Re: [platypus1917] Re: How to Begin from the Beginning by Zizek
I was addressing the reception and currency of such "Left" communism as a specific symptom of the present, which has more to do with the legacy of the 1960s New Left and its problems than those of the older revolutionary Marxist tradition.
I would have thought that after all my posts this much at least would be clear.
I think that Lenin is a much more important object of historical investigation than Gorter, Debord, et al.
-- By the way, I never even heard of Gorter or Bordiga (or Debord) et al. when I was a Spartacist youth. The SL maintained their focus on rival tendencies of "Trotskyism."
So my perspective on "Left" communism (including Castoriadis, et al.) came much later. I was severely disappointed to find that the "critique" of the tradition of Lenin, Luxemburg and Trotsky was so pathetically weak and so offered no real
alternative. Believe me, at the time, I wished it were otherwise. My intellectual curiosity went unsatisfied.
It was only later, through Adorno and then (the early Marxist) Lukacs and Korsch, Benjamin, et al., that I was able to read the Spartacist canon (of LLT) with newly opened eyes, and find so much there that the Spartacists themselves (not to mention others such as the ISO and SWP/Britain, et al. who also claim -- and travesty -- this tradition) were blind to. It was then that I became the ruthlessly deadly enemy of any and all who flatten this tradition and render it inaccessible in the present. There was a very good reason why Adorno et al. kept their distance not only from Stalinized "Communism" and fatally compromised Social Democracy but also cranky "Left" communism, and why they never entertained such perspectives' apostasies regarding the Bolshevik Revolution, but did read Trotsky avidly and incorporated his perspective into theirs.
-- Chris
--- On Mon, 7/6/09, Angelus Novus <fuerdenkommunismus@...> wrote:
From: Angelus Novus <fuerdenkommunismus@...> Subject: Re: [platypus1917] Re: How to Begin from the Beginning by Zizek To: platypus1917@yahoogroups.com Date: Monday, July 6, 2009, 9:54 AM
> These characters can't hold a candle to Lenin or Trotsky -- or the hero
> they mistakenly try to appropriate, Luxemburg, who worked with Lenin but > would have had nothing to do with them.
Um, considering that Luxemburg was murdered in 1919, whereas the KAPD was founded in 1920, it would have been really difficult for her to "have something to do with them", unless:
1. a time machine had been invented,
or,
2. a cure for death had been discovered.
Pannekoek was in the SPD in the pre-war period, and in fact both Pannekoek and Luxemburg engaged in polemics against the Kautskyite center. Lenin, at the time, shamefully supported Kautsky against Luxemburg.
And "libertarian" would never have been used as a label by these tendencies. That's just a label anarchists like to tack on in their mistaken belief that these tendencies are somewhat compatible with anarchism.
Furthermore, it's a bit of a myth that the KAPD wasn't oriented towards party-building. And the Italian left-communists are Bordiga were quite Leninist.
Sometimes it's a good idea to conduct independent research on something, rather than rely on whatever potted history the Sparts spoon-fed you as a cadre-whelp.
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