New Orleans, LA – On Saturday, March 2, around 50 community members packed into a community space in the 7th Ward. There, Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO) held a forum titled “Black Power and the need for communist organization.”

Juleea Berthelot, a student organizer, introduced the organization and two FRSO members who work in NOCOP (New Orleans for Community Oversight of the Police).

The first speaker, Toni Jones, starts off by pointing out that the political experience of Black people in the U.S. is also an economic one. Despite being over half of the city’s population, Black households make significantly less money than white ones. Historic, systemic factors play into the material conditions of the Black population. “The struggle for Black liberation has a class character,” says Jones. “Class character requires class struggle.”

Toni Mar, another FRSO member, expanded on what a communist organization looks like by connecting their work in NOCOP with the separate goals of a revolutionary organization. They aim to organize among the masses, who are not solely other socialists. In these environments, communists emphasize building the leadership of Black working class. Ultimately, they want to win people over to the socialist cause. Mar finished their addition to the forum saying, “We will only ever get what we are organized to take, and we want it all!” filling the room with applause.

#NewOrleansLA #NOCOP #BlackLiberation #Communism #WorkingClassStruggle #PoliceCrimes #SDS

To mark the April 22, 1870 birthday of Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin, Fight Back News Service is circulating the following excerpt from his 1918 book, The State and Revolution.

The “Withering Away” of the State, and Violent Revolution

Engels’ words regarding the “withering away” of the state are so widely known, they are often quoted, and so clearly reveal the essence of the customary adaptation of Marxism to opportunism that we must deal with them in detail. We shall quote the whole argument from which they are taken.

“The proletariat seizes from state power and turns the means of production into state property to begin with. But thereby it abolishes itself as the proletariat, abolishes all class distinctions and class antagonisms, and abolishes also the state as state. Society thus far, operating amid class antagonisms, needed the state, that is, an organization of the particular exploiting class, for the maintenance of its external conditions of production, and, therefore, especially, for the purpose of forcibly keeping the exploited class in the conditions of oppression determined by the given mode of production (slavery, serfdom or bondage, wage-labor). The state was the official representative of society as a whole, its concentration in a visible corporation. But it was this only insofar as it was the state of that class which itself represented, for its own time, society as a whole: in ancient times, the state of slave-owning citizens; in the Middle Ages, of the feudal nobility; in our own time, of the bourgeoisie. When at last it becomes the real representative of the whole of society, it renders itself unnecessary. As soon as there is no longer any social class to be held in subjection, as soon as class rule, and the individual struggle for existence based upon the present anarchy in production, with the collisions and excesses arising from this struggle, are removed, nothing more remains to be held in subjection — nothing necessitating a special coercive force, a state. The first act by which the state really comes forward as the representative of the whole of society — the taking possession of the means of production in the name of society — is also its last independent act as a state. State interference in social relations becomes, in one domain after another, superfluous, and then dies down of itself. The government of persons is replaced by the administration of things, and by the conduct of processes of production. The state is not ’abolished’. It withers away. This gives the measure of the value of the phrase ’a free people’s state’, both as to its justifiable use for a long time from an agitational point of view, and as to its ultimate scientific insufficiency; and also of the so-called anarchists’ demand that the state be abolished overnight.” (Herr Eugen Duhring’s Revolution in Science [Anti-Duhring], pp.301-03, third German edition.)

It is safe to say that of this argument of Engels’, which is so remarkably rich in ideas, only one point has become an integral part of socialist thought among modern socialist parties, namely, that according to Marx that state “withers away” — as distinct from the anarchist doctrine of the “abolition” of the state. To prune Marxism to such an extent means reducing it to opportunism, for this “interpretation” only leaves a vague notion of a slow, even, gradual change, of absence of leaps and storms, of absence of revolution. The current, widespread, popular, if one may say so, conception of the “withering away” of the state undoubtedly means obscuring, if not repudiating, revolution.

Such an “interpretation”, however, is the crudest distortion of Marxism, advantageous only to the bourgeoisie. In point of theory, it is based on disregard for the most important circumstances and considerations indicated in, say, Engels’ “summary” argument we have just quoted in full.

In the first place, at the very outset of his argument, Engels says that, in seizing state power, the proletariat thereby “abolishes the state as state”. It is not done to ponder over the meaning of this. Generally, it is either ignored altogether, or is considered to be something in the nature of “Hegelian weakness” on Engels’ part. As a matter of fact, however, these words briefly express the experience of one of the greatest proletarian revolutions, the Paris Commune of 1871, of which we shall speak in greater detail in its proper place. As a matter of fact, Engels speaks here of the proletariat revolution “abolishing” the bourgeois state, while the words about the state withering away refer to the remnants of the proletarian state after the socialist revolution. According to Engels, the bourgeois state does not “wither away”, but is “abolished” by the proletariat in the course of the revolution. What withers away after this revolution is the proletarian state or semi-state.

Secondly, the state is a “special coercive force”. Engels gives this splendid and extremely profound definition here with the utmost lucidity. And from it follows that the “special coercive force” for the suppression of the proletariat by the bourgeoisie, of millions of working people by handfuls of the rich, must be replaced by a “special coercive force” for the suppression of the bourgeoisie by the proletariat (the dictatorship of the proletariat). This is precisely what is meant by “abolition of the state as state”. This is precisely the “act” of taking possession of the means of production in the name of society. And it is self-evident that such a replacement of one (bourgeois) “special force” by another (proletarian) “special force” cannot possibly take place in the form of “withering away”.

Thirdly, in speaking of the state “withering away”, and the even more graphic and colorful “dying down of itself”, Engels refers quite clearly and definitely to the period after “the state has taken possession of the means of production in the name of the whole of society”, that is, after the socialist revolution. We all know that the political form of the “state” at that time is the most complete democracy. But it never enters the head of any of the opportunists, who shamelessly distort Marxism, that Engels is consequently speaking here of democracy “dying down of itself”, or “withering away”. This seems very strange at first sight. But it is “incomprehensible” only to those who have not thought about democracy also being a state and, consequently, also disappearing when the state disappears. Revolution alone can “abolish” the bourgeois state. The state in general, i.e., the most complete democracy, can only “wither away”.

Fourthly, after formulating his famous proposition that “the state withers away”, Engels at once explains specifically that this proposition is directed against both the opportunists and the anarchists. In doing this, Engels puts in the forefront that conclusion, drawn from the proposition that “the state withers away”, which is directed against the opportunists.

One can wager that out of every 10,000 persons who have read or heard about the “withering away” of the state, 9,990 are completely unaware, or do not remember, that Engels directed his conclusions from that proposition not against anarchists alone. And of the remaining 10, probably nine do not know the meaning of a “free people’s state” or why an attack on this slogan means an attack on opportunists. This is how history is written! This is how a great revolutionary teaching is imperceptibly falsified and adapted to prevailing philistinism. The conclusion directed against the anarchists has been repeated thousands of times; it has been vulgarized, and rammed into people’s heads in the shallowest form, and has acquired the strength of a prejudice, whereas the conclusion directed against the opportunists has been obscured and “forgotten”!

The “free people’s state” was a programme demand and a catchword current among the German Social-Democrats in the seventies. This catchword is devoid of all political content except that it describes the concept of democracy in a pompous philistine fashion. Insofar as it hinted in a legally permissible manner at a democratic republic, Engels was prepared to “justify” its use “for a time” from an agitational point of view. But it was an opportunist catchword, for it amounted to nothing more than prettifying bourgeois democracy, and was also a failure to understand the socialist criticism of the state in general. We are in favor of a democratic republic as the best form of state for the proletariat under capitalism. But we have no right to forget that wage slavery is the lot of the people even in the most democratic bourgeois republic. Furthermore, every state is a “special force” for the suppression of the oppressed class. Consequently, every state is not “free” and not a “people’s state”. Marx and Engels explained this repeatedly to their party comrades in the seventies.

Fifthly, the same work of Engels’, whose arguments about the withering away of the state everyone remembers, also contains an argument of the significance of violent revolution. Engels’ historical analysis of its role becomes a veritable panegyric on violent revolution. This, “no one remembers”. It is not done in modern socialist parties to talk or even think about the significance of this idea, and it plays no part whatever in their daily propaganda and agitation among the people. And yet it is inseparably bound up with the ”withering away” of the state into one harmonious whole.

Here is Engels’ argument:

“...That force, however, plays yet another role [other than that of a diabolical power] in history, a revolutionary role; that, in the words of Marx, it is the midwife of every old society which is pregnant with a new one, that it is the instrument with which social movement forces its way through and shatters the dead, fossilized political forms — of this there is not a word in Herr Duhring. It is only with sighs and groans that he admits the possibility that force will perhaps be necessary for the overthrow of an economy based on exploitation — unfortunately, because all use of force demoralizes, he says, the person who uses it. And this in Germany, where a violent collision — which may, after all, be forced on the people — would at least have the advantage of wiping out the servility which has penetrated the nation’s mentality following the humiliation of the Thirty Years’ War. And this person’s mode of thought — dull, insipid, and impotent — presumes to impose itself on the most revolutionary party that history has ever known! (p.193, third German edition, Part II, end of Chap.IV)

How can this panegyric on violent revolution, which Engels insistently brought to the attention of the German Social-Democrats between 1878 and 1894, i.e., right up to the time of his death, be combined with the theory of the “withering away” of the state to form a single theory?

Usually the two are combined by means of eclecticism, by an unprincipled or sophistic selection made arbitrarily (or to please the powers that be) of first one, then another argument, and in 99 cases out of 100, if not more, it is the idea of the “withering away” that is placed in the forefront. Dialectics are replaced by eclecticism — this is the most usual, the most wide-spread practice to be met with in present-day official Social-Democratic literature in relation to Marxism. This sort of substitution is, of course, nothing new; it was observed even in the history of classical Greek philosophy. In falsifying Marxism in opportunist fashion, the substitution of eclecticism for dialectics is the easiest way of deceiving the people. It gives an illusory satisfaction; it seems to take into account all sides of the process, all trends of development, all the conflicting influences, and so forth, whereas in reality it provides no integral and revolutionary conception of the process of social development at all.

We have already said above, and shall show more fully later, that the theory of Marx and Engels of the inevitability of a violent revolution refers to the bourgeois state. The latter cannot be superseded by the proletarian state (the dictatorship of the proletariat) through the process of ”withering away”, but, as a general rule, only through a violent revolution. The panegyric Engels sang in its honor, and which fully corresponds to Marx’s repeated statements (see the concluding passages of The Poverty of Philosophy and the Communist Manifesto, with their proud and open proclamation of the inevitability of a violent revolution; see what Marx wrote nearly 30 years later, in criticizing the Gotha Programme of 1875, when he mercilessly castigated the opportunist character of that programme) — this panegyric is by no means a mere “impulse”, a mere declamation or a polemical sally. The necessity of systematically imbuing the masses with this and precisely this view of violent revolution lies at the root of the entire theory of Marx and Engels. The betrayal of their theory by the now prevailing social-chauvinist and Kautskyite trends expresses itself strikingly in both these trends ignoring such propaganda and agitation.

The supersession of the bourgeois state by the proletarian state is impossible without a violent revolution. The abolition of the proletarian state, i.e., of the state in general, is impossible except through the process of “withering away”.

A detailed and concrete elaboration of these views was given by Marx and Engels when they studied each particular revolutionary situation, when they analyzed the lessons of the experience of each particular revolution. We shall now pass to this, undoubtedly the most important, part of their theory.

#UnitedStates #CapitalismAndEconomy #Socialism #PeoplesStruggles #Lenin #Communism #TheState

Fight Back News Service is circulating the following statement from Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO) to the Central Committee, Communist Party of the Philippines.

