12-03-2014: The following 3-part article, Dialectical Materialism vs. Bourgeois Rationalism: A Marxist Critique of the New Atheists, appeared originally in 3 separate issues of the American biweekly Trotskyist political newspaper, Workers Vanguard, published in the United States by the Spartacist League of the United States. The Spartacist League of the United States is the United States section of an international Marxist political organization called, the International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist). The phrase, Fourth Internationalist, conventionally means the same as Trotskyist, and refers to the original movement founded by political supporters of the great Russian revolutionary socialist, Leon Trotsky, in 1938, the Fourth International. The Spartacist League of the U.S. originated as a political current or tendency inside the one-time American Trotskyist political party, the Socialist Workers Party, in the early 1960s. The Socialist Workers Party considered itself an American Fourth Internationalist party Trotskyist in nature and was considered the American Fourth Internationalist party from 1938. The tendency in that party out of which the Spartacist League came originally was called the Revolutionary Tendency of the Socialist Workers Party. They in the early 1960s held that the Socialist Workers Party no longer was genuinely Trotskyist and they originally sought to win the party back to its Trotskyist program. The Revolutionary Tendency of the Socialist Workers Party were expelled from that party in 1963 and first became the Spartacist Committees, a current seeking originally to win readmission to the Socialist Workers Party on condition of being able to retain their political programmatic views so long as they obligated themselves to work in a democratically disciplined fashion inside the Socialist Workers Party. Between 1963 and 1965, the Spartacist Committees considered the Socialist Workers Party to be not revolutionary, but left-centrist. Then in 1965, the Spartacist Committees came to consider the Socialist Workers no longer left-centrist, but reformist, and from then on, the Spartacist Committees developed as an independent organization. In 1966, they held their founding convention and called their new organization the Spartacist League. Developing in the later 1960s and into the 1970s, the Spartacist League of the U.S. made international contacts and developed in the middle 1970s and afterward as the international Spartacist tendency. After a considerable period of development, in 1989, they changed the name of their international tendency to the International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist). They have not considered themselves a party, but as what they call a fighting communist propaganda league seeing itself as the nucleus of a mass revolutionary working class party. The word, propaganda, among Marxists, does not mean lies, like it usually does among too many today in the West who dont know any better. The word, propaganda, among Marxists, refers roughly to the same thing as what the word, education, means. The word, agitation, among Marxists, generally refers to seeking to present a few ideas to a broader audience. The word, propaganda, among Marxists, generally refers to seeking to present a greater set of ideas to what in most cases is a narrower audience (but not necessarily. If, for instance, a broader audience for a set of ideas presents itself, Marxists will take that opportunity to present such a broader set of ideas to that broader audience.). The ideas Marxists seek to present are ideas that reflect material reality. That is, Marxists - real ones, not fake Marxists - here are very much in the tradition of both the Western Enlightenment, and other forms of rational Enlightenments in the sense of seeing ourselves as favoring a scientifically evidence-based approach for the ideas we present to other people. That opposes us to our most consistent enemies and opponents, fascists, who as a movement present ideas without any evidence-based or facts-based or rationality-based foundation at all. Marxism, therefore, as said, is very much in the revolutionary, Enlightenment tradition of the earlier bourgeois Enlightenment and earlier bourgeois Revolutions, but also surpasses and surmounts and transcends simultaneously that tradition embracing a proletarian socialist revolutionary way of fulfilling the originally self-professed aims and goals of the earlier bourgeois Enlightenment and earlier bourgeois democratic Revolutions. The series, Dialectical Materialism vs. Bourgeois Rationalism: A Marxist Critique of the New Atheists, appeared in Workers Vanguard 1007 for 31 August 2012, then Workers Vanguard 1008 for 14 September 2012, then Workers Vanguard 1009 for 28 September 2012: Dialectical Materialism vs. Bourgeois Rationalism A Marxist Critique of the New Atheists Part One icl-fi.org/english/wv/1007/newatheists.html Printable version of this article: icl-fi.org/print/english/wv/1007/newatheists.html *** Dialectical Materialism vs. Bourgeois Rationalism A Marxist Critique of the New Atheists Part Two icl-fi.org/english/wv/1008/new_atheists_two.html Printable version of this article: icl-fi.org/print/english/wv/1008/new_atheists_two.html *** Dialectical Materialism vs. Bourgeois Rationalism A Marxist Critique of the New Atheists Part Three icl-fi.org/english/wv/1009/newatheists.html Printable version of this article: icl-fi.org/print/english/wv/1009/newatheists.html
Posted on: Wed, 03 Dec 2014 12:06:40 +0000
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