3491. Julio Antonio Mella and Trotskyism

By Carlos Ricardo Márquez, In Defence of Marxism, March 25, 2021

Today is the birthday of Julio Antonio Mella: a Cuban revolutionary and founder of the Cuban Communist Party, who was assassinated in 1929. We celebrate the legacy of this outstanding young Marxist, who embodied the best traditions of the communist movement, and gave his life in service of the working-class of Latin America and the whole world. The following text was first presented at the first International Seminar on the Life and Ideas of Leon Trotsky in Havana, Cuba, in May 2019.

Click here for the Spanish original.

Julio Antonio Mella once wrote, “Through victory or by serving as a trench for others: even in death we can be of service.” And he remains so to this day. Mella was an admirer of Leon Trotsky whom he described as “the dynamo of the revolution.” Mella came into contact with the International Left Opposition and he clashed with the methods and ideas of reformism and Stalinism. He liked to say things as they are. We must follow his example. Mella dedicated his life to the revolution – and he died for it. In so doing he came into conflict with the bureaucrats and opportunists who – despite radical phraseology – attempted to put a brake on the revolution; who conciliated and succumbed to the big bourgeoisie.

It seems incredible to think that Julio Antonio lived to be 27 years old, and yet in that time he became a central figure of the communist movement in Cuba, Mexico, and Latin America. Youth is the driving force of the proletarian revolution. Mella, like the youth of the Russian Bolshevik Party, was one of those tireless young people who broke with the established order and adopted a clear, revolutionary, proletarian perspective. Without people like him, there can be no revolution. But such impulse is not enough. It is also necessary to build the solid forces that will transform society: the revolutionary party.

Julio Antonio Mella (left in the mural above) lived to just 27 years old, and yet in that time he became a central figure of the communist movement in Cuba, Mexico, and Latin America / Image: Pierre Marshall

The impact of 1917

The seizure of power by the Russian workers shook the planet, opening the floodgates of class struggle at the international level. In Cuba, there was already an incipient socialist tradition predating 1917. Cuban emigrants since the middle of the 19th century had come into contact with socialist ideas. In 1918 there existed communist and anarchist groups that sympathized with the Russian Revolution, and the first attempts were made to build a communist party, a task that did not then come to fruition.

The winds of change came to Cuba initially through the movement of the university students who confronted the Machado dictatorship, just two years after the triumph of the Russian Revolution. Julio Antonio, coming from the petty bourgeoisie, became a leading participant in the struggle and entered into contact with the labor leaders, such as the anarcho-syndicalist Alfredo López who would have an enormous influence on him.

Mella began to understand the need to unite the student struggle with the proletarian struggle. In the course of the student struggle, he would evolve from a reformist position to a revolutionary one. We can see this in the articles he wrote for the university magazine, Alma Mater, and its successor, Juventud. In the latter, he began to defend the need for social revolution.

In February 1924, on the death of Lenin, there appeared an article by his pen, “Lenine Coronado”, in which we can read his first explicit and favorable reference to Trotsky. This is hardly surprising. At that time these two characters were unquestionably linked as the key leaders of the 1917 revolution and of the Bolshevik Party. The triumph of the Russian Revolution cannot be understood without the role of these two men. The Bolshevik party was known internationally as the party of Lenin and Trotsky.

Julio Antonio recognised Lenin and Trotsky as the unquestioned leaders of the Russian Revolution

Lenin and Trotsky, although they always coincided on fundamental points, had some differences before the revolution that kept them apart. In practice, these differences would be erased. Geographically removed at two distant points, without contact between them, they nevertheless drew the same conclusions about the tasks of the Russian Revolution. In 1917, there was no longer any barrier that might prevent their full unification.

Lenin said of Trotsky that there was no better Bolshevik from that moment on, with the two remaining close comrades-in-arms from then on. In 1923, when the bureaucracy began its rise, Lenin established an alliance with Trotsky to fight it. What is interesting is that Mella not only spoke favorably about Trotsky in 1924, but also in the period when Trotsky was under direct attack, and even when his followers had been expelled from the Communist Party.

From Leninism to Stalinism

In August 1925 the Cuban Communist Party (PCC) was founded in a clandestine meeting with thirteen delegates present. The main figures present were Carlos Baliño (a historical fighter since the independence period) and Julio Antonio Mella. In the 1920s a generation of young revolutionaries had emerged, with the figure of Julio Antonio Mella as its initiator and its center.

The conversion of Mella to communism took place in the early years of the transition from Bolshevism to Stalinization. This affected not only the Communist Party of Russia and the Russian state but the whole International. Julio Antonio was by no means impartial, and we can say with certainty that he consciously did not take Stalin's side in this struggle. For example, while Mella made several favorable references to Lenin and Trotsky, the name of Stalin never appears in his articles.

Mella made many positive references to Lenin and Trotsky but the name of Stalin does not appear in his writings

The October Revolution established the most democratic regime in history. Workers’ democracy meant the control of the soviets and the workers over the state and the economy. A tremendous degree of artistic freedom was given, which expressed itself in the emergence of various avant-guard movements; the trade unions enjoyed independence from the state, so that, as Lenin himself said, the workers could defend themselves from the excesses of the workers' government itself; the Bolshevik Party continued to be the space of open debate of revolutionary ideas, and the emergence of political currents and groupings was normal. In the midst of the most difficult conditions of the struggle, in the midst of the harassment and brutal attacks of the imperialists, as was the civil war, the party continued to hold its congresses annually. The Communist International followed the same tradition. Workers' democracy, far from opening the door to counterrevolution, drew the revolutionaries together.

Under the leadership of Lenin and Trotsky, all privilege was fought against. Debates were conducted politically, with participants depending on their moral authority and the strength of the arguments of the leadership. With the rise of the gray bureaucracy, dialectics was replaced by dogmatism. The debate of ideas was crushed by the apparatus. Mella's revolutionary spirit could not deal with this caricature that wanted to call itself ‘Marxist’. In ancient Rome, Christianity was co-opted by the ruling caste. It became a religion of the ruling class while continuing to speak like a religion of the poor. The Stalinist bureaucracy likewise spoke in favor of the October revolution while negating it in practice.

Expelled from the Communist Party

Mella was drawn to Marxism, attracted by the legacy of October. He was inspired by the ideas and practice of Lenin and Trotsky, whom he had read. At one point he became the central figure in the struggle against Machado in Cuba, who responded by attacking and imprisoning him.

Mella is the link in the history of the Cuban revolutionary struggle that connects it to the scientific ideas of revolutionary Marxism. Marxism is not a movement born from nothing. It is inspired by and linked to past revolutionary movements, beginning with the utopian socialists and developing beyond them. In the case of Mella, he drew inspiration from Cuba’s own revolutionary tradition, and his text about José Martí – which he wanted to turn into a book – is well known. Cuba was a country that had never been free and Mella understood the revolutionary potential of the national liberation struggle.

The young Cuban Communist Party, partly because of its youth, its weakness, and the repression it was subjected to by Machado – but also in part because of the political weakness of its leadership – entered into a bitter conflict with Mella. It went so far as to conduct an internal trial against him, expelling him from the organization.

That leadership of the PCC wasn’t capable of rising to the historical tasks. It was more concerned about the hunger strike Mella conducted whilst he was imprisoned than a consistent campaign for his liberation. Instead of engaging in a clear debate on tactics, they accused Mella of going on a hunger strike against his comrades, and of being individualistic and non-proletarian.

When Mella was released from prison – sick, persecuted and in danger of assassination – the harsh criticisms of the PCC did not abate. Rather than providing correct and clear answers in the face of attacks, they simply wanted control. Political weakness leads to the solution of problems not through debate but through the apparatus. This was Mella's first major clash with this kind of bureaucratic method.

His words, upon his release from prison, are in part a criticism of the leadership of the PCC, reaffirming that he had full faith in his ideals. While calling for the freedom of the rest of his imprisoned comrades, he points out that, “The Cuban people have shown that they know how to live the present historical moment of Humanity.” His spirit ran contrary to the narrow-mindedness of the Cuban communist leaders of that time.