Dear Comrades:

On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of the Philippines, Freedom Road Socialist Organization sends our warmest greetings, and we are confident that the years ahead will bring still greater victories.

Your progress in advancing the people’s democratic revolution with a socialist orientation, and in developing a people’s war to liberate the Philippines from the burden of imperialism, feudalism, and bureaucrat capitalism is an inspiration to revolutionaries everywhere.

The monopoly capitalists who rule the United States have built an empire the spans the globe – from the Philippines to Palestine to Peru. While the U.S. imperialists have constructed an immense war machine, they are beset by fundamental contradictions and strategically doomed. The people of the U.S. and the people of the Philippines share a common enemy and every blow against imperialism is a good thing that brings closer the day of their final defeat.

We appreciate the many contributions that the Communist Party of the Philippines had made to the international communist movement. Your spirted defense of Marxism-Leninism, including the earthshaking contributions of Mao Zedong to this science of revolution, stands as an example of clarity and leadership, as does the CPP’s willingness to oppose revisionism.

We place great value on the militant friendship that exists between our organizations and we will work to build on it in the coming years. For the people of our respective countries, the future is bright!

Long live proletarian internationalism!

Long live the Communist Party of the Philippines!

Long live the unity between the peoples of the U.S. and the Philippines!

With communist greetings,

Freedom Road Socialist Organization

#UnitedStates #AntiwarMovement #OppressedNationalities #Philippines #PeoplesStruggles #WorkersAndGlobalization #CommunistPartyOfThePhilippines #Communism #Socialism #Asia

The Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV) is the second-largest party supporting Nicolás Maduro for president in the May 20 elections. In this piece published in their party newspaper Tribuna Popular, the PCV Central Committee lays out their position of the electoral process, the need for communist agitation, and the future of the country. It is provided below in English, translated by Fight Back! News staff.

Communists and elections

As Communists, we understand very well that revolutionary transformations cannot come about from “bourgeois legality.” Socialism will only be possible by profoundly transforming the material and legal order of the existing structure, and this will mean to revolutionarily transcend the current legal limits of the so-called “democratic game” as it is currently defined.

But we also understand that this principle does not mean that a small conspiratorial group, separated from the working class and campesino masses, will be able to tear down the scaffolding of the capitalist system.

As Communists we do not see the elections as a mere act of “political economy” that allows us to occupy some positions or spaces from which we can little by little transform society. This is exactly the reformist conception that we must adamantly combat.

We also cannot allow ourselves to be seduced by the rightist and reformist conception of electoral events as festivals of empty slogans accompanied by music and advertising, which aims to procure the votes of the masses by means of political propaganda without content.

Agitation, organization and education

For the Communists, the upcoming elections for President of the Republic and the Legislative Councils will be an opportunity to agitate, organize and educate the Venezuelan working class, the campesino masses and all working people; using propaganda art and new forms of communication like social networks, we will put forward our political and programmatic line in a way that clearly distinguishes the message of the PCV.

For this reason, the Party of the Red Rooster does not dilute itself with “campaign teams” and “electoral marketing” strategies, for the Venezuelan working class should already be able to distinguish the position of the PCV. For this reason we can win with our program and with a campaign that overcomes simply slapping up posters and painting murals (which we must also do) with the triad of agitation, organization and education of the popular masses.

The electoral growth of the PCV is a product of elevating levels of consciousness and the qualitative and quantitative organization of the working class, which contributes to the accumulative process for a change in the correlation of forces on the political map. To augment the vote share of the PCV is to augment the political strength of the anti-imperialist popular bloc, the possibility of displacing reformists and conciliationists, and to fortify the position of the most honest and combative sectors of the Venezuelan people.

When will the Venezuelan people overcome the deficiencies of the current political process? When the working class, together with the campesinos and communal workers, is converted into a powerful hegemonic force at the head of the Bolivarian process. The Venezuelan people are currently in the crosshairs of the imperialist powers and their Creole lapdogs, and reformism is not guaranteed to be able to resist the aggressions of international capital.

Only a powerful anti-imperialist front under the leadership of the working class, together with the campesino and popular masses, can guarantee the independence of the Venezuelan nation. It is not only the presidency and some legislative positions on the line, but the entire future of the Venezuelan people is on the line. And the organic strength of the PCV, which must be reflected in its electoral showing, is a decisive element in the construction of this future.

Wladimir Abreu is a PCV Central Committee member.

#Venezuela #Elections #PeoplesStruggles #Maduro #Communism #Socialism #Americas

On the occasion of 49th anniversary of the reestablishment of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP)

Resist the Fascist US-Duterte Regime, End the Rotting Semicolonial Semi Feudal System and Raise the Revolutionary Movement to a Higher Level

The National Democratic Front of the Philippines in Mindanao (NDFP-Mindanao) is one with the Filipino people in celebrating with utmost joy the 49th anniversary of the reestablishment of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) on December 26, 1968. We congratulate all Party cadres and members for tirelessly working to advance Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and valiantly taking on the task of leading the national democratic revolution towards its socialist future. We also take this occasion to honor all our martyrs who selflessly offered their lives for the revolution and the Filipino people.

After its historic 2nd National Congress in 2016, the Party continued to correctly lead the revolutionary movement and the people in facing the chronic semifeudal and semicolonial social crisis in the first year of the US-Duterte regime. The Party most creatively dealt with the dualism of Duterte, whose ‘change is coming’ mantra almost quickly plunged the nation towards its wars of death and destruction, and an economic crisis far worse than ever before.

After he claimed to be ‘leftist’ and ‘socialist’ and claimed intent to enforce an independent foreign policy, Duterte tore away his mask of pretense as he kowtowed to the dictates of his master US President Donald Trump, revealing his true character as a puppet of US imperialism.

From the start however, he was already an avowed implementer of neoliberal policies, ensuring profits for the business interests of big bourgeois compradors and foreign monopoly capitalists. The US-Duterte regime imposed such brazen, anti-people and deceptive policies as the multi-billion ‘Build, Build, Build’ program, which will further drown the country in debt. A debt that will further burden the people in their entire lifetime under this system. The newly-signed tax reform law will further burden the people with more taxes imposed on basic commodities and services. And, the imposition of other measures in line with liberalization, privatization, deregulation, and denationalization are all detrimental to the nation’s welfare.

The US-Duterte regime’s ‘change’ turned the economy for the worse and increased the suffering of the Filipino people: poverty rate increased, incidence of hunger rose, unemployment and underemployment shot up to new levels; the dearth of and disregard for social services, especially health and education, continue unabated; land grabbing and deprivation became more widespread and the displacement of peoples is at an all-time high.

To mitigate the worsening crisis, Duterte could only do nothing but placate the increasingly frustrated Filipino masses with chump change, which is a mere pittance and can never adequately respond to the people’s needs. Numerous victims of previous calamities have not even been completely supported and rehabilitated by the reactionary government, and many among them, if not all, remain suffering under deplorable conditions.

In Mindanao, the US-Duterte regime let loose upon the people the full-force of its triple wars of death and destruction.

First, Duterte set off on a rampage against the Bangsamoro and the people of Mindanao by declaring Martial Law, using the ‘ISIS terrorist’ bogey as a pretext to justify his destructive attack against Marawi City. Duterte’s AFP/PNP is responsible for Marawi City’s complete and utter devastation, which deprived thousands of its Bangsamoro residents of their homes and livelihood through incessant airstrikes, shelling, mortar fire and ground assault. The people of Marawi City are set to suffer a great deal more because, apart from the fact that it will take years to rehabilitate the city, large portions of the area have already been guaranteed by Duterte to serve the interests of both local and foreign big business as well as of the US Armed Forces for the establishment of a new military base. Despite the bogus ‘liberation’ of Marawi City and the uninterrupted attacks against other Bangsamoro communities in Mindanao, the armed resistance of the Moro people will rise even stronger as they continue the fight for their genuine right to self-determination.

After razing Marawi to the ground, Duterte was quick to tag both the CPP and the NPA as ‘terrorist organizations’ to justify the extension of martial law until 2018 and beyond, serving as a springboard for imposing his tyranny on the entire nation.

Second, the US-Duterte regime has launched Oplan Kapayapaan against the revolutionary movement and the people of Mindanao, a bloody all-out war that utilizes the worst and most dreaded features of past military campaigns of suppression and encirclement (Oplans Lambat-Bitag, Bantay Laya 1 and 2, Bayanihan). Apart from the AFP’s direct troop assault against many hinterland communities in the island, military operations are also reinforced by airstrikes from jet fighters, attack helicopters and armed drones.

Certain drones used by AFP units in their operations are capable of releasing deadly rockets or missiles day or night, terrorizing numerous peasant, Lumad and Bangsamoro communities, including schools and other structures where civilians congregate. The countryside is literally shoved into the throes of death, resulting in the massive evacuation of whole Lumad and Bangsamoro communities from their ancestral lands.

With martial law extended and a ‘shoot to kill’ order against all Red fighters, Duterte has virtually disregarded all international protocols and rules of engagement, and directed the AFP to literally go on a bloody killing-spree, even against those whom they only suspect as working with the revolutionary movement, with complete impunity.

Third, in Duterte’s so-called ‘war against drugs’, not only has the PNP and their death squads perpetrated the mass murder of suspected small-time drug peddlers and users, but it has also included among its targets leaders and members of legitimate progressive organizations, which in Mindanao, has already taken the lives of hundreds. The regime also activated its legal offensive through the PNP-AFP Inter-Agency Committee on Legal Action (IALAC) in the filing of trumped up charges against mass leaders and activists. It has also bolstered its propaganda offensive that spread vile forms of vilification in social media, peddling lies and fake news against the revolutionary movement and the progressives.

With the correct guidance of the Party however, the revolutionary movement and the struggling masses were able to counteract against the snare lain by Duterte to have the revolutionary movement stoop down to its wiles.

Under the absolute leadership of the Communist Party, the New People’s Army is ever more ready to face the full-scale war that will further intensify in 2018 and beyond. The number of tactical offensives (TOs) launched by NPA units in the whole of Mindanao since January this year reached nearly a thousand military actions. The NPA in the Southern Mindanao region (SMR) launched more than 300 tactical offensives; the North Eastern Mindanao region, with more than 180; the North Central Mindanao region with over 200; the Far Southern Mindanao region with more than 100; and the Western Mindanao region with more or less 80 tactical offensives. There were a few well-chosen and well-executed head blows as wells as numerous attritive actions against operating enemy troops, military camps and police outposts, making them suffer a casualty rate of more than a battalion. NPA units in Mindanao were able to confiscate high-powered firearms from enemy forces that could equip a battalion of Red fighters.

Despite the use of airstrikes, armed drones and prolonged focus operations, not one single NPA unit in Mindanao was wiped out. The number of platoons and companies have in fact increased this year. In spite of the constant black propaganda, bogus peace caravans and the incessant parade of fake or recycled surrenderees, NPA Red commanders and fighters never faltered; ever willing to sacrifice their lives for the revolution and the people than be servile to the fascist dictatorship of the US-Duterte regime.

NPA units in Mindanao maintained a forward-looking and offensive posture in facing an AFP military campaign gone berserk and were able to sustain a high morale in its commitment to serve and defend the masses. Daring NPA units were able to sanction banana plantations that greatly exploit and oppress workers, peasants and Lumad and destroy the environment, set up ambuscades and attritive actions against operating AFP troops, and arrested erring elements of the PNP and accorded them the proper treatment for prisoners of war (POWs). Every minute, NPA units made certain that they are ready for battles, using every encounter as an object lesson to improve on strategy, tactics and technique to annihilate the enemy and punish the most rabid killers of the US-Duterte regime.

