some amount would also be deducted for "that which is intended for the common satisfaction of needs, such as schools, health services, etc." Not sure how to reconcile the mention of "schools" there with the earlier comment about government staying out of education–maybe in the first comment he was saying the government in its present form shouldn't have a role in funding education, or that it just shouldn't have a role in shaping the curriculum even if it did give funds to schools. Either one might make sense given that his next comment is "Particularly, indeed, in the Prusso-German Empire (and one should not
take refuge in the rotten subterfuge that one is speaking of a "state of the future";
we have seen how matters stand in this respect) the state has need, on the
contrary, of a very stern education by the people."
Ok m8, when Marx wrote the Commiefesto, he was a Hegelian, humanist faggot. Advocating things like a progressive tax, nationalization that to be honest is more social democratic and matching the radical leftist movements of its time. Later on though he became much more radical in ideas PLUS thought of ideas in the context of an early-stage socialist state. Thus "fuck taxes" and such.
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Marx has always been more libertarian, it's Lenin (just a bit, I don't dislike Lenin) and especially Stalin who twisted his words.
No I'm not a Trotskyist.
It's disheartening to see how the man who said "While the State exists, there can be no freedom. When there is freedom there will be no State." turned out once in power.
You have to actually read people's works instead of trying to reconstruct their worldview from a few selected, isolated quotes.
Trotsky was more authoritarian that Lenin fam.
Trostkysts are usually just edgy liberals who don't know anything about the actual history of the USSR. Spartacists are the most authentic followers of Trotsky.
No, the communist manifesto was a political program for the particular conditions of 1848 contained in a hastily written propaganda piece commissioned from Marx. Taking it as any indication of Marx's ideas about socialism and communism is retarded.
So shoul I just stop reading State and revolution?
I won't pretend I have finished any of Lenin's books, but I'm aware of the use of Red Terror, Marx saying it would shorten the revolutionary process and all that. I don't hold the Red Terror against Lenin; hell, his order to shoot speculators on the spot should be in the constitution of all countries.
His mistake was going against his own ideas; eroding freedoms, avoiding open elections, dissolving the Assembly, and perhaps gravest of all, hollowing out the soviets. I believe, perhaps naïvely, that he did all of that because it's what he had to do to keep the country and government from flat-out collapsing. But unfortunately, it doesn't change the fact that he left the stage set for a Stalin.
Marx's views were best explained in Grundrisse. Compare it to the Manifesto and you have your answer.
I know where the fucking quote comes from and yes, actually sart reading it so you don't think his actions are in contradiction of his words.
The entire text is a justification of his seizure of the state, and that particular passage makes reference to a letter by Engels where he says the same thing about the revolutionary state.
Trots are Leninists, retard.
In one of his books he calls for the abolition of the bureaucracy the police and army. In state and revolution he says that the function's of the state will be reduced to that of mere book keepers and technicians.
Im not the OP
maybe in practice, definitely not in theory.
You're clueless, and you don't have enough knowledge of Marxism to understand why your approach here is wrong. Finish reading The State and Revolution, it's a good an introduction to the question of the state as any, and then maybe we can talk.
I'm not even discussing the OP.
So, does power really corrupt, or did he become a monster in order to fight monsters?
I don't understand this meme.
he probably realized running shit is low-key difficult as fuck, and let's not kid ourselves, the proles were dumb as fuck back in the day, and were coming out of an agrarian society.
Same can be said of tankies
The dream of the Bolsheviks is well and truly dead
"le althusser face": louis althusser was a marxist scholar who insisted that there is an epistemological break between the early humanist marx and the late scientific marx.
There could be no freedom without an international revolution. Hardly Lenin's fault the German revolution didn't happen.
That much is true. Lenin bet all his chips on Europe, or at least Germany, going Red, then he got stuck with creating socialism in an arctic, war-torn wasteland. Things would have so so absurdly different ig the German Revolution won…
So the lesson is, socdems ruin everything.
oh, well I think that's obvious then.
bump
He found out that steering a semi-feudal economy is kind of difficult.
Was there not?
Just a good old le X meme
2012 was five years ago
Yep, I think The Poverty of Philosophy is considered the turning point