When Mella went into exile in Mexico in 1926, after being released from jail, he joined the Communist Party of that country. The Communist International had to intervene for the PCC to recognize its mistake and to formally readmit him into the organization.

Mella did not enter exile defeated, but was an active militant. Not for a moment, while integrating himself into the class struggle in Mexico, did he set aside the revolutionary struggle in Cuba. He was a defender of the Leninist united front; he promoted groups in support of Sandino's struggle in Nicaragua; he supported the liberation of Sacco and Vanzetti (for which he again went to jail), and he was part of the leadership of the All-America Anti-Imperialist League.

Brussels and the USSR

In our opinion, the trips he made to Brussels and the USSR were a turning point in Julio Antonio’s political development. In the debates of the anti-imperialist meeting there is a definitive break with the opportunism of Haya de la Torre and the APRA (they had already engaged in a polemic in Mexico). In essence, they had a policy of imperialist subordination. Again he came into confrontation with the methods of the apparatus.

Julio Antonio Mella's visit to Brussels and Moscow were a key turning point in his political evolution / Image: Tina Modotti

Mella's political positions gained a strong echo at the Anti-imperialist Congress of Brussels; as did his position on trade union tactics when he visited the USSR. A permanent representative of Latin America for the Red Trade Union International was due to be elected, and Mella was a natural candidate for the position. Under the hand of Antonio Codovilla however, the apparatus moved to politically combat Mella and to prevent him from becoming the Latin American trade union representative.

Codovilla, knowing that he could lose, avoided the vote and called for further discussion in a new meeting. He summoned his faithful at one time, but the supporters of Mella were told half an hour later. When the latter arrived they were criticized as undisciplined and told the vote had already taken place. Codovilla dismissed the issue with the argument that there had been a translation error.

Another incident of some importance occurred on that trip. Mella came into contact with Andreu Nin, at that time a member of the Left Opposition. Nin explained the differences in the international and introduced Mella to the program of the Left Opposition. Shortly after his departure from the USSR, the Opposition would be expelled from the Party.

At that time [1927] Mella wrote an article titled, “Cuadros en la Unión Soviética,” [Vignettes from the Soviet Union] in which we find no criticism of the USSR. Every fruit has its season, however. There are moments in which it is prudent to be cautious, and others to go on the offensive. This article shows a series of advances of the planned economy and of the revolution, in spite of the bureaucracy. But even here he again quotes Trotsky, which in itself – at that moment of hostility towards the Opposition – was already an open challenge.

Where is the APRA going?

The Bolsheviks knew that the only hope for the Russian Revolution – where the conditions for socialism did not exist due to its backwardness – was the extension of the revolution to the rest of the world, above all to the developed capitalist nations. With the rise of Stalinism, there was a shift from proletarian internationalism to socialism in one country, and a revival of the old Menshevik slogan of revolution by stages.

The “new” revolutionary strategy proposed an alliance with the “progressive” national bourgeoisie, as opposed to the policy of class independence that had always been defended by Lenin and Trotsky. The bureaucratic counterrevolution did not return Russia to its pre-revolutionary starting point. For a whole period, the economic base rooted in planning was maintained. This, despite everything, meant enormous economic advances, although under the asphyxiated and held by bureaucratism.

Lenin lived to see the phenomenon of bureaucratism in its early stages, and he established an alliance with Trotsky to confront and combat it. His death, and the defeat of the German revolution of 1923, accelerated the internal battle. Trotsky and his followers formed the Left Opposition. They called themselves the Bolshevik-Leninists, reflecting the fact that their task was to defend the true legacy of October.

The most mature writing in Mella's life is: “Where is the ARPA going?” This text is not only a polemic against Haya de la Torre. Mella explains that, “Answering the ARPA is a means of answering all the opportunists and traitorous reformists who hold the same or similar ideologies, even if they deny having links with the ARPA, or claim to be its enemies. Hence the usefulness of trying to fix our points of view against the propaganda of the conscious traitors to the proletariat and the pseudo-reformists of the revolutionary tendencies.”

It can be deduced that the criticism was also directed at the very heart of the Communist International. In his polemic against Haya de la Torre, Mella criticizes his policy, which consisted of a pseudo-revolutionary discourse that ended up conciliating and succumbing to the bourgeoisie. Quoting Lenin he replies:

“The Communist International should support bourgeois-democratic national movements in colonial and backward countries only on condition that, in these countries, the elements of future proletarian parties, which will be communist not only in name, are brought together and trained to understand their special tasks, i.e., those of the struggle against the bourgeois-democratic movements within their own nations. The Communist International must enter into a temporary alliance with bourgeois democracy in the colonial and backward countries, but should not merge with it, and should under all circumstances uphold the independence of the proletarian movement even if it is in its most embryonic form.”

Reflecting his proximity to Trotsky's position – and distancing himself from Stalinism which at that time was advocating support for the kulaks, encouraging them to enrich themselves, while at the international level supporting the progressive national bourgeoisie – he says:

“In their struggle against imperialism (the foreign thief) the bourgeois (the national thieves) join the proletariat, good cannon fodder. But they end up understanding that it is better to make an alliance with imperialism, which at the end of the day pursues a similar interest. From progressives they become reactionaries. The concessions they made to the proletariat in order to keep it on their side, they betray when the latter, in its advance, becomes a danger both for the foreign and for the national thief. Hence the outcry against communism.”

In one of the central points of the divergences between Trotsky and the Stalinists, Mella takes the side of the former.

The beginning of Trotskyism in Mexico

Julio Antonio, on his return to Mexico, fought for the defense of the ideas of the Left Opposition together with Russell Blackwell, who used the pseudonym of Rosario Negrete. To quote a contemporary testimony that tell us about it, Rodriguez says:

“I accompanied Rosario Negrete to Veracruz at the time of the Escobarista rebellion. We were going to meet with Ursulo Galvan, he was in charge of the Pioneers and I as general secretary of Socorro Rojo Internacional. On that trip, Negrete began to talk to me about the differences between Trotsky and Stalin, and he told me to talk to Julio Antonio Mella. I talked with him several times, he shared Negrete's views.” (Olivia Gall, Trotsky in Mexico).

Our comrade and friend, Celia Hart Santamaría, reminded us how Mella gave Alberto Martínez the “Platform of the Opposition” with the dedication: “For Alberto Martínez with the purpose of rearming Communism” (Celia Hart, ¡Julio Antonio! “Hasta después de muerto”). This is Mella after the trip to Brussels and the USSR.

Mella's tireless revolutionary spirit led him into continuous clashes with the politics of Stalinism and its national leaderships. His authority and work made him a difficult target to push aside. On the contrary, he had to occupy leading roles. Blackwell explains:

“In Mexico, in spite of continual disagreements with the opportunist heads of the Mexican party, Mella soon became one of the outstanding leaders. Because of instructions, the Mexican party practically compelled Mella, as well as many other foreign comrades, to dedicate themselves to anti-imperialist work almost exclusively. Mella was for a considerable period general secretary of the Continental Secretariat of the All-America Anti-Imperialist League, and in this manner his energies were to a great extent side-tracked from the fields where he would have been most useful to the movement. Later, however, for a period in 1928, Mella occupied provisionally the general secretaryship of the C.P. of Mexico.”

Blackwell also mentions how Mella, being the provisional secretary of the PCM, launched an offensive against the policy of conciliation with the bourgeoisie. Mella made a major difference on union tactics, defending (and winning the debate for) the creation of a new union confederation (different from the CGT and the official CROM), at a time when, Blackwell says, it was possible to unite sectors that were breaking with the reformists and bureaucrats and break their control over the Mexican unions.

