Introduction to Marxist Theory

by Henry Bertram Mayo

1960 edition, but same cover as shown. Theories, influences, and evolution of Marxism. Helps the reader to "come to terms with [Marx]."

Paperback

Published January 1, 1960

Reviews

[Anders Maybeck · Rating 5 out of 5]

A glaring blank spot appears when one reads ‘Introduction to Marxist Theory’ by Henry B. Mayo in the 5th chapter entitled “Party, Revolution, and Dictatorship of the Proletariat”, where he fails to even mention the encompassing class nature of the revolutionary and democratic dictatorship of the proletariat. What he fails to see, is exactly what Lenin accuses Kautsky of in ‘The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky’, when he says “The question of the dictatorship of the proletariat is a question of the relation of the proletarian state to the bourgeois state, of proletarian democracy to bourgeois democracy.” And what is Kautsky’s interpretation of Marx’s “Little word” according to him? Of course, “Dictatorship”! But then what is Lenin’s “Little word”? Or maybe Marx’s? Exactly what he is saying when he provides the answer to the question of the dictatorship of the proletariat as “the relation of…proletarian democracy to bourgeois democracy”. And notice that he says “proletarian democracy”! – Marx’s real “Little word”. And exactly what Marx means when he says that the proletariat must “win the battle for democracy”! And is it not falsification, but quite the opposite, to state plainly that Soviet Russia under Lenin’s New Economic Policy did have elements of both bourgeois and proletarian democracy? After the militancy of the War Communism system, Lenin actually liberalized the economy of the Soviet Union. And was there not even an election held for the Constituent Assembly in November of 1917, one month after the victory of the October Revolution? Where the Bolsheviks held an election for the Constituent Assembly and accepted that they did not win the majority, with the majority of votes going towards the Socialist-Revolutionary Party, did not proletarian democracy subsist all throughout the early stages of the Soviet Union? Lenin writes in ‘The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky’ that “[the dictatorship of the proletariat], which sums up the whole of [Marx’s] revolutionary teaching, “a single word” and even “a little word,” is an insult to and complete renunciation of Marxism.”, and argues that “both Marx and Engels…repeatedly spoke about the dictatorship of the proletariat, before and especially after the Paris Commune”, which he states that Kautsky “must know” as “It must not be forgotten that Kautsky knows Marx almost by heart, and, judging by all he has written, he has in his desk, or in his head, a number of pigeon-holes in which all that was ever written by Marx is most carefully filed so as to be ready at hand for quotation.” Lenin calls him “a blind puppy sniffing at random first in one direction and then in another”. Nonetheless Henry B. Mayo makes the same mistake as Kautsky. He never speaks of the class rule or class nature of the dictatorship of the proletariat as the truest form of democracy, where the greater part of the urban population as the revolutionary class, exercises its authority over society through the dictatorship of the proletariat, so as to suppress the bourgeois class and usher in true democratic governance. But as Marx and Engels, and Lenin readily knew, the class nature of the State, whereas Lenin quotes Marx in the aforementioned work, with this mockery of Kautsky’s assertion that this “Little word”, “dictatorship”, was somehow incompatible with democratic procedures and democratic governance. Then the proletarian dictatorship, a slightly different term than the orthodox “dictatorship of the proletariat”, used generally by Marxists as interchangeable with “dictatorship of the proletariat”, does this not simply just imply another comparison to bourgeois democracy? And is the exact term that we are looking for here not “dictatorship of the bourgeoisie”, which all Marxists repudiate? And isn’t this the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie that even manifests itself in the supposedly democratic systems of liberal democracy and neoliberalism? The class rule then of the proletariat is what is at hand here in this argument. How does the proletariat exercise its class rule over bourgeois society, except in the formation of democratic procedures themselves in the purest from of democracy, proletarian democracy.