Under the absolute leadership of the CPP, the NPA continues to have a firm grasp of the basic principles of MLM in undertaking its tasks for the revolutionary movement. To ensure this, several batches of Red fighters in various NPA units in Mindanao were able to finish this year the Basic Party Course (BPC), which outlines and discusses the fundamental principles of MLM and of the national democratic revolution.

Meanwhile, majority of Red commanders and political officers either completed or were instructors of the Intermediate Party Course (IPC), which gave a more comprehensive survey of the three main weapons of the people’s democratic revolution – the Party, armed struggle and the united front. Furthermore, there were regional committees in Mindanao that have successfully held in not more than 15 days the Advanced Party Course (APC), which outlines a deeper articulation of MLM and the country’s socialist and the world’s communist future.

As the people’s war in Mindanao continue to develop comprehensively, Party members in people’s governments and among revolutionary mass organizations, have taken an active leading role in launching agrarian revolution and realizing for hundreds of thousands of people through well-organized mass struggles, the implementation of the minimum program and, in few select areas where it is possible, the maximum program of agrarian revolution.

Consequently, this has led to the further consolidation of various organs of political power of the people despite the constant and brutal attacks of the AFP in the countryside. The masses have launched anti-feudal, anti-fascist and anti-imperialist mass struggles and campaigns. As a dialectical result, thousands of masses have been recruited as Party members.

The peace negotiations between the NDFP and the GRP that ran for several months was handled adeptly, which made it possible to finish the 4th round of talks and was about to begin the 5th round, until it was unilaterally stopped on its tracks by Duterte and his terror proclamation. Clearly, the US-Duterte regime sabotaged the peace talks, revealing its utter contempt for peace and total disregard for genuine socio-economic reforms.

Despite this, however, the NDFP, as the representative of the entire revolutionary forces, expressed its willingness to resume with the talks. It will never, on other hand, submit itself to talks of capitulation. To further prove the revolutionary movement’s seriousness in supporting the talks, the NPA in Mindanao has undertaken the orderly and safe release of more than 20 prisoners of war (POWs) since January this year.

Given these resounding achievements of the revolutionary movement under the leadership of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), the NDFP-Mindanao calls upon all revolutionary forces and the struggling masses to redouble efforts in undertaking our basic ideological, political and organizational tasks to advance the people’s democratic revolution until complete victory.

We must never shirk from our revolutionary responsibilities and face, head-on and without fear, any sacrifice we may encounter along the way in the performance of our tasks and duties, especially before the intensifying attacks of the fascist US-Duterte regime.

It is imperative that we must take the lead in uniting the people in an anti-fascist, anti-imperialist and anti-feudal united front, deliver wave upon wave of militant protests that will gather people from various oppressed and exploited classes and sectors, including the middle classes and the enlightened gentry, by the hundreds of thousands and lead the overthrow of the US-Duterte regime.

The NDFP-Mindanao calls on the NPA to launch more and more tactical offensives, combining multiple attritive actions with well-chosen and well-planned annihilative blows against the fascist AFP/PNP/paramilitary troops. The NPA must be determined to bring the people’s war to new heights!

Long live the 49th anniversary of the Communist Party of the Philippines!

Long live the People’s Democratic Revolution with a socialist perspective!

Ka Joaquin Jacinto

Spokesperson

NDFP-Mindanao

#Philippines #PeoplesStruggles #Communism #CPP #Asia

Dear Comrades,

On the 49th anniversary of the re-establishment of the Communist Party of the Philippines, we of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization send our warmest greeting and reaffirm the long and militant friendship that exists between our organizations. Your accomplishments over the past 49 years are legion, and we are confident you will win still greater victories in the coming years.

U.S. imperialism and its puppets are doing everything in their power to block the progress of the revolutionary process in the Philippines. They will fail. Under the leadership of the Communist Party of the Philippines, the national democratic revolution with a socialist orientation is bound to triumph.

FRSO will continue its efforts to oppose U.S. intervention in the Philippines and we will strengthen our solidarity efforts with the national democratic movement. We reject the attempts by U.S. imperialism and its lackeys to criminalize the fight of the people of the Philippines for liberation with lies about ‘terrorism.’

Finally, we appreciate your efforts to strengthen the international communist movement, by upholding Marxism-Leninism and many contributions of Mao Zedong.

The people of the U.S. and the people of the Philippines share an enemy in the monopoly capitalists that rule the U.S empire. Every blow landed on U.S. imperialism weakens our common enemy, and represent steps forward in our common struggle.

We understand that the future holds many challenges. And we are sure that the future is bright.

With communist greetings,

Freedom Road Socialist Organization

#UnitesStates #Philippines #Socialism #frso #Communism #CPP #Asia

This paper prepared collectively by the central leadership of Freedom Road Socialist Organization, and was presented by leading member of FRSO, Frank Chapman, at the Centennial Commemoration of the October Revolution, held in New York City, July 2017. The event was sponsored by People’s Response for International Solidarity and Mass Mobilization (PRISM) in cooperation with the U.S. member organizations of the International League of People’s Struggle (ILPS-US). ( Click here for PDF pamphlet version of this paper)

Introduction

As communists and revolutionaries, we welcome this opportunity to mark the 100th anniversary of Russia’s 1917 October Revolution, and to discuss its ongoing relevancy to the struggle today.

The October Revolution was a world-changing event. At one stroke, it settled the question of whether another world was possible. Releasing one-sixth of the world from the chains of wage slavery, it smashed the myth that rule by the few was a sort of permanent condition, and, by successfully establishing proletarian political power, the October Revolution succeeded in opening the road to socialist construction. For the years that followed, the great achievements of the Soviet Union created a new and better way of life and would exercise a powerful effect on working and oppressed people around the globe.

Not only did the October Revolution change the lives of the millions who lived in what would become the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), it changed the world revolutionary movement in a big way. Mao was later to say, that the October Revolution sent the “salvos of Marxism to China” where it was to become a powerful force in the movement for national liberation and socialism. In the U.S., the October Revolution came to exercise a magnetic pull on the revolutionaries in the socialist, labor and other people’s movements, contributing to the creation of a single, revolutionary Communist Party in the early 1920s, which became an important factor in the country’s political life.

How We Can Learn for the October Revolution in the U.S.

The Bolsheviks, under the leadership of Lenin, Stalin and others, creatively applied Marxism to the concrete conditions of Russia. In doing so they waged a consistent struggle against opportunism in the socialist and labor movements – internationally and in Russia itself. It was this struggle against opportunism that prepared the Bolsheviks to lead the working class in the seizure of power.

The October Revolution was a qualitative leap, from one historical epoch to another – a period in which moribund capitalism is heading for extinction and where socialism is on the agenda. This process in turn gave rise to Leninism; Leninism being Marxism in the era of imperialism and proletarian revolution.

Marxism-Leninism is a science, the science of revolution. It allows us to understand the laws that govern the processes at work in the world, and by understanding those laws, including those of how history develops, we can grasp the necessity and understand our freedom to change the world.

Because Marxism-Leninism is a science, a science that is by necessity and fact, universal in character, we can take the lessons of the October Revolution and learn from the experience in a materialist way that helps us to advance our work in the U.S. Lenin made the point that the soul of Marxism was a concrete analysis of concrete conditions, so we cannot say that it something that is fixed, static, or immutable. Rather, Marxism-Leninism is and will be constantly enriched through cycles of practice, and the summation of that practice.

We learn from the past, to guide our work in the present and to serve the future, which includes our revolutionary goals. We have no desire to be a historical reenactment society, and it should be obvious to all serious people that we cannot rely on analogies from Russian history to understand current conditions.

Conditions in the U.S. Today

The U.S. today is empire in decline, beset by contradictions internal and external. Lenin stated imperialism was capitalism in its moribund stage, and it is arguable that the irrational bigot Donald Trump is a fitting political representative of a sick and dying system.

Internationally, the U.S. faces a growing challenge for the national liberation movements and the national democratic governments, the socialist countries, and other imperialist rivals. Thus, the U.S. is increasing military spending, taking hostile actions against socialist Korea and Cuba, and is stepping up the U.S. wars in Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Iraq and other places.

Within the U.S., the monopoly capitalists are perusing an agenda of austerity and reaction, which means an intensification of racist discrimination and national oppression, directed at African Americans, Chicanos and Latinos, Arab and Asian Americans, and indigenous peoples including Pacific Islanders. There is an attack on the standard of living of working people (including wages, health care, pensions, and perhaps most importantly – the right to have trade unions), attacks on the rights of women, and organized bigotry against Muslims.

The point here is not do draw up a comprehensive list of the crimes being committed by the monopoly capitalist class, nor is it to chart the restructuring of the economy and political polarization that has unfolded since the great economic crisis of 2007, rather it is to provide a general picture of a wide-ranging war that the bourgeoisie is waging on the people of the U.S. and by extension, the peoples of the world.

Fortunately, the war that the rulers of the U.S. are waging on working and oppressed people is not a one-sided one, and we are now in the midst of one of the greatest upsurges of struggle since the 1960s. In cities across the country, massive and militant protests have taken place against police crimes and there is a growing movement for community control of the police. There is a growing tide of anger over the anti-immigrant polices of the Trump administration. Trump’s attempted ‘Muslim ban’ drew hundreds of thousands of people into the streets and airports. It is estimated that about 20% of the people of the U.S have taken part in protests and demonstrations since Trump took office.

Finally, there another point concerning objective conditions that bears mentioning: the communist movement in the U.S. is small. This does not negate the fact that the existing Marxist-Leninist organizations have not made big contributions to the people’s struggle. We have. Rather it is recognition of the reality that the U.S. is a large country with big working class, and for those of us who are revolutionaries, the task of building a new communist party remains on our agenda.

At any given time, communists have three general tasks: to win all that can be one in the struggle while landing the strongest possible blows on the enemy; to raise the general level of consciousness and organization among the people; and to build communist organization win the advanced to Marxism-Leninism. As we carry out these tasks there is an incredible amount that we can learn from the October Revolution and the work by Russian communists to make it a reality.

The October Revolution and the Need for a Communist Party

Given that no ruling class, be it the capitalists and landlords who ruled Russia in 1917, or the monopoly capitalists who rule the U.S. today, have ever left the stage of history voluntarily, working and oppressed people need to be organized to take political power by whatever means necessary. This is basic lesson of the October Revolution that is universally valid.

Lenin made the following points about what is needed for revolution:

It is only when the “lower classes” do not want to live in the old way and the “upper classes” cannot carry on in the old way that the revolution can triumph. This truth can be expressed in other words: revolution is impossible without a nation-wide crisis (affecting both the exploited and the exploiters). It follows that, for a revolution to take place, it is essential, first, that a majority of the workers (or at least a majority of the class-conscious, thinking, and politically active workers) should fully realize that revolution is necessary, and that they should be prepared to die for it; second, that the ruling classes should be going through a governmental crisis, which draws even the most backward masses into politics… weakens the government, and makes it possible for the revolutionaries to rapidly overthrow it. (LCW Vol 31, p. 85)

To this we can add another precondition – the need for a Communist Party. The outstanding revolutionary leader, Mao Zedong put it like this:

If there is to be a revolution, there must be a revolutionary party. Without a revolutionary party, without a party built on the Marxist-Leninist revolutionary theory and in the Marxist-Leninist style, it is impossible to lead the working class and the broad masses of people in defeating imperialism and its running dogs. (MSW Vol 4, p. 284).

Our organization, Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO), does not claim to be the party of the working class. We are a communist organization that is working to build a new communist party. The reason we do not claim to be the party is that we do not in any real way, to use Stalin’s formulation, encompass the advanced detachment of the working class. The problem is this: most advanced workers – the activists, organizers and leaders – are not revolutionaries or communists. The active of our class are in one place politically and the communists are in another. There is a gap. A separation. So, we need to fuse Marxism and the workers’ movement.

