Word: marxisms
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...dramatic irony has overtaken international Communism in the past two decades. Rival states that claim to represent Marxism-Leninism have not only denounced each other for various revisionist and schismatic sins, they have also gone to war. China and the U.S.S.R. fought a border conflict in 1969. Ten years later, China invaded Communist Viet Nam to "teach it a lesson" for Hanoi's attempt to conquer Communist Cambodia. China is currently assisting the Muslim "holy warriors" who are trying to topple the Communist government of Afghanistan...
...realizes as clearly as Grličkov that for a Communist, pragmatism and reform must end where genuine pluralism and power-sharing begin. On that point, Deng and Brezhnev are still comrades. Of all the buzz words in the Marxist lexicon, none is more telling than "struggle." It is Marxism, both the theory and the practice, stripped to its essence. What distinguishes the Soviet prototype of Communism is the ingenious and terrible way that the struggle to prevail against all challenges has been institutionalized throughout society...
Historian James Billington in his recent book, Fire in the Minds of Men, has noted that Vladimir Lenin was "a professional revolutionary before he became a Marxist." Lenin embraced Marxism because it was a very potent ideology for the purposes he had in mind. In fact, even as he played fast and loose with the letter of Marxism, Lenin was, in a way, being true to its spirit. "Philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways," wrote Marx, "the point is, to change it." As Lenin set out to alter the world, he found in Marx's philosophy...
Marx's emphasis on class conflict provided Lenin with an easy category for identifying his enemies. Also, Marxism was posited on the ideas of a single absolute truth, the predestined victory of the cause, and the fallibility and expendability of the individual. Therefore it lent itself to the suppression of dissenters and vidual. Therefore it lent itself to the suppression of dissenters and the extermination of opponents. Lenin, with his knack for hortatory pungency, reduced the past and future alike to two pronouns and a question mark: "Who-whom?" No verb was necessary. It meant who would prevail over...
Liberal Marxists like Roy Medvedev, a Soviet historian who is frequently harassed by the authorities, indignantly reject the suggestion that Marxism was in any sense to blame for the terrors of Stalinism. But it is hard to deny that Marxism-particularly as interpreted by Lenin-provided many of the concepts, attitudes and institutions that made Stalinism possible. Ex-Communists such as Arthur Koestler, author of the famous anti-Stalinist novel Darkness at Noon, have argued persuasively that Communism is corrupt and corrupting because of the brutal way that power is often attained and maintained. As the absolute embodiment of both...