To mark the 132nd anniversary of the birth of Chinese revolutionary Mao Zedong, December 26, Fight Back News Service is circulating quotes from some of his writings on the United States and its role in the world.

“Chiang Kai-shek and his supporters, the U.S. reactionaries, are all paper tigers too. Speaking of U.S. imperialism, people seem to feel that it is terrifically strong. Chinese reactionaries are using the ‘strength’ of the United States to frighten the Chinese people. But it will be proved that the U.S. reactionaries, like all the reactionaries in history, do not have much strength. In the United States there are others who are really strong – the American people.”

— Talk with the American correspondent Anna Louise Strong, August 1946

“Apart from those who are deliberately deceiving the people or are utterly naive, no one will believe that a treaty can make U.S. imperialism lay down its butcher’s knife and suddenly become a Buddha, or even behave itself a little better.”

— Statement Opposing Aggression Against Southern Vietnam and Slaughter of Its People by the U.S. – Ngo Dinh Diem clique, August, 1963

“The United States has all along attempted to control the Congo. It used the United Nations forces to carry out every sort of evil deed there. It murdered the Congolese national hero Lumumba, it subverted the lawful Congolese government. It imposed the puppet Tshombe on the Congolese people, and dispatched mercenary troops to suppress the Congolese national liberation movement. And now, it is carrying out direct armed intervention in the Congo in collusion with Belgium and Britain. In so doing, the purpose of U.S. imperialism is not only to control the Congo, but also to enmesh the whole of Africa, particularly the newly independent African countries, in the toils of U.S. neo-colonialism once again. U.S. aggression has encountered heroic resistance from the Congolese people and aroused the indignation of the people of Africa and of the whole world.”

— Declaration of Support of the People of the Congo, December 1964

“The speedy development of the struggle of the American Negroes is a manifestation of sharpening class struggle and sharpening national struggle within the United States; it has been causing increasing anxiety among U.S. ruling circles. The Kennedy Administration is insidiously using dual tactics. On the one hand, it continues to connive at and take part in discrimination against Negroes and their persecution, and it even sends troops to suppress them. On the other hand, in the attempt to numb the fighting will of the Negro people and deceive the masses of the country, the Kennedy Administration is parading as an advocate of ‘the defense of human rights’ and ‘the protection of the civil rights of Negroes,’ calling upon the Negro people to exercise ‘restraint’ and proposing the ‘civil rights legislation’ to Congress. But more and more Negroes are seeing through these tactics of the Kennedy Administration. The fascist atrocities of the U.S. imperialists against the Negro people have exposed the true nature of so-called American democracy and freedom and revealed the inner link between the reactionary policies pursued by the U.S. Government at home and its policies of aggression abroad.”

— Statement Supporting the American Negroes in Their Just Struggle Against Racial Discrimination by U.S. Imperialism, August 8, 1963

“The Afro-American struggle is not only a struggle waged by the exploited and oppressed Black people for freedom and emancipation, it is also a new clarion call to all the exploited and oppressed people of the United States to fight against the barbarous rule of the monopoly capitalist class. It is a tremendous aid and inspiration to the struggle of the people throughout the world against U.S. imperialism and to the struggle of the Vietnamese people against U.S. imperialism. On behalf of the Chinese people, I hereby express resolute support for the just struggle of the Black people in the United States.”

— Statement by Comrade Mao Tse-tung, Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, in Support of the Afro-American Struggle Against Violent Repression, April 16, 1968

“The Black masses and the masses of white working people in the United States have common interests and common objectives to struggle for. Therefore, the Afro-American struggle is winning sympathy and support from increasing numbers of white working people and progressives in the United States. The struggle of the Black people in the United States is bound to merge with the American workers’ movement, and this will eventually end the criminal rule of the U.S. monopoly capitalist class.”

— Statement by Comrade Mao Tse-tung, Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, in Support of the Afro-American Struggle Against Violent Repression, April 16, 1968

“A new upsurge in the struggle against U.S. imperialism is now emerging throughout the world. Ever since the Second World War, U.S. imperialism and its followers have been continuously launching wars of aggression and the people in various countries have been continuously waging revolutionary wars to defeat the aggressors. The danger of a new world war still exists, and the people of all countries must get prepared. But revolution is the main trend in the world today.

“Unable to win in Vietnam and Laos, the U.S. aggressors treacherously engineered the reactionary coup d’etat by the Lon Nol Sirik Matak clique, brazenly dispatched their troops to invade Cambodia and resumed the bombing of North Vietnam, and this has aroused the furious resistance of the three Indo Chinese peoples. I warmly support the fighting spirit of Samdech Norodom Sihanouk, Head of State of Cambodia, in opposing U.S. imperialism and its lackeys. I warmly support the Joint Declaration of the Summit Conference of the Indo Chinese Peoples. I warmly support the establishment of the Royal Government of National Union under the Leadership of the National United Front of Kampuchea. Strengthening their unity, supporting each other and persevering in a protracted people’s war, the three Indo-Chinese peoples will certainly overcome all difficulties and win complete victory.

“While massacring the people in other countries, U.S. imperialism is slaughtering the white and black people in its own country. Nixon’s fascist atrocities have kindled the raging flames of the revolutionary mass movement in the United States. The Chinese people firmly support the revolutionary struggle of the American people. I am convinced that the American people who are fighting valiantly will ultimately win victory and that the fascist rule in the United States will inevitably be defeated.”

— People of the World, Unite and Defeat the U.S. Aggressors and All Their Running Dogs, May 23, 1970

#RevolutionaryTheory #Mao #Socialism #MarxismLeninism

The following paper by Mick Kelly, the Political Secretary of Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO), was presented at the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) International Theoretical Conference on Fascism in the 21st Century in the Imperialist Heartlands. Sydney Loving of the Central Committee of FRSO also participated in the conference, which took place November 28-29, in Utrecht, the Netherlands.

Comrades and friends,

Let me start by thanking the National Democratic Front of the Philippines for organizing this most important event. In providing a venue for revolutionaries to address the big theoretical issues facing our respective movements, the NDFP is making a real contribution to our collective efforts to shatter the chains of monopoly capitalism.

The question of fascism is an important one, and it can impact one’s strategy, tactics, and a host of organizational measures; in fact, the fascism question can be one of life and death. There is also a wealth of important texts that address the issue, and of special importance are those of works of R. Palme Dutt and Georgi Dimitrov – both of which received wide circulation by the Communist International.

Comrades might be interested to know that the issue of fascism is a mass question among large numbers of progressive people in the U.S., given the wave of attacks unleashed by the reactionary Trump administration, Over the past 9 months, millions of people, in big cities and small towns, have taken to the streets. The extremely sharp struggles against mass deportations – including the uprising in Los Angeles and high level of struggle in Chicago and Portland, Oregon – make up one of the main issues shaping domestic politics.

We see the overall conditions as extremely favorable for building communist organization. As FRSO has been able to play an important role in these fights, we continue to be in a period of extraordinary growth.

What fascism is

For some, “Fascism” as an invective – a sort of swear word, the worst thing that you can call someone or some action of government – as opposed to a political category with a scientific definition. This is a long-standing tendency on the part of the petty bourgeois left, and certainly there is no one here who does that. Others, like the Trotskyites [1], see fascism as the product of a mass movement of the petty bourgeoisie. That is not correct either.

We are in agreement with the definition adopted by 13th plenum of the Executive Committee of the Communist International which states fascism is, “the open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic and most imperialist elements of finance capital.”

At the 7th Congress of the Communist International, Dimitrov pointed out, “The accession to power of fascism is not a ordinary succession of one bourgeois government by another, but a substitution of one state form of class domination of the bourgeoisie – bourgeois democracy – for another form, open terrorist dictatorship.” [2]

This is an important point. While it is true there is not a qualitative difference between fascism and bourgeois democracy, in the sense that they are both ways that the monopoly capitalist wield state political power, there is a qualitative difference in so far as one is very different than the other when it comes to democratic rights of working and oppressed people.

Fascism and capitalist democracy are different forms of political rule. The fact that there is real difference between the two means that revolutionaries will employ different tasks, objectives, and organizational measures depending on the form of bourgeois rule. Communist organizing in a period of open terror is for all practical purposes illegal.

Fascist governments wage aggressive wars characterized by extremes of national chauvinism. In fact, bourgeois democratic governments have always done the same and often resort to the use of open terror to maintain control of their colonies or neo-colonies. In fact, the use of open terror in the neo-colonial or colonial settings is a feature that is common to fascist and bourgeois democratic governments.

In his important work The State and Revolution, Lenin points out, “A democratic republic is the best possible political shell for capitalism, and, therefore, once capital has gained possession of this very best shell (through the Palchinskys, Chernovs, Tseretelis and Co.), it establishes its power so securely, so firmly, that no change of persons, institutions or parties in the bourgeois-democratic republic can shake it.”

Why would the ruling class give up this “best possible political shell”? Stalin responds that it is because they have to:

In this connection the victory of fascism in Germany must be regarded not only as a symptom of the weakness of the working class and a result of the by the betrayals of the working class by Social-Democracy, which paved the way for fascism; it must also be regarded as a sign of weakness of the bourgeois, a sign that the bourgeois is no longer able to rule by the old methods of parliamentary and bourgeois democracy, and, as a consequence, is compelled in its home policy to resort to terrorist methods of rule — as a sign it is no longer to find a way out of the present situation on the basis of a peaceful foreign policy, and, as a consequence, is compelled to resort to a policy of war. [3]

Finally let me quote from R. Palme Dutt, “Fascism is not inevitable. Fascism is not a necessary stage of capitalist development through which all countries must pass. The social revolution can forestall Fascism, as it has done in Russia. But if the social revolution is delayed, then the menace of fascism becomes urgent.” [4]

So, there are several themes that should be circled back to. First, fascism employs open terrorism. Sure, there can be courts and parliaments, but open terrorism is what the fascist state is organized around and for. Secondly, fascism is a tool of the financial oligarchy – particularly its most reactionary and chauvinist sectors. And finally, there is the issue of extreme national chauvinism and fascism’s war-like nature.

To what degree is there a fascist danger in the U.S.?

In the entire epoch of monopoly capitalism, fascism is a latent tendency and therefore a possibility, given that the necessary conditions are present. In a context where the decline of U.S. imperialism is accelerating, where polarization is sharpening in the political superstructure, it is necessary to have a materialist evaluation of the objective conditions. That includes a realistic assessment of an immediate fascist danger.

When identifying what fascism is, in our view the most essential feature is the use of open terror by the ruling class, meaning the legal possibilities to organize for socialism are slim to nonexistent. That is not currently the situation in the United States, and communists in the U.S. need to utilize every avenue and opportunity to build the people’s struggle while developing revolutionary organization.

It is a fact that there are fascist groups and there are people in government who are pro-fascist. These elements are present in the military too. Their attacks should be met head on. The events of January 6, 2021, when Trump attempted to block the peaceful transfer of power and his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol, speaks volumes about the lengths reactionaries will go to – as well as some of the limitations that necessity places on them.

The U.S. has always repressive place. Even as it went to war on German fascism and was an important part of the world anti-fascist coalition, 120,000 Japanese Americans were put in concentration camps.

Whatever assessment one has about a fascist danger, repression and resistance to repression need to be taken seriously. This means opposing reactionary laws and measures that restrict our democratic rights. It also means pushing back hard against legal attacks we face. Over the past 15 years our organization has faced a fair amount of repression, [5] and we have developed some capacity to deal with it. The most recent example was the defense of an immigrant rights activist and comrade who was charged with conspiracy to further civil disorder in the aftermath of the anti-ICE rebellion in Los Angles. We build a broad, national defense campaign and charges were dropped.

All quantity includes quality – and there is a whole political landscape between capitalist democracy and open terror (fascism) that could be very different from what we have experienced over the past 50 years.

Fascism is a tool of the most reactional monopoly capitalists to prevent revolution. In the U.S. today, we are not in a revolutionary situation. An effective strategy against fascism would necessitate building the broadest possible united front to stop it, like for example the Popular Front employed by U.S. communists from the mid-1930s on. If there is an immediate danger of capitalist democracy being replaced by open terror, we can and will adjust our strategy and organizational functioning accordingly.

Comrades: communists have a rich history of resisting repression and defeating fascism. It was Soviet soldiers who planted the flag bearing a hammer and sickle on the ruins of the “thousand-year Reich.” Our comrades of the Philippines have repeatedly demonstrated it is possible to grow and thrive in the context of U.S.-sponsored terror. The road might be a hard one, but our future is bright.

Let me close with a quote from the outstanding revolutionary and Marxist-Leninist Mao Zedong:

I have said that all the reputedly powerful reactionaries are merely paper tigers. The reason is that they are divorced from the people. Look! Was not Hitler a paper tiger? Was Hitler not overthrown? I also said that the tsar of Russia, the emperor of China and Japanese imperialism were all paper tigers. As we know, they were all overthrown. U.S. imperialism has not yet been overthrown, and it has the atom bomb. I believe it also will be overthrown. It, too, is a paper tiger.

Long live proletarian internationalism! Long live the unity of the world’s peoples! Victory is certain, together we will win!

Notes

[1] Trosky states in Fascism: What it is and how to fight it, “The fascist movement in Italy was a spontaneous movement of large masses, with new leaders from the rank and file. It is a plebian movement in origin, directed and financed by big capitalist powers. It issued forth from the petty bourgeoisie, the slum proletariat, and even to a certain extent from the proletarian masses; Mussolini, a former socialist, is a “self-made” man arising from this movement.”

[2] Dimitrov, The Fascist offensive and the tasks of the Communist International in the fight for uniy of the working class against fascism, 7th Congress of the Communist International, page 127

[3] J. Stalin, Report to the 17th Party Congress, CW vol. 13, page 300

[4] R. Palme Dutt, Fascism and Social Revolution

[5] In 2010 more than 70 FBI agents carried out coordinate raids against antiwar and international solidarity activist – including the homes of a number of FRSO members.

#RevolutionaryTheory #FRSO #Statement #Fascism #NDFP #Philippines #Lenin #Stalin #Mao #MarxismLeninism

In his extraordinary work, The Foundations of Leninism, J.V. Stalin, the principal leader of the Soviet Union after Lenin, explained, “Theory is the experience of the working-class movement in all countries taken in its general aspect.” In other words, theory is based on the summation of practical experience. General lessons are drawn from that experience, and then applied, tested and enriched through application in practice to our particular conditions. The 1938 work The History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks) – Short Course stands out as an invaluable wellspring of theory because it provides a summation of the experiences of the Bolshevik Revolution from a Marxist-Leninist perspective. It is a summation that we can and must learn from to apply to the revolutionary tasks at hand here and now.

Indeed, such was the value of the Short Course that during the Yan’an Rectification Movement, Mao Zedong wrote, “... in studying Marxism-Leninism, we should use the History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks), Short Course as the principal material. It is the best synthesis and summing-up of the world communist movement of the past hundred years, a model of the integration of theory and practice, and so far the only comprehensive model in the whole world. When we see how Lenin and Stalin integrated the universal truth of Marxism with the concrete practice of the Soviet revolution and thereby developed Marxism, we shall know how we should work in China.”

Stalin’s role in writing the Short Course

The authorship of the Short Course has long been a topic of discussion. Some have asserted that it was written by Stalin. Others have said it was written by a committee. The fact is that it was written by a committee of party historians under the political and theoretical guidance of Stalin. 

The book Stalin’s Master Narrative, edited by David Brandenberger and Mikhail Zelenov, shows exactly what Stalin’s contributions to the book were. He revised or rewrote significant portions of the book, and cut major sections as well. For example, he cut sections that praised his individual contributions too highly, as well as sections that overestimated or overstated the scope and strength of the counterrevolutionary Trotskyite conspiracy. Meanwhile, the section on Dialectical and Historical Materialism is entirely Stalin’s work. 

Liberals, Trotskyites, and anti-communist academics often look at Stalin’s direct involvement in the authorship of the Short Course and use that to dismiss the book as self-promotion. The revisionist Khrushchev even listed Stalin’s authorship of the Short Course among Stalin’s “crimes” in order to denigrate Stalin and bury this important text. Modern scholarship has revealed the “crimes” of Stalin in the so-called “Secret Speech” to be fabrications by Khrushchev, and this is no different. Khrushchev blames Stalin for self-aggrandizing in the book, but we now know that Stalin had no patience for such lavish personal praise, and we can see that he cut such praise heavily from the book. 

