Mertcan Bulak
@MBulak
1183 okur puanı
Ağustos 2020 tarihinde katıldı
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In the West, social democratic parties seemed to be merely tampering with capitalism in order to make it more efficient, while Marxist-Leninist parties with their tired dogmas born of nineteenth-century circumstances had little relevance to workers in the affluent societies of the late twentieth century who had little to lose but their mortgages.
‘The policeman’s riot club functions like a magic wand’, wrote Carl Oglesby in extravagant, existentialist tones, ‘under whose hard caress the banal soul grows vivid and the nameless recover their authenticity — a bestower, this wand, of the lost charisma of the modern self: I bleed, therefore I am.’
In the first place, the Sarvodayites like their Western anarchist counterparts assert that those who seek political power are inevitably corrupted. Secondly, they believe that the principle of majority rule cannot express public opinion and bring about the welfare for all. Thirdly, they maintain that political parties are by their nature divisive and corrupting.
Apart from the successes of the Bolshevik Revolution, the Leninist theory of tutelage attracted many radical Chinese intellectuals who did not trust the allegedly stubborn and ignorant masses. Unlike anarchism, Leninism also embraced nationalism which helped it draw on a wider base of support.
Ironically, anarchism in China paved the way for Marxism-Leninism. The students sent to France by the predominantly anarchist association unintentionally became influenced by Marxist-Leninist dogma. They went on to help establish the Chinese Communist Party which had its first congress in 1921. But it was not long before a leading spokesman for the Communists, Ch’en Tu-hsiu, argued, against the anarchists, the case for an organized central power, an ‘enlightened despotism’ no less.