#plekhanov

[fuckyeahmarxismleninism]

Lenin: Thinker, fighter

George Plekhanov did not have Lenin in mind when he wrote his remarkable essay on “The Role of the Individual in History.” But the following paragraphs describe Lenin more than anybody else you can think of

 By Vince Copeland

Lenin would have been the first to admit — and even proclaim — that he, too, was a continuer, especially of Karl Marx and even of Plekhanov himself in that thinker’s earlier period.

In Lenin we have an example of a person who, although also a “continuer,” actually did clearly begin not one, but several, very important aspects of the struggle for the inevitable socialist future of humanity. 

Let us review the main “beginnings” that he was personally responsible for.

[milkboydotnet]

Social relationships have their inherent logic: as long as people live in given mutual relationships they will reel, think and act in a given way, and no other. Attempts on the part of public men to combat this logic would also be fruitless; the natural course of things (i.e. this logic of social relationships) would reduce all his efforts to naught. But if I know in what direction social relations are changing owing to given changes in the social-economic process of production, I also know in what direction social mentality is changing; consequently, I am able to influence it. Influencing social mentality means influencing historical events. Hence, in a certain sense, I can make history, and there is no need for me to wait while 'it is being made.'

G.V. Plekhanov, On the Role of the Individual in History (1898)

[meatthawsmoth]

To begin with, the incontestable merit of Stirner consists in his having openly and energetically combated the sickly sentimentalism of the bourgeois reformers and of many of the Utopian Socialists, according to which the emancipation of the proletariat would be brought about by the virtuous activity of 'devoted' persons of all classes, and especially of those of the possessing-class. Stirner knew perfectly what to expect from the 'devotion' of the exploiters. The 'rich' are harsh, hard-hearted, but the 'poor' (the terminology is that of our author) are wrong to complain of it, since it is not the rich who create the poverty of the poor, but the poor who create the wealth of the rich. They ought to blame themselves then if their condition is a hard one. In order to change it they have only to revolt against the rich; as soon as they seriously wish it, they will be the strongest and the reign of wealth will be at an end. Salvation lies in struggle, and not in fruitless appeals to the generosity of the oppressors. Stirner, therefore, preaches the class war.

Plekhanov, Anarchism and Socialism. Amazing how an anti-anarchist Bolshevik understood Stirner better than many pro- and anti-Stirner anarchists.

[yngwrthr]

Every democratic principle must be considered not by itself, abstractly, but in relation to that which may be called the fundamental principle of democracy, namely, salus populi suprema lex. Translated into the language of the revolutionist, this means that the success of the revolution is the highest law, and if the success of the revolution demanded a temporary limitation on the working of this or that democratic principle, then it would be criminal to refrain from such a limitation… One can judge the suitability of such measures only on the basis of the rule: salus revolutionis suprema lex.

Georgi Plekhanov, Vtoroi s’’ezd RSDRP Protokoly, pp. 181-182, quoted in E. Belford, Zemlya vs. Volya – From Narodnichestvo to Marxism, Soviet Studies, vol. XXX, no. 3, July 1978, p. 308

[yngwrthr]

I am fully convinced that Marx and Engels, after the materialist turn in their development, never abandoned the standpoint of Spinoza. This conviction of mine is based in part on the personal testimony of Engels. In 1889, while I was in Paris for the International Exhibition, I took the opportunity of going to London to meet Engels in person. I had the pleasure of spending almost a week in long discussions with him on various practical and theoretical subjects. At one point our discussion turned to philosophy. Engels strongly criticized what Stern rather imprecisely calls the ‘materialism in the philosophy of nature’. ‘So for you,’ I asked him, 'old Spinoza was right when he said that thought and extension were nothing but two attributes of one and the same substance ?’ 'Of course,’ Engels replied, 'old Spinoza was absolutely right.’

Georgi Plekhanov quoted by Lucio Colletti, “Teleology and Causation,” Bernstein and the Marxism of the Second International (1969)

[milfstalin]

[yaoisheviks-bracket]

georgi plekhanov

big bara mentor figure lowkey a classic trope and i know he had a villain arc in the second international but i feel like being the daddy of russian marxism gotta count for something. Please

accepted!

[russia-libertaire]

"We all draw from it moral strength and faith in a better future."

Georgi Plekhanov on Chernyshevsky's What Is to Be Done?