In any case, Marxists ought to understand that Stalin’s leading role in the Bolshevik Revolution and the Soviet State placed him in a unique position to give an accurate, Marxist-Leninist summation of events, in the interests of developing communist theory and practice. The purpose of the book, contrary to what the revisionists and other anti-communists claim, was to educate the Party from top to bottom in Marxist-Leninist theory from a decidedly practical point of view. Indeed, if there is one current that runs steadily throughout the book, it is the unity of theory practice. 

The unity of theory and practice in the Short Course

We can see then that one of the remarkable things that the Short Course does is to unite the practice that it is summing up with the theory that guided it at the time. In this way, it looks at the major works of Lenin and Stalin and contextualizes them, explains why they were written, and breaks down their main points in relation to the struggles that they sought to inform. 

As the book traces the history of the Bolsheviks from 1883 with the formation of the Emancipation of Labor group, through the development of the Soviet Constitution adopted in December of 1936, it strives to draw out both theoretical and practical lessons that can be taken up by revolutionaries, and to show the dialectical unity between theory and practice. It is a work of historical materialism, after all. So in it we see how the important ideological, political and organizational questions arose from the material reality of the time and place in which they were born.

The Short Course takes the time to explain practically all of Lenin’s major works and how they contributed to the revolution. It explains how many of Lenin’s writings formed the foundation for the Bolshevik party. Thus, it explains how Lenin’s What Is To Be Done? formed the ideological foundation for the Marxist-Leninist party. It explains how Lenin’s One Step Forward, Two Steps Back similarly formed the organizational foundation. And it explains how Lenin’s Materialism and Emperio-Criticism formed the philosophical foundation. In this way, the Short Course is an essential textbook on Leninist theory.

We can draw innumerable practical lessons from the book as well. For example, we can see how the Bolsheviks, despite being relatively small, were able, as early as 1905, to organize and mobilize the masses of the workers and peasants of the Russian Empire in order to have an influence that far exceeded their own numbers. It not only explains, but demonstrates, the necessity of armed struggle to smash the bourgeois dictatorship and institute the dictatorship of the proletariat: working class state power with the goal of building socialism and advancing towards communism. And it shows in practice how the Bolsheviks went about building socialism in the Soviet Union, for the first time in history. 

In its conclusion, the Short Course sums up its lessons. It emphasizes the central role of the revolutionary proletarian party itself: “The history of the Party teaches us, first of all, that the victory of the proletarian revolution, the victory of the dictatorship of the proletariat, is impossible without a revolutionary party of the proletariat, a party free from opportunism, irreconcilable towards compromisers and capitulators, and revolutionary in its attitude towards the bourgeoisie and its state power.”

Second, it emphasizes the pivotal role of theory, “The history of the Party further teaches us that a party of the working class cannot perform the role of leader of its class, cannot perform the role of organizer and leader of the proletarian revolution, unless it has mastered the advanced theory of the working-class movement, the Marxist-Leninist theory.”

Third, it emphasizes the necessity of the hegemony of the working class party among the class, “The history of the Party further teaches us that unless the petty-bourgeois parties which are active within the ranks of the working class and which push the backward sections of the working class into the arms of the bourgeoisie, thus splitting the unity of the working class, are smashed, the victory of the proletarian revolution is impossible.”

Fourth, it emphasizes ideological struggle against opportunism, “The history of the Party further teaches us that unless the Party of the working class wages an uncompromising struggle against the opportunists within its own ranks, unless it smashes the capitulators in its own midst, it cannot preserve unity and discipline within its ranks, it cannot perform its role of organizer and leader of the proletarian revolution, nor its role as the builder of the new, Socialist society.”

Fifth, it emphasizes criticism and self-criticism, “The history of the Party further teaches us that a party cannot perform its role as leader of the working class if, carried away by success, it begins to grow conceited, ceases to observe the defects in its work, and fears to acknowledge its mistakes and frankly and honestly to correct them in good time.”

And finally, it emphasizes the mass line, “the history of the Party teaches us that unless it has wide connections with the masses, unless it constantly strengthens these connections, unless it knows how to hearken to the voice of the masses and understand their urgent needs, unless it is prepared not only to teach the masses, but to learn from the masses, a party of the working class cannot be a real mass party capable of leading the working class millions and all the labouring people.”

The Short Course today

The lessons of the history of the Bolshevik party are as vital today as ever. Not only is this book a textbook of Marxism-Leninism, but, as Mao said, the Short Course is also “a model of the integration of theory and practice.” We can see many of our own problems reflected in it, and by studying how the Bolsheviks addressed those problems, we can better understand how to move forward. The Short Course addresses party building, organization, the national question, imperialism, war and peace, strategy and tactics, and so much more, all in an accessible and understandable way. 

Often, when we read the writings of Lenin, we may feel detached from the broader context in which they were written. This book can serve to bridge the gap between those texts and their context, helping us to better understand their meaning and purpose. In that way, we can better understand how to apply the general theoretical lessons of those important texts to our own particular conditions. 

The problems that faced the Bolsheviks are not unique, and many of them still plague revolutionaries all over the world, including in the United States. Indeed, while our conditions may not be the same, the theory of Marxism-Leninism is essential for understanding and advancing our own revolution. We are still in the era of imperialism and proletarian revolution. Our enemy is the capitalist class. Our goal is socialism, and ultimately, communism. And our way forward is the path first charted by Lenin, Stalin, and the Bolsheviks. 

#RevolutionaryTheory #RedReviews #USSR #Stalin #MarxismLeninism

The revolutionary struggle that brought about the first socialist state in the former Russian Empire in 1917 had its first major upheavals years earlier. The Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP) had split into two factions, the Bolsheviks (meaning majority, led by V.I. Lenin) and Mensheviks (meaning minority, led by Julius Martov) in 1903. The RSDLP remained as one party formally, but the two factions, practically, had separate centers, presses, and programs. As The History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks) – Short Course puts it, “on the eve of the first Russian revolution, when the Russo-Japanese war had already begun, the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks acted as two separate political groups.”

The Russo-Japanese war broke out in 1904, and the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks each took a different stance toward the war. “The Mensheviks, including Trotsky, were sinking to a position of defending the ‘fatherland’ of the tsar, the landlords and the capitalists,” says the Short Course. “The Bolsheviks, headed by Lenin, on the other hand, held that the defeat of the tsarist government in this predatory war would be useful, as it would weaken tsardom and strengthen the revolution.”

By 1905 the struggle came to a head. The Short Course sums it up like this: 

“The workers' recourse to mass political strikes and demonstrations, the growth of the peasant movement, the armed clashes between the people and the police and troops, and, finally, the revolt in the Black Sea Fleet, all went to show that conditions were ripening for an armed uprising of the people. This stirred the liberal bourgeoisie into action. Fearing the revolution, and at the same time frightening the tsar with the spectre of revolution, it sought to come to terms with the tsar against the revolution; it demanded slight reforms ‘for the people’ so as to ‘pacify’ the people, to split the forces of the revolution and thus avert the ‘horrors of revolution.’ ‘Better part with some of our land than part with our heads,’ said the liberal landlords. The liberal bourgeoisie was preparing to share power with the tsar.’

In this time of great upheaval, the RSDLP lacked unity over tactics on how to move forward. The Bolsheviks called the Third Congress in order to assess the situation and formulate tactics that the whole party would be bound to carry out. But the Mensheviks boycotted the Third Congress and called their own “conference” in order to formulate their own tactical line apart from the Bolsheviks. 

The Third Party Congress correctly assessed that the liberal bourgeoisie didn’t want complete victory for the revolution but would instead seek compromise with the tsar on the basis of forming a constitutional monarchy. Therefore, it called for the proletariat to lead the bourgeois-democratic revolution, allied closely with the peasantry, since those were the class forces fundamentally interested in complete victory. The Menshevik conference, on the other hand, insisted that the democratic revolution be led by the liberal bourgeoisie, and that revolutionary socialists should make every effort to avoid frightening the liberal bourgeoisie and thereby undermining the revolution. The Bolsheviks advocated the revolutionary overthrow of tsarism, and the continuation of the revolution from its bourgeois-democratic stage to its socialist stage, while the Mensheviks instead advocated a policy of compromise and reform. 

Lenin’s arguments

Lenin’s book, Two Tactics of Social Democracy in the Democratic Revolution appeared two months after the Third Congress, in July 1905. It explained and developed the Bolshevik tactical line as it exposed and criticized the Menshevik tactical line. 

There are three main points in Lenin’s book that must be emphasized. 

First, Lenin argued that the proletariat must be the leader and guiding force of the bourgeois-democratic revolution. Thus, in Two Tactics Lenin writes, 

“Marxism teaches the proletarian not to keep aloof from the bourgeois revolution, not to be indifferent to it, not to allow the leadership of the revolution to be assumed by the bourgeoisie but, on the contrary, to take a most energetic part in it, to fight most resolutely for consistent proletarian democracy, for carrying the revolution to its conclusion. We cannot jump out of the bourgeois-democratic boundaries of the Russian revolution, but we can vastly extend these boundaries, and within these boundaries we can and must fight for the interests of the proletariat, for its immediate needs and for the conditions that will make it possible to prepare its forces for the future complete victory.”

For this reason, Lenin writes, “The outcome of the revolution depends on whether the working class will play the part of a subsidiary to the bourgeoisie, a subsidiary that is powerful in the force of its onslaught against the autocracy but impotent politically, or whether it will play the part of leader of the people’s revolution.” To do this, Lenin held that it was necessary for the proletariat to ally itself with the peasantry, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, to isolate the liberal bourgeoisie and force it out of leadership of the revolution. 

Second, Lenin argued that the means for overthrowing tsarism and achieving a democratic republic was through revolutionary armed struggle. 

In Two Tactics Lenin writes, “In order to be able to exercise this pressure from below, the proletariat must be armed—for in a revolutionary situation matters develop with exceptional rapidity to the stage of open civil war – and must be led by the Social-Democratic Party. The object of its armed pressure is that of ‘defending, consolidating and extending the gains of the revolution,’ i.e., those gains which from the standpoint of the interests of the proletariat must consist in the fulfilment of the whole of our minimum program.”

Against the Mensheviks, who advocated for reform during a revolutionary situation, Lenin wrote, “under the circumstances … amendments are moved by means of street demonstrations, interpolations are introduced by means of offensive action by armed citizens, opposition to the government is effected by forcibly overthrowing the government.” 

Third, Lenin argued that the revolution should have two stages, and that the revolution must not come to a halt with the victory of the bourgeois-democratic stage. Instead, it must strive immediately to pass into the socialist stage.

Therefore, Lenin writes in Two Tactics, “The proletariat must accomplish the socialist revolution, by allying to itself the mass of the semi-proletarian elements of the population in order to crush by force the resistance of the bourgeoisie and to paralyze the instability of the peasantry and the petty bourgeoisie.”

The Short Course points out, “This was a new theory which held that the Socialist revolution would be accomplished not by the proletariat in isolation as against the whole bourgeoisie, but by the proletariat as the leading class which would have as allies the semi-proletarian elements of the population, the ‘toiling and exploited millions.’” It goes on to explain, “According to this theory the hegemony of the proletariat in the bourgeois revolution, the proletariat being in alliance with the peasantry, would grow into the hegemony of the proletariat in the Socialist revolution, the proletariat now being in alliance with the other laboring and exploited masses, while the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry would prepare the ground for the Socialist dictatorship of the proletariat.”

The hegemony of the proletariat in the bourgeois-democratic revolution, the necessity of revolutionary armed struggle, and the importance of carrying the revolution forward from the democratic to the socialist stage: these are the most important lessons to draw from Lenin’s Two Tactics. 

Two Tactics today

After 1905, the democratic revolution in Russia entered a period of retreat, and wouldn’t be completed until February of 1917, after which the Bolsheviks did indeed push the revolution forward to the victorious October socialist revolution. 

Regarding Lenin’s book, Two Tactics, the Short Course says, “Its invaluable significance consists in that it enriched Marxism with a new theory of revolution and laid the foundation for the revolutionary tactics of the Bolshevik Party with the help of which in 1917 the proletariat of our country achieved the victory over capitalism.”

It is important that revolutionaries study this cornerstone of Marxist-Leninist theory today. Indeed, it explains in clear terms how revolutionaries should relate to the movements for democracy and the other class forces involved in those movements. It lays out the basic principles at the core of Leninist tactics. The lessons of Two Tactics apply to our own struggle in the U.S., where different class forces are united in struggle against monopoly capitalism. At the core of this united front is the strategic alliance of the multinational working class on the one hand and the movements of the oppressed nations and nationalities for liberation on the other hand. Lenin’s Two Tactics explains clearly the importance of the leadership of the proletariat and its need for allies. And while we must push forward and develop the struggle to defend and expand democracy in a revolutionary way, we must advance to the overthrow of the capitalist system and struggle for socialism.

#RevolutionaryTheory #Socialism #MarxismLeninism #MLTheory #RedTheory

50 years ago, on April 30, the gates of the Presidential Palace in Saigon were broken by a tank—a tank driven by a fighter for a unified and independent Vietnam. The flag of the U.S.-backed puppet regime came down, and the flag of the National Liberation Front replaced it.

Saigon, the capital of French colonialism, and then American imperialism, was no more. Saigon became Ho Chi Minh City—named for the communist leader who stood at the forefront of Vietnam’s fight for national liberation.

On July 17, 1966, Ho Chi Minh stated, “The war may last five years, ten years, 20 years, or even longer. Ha Noi, Hai Phong, and some cities and factories may be devastated. But the Vietnamese people will never be afraid! Nothing is more precious than independence and freedom. When victory comes, our people will rebuild our country, stronger and more beautiful than ever before.”

So, it came to be, after long decades of heroic struggle, the many had defeated the few. A small country defeated a big one, and Vietnam at last was liberated. A few weeks earlier, on April 18, the Cambodian puppet regime of Lon Nol was sent packing; in the capital city of Phnom Penh, streets were named after the students killed at an anti-war protest at Kent State. Laos would get free as well and embark on the socialist road.

A crucial factor in these victories was forward-looking leaders who made use of the science of Marxism-Leninism. When talking about how he became a communist, Ho Chi Minh said, “There is a legend, in our country as well as in China, on the miraculous ‘Book of the Wise.’ When facing great difficulties, one opens it and finds a way out. Leninism is not only a miraculous ‘book of the wise,’ a compass for us Vietnamese revolutionaries and people: it is also the radiant sun illuminating our path to final victory, to socialism and communism.”

The struggle to liberate Vietnam was a titanic battle that shook the world. Both the People’s Republic of China and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics proved important aid that helped make the victory possible.

Here in the United States, the movement against the war on Vietnam would have a profound impact. It brought many millions into the streets. By the war’s end, the anti-war movement was a movement in solidarity with Vietnam, and the predominant flag at U.S. demonstrations was the flag of the National Liberation Front. The struggle in Vietnam also contributed to the emergence of a new communist movement in the country, which in turn would lead to the founding of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization.

The victory in Vietnam proves that those who have a just cause and history on their side will win. Since the early 1970s, U.S. imperialism has been a state of decline, and that decline is picking up speed today.

We continue to draw inspiration from past victories and are certain that there will be many more—from Palestine to the Philippines—and yes, right here in the U.S. To quote the outstanding revolutionary Mao Zedong, “While the road ahead is tortuous, the future is bright.”

#FRSO #Statement #RevolutionaryTheory #International #Vietnam #MarxismLeninism #HoChiMinh #AntiWarMovement

In 1951 the principal leader of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin, published Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR. While it is a rather small book, its importance in the Marxist-Leninist understanding of socialism is quite large, and it deserves to be studied carefully. The book itself is a product of the discussions and debates in preparation of the excellent textbook, Political Economy, published by the Economics Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R. Preparation of this textbook under Stalin’s guidance began as early as the late 1930s and was nearing completion in 1941 before it was delayed by the outbreak of World War II. As a result, it wasn’t finally published until 1954, shortly after Stalin’s death. 

Stalin’s Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR came out of this process, specifically from a 1951 conference concerning the Political Economy textbook. The Foreword to the First Edition of the Political Economy textbook makes note of this conference. It says, “Of very great importance for the work on this textbook was the economic discussion organized in November 1951 by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. In the course of this discussion, in which hundreds of Soviet economists took an active part, the draft for a textbook of political economy submitted by the authors was subjected to a thorough critical examination.”

Stalin’s Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR is a summation of his views from this conference. It was printed in the party journal, Bolshevik, just prior to the 19th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. It presented Stalin’s thoughts on the issues raised by the conference and answered questions. It deals with a number of important questions or problems dealing with the laws governing political economy, particularly as it relates to socialist construction in light of the experiences of the Soviet Union up to that point. 

