edmund wilson, to the finland station

(6): for Michelet, Vico as the originator of "historical principle" -- pattern in dev. of societies

(7): in Vico, the "organic character" of human society, the principle of "humanity creating itself"

(9): Vico had no conception of progress--a serieis of repetitive cycles. But Michelet, of course, had the Revolution.

(10): 1830 was a setback for Michelet, as the liberal bourgeoisie sold out to the Orleanists

(12) : Michelet presents his history in relation to a social and economic context

(13): approach was entirely 'rational' -- that is, anti-clerical and democratic

(19): important--Michelet alive to the "internal antithesis" of the revolution, between class solidarity and patriotic duty

(20): the principal actor, for Michelet, as the people

(28): construction of a 'usable history'

(30): important--of course, utopian to the point of being petty-bourgeois: in response to the vivid antagonisms of class society, Michelet's is that "we must have love."

(31): man seen as an 'accessory' to his position

(33): 1870-1871, France has ten million industrial workers and twenty-six million peasants

(34): Michelet's special version of nationalism in which the nation is identified with the Fr. revolutionary tradition

(37): key--with Renan, 'revolution' was coming to connote working-class interference from below in bourgeois society. this is the beginning of the decline, in that sense.

(41): Fr. bourgeois intellectual in 1870 belonged to a victorious class and a defeated nation

(45): Renan focuses on ideas -- human history is background

(58): Taine is taking us toward naturalism, away from revolutionary enthusiasm

(54-55): again--because of the socialist specter, anxieties about his understanding of the Fr. Rev.

(62): Anatole Fr. represents the revolutionary tradition in full disintegration

(64): Michelet gets a sense of solidarity from the Rev; for Frnace, abysses of doubt and despair loom large

(72-73): Babeuf had rallied around the radical elements of the Rev, after Thermidor. founded The Society of Equals.

(75): int--the people had had enough of the Jacobins--the poor were no longer ready to fight (a realism and sobriety suggestive of later phases of socialism) .

(75): Babeuf's defense as a summing-up of the unrealized ideas of the Enlightenment

(77): Rousseau--'men so odious has to dare to have more than enough while other men are dying of hunger'

(80): important--Babeuf as Fr. Revolution's last hurrah. the utopian socialists of the next century belong to a very different world.

(80): Saint Simon -- 'monseiur le comte! Remember you have great things to do!'

(82): key--Saint-Simon as offering a critique of the liberal Enlightenment, which had bestowed complete freedom on the individual, not understanding that it apprehended him only in the abstract (i.e., outside of the laws of society, of social development)

(83): Saint-Simon's vision was to have three classes (governing was to be done by those who could work for the State without pay)

(84): four great division of the world--rest would be protectorates

(84): whole message, in short, is "his peculiar version of the principle of noblesse oblige"

(90): key--both Fourier and Owen based themselves on a doctrine of Rousseau's that was in the air of the time--the idea that mankind is naturally good, and only institutions have perverted it.

(92): Owen as Henry Ford

(95): Owen, 1817 -- discovering the 'class interests' of the elite

(97): Owen had very little sympathy with the Chartists and the Corn Law agitation

(99): Enfantin becomes Christ!

(101): key -- none of these idealists understood the real mechanisms of social change, nor could they forsee the development/dynamics of the system they hated. This is what socialism meant, when it began to be current in France and England circa 1835.

(103): Comte as disciple of Saint-Simon

(120): int--the 'self-determination' of Kant as the intellectual reflection of the Fr. Rev on the German bourgeoisie -- the 'will' in Kant as a purely ideological determination and moral postulate, no influence on actual society

(121): key, Hegel -- there was a revolutionary principle in Hegel, who had himself been swept up by the Fr. Revolution until he became a Prussian professor. Young Hegelians saw no reason that these processes should be suddenly arrested?

(124): Marx pens wood-gathering essay, at 24 -- already demonstrating a concern for material context, Wilson suggests

(126-127): the critique of Feuerbach, who produces a substitute religion (love) and thinks in terms of an abstract humanity. Marx's task is to dispense of religion altogether, and place man in society. problems which had given rise to religion could only be solved by concrete man in society.

