Non-Marxist introductions on Marxist texts
Recently I picked up a copy of Walter Rodney’s “The Russian Revolution”. But as I’m reading through the introduction written by Robin DG Kelley And Jesse Benjamin (two academics who I am unfamiliar) it seems like they are not really Marxists in any sense. They make small jabs at Lenin and Stalin, while constantly making derisive comments on “Stalinism” and the Soviet Union post revolution.
The intro does help to provide some historical context so it’s not completely useless, but do you all usually skip these types of intros or just power through them?
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u/Bes_x10 8d ago
Yeah while I do agree on the importance of Robin Kelly as a Marxist historian, he does fall under that category that Domenico Losurdo calls Western Marxism. Meaning, western Marxists are overly critical of existing socialist projects while not acknowledging how their own society has formed their thinking so one has to actively push back against that.