Jules Guesde, ou la fabrication du marxisme orthodoxe
Angenot, Marc
Jules Guesde, ou la fabrication du marxisme orthodoxe - 1998.
36
Jules Guesde, the founder in 1880-81 of the Parti Ouvrier in France, was the inventor of something called (by his numerous enemies) “Orthodox Marxism”. The major components of this doctrine supposed to express the “laws” of a self-styled “scientific Socialism” – but which does not have much to do with Karl Marx’s thought – are analysed here: Permanent laws of History determining the past, present, and future of humankind; “Iron Law” of wages and increasing proletarisation; imminent, fatal, and necessarily successful Revolution brought about by the “last crisis” of the capitalist system; “brief” episode of a dictatorship of the Proletariat; instauration of a Collectivist regime which was to be supervised not by any kind of State but by a scientific and classless “Management of things”, etc. The author shows how this idiosvncratic doctrine was meant to overcome the failures of the Paris Commune by organising an extremely disciplined, military-like Party which was to be the spear-head of the incoming Revolution. He also suggests that Guesde’s ideological tinkering mainly interpolated some metaphorical and speculative passages excerpted from Man in the great anonymous Master Narrative of Socialism as it evolved since the 1830’s.
Jules Guesde, ou la fabrication du marxisme orthodoxe - 1998.
36
Jules Guesde, the founder in 1880-81 of the Parti Ouvrier in France, was the inventor of something called (by his numerous enemies) “Orthodox Marxism”. The major components of this doctrine supposed to express the “laws” of a self-styled “scientific Socialism” – but which does not have much to do with Karl Marx’s thought – are analysed here: Permanent laws of History determining the past, present, and future of humankind; “Iron Law” of wages and increasing proletarisation; imminent, fatal, and necessarily successful Revolution brought about by the “last crisis” of the capitalist system; “brief” episode of a dictatorship of the Proletariat; instauration of a Collectivist regime which was to be supervised not by any kind of State but by a scientific and classless “Management of things”, etc. The author shows how this idiosvncratic doctrine was meant to overcome the failures of the Paris Commune by organising an extremely disciplined, military-like Party which was to be the spear-head of the incoming Revolution. He also suggests that Guesde’s ideological tinkering mainly interpolated some metaphorical and speculative passages excerpted from Man in the great anonymous Master Narrative of Socialism as it evolved since the 1830’s.
Réseaux sociaux