(137): the whole tradition Wilson is discussing, he wants to say, is reacitng to a kind of 'anti-social egoism'

(141): from Hegel they have taken a principle of historical change, but discarded the role of Heroes (even though, even for Hegel, these Heroes are only the expression of larger historical forces)

(143): from Saint-Simon they understand modern politics as science of regulated production; from Fourier the arraignment of the bourgeois as betraying the Englightenment; from Owen the realization that the factory system must be the root of the social revolution.

(144): through Dezamy and List they get a sense of the class struggle--the former had critized Cabet for believing that the bourgeoisie would come to the aid of Labor

(145): already by 1843 (Critique of the Hegelian Philosophy of Law) Marx has postulated the proletariat as playing the new Hegelian role in effecting the emancipation of Germany

(148): Engels' reflections on being a bourgeois and communist at the same time ('if only one doesn't write!') -- spot on!

(154): Proudhon's warning to Marx, as he writes about desire to establish a new system--potential "leaders of a new intolerance"

(154): this is what led Marx to attack Proudhon's book with ferocity--sees "Property is theft" as presupposing real rights in property (Abstract Man, who had concealed the petty bourgeois; Proudhon declared strikes as crimes against the necessities of the established order)

(155): key--1845 as the first discussion with Marx of the theory of historical materialism, the preliminary emergence of a complete and coherent theory

(158): against moralism

(163): hilarious and telling interaction between Heine (intellectual) and Weitling (communist tailor), illustrating the difficulty of getting German intellectuals to make links to the working-class

(164): Proudhon and Weitling were thinkers from the lower classes, unlike Marx and Engels

(166-167): the actual fight, Marx vs. Weitling, at League of the Just -- scientific doctrine vs. utopian socialism, which resulted in the first Marxist party purge

(169): Gottschalk's scathing attack on the doctrinaire character of Marx and Engels -- "The distress of the workers, the hunger of the poor, have only a scientific... interest for them. Why should we, men of the proletariat, spill our blood for this?"

(170): Marx on trial, foreman thanks him for an extremely informative speech!

(172): the Marxist conception of peasant conservatism -- father has won property from the nobility, and can't stomach the thought of another revolution against property (because he is unable to understand as yet that the new bankers are dispossessing him, in their own way) [but what is the claim, here? a capacity (to change society) argument? ok, but requires further thought. a propensity (to band together) argument? demands severe qualification]

(174): Engels runs into his dad while he's trying to arm workers!

(176): Jenny doing recitations for Marx's lectures

(179): good point that materialism does not mean something extremely simple: that men always act from motives of economic interest [we do have to unpack how to reconcile historical materialism from both directions -- ec. interest angle, and man-in-society angle]

(188): on Luther--"He emancipated the body from chains, because he laid chains upon the heart."

(192): Dialectic as a religious myth

(194-195): [these are odd pages -- why read inevitability as anything more than polemic?]

(196): imp, pointing out the philosophical trap of materialism -- trying to give historical materialism intellectual foundation independent of the earthly conditions that have stimulated certain men to build it.

(198-199): 18th Brumaire -- seeing through the 'shadow-play' of politics to the real conflicts at the heart of social life

(201): key--the firest of '48 had ebbed, by 1850 a new period of prosperity had commenced. [there is a link, here, to the fundamental question of whether crises generate revolution, and what exactly the details of this relationship are]

(202): Marx/Engels vs. Wilich, in the Communist League -- question of the place of 'will' in political strategy. Marx transfers the headquarters to Cologne, to win the battle

(202-203): in 1855, Marx proclaims the beginning of the English Revolution, at a protest over Sunday ban on liquor

(209): fox-hunting as 'the real school for cavalry'!

