An outline history of the Communist movement of the world - Book excerpts and review - part 1
History of communist movement - Part 1
I have just finished reading a book on ' the outline history of the Communist movement
of the world' written by N Ramakrishnan.
Here I am narrating my impressions on the book. Though working as part of a Left leaning trade union,
I have never made any good effort to understand communist philosophy nor was I much enthused over it. My half hearted attempts at understanding complex terms like dialectics, materialism, et al. got always aborted midway due to my lack of interest in the subject. Long ago, I decided that those subjects were not my cup of tea and so, it would be better to leave those theories alone. And also at one point of time, I happened to read in a blog about the complex nature of communist theory which, in the opinion of author of the write up that it would take a minimum of ten to twelve years to fully grasp all aspects of Communist school of thought. One of my somewhat better enlightened 'believer' comrades also had an opinion that I was trying to comprehend advanced level of theory, when in fact, I was still at primary level. So I thought I had to make a helluva lot of effort to reach graduate level to understand the basics as well as higher levels. These had a discouraging effect on my attempts to study and know the basics of communism. At this point of time I had my hands on to this simple titled book An outline history of communist movement of the world Part 1.
Well, after reading this book now, I think I really got some fairly good ideas on the history of world communism and more particularly on some of Communism's proponents. Here I am not making any
attempt to critically analyze Marxist school of thought after understanding the concepts. But rather, I will be trying to summarize what this author has written and organize it for my own satisfactory grasp. Here and there I have put my words as 'my take' which I realize, are more of child's play and insignificant, still I prefer to have it to express my thoughts on the subject.
Marx and Engels
Karl Marx was born in Rhine Province in Prussia in the year 1818 (in today's Germany) to a lawyer family and about two years later Frederick Engels was born to a wealthy family in Barmen, Prussia.
In his school final composition itself, Marx wrote about the welfare of mankind and pursuit of perfection and those two things cannot be in conflict and pursuit of perfection in man will be complete only when it is complementary to welfare of humans. He was of the view that the happiest man is the one who makes greatest number of people happy. Though Marx chose Law in his students days, he also evinced keen interest in Philosophy and was greatly inspired by the then German social philosopher Hegel's dialectics in his youth even though he had his own doubts on some of his views.Engels early life - Born to a rich industrialist father in barmen, Germany. Right from his childhood he had sympathetic views towards poor people. In later years, after he got married to Wife Mary burns, she was also instrumental in turning him fully into a proletarian revolutionary. Engels contributed articles for Marx edited German - French Special number magazine through which they first came into contact. Marx and Engels had similar political ideas and
solutions for the problem of the majority of human society, working classes. Engels was keenly following Marx's early writings and had high respect for him. Their first meeting took place in Paris in 1844.
After the meeting, they felt that they had complete agreement in all fields and decided to work together.
Marx had a better grasp in philosophy and on political economy, Engels was well versed. As they worked together, new horizons were touched on both these subjects and revolutionary ideas were conceived which was to change the world at later stages.
The German ideology - first joint work of Marx & Engels and first mature work of Marxism. Initially only some portions were published due to fierce opposition at that time. Full book was published in 1932 and English version only in 1959- the book was a critique of Hegalian philosophy and for the first time combined Dialectical methods and Feuerbach's Materialism and analysed a new theory called Dialectic Materialism which was to be known as Marxism later. The book extensively dealt with materialist principles of Ludwig Feuerbach, German philosopher who impressed Marx greatly on his materialistic ideas. Developmental study of nature and history was a given a genuine scientific approach in the book. This was first such attempt by anyone in the history of mankind. Very importantly the book says on human consciousness thus, " It is not consciousness that determines life but life determines consciousness". The book deals with the basic features of future communist society viz., abolition of private property which is the basic tenet of communism. Abolition of class divisions in society and along with it, classes themselves, reformation of production and doing away with the state apparatus which is the instrument of all evils in human society.
(My take - it was a brilliant idea no doubt, to first analyse human history through available historical evidences and through sociological prism. It seems that it would be more or less accurate through the available materials/data to analyse the anthropological progress up to the times in which it is given. But based on past experiences, if one tries to come to some definite conclusion, it has the real possibility of getting into hazardous prophesying. I also read somewhere that it was fashionable then in Europe and more particularly in Germany in those days to give simple philosophical interpretations through very complex and unintelligible terms.That way most of the theories/philosophies were presented and Dialectical materialism was not be an exception. This complexity makes it a little difficult to understand even for most of the core followers of communist school of thought. I must complement the author of this book for succeeding to a large extent
in presenting the complex ideas in a simple manner. Typographical errors and grammatical mistakes could have been avoided had the book been edited properly before publishing. We find a lot of such errors in the first half of the book. )
I have just finished reading a book on ' the outline history of the Communist movement
of the world' written by N Ramakrishnan.
