u/squidshopping

Across various Marxist works, the proletarian revolution sometimes seems to be presented as a historical inevitability, and sometimes seemingly as an outcome that communists have a moral duty to work towards and achieve. For instance, Marx and Engels say in The Communist Manifesto that

>The development of modern industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.

On the other hand, in A Great Beginning, Lenin says:

>We must carefully study the feeble new shoots, we must devote the greatest attention to them, do everything to promote their growth and "nurse” them. Some of them will inevitably perish. We cannot vouch that precisely the "communist subbotniks” will play a particularly important role. But that is not the point. The point is to foster each and every shoot of the new; and life will select the most viable.

I get that these two views aren't contradictory. In fact this quote from The Eighteenth Brumaire explains quite succinctly why developments are brought about by a mix of conscious and unconscious forces, on a societal level:

>Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.

What I'm confused by is whether this view is applicable on an individual level. To what extent do individuals have "free will" (meaning a capacity to make choices that is somewhat independent from their material conditions)? Given that individuals are just an "ensemble of the social relations" (Theses on Feuerbach), it seems like they have no free will at all, but in that case I don't understand why Marx, Engels, and Lenin would appeal to the proletariat on the basis of "duty", which seems to suggest some degree of free will (such as regarding the choice whether to do their duty). Alternatively, a better question might be: how should I understand the concept of "free will"? Recommendations for authors or texts would also be highly appreciated.

Side note: I find it interesting to consider Althusser's Contradiction and Overdetermination, where he speaks of "the relative autonomy of the superstructures", in relation to this. But once again I'm unsure as to whether the concept can be applied on an individual level.

Edit: I did look through both this sub and r/communism for posts on free will, but for the most part people just provided the same quote from The Eighteenth Brumaire that I have included here and did not really explain further. To reiterate, my confusion is regarding why communists appeal to the proletariat on the basis of duty, which seems to presume the existence of individuals with some amount of free will, if ultimately these things do not exist or are just illusions.

Engels wrote in his critique of the Erfurt program:

>One can conceive that the old society may develop peacefully into the new one in countries where the representatives of the people concentrate all power in their hands, where, if one has the support of the majority of the people, one can do as one sees fit in a constitutional way: in democratic republics such as France and the U.S.A., in monarchies such as Britain, where the imminent abdication of the dynasty in return for financial compensation is discussed in the press daily and where this dynasty is powerless against the people.

I'm aware that in The State and Revolution, Lenin's commentary on this is that Engels had merely used the word 'conceive'. Regarding Marx's claim (in a letter to Kugelmann on April 12, 1871) that

>[Smashing the bureaucratic-military machine] is the precondition for every real people's revolution on the Continent.

Lenin also comments that

>It is interesting to note [that Marx] restricts his conclusion to the Continent. This was understandable in 1871, when Britain was still the model of a purely capitalist country, but without a militarist clique and, to a considerable degree, without a bureaucracy. Marx therefore excluded Britain, where a revolution, even a people's revolution, then seemed possible, and indeed was possible, without the precondition of destroying "readymade state machinery".

I'm pretty unfamiliar with British history and the particular contemporary context (I only know that Britain only had a voluntary army and instead relied heavily on the Royal Navy), so I'm struggling to understand why Marx and Engels thought the socialist revolution would proceed differently in Britain as opposed to most of continental Europe. As such, my questions are:

1. Why is it that Britain had significantly less of a bureaucratic-military machine than the rest of continental Europe?
2. Why would this mean that a socialist revolution might proceed differently in Britain? How exactly would it have proceeded?

Recommended readings in lieu of a direct explanation are also welcome.

In 1917, Lenin wrote

>For on July 4 a peaceful transfer of power to the Soviets, a peaceful development of the Russian revolution, was still possible.

in An Answer, July 22-26

>The peaceful development of any revolution is, generally speaking, extremely rare and difficult, because revolution is the maximum exacerbation of the sharpest class contradictions; but in a peasant country, at a time when a union of the proletariat with the peasantry can give peace to people worn out by a most unjust and criminal war, when that union can give the peasantry all the land, in that country, at that exceptional moment in history, a peaceful development of the revolution is possible and probable if all power is transferred to the Soviets. The struggle of parties for power within the Soviets may proceed peacefully, if the Soviets are made fully democratic, and "petty thefts" and violations of democratic principles, such as giving the soldiers one representative to every five hundred, while the workers have one representative to every thousand voters, are eliminated. In a democratic republic such petty thefts will have to disappear.

in The Russian Revolution And Civil War, September 29

>By seizing full power, the Soviets could still today—and this is probably their last chance—ensure the peaceful development of the revolution, peaceful elections of deputies by the people, and a peaceful struggle of parties inside the Soviets; they could test the programmes of the various parties in practice and power could pass peacefully from one party to another.

in The Tasks of the Revolution, October 9 and 10

As far as I understand it, the Mensheviks and Social-Revolutionaries were cowards to the very end, and so there was no peaceful development of the revolution. How am I to understand Lenin here? Does the fact that the peaceful development did not occur mean that he was wrong to say that it could have occurred? Was he just being polemical?