(212): question of whether learning was simply functional for them -- Wilson believes no (he says it was for Lenin; M+E were men of the Enlightenment)

(214): communist vision had renaissance man at its heart

(216-217): death of Marx's children

(224):1850s were terrible, for Marx. exile at its lowest point

(225-226): internationalism vs. nationalism -- backing the 'advanced' over the 'non-advanced'. M+E support for the unification of Germ; an egregious 1851 letter from Engels, re: Poland

(236): German 'liberal reform' had very quickly gone backwards after '48, with universal suffrage very soon becoming graded suffrage according to income

(237): Lasalle had started to talk in Marxist terms, trying to make it practical (Wilson accuses M+E of being excessive and fastidious, here)

(243): Lasalle on the State -- saw it not so much as the instrument of a dominating class, but also as a 'moral whole', a sum of education/power/freedom that was unattainable for a simple combination of individuals. this, Wilson suggests, is behind is relationship with Bismarck in the early 1860s (till 1864, when Bismarck no longer needs Lasalle)

(251): Engels happy at industrial crisis

(256): imp, First International is founded in 1864 -- the workers' movement had been reviving, after the reaction of a decade (the 1850s)

(259): Marx gives his first address, which was a tricky balancing act between English trade unionists, Proudhonists, etc., etc.

(260): offers an immiseration type thesis, even in the 1860s

(260): by the end of the 1860s, has 800,000 members

(261): 1869 congress is 'captured' by Bakunin

(263): imp, Bakunin as a revolutionist of the will/act, upheaval as a historical necessity that didn't need strategy/plan [almost of the Holloway type]

(265): Bakunin in prison for eight years after '48

(267-268): Bakunin had wisened to the flaws of the patriotic insurrections (namely, their failure to tackle the social question)

(269): Marx vs. Bakunin on the 'right of inheritance' , in 1869(Marx opposed to making it an issue, in effect, because it was derivative). Bakunin's motion carries, Marx didn't attend

(271): Nechaev and Bakunin wrote together about the revolutionary--only one idea, the revolution, must be ready to dismiss all other sentiments, etc.

(272): imp, the vision of the vanguard is stripped of all social/political content, until it becomes divorced from the proletariat/people -- the former's job is only to destroy.

(275): Bakunin had been speaking of anarchism, sine 1866

(276): Bakunin expelled, 1872

(276): Paris Commune, though, had had the effect of encouraging their program

(277): imp, the 'readiness' argument -- Bakunin vs. Marx on the need to wait for social conditions to ripen

(277): now headquarters are transferred to NY

(278): Bakunin's telling impatience on his death bed-- disappointed that the masses did not want to become impassioned for their own emancipation

(279): key--Commune as a pivotal event, the "first great justification" of Marx's theory.

(281): more people killed/imprisoned/exiled in one week, in Terror of 1871, than in three years of the revolutionary Terror of Robespierre

(281-282): Commune as vindication of Blanqui and Bakunin?

(282): Engels, in 1891, calls the Commune example of 'Dictatorship of the Proletariat'

(283): why!?--[again, Wilson mistakes mysticism for politics]

(287): bad account of DK -- saying it derives from laws of human selfishness, which is emphatically NOT the case.

(291): Fabians had a different theory of value, dependent on demand

(294): claim of political bias in LTV

(298): on Marxism and Human Nature -- mischaracterizing the argument, though

(299, 300): bad--intentionally making the account, re: morality, mystical

(308): on crisis and factory shut-down -- "capital... drags with it into its grave the corpses of its slaves..."

(315): a thoroughly elitist, silly objection: the proletariat are not well-educated, how can we expect them to take over? [this comes up again]

(316): what!?--US as a genuine social democracy!?

(319): Marx was incapable of imagining democracy, certainly democratization to the extent that it's proceeded, today [this is a fair point]

(320): in 1872, Marx mentioned that it may be possible to make a revolution by peaceful means in dem. countries

(324): 1870 war, Lasalleans voted for war credits, Liebknecht and Bebel refrained

(326): socialism --> communism claim made in the Gotha program, 1874

(331): 1889, founding of the Second Internatoinl

(338): Eleanor commits suicide, as do Paul and Laura Lafargue

(343): it's once Alexander II comes to power (revolt of peasantry, agitation of nobility) that Marx and Engels begin to consider possibility of revolution in Russia

(344): the 1881 letter to Zazulich comes only after several drafts

(344): DK was published in 1868 in Russia, to Marx's surprise

(352): Lenin's father dies in 1886, after the period of reaction has settled in (following Alexander II's assassination in 1881)

(353-355): Alexander murdered, heart-breaking story re: Lenin's mother (finds out about it in the newspaper) and liberal friends' betrayals

(357): imp, Russian liberalism, in short, ran into the shoals of the 1880s. Subversive possibilities of peasantry, to which People's Will had been atttached, had gone down with the rise in the price of grain.