Stalin’s arguments

From the very beginning, Stalin drives home that when we are talking about socialist construction, we are talking about a law-governed process. He writes, “Marxism regards laws of science – whether they be laws of natural science or laws of political economy – as the reflection of objective processes which take place independently of the will of man. Man may discover these laws, get to know them, study them, reckon with them in his activities and utilize them in the interests of society, but he cannot change or abolish them.” In other words, we can’t just do whatever we want. We are bound by the laws of social and historical development. It is important to keep this point in mind.

Stalin addresses several dogmatic misconceptions regarding socialism. First, he discusses the question of commodity production under socialism. Stalin writes, 

“Certain comrades affirm that the Party acted wrongly in preserving commodity production after it had assumed power and nationalized the means of production in our country. They consider that the Party should have banished commodity production there and then. In this connection they cite Engels, who says: ‘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.’ These comrades are profoundly mistaken.”

Stalin is addressing a common dogmatic mistake. He points out that “Engels has in mind countries where capitalism and the concentration of production have advanced far enough both in industry and in agriculture to permit the expropriation of all the means of production in the country and their conversion into public property.” Stalin notes that the Bolshevik Revolution took place under different conditions and thus has to face the question differently. “And so, what is to be done if not all, but only part of the means of production have been socialized, yet the conditions are favourable for the assumption of power by the proletariat – should the proletariat assume power and should commodity production be abolished immediately thereafter?” These are the different conditions in which the USSR found itself. 

Stalin makes a very important point regarding commodity production under socialism: 

“It is said that commodity production must lead, is bound to lead, to capitalism all the same, under all conditions. That is not true. Not always and not under all conditions! Commodity production must not be identified with capitalist production. They are two different things. Capitalist production is the highest form of commodity production. Commodity production leads to capitalism only if there is private owner-ship of the means of production, if labour power appears in the market as a commodity which can be bought by the capitalist and exploited in the process of production, and if, consequently, the system of exploitation of wage workers by capitalists exists in the country. Capitalist production begins when the means of production are concentrated in private hands, and when the workers are bereft of means of production and are compelled to sell their labor power as a commodity. Without this there is no such thing as capitalist production.”

Stalin notes that there are two different production sectors in the USSR, “state, or publicly-owned production, and collective-farm production, which cannot be said to be publicly owned.” He notes that the collective farms are not ready to move beyond commodity relations. “At present the collective farms will not recognize any other economic relation with the town except the commodity relation – exchange through purchase and sale,” Stalin writes. “Because of this, commodity production and trade are as much a necessity with us today as they were, say, thirty years ago, when Lenin spoke of the necessity of developing trade to the utmost.” Thus Stalin explains that this is a “special kind of commodity production” which is a “commodity production without capitalists … concerned mainly with the goods of associated socialist producers.” 

Stalin further points out that some other conceptions, drawn from the Marxist analysis of capitalism, also cannot be artificially applied to the conditions of socialism. “Talk of labor power being a commodity, and of ‘hiring’ of workers sounds rather absurd now, under our system: as though the working class, which possesses means of production, hires itself and sells its labor power to itself,” Stalin explains. He goes on to say, “It is just as strange to speak now of ‘necessary’ and ‘surplus’ labor: as though, under our conditions, the labor contributed by the workers to society for the extension of production, the promotion of education and public health, the organization of defence, etc., is not just as necessary to the working class, now in power, as the labor expended to supply the personal needs of the worker and his family.” 

Related to this is the question of the Law of Value, and whether it continues to exist under socialism. The Marxist conception of the Law of Value under capitalism can be summed up like this: The value of any commodity is equal to the socially necessary labor time required to produce that commodity. In capitalist society the Law of Value causes the price of commodities to gravitate towards their value. In this way it regulates the distribution of labor-power and the means of production within the society and motivates technical progress. Stalin notes, “Value, like the law of value, is a historical category connected with the existence of commodity production.” Nevertheless, “the law of value can be a regulator of production only under capitalism, with private ownership of the means of production, and competition, anarchy of production, and crises of overproduction.” The function of the law of value under socialism is thus restricted primarily to the circulation and exchange of commodities, namely consumer goods. 

Stalin also discusses the necessity of abolishing the contradictions between town and country, and between mental and manual labor. This means, primarily, further developing the productive forces, raising agriculture to the level of industry, and raising manual labor to the level of technical work through cultural and scientific education. These are essential tasks of the period of socialist construction. 

Stalin goes on to further address questions regarding the world market and the deepening crisis of capitalism, and the continuing inevitability of inter-imperialist wars after the peace of the second World War. 

Stalin also goes on to explain the difference between the basic laws of capitalism and socialism. He says the basic law of capitalism can be put like this: “the securing of the maximum capitalist profit through the exploitation, ruin and impoverishment of the majority of the population of the given country, through the enslavement and systematic robbery of the peoples of other countries, especially backward countries, and, lastly, through wars and militarization of the national economy, which are utilized for the obtaining of the highest profits.” In contrast, Stalin says that the basic law of socialism is “the securing of the maximum satisfaction of the constantly rising material and cultural requirements of the whole of society through the continuous expansion and perfection of socialist production on the basis of higher techniques.”

The rest of the book goes into more particular aspects of the discussion around the Soviet Political Economy textbook. This is also worth careful attention, especially where Stalin answers particular questions and misconceptions, but unfortunately it's beyond our scope to get into all of that in this short review. 

Relevance of Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR for today

Stalin’s book sums up the lessons of socialist construction in the world’s first socialist state up to that point based on the principles of Marxist-Leninist science. For that reason alone, it is invaluable. Marx and Engels, the founders of modern scientific socialism, were rightfully hesitant to try to predict what socialist society would look like, though they were able to draw upon the experience of the Paris Commune of 1871, and from the basic laws of historical materialism, some fundamental points that have held true. This is most apparent in Marx’s Critique of the Gotha Program. But until the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, it wasn’t possible to concretely sum up the sustained experience of socialism in practice. Stalin’s book does just that, drawing on 34 years of socialist construction.

These lessons are important for Marxists to grasp. It is essential for those who aspire to a socialist future to understand what socialism is, and Stalin’s work lays the foundation for just such an understanding. From here, we can also look at the experiences of socialism in practice over the past 74 years since Stalin’s book was written and draw further lessons. Notably, many countries have built socialism in conditions different from those of the Soviet Union, and we can draw positive and negative lessons from their experiences. For example, we see that after the rise of Khrushchev, revisionism took hold in the USSR. The revolutionary principles of Marxism-Leninism were “revised” to accommodate a lengthy process of “economic reforms” that accelerated ideological degeneration and finally to capitalist restoration in 1991. The people’s democracies of Eastern Europe fell earlier, in 1989. But some socialist countries were able to survive and thrive. Today, the People’s Republic of China, Vietnam, Laos, Cuba and Democratic Korea still follow the socialist road, and have built socialism based on their own particular conditions. We have a lot to learn from studying their experiences as well. 

China in particular stands out. Looking at People’s China today is like looking into the future. By creatively applying Marxist-Leninist principles to Chinese conditions, the Communist Party of China has modernized their country, wiped out extreme poverty, and set out well on the way towards building prosperous and harmonious socialist society.

As General Secretary Xi Jinping said at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of China, “To uphold and develop Marxism, we must integrate it with China's specific realities. Taking Marxism as our guide means applying its worldview and methodology to solving problems in China.” Xi also says in this same report that “We have identified the principal contradiction facing Chinese society as that between unbalanced and inadequate development and the people's ever-growing needs for a better life, and we have made it clear that closing this gap should be the focus of all our initiatives.” This is perfectly in line with Stalin’s basic law of socialism discussed above, applied to the contemporary Chinese situation. 

The United States is an advanced imperialist country, the most powerful monopoly capitalist power in world history. While the U.S. is, of course, very different from Tsarist Russia or pre-revolutionary China, with its own history and problems, it too is governed by the laws of capitalist development, and likewise, the process of building socialism in this country will also proceed according to objective laws. Understanding the experiences of the socialist countries helps us to understand those laws and learn from those rich experiences. 

Revolutionaries today would do well to study Stalin’s Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR as well as the 1954 Political Economy textbook to which it contributed.

#RevolutionaryTheory #RedReviews #MarxismLeninism #Stalin

Naturally, we trace the origin of Marxism-Leninism to the theories of Karl Marx. The science of revolution bears his name, after all, together with Lenin’s. But of course we should understand that Marx wasn’t born a Marxist. This brings us to the question, which of Marx’s theories can we say are representative of Marxism? In other words, when did Marx become a Marxist, and why? By answering this, we not only proof ourselves against the dogmatist error or thinking Marxism is “whatever Marx wrote,” but we also come to a clearer understanding of what distinguishes Marxism as such.

First, let’s agree that by the time of The Communist Manifesto in 1848, we are presented with the basic ideas of Marxism. This point is not controversial. So, let’s take a look at what Marx was writing and doing before that and see if we can discern when Marxism emerged within Marx’s work. Marx’s writings in the first volume of the Marx/Engels Collected Works begin as early as 1835 when Marx was 17 years old, but nobody thinks those earliest writings are representative of Marx’s scientific socialism. 

The question arises in earnest in his early philosophical works from 1843 and 1844, from The Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right to The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts. These were written before Marx began his lifelong friendship and collaboration with Friedrich Engels.

The Manuscripts bear little resemblance to the later Marx. They don’t concern themselves with class struggle, revolution, or exploitation. Absent are the categories of historical materialism, such as mode of production, productive forces, ideology, and so on. Instead, the 1844 Manuscripts base their critique of capitalism on the concept of “alienation.” This is an idea drawn from Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit and Feuerebach’s The Essence of Christianity. Hegel argues that God alienates himself in man, and Feuerbach argues that man alienates himself in God. Marx then argues that the worker is alienated in capitalism – from what the workers produce, from the act of production, from nature, and from themselves and others. The work is full of idealist philosophical jargon like “species-being” and “life-essence.” Nevertheless, the solution, Marx says, is communism. But it is an idealized and abstract communism. As Marx puts it in the 1844 Manuscripts, 

“Communism is the positive supersession of private property as human self-estrangement, and therefore as the true appropriation of the human essence through and for man; it is the complete restoration of man to himself as a social, i.e., human, being, a restoration which has become conscious and which takes place within the entire wealth of previous periods of development. This communism, as fully developed naturalism, equals humanism, and as fully developed humanism equals naturalism; it is the genuine resolution of the conflict between man and nature, and between man and man, the true resolution of the conflict between existence and being, between objectification and self-affirmation, between freedom and necessity, between individual and species. It is the solution of the riddle of history and knows itself to be the solution.”

This is very abstract! There’s no real program, no way to get there, beyond the call for the reclamation of the human essence. Marx has not yet made the leap from “interpreting the world” to changing it. 

Meanwhile, Engels, also prior to his collaboration with Marx, wrote The Condition of the Working Class in England, which was published in 1845. This book, examining in meticulous detail the facts of working class life at the heart of the industrial revolution, is entirely concrete, and it had a tremendous impact on Marx, who read it later in 1844 prior to its publication. After reading Engels’s book, Marx abandoned his The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts altogether.

Shortly after that, Marx and Engels began their partnership in Paris to work on the book The Holy Family. In 1845 Karl Marx was expelled from France and moved to Brussels, Belgium.

While in Brussels, he produced, together with Engels, one of the most important works in the history of the international communist movement, The German Ideology, written from 1845 to 1846. This was followed not long after by Marx’s book The Poverty of Philosophy. These texts, The Holy Family, The German Ideology, and The Poverty of Philosophy, play an important role for Marx and Engels, in that their goal is to challenge the Young Hegelians, the so-called “True Socialists,” and Proudhon and his followers. This served to clear the way, ideologically, for Marxism to take its place in the workers’ movement. By 1846 Marx and Engels formed the Communist Correspondence Committee, with the goal of organizing a proletarian socialist party. The Committee was a precursor of the Communist League, for which the Manifesto was written on the eve of the Revolutions of 1848.

In all of this work prior to 1848 The German Ideology stands out. Interestingly, it was never published during Marx’s lifetime. And yet, today, it is widely recognized as the principal text in which Marx and Engels developed historical materialism. It wasn’t published until 1932 by the Marx-Engels-Lenin institute in the Soviet Union. Understanding the role The German Ideology played in the development of Marx’s thought is crucial. We can see a number of important differences between Marx’s thought prior to his partnership with Engels and after. 

Prior to 1845, Marx was himself a Young Hegelian. The Young Hegelians were a group of left-leaning philosophers strongly influenced by G.W.F. Hegel and his student, Ludwig Feuerbach. The ideas of the Young Hegelians were still thoroughly liberal and idealist. After reading The Condition of the Working Class in England and beginning his work with Engels, Marx’s entire outlook shifted profoundly to emphasize class struggle at its very core. Almost immediately, his focus in 1845 became the critique of idealist and metaphysical philosophical trends in the socialist movement – trends to which Marx himself was previously sympathetic. 

In The German Ideology, Marx and Engels write that the Young Hegelians are “sheep, who take themselves and are taken for wolves,” and “their bleating merely imitates in a philosophic form the conceptions of the German middle class.” 

“Since the Young Hegelians consider conceptions, thoughts, ideas, in fact all the products of consciousness, to which they attribute an independent existence, as the real chains of men,” write Marx and Engels “… it is evident that the Young Hegelians have to fight only against these illusions of consciousness.” How does Marx, who until only recently considered himself a Young Hegelian, break from this? He writes that “It has not occurred to any one of these philosophers to inquire into the connection of German philosophy with German reality, the relation of their criticism to their own material surroundings.” So, in The German Ideology, Marx and Engels do exactly that. They then set out to outline their materialist conception of history, how ideas arise from real material processes, and how class struggle functions as the motor of social change. 

Thus Marx broke firmly with the Young Hegelians and established the theory of historical materialism. Furthermore, he came to see historical change as a law-governed process that could be understood scientifically. The French Marxist-Leninist philosopher, Louis Althusser, beginning in the early 1960s, makes the point that The German Ideology represents the key work of what he refers to as Marx’s “epistemological break.” 

As Althusser puts it in For Marx, “There is an unequivocal ‘epistemological break’ in Marx’s work which does in fact occur at the point where Marx himself locates it, in the book, unpublished in his lifetime, which is a critique of his erstwhile philosophical (ideological) conscience: The German Ideology.” Althusser goes on to say that “This ‘epistemological break’ divides Marx’s thought into two long essential periods: the ‘ideological’ period before, and the scientific period after, the break in 1845.” In other words, this is the point where Marx’s epistemology matures.

Epistemology in philosophy refers to how we know what we know. In this way, it was a conscious and intentional break from bourgeois ideology, which had until then permeated Marx’s thinking. As Althusser later puts it in his 1974 book, Essays in Self-Criticism, “Theoretically, he wrote these manuscripts on the basis of petty-bourgeois philosophical positions, making the impossible political gamble of introducing Hegel into Feuerbach, so as to be able to speak of labor in alienation, and of History in Man.” 

On the other side of this break, we have the development of dialectical and historical materialism, the critique of political economy, and the elaboration of scientific socialism. Even after the break, “long years of positive study and elaboration were necessary before Marx could produce, fashion and establish a conceptual terminology and systematics that were adequate to his revolutionary theoretical project,” Althusser explains. In other words, after the break from bourgeois ideology, Marxism didn’t immediately burst upon the scene complete but was elaborated and developed over a period of time. 

To think of this break as a purely theoretical exercise, producing immediate theoretical results, would itself be idealism. The break was driven by the practical demands of the growing revolutionary movement. As Engels says in his book Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy, “the Revolution of 1848 thrust the whole of philosophy aside as unceremoniously as Feuerbach had thrust aside Hegel. And in the process, Feuerbach himself was also pushed into the background.” By philosophy here, Engels means idealist philosophy. In any case, the most important takeaway here is that Marx’s works prior 1845 are working within the framework of bourgeois ideology, not Marxism. 

The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 were translated into English for the first time in 1959 and immediately caused quite a stir among the revisionists as well as among academic “Marxists” in the West. The timing here is significant. These two groups, the revisionists and their academic fellow-travelers, were interested in rebranding socialism as a kind of “humanism” in the wake of Khrushchev’s “destalinization.”

