“The Marxist method is to accentuate the class struggle between workers and capitalists, organize it both nationally and internationally, and carry it forward…in full consciousness of the ruthlessness of the forces at play, to the goal of a revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.”
~Max Eastman
Marxism, Is it Science? The Practical Hypothesis in Marxism
Revolutionary Dictatorship Read More »
“The German state patronized modern capitalism, perverting it to the support of feudal political institutions; and the German philosophers patronized modern science, perverting it to the support of animistic superstition.”
~Max Eastman
Marxism, Is it Science?, Part 4, The Marxian System, The Theory of History
Institutions and Superstitions Read More »
“It seems obvious to me now–though I have been slow, I must say, in coming to the conclusion–that the institution of private property is one of the main things that have given man that limited amount of free-and-equalness that Marx hoped to render infinite by abolishing this institution. Strangely enough Marx was the first to see this. He is the one who informed us, looking backwards, that the evolution of private capitalism with its free market had been a precondition for the evolution of all our democratic freedoms. It never occurred to him, looking forward, that if this was so, these other freedoms might disappear with the abolition of the free market.”
~Max Eastman
The Reader’s Digest, July 1941, p.39
“If the socialist hypothesis were valid in general, some tiny shred of the benefits promised by it would have appeared when the Russian capitalists were expropriated and production taken over by the state, no matter how untoward the circumstances. By that time everything in Russia was worse from the standpoint of socialist ideals than it had been under the regime of the Tsar.”
~Max Eastman
Reflections on the Failure of Socialism, Intro
Socialist Hypothesis Read More »
“In Das Kapital, as in The Holy Family, the force which guarantees the evolution of capitalism to the point of rupture, and the creation of a communist state, is that same logical necessity of ascending from the lower to the higher which Hegel laid on the whole Universe in the name of God.”
~Max Eastman
Marxism, Is it Science?, Part IV, The Marxian System, Religion in “Das Capital”