And then if Henry B. Mayo’s formulation of the dictatorship of the proletariat wasn’t close enough, surely he must come around in his theory of democracy in the final chapter of ‘Introduction to Marxist Theory’ entitled “Democracy and Marxism”! But then as the reader reaches the final chapter of this work, he realizes that the old man is as Lenin said of Kautsky, “chewing rags in his sleep”, when he tried to apprehend the Soviet experiment with “really existing socialism” with his theory of formal democracy. And he admits exactly what Zizek gets to in “The Leninist Freedom”. That only formal equality, equality before the law, that “all men are created equal” in the U.S. Constitution, can exist under liberal democracy. With the invocation of some liberal principle such as John Rawl’s “difference principle”, he attempts to reconcile a class society with private ownership of the means of production, and the difference in wage gaps between workers, those who live in affluence, and those who live in poverty, and of course millionaires and billionaires. And then we really do not need then to go to any sort of analytical Marxist analysis of the “state of nature” applied to some form of primitive cooperation, whereas rather than this Hobbesian “war of all against all”, there is a state of nature of economic participism in the “state of nature”, that does not start at the beginning of history, but exists as the final “ultimate aim” of a communist society. That the state of nature after centuries of changes to the economic mode of production, slavery and feudalism, capitalism and socialism, pure communism as the “ultimate aim” necessary to render the communist movement from the perspective of a “Common goal”. Therefore the abolition of private property exists as this Endziel that I have spoke about in previous works, and the Unding that acts as the principle of a pure class consciousness. But isn’t this dialectic of Unding and Endziel properly Hegelian, and even idealist in a certain sense? Did Marx’s materialism require a Hegelian reference? Or more than a reference? Yes, it certainly did, and then if philosophy started with a critique of religion, such as the Young Hegelians beginning their philosophical projects generally critiquing organized religion, at what moment in history with the introduction of materialist class analysis did we transition into an ideological becoming, whereas history and subjectivity become intersectional, and then with the advent of capitalist society, a communist analysis was rendered possible. But then weren’t Marx and Engels really the main proponents and purveyors of a communist analysis, but only for the principle reason that they weren’t anarchists at all?! That they argued for a state society through the dictatorship of proletariat. What does this mean in the context that the dictatorship of the proletariat is a pure form of mass democracy? Well, we must realize that “the withering away of the state” is the Unding of the Endziel, the communist society, that the dialectical process of history moving forward through the unity and difference inherent in contradictions, that this final synthesis of the communist society, is only made possible by this peaceful evolution finally after the socialist state has taken hold, hence we call this “The withering away of the state”.

And then it seems that in this final chapter of ‘Introduction to Marxist Theory’ by Henry B. Mayo, he begins the end of his work just to remind readers that he doesn’t really understand Marxist dialectics, materialist dialectics! How is it possible for him to say something, for example, like “Dialectical materialism, of itself, therefore bears no more relation to democracy than does any nonsense theory.” As if, the very basis of a realistic description of reality, which can only be rendered from the perspective of dialectical materialism, the contradiction and unity of opposites, really the only way that reality, reason, or discourse, can be made understandable is based in contradictions. What did he think that dialectical materialism is applied to? And in another quote, for example, earlier he says “It is also quite possible to separate metaphysics from any particular social theory, so that in a sense dialectical materialism, is irrelevant to the Marxist historical and social analysis.” And then it becomes obvious that he thinks that Marx’s main teaching in his philosophical rendering of a materialist theory of existence, dialectical materialism, is somehow not even relevant to understanding Marxism? How could he be further from the truth, when Marxism has its whole basis in materialist dialectics? He cannot abandon the whole basis of the conflict between classes, everyday work relations where workers hold contradictory class positions from their employers, and then maybe we must bring up the retreat into every possible multitude of materialist dialectical contradictions, and will seem to be obvious then on our side, that dialectical materialism can never be divorced form any Marxist materialist analysis, and Mayo doesn’t even think twice about it! Just beginning a discussion of democracy, of course bourgeois democracy, with the complete rejection and disavowal of dialectical materialism, even though he included a previous chapter on the matter, now he sounds like he’s writing his “other book”, namely his other work which is titled ‘Introduction to Democratic Theory’, and oh, one can only imagine the falsifications! Marxism is democracy – proletarian democracy.