At the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1956, Khrushchev set out to “revise” Marxism, stripping away its revolutionary essence and its fundamentally proletarian class character. With the notable exception of Albania and China, most parties followed along. This revisionist rebranding of socialism as humanism would later find expression in the 1989 counter-revolutions in Eastern Europe. There, as history has shown, the slogan “socialism with a human face” truly meant bourgeois liberalization and the embrace of individualism. It is to Althusser’s credit that he immediately saw this trend for what it was and struggled against it. In this context, there is a very clear reason that these revisionists and academics were so taken with the work of the early Marx: it isn’t Marxist. 

As Marxist-Leninists today, this helps us clarify a few essential points. First, Marxism isn’t just whatever Marx said. That’s dogmatism. And that kind of dogmatism can also be put into the service of Marxism’s enemies. On the contrary, Marxism is the proletarian revolutionary science of social change, founded on a fundamental break from bourgeois ideology, idealism, and metaphysical thinking of all sorts. Marx’s ideas developed and changed over the course of his career. The important thing is to master Marxism-Leninism as a science. 

Second, Marxism's purpose is not simply to understand the world, but to change it. Theory and practice are inextricably linked. Revolutionary practice depends on Marxism to be successful, and Marxism, as a science, is enriched and developed through practice. It was through building the socialist movement, organizing the Communist Correspondence Committee and the Communist League, and then through participating in the upheavals of the 1848 revolutions, that Marxism grew out of abstraction to an engagement with the real world in concrete terms. As revolutionaries today, always faced with the modern challenges of dogmatism, revisionism, and all kinds of bourgeois academic ideas masquerading as some kind of Marxism, these lessons are as important as ever. 

J. Sykes is the author of the book “The Revolutionary Science of Marxism-Leninism”. The book can be purchased by visiting tinyurl.com/revsciMLbook

#RevolutionaryTheory #Marx #MarxismLeninism

In 1942, Mao Zedong and the Communist Party of China launched a rectification movement in the Yan’an base area during the difficult years of the Second United Front. This was in the middle of the War of Resistance Against Japan. During this time, the civil war between the Communist Party of China and the reactionary Kuomintang was put on hold in order to unite and fight back against the invasion of Japanese fascism.

What was the Yan’an Rectification Movement? Essentially it was a movement to educate the party in Marxism-Leninism. It was part of a longer process of correcting major errors which truly began at the Zunyi Conference in 1935 and culminated in the Seventh National Congress of the CPC in 1945. As explained in the book A Concise History of the Communist Party of China, “After the Zunyi Meeting, the Party line had developed along a correct Marxist path. However, the subjectivism and dogmatism that had so seriously damaged the Party’s cause needed to be fully addressed from an ideological standpoint.” The Zunyi Conference in 1935 had repudiated major errors in leadership, consolidating the party’s leading core around Mao Zedong. But the problems in the center up to that point caused ripples throughout the party as a whole that had to be addressed. The Yan’an Rectification Movement set out to do exactly that.

In A History of the Modern Chinese Revolution, Ho Kan-chih explains the particular ideological context of the Yan’an Rectification Movement as follows:

“As the Party was working in the rural areas, it could not help being constantly affected by the broad mass of petty bourgeoisie which surrounded it. The bourgeoisie also tried every means to influence the Party. After the outbreak of the anti-Japanese war, a large number of progressives of peasant or urban petty-bourgeois origin joined the Party. … It was also inevitable that those members of petty-bourgeois origin who had not yet been sufficiently steeled ideologically and politically should attempt in various ways to influence the Party with their ideology and working style, and, in some cases, even to 'reform' the Party according to petty-bourgeois ideology and ways of thinking. This had led to a contradiction within the Party between proletarian and non-proletarian ideologies, especially between proletarian and petty-bourgeois ideologies. Confronted with this grave problem within its own ranks, the Party decided to take up the urgent task of educating these members in Marxism-Leninism.”

Ho goes on to explain, “The Rectification Campaign was mainly directed against tendencies towards subjectivism in the approach to study, towards sectarianism in the style of Party work and towards their form of expression – stereotyped Party jargon in literary work.” To this end, Mao Zedong wrote three short texts dealing with each of these in turn. These three essays formed the basis of the rectification movement, attacking petty-bourgeois ideology and its manifestations: “Reform Our Study.” “Rectify the Party’s Style of Work,” and “Oppose Stereotyped Party Writing.”

“Reform Our Study”

In “Reform Our Study,” Mao Zedong takes aim at subjectivist attitudes towards study, especially the problems of dogmatism and empiricism. Mao highlights three errors in particular: “neglect of the study of current conditions, neglect of the study of history and neglect of the application of Marxism-Leninism.”

Fundamentally, these problems originate from studying Marxism in the abstract, rather than studying theory in connection to practice, as it relates to China's concrete conditions and the specific tasks of the Chinese revolution. Mao explains this very clearly, saying,

“Although we are studying Marxism, the way many of our people study it runs directly counter to Marxism. That is to say, they violate the fundamental principle earnestly enjoined on us by Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin, the unity of theory and practice. Having violated this principle, they invent an opposite principle of their own, the separation of theory from practice. In the schools and in the education of cadres at work, teachers of philosophy do not guide students to study the logic of the Chinese revolution; teachers of economics do not guide them to study the characteristics of the Chinese economy; teachers of political science do not guide them to study the tactics of the Chinese revolution; teachers of military science do not guide them to study the strategy and tactics adapted to China's special features; and so on and so forth.”

To get at the heart of this, Mao contrasts the subjectivist attitude towards study to the Marxist-Leninist attitude. He writes,

“Many of our people … are doing research work but have no interest in studying either the China of today or the China of yesterday and confine their interest to the study of empty ‘theories’ divorced from reality. Many others are doing practical work, but they too pay no attention to the study of objective conditions, often rely on sheer enthusiasm and substitute their personal feelings for policy. Both kinds of people, relying on the subjective, ignore the existence of objective realities.”

Contrary to this is the Marxist-Leninist attitude towards study:

“With this attitude, one studies the theory of Marxism-Leninism with a purpose, that is, to integrate Marxist-Leninist theory with the actual movement of the Chinese revolution and to seek from this theory the stand, viewpoint and method with which to solve the theoretical and tactical problems of the Chinese revolution. Such an attitude is one of shooting the arrow at the target. The ‘target’ is the Chinese revolution, the ‘arrow’ is Marxism-Leninism. … To take such an attitude is to seek truth from facts.”

Based on this, Mao makes three proposals towards the rectification of the problem of subjectivism in study. First, he says we should make “a systematic and thorough study of the situation around us.” Second, he proposes a thorough and systematic study of the history of China “in the several fields of economic history, political history, military history and cultural history.” And third, he proposes that the whole Party study the History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks), Short Course. Mao correctly states that this book “is the best synthesis and summing-up of the world communist movement of the past hundred years, a model of the integration of theory and practice…”

“Rectify the Party’s Style of Work”

In “Rectify the Party’s Style of Work” Mao continues from where he left off in “Reform Our Study.” First, he tackles the problem of the relationship between practical work and theoretical work.

“We want theorists who can, in accordance with the Marxist-Leninist stand, viewpoint and method, correctly interpret the practical problems arising in the course of history and revolution and give scientific explanations and theoretical elucidations of China's economic, political, military, cultural and other problems. Such are the theorists we want. To be a theorist of this kind, a person must have a true grasp of the essence of Marxism-Leninism, of the Marxist-Leninist stand, viewpoint and method and of the theories of Lenin and Stalin on the colonial revolution and the Chinese revolution, and he must be able to apply them in a penetrating and scientific analysis of China's practical problems and discover the laws of development of these problems. Such are the theorists we really need.”

In other words, theoretical work must not be abstract but must be aimed at the needs of the Chinese revolution. “It is necessary to master Marxist theory and apply it,” Mao says, “master it for the sole purpose of applying it.”

Mao holds up Karl Marx himself as an example of the kind of theorists we need. He says, “Marx undertook detailed investigations and studies in the course of practical struggles, formed generalizations and then verified his conclusions by testing them in practical struggles – this is what we call theoretical work.”

Mao makes an important point. Both dogmatism and empiricism are subjectivist errors that misunderstand the dialectical relationship between theory and practice, and he says that both of these must be corrected.

“Those with book learning must develop in the direction of practice; it is only in this way that they will stop being content with books and avoid committing dogmatist errors. Those experienced in work must take up the study of theory and must read seriously; only then will they be able to systematize and synthesize their experience and raise it to the level of theory, only then will they not mistake their partial experience for universal truth and not commit empiricist errors.”

A big part of this essay deals with the problem of sectarianism. Mao breaks down several remnants of sectarianism within the party. Mao highlights a number of expressions of sectarianism within the Party: “relations between the part and the whole, relations between the individual and the Party, relations between outside and local cadres, relations between army cadres and other cadres working in the locality, relations between this and that army unit, between this and that locality, between this and that department and relations between old and new cadres.” In all of these instances, Mao’s emphasis is on putting the interests of the party and the revolution first.

There is also the problem of sectarianism in the party’s external relations. Mao writes “we cannot defeat the enemy by merely uniting the comrades throughout the Party, we can defeat the enemy only by uniting the people throughout the country.” In other words, because the Communist Party is based upon a very high degree of organizational discipline and political unity, it must be a minority in relation to the broad revolutionary masses of the people. For that reason, it is necessary for the party to unite everyone who can be united in order to defeat the class enemy.

“Oppose Stereotyped Party Writing”

At the end of “Rectify the Party’s Style of Work” Mao promises to deal with the problem of stereotyped party writing later. In “Oppose Stereotyped Party Writing,” Mao delivers on this promise. “Stereotyped Party Writing” means something specific. The term is referring to a formal, bureaucratic writing style popular with Chinese intellectuals at the time. We might compare it to a kind of overly academic style today, filled with technical jargon and a web of subheadings, long-winded, opaque, dry, and lifeless.

Instead, Mao explains that while we should explain things thoroughly and completely, we should do so simply and clearly, concisely, and in terms that are intelligible and engaging to our audience. Concerning composing leaflets and doing broad propaganda work aimed at the masses, Mao quotes Georgi Dimitrov (then the head of the Communist International) on this issue: “When writing or speaking always have in mind the rank-and-file worker who must understand you, must believe in your appeal and be ready to follow you!”

According to the book A Concise History of the Communist Party of China, “Party members followed the rectification approach of first carefully studying the relevant documents and carrying out criticism and self-criticism.” The book goes on to say,

“The rectification movement was a thoroughgoing Marxist education movement that produced tremendous results. The Movement correctly combined Marxism-Leninism with the Chinese reality, and awakened the entire Party to the Marxist ideological line of seeking truth from facts. The movement initiated large-scale discussions throughout the Party about how to regard the tenets of Marxism in light of reality, how to combine the basic tenets of Marxism with the realities of the Chinese revolution, and what attitude to adopt toward some of the major questions in the Party’s history.”

That is how the CPC sums up the lessons of the Yan’an Rectification Movement today, and its lessons are valuable for us as well.

Why should we study Mao’s writings from the Yan’an Rectification Movement today?

These days more and more people are being won over to the idea that capitalism is a failed system, and more and more people are coming to the conclusion that socialism and Marxism provide the answers to the problems posed by the continuing decline of the imperialist system.

But at the same time, just as in China at the time of the Yan’an Rectification Movement, many of these people are coming to Marxism from a petty bourgeois class background, or without a clear view on how to study. They don’t understand the absolute necessity of studying Marxism concretely as it relates to real practice in the real world. So instead, they watch streamers and videos, listen to podcasts, or read books and articles from academics that merely talk about Marxist ideas abstractly. They get their education in Marxism from people with no practical experience in organizing the masses to confront the class enemy. They learn to quote Marx and Lenin, but they don’t learn to apply the methodology of Marx and Lenin to the concrete problems that face us here and now.

These modern subjectivists don’t aim the arrow of Marxism-Leninism at the target of revolution in the United States, or use Marxism to sum up real practical experiences in organizing. The purpose of studying Marxism-Leninism is to master it and apply it. Instead, some think that before they can engage in practical work, they must first master theory, failing to understand that theory cannot be mastered in isolation from practice. Meanwhile, some others go on doing practical work in isolation from theory, thinking that theory is for someone else to deal with. Still theory and practice are isolated from one another. They make the same mistake from the other side. As a consequence, people substitute petty bourgeois radicalism or pragmatism for Marxism.

Because of this wrongheaded subjectivist approach to theory, people are “shooting blindly” or “shooting at random” when it comes to practical work, instead of “aiming the arrow at the target.”

The success of the Yan’an Rectification Movement also speaks for itself. Volume 1 of An Ideological History of the Communist Party of China says, “The years between the Zunyi Conference in 1935 to the Seventh National Congress of the CPC in 1945 were an important period in which the Party changed from a path of several setbacks to a series of continuous victories, and the whole process of organization saw rapid growth.”

We can learn a lot from the lessons of the Yan’an Rectification Movement, but we must think about how these lessons apply to our practical work in the U.S. today. Like the CPC, we too should understand the reality of our concrete conditions here in the U.S. – “seeking truth from facts.” We should study the history of the United States from the perspective of Marxism-Leninism. The Political Program of the FRSO addresses U.S. history, but we can still go deeper. For example, we can read the works of U.S. Marxist-Leninists like William Z. Foster’s Outline Political History of the Americas and The History of the Communist Party of the United States, Harry Haywood’s Black Bolshevik, and Frank Chapman’s Marxist-Leninist Perspectives on Black Liberation and Socialism, among others. And, last but not least, we should “aim the arrow at the target” by applying Marxist-Leninist theory to the concrete tasks of revolutionary organizing here and now.

Mao once famously said that if you want to know the taste of pear you have to change the pear by eating it. This is also true of theory. If you want to truly understand dialectical and historical materialism, you have to apply them to the problems of practical mass struggles.

J. Sykes is the author of the book “The Revolutionary Science of Marxism-Leninism”. The book can be purchased by visiting tinyurl.com/revsciMLbook

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Lenin’s important work, The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky, is a pamphlet written in 1918, responding to a pamphlet by the principal leader of the Second International, Karl Kautsky, entitled The Dictatorship of the Proletariat. 

The Great October Revolution of 1917 had won, and at the time of Lenin’s writing in October and November of 1918, socialism was just beginning to be built in the former Russian empire. The Second International had already split over how to relate to the First World War.

Karl Kautsky was a major figure at the time, though now he is largely remembered through the lens of Lenin’s polemics against him. He had been an associate of Friedrich Engels and had even edited Marx’s Theories of Surplus-Value. He was widely regarded within the Second International as the leading expert on so-called “Orthodox Marxism” after the death of Engels, to the point that some even called him “the Pope of Marxism.” But if the imperialist world war didn’t do enough to reveal Kautsky’s true opportunist colors, the Bolshevik Revolution certainly did. Only one year into the first sustained attempt at building socialism anywhere on Earth, and Kautsky came out strongly opposed to it. 

A series of polemics were exchanged between Kautsky and the Bolsheviks, beginning with Kautsky’s pamphlet against the dictatorship of the proletariat and Lenin’s response. The gist of Kautsky’s argument was to attempt to distort Marxism in favor of a theory of peaceful transition to socialism, against smashing the bourgeois state machinery, and against the very notion of the class nature of the state. It was an attempted broadside against the Bolshevik Revolution. On Kautsky’s side, these polemics would go on to help define the revisionist and social democratic theory of peaceful transition to socialism. And like his extraordinary book The State and Revolution, Lenin’s The Proletarian Revolution and Renegade Kautsky is not only a study of the Marxist theory of the state, but also an important Marxist-Leninist refutation of social democratic reformism. 

Having now set the stage, let’s look at the argument that Lenin presents in his response to Kautsky. It must be said that The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky gives us Lenin at his most polemical. Lenin’s wit is on full display as he unrelentingly lambasts Kautsky. It is a very entertaining read. It is a level of polemical ferocity that one doesn’t often see from Lenin, reserved only for those whom he has determined are beyond help. 

Lenin’s argument

Lenin begins by quoting Kautsky, laying out the crux of his position. “Kautsky formulates the question as follows: ‘The contrast between the two socialist trends’ (i.e., the Bolsheviks and non-Bolsheviks) ‘is the contrast between two radically different methods: the dictatorial and the democratic.’” 

Lenin immediately points out that Kautsky is obscuring the class nature of the state, by “speaking of democracy in general, and not of bourgeois democracy.” Kautsky further tries to dismiss Marx’s own writings on the dictatorship of the proletariat, saying that the theory of dictatorship of the proletariat “rests upon a single word of Karl Marx’s.”

