Polemic: Is Defense of Marxism Paranoia?

Marxism, an indispensable weapon for the working class

Internationalism, as part of the communist left, has never hidden its belonging to the political milieu which claim its adherence to marxism, the communist theory that has historically best expressed the movement of the working class towards its political and economic emancipation. Marxism has demonstrated its superiority over all other social theories by being able to offer a global understanding of the movement of human history and to predict the broad lines of its future evolution. Moreover marxism as the theoretical viewpoint of the revolutionary class in capitalism , is the most advanced point of human thinking about social reality. At the same time marxism is not a kind of neutral science that can be learned in the unie that can be learned in the universities for the sake of learning. Marxism is over all a weapon of combat of the working class in its revolutionary struggle against capitalism, a tool for the advance of proletarian consciousness through the exposure of bourgeoisie mystifcations and the expelling of all bourgeoisie’s ideological influences from the working class. For us only those political organizations which base themselves in Marxism can be truly meaningful in the struggle to overthrow capitalism by the working class.

Of course we know that one is not a revolutionary simply because it swears to be a "marxist". In fact for the greatest part of the last century most of the forces of the left wing of the political apparatus of the bourgeois state, have, cynically, called themselves "marxists". All around the world every school children is taught that the political continuator of the Socialist parties that helped massacre the proletariat during W.W.I and the Communist parties of the Stalinist counterrevolution are marxist organizations –the supposed defenders of the interest of the working class. And the same is said of their leftist appendages, the troskist, moist and other so-called marxist-leninist gruplets that chant, with a more radical tone, the same counterrevolutionary songs than the former outionary songs than the former organizations. Indeed the bourgeois media goes as far as calling ‘marxist’ many currently demonized little sanguinary dictators like Castro, Milosevic, Kim Sung, and even Sadam Hussein!

In other words the dominant class has learned a long time ago that to better attack the consciousness of the working class was not enough with openly attacking marxism, as it did at the beginning of the communist movement during the XIX century. In fact the bourgeoisie on its permanent struggle to undermine the consciousness of the proletariat, has found more effective to pretend from the left of its political apparatus to represent ‘marxism’, while from the right accuses it of some of the worst crimes that capitalism has committed against humanity.

Thus we are aware that the allegiance to marxism is not enough to judge the class nature of a political organization –which is determined by their whole practice expressed in their program, political orientations, activities and political origins. On the other hand we know that there are well meaning individuals that want to be revolutionaries while they are at the same time caught in the trap of the "anti-marxist" campaigns that the bourgeoisie has so much developed since the collapse of the Stalist re collapse of the Stalist regimes. Yet, instead of capitulating to the pressure of bourgeois ideology and the confusions of these elements, this makes even more important for marxist revolutionaries to defend marxism.

As far as ND is concerned, according to its elements themselves, they are not "marxists", but the declared enemies of marxism. For us they are not confused well meaning militants, but individuals with a coherent bourgeois orientation and practice.

Is the Defense of Marxism paranoia?

On our statement on ND we essentially said that:

-ND, because of its political activity and main self-declared porpouse –"our goal is to spread an alternative to marxsim"-, is in general sense a bourgeois group, which main function is to spread distrust in the revolutionary traditions of marxism.

-yet, ND, because its main field of action, seems more precisely to be an organized effort of the bourgeoisie to infiltrate the so-called "non-market, anti-satist, libertarian socialist" political milieu of which Discussion bulletin is its main forum.

-and we finished by calling this milieu –particularly its De Leonist 0;particularly its De Leonist components, which consider themselves officially marxist- to react against ND’s activities and in particular for DB to stop being a willing vehicle of the propaganda of this group.

This was and is our position about ND and if the publisher of DB wanted to disagree with us, defend ND or whatever he should at least took up the trouble to quote our statement so that his readers, particularly those which don’t know Internationalism, could have formed an opinion for themselves. The accusation that we are "paranoid" because we defend marxism seems so baseless –even strangely foolish coming from somebody who considers himself a marxist- that hardly deserves a serious response. Any children knows how to use that term to mean that somebody has lost all sense of reality and is victim of delusions of persecution. Well, not even FG can’t deny the reality of ND attacks to marxism (he prefers to use the term "rejection"), is he also without knowing "paranoid"? Of course FG could have said that we are "paranoid" because we have the suspicion that ND is "an organized effort of the bourgeoisie". About this question obviously we don’t have the prove that ND is so, other than calling the attention to its politics and behavior, bs politics and behavior, but this does not change a iota of the fact that ND is a bourgeois group.

However, it seems to us that what Frank G. is avoiding with the polemic trick of labeling us as "paranoid", is to take himself a stand in relation to the class nature and activity of ND. Here are some questions that he should consider answering: Does he consider this group despite its anti-marxism and its bourgeois democratic ideology a genuine political expression of the working class? Does he considers ND to be a part of what DB terms "the real revolutionaries of our era: the non-market, anti-statist, libertarian socialists."? Furthermore, we know that DB considers itself a forum for the debate and discussion between the components of this "political milieu", then, how does his publisher explains that ND has never taken the trouble to respond to the critics of other groups and contributor of DB?

In any case even if FG does not want to take a clear position on ND, he should at least explain his suspicion of paranoia symptoms on those who defend marxism vis a vis the campaigns of slanders of its declared enemies. For our part we think that the defense of marxism is our most elementary responsibility, and call again those with an adherence to DeLeonism –which claimso DeLeonism –which claims a historical affiliation to marxism- to do likewise. This activity is particularly crucial on face of a new generation of militant workers without political culture and almost not experience in the working class struggle.

Eduardo Smith.