On key questions, Mella came to the same position as Lenin and Trotsky / Image: In Defence of Marxism

This debate heightened tensions in the PCM as Mella was accused of being a Trotskyist. There was an offensive against him, with the full pressure of the apparatus brought to bear. Blackwell explains:

“But upon the return of the delegation from Moscow after the Sixth World Congress of the Comintern, comrade Mella was not only removed from this provisional post but was also summarily removed from the Central Committee, upon the insistence of the right wing C.E.C. led by Martin (Sitirner) and Carrillo. In a former period Mella had been accused of “Trotskyism”, and only through a formal renunciation of the point of view of the Left Opposition which was probably the greatest political mistake of his party career, was he allowed to remain in the leadership.” (Russell Blackwell, “Julio A. Mella”)

Indeed, in a meeting of the Central Committee of the Mexican Communist Party, in the midst of all the pressures, Mella declared that he did not belong to the Left Opposition. Note that Blackwell uses the term “formal renunciation of the point of view of the Opposition,” which does not mean an abandonment of those ideas in reality, much less an assimilation of Stalinist ideas. In the midst of this dispute Mella was, for the second time, thrown out of a Communist Party.

Who assassinated Mella?

A month before his assassination, Mella had a bitter discussion with Vittorio Vidali inside the premises of the Communist Party. Enraged, the latter told him, “Don’t ever forget: you leave the International in one of two ways, either expelled or dead!” This man has an obscure history. During the Spanish Civil War, Andreu Nin, former militant of the Left Opposition and member of the POUM, was assassinated by the Stalinists.

Vidali is accused of being involved in this assassination as well as that of Trotsky himself. After his death, Mella’s partner, Tina Modotti, would end up in a relationship with Vittorio Vidalli. Tina was with Mella when he was assassinated, and in the police investigation itself she was accused of involvement.

The incompatibility of Stalinism and Bolshevism was such that, in order to consolidate itself in power, it had to exterminate the generation of the party that made the revolution. Between 1936 and 1938 the Moscow trials took place in which a large number of communist militants were condemned to death, accused of counterrevolutionary crimes. Some of them didn’t even make it to trial because they didn’t survive the torture rooms, prisons and concentration camps. Leon Trotsky himself would be assassinated in 1940 by a Stalinist agent in the same city in which Mella was killed. But the Cuban communist was assassinated in 1929, when this Stalinist practice of assassinations was yet to be applied.

On Mella's death, several historians, such as Adys Cupull, Froilan González and Christine Hatzky, have provided evidence that the material assassins were thugs of Machado, the Cuban president, named as José Agustín López Valiñas and Miguel Francisco Sanabria.

Russell Blackwell (Rosalio Negrete), the founder of the Left Opposition in Mexico, points out in the previously mentioned biographical article on Mella, written two years after his death, “On January 10th he was shot dead in the street by Machado’s assassins ...", recognizing the Cuban dictator as the assassin.

One of the most recent investigations, carried out by Gabriela Pulido and Laura Moreno, compared files of the Mexican police with those of the Cuban police, which also demonstrated their complicity in the murder and the protection of the killers (see El asesinato de Julio Antonio Mella: informes cruzados entre México y Cuba, Secretariat of Culture and INAH).

As Julio Cesar Guanche rightly says: “both versions [of Mella's assassination] explain Mella's life better than they explain his death: they explain everything about his revolutionary character” (“¿Por qué leer a Julio Antonio Mella?”, rebelión.org).

Was Mella a Trotskyist?

The term Trotskyist was invented to discredit those who maintained the legacy of October and grouped themselves in the Left Opposition, distorting their ideas and inverting the role played by Trotsky and Stalin in the Russian Revolution. Lenin's last struggle was to fight against the bureaucracy in an alliance with Trotsky. A school of Stalinist falsification was formed that wrote a new and distorted history. On his trip to Moscow and Brussels, Mella became aware of these debates in the International.

One can hardly question Julio Antonio Mella's Marxist credentials. Leon Trotsky is but the continuity of the ideas of authentic Marxism, and it is evident that Mella was not a Stalinist and was inspired by the ideas and struggle of Lenin and Trotsky. Mella had a head of his own that thought dialectically and with freedom. With a class perspective he came to the conclusion of the traitorous role not only of imperialism, but also of the national bourgeoisies (the “local thieves”). He was an internationalist who never abandoned the revolutionary struggle in Cuba, of which he once said, “The struggle is international, as the force that sustains the Cuban government is international: capitalist imperialism”.

Mella has national roots in his revolutionary struggle. He admired José Martí but understood the role of the working class. He knew that in the national liberation struggle the working class should play the leading role, he understood the traitorous role of the national bourgeoisie and that complete national liberation from imperialism could not happen without a struggle for socialism. In his article “The cry of the martyrs”, he declares: “There is no more fatherland. Only enemy classes”.

Did Mella belong to the Left Opposition? The Opposition was in the process of formation. Julio Antonio Mella played a role in that beginning as a route by which the ideas of the Bolshevik-Leninists were brought to Mexico and Cuba. Under pressure, Mella said he did not belong to the Opposition. That may have been a momentary mistake, though not an abandonment of ideas. The Opposition was not a ready-made entity but an organism under construction. It does not mean Mella abandoned his ideas and perspective. After his death several of his close collaborators would form the Left Opposition.

Mella was a revolutionary of integrity and that naturally led him to clash again and again with Stalinism. We have no doubt that if he had lived longer, he would have been on the side of Blackwell in Mexico or Sandalio Junco in Cuba, claiming the traditions of Bolshevism against Stalinist opportunism. Whether Mella was formally part of the Left Opposition or not has the least significance. The important thing was the ideas he defended, which in the dispute in the International coincided in its key points with those of Lenin and Trotsky, in opposition to the ideas and methods of Stalinism.

The ideas and traditions of Leon Trotsky are not alien to the Cuban and Latin American revolutionary tradition. They are an integral part of the birth of our movement and of the Communist Parties in the Americas.

2724. Marxism of C. L. R. James

By Paul Le Blanc, Against the Current, October 8, 2017

C. L.  R. James

Cyril Lionel Robert James (1901-1989) has begun to enjoy a revival among U.S. and European intellectuals which promises to spread his influence more widely in the present and future than was the case at any time during his life. He is best known for his magnificent history of the Haitian revolution, entitled Black Jacobins (first published in 1938 and reprinted often since then), but a growing number of people are becoming increasingly familiar with many other facets of his work.

There has been a flood of works by and about James since his death.  There are now two biographies—one by "new left" historian Paul Buhle, and a more recent product of Kent Worchester's careful scholarship.  A massive anthology of his writings, edited by Anna Grimshaw, was glowingly reviewed in the New York Times.  A fascinating collection edited by Buhle and Paget Henry entitled C.L.R. James's Caribbean has now been followed by a re-issue of his sports classic Beyond a Boundary.

Grimshaw and Keith Hart have also made available a major work by James, rich in pioneering cultural analysis, entitled American Civilization.  Professor Robert Hill of the University of California at Los Angeles is projecting the publication of the Collected Works of C.L.R. James over the coming years, according to a front-page story in the Chronicle of Higher Education.  An important collection of essays by various scholars, edited by Selwyn Cudjoe and William E. Cain, C.L.R. James, His Intellectual Legacies, has just appeared.

The Revolutionary Studies series of Humanities Press has recently republished his 1937 classic World Revolution (a history of the Communist International), has published a volume edited by Scott McLemee and myself, entitled C.L.R. James and Revolutionary Marxism, Selected Writings 1939-1949, and plans to bring out his wonderful 1960 lectures Modern Politics in the near future.

James is generally acknowledged to have been one of the most original Marxist thinkers to emerge from the Western hemisphere, yet essential aspects of his identity came from the other side of the Atlantic, from Europe and Africa.  As he explained to one African-American scholar, "I am a Black European, that is my training and outlook."

He offered penetrating analyses on the interrelationships of class, race and gender, and his discussions of colonialism and anti-colonialism could be brilliant. But C.L.R. James also embraced the heritage of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, the working-class and socialist movements of Europe and North America, and the Bolshevism of Lenin and Trotsky which transformed Russia and promised to liberate the world from all oppression. At the same time, his writings on sports deserve special emphasis—which is something that can be said of few Marxist theorists. James began his writing career by writing about baseball's distant cousin, cricket, first in the West Indies and later in England.

