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Marx and Organization
Lause, Mark A.
http://solidarity-us.org/atc/195/marx-lause/Date Written: 2018-07-01 Publisher: Against the Current Year Published: 2018 Resource Type: Article Cx Number: CX23347 Lause examines Marx's involvement in different organizations and argues that he seems never to have had a problem not being in an organization -- not because he accorded organization no importance, but rather that the importance he accorded it depended entirely on the demands of the class struggle around him. Abstract: ----- Excerpts: Marx and Engels explicitly declared that they aspired to no party separate and apart from those of working class movements generally, specifically the Blanquists in France, Chartists in Britain, and National Reformers in the United States, with which they had become familiar through the Chartists. When Marx and Engels engineered what amounted to the destruction of the International, they did so by removing its headquarters to New York. They preferred its legacy to survive without a loss or dilution of its meaning. However, they also hoped that the shift might find a new importance in sparking the growth of working class politics in America. On this bicentennial of his birth, we remember Karl Marx not for his efforts to help us to understand the world, but for his admonition that the point must be to change it - and for his example in defining ourselves not by our abstract aspirations but by an organic relationship to the dynamics of history. His conclusions should remain the key guide to action and organization: Workers of the world, unite! Subject Headings |