One of the great strengths of the communist movement in Russia is that it dealt with the problem of fusing Marxism and the workers’ movement in a practical and meaningful way. In 1899 Lenin posed the issue like this:

The separation of the working-class movement and socialism gave rise to weakness and underdevelopment in each: the theories of the socialists, unfused with the workers’ struggle, remained nothing more than utopias, good wishes that had no effect on real life; the working-class movement remained petty, fragmented, and did not acquire political significance, was not enlightened by the advanced science of its time. For this reason we see in all European countries a constantly growing urge to fuse socialism with the working-class movement in a single Social-Democratic movement. When this fusion takes place the class struggle of the workers becomes the conscious struggle of the proletariat to emancipate itself from exploitation by the propertied classes, it is evolved into a higher form of the socialist workers’ movement—the independent working-class Social-Democratic party. (LCW, Vol 4, p. 255)

In addition, Lenin and the Bolsheviks also developed measures to consolidate the party – organizationally, politically and ideologically – all of which we can learn from today.

Taken as a whole, conditions in the U.S. today are favorable for building communist organization. The large number people who self-identify as “socialists” in the wake of the Sanders presidential campaign is an indicator of this, as is the upsurge of struggle against police crimes, the large-scale protests against Trump, and the openness in the labor movement to class-struggle unionism. Also, coming off the economic crisis of 2007, and the restructuring of the economy that has taken place since then, there is a sense among many, especially among young people, that capitalism is a failed system.

In all of the people’s struggles, the issue of “Who will lead?” is a basic one. Communist leadership is not preordained. It is earned, though our clarity of political line, organizational capacity and hard work. Communists need to be good at learning at the same time as we teach others. We cannot afford to criticize from the sidelines. We need to step up, and if we do not do so, opportunists of various stripes will be glad to do it for us.

For example, objectively speaking, there is a movement against Trump. It began while he was on the campaign trial, and many of us marched against him and his agenda in the streets of Cleveland during the Republican National Convention. There was a huge outpouring of struggle, which was largely spontaneous, following his election, and we are now in a period where large-scale fightbacks can be organized against his more egregious attacks – such as the Muslim ban.

In building the movement against Trump, we need to contend with reformists and other class forces, including those tied with the leadership of the Democratic Party, over the issue of who should lead. The fact is the only way we can lead this movement is by being the ranks of those who are the practical organizers of it – which means that we are among those calling the demonstrations, organizing the big protests, and are among the speakers putting out a clear line on the issues of day. To the extent that we can, we want the movement to target not only Trump, but also the monopoly capitalists who stand behind him.

In this struggle, like every other popular movement, is critical for communists do more than work to raise the general level of consciousness among the masses of people, and we can’t be content with being the among the best of the activists either. In every battle that we engage in it is critical we are summing things up with the activists and leaders, helping them understand the laws the govern monopoly capitalism, and explaining the need for socialism. By doing this we grow the communist movement in this country, and lay the basis for creating a new communist party.

It should also be noted that this work of building communist organization in the crucible of the day-to-day struggle helps to create the material basis for Marxist-Leninist organizations, to engage in joint practice, to engage in summation, and, where possible, to the achievement of principled organizational unity.

Strategy for Revolution in the U.S. and the National Question

All revolutionary strategy is based on answering the question, “Who are our friends and who are our enemies?” This is impossible without understanding the specific features of U.S. society.

Our strategy for socialist revolution is constructing a united front against the monopoly capitalist class, under the leadership of the working class and its political party, with a strategic alliance between the multinational working class and the oppressed nationalities at the core of this united front.

It is vital to understand the special needs and demands of entire nationalities within the borders of the U.S – African Americans, Chicanos and Latinos, Asian Americans, Native peoples including native Hawaiians, Arab Americans and others, are bound by the chains of national oppression.

Racism in the U.S. carries the stench of the slave market. It maintains that Black people are inferior and that racial antagonisms are ahistorical and independent of the development class societies. We totally reject this notion.

Lenin referred to pre-1917 Russia as a “prison house of nations,” and that is exactly what the U.S. is today, where racist discrimination and systematic inequality in all spheres of life – economic, political, and cultural – is the order of the day. One of the main reasons that Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik) was successful in October 1917 was that it championed the fight against national oppression, and it consistently stood for the national liberation and self-determination. There is a lot we can learn from this experience.

Likewise, by waging a struggle against the opportunism and social chauvinism that characterized the Second International, Marxism-Leninism became the revolutionary theory, where the national question takes it rightful place, where is understood where it is in reality – as vital to the revolutionary process internationally and vital to understanding the core dynamics of change in a multi-national state like the U.S.

We make the following point in our Statement on National Oppression, National Liberation and Socialist Revolution, which crystallizes our understanding of the importance of the fight against national oppression:

The struggle against imperialism and national oppression is a revolutionary struggle, for just as the people of Asia, Africa and Latin America require revolutionary struggles to overthrow colonialism and liberate their countries, so will it take a revolutionary struggle in the United States to gain full equality for oppressed nationalities. Since it is the system of imperialism that profits from and causes national oppression, only the overthrow of this system can end national oppression.

Two things are needed to develop the strategic alliance. First, we need to build the African American, Chicano, and other oppressed nationality movements, and to promote working class leadership with in those movements. Workers from oppressed nations in the trade union movement bring with them the special demands of their national liberation movements. We fight for the trade union movement to stand in unconditional solidarity with the oppressed.

Second, as we build the multinational working class movement, we need to ensure that the fight against racist discrimination, and for consistent democracy, and full equality for the oppressed is at the core of our agenda. For example, in recent years the struggle against police crimes has exploded in Black community. In a number of places this struggle has expanded to encompass the fight for community control of police. In addition to building these fights, everything possible should be done to get the labor movement to support them.

Or to take another example, we have worked hard to build the immigrant rights movement, to resist deportations and to build the fight for legalization for all. In the cities where we do this, we have worked hard to draw in the labor movement.

The work to build this strategic alliance also requires carrying out a set of interrelated and at times difficult tasks. White workers, especially those who are active and forward-looking, have the responsibility to fight white chauvinism or racism among whites and play an active role in building the fight against all manifestations of national oppression. Racial prejudice is not the primary cause of national oppression. It is the consequence, the rationalization and justification of national oppression.

Revolutionary-minded oppressed nationality workers have the responsibly to oppose narrow nationalism among workers of their own nationality.

Building a united front against monopoly capitalism, building communist organization with the aim of constructing a Leninist party of a new type, or building a strategic alliance are all tasks that can be carried out now. All the basic contradictions of imperialism are sharpening and there is a real urgency to do what must be done.

Proletarian Internationalism

The monopoly capitalists who rule the U.S. also rule an empire that extends around the world. They are parasites and exploiters who rob vast swaths of the globe – hundreds of millions of people – of their labor, land and natural resources. They have built a military machine of an unprecedented scale in world history and the U.S. is waging continuous wars, from the Philippines to Iraq. They have placed Puerto Rico under colonial rule and block its path to independence. And they make the Zionist occupation of Palestine possible.

The people of the U.S. and peoples of world have something in common, a common enemy. Every blow that the people of the U.S. land on our rulers is good for people everywhere, and vice versa, and this is the material basis for proletarian internationalism, for the unity of the working class and for oppressed nations on a world scale.

Living in the center of an imperialist empire, revolutionaries have a special responsibility to oppose the wars of our ‘own’ rulers and extend support to the oppressed. As we do so there is a great deal that we can learn from the determined fight that the Russian communists waged against the social chauvinists, i.e. those who were socialist in words, but “great nation chauvinists” in deed. As we build the anti-war movement we constantly encounter those who what to join the in demonization of the national liberation movements. We cannot let these forces set the terms of the movement.

Along a similar vein, we can never accept the imperialists’ attempts to criminalize the national liberation movements with their slanders of terrorism or narco-terrorism, and we oppose their laws that seek to outlaw international solidarity.

The Future is Bright

The October Revolution opened the road to a new stage in human history that shows what our class can do – that we can “lose our chains.” Revolutionaries in the U.S. have a big job and we are well served by using the science of Marxism-Leninism and learning from advanced experience.

Monopoly capitalism is a failed, criminal system that had a beginning and that will surely have an end. Its gravediggers are already on the scene. And while we do not know the year or month – we are certain the U.S. will have its October.

#NewYorkNY #AntiwarMovement #Socialism #FreedomRoadSocialistOrganization #frso #Antiracism #Communism #Statement #Antifascism #OctoberRevolution #Party #Centennial

The Venezuelan political situation has reached a new level of confrontation; not because the hegemonic forces within the Bolivarian process wanted it, but because the plans for a coup d’etat – which have existed since the very beginning of the process – have intensified in recent months.

These plans, which include acts of terrorist violence via fascist and mercenary groups, have failed to achieve the objectives set by imperialism and implemented with the lapdog complicity of the stateless right, grouped mostly in the MUD [Democratic Unity Roundtable].

Through the U.S. State Department and the Southern Command, these plans are made and directed, aiming to reproduce recipes of destabilization already used successfully in other countries.

The Venezuelan people have seen and suffered the most varied types of coup actions, at the media, psychological, economic, institutional, and international levels; making process with the implementation of each one of them.

[The opposition] have positioned the matrix of opinion that in Venezuela there is no geographic space without protests and that the whole people accompany them, when in reality every day are reduced the sectors that support them, since their own followers are besieged, they have paid a toll and suffer the attacks of their thuggish and terroristic actions.

Political and Conceptual Clarity

The terrorist sectors of the MUD and those acting jointly with it have directed their attacks directly to the institutional front, looking for the breakdown of governability and the capacity of the Government’s response, to weaken and demoralize the Bolivarian people.

As they do not have enough popular support, they have proposed to pressure the economy, attacking supply points and food transportation to sharpen the shortage and the increase of prices, with the purpose of encouraging participation in the looting that they often induce against hardware stores, liquor stores or other establishments that have nothing to do with food supply.

They dedicate themselves to besieging the population by deploying mercenary groups, leaving a trail of dead, wounded, destroyed, looted, incinerated and terrorized, with images that strike fear into the collective and individual imagination of the Venezuelan people and of public opinion around the world.

This criminal behavior of the fascist right is explained by the counter-offensive that has unleashed imperialism, especially North American imperialism, to regain political control in our Latin American continent and to roll back the advances in the project of national liberation of the peoples; so this conflict has a clear international and patriotic character.

The increase in the coup’s plans – fostered and supported from abroad – envision, if necessary, direct military action by imperialism in favor of the big bourgeoisie and against the interests of the working people; so this confrontation also acquires a defined class character.

For all this, the most extensive patriotic and anti-imperialist unity, especially of revolutionaries, both nationally and internationally, is indispensable.

We must also defend the people’s victories we have achieved historically and in the Bolivarian process, and the concrete expressions of the united progress of the peoples in the struggle for independence and sovereign development.

In addition, within the framework of the National Constituent Assembly (ANC), we must deepen the fight against the class enemy, making it clear that the correlation of forces within the ANC – alone – is not conducive to the revolutionary deepening of the process of the Bolivarian movement, but in order to achieve real progress and policies in favor of the interests of the people, to respond to the demands and needs of the people, it will require conscious, organized and combative mobilizations, with worker-peasant and popular unity, and the proposals of a revolutionary program.

#Venezuela #Communism #BolivarianRevolution #Americas

To mark the Nov. 28, 1820 birthday of the revolutionary Frederick Engels, Fight Back News Service is circulating the one of his writings – the third chapter of his work Socialism: Utopian and Scientific.

