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6/20/2025, 2:53:17 AM
>>63863843
Or to put it another way, you basically had a split in the socialist movement in the 20th century. There was the Leninist version (who became identified as the communists, and yeah, sure) and the socialists (who became social-democrats). Both had their origins in 19th century socialism which included Karl Marx, but these were both 20th century mutations or developments of those ideas. There was a really strong push by the communists in the 20th century to impose themselves as a hegemon on those ideas. Obviously, there were strong points of contact with those ideas since that's where they came from, but I think it's useful to look at them as a distinctly 20th century phenomenon or product of this split, and there are arguments that they departed from those ideas in some ways. The total-war command economy they ran for example was influenced by World War I as much as Karl Marx, but Marx wasn't an economic planner.
This split also occurred as a result of the revolution. Lenin's model of running a political party with a Leninist party structure that imposes rigid discipline on the members was something they came up with. To be a member of the Comintern, your party had to also be like them. They were like a car with four wheels all moving in the same direction with a single driver at the wheel. There were socialist parties that applied for membership in the Comintern and were rejected because they weren't Leninists. (I think this was probably a mistake on their part.) If you watch the movie Reds, there's a scene where John Reed (an American socialist journalist who wrote one of the first books about the revolution in English because he took part in it) leads a split in the Socialist Party, which was a third-party in the U.S. at the time, to form a Bolshevik-style organization. Then a representative of the Russian embassy shows up to plug them in like he's Boris from Rocky & Bullwinkle.
Or to put it another way, you basically had a split in the socialist movement in the 20th century. There was the Leninist version (who became identified as the communists, and yeah, sure) and the socialists (who became social-democrats). Both had their origins in 19th century socialism which included Karl Marx, but these were both 20th century mutations or developments of those ideas. There was a really strong push by the communists in the 20th century to impose themselves as a hegemon on those ideas. Obviously, there were strong points of contact with those ideas since that's where they came from, but I think it's useful to look at them as a distinctly 20th century phenomenon or product of this split, and there are arguments that they departed from those ideas in some ways. The total-war command economy they ran for example was influenced by World War I as much as Karl Marx, but Marx wasn't an economic planner.
This split also occurred as a result of the revolution. Lenin's model of running a political party with a Leninist party structure that imposes rigid discipline on the members was something they came up with. To be a member of the Comintern, your party had to also be like them. They were like a car with four wheels all moving in the same direction with a single driver at the wheel. There were socialist parties that applied for membership in the Comintern and were rejected because they weren't Leninists. (I think this was probably a mistake on their part.) If you watch the movie Reds, there's a scene where John Reed (an American socialist journalist who wrote one of the first books about the revolution in English because he took part in it) leads a split in the Socialist Party, which was a third-party in the U.S. at the time, to form a Bolshevik-style organization. Then a representative of the Russian embassy shows up to plug them in like he's Boris from Rocky & Bullwinkle.
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