Paul Buhle, following James, tells us that such sports are a means of "expression for ordinary genius," adding that James regarded cricket as "a fully fledged art form equal to theatre, opera and dance.  To this claim James added a populist amendment: 'What matters in cricket, as in all the finer arts, is not the finer points but what everyone with some knowledge of the elements can see and feel.' It embodied the elemental human movement which ... constituted the basis and the source of renewal for all arts."  (One can imagine that these insights could also be applied to modern-day basketball, music videos on MTV, and much else.)

Such things—James felt—come from the same deeply creative sources as more conventional great art and also as genuinely revolutionary politics.  The mass popular response to such things, similarly, has something in common with the emotions and sensibilities associated with social revolutions, in which masses of people creatively transform reality.

James's Political Involvements

James moved to England in 1932 from the West Indian island of Trinidad.  In England he quickly made contact with the British working-class movement, becoming part of the radical Independent Labor Party and of a small Trotskyist organization within it called the Marxist Group.  He learned his Marxism within this context, and some of his most enduring contributions to Marxism were made while he was part of the Trotskyist movement in Britain and the United States.  James also became involved in the Pan-Africanist movement, becoming associated with such figures as George Padmore, Paul Robeson, W.E.B. DuBois, Jomo Kenyatta, and Kwame Nkrumah.

In 1938 James helped to found the Fourth International, the world-wide organization of revolutionary socialists, and was elected to its International Executive Committee.  In the same year he moved to the United States and became part of the Socialist Workers Party.  Frank Lovell has offered this recollection:

"When C.L.R. James came to this country from Britain, where he was a leader of the Trotskyist movement, he was welcomed into the Socialist Workers Party and given leadership responsibilities.  James was an impressive speaker with his British accent and his poise.  He was a tall, handsome Black man...  He spoke without notes, standing aside from the podium on the speakers platform.  It was as if he were a great actor delivering a famous oration."

"At his first appearance he shared the platform with [the top leaders of the SWP, Max] Shachtman and [James P.] Cannon in the Irving Plaza meeting hall where Trotskyist meetings were often held. Shachtman was the first speaker and was not brief.  James came on next and even though his talk was longer than Shachtman's, he completely captivated his audience and received a big ovation.  Cannon was the last speaker.  Although he was the national secretary of the party and had been announced for a major speech, Jim had no intention of standing on his dignity or trying to hold the audience so late at night in order to have his turn. He put aside his notes, congratulated James on his speaking ability and welcomed him to the Socialist Workers Party." [James P. Cannon As We Knew Him, ed. by Les Evans (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1976), pp. 138-139.]

James remained part of the Trotskyist movement until 1951, adopting the party name "J.R. Johnson."  In 1940, when Shachtman and many others split from the SWP and set up the rival Workers Party, James initially lined up with the Shachtmanites.  At the same time, along with an energetic theorist-in-the-making named Rae Spiegel, later known as Raya Dunayevskaya, who took the party name "Freddie Forest," James formed a very distinctive political current: the Johnson-Forest tendency.

The Johnson-Forest tendency, which never had more than a few dozen adherents, mapped out an ambitious project for U.S. revolutionaries: to develop an Americanized Marxism, and an Americanized Bolshevism, that would involve a dynamic interpenetration of the U.S. and international revolutionary traditions.

This was to include intellectual efforts that have had an impact on later scholars and social critics: the development of substantial analyses of U.S. history, studies of modern culture (including a serious attitude toward popular culture), historical and sociological labor studies, the development of Marxist economic analysis, and an awesome embrace of dialectical materialism which involved an immersion in the philosophical writings of Hegel.  Among the contributions of the Johnson-Forest tendency was to produce the first English-language translation of Marx's important Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of the early 1840s.

Shachtman and those who were close to Shachtman had little use for the Johnson-Forest tendency, which attracted some of the more energetic young comrades and—among other things- -sought to inspire them with the ambition to master the complexities of Marx's Capital and Hegel's Phenomenology of the Mind. As one veteran of Shachtmanites later recalled: "You would see these 17 year olds who could barely spell, and they were carrying Hegel."  A one-time Shachtmanite youth leader agreed: "In the youth group, with Hegel, they would get up and start espousing Hegel, and it was utterly incoherent."

There were three other sins of the Johnson-Forest tendency that aggravated Shachtman and his co-thinkers: 1) the position that the African- American struggle, rather than being subsumed under the general struggle of the working class, had a powerful dynamic of its own and would be central to the socialist revolution in the U.S.; 2) the position that the American working class was far more radical, having a greater revolutionary character, than many of the Shachtmanites imagined; and 3) that the Socialist Workers Party of James P. Cannon was much better than Shachtman and others were willing to admit, and that the two groups should reunify.

This finally led to a split from the Workers Party in 1947, and the Johnson-Forest group returned to the SWP. While many SWPers were not inclined to accept much of the Johnson-Forest theoretical output, and especially rejected the Johnson-Forest notion that the Soviet Union was a "state-capitalist" society, the tendency's members were seen as serious and hardworking revolutionaries.  The contributions that James had to make regarding the so-called "Negro Question" were also highly valued.  And yet disappointed hopes regarding the failure of the U.S. working class to turn in a revolutionary direction, growing difficulties and frustrations brought on by the Cold War and McCarthy periods, and deepening political differences, caused James and his followers to leave the SWP within five years.  In doing this, they also openly rejected Trotskyism and any commitments to building a Leninist-type party in the United States.

Shortly after this 1951 split, James—who was not a U.S. citizen—was arrested and thrown out of the country because of his revolutionary politics.  In 1955, Raya Dunayevskaya and others split away to establish their own "Marxist-Humanist" News and Letters group; in 1962 the Johnsonmites—known by the name of their own paper Correspondence—suffered another split led by James Boggs and Grace Lee Boggs.  James and his cothinkers regrouped around the name "Facing Reality" (the title of a major Johnsonite document).  By the end of the 1960s, the remnants of the Facing Reality group (led by James's close associate Marty Glaberman) decided to dissolve.

In the meantime, however, two of James's proteges in other countries—Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana and Eric Williams in Trinidad—assumed state power, and welcomed their mentor's support and assistance.  To a limited extent in Ghana, and to a much greater extent in Trinidad, James contributed what he could—especially important writings—to advance the revolutionary struggle.  In both cases, he was forced to break with the political course adopted by Nkrumah and Williams, each in their own way veering off from the revolutionary-democratic and socialist perspectives which he represented.

In the final decades of his life, James was able to see his influence grow in England, the United States, and in the Caribbean among activists who were attracted to these revolutionary perspectives.

James's Method and Contributions

It would be wrong to allow James to become—as has been done by some over the years—a cult figure.  He is not some sort of earthly deity whose judgments must be worshipped, but a comrade from whom one can learn (sometimes even as one is challenging him and clarifying a disagreement).  Rather than offering criticisms or noting contradictions in his ideas and work, I want to focus on certain of his strengths and insights that I believe can be beneficial for the revolutionary socialist movement.  At the end of this presentation, however, I will touch on one aspect of his thought which strikes me as somewhat problematical.

James's general approach to reality seems to me to be very dynamic and exciting.  An essential aspect of his method is to make links between seemingly diverse realities, sometimes to take something that is commonly perceived as being marginal and to demonstrate that it is central, for example: the relation of the Haitian Revolution to the French Revolution and later to the fortunes of Napoleon Bonaparte; the relation of blacks to world history, Western civilization, and the class struggle; the relation of popular culture—sports, movies, hit songs, dancing, pulp fiction, comic books, etc.—to more "refined" culture, to social realities and to class consciousness.  James focuses on these so-called "marginal" realities in a manner that profoundly alters (rather than displacing) the traditionally "central" categories.

The attentive reader will find that such a methodological approach generates innumerable fruitful challenges which help to move one's thinking forward on a variety of issues.