Chapter 3

The materialist conception of history starts from the proposition that the production of the means to support human life and, next to production, the exchange of things produced, is the basis of all social structure; that in every society that has appeared in history, the manner in which wealth is distributed and society divided into classes or orders is dependent upon what is produced, how it is produced, and how the products are exchanged. From this point of view, the final causes of all social changes and political revolutions are to be sought, not in men's brains, not in men's better insights into eternal truth and justice, but in changes in the modes of production and exchange. They are to be sought, not in the philosophy, but in the economics of each particular epoch. The growing perception that existing social institutions are unreasonable and unjust, that reason has become unreason, and right wrong [1], is only proof that in the modes of production and exchange changes have silently taken place with which the social order, adapted to earlier economic conditions, is no longer in keeping. From this it also follows that the means of getting rid of the incongruities that have been brought to light must also be present, in a more or less developed condition, within the changed modes of production themselves. These means are not to be invented by deduction from fundamental principles, but are to be discovered in the stubborn facts of the existing system of production.

What is, then, the position of modern Socialism in this connection?

The present situation of society — this is now pretty generally conceded — is the creation of the ruling class of today, of the bourgeoisie. The mode of production peculiar to the bourgeoisie, known, since Marx, as the capitalist mode of production, was incompatible with the feudal system, with the privileges it conferred upon individuals, entire social ranks and local corporations, as well as with the hereditary ties of subordination which constituted the framework of its social organization. The bourgeoisie broke up the feudal system and built upon its ruins the capitalist order of society, the kingdom of free competition, of personal liberty, of the equality, before the law, of all commodity owners, of all the rest of the capitalist blessings. Thenceforward, the capitalist mode of production could develop in freedom. Since steam, machinery, and the making of machines by machinery transformed the older manufacture into modern industry, the productive forces, evolved under the guidance of the bourgeoisie, developed with a rapidity and in a degree unheard of before. But just as the older manufacture, in its time, and handicraft, becoming more developed under its influence, had come into collision with the feudal trammels of the guilds, so now modern industry, in its complete development, comes into collision with the bounds within which the capitalist mode of production holds it confined. The new productive forces have already outgrown the capitalistic mode of using them. And this conflict between productive forces and modes of production is not a conflict engendered in the mind of man, like that between original sin and divine justice. It exists, in fact, objectively, outside us, independently of the will and actions even of the men that have brought it on. Modern Socialism is nothing but the reflex, in thought, of this conflict in fact; its ideal reflection in the minds, first, of the class directly suffering under it, the working class.

Now, in what does this conflict consist?

Before capitalist production — i.e., in the Middle Ages — the system of petty industry obtained generally, based upon the private property of the laborers in their means of production; in the country, the agriculture of the small peasant, freeman, or serf; in the towns, the handicrafts organized in guilds. The instruments of labor — land, agricultural implements, the workshop, the tool — were the instruments of labor of single individuals, adapted for the use of one worker, and, therefore, of necessity, small, dwarfish, circumscribed. But, for this very reason, they belonged as a rule to the producer himself. To concentrate these scattered, limited means of production, to enlarge them, to turn them into the powerful levers of production of the present day — this was precisely the historic role of capitalist production and of its upholder, the bourgeoisie. In the fourth section of Capital, Marx has explained in detail how since the 15th century this has been historically worked out through the three phases of simple co-operation, manufacture, and modern industry. But the bourgeoisie, as is shown there, could not transform these puny means of production into mighty productive forces without transforming them, at the same time, from means of production of the individual into social means of production only workable by a collectivity of men. The spinning wheel, the handloom, the blacksmith's hammer, were replaced by the spinning-machine, the power-loom, the steam-hammer; the individual workshop, by the factory implying the co-operation of hundreds and thousands of workmen. In like manner, production itself changed from a series of individual into a series of social acts, and the production from individual to social products. The yarn, the cloth, the metal articles that now come out of the factory were the joint product of many workers, through whose hands they had successively to pass before they were ready. No one person could say of them: “I made that; this is my product.”

But where, in a given society, the fundamental form of production is that spontaneous division of labor which creeps in gradually and not upon any preconceived plan, there the products take on the form of commodities, whose mutual exchange, buying and selling, enable the individual producers to satisfy their manifold wants. And this was the case in the Middle Ages. The peasant, e.g., sold to the artisan agricultural products and bought from him the products of handicraft. Into this society of individual producers, of commodity producers, the new mode of production thrust itself. In the midst of the old division of labor, grown up spontaneously and upon no definite plan, which had governed the whole of society, now arose division of labor upon a definite plan, as organized in the factory; side by side with individual production appeared social production. The products of both were sold in the same market, and, therefore, at prices at least approximately equal. But organization upon a definite plan was stronger than spontaneous division of labor. The factories working with the combined social forces of a collectivity of individuals produced their commodities far more cheaply than the individual small producers. Individual producers succumbed in one department after another. Socialized production revolutionized all the old methods of production. But its revolutionary character was, at the same time, so little recognized that it was, on the contrary, introduced as a means of increasing and developing the production of commodities. When it arose, it found ready-made, and made liberal use of, certain machinery for the production and exchange of commodities: merchants' capital, handicraft, wage-labor. Socialized production thus introducing itself as a new form of the production of commodities, it was a matter of course that under it the old forms of appropriation remained in full swing, and were applied to its products as well.

In the medieval stage of evolution of the production of commodities, the question as to the owner of the product of labor could not arise. The individual producer, as a rule, had, from raw material belonging to himself, and generally his own handiwork, produced it with his own tools, by the labor of his own hands or of his family. There was no need for him to appropriate the new product. It belonged wholly to him, as a matter of course. His property in the product was, therefore, based upon his own labor. Even where external help was used, this was, as a rule, of little importance, and very generally was compensated by something other than wages. The apprentices and journeymen of the guilds worked less for board and wages than for education, in order that they might become master craftsmen themselves.

Then came the concentration of the means of production and of the producers in large workshops and manufactories, their transformation into actual socialized means of production and socialized producers. But the socialized producers and means of production and their products were still treated, after this change, just as they had been before — i.e., as the means of production and the products of individuals. Hitherto, the owner of the instruments of labor had himself appropriated the product, because, as a rule, it was his own product and the assistance of others was the exception. Now, the owner of the instruments of labor always appropriated to himself the product, although it was no longer his product but exclusively the product of the labor of others. Thus, the products now produced socially were not appropriated by those who had actually set in motion the means of production and actually produced the commodities, but by the capitalists. The means of production, and production itself, had become in essence socialized. But they were subjected to a form of appropriation which presupposes the private production of individuals, under which, therefore, every one owns his own product and brings it to market. The mode of production is subjected to this form of appropriation, although it abolishes the conditions upon which the latter rests. [2]

This contradiction, which gives to the new mode of production its capitalistic character, contains the germ of the whole of the social antagonisms of today. The greater the mastery obtained by the new mode of production over all important fields of production and in all manufacturing countries, the more it reduced individual production to an insignificant residuum, the more clearly was brought out the incompatibility of socialized production with capitalistic appropriation.

The first capitalists found, as we have said, alongside of other forms of labor, wage-labor ready-made for them on the market. But it was exceptional, complementary, accessory, transitory wage-labor. The agricultural laborer, though, upon occasion, he hired himself out by the day, had a few acres of his own land on which he could at all events live at a pinch. The guilds were so organized that the journeyman of today became the master of tomorrow. But all this changed, as soon as the means of production became socialized and concentrated in the hands of capitalists. The means of production, as well as the product, of the individual producer became more and more worthless; there was nothing left for him but to turn wage-worker under the capitalist. Wage-labor, aforetime the exception and accessory, now became the rule and basis of all production; aforetime complementary, it now became the sole remaining function of the worker. The wage-worker for a time became a wage-worker for life. The number of these permanent was further enormously increased by the breaking-up of the feudal system that occurred at the same time, by the disbanding of the retainers of the feudal lords, the eviction of the peasants from their homesteads, etc. The separation was made complete between the means of production concentrated in the hands of the capitalists, on the one side, and the producers, possessing nothing but their labor-power, on the other. The contradiction between socialized production and capitalistic appropriation manifested itself as the antagonism of proletariat and bourgeoisie.

We have seen that the capitalistic mode of production thrust its way into a society of commodity-producers, of individual producers, whose social bond was the exchange of their products. But every society based upon the production of commodities has this peculiarity: that the producers have lost control over their own social inter-relations. Each man produces for himself with such means of production as he may happen to have, and for such exchange as he may require to satisfy his remaining wants. No one knows how much of his particular article is coming on the market, nor how much of it will be wanted. No one knows whether his individual product will meet an actual demand, whether he will be able to make good his costs of production or even to sell his commodity at all. Anarchy reigns in socialized production.

But the production of commodities, like every other form of production, has it peculiar, inherent laws inseparable from it; and these laws work, despite anarchy, in and through anarchy. They reveal themselves in the only persistent form of social inter-relations — i.e., in exchange — and here they affect the individual producers as compulsory laws of competition. They are, at first, unknown to these producers themselves, and have to be discovered by them gradually and as the result of experience. They work themselves out, therefore, independently of the producers, and in antagonism to them, as inexorable natural laws of their particular form of production. The product governs the producers.

In mediaeval society, especially in the earlier centuries, production was essentially directed toward satisfying the wants of the individual. It satisfied, in the main, only the wants of the producer and his family. Where relations of personal dependence existed, as in the country, it also helped to satisfy the wants of the feudal lord. In all this there was, therefore, no exchange; the products, consequently, did not assume the character of commodities. The family of the peasant produced almost everything they wanted: clothes and furniture, as well as the means of subsistence. Only when it began to produce more than was sufficient to supply its own wants and the payments in kind to the feudal lords, only then did it also produce commodities. This surplus, thrown into socialized exchange and offered for sale, became commodities.

The artisan in the towns, it is true, had from the first to produce for exchange. But they, also, themselves supplied the greatest part of their individual wants. They had gardens and plots of land. They turned their cattle out into the communal forest, which, also, yielded them timber and firing. The women spun flax, wool, and so forth. Production for the purpose of exchange, production of commodities, was only in its infancy. Hence, exchange was restricted, the market narrow, the methods of production stable; there was local exclusiveness without, local unity within; the mark in the country; in the town, the guild.

But with the extension of the production of commodities, and especially with the introduction of the capitalist mode of production, the laws of commodity-production, hitherto latent, came into action more openly and with greater force. The old bonds were loosened, the old exclusive limits broken through, the producers were more and more turned into independent, isolated producers of commodities. It became apparent that the production of society at large was ruled by absence of plan, by accident, by anarchy; and this anarchy grew to greater and greater height. But the chief means by aid of which the capitalist mode of production intensified this anarchy of socialized production was the exact opposite of anarchy. It was the increasing organization of production, upon a social basis, in every individual productive establishment. By this, the old, peaceful, stable condition of things was ended. Wherever this organization of production was introduced into a branch of industry, it brooked no other method of production by its side. The field of labor became a battle-ground. The great geographical discoveries, and the colonization following them, multiplied markets and quickened the transformation of handicraft into manufacture. The war did not simply break out between the individual producers of particular localities. The local struggles begat, in their turn, national conflicts, the commercial wars of the 17th and 18th centuries.

Finally, modern industry and the opening of the world-market made the struggle universal, and at the same time gave it an unheard-of virulence. Advantages in natural or artificial conditions of production now decide the existence or non-existence of individual capitalists, as well as of whole industries and countries. He that falls is remorselessly cast aside. It is the Darwinian struggle of the individual for existence transferred from Nature to society with intensified violence. The conditions of existence natural to the animal appear as the final term of human development. The contradiction between socialized production and capitalistic appropriation now presents itself as an antagonism between the organization of production in the individual workshop and the anarchy of production in society generally.