(358): Alexander had read Marx, but had thought it would be impossible to agitate amongst the w-class until the Tsarist regime had been done away with. But Lenin was coming of age at a time when the industrial dev. of Russia was beginning, at pace.

(363): Marxism in Russia being spurred along by the success of the SPD in Germany

(367): [Wilson invokes German blood to describe Lenin!]

(373): inkstands of milk and bread, in prison

(376): 1897-1900 was Lenin's Siberian exile

(379): Lenin on Beethoven -- 'I know nothing that is greater than the Apassionata; I'd like to listen to it every day... But I can't listen to music too often. It...makes you want to say stupid nice things and stroke the heads of people who could create such beauty while living in this vile hell. And now you mustn't stroke anyone's head--you might get your hand bitten off. You have to to hit them on the head, without any mercy, although our ideal is not to use force against anyone. Hm, hm, our duty is infernally hard."

(380): imp -- truth as something practical, testable; our knowledge of the world is relative, but always approaching an absolute through our work in the world

(381): Lenin not a theorist, according to Wilson. at the very least, theory subordinated to practical activity

(382): 1895, Lafargue was saying no one understood Marx in W. Europe; Bernstein proves this in 1898, by formulating 'revolution-through-evolution'

(386): Lenin became dictator not b/c of personality (no ambition, etc.) but because of 'social physics' [this term remains black-boxed in Wilson, though]

(390): importance of understanding WITBD as written in the context of a dictatorship, where democracy in party was completely impossible

(403): Trotsky also compelled to move towards Marxism, away from populism, by the force of events -- workers' agitation in 1896 and industrial development in the Ukraine

(406): Trotsky in Siberian exile from Jan 1898 to Aug 1902

(409): why Lenin and Krupskaya decided to have no children -- family could only have hampered them in their line of duty

(412): Trotsky as Engels/Lasalle, Marx as Lenin

(413-414): 1905, Trotsky as revolution's most important public figure

(419): imp--reasons for its failure, in 1905, was the Tsar's ability to control the fighting forces, b/c of predominance of a loyal peasantry in the army/navy

(420): Engels, in 1847 Principles of Communism, had already noted the impossibility of building socialism in one country

(422): Trotsky as an individual that was made by the context around him -- men of first rank who flourish inside a school

(426): isolation as Trotsky's fate, except for short-lived moments of exceptional prominence

(429): History as teleological for Trotsky [but come on, again misunderstanding polemics]

(430-431): imp discussion--Martov's prescient opposition to Bolshevik takeover [conditions are not ripe yet, etc.? but then what do you do--let the bourgeoisie run the country to the dogs?]

(432): Trotsky on morality--a thoroughgoing instrumentalism [which seems basically correct]

(438): nationalist complement to Bernstein's revisionism

(438): remember that Engels had been pro-war, in case of attack by Russia (though he had thought that the revolution would come before the war)

(439): fate of Lenin's brother and family had left Lenin with a lifelong bitterness for the cowardice of liberals

(440): hating on Plekhanov and Kautsky, after they've turned

(442): Lenin on executions (who's asking? those who sent 16 million to their graves?)

(445): Feb 1912, Lena goldfields, marks the uptick in struggle that will lead, eventually, to 1917

(447): official Bolshevik-Menshevik split isn't until 1912, remember

(458): Pravda before April, in Stalin and Kamenev's hands, had been vacillating and conciliatory re: Prov. Government

(490): Wilson's elitism, again -- proletariat can't govern like the bourgeoisie can, b/c of comparative lack of education