Among James's most substantial contributions was his assistance in making revolutionary Marxists aware of the centrality of "the Negro Question" to the class struggle and to any genuinely revolutionary perspective in the United States, and I want to give major attention to that. First of all, he insistently demonstrated that the history of blacks in the Americas was not simply a history of poor victims of oppression, but of a vibrant and conscious people that found innumerable ways to resist their oppression, assert their humanity, and periodically struggle for their own liberation.

But James went much further than this. On the basis of in-depth study and experience in black communities of the United States, creatively utilizing Lenin's views on oppressed nationalities, and in collaboration with Trotsky (with whom he had extensive discussions in Mexico), James developed a profound theoretical orientation to help guide the practical work of U.S. revolutionaries.

"The American Negroes, for centuries the most oppressed section of American society and the most discriminated against, are potentially the most revolutionary elements of the population," James explained in one resolution which he wrote in 1939.  "They are designated by their whole historical past to be, under adequate leadership, the very vanguard of the proletarian revolution."  He added that "the broad perspectives of [Trotsky's theory of] the permanent revolution will remain only a fiction" unless revolutionary socialists could find their way to the African-American masses.

The implications of this were that a consistent, uncompromising struggle for the democratic rights of African Americans (largely proletarianized) would necessarily challenge bourgeois power and capitalism, with a potential for growing over into a struggle for working-class power and socialism.  Yet James did not leave things at that. A second resolution noted that African Americans might feel moved, on the basis of their own historic oppression, to advance the demand "for the establishment and administration of a Negro state."  He explained that "in a revolutionary crisis, as they begin to shake off the state coercion and ideological domination of the American bourgeois society, their first step may well be to demand the control, both actual and symbolical, of their own destiny."

Rejecting schematic definitions having to do with whether blacks in the U.S. constituted "a nation," James pointed out that "the raising or support of the slogan by the masses of Negroes will be the best and only proof required."  Under such circumstances, revolutionary socialists should support the demand, the realization of which could constitute, as James put it, a "step forward to the eventual integration of the American Negroes into the United Socialist States of America."

James added: "The advocacy of the right of self-determination does not mean advancing the slogan of self-determination.  Self-determination for Negroes means that Negroes themselves must determine their own future."  It is worth noting that there are, in fact, two meanings attached to the term self-determination here. One meaning involves separation, setting up a politically-distinct nation—which may or may not take place, depending on what blacks themselves wish to do. The other meaning involves the right of an oppressed people to define what they shall be and to determine their own future—which, James insisted, must be a constant principle for revolutionary Marxists.

He also observed that "the awakening political consciousness of the Negro not unnaturally takes the form of independent action uncontrolled by whites.  The Negroes have long felt, and more than ever feel today the urge to create their own organizations under their own leaders and thus assert, not only in theory but in action, their claim to complete equality with other American citizens.  Such a desire is legitimate and must be vigorously supported even when it takes the form of a rather aggressive chauvinism."  James's next point is of particular interest: "Black chauvinism in America today is merely the natural excess of the desire for equality and is essentially progressive while white American chauvinism, the expression of racial domination, is essentially reactionary."

This general orientation was so advanced for its time that the SWP proved incapable of fully assimilating it, and even today many socialists, even some who identify with Trotskyism, don't accept it. But in the 1960s James's position provided a basis for understanding the rising tide of militant struggles and nationalist consciousness in the Black community.  While these new developments proved to be unexpected by and utterly confusing to many observers, Trotskyist analyst George Breitman was able to draw on the earlier perspectives to provide a revolutionary Marxist explanation.  Especially important was Breitman's ability to highlight, document and help popularize the profoundly revolutionary meaning of the ideas and life of Malcolm X—which would have been impossible without the kind of analysis pioneered by James a quarter of a century before.

As I have already indicated, James by no means confined himself to "the Negro Question."  His approach to the world around him was comprehensive, multifaceted and penetrating.  As a revolutionary interenationalist, he concerned himself with revolutionary events in Europe, Asia, Latin America, Africa—and also with the real struggles of working people and the oppressed in the United States, in which he saw genuinely revolutionary qualities.  There is a profound continuity in how he viewed these struggles and the manner in which he defined socialism.  This comes through in this passage from a 1947 document of the Johnson-Forest tendency entitled The Invading Socialist Society.

The struggle for socialism is the struggle for proletarian democracy.  Proletarian democracy is not the crown of socialism.  It is its basis.  Proletarian democracy is not the result of socialism.  Socialism is the result of proletarian democracy.  To the degree that the proletariat mobilizes itself and the great masses of the people, the socialist revolution is advanced.  The proletariat mobilizes itself as a self-acting force through its own committees, unions, parties and other organizations.

An essential aspect of James's approach is not that members of small revolutionary socialist groups need to persuade the working class to become such a "self-acting force."  Rather, he insisted, the working-class already is such a force, carrying out innumerable forms of resistance and struggle in everyday life in their own workplaces and communities and personal lives which—while not necessarily conforming to the blueprints and schemas of revolutionary socialist groups, and often not noticed by these groups—effectively combat, undermine, subvert capitalist power, creating elements of a new democratic-collectivist society within the shell of the capitalist society around us.

In 1943 James expressed this outlook in a brilliant polemic against Sidney Hook (a pioneering post-Marxist whose 1943 volume The Hero in History is being echoed today in fashionable ex-leftist critiques of Marxism and Leninism).  Here James wrote eloquently about the relationship between the working class and genuinely revolutionary socialist groups.  Noting that one aspect of Lenin's strength was that he was an organic part of Russian culture, he went on to say:

"As to the outstanding role Lenin played inside his own party, even Marxist histories tend to give it a false significance.  Lenin fought for the Bolshevik principles in 1903 and won. He was constantly winning, which means that he expressed ideas which stood the test of practice.  The proletariat as a whole, at all critical moments, followed the Bolsheviks.

"More important than this, however, is the fact that the Russian proletariat taught and disciplined Lenin and the Bolsheviks not only indirectly but directly.  Basically the organization of the party paralleled the organization of the productive power of the proletariat in revolution.  In 1917, Lenin thought the struggle hopeless, and was thinking of giving it up. A few weeks later came the massacre of January, and the magnificent response of the Russian proletariat revived the faltering leader.  The proletariat created the soviets [democratic workers' councils].  The Bolsheviks learned here to understand the vitality and creative power of the proletariat in revolution....  The great change in policy in April was only a manifestation of the essential policy of the Bolshevik Party, to express and organize the instinctive desires and aims of the proletariat....

"The proletariat repeatedly led the Bolsheviks and gave Lenin courage and wisdom.  Between 1890 and 1921 the interrelation between leader, party, class and nation was indivisible.  The transformation of Bolshevism into totalitarianism is adequately dealt with in the literature of Trotskyism.  The analysis is embodied in history, and the lessons are plain.  With the proletariat or against it, that is the future of every modern nation.  The secret of Lenin's greatness is that he saw this so clearly, and he saw this so clearly because this choice was the inescapable product of the whole past of Russia...."

We have here a vision of revolutionary organizations being organically connected with the history and culture of their own countries, and especially with their own working classes, the insight that a revolutionary organization must be able to learn from the working class if it hopes to be able to have anything to teach the working class, that it must follow the workers in order to be able lead, that the relationship between the revolutionary group and the working class must be profoundly interactive.

A Challenge to Revolutionary Marxists

Here I want to turn to a problematical aspect of James's thought, which hopefully will provide a challenging conclusion to this presentation.  James never altered his analysis of and admiration for Lenin and the Bolshevik party.  But by the early 1950s he discarded the conception of building a revolutionary vanguard party in the United States because he felt this conception—as understood by most U.S. Leninists—got in the way of cultivating the necessary interactive relationship between revolutionary Marxists and the actually-existing, self-acting working class.

He came to the conclusion that Trotsky and other revolutionary Marxists had been wrong about believing that, after a working-class revolution, a transitional period between capitalism and socialism would be necessary.  He felt that before the working class made its revolution it would already have created—spontaneously, or semi-spontaneously, through its own activity—democratic, collectivist, socialist relations through its resistance to capitalist oppression.