The capitalistic mode of production moves in these two forms of the antagonism immanent to it from its very origin. It is never able to get out of that “vicious circle” which Fourier had already discovered. What Fourier could not, indeed, see in his time is that this circle is gradually narrowing; that the movement becomes more and more a spiral, and must come to an end, like the movement of planets, by collision with the center. It is the compelling force of anarchy in the production of society at large that more and more completely turns the great majority of men into proletarians; and it is the masses of the proletariat again who will finally put an end to anarchy in production. It is the compelling force of anarchy in social production that turns the limitless perfectibility of machinery under modern industry into a compulsory law by which every individual industrial capitalist must perfect his machinery more and more, under penalty of ruin.

But the perfecting of machinery is making human labor superfluous. If the introduction and increase of machinery means the displacement of millions of manual by a few machine-workers, improvement in machinery means the displacement of more and more of the machine-workers themselves. It means, in the last instance, the production of a number of available wage workers in excess of the average needs of capital, the formation of a complete industrial reserve army, as I called it in 1845 [3], available at the times when industry is working at high pressure, to be cast out upon the street when the inevitable crash comes, a constant dead weight upon the limbs of the working-class in its struggle for existence with capital, a regulator for keeping of wages down to the low level that suits the interests of capital.

Thus it comes about, to quote Marx, that machinery becomes the most powerful weapon in the war of capital against the working-class; that the instruments of labor constantly tear the means of subsistence out of the hands of the laborer; that they very product of the worker is turned into an instrument for his subjugation.

Thus it comes about that the economizing of the instruments of labor becomes at the same time, from the outset, the most reckless waste of labor-power, and robbery based upon the normal conditions under which labor functions; that machinery,

“the most powerful instrument for shortening labor time, becomes the most unfailing means for placing every moment of the laborer's time and that of his family at the disposal of the capitalist for the purpose of expanding the value of his capital.” (Capital, English edition, p. 406)

Thus it comes about that the overwork of some becomes the preliminary condition for the idleness of others, and that modern industry, which hunts after new consumers over the whole world, forces the consumption of the masses at home down to a starvation minimum, and in doing thus destroys its own home market.

“The law that always equilibrates the relative surplus- population, or industrial reserve army, to the extent and energy of accumulation, this law rivets the laborer to capital more firmly than the wedges of Vulcan did Prometheus to the rock. It establishes an accumulation of misery, corresponding with the accumulation of capital. Accumulation of wealth at one pole is, therefore, at the same time accumulation of misery, agony of toil, slavery, ignorance, brutality, mental degradation, at the opposite pole, i.e., on the side of the class that produces its own product in the form of capital (Marx's Capital, p. 661)

And to expect any other division of the products from the capitalist mode of production is the same as expecting the electrodes of a battery not to decompose acidulated water, not to liberate oxygen at the positive, hydrogen at the negative pole, so long as they are connected with the battery.

We have seen that the ever-increasing perfectibility of modern machinery is, by the anarchy of social production, turned into a compulsory law that forces the individual industrial capitalist always to improve his machinery, always to increase its productive force. The bare possibility of extending the field of production is transformed for him into a similarly compulsory law. The enormous expansive force of modern industry, compared with which that of gases is mere child's play, appears to us now as a necessity for expansion, both qualitative and quantative, that laughs at all resistance. Such resistance is offered by consumption, by sales, by the markets for the products of modern industry. But the capacity for extension, extensive and intensive, of the markets is primarily governed by quite different laws that work much less energetically. The extension of the markets cannot keep pace with the extension of production. The collision becomes inevitable, and as this cannot produce any real solution so long as it does not break in pieces the capitalist mode of production, the collisions become periodic. Capitalist production has begotten another “vicious circle”.

As a matter of fact, since 1825, when the first general crisis broke out, the whole industrial and commercial world, production and exchange among all civilized peoples and their more or less barbaric hangers-on, are thrown out of joint about once every 10 years. Commerce is at a stand-still, the markets are glutted, products accumulate, as multitudinous as they are unsaleable, hard cash disappears, credit vanishes, factories are closed, the mass of the workers are in want of the means of subsistence, because they have produced too much of the means of subsistence; bankruptcy follows upon bankruptcy, execution upon execution. The stagnation lasts for years; productive forces and products are wasted and destroyed wholesale, until the accumulated mass of commodities finally filter off, more or less depreciated in value, until production and exchange gradually begin to move again. Little by little, the pace quickens. It becomes a trot. The industrial trot breaks into a canter, the canter in turn grows into the headlong gallop of a perfect steeplechase of industry, commercial credit, and speculation, which finally, after breakneck leaps, ends where it began — in the ditch of a crisis. And so over and over again. We have now, since the year 1825, gone through this five times, and at the present moment (1877), we are going through it for the sixth time. And the character of these crises is so clearly defined that Fourier hit all of them off when he described the first “crise plethorique”, a crisis from plethora.

In these crises, the contradiction between socialized production and capitalist appropriation ends in a violent explosion. The circulation of commodities is, for the time being, stopped. Money, the means of circulation, becomes a hindrance to circulation. All the laws of production and circulation of commodities are turned upside down. The economic collision has reached its apogee. The mode of production is in rebellion against the mode of exchange.

The fact that the socialized organization of production within the factory has developed so far that it has become incompatible with the anarchy of production in society, which exists side by side with and dominates it, is brought home to the capitalist themselves by the violent concentration of capital that occurs during crises, through the ruin of many large, and a still greater number of small, capitalists. The whole mechanism of the capitalist mode of production breaks down under the pressure of the productive forces, its own creations. It is no longer able to turn all this mass of means of production into capital. They lie fallow, and for that very reason the industrial reserve army must also lie fallow. Means of production, means of subsistence, available laborers, all the elements of production and of general wealth, are present in abundance. But “abundance becomes the source of distress and want” (Fourier), because it is the very thing that prevents the transformation of the means of production and subsistence into capital. For in capitalistic society, the means of production can only function when they have undergone a preliminary transformation into capital, into the means of exploiting human labor-power. The necessity of this transformation into capital of the means of production and subsistence stands like a ghost between these and the workers. It alone prevents the coming together of the material and personal levers of production; it alone forbids the means of production to function, the workers to work and live. On the one hand, therefore, the capitalistic mode of production stands convicted of its own incapacity to further direct these productive forces. On the other, these productive forces themselves, with increasing energy, press forward to the removal of the existing contradiction, to the abolition of their quality as capital, to the practical recognition of their character as social production forces.

This rebellion of the productive forces, as they grow more and more powerful, against their quality as capital, this stronger and stronger command that their social character shall be recognized, forces the capital class itself to treat them more and more as social productive forces, so far as this is possible under capitalist conditions. The period of industrial high pressure, with its unbounded inflation of credit, not less than the crash itself, by the collapse of great capitalist establishments, tends to bring about that form of the socialization of great masses of the means of production which we meet with in the different kinds of joint-stock companies. Many of these means of production and of distribution are, from the outset, so colossal that, like the railways, they exclude all other forms of capitalistic expansion. At a further stage of evolution, this form also becomes insufficient. The producers on a large scale in a particular branch of an industry in a particular country unite in a “Trust”, a union for the purpose of regulating production. They determine the total amount to be produced, parcel it out among themselves, and thus enforce the selling price fixed beforehand. But trusts of this kind, as soon as business becomes bad, are generally liable to break up, and on this very account compel a yet greater concentration of association. The whole of a particular industry is turned into one gigantic joint-stock company; internal competition gives place to the internal monopoly of this one company. This has happened in 1890 with the English alkali production, which is now, after the fusion of 48 large works, in the hands of one company, conducted upon a single plan, and with a capital of 6,000,000 pounds.

In the trusts, freedom of competition changes into its very opposite — into monopoly; and the production without any definite plan of capitalistic society capitulates to the production upon a definite plan of the invading socialistic society. Certainly, this is so far still to the benefit and advantage of the capitalists. But, in this case, the exploitation is so palpable, that it must break down. No nation will put up with production conducted by trusts, with so barefaced an exploitation of the community by a small band of dividend-mongers.

In any case, with trusts or without, the official representative of capitalist society — the state — will ultimately have to undertake the direction of production. [4] This necessity for conversion into State property is felt first in the great institutions for intercourse and communication — the post office, the telegraphs, the railways.

If the crises demonstrate the incapacity of the bourgeoisie for managing any longer modern productive forces, the transformation of the great establishments for production and distribution into joint-stock companies, trusts, and State property, show how unnecessary the bourgeoisie are for that purpose. All the social functions of the capitalist has no further social function than that of pocketing dividends, tearing off coupons, and gambling on the Stock Exchange, where the different capitalists despoil one another of their capital. At first, the capitalistic mode of production forces out the workers. Now, it forces out the capitalists, and reduces them, just as it reduced the workers, to the ranks of the surplus-population, although not immediately into those of the industrial reserve army.

But, the transformation — either into joint-stock companies and trusts, or into State-ownership — does not do away with the capitalistic nature of the productive forces. In the joint-stock companies and trusts, this is obvious. And the modern State, again, is only the organization that bourgeois society takes on in order to support the external conditions of the capitalist mode of production against the encroachments as well of the workers as of individual capitalists. The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine — the state of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it proceeds to the taking over of productive forces, the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The workers remain wage-workers — proletarians. The capitalist relation is not done away with. It is, rather, brought to a head. But, brought to a head, it topples over. State-ownership of the productive forces is not the solution of the conflict, but concealed within it are the technical conditions that form the elements of that solution.

This solution can only consist in the practical recognition of the social nature of the modern forces of production, and therefore in the harmonizing with the socialized character of the means of production. And this can only come about by society openly and directly taking possession of the productive forces which have outgrown all control, except that of society as a whole. The social character of the means of production and of the products today reacts against the producers, periodically disrupts all production and exchange, acts only like a law of Nature working blindly, forcibly, destructively. But,with the taking over by society of the productive forces, the social character of the means of production and of the products will be utilized by the producers with a perfect understanding of its nature, and instead of being a source of disturbance and periodical collapse, will become the most powerful lever of production itself.

Active social forces work exactly like natural forces: blindly, forcibly, destructively, so long as we do not understand, and reckon with, them. But, when once we understand them, when once we grasp their action, their direction, their effects, it depends only upon ourselves to subject them more and more to our own will, and, by means of them, to reach our own ends. And this holds quite especially of the mighty productive forces of today. As long as we obstinately refuse to understand the nature and the character of these social means of action — and this understanding goes against the grain of the capitalist mode of production, and its defenders — so long these forces are at work in spite of us, in opposition to us, so long they master us, as we have shown above in detail.

But when once their nature is understood, they can, in the hand working together, be transformed from master demons into willing servants. The difference is as that between the destructive force of electricity in the lightning in the storm, and electricity under command in the telegraph and the voltaic arc; the difference between a conflagration, and fire working in the service of man. With this recognition, at last, of the real nature of the productive forces of today, the social anarchy of production gives place to a social regulation of production upon a definite plan, according to the needs of the community and of each individual. Then the capitalist mode of appropriation, in which the product enslaves first the producer, and then the appropriator, is replaced by the mode of appropriation of the products that is based upon the nature of the modern means of production; upon the one hand, direct social appropriation, as means to the maintenance and extension of production — on the other, direct individual appropriation, as means of subsistence and of enjoyment.

Whilst the capitalist mode of production more and more completely transforms the great majority of the population into proletarians, it creates the power which, under penalty of its own destruction, is forced to accomplish this revolution. Whilst it forces on more and more of the transformation of the vast means of production, already socialized, into State property, it shows itself the way to accomplishing this revolution. The proletariat seizes political power and turns the means of production into State property.