Marx himself explains that “Between capitalist and communist society lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.”

Lenin reminds us that, in fact, Marx’s theory of the dictatorship of the proletariat is more than a “single word” written in passing, presumably of no importance. He writes 

“First of all, to call this classical reasoning of Marx’s, which sums up the whole of his revolutionary teaching, ‘a single word’ and even ‘a little word,’ is an insult to and complete renunciation of Marxism. It must not be forgotten that Kautsky knows Marx almost by heart, and, judging by all he has written, he has in his desk, or in his head, a number of pigeon-holes in which all that was ever written by Marx is most carefully filed so as to be ready at hand for quotation. Kautsky must know that both Marx and Engels, in their letters as well as in their published works, repeatedly spoke about the dictatorship of the proletariat, before and especially after the Paris Commune. Kautsky must know that the formula ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ is merely a more historically concrete and scientifically exact formulation of the proletariat’s task of ‘smashing’ the bourgeois state machine, about which both Marx and Engels, in summing up the experience of the Revolution of 1848, and, still more so, of 1871, spoke for forty years, between 1852 and 1891.”

Kautsky attempts to obscure the issue, insisting that “dictatorship means the abolition of democracy,” and that it means “the undivided rule of a single person, unrestricted by laws.” Lenin responds by saying “It is natural for a liberal to speak of ‘democracy’ in general; but a Marxist will never forget to ask: ‘for what class?’” Lenin is quick to point out that the dictatorship of the proletariat is

“not the dictatorship of a single individual, but of a class.” And he goes to explain that “To transform Kautsky’s liberal and false assertion into a Marxist and true one, one must say: dictatorship does not necessarily mean the abolition of democracy for the class that exercises the dictatorship over other classes; but it does mean the abolition (or very material restriction, which is also a form of abolition) of democracy for the class over which, or against which, the dictatorship is exercised.”

In other words, capitalist democracy doesn't exist over and above the class struggle. It is bourgeois dictatorship over the working class. Likewise, the dictatorship of the proletariat is the dictatorship of one class over another, of the working class over its former explorers and oppressors, the capitalist class. It smashes the capitalist state machinery and replaces it with working class state power in the service of socialism. 

In his defense of peaceful transition to socialism, Kautsky even goes so far as to claim the Paris Commune of 1871 as a victory for “pure democracy.” Lenin points out that the Paris Commune “waged war against Versailles as the workers’ government of France against the bourgeois government.” Lenin then goes on to quote Engels: 

“Have these gentlemen” (the anti-authoritarians) “ever seen a revolution? A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is an act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon—all of which are highly authoritarian means. And the victorious party must maintain its rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionaries. Would the Paris Commune have lasted more than a day if it had not used the authority of the armed people against the bourgeoisie? Cannot we, on the contrary, blame it for having made too little use of that authority?”

On the question of bourgeois and proletarian democracy, Lenin writes. “If we are not to mock at common sense and history, it is obvious that we cannot speak of ‘pure democracy’ as long as different classes exist; we can only speak of class democracy.” By obscuring the class nature of democracy in favor “democracy in general” Kautsky (and his social democratic followers) fail to see, as Lenin puts it, that “Proletarian democracy is a million times more democratic than any bourgeois democracy; Soviet power is a million times more democratic than the most democratic bourgeois republic.”

In other words, proletarian democracy is a democracy of a new type. Lenin explains concretely how this is so: 

“The old bourgeois apparatus—the bureaucracy, the privileges of wealth, of bourgeois education, of social connections, etc. (these real privileges are the more varied the more highly bourgeois democracy is developed)—all this disappears under the Soviet form of organisation. Freedom of the press ceases to be hypocrisy, because the printing-plants and stocks of paper are taken away from the bourgeoisie. The same thing applies to the best buildings, the palaces, the mansions and manor houses. Soviet power took thousands upon thousands of these best buildings from the exploiters at one stroke, and in this way made the right of assembly—without which democracy is a fraud—a million times more democratic for the people. Indirect elections to non-local Soviets make it easier to hold congresses of Soviets, they make the entire apparatus less costly, more flexible, more accessible to the workers and peasants at a time when life is seething and it is necessary to be able very quickly to recall one’s local deputy or to delegate him to a general congress of Soviets.”

When Kautsky objects, saying “why do we need dictatorship when we have a majority?” Lenin responds with Marx’s answer: “to break down the resistance of the bourgeoisie … to inspire the reactionaries with fear … to maintain the authority of the armed people against the bourgeoisie … that the proletariat may forcibly hold down its adversaries.” This is necessary because while “the exploiters can be defeated at one stroke in the event of a successful uprising at the center, or of a revolt in the army,” Lenin writes, “but except in very rare and special cases, the exploiters cannot be destroyed at one stroke.” He goes on to explain that “If the exploiters are defeated in one country only – and this, of course, is typical, since a simultaneous revolution in a number of countries is a rare exception – they still remain stronger than the exploited, for the international connections of the exploiters are enormous.” Furthermore, he points out that “The transition from capitalism to communism takes an entire historical epoch. Until this epoch is over, the exploiters inevitably cherish the hope of restoration, and this hope turns into attempts at restoration.” History has proven Lenin correct on each of these points.

Lenin goes on to defend particular elements of Soviet democracy from Kautsky’s attacks. While space prevents us from outlining the entirety of that argument here, we’ve covered many of the most important theoretical parts of the pamphlet and would encourage carefully reading the entire work. 

The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky today

The lessons of Lenin’s polemic with Kautsky over the dictatorship of the proletariat are important and deserve careful attention. The social democrats, revisionists, petty bourgeois radicals, and ordinary bourgeois liberals are united in the defense of democracy in the abstract and reject the necessity of proletarian dictatorship. While many can see exploitation and oppression under capitalism for what it is, reformists encourage the belief that “democracy” can permanently transform societies social relations – that we can vote our way to socialism. But, as Lenin explains and as history demonstrates, this simply isn’t the case. 

Further, the question of the dictatorship of the proletariat is one of the main points of attack by opponents of Marxism on the historical experience of the Soviet Union and on the socialist countries today, who rely upon proletarian dictatorship in defense of socialism against both imperialist intervention and capitalist restoration, while at the same time expanding a real working class democracy. 

The task that stands before us is to build a revolutionary communist party that is capable of taking power away from the capitalist class of exploiters and oppressors and putting it into the hands of the working class and its allies. The accelerating decline of monopoly capitalism demands that we do this, for the sake of building a more just socialist society – a society built upon the foundation of proletarian democracy and protected by proletarian dictatorship.

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The purpose of Marxist analysis is so that we can know how to make revolution, so that we understand the terrain of struggle, formulate correct strategy and tactics, and identify our friends and enemies. We must understand the contradictions at work in society and unite all who can be united if we want to win. So, we need to be very careful and precise in that analysis.

It is also important to challenge and correct theoretical errors that can lead us in the wrong direction. There’s a tendency from some on the left to argue that the United States should be understood today as a settler-colonial state. Such a position may seem at first glance to be obvious; many accept this position without careful consideration, simply taking its correctness as given. By automatically accepting the correctness of this position, these perhaps well-meaning revolutionaries fail to understand the ways in which this theory deviates from Marxism, and fail to consider its deeper implications for revolutionary strategy.

Overall, this is a relatively amorphous tendency, with a lot of varying positions that don’t always agree on the particulars. But, so far as there is one, the basic argument from the proponents of this theory goes something like this: The United States remains today a settler-colonial state. People of European descent, regardless of their actual class position, are settlers, and are seen as continuing to benefit from and perpetuate a colonial system. In other words, the people of the United States are divided into two camps, with the colonized in one camp, and the settlers in the other. Some even go so far as to say that this makes up the principal contradiction in the U.S. This is furthermore viewed as a fundamentally antagonistic contradiction.

This ought to be contrasted with the Marxist-Leninist view, which sees the United States as an advanced imperialist country. Again, we see a division of U.S. society into two camps. On the one hand there is the camp of the capitalists, and on the other the oppressed and exploited masses of workers and oppressed nationalities. The principal contradiction is therefore between the capitalist class on the one hand, and the multinational working class and its allies on the other, particularly the oppressed nations. Historical development is a law governed process, and it is a law of capitalist development that this basic class struggle is the fundamental contradiction inherent to capitalist society.

What’s at stake in the debate over settler-colonialism in the United States?

To put it as plainly as possible, if the proponents of the U.S. settler-colonialism theory are correct, then there is no basis whatsoever upon which to build a multinational working class communist party in this country. Indeed, such a view sees the “settler working class” as instruments of colonialism, hostile to the interests of the colonized people, rather than viewing all working and oppressed people as natural allies in the struggle against imperialism, our mutual oppressor.

Obviously, this is a very important strategic point, and it cannot go unaddressed. We should examine where this theory comes from and look at how it can be answered by Marxist-Leninist science.

Some points of historical development

We can all agree that the United States began as a settler-colonial project, founded on the genocide of Native Americans and the enslavement of Africans. We can furthermore agree that the legacy of this period of U.S. history persists. National oppression and the oppression of indigenous people continues.

However, some people believe it's as simple as “once a settler-colony, always a settler-colony.” This is metaphysical thinking. While it is true that the legacy of settler-colonialism in the United States certainly persists, the systems of oppression have not remained static. Dialectical materialism understands that the nature of a thing is defined by the contradictions inherent to it. Things aren’t fixed, but always changing and developing according to these contradictions. This is true of capitalism in the U.S. as it has developed as well. At different periods in U.S. history, different contradictions have taken the principal, determining role. As contradictions shift, so too does the terrain of struggle.

U.S. settler-colonialism is a particular social formation with a particular set of contradictions at the heart of it. Historically it is a transitionary period in the early development of the capitalist mode of production. It is characterized by the dominant role played by the contradiction between settlers on the one hand and colonized people on the other. This contradiction is the main thing shaping the trajectory of the capitalist mode of production in the period of “primitive accumulation” during its nascent development. In this way, settler-colonialism fueled the rapid growth of the capitalist mode of production in the early United States.

Those who came to the American colonies, of course, were not an undifferentiated, classless mass. As Philip S. Foner notes in the first volume of his History of the Labor Movement in the United States, “Probably half the immigrants to Colonial America were indentured servants. By 1770 a quarter of a million had entered America, of whom more than a hundred thousand were victims of kidnaping or prisoners sentenced to service.” This is, of course, in addition to “five hundred thousand Negro slaves, approximately 20 per cent of the colonial population.”

As the capitalist mode of production developed, this transitional settler-colonial period had to give way to mature competitive capitalism, bringing forth new contradictions. These contradictions changed and developed enough that the United States underwent two bourgeois revolutions, the War of Independence which overthrew the British colonial system and the Civil War, which overthrew the slave system of the Southern planter class.

As the book An Economic History of the Major Capitalist Countries by Kang Fan puts it, “American victory in the war [of Independence] and the subsequent establishment of the United States overthrew England's colonial rule in North America. Domestically, it swept aside many feudal remnants, and it opened the road for the development of capitalism.” Lenin called the War of Independence “one of those great, really liberating, really revolutionary wars of which there have been so few,” and after that war the U.S. was no longer a colony.

Industrialization brought about heightened contradictions between labor and capital. After the intensified industrial buildup of the Civil War, monopoly capitalism emerged in the United States out of the merger of banking capital with industrial capital into finance capital, bringing the capitalist mode of production into its most fully developed and final stage. The rise of monopoly capitalism brought about the end of competitive capitalism.

In a relatively short span of time, the U.S. went from being a colony to an imperialist power. The old colonial system based on the export of commodities was transformed into an imperialist system based on the export of capital. The financial oligarchy which came to dominate the U.S. sought to solve its growing crises through the oppression of whole nations and peoples, at home and abroad, in order to extract super-profits to prop up its rotten system. The multinational working class and the liberation movements of oppressed nationalities found themselves with a common enemy – the monopoly capitalist class. Thus, a united front against monopoly capitalism, based on the strategic alliance of the multinational working class and the oppressed nations, became both possible and necessary.

The national question in the U.S.

When we talk about oppressed nations in the United States, we have to be very clear. The United States is the greatest imperialist power in the world. It isn’t a colony. Like Tsarist Russia prior to the Bolshevik Revolution, it is a “prison house of nations.”

Within the borders of the U.S. there are oppressed nations. What is an oppressed nation? As Stalin defines it in Marxism and the National Question, “A nation is a historically constituted, stable community of people, formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life, and psychological make-up manifested in a common culture.” These oppressed nations are nations without states. They don’t govern themselves. The oppressed nations in the U.S. are the African American nation, with its homeland in the Black Belt South, the Chicano nation in the Southwest, and the Hawaiian nation. This national oppression exists to allow the U.S. monopoly capitalist class to draw super-profits from a higher rate of exploitation of the oppressed nationalities. This national oppression is the material basis of racist ideas, and uprooting national oppression is therefore the key to demolishing racist and white chauvinist thinking.

To be perfectly clear, it is important to note that oppressed nations are not the same thing as colonies. The correct demand for a colony is immediate independence. This is the demand we must put forward regarding Puerto Rico and other colonies, where basic democratic rights are denied and which are merely objects of plunder. The demand that must be raised regarding an oppressed nation, on the other hand, is self-determination. This is a very important distinction.

Self-determination is a democratic demand. It means that the oppressed nation ought to democratically determine its own destiny. Historically imposed obstacles to genuine political power must be systematically dismantled. And most importantly, self-determination means the right to separate in its historically constituted national territory and govern itself however it sees fit. But self-determination isn’t forced separation, just as the right to divorce isn’t forced separation. Indeed, the purpose is to create the basis for unity on a truly equal footing. Thus, self-determination is the demand of the oppressed nations in the U.S.

The demands of indigenous peoples deserve special consideration and are distinct: full sovereignty and national development of indigenous peoples, and the protection of their cultures, languages and traditions.

Finally, it must be noted that in the era of imperialism, the national question is bound up with proletarian socialist revolution. No longer is the bourgeoisie a revolutionary class. Imperialism closes off the path of independent capitalist development for the bourgeoisie of the oppressed nations. The national liberation movements therefore must ally themselves with the working class struggle, with an orientation towards socialism – or find themselves diverted into neocolonialism. In the U.S. this means that the strategic alliance between the multinational working class and the liberation movements of the oppressed nationalities is central to the united front against monopoly capitalism.

The multinational working class

For any of this to be any more than wishful thinking, a real revolutionary movement is necessary. For such a movement to be successful in the United States, such as it really is, it must have working class leadership, and the working class in the U.S. is fundamentally multinational in character.

What does this mean? The U.S. isn’t an apartheid system, like “Israel” or “Rhodesia” for example. The horrific system of Jim Crow segregation that followed the betrayal of Reconstruction was itself uprooted by the Black liberation movement. While national oppression remains, de jure segregation no longer exists. The working class, as a result of its historical development, is therefore multinational in character.

This is because workers of all nationalities, both oppressed nationality workers and white workers, toil shoulder to shoulder on assembly lines and shop floors, in kitchens, warehouses and offices, from coast to coast. Even as national oppression puts greater pressure on oppressed nationality workers, they are still forged into one multinational working class together with their white siblings as they suffer exploitation together under the same bosses.

This is also true within the territories of the oppressed nations, though there tend to be greater numbers of oppressed nationality workers proportional to white workers in those places as a simple demographic fact. The higher rate of exploitation in the oppressed nations drives down living standards for the entire multinational working class.

Mao Zedong famously said, “In the final analysis, national struggle is a matter of class struggle. Among the whites in the United States, it is only the reactionary ruling circles that oppress the black people.” Mao was explaining that while many white workers may have racist and white chauvinist ideas that have to be overcome, those ideas are the ideology of the class enemy. It is that class enemy, the capitalists, who wield the instruments of oppression against the oppressed nationalities. The ruling class, not white workers, are the bosses and the landlords. The ruling class are the ones who control the police and the courts. It is the monopoly capitalist class who reap the super-profits from national oppression.

Sources of the error

The facts of the matter are clear. Where then, does the confusion on this question come from? There are two main ideological factors leading to the development of the theory of U.S. settler-colonialism. These are, first of all, petty bourgeois radicalism, and second, a desire to “copy and paste” from the Palestinian experience.