Even if the working class did not put a "socialist" label on its own consciousness, activities, and relationships, these were developing in a socialist direction within the very framework of capitalist society, through the class struggle which—as noted in the Communist Manifesto—is "now hidden, now open."  The transition to socialism, he felt, is taking place now in the consciousness and struggles of working people in their workplaces and in their communities, and the transition will be completed (not begun) by a working-class revolution.

I believe that there are elements of truth in all of this, but that James took it too far. Socialism is not inevitable.  There are countervailing tendencies—anti-socialist, anti-democratic, anti-humanist tendencies—in our society, in our culture, and within the working class.

The genuinely revolutionary and socialist tendencies that James points to are there in the consciousness, the struggles, and the everyday life of those who are part of the working class.  But these can become triumphant only to the extent that they become conscious, are organized and mobilized--and there are no guarantees that this will happen on its own. Elements within the working class, including people like ourselves, will need to work hard to help make it happen.

To be effective in this, we will need to organize ourselves, we will need to learn how to work collectively and carry out coherent activities that contribute to the growth of a working-class socialist movement, creating organizational structures that can facilitate all of this. This means that, contrary to what James argued in the 1950s and afterward, we will be moving to create a U.S. variant of the Bolshevik-Leninist party.

As we do that, however, we will be well served if we critically draw from the rich contributions offered to us by our comrade C.L.R. James.  There is much that recommends him to us—his great intellectual breadth, which is reflected in the quality of his Marxism, combining a serious concern with philosophy, history, economics, culture, and practical political work. There is also his capacity to see things which aren't quite "there" yet, but which are in the process of coming into being.

Related to this is his capacity to identify fruitful connections between seemingly disparate phenomena, and his consequent ability to take what is "peripheral" and show that it is, in fact, central to an adequate understanding of politics and society.  In addition, there is the deep humanism which is essential to revolutionary Marxism but which James makes very much his own, which opens to us a crucial insight: socialism is not something that is simply thought up by brilliant intellectuals—it is an integral part of the reality around us. Essential elements of it can be found in the thinking, the perceptions, the values, the desires, the everyday life- activities, the many ongoing struggles of the human beings who are part of the working-class majority.

Writings of C.L.R. James referred to in this presentation:

American Civilization, ed. by Anna Grimshaw and Keith Hart, with an afterword by Robert A. Hill (London: Basil Blackwell, 1993)

Beyond a Boundary (Durham: Duke University Press, 1993) Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution (New York: Vintage Books, 1962)

C.L.R. James's Caribbean, ed. by Paget Henry and Paul Buhle (Durham: Duke University Press, 1992) The C.L.R. James Reader, ed. by Anna Grimshaw (London: Basil Blackwell, 1992)

C.L.R. James and Revolutionary Marxism, Selected Writings, 1939-1949, ed. by Scott McLemee and Paul Le Blanc (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1993) ____ with F. Forest (Raya Dunayevskaya) and Ria Stone (Grace Lee),

The Invading Socialist Society (Detroit: Bewick Editions, 1972) Modern Politics (Detroit: Bewick Editions, 1973); scheduled to be republished by Humanities Press "Philosophy of History and Necessity: A Few Words with Professor Hook," The New International, October 1943

World Revolution 1917-1936, The Rise and Fall of the Communist International (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1993)

(My thanks to Paul Buhle, Scott McLemee and Martin Glaberman, who read and commented on earlier versions of this article, and to participants in the Solidarity summer school class which was the occasion for its composition.)

1875. The Legend of Marx, or “Engels the Founder”

By Maximilien Rubel, marxmyths.org, 1972

Maximilien Rubel

Introduction

In May 1970, upon the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the birth of Friedrich Engels, the town of Wuppertal had organised an international scientific conference. This occasion brought together around 50 specialists from more than 10 European countries, as well as Israel and the United States whose task was to take stock of modern research on the thought of he who is universally taken to be, alongside his friend Karl Marx, one of the founders of “Marxism”. Invited to participate in this conference, I intended to submit as a text for the discussion a series of critical theses centred on the theme of Engels’s responsibility for the genesis of the dominant ideology of the 20th century: ‘Marxism’. It had seemed to me normal and urgent to share my critical reservations, in the context of a more ‘scientific’ than commemorative event, to an audience informed of the problems in the evolution of ideas in relation to the events and upheavals that have marked the 20th Century. I had therefore presented the organisers a document in 8 points, written in German, which I had titled “Gesichtspunkte zum thema ‘Engels als Begründer’”.

To my surprise, upon arrival in Wuppertal, I was received by the conference officials who informed me of a certain predicament: my Soviet and East German colleagues, being personally offended when reading my “Viewpoints”, were threatening to leave the conference if my contribution was not retracted from the debate! After laborious negotiation we came to an agreement on a formula which seemed likely to calm the irritation of these ‘scientific’ representatives from ‘socialist’ countries: the texts would no longer be read from the platform, but merely commented upon and discussed. It would be tempting to recount the details of the debate if the objections had merited the term ‘scientific’, and if the behaviour of certain participants hadn’t translated as a complete refusal to engage in a discussion that risked putting in question the range of ideological positions of ‘marxism-leninism’. At the same time, this obstinate if not insulting refusal, was enough to confirm to the eyes of an impartial observer the fundamental criticism that can be directed at the use of this concept of ‘Marxism’, the erroneous use of which was precisely what my “Viewpoints” denounced^[1].

The epilogue to this conference was to further underline the solid grounding of a critique which, in the form of a simple semantic reflection, in fact represented a defence of Marx’s social theory in opposition to Marxist mythology. As it turned out, the organisers were not afraid of avoiding the elementary rules of editorial policy generally respected in ‘bourgeois’ democracies: the text (submitted at the request of the officials) was not included in the volume of collected contributions that were submitted prior to the conference^[2]. Habent sua fata libelli…^[3]

We here present a translation of the text refused by the conference at Wuppertal, with some supporting commentary.  

Viewpoints on the Theme of “Engels the Founder”

“For the ultimate final triumph of the ideas set forth in the Manifesto, Marx relied solely upon the intellectual development of the working class, as it necessarily has to ensue from united action and discussion.”

-F. Engels, Preface to the 1890 German edition of the Communist Manifesto

I. Marxism did not enter the world as an authentic product of Karl Marx’s way of thinking, but was conceived in Friedrich Engels’ mind. Insofar as the term ‘marxism’ conceals a rational concept, it is not Marx but Engels who carries the responsibility; and if today Marx’s argument retains a priority, it is principally related to problems for which Engels did not find more than a partial solution, or with which he did not concern himself. Therefore, if these problems can be resolved at all, this can only be with the help of Marx himself. By no means does this mean that Engels must be excluded from discussion, but it is legitimate to question the extent to which he should be taken into account in any dealings with the writings of Marx which escaped his attention. In more general terms the question can be thus formulated: what are the limits of Engels’ competence in his role as uncontested executor of Marx’s intellectual legacy, to which we still appeal to elucidate the material and ethical problems of our time?

II. This interrogation must examine a central problem – that of the intellectual relationship between Marx and Engels, ‘founders’ of a collection of ideological and political concepts artificially grouped under the name ‘marxism’. The fact that this question must be posed itself reveals a very characteristic phenomenon of our epoch, which one might now call the ‘myth of the 20th Century’. We should recall that the ‘founders’ sometimes themselves evoked mythological interpretation to underline the peculiar character of their friendship and intellectual collaboration: Marx was not being ironic in invoking the example of antique “Dioscures” or that of Orestes and Pylade, whilst Engels mocked the rumour according to which “Ahriman-Marx” had led “Ormuzd-Engels” astray^[4]. There is equally an opposite tendency, with increasingly frequent efforts to oppose Marx to Engels: the first would be the ‘true’ founder, the second reduced to the rank of mere ‘pseudo-dialectician’^[5].