Here I am narrating my impressions on the book. Though working as part of a Left leaning trade union,
I have never made any good effort to understand communist philosophy nor was I much enthused over it. My half hearted attempts at understanding complex terms like dialectics, materialism, et al. got always aborted midway due to my lack of interest in the subject. Long ago, I decided that those subjects were not my cup of tea and so, it would be better to leave those theories alone. And also at one point of time, I happened to read in a blog about the complex nature of communist theory which, in the opinion of author of the write up that it would take a minimum of ten to twelve years to fully grasp all aspects of Communist school of thought. One of my somewhat better enlightened 'believer' comrades also had an opinion that I was trying to comprehend advanced level of theory, when in fact, I was still at primary level. So I thought I had to make a helluva lot of effort to reach graduate level to understand the basics as well as higher levels. These had a discouraging effect on my attempts to study and know the basics of communism. At this point of time I had my hands on to this simple titled book An outline history of communist movement of the world Part 1.
Well, after reading this book now, I think I really got some fairly good ideas on the history of world communism and more particularly on some of Communism's proponents. Here I am not making any
attempt to critically analyze Marxist school of thought after understanding the concepts. But rather, I will be trying to summarize what this author has written and organize it for my own satisfactory grasp. Here and there I have put my words as 'my take' which I realize, are more of child's play and insignificant, still I prefer to have it to express my thoughts on the subject.
Marx and Engels
Karl Marx was born in Rhine Province in Prussia in the year 1818 (in today's Germany) to a lawyer family and about two years later Frederick Engels was born to a wealthy family in Barmen, Prussia.
In his school final composition itself, Marx wrote about the welfare of mankind and pursuit of perfection and those two things cannot be in conflict and pursuit of perfection in man will be complete only when it is complementary to welfare of humans. He was of the view that the happiest man is the one who makes greatest number of people happy. Though Marx chose Law in his students days, he also evinced keen interest in Philosophy and was greatly inspired by the then German social philosopher Hegel's dialectics in his youth even though he had his own doubts on some of his views.Engels early life - Born to a rich industrialist father in barmen, Germany. Right from his childhood he had sympathetic views towards poor people. In later years, after he got married to Wife Mary burns, she was also instrumental in turning him fully into a proletarian revolutionary. Engels contributed articles for Marx edited German - French Special number magazine through which they first came into contact. Marx and Engels had similar political ideas and
solutions for the problem of the majority of human society, working classes. Engels was keenly following Marx's early writings and had high respect for him. Their first meeting took place in Paris in 1844.
After the meeting, they felt that they had complete agreement in all fields and decided to work together.
Marx had a better grasp in philosophy and on political economy, Engels was well versed. As they worked together, new horizons were touched on both these subjects and revolutionary ideas were conceived which was to change the world at later stages.
The German ideology - first joint work of Marx & Engels and first mature work of Marxism. Initially only some portions were published due to fierce opposition at that time. Full book was published in 1932 and English version only in 1959- the book was a critique of Hegalian philosophy and for the first time combined Dialectical methods and Feuerbach's Materialism and analysed a new theory called Dialectic Materialism which was to be known as Marxism later. The book extensively dealt with materialist principles of Ludwig Feuerbach, German philosopher who impressed Marx greatly on his materialistic ideas. Developmental study of nature and history was a given a genuine scientific approach in the book. This was first such attempt by anyone in the history of mankind. Very importantly the book says on human consciousness thus, " It is not consciousness that determines life but life determines consciousness". The book deals with the basic features of future communist society viz., abolition of private property which is the basic tenet of communism. Abolition of class divisions in society and along with it, classes themselves, reformation of production and doing away with the state apparatus which is the instrument of all evils in human society.
(My take - it was a brilliant idea no doubt, to first analyse human history through available historical evidences and through sociological prism. It seems that it would be more or less accurate through the available materials/data to analyse the anthropological progress up to the times in which it is given. But based on past experiences, if one tries to come to some definite conclusion, it has the real possibility of getting into hazardous prophesying. I also read somewhere that it was fashionable then in Europe and more particularly in Germany in those days to give simple philosophical interpretations through very complex and unintelligible terms.That way most of the theories/philosophies were presented and Dialectical materialism was not be an exception. This complexity makes it a little difficult to understand even for most of the core followers of communist school of thought. I must complement the author of this book for succeeding to a large extent
in presenting the complex ideas in a simple manner. Typographical errors and grammatical mistakes could have been avoided had the book been edited properly before publishing. We find a lot of such errors in the first half of the book. )
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