First let’s talk about petty bourgeois radicalism. As Mao once put it, “In class society, everyone lives as a member of a particular class, and every kind of thinking, without exception, is stamped with the brand of a class.” So what is the material basis of this theory about settler-colonialism in the U.S.? Petty bourgeois radicalism is characterized, as Lenin puts it, by “the instability of such revolutionism, its barrenness, and its tendency to turn rapidly into submission, apathy, phantasms, and even a frenzied infatuation with one bourgeois fad or another.” The petty bourgeoisie, the class of small business owners or petty capitalists, is under immense pressure. They are under pressure from the working class on the one hand, whom they exploit generally, and the monopoly capitalists on the other hand, with whom they cannot compete. Because they are driven to ruin by the monopoly capitalists, and ultimately have no future as a class, they sometimes take up radical, even revolutionary, ideas, however inconsistently. These petty bourgeois radicals pride themselves on taking the most outwardly revolutionary position, regardless of whether or not it holds up to scientific analysis. Lenin writes that the petty bourgeois radical “easily goes to revolutionary extremes, but is incapable of perseverance, organization, discipline and steadfastness.” They are not members of the working class and do not grasp the centrality of the working class in the socialist revolution. They take up all sorts of petty bourgeois ideas about the backwardness or ignorance of the working class and take a pessimistic and defeatist attitude regarding the revolutionary potential of the working class. So, they seek revolutionary potential elsewhere. The only way to make such a position fit into a Marxist analysis is to revise the fundamental principles of Marxism-Leninism – namely the key role of the working class.

Second, many see the heroic struggle of Palestinian resistance against Zionism and wish to copy and paste an analysis of the Palestinian struggle onto U.S. conditions. Largely this comes from a desire to use what is happening in Palestine to draw attention to the need for revolution in the U.S. As admirable as this is, the United States is not Palestine, and so this obscures as much as it illuminates.

The contradictions at work are not the same. This is a fact clearly understood by the Marxist-Leninists in Palestine. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine themselves say in “Strategy for the Liberation of Palestine”, their main programmatic document, “The class structure in an underdeveloped community naturally differs from that of industrial communities. In an industrial community there is a strong capitalist class opposite a numerous working class, and the basic struggle in such communities is a sharp clash between these classes.” In other words, we have to understand the strategic array of various forces based on the class contradictions at work. The Palestinians have done their own analysis of their concrete conditions, and we must likewise analyze our own.

The Palestinians find themselves occupied by an apartheid state, much like Zimbabwe prior to liberation. The principal contradiction in Palestine is certainly that between the Palestinian resistance movement on the one hand and the Zionists and their imperialist supporters on the other. That is the contradiction that is clearly driving things forward. In the U.S., where people of all nationalities are forged into one multinational working class, there is a basis to build a multinational working class party. Under Israeli apartheid, there is no such multinational working class. The analogy breaks down when faced with concrete reality.

Indeed, the situation the Palestinian comrades find themselves in isn’t the norm on a global scale. In fact, it is quite rare. Some of the most recent examples include Angola, Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau, none of which remain settler-colonies. Unlike in Palestine, which is occupied by the Zionist apartheid state, in much of the underdeveloped world neocolonialism holds sway, where a class of compradores and traitors rules on behalf of the imperialists, creating a show of nominal independence while the economic life of the country is in fact entirely subservient to the imperialist powers. Settler-colonialism is used in Palestine because Israel is the lynchpin of U.S. hegemony in the Middle East. Because U.S. power in the Middle East depends on the survival of its regional proxy, oppression is especially sharp.

Strategy for revolution

Revolution in the United States requires Marxist-Leninist analysis. Furthermore, it requires the leadership of the multinational working class, organized in a Marxist-Leninist party. The misguided theory of settler-colonialism in the United States has to be overcome if we are to accomplish this historic task.

This erroneous theory of settler-colonialism is an obstacle to building the strategic alliance that must be at the core of any revolutionary strategy that can hope to be successful. We have to base that strategy on the contradictions that are truly driving things forward in the real world, and that contradiction is between the capitalist class on the one hand, and the oppressed and exploited masses of workers and oppressed nationalities on the other.

We live in the belly of the beast, in the heart of the most vicious imperialist power in the world. We have to turn the whole order of things upside down, and, if we’re going to do that, then we have to accomplish several major tasks.

Our central task is party building. We have to fuse Marxism-Leninism with the multinational working class and build a revolutionary communist party that can contend for power. And we have to build around that party a united front against monopoly capitalism, with the strategic alliance of the multinational working class and oppressed nationalities at its core. In order to do this, we have to be crystal clear in our analysis, so that we can put that analysis to work.

Only the multinational working class, allied with the liberation movements of oppressed nationalities, can overthrow the rule of the capitalists, smash the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, build socialism, and end exploitation and oppression once and for all.

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Lenin’s important book, “Left Wing” Communism, An Infantile Disorder, was written in 1920. According to the subtitle of the original manuscript, it was intended to be “a popular exposition on Marxist strategy and tactics.” After the victory of the Great October Socialist Revolution in 1917, the working class in the former Russian Empire had smashed its chains and set out on the road to socialism. Revolutionaries all over the world were eager to understand how the Bolsheviks had succeeded in defeating Tsarism and imperialism. Lenin, therefore, wrote this book to help guide the international communist movement and to sum up some of the critical lessons of the revolution in Russia.  

Reading this book by Lenin, one point is made clear again and again – there are no ready-made formulas that can be applied whenever and wherever just the same, but, rather, the concrete analysis of concrete conditions is paramount, and everything must be undertaken in accordance with the present time, place and conditions. Marxism-Leninism is a revolutionary science. It understands that there are general laws of motion that hold true. At the same time, those general laws must be applied creatively to any particular situation based on a dialectical analysis of the material processes at work. 

Lenin’s argument

Lenin begins this text with a look at what is universal in the experience of the Russian revolution. He says that “the Russian model … reveals to all countries something – and something highly significant – of their near and inevitable future.” 

From the outset, Lenin stresses that “the experience of the victorious dictatorship of the proletariat in Russia has clearly shown even to those who are incapable of thinking or have had no occasion to give thought to the matter that absolute centralization and rigorous discipline of the proletariat are an essential condition of victory over the bourgeoisie.” This is Lenin’s first point, that a party of the Bolshevik type is absolutely necessary if the working class is to win power. 

After a summation of the history of Bolshevism, Lenin begins to draw some conclusions. The first of these is that Bolshevism gained strength through struggle against opportunism within the revolutionary movement. Lenin writes that “Bolshevism’s principal enemy within the working-class movement” from 1914 until the time of his writing this book, was, “First and foremost, the struggle against opportunism which in 1914 definitely developed into social-chauvinism and definitely sided with the bourgeoisie, against the proletariat.” This is the “right” opportunist trend. This struggle is well known, Lenin says. If we want to study it, we can look at Lenin’s other texts like The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky. Here he wants to focus on another enemy of the working class, the trend of “left” opportunism. This takes shape as “petty-bourgeois revolutionism,” and Lenin explains how this arises ideologically from the material class position of the petty bourgeoisie, among whom it is rooted. 

“...[T]he petty proprietor, the small master (a social type existing on a very extensive and even mass scale in many European countries), who, under capitalism, always suffers oppression and very frequently a most acute and rapid deterioration in his conditions of life, and even ruin, easily goes to revolutionary extremes, but is incapable of perseverance, organization, discipline and steadfastness.”

He draws particular attention to “the instability of such revolutionism, its barrenness, and its tendency to turn rapidly into submission, apathy, phantasms, and even a frenzied infatuation with one bourgeois fad or another.” Surely everyone who has spent any time organizing has encountered these people and knows exactly what Lenin means. 

Drawing from the Bolshevik experience, Lenin writes, “The struggle that Bolshevism waged against ‘Left’ deviations within its own Party assumed particularly large proportions on two occasions: in 1908, on the question of whether or not to participate in a most reactionary ‘parliament’ and in the legal workers’ societies, which were being restricted by most reactionary laws; and again in 1918 (the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk), on the question of whether one ‘compromise’ or another was permissible.”

These are today still the points where the ultra-leftists try to drag the revolutionary struggle into the mire: how to relate to bourgeois elections, how to relate to the trade unions, and how to deal with the question of compromise. 

Bourgeois elections

Looking at how Lenin and the Bolsheviks dealt with the question of bourgeois elections, we would benefit from quoting the following paragraph in full: 

“The Bolsheviks’ boycott of “parliament” in 1905 enriched the revolutionary proletariat with highly valuable political experience and showed that, when legal and illegal parliamentary and non-parliamentary forms of struggle are combined, it is sometimes useful and even essential to reject parliamentary forms. It would, however, be highly erroneous to apply this experience blindly, imitatively and uncritically to other conditions and other situations. The Bolsheviks’ boycott of the Duma in 1906 was a mistake, although a minor and easily remediable one.  The boycott of the Duma in 1907, 1908 and subsequent years was a most serious error and difficult to remedy, because, on the one hand, a very rapid rise of the revolutionary tide and its conversion into an uprising was not to be expected, and, on the other hand, the entire historical situation attendant upon the renovation of the bourgeois monarchy called for legal and illegal activities being combined. Today, when we look back at this fully completed historical period, whose connection with subsequent periods has now become quite clear, it becomes most obvious that in 1908–14 the Bolsheviks could not have preserved (let alone strengthened and developed) the core of the revolutionary party of the proletariat, had they not upheld, in a most strenuous struggle, the viewpoint that it was obligatory to combine legal and illegal forms of struggle, and that it was obligatory to participate even in a most reactionary parliament and in a number of other institutions hemmed in by reactionary laws (sick benefit societies, etc.).”

So, should revolutionaries participate in bourgeois elections, and how should they go about it? Lenin doesn’t exactly give us a final “yes” or “no” which is true always and everywhere. He does say that “participation in a bourgeois-democratic parliament … actually helps that proletariat to prove to the backward masses why such parliaments deserve to be done away with; it facilitates their successful dissolution, and helps to make bourgeois parliamentarianism ‘politically obsolete’.” 

We should harbor no illusions that a peaceful, electoral transition to socialism is possible. However, revolutionaries must engage with the masses in electoral politics, simply because that is where the masses are at, and we want to create more favorable conditions for revolutionary work. We should use the mass line to take up the demands of the advanced among the masses and, with the lens of Marxist analysis, find ways to see them through. Then we sum up those experiences with the advanced and draw conclusions.  

It has to be stressed that Lenin’s main point in this regard is that particular conditions demand particular tactics. The goal is to build the revolutionary movement, which can only be done together with the masses in real struggle, and tactical decisions must start from there. 

Work in the trade unions

On the trade unions, Lenin writes, 

“The trade unions were a tremendous step forward for the working class in the early days of capitalist development, inasmuch as they marked a transition from the workers’ disunity and helplessness to the rudiments of class organization. When the revolutionary party of the proletariat, the highest form of proletarian class organization, began to take shape (and the Party will not merit the name until it learns to weld the leaders into one indivisible whole with the class and the masses) the trade unions inevitably began to reveal certain reactionary features, a certain craft narrow-mindedness, a certain tendency to be non-political, a certain inertness, etc. However, the development of the proletariat did not, and could not, proceed anywhere in the world otherwise than through the trade unions, through reciprocal action between them and the party of the working class.”

Lenin could not be clearer when he says, “If you want to help the ‘masses’ and win the sympathy and support of the ‘masses’, you … must absolutely work wherever the masses are to be found.” 

This is why we must not shun work in the unions, even if they are led by business unionists who want “class peace” or sellouts who are in it only for themselves. Instead, we have to fight for class struggle unionism and build the militant minority in order to put the unions on a class struggle basis. These are the main mass organizations of the working class. They are not sufficient for revolutionizing the class structure of society by themselves, but they are where the advanced fighters of the working class are to be found, and we will win them over by fighting shoulder to shoulder with them. 

“Left-Wing” Communism today

We find ourselves in interesting times, and the lessons of Lenin’s text deserve careful consideration. First, the working class has no organized vanguard. There is no communist party in the United States. While some claim the name, none in practice can honestly say that their cadres are the “generals of the proletarian army.” This means that the central task is to build such a party. We must do that by winning over the advanced fighters of the working class and oppressed nationality movements to Marxism-Leninism through practice. As Mao Zedong clearly put it, “A leading group that is genuinely united and linked with the masses can be formed only gradually in the process of mass struggle, and not in isolation from it.” In other words, party building has to be done in the course of real mass struggles. How else could we build a party comprised of the true leaders of the masses? 

Furthermore, we are deep into an unusual presidential election season, and we are simultaneously witnessing a U.S.-backed genocide being carried about by the Zionists in Palestine. These are issues that many are talking about and that shouldn’t be ignored. It is unavoidable that we should discuss Lenin’s text in this context, particularly in regard to how we address bourgeois elections generally, and this one in particular. 

One of the main ways the broad masses engage with politics is through bourgeois elections. We may know that bourgeois elections, a contest for rulership between two sections of the capitalist class, is “politically obsolete,” but that doesn’t mean anything if the masses haven’t yet come to the same conclusion. Furthermore, while elections cannot fundamentally change the class nature of society, they can influence the conditions under which we are fighting to build a revolutionary movement. This has been proven in practice, such as in the struggle for community control of the police. 

All that said, how do we concretely analyze electoral questions? When we look at bourgeois elections, we need to consider four questions: 1) Does one candidate represent a special danger? 2) Is the election a referendum on a major social question, such as war? 3) Does a contending campaign embody a particular social movement, such as the Black liberation movement? 4) Is the election part of a significant political movement independent of the two main capitalist parties? 

Of course, all of these questions are in play, but in the present moment it is crystal clear that genocide in Palestine, and the heroic fight for liberation being fought by the Palestinian Resistance, is primary. The advanced fighters in many mass movements are united in this understanding. Solidarity with Palestine and the demand to end the genocide are at the forefront of the peoples struggles, and the Palestinian liberation movement is at the center of revolutionary process that can defeat the Zionist proxy of U.S. imperialism in the Middle East. Those who get this question wrong will lose the confidence of the advanced and will be rightly seen as betrayers of the Palestinian people. 

For the reason, we have to be clear that in the present moment the U.S. presidential election is a referendum on the genocide. It has never been clearer – as we are presented with a choice between the reactionary Trump, on the one hand, and the architects of genocide on the other – that this is a failed system and that the choice presented to us is rotten to the core. Neither choice is acceptable.

Communists must unite with the advanced, using Marxism to analyze the situation and find the way forward. Lenin’s book stresses this same point. Today, that way forward is to unite with and help lead the struggle to stop the genocide and to fight for a free Palestine, from the river to the sea. 

More than anything else, Lenin’s book “Left Wing” Communism shows us how to apply Marxism to the dynamic and complex mass struggles in which we find ourselves, and how to navigate those struggles, always with the goal of building towards revolution and socialism.

J. Sykes is the author of the book “The Revolutionary Science of Marxism-Leninism”. The book can be purchased by visiting tinyurl.com/revsciMLbook

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Five Essays on Philosophy collects five important essays on dialectical materialism and Marxist epistemology, or the theory of knowledge, by Mao Zedong. It includes the articles “On Practice” and “On Contradiction” as well as “On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People,” “Speech at the Chinese Communist Party's National Conference on Propaganda Work,” and “Where do Correct Ideas Come From?” 

The extraordinary thing about these essays is that they are tremendously practical. This isn’t something often associated with philosophical works, but Mao demonstrates in simple and straightforward terms the way that philosophy can be used by the working class. As Marx said in his eleventh thesis on Feuerbach, “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.” Mao shows us how to do that.

On Practice 

The first article in the collection is “On Practice: On the Relation Between Knowledge and Practice, Between Knowing and Doing,” from 1937. Together with “On Contradiction” this was originally delivered as a lecture to the Anti-Japanese Military and Political College in the Yenan base area during the United Front against Japan. The aim of “On Practice” together with “On Contradiction” was to correct tendencies towards dogmatism and empiricism among cadres in the Communist Party of China at the time by giving a thorough explanation of the practical implications of Marxism-Leninism’s theoretical foundations. 

What do we mean by dogmatism and empiricism? Put simply, both disregard the dialectical interconnectedness of theory and practice. Dogmatism ignores the lessons of practical experience, while empiricism ignores the need for theory to guide practice. 

Practice is the source and aim of theory. This is the main point of “On Practice.“ The two must be understood as deeply interconnected.

“On Practice” explains the materialist premise that our ideas arise from our material reality, namely from our social practice in production, class struggle, and scientific experiment. Mao points out, “Of these other types of social practice, class struggle in particular, in all its various forms, exerts a profound influence on the development of man's knowledge. In class society everyone lives as a member of a particular class, and every kind of thinking, without exception, is stamped with the brand of a class.” 

