Tallahassee, FL – International Women's Day is an ideal occasion to recognize and honor the accomplishments of women across the globe. Let us use this opportunity to recognize the importance of Alexandra Kollontai, an ardent supporter of gender equality and a pioneering fighter for the rights of women.

Kollontai was a Russian Marxist theorist who, in 1913, authored an article entitled “Women's Day” in Pravda prior to the first International Women's Day celebration in Russia. Her article was and is a revolutionary contribution to the struggle for women's rights and her impactful words continue to reverberate in contemporary gender conversations.

Who was Alexandra Kollontai?

Alexandra Kollontai was a multilingual prodigy from a Ukrainian-Russian-Finnish family who was an influential voice in the socialist movement. She had to flee in exile during the February Revolution of 1917 and returned to Russia when called by Lenin in 1918. She held the position of People's Commissar of Social Welfare until 1924 and negotiated the Finno-Soviet Peace Treaty of 1940. Her legacy is significant in guiding conversations on international women's solidarity and providing tools to assess current gender-based problems.

In her article “Women's Day,” Alexandra Kollontai argued the importance of Women's Day to the Russian people, highlighting the immense strength of the women's movement and its positive effect on the cost of living, maternity insurance, child labor and the implementation of laws protecting women’s labor.

Kollontai observed that in England, there were 292,000 women members in the trade unions, and in Germany, there were 200,000 and 150,000 in the trade unions and the workers' party, respectively. Austria also boasted 47,000 women members in the trade unions and almost 20,000 in the party. She additionally pointed out that the women of the working class were self-organizing in countries such as Italy, Hungary, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Switzerland, with the women's socialist movement boasting almost one million members.

Kollontai thus insisted that communists must acknowledge the influence and power of women's rights in the proletarian movement. Women's rights and equality in the working class were essential for true proletarian liberation, and she advocated for the protection of reproductive rights and the empowerment of women in the working class.

Kollontai observed that the men workers had previously been of the opinion that they could succeed without the assistance of women, displaying a disregard for the women demographic. As a result of the high unemployment rates of fathers and husbands, women were compelled to join the labor force, often receiving discriminatory treatment and lacking rights. She viewed this state of affairs as damaging to the cause of the working class, as women with no legal rights are incapable of standing up for their own needs and fighting for them alongside men. Therefore, it was of paramount importance that the woman worker is included in the movement so as to raise awareness of their rights.

As the organizations of the workers came to realize that the woman worker was among the most neglected members of the class, they began to campaign for special protections, insurance and political rights for women. With the establishment of committees, secretariats and bureaus devoted to improving the welfare of working women, as well as the organization of days, leaflets, meetings and conferences for the working-class woman, the need for recognition of women's rights in the proletarian movement and their equality in the working class were pushed to the forefront of discussion.

Alexandra Kollontai's consistent writings highlighted the need for uniting the working class, which includes women, against the shared enemy of capital. She noted that the working-class women had their own distinct requirements and that it was the party's mission to fight for them, thereby prompting the implementation of Women's Day, the objective of which is to promote the advancement of women's rights and the enhancement of their place in the working class.

The observance of Women's Day should fill women of the working class with a euphoric sense of fulfilling the general working-class cause and striving for their own freedom. Through espousing and participating in Women's Day marches, we acknowledge that women's rights and equality within the working class are critical to true proletarian liberation and the strengthening of women in the working class. As such, it is a purpose that needs to be supported and commemorated by all.

The incredible efforts of Alexandra Kollontai to ensure women's rights and equality in the working class during her time in the Soviet Union continue to have an influence today. Her tenacious attitude in the struggle for women's rights provides a reminder to all that although we have made considerable progress over the last century, much more is still needed to be done to ensure that all people have the freedom to make decisions concerning their own bodies.

The right-wing and corporate-backed campaigns against reproductive rights, LGBTQ rights and civil rights present a threat to all the hard-won advancements of the women's movement and other progressive movements. To be able to triumph over this injustice, we need to turn our resentment into an organized collective campaign. This is the only way we can develop a movement powerful enough to bring down their regime and break the fetters of oppression. We should be inspired by Alexandra Kollontai, who persistently strived for women's rights and equality in the working class. Her example reminds us how far we have progressed, but more importantly, how much further we must go in order to obtain genuine freedom.

#TallahasseeFL #Marxism #InternationalWomensDay

Now that we have talked about the Marxist theory of knowledge and examined the meaning and function of dialectical materialism, let’s look at how that is applied to studying the historical development of society. Marx called this “the materialist conception of history,” or historical materialism. It is historical materialism that demonstrates the link between dialectical materialism and political economy. Here we have dialectical materialism applied to history.

Before we get into all of the details of historical materialism, let’s take an introductory look at some of the key concepts. This way we can understand how they fit together. After this we can look more closely at them each piece by piece.

