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· Ideological Intransigence, Democratic Centralism, and Cultism: A Case Study from the Political Left

by Dennis Tourish, Ph.D.
University of Ulster, Northern Ireland

For the most part, we know that bourgeois social "science" ranges from "not so good" to "just awful". Here is a rare exception!

The many observations that I have made in my posts on the Leninist party are systematically confirmed in this fascinating study.

The next step would obviously be a class analysis of Leninist party leaders and their victims...something I lack the resources to undertake.

But taken on its own terms, this document is an absolutely brilliant and damning critique of cargo-cult Leninism.

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· A Contribution to the Critique of Marx.

by John Crump

This is an enlightening Marxist analysis of Marx himself.

After all, he and Engels were mortal men, situated in a historical era of bourgeois revolutions and this had an inevitable effect on the formation of their ideas as well as their own political practice.

Certainly their genius enabled them to see far beyond their own era...but not as clearly as they would have wished. No human is gifted with "infinite" vision.

Consequently, we modern communists must be especially careful with Marx and Engels...to learn from them when they were correct and to dismiss that part of their work that was merely a product of the era in which they lived.

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· The "Renegade" Kautsky and his Disciple Lenin.

by Jean Barrot

The close links between Kautsky and Lenin are set forth in a clear way and a good deal of mythology is demolished in the process.

The bitter divorce between social democracy and Leninism in the years 1915-21 has obscured the long and reasonably happy marriage of the two. Today they speak of one another with total contempt...but that was not always the case.

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· The Contradiction of Trotsky

By Claude Lefort

Bourgeois historians have always had something of a "soft spot" for Leon Trotsky...defeated revolutionaries have a "romantic" appeal--especially when contrasted with "victorious" revolutionaries like Stalin...the "devil" incarnate.

We know all the lies that were told about Trotsky by the "Stalinists"...and all the romantic myths of "titanic struggles" told by the Trotskyists and echoed by many bourgeois historians.

Here is an article that is correctly unconcerned with mythology and examines, instead, what actually happened in the Soviet Union between Trotsky, the "Left Opposition", and Stalin.

Icon-worshippers on both sides will hate it; I found it quite refreshing.

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· Demarchy/Brian Martin's Website