Mao explains it like this: 

“Marxists hold that man's social practice alone is the criterion of the truth of his knowledge of the external world. What actually happens is that man's knowledge is verified only when he achieves the anticipated results in the process of social practice (material production, class struggle or scientific experiment). If a man wants to succeed in his work, that is, to achieve the anticipated results, he must bring his ideas into correspondence with the laws of the objective external world; if they do not correspond, he will fail in his practice. After he fails, he draws his lessons, corrects his ideas to make them correspond to the laws of the external world, and can thus turn failure into success.”

Because knowledge is based on practice, our knowledge progresses from a lower to a higher level as we gain experience, building upon itself. Mao explains that knowledge proceeds through stages, from perceptual knowledge to rational knowledge. Beginning with perception of the world around us, we then form theories and ideas. Mao sums all of this up like this:

“Discover the truth through practice, and again through practice verify and develop the truth. Start from perceptual knowledge and actively develop it into rational knowledge; then start from rational knowledge and actively guide revolutionary practice to change both the subjective and the objective world. Practice, knowledge, again practice, and again knowledge. This form repeats itself in endless cycles, and with each cycle the content of practice and knowledge rises to a higher level. Such is the whole of the dialectical-materialist theory of knowledge, and such is the dialectical-materialist theory of the unity of knowing and doing.”

On Contradiction

Mao’s essay “On Contradiction” is an explanation of dialectical materialism and how it can be applied by revolutionaries as a method of analysis to guide practice. Here he explains how change occurs, so that we can transform society in accord with its laws of motion. 

Mao gets straight to the point, saying “The law of contradiction in things, that is, the law of the unity of opposites, is the basic law of materialist dialectics.” He explains that Marxist philosophy is materialist, meaning that it sees material processes as being the driving force of social change. He explains that it is dialectical because it sees things as interconnected and driven forward mainly by its internal contradictions, and, secondarily, in its interrelations with other things.

Mao argues that reality is a process, and that any complex process is made up of a system of contradictions. Within this system of contradictions, while there are many different contradictions at work, one is always principal. In other words, the principal contradiction is the contradiction that is determining the overall motion of the process as a whole. At the same time, each contradiction is asymmetrical. One side – the principal aspect of the contradiction – is dominant. Finally, there are different types of contradictions that can be resolved in different ways, antagonistic and non-antagonistic contradictions. 

The main way that change occurs is through the transformation of quantity into quality, where the buildup of quantity leads to a qualitative leap, and the two aspects of a contradiction exchange places. In capitalist society, an example would be the build-up of consciousness and organization by the working class, and the building of a revolutionary Marxist-Leninist party. This would represent the quantitative accumulation of force by the secondary aspect of the contradiction between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie that is fundamental to capitalism. The primary aspect of that contradiction is the bourgeoisie. It is the ruling class. It controls the means of production, the state, the media, the police and the army. But a revolution represents a qualitative leap, whereby the secondary aspect of the contradiction, the working class, has accumulated enough force that the two aspects can exchange places. Socialism puts the working class in charge. The proletariat becomes the principal aspect of the contradiction. 

Mao emphasizes the importance of grasping the principal contradiction. This is the contradiction that is determining the overall motion of the process. He gives an example, saying,

“in capitalist society the two forces in contradiction, the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, form the principal contradiction. The other contradictions, such as those between the remnant feudal class and the bourgeoisie, between the peasant petty bourgeoisie and the bourgeoisie, between the proletariat and the peasant petty bourgeoisie, between the non-monopoly capitalists and the monopoly capitalists, between bourgeois democracy and bourgeois fascism, among the capitalist countries and between imperialism and the colonies, are all determined or influenced by this principal contradiction.”

In other words, Marxists should strive to understand which contradiction is principal and which contradictions are secondary. Understanding this tells us where to focus our attention and where and how to aim our blows as we fight to change society. While the fundamental class conflict between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie is principal within the imperialist countries themselves, that contradiction is heavily influenced by the contradiction between imperialism and the oppressed nations, which is driving imperialism’s decline on a global scale. This analysis has to guide our strategy, meaning that the multinational working class must lead a united front against monopoly capitalism, with the strategic alliance between the working class and the movements of oppressed nationalities at its core. 

On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People 

“On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People” was written by Mao in 1957 and delivered as a speech to the Eleventh Session of the Supreme State Conference. It helped guide the Communist Party through the “Hundred Flowers” campaign and the Anti-Rightist campaign that followed. 

The main point of the essay is to explain the difference between antagonistic and non-antagonistic contradictions within the context of the situation in China at the time, during socialist construction, and to give some guidance on how the contradictions in socialist society ought to be approached and resolved. 

Antagonistic contradictions are essentially a zero-sum game. One side’s gain is the other side’s loss. For example, the bourgeoisie gets its wealth at the expense of the working class, so this contradiction is antagonistic. Everything good for the capitalists is bad for the workers, and vice versa. Because this contradiction is fundamentally antagonistic, it can only be resolved antagonistically, through the revolutionary change of which class is in power. But other contradictions are non-antagonistic, meaning there is room to come to agreement, unity and compromise. The contradictions within the united front are like this, and can be resolved through discussion, debate and persuasion, in the course of our united practical struggle. 

Mao sums this idea up like this. “This democratic method of resolving contradictions among the people was epitomized in 1942 in the formula ‘unity – criticism – unity’. To elaborate, that means starting from the desire for unity, resolving contradictions through criticism or struggle, and arriving at a new unity on a new basis. In our experience this is the correct method of resolving contradictions among the people.”

If we use this method of “unity – criticism – unity” to resolve contradictions among the people, contradictions within our organizations and within the masses in the united front work that we do, we can prevent the real contradictions that exist from becoming antagonistic. This is essential if we are to unite all who can be united against the enemy, the monopoly capitalist class. 

Five Essays on Philosophy today

Five Essays on Philosophy wraps up with Mao’s “Speech at the Chinese Communist Party’s National Conference on Propaganda Work” from 1957 and a short article from 1963 entitled “Where Do Correct Ideas Come From?” 

In the speech on propaganda work, Mao argues that “While we have won basic victory in transforming the ownership of the means of production, we are even farther from complete victory on the political and ideological fronts. In the ideological field, the question of who will win out, the proletariat or the bourgeoisie, has not yet been really settled. We still have to wage a protracted struggle against bourgeois and petty-bourgeois ideology.” It emphasizes the importance of waging ideological struggle against both dogmatism and revisionism. Therefore, Mao says, “Both dogmatism and revisionism run counter to Marxism. Marxism must necessarily advance; it must develop along with practice and cannot stand still. It would become lifeless if it were stagnant and stereotyped. However, the basic principles of Marxism must never be violated, otherwise mistakes will be made. It is dogmatism to approach Marxism from a metaphysical point of view and to regard it as something rigid. It is revisionism to negate the basic principles of Marxism and to negate its universal truth.”

“Where Do Correct Ideas Come From?” is largely a concise reiteration of the ideas explained in greater length in “On Practice.” Mao writes, “the one and only purpose of the proletariat in knowing the world is to change it. Often, correct knowledge can be arrived at only after many repetitions of the process leading from matter to consciousness and then back to matter, that is, leading from practice to knowledge and then back to practice. Such is the Marxist theory of knowledge, the dialectical materialist theory of knowledge.” 

Today it is essential that we use Marxist-Leninist philosophy to analyze our conditions and guide our practice as we work to advance the struggle. The lessons of “On Practice,” that practice is the source and aim of theory, is essential to all that we do. The lessons of “On Contradiction,” that we must grasp the principal contradiction in order to formulate strategy for revolution, is likewise essential if we are to accomplish anything. And we must understand that antagonistic and non-antagonistic contradictions both require their own methods of resolution. We have to struggle for proletarian ideology against bourgeois and petty-bourgeois ideological trends like dogmatism and revisionism. And we must always do this in a way that allows us to unite all who can be united against our common enemy. Studying Five Essays on Philosophy by Mao Zedong can help tremendously as we seek to apply Marxist-Leninist theories to the tasks before us.

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The Foundations of Leninism is a collection of lectures given by J.V. Stalin to Sverdlov University in 1924, shortly after the death of Lenin in January of that year. The nine lectures that make up the book cover topics of history, methodology, style of work, theory, and strategy and tactics, as well as exposition and analysis of particular issues, such as the party, the dictatorship of the proletariat, the national question, and the peasant question. On each of these topics, Stalin lays out the Leninist position succinctly and concretely. 

Stalin’s lectures and the book that came out of them have to be understood in the context of the period in which it was written. After the death of Lenin, a sharp ideological struggle over the direction of the Soviet Union gripped the party and the masses. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) needed to chart a course for how to transition from the New Economic Policy, which sought to stabilize the economy following the “war communism” of the Civil War period, to the period of socialist construction.

During Lenin’s illness the Trotskyites headed up a group of opportunists who put forward the “Declaration of Forty-Six Oppositionists.” According to the History of the CPSU (Bolsheviks) – Short Course, “In their declaration, they prophesied a grave economic crisis and the fall of the Soviet power and demanded freedom of factions and groups as the only way out of the situation.” The History goes on to explain, “The platform of the forty-six was followed up by the publication of a letter by Trotsky …[which] harped on the old Menshevik themes which the Party had heard from him many times before.” After a long discussion in all levels of the party, Trotsky’s opposition line was defeated at the Thirteenth Party Conference. But, as the History of the CPSU explains, “In the autumn of 1924, Trotsky published an article entitled, ‘The Lessons of October’ in which he attempted to substitute Trotskyism for Leninism.” 

It is in this context that Stalin’s Foundations of Leninism was published. For this reason, the 1949 book Joseph Stalin: A Political Biography by the Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute calls Foundations of Leninism “a most effective weapon in demolishing Trotskyism ideologically, and in defending, explaining, and developing Leninism.” The book systematically laid out “everything new and distinctive associated with the name of Lenin, everything he contributed to the development of Marxist theory.” Foundations of Leninism thus draws clear lines of demarcation between Leninism and all forms of opportunism. 

The Marxism of the current era

As Stalin writes in the introduction, “The foundations of Leninism is a big subject.” We can’t address all of it here. But we can touch on some of the major points. 

First, let’s look at Stalin’s definition of Leninism: “Leninism is Marxism of the era of imperialism and the proletarian revolution.” He expands further on this, saying, 

“To be more exact, Leninism is the theory and tactics of the proletarian revolution in general, the theory and tactics of the dictatorship of the proletariat in particular. Marx and Engels pursued their activities in the pre-revolutionary period, (we have the proletarian revolution in mind), when developed imperialism did not yet exist, in the period of the proletarians’ preparation for revolution, in the period when the proletarian revolution was not yet an immediate practical inevitability. But Lenin, the disciple of Marx and Engels, pursued his activities in the period of developed imperialism, in the period of the unfolding proletarian revolution, when the proletarian revolution had already triumphed in one country, had smashed bourgeois democracy and had ushered in the era of proletarian democracy, the era of the Soviets.”

In other words, Leninism further develops Marxism in the current period, the era of imperialism, or monopoly capitalism, when the contradictions of capitalism are pushed to their extreme. It develops revolutionary theory, strategy and tactics, in this context. It is under these new conditions that Leninism seeks to address the problems posed to the revolutionary movement by the contradictions inherent in the imperialist system. Stalin emphasizes that “Leninism emerged from the proletarian revolution, the imprint of which it cannot but bear,” and that “it grew and became strong in clashes with the opportunism of the Second International, the fight against which was and remains an essential preliminary condition for a successful fight against capitalism,” and thus, “the ruthless struggle against this opportunism could not but constitute one of the most important tasks of Leninism.” 

Stalin emphasizes that there are three contradictions which imperialism brings forward that need to be understood as carrying particular importance. First, there is the contradiction between labor and capital. Second, there is the contradiction among the financial groups and imperialist powers. And third, there is the contradiction between the imperialist nations and the oppressed nations and peoples of the world. “Such, in general,” writes Stalin, “are the principal contradictions of imperialism which have converted the old, ‘flourishing’ capitalism into moribund capitalism.” 

Theory and practice 

Stalin lays particular importance on Leninism’s method of analysis. He emphasizes that this method relied upon testing the theoretical dogmas and policies of the parties of the Second International. These dogmas and policies were found to be insufficient for leading a revolutionary movement forward. Stalin breaks down several of these dogmas piece by piece, showing how Leninist theory must reject dogmatism and combine theory with practice in the course of revolutionary struggle. This is summed up by noting, “It is precisely this critical and revolutionary spirit that pervades Lenin's method from beginning to end.”

On the importance of theory in Leninism, Stalin notes, “Some think that Leninism is the precedence of practice over theory in the sense that its main point is the translation of the Marxist theses into deeds, their “execution”; as for theory; it is alleged that Leninism is rather unconcerned about it. … We also know that theory is not held in great favor by many present-day Leninist practical workers, particularly in view of the immense amount of practical work imposed upon them by the situation.” 

Against this, Stalin puts forward an excellent definition of Marxist theory: “Theory is the experience of the working-class movement in all countries taken in its general aspect.” For Leninism, theory and practice must be united. Theory without practice is worthless, and practice without theory “gropes in the dark.” 

Explaining the importance of theory, Stalin emphasizes that “theory can become a tremendous force in the working-class movement if it is built up in indissoluble connection with revolutionary practice.” Indeed, writes Stalin, “theory, and theory alone, can give the movement confidence, the power of orientation, and an understanding of the inner relation of surrounding events; for it, and it alone, can help practice realize not only how and in which direction classes are moving at the present time, but also how and in which direction they will move in the near future.”

Stalin brings particular attention to two theoretical points of Lenin’s: first, the criticism of spontaneity and the importance of a vanguard party, and second, Lenin’s theory of proletarian revolution. 

The first point here is to emphasize that Leninism understands that the spontaneous economic battles of the working class are not sufficient to bring about a socialist revolution, but rather that a political struggle against the bourgeois state, led by an organized and disciplined vanguard, made up of its most advanced and class conscious workers, armed with the most advanced revolutionary theory (Marxism-Leninism) is necessary to overthrow the dictatorship of capital and build working class state power. Today, when no such vanguard party exists as a material reality, the central task of Marxist-Leninists is to build one. 

The second point is to understand that Lenin understood the era of imperialism to be the eve of socialist revolution due to the internal contradiction of the monopoly capitalist system. Previously, the socialist movement believed that socialist revolution must first come to the most advanced capitalist countries first. Contrary to this, Leninism asserts, “The front of capital will be pierced where the chain of imperialism is weakest, for the proletarian revolution is the result of the breaking of the chain of the world imperialist front at its weakest link.” In 1917, this weak link was Tsarist Russia. 

Proletarian dictatorship

The Foundations of Leninism explains Lenin’s theory of the state clearly and succinctly. 

“The state is a machine in the hands of the ruling class for suppressing the resistance of its class enemies. In this respect the dictatorship of the proletariat does not differ essentially from the dictatorship of any other class, for the proletarian state is a machine for the suppression of the bourgeoisie. But there is one substantial difference. This difference consists in the fact that all hitherto existing class states have been dictatorships of an exploiting minority over the exploited majority, whereas the dictatorship of the proletariat is the dictatorship of the exploited majority over the exploiting minority.”

Stalin outlines two essential conclusions that Lenin draws from this theory of the state. First, the state isn’t a “complete” democracy, but rather, it is democracy for the working class for the sake of the repression of the capitalist class. Second, the proletarian dictatorship “cannot arise as the result of the peaceful development of bourgeois society and of bourgeois democracy; it can arise only as the result of the smashing of the bourgeois state machine, the bourgeois army, the bourgeois bureaucratic apparatus, the bourgeois police.” 

“In other words,” writes Stalin, “the law of violent proletarian revolution, the law of smashing of the bourgeois state machine as a preliminary condition for such a revolution, is an inevitable law of the revolutionary movement in the imperialist countries of the world.” 

The National Question 

The National Question, the question of how the socialist revolution should relate to the nations oppressed by imperialism, is of particular importance to Leninism. Self-determination is a key point here. “Leninism broadened the conception of self-determinism, interpreting it as the right of the oppressed peoples of the dependent countries and colonies to complete secession, as the right of nations to independent existence as states.” Further, Stalin explains, “the national question can be solved only in connection with and on the basis of the proletarian revolution, and that the road to victory of the revolution in the West lies through the revolutionary alliance with the liberation movement of the colonies and dependent countries against imperialism. The national question is a part of the general question of the proletarian revolution, a part of the question of the dictatorship of the proletariat.”

