Lenin's "The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism"

Vanguard October 2012 p. 6
Duncan B.

Lenin’s The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism, written in 1913 is a handy introduction to the basic principles of Marxism.

In developing his theories, Marx drew on the three main ideological currents of his time – German philosophy, English political economy, and French socialism.

Lenin wrote, “The Marxian doctrine is omnipotent because it is true. It is complete and harmonious, and provides men with an integral world conception which is irreconcilable with any form of superstition, reaction, or defence of bourgeois oppression. It is the legitimate successor to the best that was created by mankind in the nineteenth century in the shape of German philosophy, English political economy and French socialism.”

Philosophy

The philosophy of Marxism is called materialism. What is materialism? Engels put it in a nutshell in his philosophical work Ludwig Feuerbach, “The great basic question of all philosophy, especially of modern philosophy, is that concerning the relation of thinking and being, of spirit to nature… Which is primary, spirit or nature? The answers which the philosophers gave to this question split them into two great camps. Those who asserted the primacy of spirit to nature and, therefore, in the last instance, assumed world creation in some form or other... comprised the camp of idealism. The others, who regarded nature as primary, belonged to the various schools of materialism.”

Dialectics

Dialectics is an essential part of Marxist philosophy. Marxist dialectics teaches us, as Engels put it, “that the world is not to be comprehended as a complex of ready-made things, but as a complex of processes, in which the things apparently stable no less than their mind-images in our heads, the concepts, go through an uninterrupted change of coming into being and passing away...” This way of looking at the world helps the workers to see that capitalism is not eternal.

The Materialist Conception of History

Historical materialism is one of Marx’s great contributions to philosophy. “Historical materialism” means the view of the course of history which seeks the ultimate cause and the great moving power of all important historic events in the economic development of society, in the changes in the modes of production and exchange, in the consequent division of society into distinct classes, and in the struggles of these classes against one another.”

As Marx wrote in his Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, “The mode of production of material life determines the social, political and intellectual life process in general. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.”

Political Economy

Marx devoted considerable attention to the study of the economic system of capitalism. His monumental work Capital is the result of his studies. Central to the capitalist economy is the concept of surplus value. The wage-worker sells his capacity for labour (labour power) to the owner of the factory, the capitalist. During his working day, the worker works to add value to the raw materials supplied by the capitalist. The labour of one part of the day is enough to cover the cost of maintaining himself and his family (wages), while for the other part of the day he must work to create surplus value for the capitalist. Surplus value is the source of profit, the source of wealth of the capitalist class.

Socialism

Marx did not invent Socialism. Socialists and socialism had been around for many years before Marx. Socialism before Marx was what is called utopian socialism. Utopian socialists criticised capitalism and dreamed up fanciful schemes to end it, but they could not explain how the capitalist class exploited the workers or point to the social force which is capable of creating the new society.

Class Struggle

Marx also did not discover the theory of class struggle. Class struggle has gone on ever since classes emerged from primitive societies – from the struggles between slave-owners and slaves through the feudal system to the modern struggles between the capitalist class and the working class.

Marx wrote on this point to the socialist Joseph Wedemeyer in 1852, “As to myself, no credit is due to me for discovering the existence of classes in modern society, nor yet the struggle between them. Long before me bourgeois historians had described the historical development of this struggle of the classes, and bourgeois economists the economic anatomy of the classes. What I did that was new was to prove: 1) that the existence of classes is only bound up with particular historical phases in the development of production; 2) that the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat 3) that this dictatorship itself only constitutes the transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless society.”

The Lesson of Lenin’s Article

Lenin wrote in The Three Sources and the Three Component parts of Marxism, “People always were and always will be the stupid victims of deceit and self-deceit in politics until they learn to discover the interests of some class or other behind all moral, religious, political and social phrases, declarations and promises. The supporters of reforms and improvements will always be fooled by the defenders of the old order until they realise that every old institution, however barbarous and rotten it may appear to be, is maintained by the forces of some ruling class. And there is only one way of smashing the resistance of these classes, and that is to find, in the very society which surrounds us, and to enlighten and organise for the struggle, the forces which can – and owing to their social position, must – constitute the power capable of sweeping away the old and creating the new.’

In Australia that power is the Australian working class and its allies.