But, in doing this, it abolishes itself as proletariat, abolishes all class distinction and class antagonisms, abolishes also the State as State. Society, thus far, based upon class antagonisms, had need of the State. That is, of an organization of the particular class which was, pro tempore, the exploiting class, an organization for the purpose of preventing any interference from without with the existing conditions of production, and, therefore, especially, for the purpose of forcibly keeping the exploited classes in the condition of oppression corresponding with the given mode of production (slavery, serfdom, wage-labor). The State was the official representative of society as a whole; the gathering of it together into a visible embodiment. But, it was this only in so far as it was the State of that class which itself represented, for the time being, society as a whole:

in ancient times, the State of slaveowning citizens;

in the Middle Ages, the feudal lords;

in our own times, the bourgeoisie.

When, at last, it becomes the real representative of the whole of society, it renders itself unnecessary. As soon as there is no longer any social class to be held in subjection; as soon as class rule, and the individual struggle for existence based upon our present anarchy in production, with the collisions and excesses arising from these, are removed, nothing more remains to be repressed, and a special repressive force, a State, is no longer necessary. The first act by virtue of which the State really constitutes itself the representative of the whole of society — the taking possession of the means of production in the name of society — this is, at the same time, its last independent act as a State. State interference in social relations becomes, in one domain after another, superfluous, and then dies out of itself; the government of persons is replaced by the administration of things, and by the conduct of processes of production. The State is not “abolished”. It dies out. This gives the measure of the value of the phrase: “a free State”, both as to its justifiable use at times by agitators, and as to its ultimate scientific insufficiency; and also of the demands of the so-called anarchists for the abolition of the State out of hand.

Since the historical appearance of the capitalist mode of production, the appropriation by society of all the means of production has often been dreamed of, more or less vaguely, by individuals, as well as by sects, as the ideal of the future. But it could become possible, could become a historical necessity, only when the actual conditions for its realization were there. Like every other social advance, it becomes practicable, not by men understanding that the existence of classes is in contradiction to justice, equality, etc., not by the mere willingness to abolish these classes, but by virtue of certain new economic conditions. The separation of society into an exploiting and an exploited class, a ruling and an oppressed class, was the necessary consequences of the deficient and restricted development of production in former times. So long as the total social labor only yields a produce which but slightly exceeds that barely necessary for the existence of all; so long, therefore, as labor engages all or almost all the time of the great majority of the members of society — so long, of necessity, this society is divided into classes. Side by side with the great majority, exclusively bond slaves to labor, arises a class freed from directly productive labor, which looks after the general affairs of society: the direction of labor, State business, law, science, art, etc. It is, therefore, the law of division of labor that lies at the basis of the division into classes. But this does not prevent this division into classes from being carried out by means of violence and robbery, trickery and fraud. it does not prevent the ruling class, once having the upper hand, from consolidating its power at the expense of the working-class, from turning its social leadership into an intensified exploitation of the masses.

But if, upon this showing, division into classes has a certain historical justification, it has this only for a given period, only under given social conditions. It was based upon the insufficiency of production. It will be swept away by the complete development of modern productive forces. And, in fact, the abolition of classes in society presupposes a degree of historical evolution at which the existence, not simply of this or that particular ruling class, but of any ruling class at all, and, therefore, the existence of class distinction itself, has become a obsolete anachronism. It presupposes, therefore, the development of production carried out to a degree at which appropriation of the means of production and of the products, and, with this, of political domination, of the monopoly of culture, and of intellectual leadership by a particular class of society, has become not only superfluous but economically, politically, intellectually, a hindrance to development.

This point is now reached. Their political and intellectual bankruptcy is scarcely any longer a secret to the bourgeoisie themselves. Their economic bankruptcy recurs regularly every 10 years. In every crisis, society is suffocated beneath the weight of its own productive forces and products, which it cannot use, and stands helpless, face-to-face with the absurd contradiction that the producers have nothing to consume, because consumers are wanting. The expansive force of the means of production burst the bonds that the capitalist mode of production had imposed upon them. Their deliverance from these bonds is the one precondition for an unbroken, constantly-accelerated development of the productive forces, and therewith for a practically unlimited increase of production itself. Nor is this all. The socialized appropriation of the means of production does away, not only with the present artificial restrictions upon production, but also with the positive waste and devastation of productive forces and products that are at the present time the inevitable concomitants of production, and that reach their height in the crises. Further, it sets free for the community at large a mass of means of production and of products, by doing away with the senseless extravagance of the ruling classes of today, and their political representatives. The possibility of securing for every member of society, by means of socialized production, an existence not only fully sufficient materially, and becoming day-by-day more full, but an existence guaranteeing to all the free development and exercise of their physical and mental faculties — this possibility is now, for the first time, here, but it is here. [5]

With the seizing of the means of production by society, production of commodities is done away with, and, simultaneously, the mastery of the product over the producer. Anarchy in social production is replaced by systematic, definite organization. The struggle for individual existence disappears. Then, for the first time, man, in a certain sense, is finally marked off from the rest of the animal kingdom, and emerges from mere animal conditions of existence into really human ones. The whole sphere of the conditions of life which environ man, and which have hitherto ruled man, now comes under the dominion and control of man, who for the first time becomes the real, conscious lord of nature, because he has now become master of his own social organization. The laws of his own social action, hitherto standing face-to-face with man as laws of Nature foreign to, and dominating him, will then be used with full understanding, and so mastered by him. Man's own social organization, hitherto confronting him as a necessity imposed by Nature and history, now becomes the result of his own free action. The extraneous objective forces that have, hitherto, governed history,pass under the control of man himself. Only from that time will man himself, more and more consciously, make his own history — only from that time will the social causes set in movement by him have, in the main and in a constantly growing measure, the results intended by him. It is the ascent of man from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom.

Let us briefly sum up our sketch of historical evolution.

I. Mediaeval Society — Individual production on a small scale. Means of production adapted for individual use; hence primitive, ungainly, petty, dwarfed in action. Production for immediate consumption, either of the producer himself or his feudal lord. Only where an excess of production over this consumption occurs is such excess offered for sale, enters into exchange. Production of commodities, therefore, only in its infancy. But already it contains within itself, in embryo, anarchy in the production of society at large.

II. Capitalist Revolution — transformation of industry, at first be means of simple cooperation and manufacture. Concentration of the means of production, hitherto scattered, into great workshops. As a consequence, their transformation from individual to social means of production — a transformation which does not, on the whole, affect the form of exchange. The old forms of appropriation remain in force. The capitalist appears. In his capacity as owner of the means of production, he also appropriates the products and turns them into commodities. Production has become a social act. Exchange and appropriation continue to be individual acts, the acts of individuals. The social product is appropriated by the individual capitalist. Fundamental contradiction, whence arise all the contradictions in which our present-day society moves, and which modern industry brings to light.

A. Severance of the producer from the means of production. Condemnation of the worker to wage-labor for life. Antagonism between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie.

B. Growing predominance and increasing effectiveness of the laws governing the production of commodities. Unbridled competition. Contradiction between socialized organization in the individual factory and social anarchy in the production as a whole.

C. On the one hand, perfecting of machinery, made by competition compulsory for each individual manufacturer, and complemented by a constantly growing displacement of laborers. Industrial reserve-army. On the other hand, unlimited extension of production, also compulsory under competition, for every manufacturer. On both sides, unheard-of development of productive forces, excess of supply over demand, over-production and products — excess there, of laborers, without employment and without means of existence. But these two levers of production and of social well-being are unable to work together, because the capitalist form of production prevents the productive forces from working and the products from circulating, unless they are first turned into capital — which their very superabundance prevents. The contradiction has grown into an absurdity. The mode of production rises in rebellion against the form of exchange.

D. Partial recognition of the social character of the productive forces forced upon the capitalists themselves. Taking over of the great institutions for production and communication, first by joint-stock companies, later in by trusts, then by the State. The bourgeoisie demonstrated to be a superfluous class. All its social functions are now performed by salaried employees.

III. Proletarian Revolution — Solution of the contradictions. The proletariat seizes the public power, and by means of this transforms the socialized means of production, slipping from the hands of the bourgeoisie, into public property. By this act, the proletariat frees the means of production from the character of capital they have thus far borne, and gives their socialized character complete freedom to work itself out. Socialized production upon a predetermined plan becomes henceforth possible. The development of production makes the existence of different classes of society thenceforth an anachronism. In proportion as anarchy in social production vanishes, the political authority of the State dies out. Man, at last the master of his own form of social organization, becomes at the same time the lord over Nature, his own master — free.

To accomplish this act of universal emancipation is the historical mission of the modern proletariat. To thoroughly comprehend the historical conditions and this the very nature of this act, to impart to the now oppressed proletarian class a full knowledge of the conditions and of the meaning of the momentous act it is called upon to accomplish, this is the task of the theoretical expression of the proletarian movement, scientific Socialism.

Notes

1. Mephistopheles in Goethe's Faust

2. It is hardly necessary in this connection to point out that, even if the form of appropriation remains the same, the character of the appropriation is just as much revolutionized as production is by the changes described above. It is, of course, a very different matter whether I appropriate to myself my own product or that of another. Note in passing that wage-labor, which contains the whole capitalist mode of production in embryo, is very ancient; in a sporadic, scattered form, it existed for centuries alongside slave-labor. But the embryo could duly develop into the capitalistic mode of production only when the necessary historical pre-conditions had been furnished.

3. “The Conditions of the Working-Class in England” — Sonnenschein & Co., p.84.

4. I say “have to”. For only when the means of production and distribution have actually outgrown the form of management by joint-stock companies, and when, therefore, the taking them over by the State has become economically inevitable, only then — even if it is the State of today that effects this — is there an economic advance, the attainment of another step preliminary to the taking over of all productive forces by society itself. But of late, since Bismarck went in for State-ownership of industrial establishments, a kind of spurious Socialism has arisen, degenerating, now and again, into something of flunkyism, that without more ado declares all State-ownership, even of the Bismarkian sort, to be socialistic. Certainly, if the taking over by the State of the tobacco industry is socialistic, then Napoleon and Metternich must be numbered among the founders of Socialism.

If the Belgian State, for quite ordinary political and financial reasons, itself constructed its chief railway lines; if Bismarck, not under any economic compulsion, took over for the State the chief Prussian lines, simply to be the better able to have them in hand in case of war, to bring up the railway employees as voting cattle for the Government, and especially to create for himself a new source of income independent of parliamentary votes — this was, in no sense, a socialistic measure, directly or indirectly, consciously or unconsciously. Otherwise, the Royal Maritime Company, the Royal porcelain manufacture, and even the regimental tailor of the army would also be socialistic institutions, or even, as was seriously proposed by a sly dog in Frederick William III's reign, the taking over by the State of the brothels.

5. A few figures may serve to give an approximate idea of the enormous expansive force of the modern means of production, even under capitalist pressure. According to Mr. Giffen, the total wealth of Great Britain and Ireland amounted, in round numbers in

1814 to £ 2,200,000,000,

1865 to £ 6,100,000,000,

1875 to £ 8,500,000,000.

As an instance of the squandering of means of production and of products during a crisis, the total loss in the German iron industry alone, in the crisis of 1873-78, was given at the second German Industrial Congress (Berlin, February 21, 1878), as 22,750,000 pounds.

#US #Remembrances #Communism #FrederickEngels #SocialismUtopianAndScientific #Theory

Fans and critics have spent the last month deconstructing everything about The Force Awakens, and its politics are no exception. Unlike Star Trek's overwhelmingly progressive vision of a communist future, the Star Wars series has always had more muddled political content. While the original trilogy pitted a group of self-described rebels against a literal Empire, several critics speculated that the films fed into the anti-Soviet Cold War politics of U.S. politicians in the 70s and 80s. Even the class composition of the rebel forces – former royalty (Princess Leia), deposed religious aristocrats (the Jedi), criminal smugglers (Han Solo), and union-busters (Lando Calrissian) – raises questions of how progressive the rebellion actually is.