III. Any investigation into the relationship between Marx and Engels is in advance destined to fail if it does not clear away the legend of the ‘foundation’ and does not take for a methodological point of departure the aporia of the concept of Marxism. It was the merit of Karl Korsch, when twenty years ago at the threshold of a radical revision of his intellectual positions, to have attempted a critique of Marxism which amounted to a declaration of war. However, Korsch simply did not dare commit the act of sweeping away the concept of Marxism and it’s mythological residues. Instead, he tried to remove this difficulty through the usage of linguistic artifices destined to conserve and to save the “important elements of the Marxist doctrine” with a view to the “reconstruction of a revolutionary theory and practice”. In his “Ten Theses on Marxism Today” Korsch moves indiscriminately between speaking of the “teaching of Marx and of Engels”, “Marxist doctrine”, the “doctrine of Marx”, “Marxism” and so on^[6]. In the fifth thesis, concerning the question of the precursors, founders and continuators of the socialist movement, Korsch goes so far as to omit the name of Engels, the alter ego of Marx! Yet he was not far from the truth when he wrote:

“Today, all attempts to re-establish the Marxist doctrine as a whole in its original function as a theory of the working classes social revolution are reactionary utopias.”

Korsch could as well, and more accurately, have spoken of “absurd mythologies” in place of “reactionary utopias.”

IV. In view of the impossibility of rationally defining the meaning of the concept of Marxism, it seems logical to abandon the word itself, yet it is so commonly and so universally employed. This term, degraded to the point of merely being a mystificatory slogan, carried from its birth the stigma of obscurantism. Marx struggled hard to undo this when, in the last years of his life, his reputation had broken the wall of silence which surrounded his work, and he made this categorical declaration: “ce qu’il y a de certain c’est que moi, je ne suis pas Marxiste”^[7]. However revealing, the fact that Engels bequeathed this warning to posterity does not relieve him of the responsibility of having given in to the temptation of lending the stamp of his authority to this unjustifiable term. Charged with being the guardian and the perpetuator of a theory, the elaboration of which he admitted to not having contributed more than a modest part^[8], and glorifying Marx’s name in an attempt to repair the damage, Engels inadvertently promoted the genesis of a superstition, the negative consequences of which he could not have known. Today, sixty years after his death, his efforts are perfectly clear. When Engels decided to appropriate the terms ‘marxist’ and ‘marxism’ from his adversaries in order to change a hostile name into a name of honour, he could hardly have expected that, through this gesture of defiance (or was it resignation?), he would become the godfather of a mythology destined to dominate the twentieth century.

V. The genesis of Marxist myth can be traced to the conflicts within the International. The need to hurl abuse at the opponent and their partisans made the ‘anti-authoritarians’, with Bakunin at their head, inventive enough to create such terms as ‘marxites’, ‘marxists’, and ‘marxism’. Gradually Marx’s disciples in France developed the habit of accepting these denominations which they had not created and which destined them to be distinguished from other socialist factions, so that finally these terms became political and ideological labels. From then on only the authority of Engels was necessary to sanction the usage of these terms, the ambiguity of which may not have been evident to those who used them. Engels was from the outset energetically hostile to their usage; he knew better than anyone that it risked corrupting the profound significance of a teaching that should have been considered the theoretical expression of a social movement and by no means as a doctrine invented by an individual for the benefit of an intellectual elite. His resistance did not weaken until when, in 1889, the dissent between, on one hand the ‘possibilists’, ‘blanquistes’ and ‘broussistes’, and on the other hand the ‘collectivists’ and ‘guesdistes’, threatened to cause a rupture in the movement in France, each faction having decided to organize its own international Workers’ Congress. Engels’ predicament is obvious; he attempted to avert danger of confusion and of verbal and ideological corruption by using inverted commas to speak of “Marxists” and of “Marxism”, and by speaking of “so-called Marxists”. When Paul Lafargue expressed his apprehension in seeing his group pass for a “faction” amongst others in the Workers Movement, Engels replied “we have never called you anything other than the ‘so-called Marxists’ and I cannot know what to call you otherwise. If you have another name as short, tell us and we will duly call you that with pleasure.”^[9]

VI. If Nietzsche published Ecce Homo for fear of one day being canonized by disciples for which he did not at all wish, the same precaution did not seem necessary in the case of Marx, even though he had not written and published more than a fragment of his projected oeuvre. Nevertheless, the printed and unpublished material which he had bequeathed to posterity amounted to a rigorous formal prohibition against linking his name to the cause for which he had fought, and to a teaching for which he believed himself mandated by the anonymous mass of the modern proletariat. If Engels had respected this prohibition as Marx’s executor, and had applied his veto to the abusive term, the universal scandal of ‘marxism’ would never have seen the light of day; but Engels committed the unpardonable error of supporting this abuse, and thus acquired the dubious honour of being the first ‘Marxist’. It is tempting to see it as the punishment of destiny that, believing himself heir, he was in truth the founder – albeit involuntarily – of ‘Marxism’. The “irony of history” which Engels loved to invoke had played a cruel trick on him. He thus became a prophet in spite of himself when on his 70th birthday he pronounced the regretful words: “my destiny willed that I harvest the honour and the glory sowed by a greater man than I; Karl Marx”^[10]. For his 150th anniversary, we must acknowledge in Engels the contestable merit and the more dubious title of ‘founder of Marxism’.

VII. In the history of Marxism and the cult of Marx, Engels is at the forefront. We are familiar enough with the human and quasi-religious aspect of this friendship, which does not require particular analysis. On the other hand, what necessitates a thorough examination is the effect of the friendship as much upon Marx himself as on his epigones and his distant disciples. Always ready to act as pioneer of Marx’s theories, Engels expressed many ideas which Marx could not, of course, accept without critique; the silence of Marx can be explained by his desire to scrupulously respect the solidarity which he held with his friend. We cannot confirm the extent to which he should be identified with everything that Engels had said or written, but this problem is minor, considering his acknowledged admiration for the intellectual gifts of his friend: after all, he considered himself Engels’ disciple^[11]. That which Marx did not allow himself has today become a strict duty: we must break the bewitching charm of this legend, and determine the place of Engels’ oeuvre in the development of the intellectual inheritance of socialism, in relation to the destiny of the workers’ movement.

VIII. It is only if one understands that Engels had the makings of a founder that one will grasp the reasons for which he went about the duties of editor and perpetuator of the manuscripts of Marx in a manner which, today more than ever, demands some critique^[12]. The writings of Marx neglected by Engels (amongst others the preparatory works for the doctoral thesis, the Kreuznach anti-Hegelian manuscript, the economico-philosophical sketches of Paris and of Brussels, the Economic Manuscripts of 1857-1858 (The Grundrisse), the numerous workbooks and the correspondence with third parties) did not only place the researcher and specialist before entirely new interpretive problems; they erected new categories and created new generations of readers who could not and would not content themselves with the stereotyped phraseology of professional Marxists. The real imperative is to understand a world and to live and act in a time when ideology, mechanization and manipulation of consciousness are allied with pure violence, to change the world into a vale of tears.

The theses sketched here above constitute the introduction to a debate whose essential theme must be the problem of Marxism as the mythology of our era. The question of the extent to which Engels can be held responsible for the genesis of this universal superstition is secondary to the extent that we can affirm, if we recognize the teaching of Marx the ‘materialist’, that ideologies- amongst which Marxism in all its variants should be placed – do not fall from the sky; they are essentially bound to the class interests which are at the same time the interests of power. It is enough to recognize in Engels the legitimate inheritor of Marx’s thought to denounce in his name and to his honour, the established ‘Marxism’ as a school of confusion and misguided ways for our age of iron.

M. Rubel, 1972.

Footnotes

1. For a general survey of the debates at Wuppertal, cf. Henryk Skrypczak, “International wissenschaftliche Engels-Konferenz in Wupperta” in International Wissenschaftliche Korrespondenz zur Geschichte der Deutschten Arbeitebewegung (I.W.K.), no. 10, Berlin, June 1970, p. 62 ff. A summary of my viewpoints can be found ibid. p. 81 ff.