In the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels famously proclaimed that “the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle.” This is the main point of historical materialism, but there is a lot to unpack in that statement, and we should spend some time understanding how Marx and Engels arrived at that conclusion and what it means for revolutionaries.

Engels summed it up like this in his speech at the grave of Karl Marx in 1883:

“Just as Darwin discovered the law of development of organic nature, so Marx discovered the law of development of human history: the simple fact, hitherto concealed by an overgrowth of ideology, that mankind must first of all eat, drink, have shelter and clothing, before it can pursue politics, science, art, religion, etc.; that therefore the production of the immediate material means, and consequently the degree of economic development attained by a given people or during a given epoch, form the foundation upon which the state institutions, the legal conceptions, art, and even the ideas on religion, of the people concerned have been evolved, and in the light of which they must, therefore, be explained, instead of vice versa, as had hitherto been the case.”

As we’ve said before, Marxism is monistic rather than dualistic, meaning it doesn’t separate matter and thought, but recognizes thought as arising from and dependent upon matter. Our material being determines our consciousness. Before we can think, we must eat. Basically, Marxism understands that human society has always been organized around its tools in the production of its material needs. Each historical period is characterized materially by its forces of production and relations of production. Together these make up the material and economic base of society, the mode of production.

Forces of production include everything we use to fulfill human needs. This includes everything from tools, to factories, alongside land, raw materials, logistical infrastructure, warehouses, offices, retail facilities, restaurants, and so on. The tools and factories make up the instruments of production. The raw materials and resources make up the objects of production. The means of production consist of the instruments and objects of production together. The forces of production also include the living labor of the workers, the agents of production. In early human society, these productive forces were limited mainly to things like stone arrowheads and spear tips for hunting. Now they include highly complex technologies and methods.

Relations of production are the definite social relations that people enter into in order to organize the production of their needs. Production is a social process, based on some degree of a division of labor, and, following the end of primitive communal societies and the rise of the ancient slave societies, division of ownership, or class division. In class society, the means of production and the agents of production are separated, such that a minority of people own the means of production while a much larger majority of people work as the agents of production.

For now, let’s just emphasize that in the contradiction between the forces and relations of production, the forces of production tend to be the principal, or determining aspect. It is the forces of production, that is, the instruments of production together with living labor, acting upon nature, that plays the leading role. However, at times the relations of production may be the principal aspect, hastening or slowing the development of the productive forces.

Corresponding to this economic and material base of society there is also a superstructure of society, made up of a set of repressive and ideological apparatuses whose function is the reproduction of the mode of production. This includes legal systems, the courts and the police, but it also includes cultural institutions, schools, the media, religion and the broad political and philosophical ideas that characterize society. For now, let’s just emphasize that in the contradiction between the base and superstructure, the base is typically the principal aspect. The superstructure arises from the material base, though the superstructure also acts upon the base and reinforces it.

Each historical mode of production is defined by the level of the development of its productive forces and the corresponding relations of production. As the productive forces develop to higher levels, eventually the relations of production that at first encouraged and accelerated their development begin to hold them back, and those relations of production must be changed in order for the productive forces to be able to develop further.

Marx sums this up most succinctly in his preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy:

“At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or – this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms – with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure.”

As society’s productive forces developed, so too did the relations of production develop from primitive communalism to the ancient slave societies, and on to feudalism, then capitalism, and from capitalism to socialism. These are the relations of production Marx and Engels identified from their analysis of how they had developed in Europe and how they would continue to develop based on their laws of motion that they drew from that analysis. Each change from one mode of production to the next meant the advancement of the productive forces and the revolutionizing of the relations of production. These changes also created great shifts in the legal, political and ideological superstructure to reinforce the base, demanding changes in legal structures, education, family relations and so on.

Historical materialism exposes the great lie of bourgeois ideology, that capitalism is eternal. It shows us that, on the contrary, it wasn’t always like this, that things have come to be this way as a result of a historical process, and that we can and must change things fundamentally and for the better. Historical materialism is a vast subject, and it will take us some time to do it justice. This article can only serve as a brief introduction to the elements of historical materialism. In our forthcoming articles we will go more deeply into each of these.

#UnitedStates #Marxism #MarxismLeninism #Theory #MLTheory #dialecticalMaterialism

For anniversary of the birth of Karl Marx, May 5, 1818, Fight Back! is reprinting “Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League”. Drafted by Marx in 1850, this work shows Marx to be, above all else, a revolutionary.

Brethren!