In some ways, the prequel trilogy's story of the 'fall of the Old Republic' and the rise of the Empire tried to remedy this by incorporating a major galactic trade dispute and political crisis into the story. Released in 2005 amid growing opposition to the war in Iraq, Episode III: Revenge of the Sith's anti-Bush message is about as subtle as James Cameron's Avatar. But the prequels serve as a crucial reminder to progressives that a good political message can't make up for terrible production, bad acting, sloppy writing, and cringe-worthy dialogue.

The Force Awakens is actually an improvement on the previous installments in the series in this regard. Taking place 30 years after the last film ( Return of the Jedi), the story's main villain is a right-wing paramilitary outfit called the First Order, made up of the most reactionary remnants of the fallen Galactic Empire. With their Nazi-style black uniforms, demagoguery, continued use of 'stormtroopers' to enforce their rule, and penchant for inter-planetary genocide, the First Order is decidedly fascist. They're particularly timely and frightening given the rise of far-right forces in the U.S. and Western Europe.

The new set of heroes introduced in the film are also stark improvements over their counterparts in the preceding films. In the original trilogy, the only significant Black character was Lando Calrissian, an anti-union capitalist who betrays his friends to the Empire. But in The Force Awakens, we meet Finn, a Black stormtrooper who refuses to fight for the First Order and becomes a leader in the resistance. Similarly, the film's badass female lead character, Rey, comes from an impoverished background and quickly learns to use the Force in fighting the First Order – a sharp contrast to Princess Leia's royal pedigree and her passivity throughout most of the original trilogy.

While there are a lot of positive aspects to The Force Awakens, the film is by no means perfect. The prequel films got bogged down by its overwrought parliamentary politics and tedious trade disputes. As if in response to these common fan criticisms, J.J. Abrams makes the opposite mistake by giving us too little information about the Star Wars universe after the fall of the Empire. State power in the galaxy, we are told, lies in a new Republic government, which the First Order seeks to overthrow. How and more importantly why a 'rebellion' continues to exist in this context is perplexing, and its relationship to the Republic goes largely unexplained. Hopefully future installments can tell an equally tight story while also fleshing out the political dynamics of the Star Wars universe.

There's no doubt that The Force Awakens is the best Star Wars film in last 35 years, when The Empire Strikes Back – commonly regarded as the best film in the series – was released. With its return-to-form storytelling and genuinely enjoyable characters, old and new, it revived a great but struggling sci-fi series for 21st century audiences.

#JacksonvilleFl #Movies #Communism #StarWars #TheForceAwakens #TheEmpireStrikesBack #ReturnOfTheJedi #RevengeOfTheSith #Review

Nelson Mandela, a leader of the South African struggle for national liberation, passed away today, Dec 5. Mandela led the African National Congress, and along with South African communists, founded the armed struggle group Umkhonto we Sizwe, After 26 years in prison, the national liberation movement of the African masses, supported by a broad international anti-Apartheid movement, won his freedom. The official racial segregation and discrimination of Apartheid was brought down and Nelson Mandela elected president of South Africa.

The U.S. government supported Apartheid and opposed Mandela – keeping President Mandela on the U.S terrorism list up until 2008. The U.S. government has instituted laws such as the Patriot Act and NDAA and reversed other civil rights laws like the Voting Rights Act of 1964, reminiscent of apartheid South Africa.

It is important to study and understand Nelson Mandela the freedom fighter in his own words:

http://www.anc.org.za/list_by.php?by=Nelson%20Mandela

Mandela On Struggle:

“Only through hardship, sacrifice and militant action can freedom be won. The struggle is my life. I will continue fighting for freedom until the end of my days.”

“It is revolutionary…precisely because the changes it envisages cannot be won without breaking up the economic and political set-up…to win the demands calls for the organization, launching, and development of mass struggles on the widest scale.”

“The most vital task facing the democratic movement in this country is to unleash such struggles and to develop them on the basis of the concrete and immediate demands of the people from area to area. Only in this way can we build a powerful mass movement which is the only guarantee of ultimate victory in the struggle for democratic reforms”.

“The majority of South Africans, black and white, recognize that apartheid has no future. It has to be ended by our own decisive mass action in order to build peace and security. The mass campaign of defiance and other actions of our organization and people can only culminate in the establishment of democracy.”

Mandela on Apartheid, Racism, and Discrimination:

“The Government takes measures to protect White people in one way and Black people not at all.”

“Our most potent weapon against this [AIDS] virus is education. We have, perhaps, for some time, allowed ourselves to believe that like other epidemics it will come and go; that the great advances of our time in science and technology will offer us appropriate quick intervention. The key to our success is our own collective effort. The time for rhetorical arguments and victim blaming has passed. Now is the time for action.”

“As long as…people are denied the democratic vote, they shall have to vote with their feet.”

Mandela on Freedom:

“No power on earth can stop an oppressed people determined to win their freedom.”

“We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.”

Mandela on the U.S.:

“If the United States of America or Britain is having elections, they don't ask for observers from Africa or from Asia. But when we have elections, they want observers.”

“What I am condemning is that one power, with a president [George W. Bush] who has no foresight, who cannot think properly, is now wanting to plunge the world into a holocaust.” -- Iraq War speech (2003) Mandela On Workers:

“I think we may sometimes be at fault in not stressing and repeating the importance of the organized participation of workers in our struggle.”

“What has characterized workers in our country, has been the determination not to be isolated from the rest of society, not to be misled that Unions must only concern themselves with shop-floor issues.”

Mandela on Communism:

“Communists have always played an active role in the fight by colonial countries for their freedom, because the short-term objects of Communism would always correspond with the long-term objects of freedom movements.”

Mandela on Armed Struggle:

“I admit immediately that I was one of the persons who helped to form Umkhonto we Sizwe, and that I played a prominent role in its affairs until I was arrested in August 1962.”

“50 years of non-violence had brought the African people nothing but more and more repressive legislation, and fewer and fewer rights.”

“Secondly, we felt that without violence there would be no way open to the African people to succeed in their struggle against the principle of white supremacy. All lawful modes of expressing opposition to this principle had been closed by legislation, and we were placed in a position in which we had either to accept a permanent state of inferiority, or to defy the Government. We chose to defy the law. We first broke the law in a way which avoided any recourse to violence; when this form was legislated against, and then the Government resorted to a show of force to crush opposition to its policies, only then did we decide to answer violence with violence.”

“As violence in this country was inevitable, it would be unrealistic and wrong for African leaders to continue preaching peace and non-violence at a time when the Government met our peaceful demands with force.”

#UnitedStates #Remembrances #AntiRacism #Apartheid #SouthAfrica #NelsonMandela #Communism #UmkhontoWeSizwe #AfricanNationalCongress

Mass response to the fascists’ attack

On Thursday evening the thuggish and murderous attack of the fascists of the Golden Dawn against communists met the resolute response of the people Perama (a working class district in Piraeus) with a big and massive demonstration.

As the KKE denounced, the underhand and murderous attack by the Golden Dawn’s members took place during the night of the 12th September in Perama against members and cadres of the KKE and KNE who were fly posting in order to propagandize the 39th festival of KNEOdigitis. Nine people were injured by the murderous attack and were transported to the hospital, amongst them the President of the Metalworkers’ Trade Union of Piraeus, Sotiris Poulikogiannis, and other members of the Union’s Board.

The way in which the attack unfolded and the tools that were used – they emerged from the surrounding streets with cars and motorcycles and attacked the members of KKE and KNE in an underhand way with iron bars and clubs around which they had attached sharp objects- proving the murderous character of the attack. The members of the Golden Dawn -some of them had their faces covered, others wore helmets or T-shirts of t Golden Dawn- were headed by wellknown fascists and thugs in Perama.

The murderous attack that took place on Thursday proves the Nazi character of the Golden Dawn which permanently targets the KKE because it struggles for the overthrow of the rotten capitalist system that breeds and feeds fascism and Nazism.

The attack on the members of the KKE -amongst them were also cadres of the Metalworkers’ Trade Union of Piraeus and the unions of the ship-repair zone whose activity is a thorn in the side of the employers- proves their role as stooges of the system. The working people, the unemployed, the poor popular strata must decisively condemn and isolate the fascists of the Golden Dawn and their thuggish activity and struggle together with the KKE for the strengthening of the People’s Alliance in the workplaces and the neighborhoods.

Condemnation of the murderous attack

Dozens of trade unions, mass organizations and political parties in Greece have condemned with their statements the murderous attack of the members of Golden Dawn. On Friday 13th of September masses of working people, unemployed, youth, people from the poor popular strata joined together with the KKE and KNE in one of the biggest demonstrations that has taken place in the working class district in recent years.

#Greece #KKE #GoldenDawn #fascism #Communism #CommunistPartyOfGreece #Statement #Fascist #Europe

Statement of 76 Communist and Workers’ Parties against the Imperialist Military Attack against Syria

We, the communist and workers’ parties, express our solidarity with the Syrian people and denounce the military attack against Syria which is being prepared by the imperialists of the USA, NATO and the EU together with their allies in order to promote their interests in the region.

We reject the pretexts of the imperialists which, as was demonstrated, were also used in the war against Iraq and in the other imperialist wars against Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Libya.

We call on the working class, the peoples all over the world to oppose and condemn the new imperialist war, to demand that the governments of their countries have no involvement in and do not support the criminal military offensive.

Communist Party of Albania Algerian Party For Democracy And Socialism Communist Party of Australia Communist Party of Azerbaidjan Democratic, Progressive Tribune, Bahrain Communist Party of Bangladesh Communist Party Of Belarus Communist Party of Workers of Belarus Workers’ Party of Belgium Communist Party of Belgium (Wallonia-Brussels) Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia Communist Party of Brazil Brazilian Communist Party Communist Party of Britain New Communist Party of Britain Communist Party of Canada Communist Party of Chile Communist Party of Cuba The Progressive Party of the Working People – AKEL, Cyprus Communist Party of Denmark Communist Party in Denmark Danish Communist Party Communist Party of Finland Communist Workers’ Party of Finland Pole of Communist Revival, France URCF (France) Galician People's Union, Spain Unified Communist Party of Georgia German Communist Party (DKP) Communist Party of Greece Hungarian Workers’ Party Tudeh Party of Iran Communist Party of Ireland The Workers Party of Ireland Communist Party of Israel Party of the Italian Communists Communists People’s Left-Communist Party, Italy Activist Group Shiso-Undo, Japan Jordanian Communist Party Socialist Party of Latvia Socialist People’s Front of Lithuania Communist Party of Luxembourg Communist Party of Malta Communist Party of Mexico Partido Socialista APN, Mexico People’s Resistance, Moldova New Communist Party of the Netherlands Communist Party of Norway Communist Party of Pakistan Palestinian Communist Party Palestinian People’s Party Philippine Communist Party [PKP-1930] Communist Party of Poland Portuguese Communist Party Communist Party of the Russian Federation Communist Workers’ Party of Russia Communist Party of Soviet Union New Communist Party of Yugoslavia Communist Party of Slovakia Communist Party of Spain Communist Party of the People of Spain Sudanese Communist Party Communist Party, Sweden Communist Party of Sweden Communist Party of Southern Switzerland (federate to Swiss Labour Party) Syrian Communist Party Syrian Communist Party [Unified] Communist Party of Tadjikistan Communist Party of Turkey Labour Party of Turkey (EMEP) Communist Party of Ukraine Union of Communists of Ukraine Communist Party of Venezuela Party for Socialism and Liberation (USA) Communist Party USA (CPUSA) Freedom Road Socialist Organization (USA)

#UnitedStates #AntiwarMovement #Syria #NATO #USImperialism #chemicalWeapons #Communism