Chris Cutrone

KARL KORSCH’S SEMINAL ESSAY on “Marxism and Philosophy” (1923) is a historical treatment of the problem from Marx and Engels’s time through the 2nd International to the crisis of Marxism and the revolutions of 1917–19 in Russia, Germany and beyond. More specifically, Korsch took up the development and vicissitudes of the relation between theory and practice in the history of Marxism, which he considered the “philosophical” problem of Marxism. Korsch, like Georg Lukács and the thinkers in Frankfurt School critical theory, was inspired by the “subjective” aspect of Marxism exemplified by Lenin’s irreducible role in the October Revolution. Korsch was subsequently denounced as a “professor” in the Communist International and quit the movement, embracing council communism and shunning Marxian theory, writing an “Anti-Critique” in 1930 that critiqued Marxism as such, and by 1950 actively seeking to liquidate the difference between Marxian and anarchist approaches. In so doing, Korsch succumbed to what Adorno termed “identity thinking.” By assuming the identity of theory and practice, or of social being and consciousness in the workers’ movement, Korsch abandoned his prior discernment and critical grasp of their persistent antagonism in any purported politics of emancipation.

From Lenin’s “Left-Wing” Communism — An Infantile Disorder (1920):
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/lwc/
“[E.g.,] Parliamentarianism has become “historically obsolete”. That is true in the propaganda sense. However, everybody knows that this is still a far cry from overcoming it in practice. Capitalism could have been declared — and with full justice — to be “historically obsolete” many decades ago, but [...]

I am writing with some notes and suggestions for discussion on the Spartacist League pamphlet on “Lenin and the vanguard party” (1978):

http://www.bolshevik.org/Pamphlets/LeninVanguard/LVP%200.htm

I’d like to quote at length from Spartacist founder James Robertson’s 1973 speech “In Defense of Democratic Centralism” that is included in the pamphlet as supplemental material (and is edited in the pamphlet but [...]

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“It is not a question of counterposing abstract principles. . . . [W]ith the degeneration of organizations, with the passing of entire generations into discard . . . the necessity . . . arises of mobilizing fresh forces on a new historical stage. . . . With inevitable halts and partial retreats it [...]