In the two revolutionary years of 1848-49 the League proved itself in two ways. First, its members everywhere involved themselves energetically in the movement and stood in the front ranks of the only decisively revolutionary class, the proletariat, in the press, on the barricades and on the battlefields. The League further proved itself in that its understanding of the movement, as expressed in the circulars issued by the Congresses and the Central Committee of 1847 and in the Manifesto of the Communist Party, has been shown to be the only correct one, and the expectations expressed in these documents have been completely fulfilled. This previously only propagated by the League in secret, is now on everyone’s lips and is preached openly in the market place. At the same time, however, the formerly strong organization of the League has been considerably weakened. A large number of members who were directly involved in the movement thought that the time for secret societies was over and that public action alone was sufficient. The individual districts and communes allowed their connections with the Central Committee to weaken and gradually become dormant. So, while the democratic party, the party of the petty bourgeoisie, has become more and more organized in Germany, the workers’ party has lost its only firm foothold, remaining organized at best in individual localities for local purposes; within the general movement it has consequently come under the complete domination and leadership of the petty-bourgeois democrats. This situation cannot be allowed to continue; the independence of the workers must be restored. The Central Committee recognized this necessity and it therefore sent an emissary, Joseph Moll, to Germany in the winter of 1848-9 to reorganize the League. Moll’s mission, however, failed to produce any lasting effect, partly because the German workers at that time had not enough experience and partly because it was interrupted by the insurrection last May. Moll himself took up arms, joined the Baden-Palatinate army and fell on 29 June in the battle of the River Murg. The League lost in him one of the oldest, most active and most reliable members, who had been involved in all the Congresses and Central Committees and had earlier conducted a series of missions with great success. Since the defeat of the German and French revolutionary parties in July 1849, almost all the members of the Central Committee have reassembled in London: they have replenished their numbers with new revolutionary forces and set about reorganizing the League with renewed zeal.

This reorganization can only be achieved by an emissary, and the Central Committee considers it most important to dispatch the emissary at this very moment, when a new revolution is imminent, that is, when the workers’ party must go into battle with the maximum degree of organization, unity and independence, so that it is not exploited and taken in tow by the bourgeoisie as in 1848.

We told you already in 1848, brothers, that the German liberal bourgeoisie would soon come to power and would immediately turn its newly won power against the workers. You have seen how this forecast came true. It was indeed the bourgeoisie which took possession of the state authority in the wake of the March movement of 1848 and used this power to drive the workers, its allies in the struggle, back into their former oppressed position. Although the bourgeoisie could accomplish this only by entering into an alliance with the feudal party, which had been defeated in March, and eventually even had to surrender power once more to this feudal absolutist party, it has nevertheless secured favorable conditions for itself. In view of the government’s financial difficulties, these conditions would ensure that power would in the long run fall into its hands again and that all its interests would be secured, if it were possible for the revolutionary movement to assume from now on a so-called peaceful course of development. In order to guarantee its power the bourgeoisie would not even need to arouse hatred by taking violent measures against the people, as all of these violent measures have already been carried out by the feudal counter-revolution. But events will not take this peaceful course. On the contrary, the revolution which will accelerate the course of events, is imminent, whether it is initiated by an independent rising of the French proletariat or by an invasion of the revolutionary Babel by the Holy Alliance.

The treacherous role that the German liberal bourgeoisie played against the people in 1848 will be assumed in the coming revolution by the democratic petty bourgeoisie, which now occupies the same position in the opposition as the liberal bourgeoisie did before 1848. This democratic party, which is far more dangerous for the workers than were the liberals earlier, is composed of three elements: 1) The most progressive elements of the big bourgeoisie, who pursue the goal of the immediate and complete overthrow of feudalism and absolutism. This fraction is represented by the former Berlin Vereinbarer, the tax resisters; 2) The constitutional-democratic petty bourgeois, whose main aim during the previous movement was the formation of a more or less democratic federal state; this is what their representative, the Left in the Frankfurt Assembly and later the Stuttgart parliament, worked for, as they themselves did in the Reich Constitution Campaign; 3) The republican petty bourgeois, whose ideal is a German federal republic similar to that in Switzerland and who now call themselves ‘red’ and ’social-democratic’ because they cherish the pious wish to abolish the pressure exerted by big capital on small capital, by the big bourgeoisie on the petty bourgeoisie. The representatives of this fraction were the members of the democratic congresses and committees, the leaders of the democratic associations and the editors of the democratic newspapers.

After their defeat all these fractions claim to be ‘republicans’ or ’reds’, just as at the present time members of the republican petty bourgeoisie in France call themselves ‘socialists’. Where, as in Wurtemberg, Bavaria, etc., they still find a chance to pursue their ends by constitutional means, they seize the opportunity to retain their old phrases and prove by their actions that they have not changed in the least. Furthermore, it goes without saying that the changed name of this party does not alter in the least its relationship to the workers but merely proves that it is now obliged to form a front against the bourgeoisie, which has united with absolutism, and to seek the support of the proletariat.

The petty-bourgeois democratic party in Germany is very powerful. It not only embraces the great majority of the urban middle class, th