In Imperialism and the Split in Socialism, Lenin writes:

>No one can seriously think it possible to organise the majority of the proletariat under capitalism.

He doesn't seem to explain this in the text. Can someone explain why this is the case, or point me to a text where this is explained?

It is my understanding that under Marxism, there is no self interest, only class interest. However, Marx writes in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte about a "sheer egoism, which makes the ordinary bourgeois always inclined to sacrifice the general interest of his class for this or that private motive". How do I reconcile these two ideas? Is it that the exploiting classes are more prone to identifying some kind of "self interest", even if no such thing really exists?

Sorry for the vague question. Hopefully explaining some of the context behind the inquiry might help to clarify.

I've read some Marx, Lenin, Mao, and recently started on Settlers by J Sakai. A trend I keep seeing is a longing to return to the past, which always seems to correspond to a petit-bourgeois class position, or revisionism (these two seem related as well, though I'm unclear on the exact relation). For instance, in Imperialism, Lenin says > We shall see later how “on these grounds” reactionary, petty-bourgeois critics of capitalist imperialism dream of going back to “free”, “peaceful”, and “honest” competition.

Sakai develops this in > The politics of the [American Anti-Imperialist] League did not support national liberation; they were not anti-capitalist or even anti-racist. The heart of their movement was the appeal of a false past, of the picture of Amerika as an insular European society, of an economy based on settlers production, in small farms and workshops.

It's pretty clear that on a general level, yearning for (or trying to establish) a past mode of production is antithetical to progress, and thus reactionary. But I'm not sure how this wouldn't just apply to any yearning for anything past. Surely it isn't any less antithetical to progress to yearn for, say, a past government, if conditions no longer support it. First worlders spout inanities like "I wish we could go back to the good old days where companies still made good products" all the time. But isn't all that nostalgia is a yearning to return to the past? Is there any kind of yearning for the past that wouldn't be reactionary?

Ever since I started studying Marxism, I've become increasingly aware of my class position (petit bourgeoisie) as well as the reactionary tendencies in me. I understand that materially speaking, my class position is not and will not be that of the proletariat, but does that mean that there is an inherent limit to how much I can come to take on a proletarian understanding of the world? For instance, I derive enjoyment from consuming bourgeois art, or from socialising with my fellow petit bourgeois. I desire to love and be loved, even though in theory I understand that love, for my class, under capitalism, cannot transcend class position. I seem to find meaning or at least enjoyment in self-expression, even though in theory I know it is meaningless and reactionary. Is there any way to talk myself out of these feelings and desires, or do I just have to live with them?

In Origin of the Family, Engels says that > And if among the barbarians, as we saw, the distinction between rights and duties could hardly be drawn, civilization makes the difference and antagonism between them clear even to the dullest intelligence by giving one class practically all the rights and the other class practically all the duties.

I understand vaguely what this means, but is there a clearer account of rights and duties that I can reference? Previously I was familiar with with the Hohfeldian system, where having a right to X means having no duty not to X, but I am wary of applying bourgeois political philosophy to Marxist texts. In addition, I get that Engels is likely talking about rights and duties in a legal sense, but am unclear about whether, in Marxism, there are moral rights and duties to speak of at all.

At the end of Chapter 5, The Rise of the Athenian State, Engels writes that

> But with the development of commerce and industry wealth was accumulated and concentrated in a few hands, and the mass of the free citizens were impoverished. Their only alternatives were to compete against slave labor with their own labor as handicraftsman, which was considered base and vulgar and also offered very little prospect of success, or to become social scrap. Necessarily, in the circumstances, they did the latter, and, as they formed the majority, they thereby brought about the downfall of the whole Athenian state. The downfall of Athens was not caused by democracy, as the European lickspittle historians assert to flatter their princes, but by slavery, which banned the labor of free citizens.

But Engels says earlier that the majority of the people in the Athenian state were slaves, not free people. Later on, in Chapter 8, The Formation of the State among Germans, Engels writes that

> abolition of slavery by successful rebellion is unknown to antiquity

My question is: why is it not possible for the slaves to bring about a revolution, if they comprised the majority? How was it that the free Athenians were the one to bring about a revolution instead?