2. Friedrich Engels 1820-1970. Referate-Diskussionen-Dokumente. Internationale wissenschaftliche Konferenz in Wuppertal vom 25-29 Mai 1970, Hannover, Verlag für Literatur und Zeitgeschehen, 1970.

My “position” is commented upon in the following terms:

“In order to fulfill the program of the final day, the council of the conference had decided to give up the discussion after the 6th session, and to begin after the 7th with the general debate. Firstly, Maximilien Rubel was supposed to have continued (?) to expound his conception. He submitted a text to the conference which was a polemical formulation against Engels, but did not then present this text before the assembly (with good reason!). These 8 theses which were, in accordance with the author’s intention, to provoke a debate on the actual significance of Marxism, may be summarised as follows: after Marx’s death, Engels made great efforts to elevate the term ‘Marxism’ formed by Marx’s adversaries, to the rank of an intelligible and definable concept. In doing this, Engels became the founder of a hybrid system of thought which was alien to the intentions of Marx himself. After the death of Engels, the ideological germs of this system were transformed into a conceptual methodology necessarily dependent upon certain class conditions.” [p. 255 ff.]

The report then mentions a polemic in opposition to mine, from a preceding session, from an East-German Marxist, about the concept of a “historic mission”, a controversy, “in which Engels did not play more than an indirect role” [ibid.]

Much could be said about the “abridged report” which summarises my theses and the “polemic” which they had provoked. I would simply affirm, however, that my text “against Engels” was simply the critique of a historically negative act by the closest and most active collaborator of Marx, and against a certain school of Marxist thought, the existence of which constitutes the negation of all that Marx and Engels themselves did for socialist thought and the workers movement. I continue to believe that my contribution responded, more than any other, to the true ‘scientific’ spirit of that conference, in the memory of he who invented the notion of ‘scientific socialism’, and who equally identified this notion with ‘critical socialism’. The conference could not offer a real homage to the man whom it intended to celebrate if it did not take as a guiding thread in its debates these words of Engels’:

“The workers movement rests on the most rigorous critique of existing society. The critique is the vital element. How could it absent itself from critique, or prohibit debate?” (Engels to Gerson Trier, 18th December, 1889).

3. [editorial note:“books have their fate”]

4. Cf. Marx to Engels, 20th January, 1864; 24th April, 1867. Engels to E. Bernstein, 23rd April, 1883. There are even instances in which the two friends are spoken of as if they acted as a single person: for example “Marx and Engels says” (see Marx to Engels August 1st, 1856.)

5. See, for example, the opposition that Iring Fetscher established between Marx’s “philosophy of the proletariat”, and that of Engels. Fetscher explores their different ways of envisaging the “negation of philosophy” and the relation of human history to nature in the conception – which was unacceptable for Marx – of an objective dialectics of nature, and of thought as a reflection of reality. See I. Fetscher, Karl Marx und der Marxismus. Von der Philosophie des Proletariats zur proletarischen Weltanschauung, Munchen, 1987, p. 182 ff. See also Donald C. Hodges, “Engels’s Contribution to Marxism”, The Socialist Register, 1965, p. 297-810, and Vladimir Hosky, “Der neue Mensch in theologischer und marxisticher Anthropologie” Marxismusstudien, VII, 1972, p. 58-86.

6. See Karl Korsch, “Dix thèses sur le marxisme aujourd’hui”, Arguments III, no. 16, 1959, p. 26 ff. The mimeograph of this text supports the date Zurich, 4th September, 1950. [editorial note – a translation of this text is available: Ten Theses on Marxism Today]

7. Engels specifies that this declaration was made by Marx with regards to the “Marxism” which was rampant between 1879-1880 “amongst certain of the French”, but the blame also applies to a group of intellectuals and students within the German party; they, together with the opposition press, exhibited a distorted and disfigured “Marxism” (see Engels’s letter to the editors of Socialdemokrat, 7th September 1890, published in the journal, 18th September 1890). This quip of Marx’s, so full of foreboding, was reported by Engels every time the occasion arose; see his letters to Bernstein, 3rd November, 1882, to Carl Schmidt, 5th August, 1890, and to Paul Lafargue, 27th August, 1890. G. A. Lopatine, the Russian revolutionary, met Engels to discuss the perspectives for Russian revolution in September 1883. He recounted some details of their talks in a letter to a member of the Norodnaiia Voliia containing the passage: “You should remember what I told you once – that Marx himself was never a Marxist. Engels reported that at the time of the struggle of Brousse, Malon, and Cie against the others, Marx said with laughter one day that ‘I can say just one thing; that I am not a Marxist!’” See the extract from Lopatine’s letter to M. N. Oshanina of 20th September, 1888, translated from Russian, in Marx-Engels-Werke 21, p. 489. However, there is no humorous tone to Marx’s letters to his friend when, on a trip to France, he communicated his impressions of the arguments of the socialists in the competing congresses of the Possibilists in Saint-Etienne, and the Guesdists in Roanne in Autumn 1882. “The Marxists and the anti-Marxists”, he wrote, “both types have done their best to ruin my trip to France” (Marx to Engels, September 30th, 1882). On his disagreement with the Russian ‘Marxists’, see Marx to Vera Zasulich, 1881, on the possibilities of the Russian peasant commune. On the relations between Marx and Engels and their Russian disciples, see Die russische Kommune. Kritik eines Mythos, Herausgegeben von M. Rubel, Carl Hanser Verlag, Munich, 1972.

8. The formal declarations of Engels in this respect are too numerous to be recounted here. Let us say simply that there is not the slightest doubt regarding the paternity of the great scientific discoveries, which are all, without exception, attributable only to Marx. Of all his declarations, the most significant is perhaps the note inserted by Engels in a writing which was to demonstrate the continuity of German philosophy in elevating its most dignified inheritor, Karl Marx, to the rank of founder of a system. See Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy, 1888. It is in this work that Engels made the official gesture of baptising the theory with Marx’s name: “Out of the dissolution of the Hegelian school, however, there developed still another tendency, the only one which has borne real fruit. And this tendency is essentially connected with the name of Marx.” Engels repeated this act in the note where he remarks that “What Marx accomplished I would not have achieved. [...] Marx was a genius; we others were at best talented. Without him the theory would not be by far what it is today. It therefore rightly bears his name.” We should not then be surprised at the conclusion to this critique, which consecrates Marx as both inheritor and founder of a philosophical school: “The German working-class movement is the inheritor of German classical philosophy.” Engels had thus cast the die.

9. Engels to Lafargue, 11th May, 1889. Once engaged in this verbal concession, Engels could no longer back out, and he had to go all the way. His mind was made up the moment he felt assured of the triumph of the collectivists led by Guesde and Lafargue: “But the advantage gained over the anarchists after 1873 was put into question by their successors, and I did not therefore have a choice. Now that we are victorious, we have proved to the world that almost all of the socialists in Europe are ‘Marxists’. It will drive them crazy that they gave us that name and they will be left with Hyndman to console them” (Engels to Laura Lafargue. 11 June, 1889). Ironically it is precisely the same Hyndman whom Marx had advised against referring to his name in the program of the new English party. “In the party programs we should avoid everything which leads to the appearance of a direct dependence on a particular author or a particular book” (Marx to Henry Mayers Hyndman, 2 July, 1881).

10. Letter to the editors of the Berliner Volksblat, 5th December, 1890.

11. “You know, primo, that I am always slower in getting onto things and, secundo, that I follow in your footsteps.” (Marx to Engels, 4th July, 1864).

12. See M. Rubel, Introduction to Karl Marx, Oeuvres: Economie II, Gallimard, Paris, 1968. See ibid. p. CXXVII ff., for the list of the discoveries which Marx regarded as being his own. Marx attributed to himself neither the founding of historical materialism, nor the discovery of surplus value. However, this attribution – an act of Engels’s – was tacitly approved by Marx. See, for example, the account given by Engels in Das Volk, 1859, and the biographical article on Marx in Volkskalendar 1877.