Leninism also recognizes that “the revolutionary character of a national movement under the conditions of imperialist oppression does not necessarily presuppose the existence of proletarian elements in the movement, the existence of a revolutionary or a republican programme of the movement, the existence of a democratic basis of the movement.” This an essential point to drive home, especially today as Zionists and opportunists both demand the denunciation of Hamas and the division of the Palestinian resistance in the face of U.S.-backed genocide in Gaza. Every socialist must understand that the defeat of Israel, as a tool of U.S. imperialism, as a blow against the monopoly capitalist class, and must therefore unequivocally support the unified Palestinian resistance in its just struggle for liberation. 

The same is true within the U.S. where revolutionaries must recognize the right to self-determination of the Black, Chicano and Hawaiian nations, including their right to secede in their national territories of the Black Belt South, the Southwest and Hawai’i, respectively. Likewise, revolutionaries in the U.S must support immediate independence for the colonies, and the sovereignty of native peoples. 

This is why the strategic alliance between the multinational working class and the liberation struggles of the oppressed nationalities must form the core of the united front against monopoly capitalism in the U.S. 

Strategy and tactics

The Foundations of Leninism has a lot to say about Leninist revolutionary strategy and tactics. Here we will emphasize the distinction that Stalin makes between revolutionary strategy and tactics and reformism. While Stalin was drawing from a body of practice where a revolutionary situation was at hand in Russia and many other places, there is much to here to inform our thinking today.

“To a reformist,” writes Stalin, “reforms are everything, while revolutionary work is something incidental, something just to talk about, mere eyewash. That is why, with reformist tactics under the conditions of bourgeois rule, reforms are inevitability transformed into an instrument for strengthening that rule, an instrument for disintegrating the revolution.”

“To a revolutionary, on the contrary,” Stalin explains, “the main thing is revolutionary work and not reforms; to him reforms are a by-product of the revolution. That is why, with revolutionary tactics under the conditions of bourgeois rule, reforms are naturally transformed into an instrument for strengthening the revolution, into a strongpoint for the further development of the revolutionary movement.”

In other words, revolutionaries struggle for reforms in order to build the revolutionary movements and set the conditions for revolutionary struggle. This is why we say again and again that there are three cardinal principles in revolutionary organizing: we must win all that can be won and strike blows against the enemy; we must raise the level of consciousness and organization of the masses; and we must win the advanced from these struggles to Marxism-Leninism and build revolutionary organization. 

Foundations of Leninism today

Today we still live in the era of imperialism and proletarian revolution, and Marxism-Leninism is theory that the working class needs to understand and put into practice in order to overthrow the old society and build a new one, socialism, where working people are in power and can put the needs of the people first.

As imperialism lashes out everywhere, from Palestine to the Philippines, we need to understand the lessons of Leninism, and stand in solidarity with oppressed people everywhere in our fight against our common enemy – the monopoly capitalist class at the head of the U.S. imperialist machine of oppression, war, exploitation, misery and death. U.S. imperialism is in a period of prolonged decline, during which it only becomes more vicious.

We have to be organized to fight back. Lenin emphasized that there are objective and subjective conditions for a revolution to take place. The objective conditions are that there is an economic crisis that becomes a political crisis for the ruling class, where they can no longer rule in the old way and we can no longer live in the old way. The subjective conditions are that the working class is conscious of itself as a class, and that it is organized, with a party capable of leading a broad revolutionary movement. 

The objective conditions can be analyzed and impacted by struggle, but the subjective conditions are even more within our power to change to our benefit. We can and must use Marxism-Leninism to grasp the tasks of the movement, build the organization and consciousness among the masses, and prepare ourselves to seize the time. Reading The Foundations of Leninism can help a great deal in helping revolutionaries orient themselves for the struggles ahead.

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When the first World War broke out in 1914, it threw the socialist movement into disarray. Within the Second International, socialist leaders from all over the world disagreed on how to analyze the causes of the war and the way forward. According to Vladimir I. Lenin: A Political Biography by the Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute, “On the very outbreak of the war he set to work to make a profound and detailed study of the world literature on the economics, methods of production, history, geography, politics, diplomacy, the working class movement, the colonial question, and other spheres of social life in the different countries in the epoch of imperialism.” These Notebooks on Imperialism, over 600 pages of copious research, make up Volume 39 of his Collected Works. The Institute notes, “The fruit of this vast work of research was Lenin’s famous book Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism. Completed in June 1916, this book is one of the greatest works in Marxist-Leninist literature.”

Lenin’s analysis of imperialism

Let’s begin with Lenin’s definition of imperialism: 

“Imperialism is capitalism in that stage of development in which the domination of monopolies and finance capital has established itself; in which the export of capital has acquired pronounced importance; in which the division of the world among the international trusts has begun; in which the partition of all the territories of the globe among the great capitalist powers has been completed.”

Lenin notes that this process is a dialectical one. In other words, it is driven by the contradictions inherent in capitalism, as the aspects of those contradictions transform into their opposites. In economic terms, this means free competition is transformed into monopoly. Lenin puts it like this:

“Imperialism emerged as the development and direct continuation of the fundamental characteristics of capitalism in general. But capitalism only became capitalist imperialism at a definite and very high stage of its development, when certain of its fundamental characteristics began to change into their opposites, when the features of the epoch of transition from capitalism to a higher social and economic system had taken shape and revealed themselves in all spheres. Economically, the main thing in this process is the displacement of capitalist free competition by capitalist monopoly. Free competition is the basic feature of capitalism, and of commodity production generally; monopoly is the exact opposite of free competition, but we have seen the latter being transformed into monopoly before our eyes, creating large-scale industry and forcing out small industry, replacing large-scale by still larger-scale industry, and carrying concentration of production and capital to the point where out of it has grown and is growing monopoly: cartels, syndicates and trusts, and merging with them, the capital of a dozen or so banks, which manipulate thousands of millions. At the same time the monopolies, which have grown out of free competition, do not eliminate the latter, but exist above it and alongside it, and thereby give rise to a number of very acute, intense antagonisms, frictions and conflicts. Monopoly is the transition from capitalism to a higher system.”

We can trace where this happens historically. Imperialism arose as a result of the laws of motion of capitalism beginning in the late 19th century. Lenin writes,

“Thus, the principal stages in the history of monopolies are the following: (1) 1860-70, the highest stage, the apex of development of free competition; monopoly is in the barely discernible, embryonic stage. (2) After the crisis of 1873, a lengthy period of development of cartels; but they are still the exception. They are not yet durable. They are still a transitory phenomenon. (3) The boom at the end of the nineteenth century and the crisis of 1900-03. Cartels become one of the foundations of the whole of economic life. Capitalism has been transformed into imperialism.”

In the section “Imperialism and the Split in Socialism”, Lenin further explained, “Imperialism, as the highest stage of capitalism in America and Europe, and later in Asia, took final shape in the period 1898–1914. The Spanish-American War (1898), the Anglo-Boer War (1899–1902), the Russo-Japanese War (1904–05) and the economic crisis in Europe in 1900 are the chief historical landmarks in the new era of world history.” Indeed, the origin of imperialism was accompanied early on by war, in order to divide and re-divide the world. This trend has persisted, erupting in World War I and World War II, both of which began as imperialist wars for the redivision of the world among themselves. In the aftermath of World War II, the U.S. rose as the dominant imperialist power.

In the first section of Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, Lenin addresses the how and why capitalism transitioned from its earlier stage of competitive capitalism to its new, higher stage, of monopoly capitalism. Lenin notes “Competition becomes transformed into monopoly. The result is immense progress in the socialization of production. In particular, the process of technical invention and improvement becomes socialized.” 

Lenin makes two important points here. First, the transformation from competitive capitalism to monopoly capitalism happens according to the laws of capitalism itself, not because a few particularly bad capitalists decided to steer it in that direction. Second, he points out that the imperialist stage of capitalism represents an important stage in the dialectical process driving capitalism towards revolution and socialism. Therefore, he writes, “Capitalism in its imperialist stage leads directly to the most comprehensive socialization of production; it, so to speak, drags the capitalists, against their will and consciousness, into some sort of a new social order, a transitional one from complete free competition to complete socialization.” 

Lenin also notes that, in the contradiction between free competition and monopoly, both continue to exist side by side, but that monopoly has become the dominant, determining aspect of the contradiction. “The general framework of formally recognized free competition remains,” Lenin writes, “and the yoke of a few monopolists on the rest of the population becomes a hundred times heavier, more burdensome and intolerable.” 

The result of this is that different strata among the capitalists are operating in very different ways. The petit bourgeoisie are, by and large, being crushed by the monopoly capitalist class. Simultaneously, non-monopoly capitalists continue to exist, but precariously, under immense pressure from the monopoly capitalists. The result is that these non-monopoly capitalists and petit bourgeoisie are buried unless they can achieve an extraordinarily high rate of exploitation. 

But the petit bourgeoisie cannot compete effectively with the superprofits of the monopoly capitalists. By exporting capital (namely factories) to the developing world, the imperialists are able to achieve a higher rate of exploitation than is possible with domestic labor. In other words, they can produce cheaper, and then sell for more. In this way, the imperialists use superprofits as life-support for a dying system. They are able to relieve some of the effects of the economic crises that plague capitalism by exporting capital to where labor is cheaper. 

All the while, they reinforce their superprofits with unequal trade agreements, predatory loans and other neocolonial policies meant to keep the peoples of these countries dependent and weak, and they back this up with military power. 

Meanwhile, the nature of the imperialist system drives forward and intensifies the crises within the capitalist countries. It pushes the class struggle towards its extreme limits, as the working class and oppressed nationalities are further exploited and oppressed in order to fatten the pockets of the capitalists. This cannot but lead inevitably towards a revolutionary struggle within the heart of the imperialist countries themselves.

Further, imperialism drives towards a revolutionary crisis in the colonial and semi-colonial countries. This inevitably leads towards the struggles for national liberation against imperialism on the part of the oppressed nations and peoples of the world.

And, finally, under imperialism wars cannot be averted. War is an essential and fundamental feature of the imperialist system. Because imperialism develops unevenly, the imperialist powers will seek again and again to redivide the world among themselves. Furthermore, the imperialists will inevitably resort to war to protect their interests, and the working and oppressed people of the entire world will fight to resist imperialism oppression by any means necessary. 

Imperialism today

“Leninism,” writes Stalin in The Foundations of Leninism, “is Marxism of the era of imperialism and the proletarian revolution.” The rise of monopoly capitalism has pushed to the forefront four fundamental contradictions on a world scale: the contradiction between the imperialist powers themselves, the contradiction between the imperialist powers and the oppressed nations and peoples, the contradiction between the monopoly capitalists and the proletariat in the imperialist countries, and the contradiction between the imperialist and socialist systems. 

Of these four, the principal contradiction on a world scale is the contradiction between imperialism and the oppressed nations struggling for national liberation, while, within the imperialist counties the principal contradiction is generally reflected in the class struggle between the monopoly capitalists and the proletariat. 

This means that Lenin’s analysis of imperialism is essential to guiding our understanding of the terrain of struggle, as we work to build a united front against monopoly capitalism, based on the strategic alliance between the multinational working class and the liberation movements of oppressed nationalities. 

Indeed, within the U.S. itself, the monopoly capitalist class holds whole peoples under the yoke of national oppression, in order to extract super profits. Therefore, the core of the united front against monopoly capitalism in the United States is that between the multinational working class, and the oppressed nations. Namely, these are the African American nation, which has a national territory in the Black Belt South, the Chicano Nation in the Southwest, and the Hawaiian Nation. These struggles for national liberation and self-determination are essential for the development of a revolutionary movement in the U.S.

It also means that, on an international scale, the working class here in the U.S. must ally with the national liberation struggles all over the world, from Palestine to the Philippines. The U.S. monopoly capitalist class is our mutual oppressor and enemy, and every blow struck against this class weakens them and aids our respective struggles. Solidarity is essential. 

In 1917, the Bolshevik revolution struck a major blow against imperialism, breaking the Soviet Union away from the imperialist world system and creating a counterbalance to imperialist hegemony. World War II saw further shifts in the balance. After the invasion of the USSR by Nazi Germany, the character of the war fundamentally changed from an inter-imperialist war to a war between socialism and imperialism. Blows were struck for liberation and against fascism all over the world. China and the people’s democracies of eastern Europe broke free of the imperialist system and joined the socialist bloc. And despite the turn towards revisionism in 1956, leading to the eventual restoration of capitalism in the USSR in 1991, the socialist countries, namely China, Cuba, Vietnam, DPRK and Laos, continue to be a force against imperialism hegemony throughout the world. And since the historic defeat of the U.S. in Vietnam in the 1970s, U.S. imperialism has been in a state of prolonged decline, scrambling to hold on to its ebbing power and influence. 

Today the U.S. monopoly capitalist class struggles to cling to the remnants of a fading empire. It still dominates the UN, though that domination too seems to be slipping. Likewise, it controls international financial institutions, such as the World Bank and the IMF, which it uses to leverage neocolonial policies in the developing world. Further, it intervenes militarily, both directly and indirectly, all over the world to protect its interest. Currently it is pursing two simultaneous proxy wars, propping up Ukraine in an attempt to weaken Russia, and supporting the Israeli genocide against Palestine. It is pushing with all its might to pursue a cold war policy against an ascendent socialist China. Indeed, the U.S. is stretched very thin, and is everywhere on the ropes. 

The working class here in the U.S., together with its allies, needs to make every effort to support these struggles in whatever way it can. Lenin’s analysis in Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, is essential reading to understand the way forward. 

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In 1848 a great revolutionary upsurge spread through Europe. These revolutions swept through Italy, France, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Sweden, Switzerland, Poland, Ireland and other parts of Europe. By and large, these were democratic revolutions against feudalism, waged by the bourgeoisie, the petty bourgeoisie and the working class. In the midst of this wave of revolution, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels joined the underground German Communist League. Marx and Engels were tasked with writing the program of the Communist League, The Manifesto of the Communist Party, a document that would explain the organization's analysis of the situation and its plan for how to move from that situation to revolution and socialism. 

Lenin writes of this period: 

“The revolution of 1848, which broke out first in France and then spread to other West-European countries, brought Marx and Engels back to their native country. Here, in Rhenish Prussia, they took charge of the democratic Neue Rheinische Zeitung published in Cologne. The two friends were the heart and soul of all revolutionary-democratic aspirations in Rhenish Prussia. They fought to the last ditch in defense of freedom and of the interests of the people against the forces of reaction. The latter, as we know, gained the upper hand. The Neue Rheinische Zeitung was suppressed. Marx, who during his exile had lost his Prussian citizenship, was deported; Engels took part in the armed popular uprising, fought for liberty in three battles, and after the defeat of the rebels fled, via Switzerland, to London.”

Marx and Engels were not simply theorists, as they are so often portrayed by bourgeois academics. They were revolutionary organizers and fighters, whose theoretical work was driven by the practical needs of the revolutionary movement. Marx’s “Address to the Central Committee of the Communist League” of March 1850 outlines the practical work that accompanied the program put forward in the Manifesto and is important to look at together with it.

The Manifesto of the Communist Party

The Communist Manifesto is one of the clearest and most straightforward expressions of Marxism. As Lenin put it, “This little booklet is worth whole volumes: to this day its spirit inspires and guides the entire organized and fighting proletariat of the civilized world.” It explains the basic ideas of historical materialism and scientific socialism in a way that is accessible and inspiring. It is no wonder that this text has been a guide for revolutionaries the world over ever since, taking root first in Russia with the Bolshevik Revolution. 

In 1872, Marx and Engels wrote a preface to the Manifesto, in which they stressed that “however much that state of things may have altered during the last twenty-five years, the general principles laid down in the Manifesto are, on the whole, as correct today as ever.” They also emphasize that “the practical application of the principles will depend, as the Manifesto itself states, everywhere and at all times, on the historical conditions for the time being existing.” At the same time, they note that history isn’t static, and that theory must develop along with practice. For this reason, they draw particular attention to the Revolution of 1848 in France and the Paris Commune in 1871, saying, “One thing especially was proved by the Commune, viz., that ‘the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes.’” Instead, as Marx explains in his books summing up those struggles, namely The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte and The Civil War in France, it must be smashed and replaced by new organs of working class state power. 

The history of class struggle

The first chapter of the Manifesto begins with a declaration of the central principle of historical materialism: “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.” It explains that this struggle inevitably results in “the revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.” In the current period, it says, these contending classes are the bourgeoisie and the proletariat – the capitalist class that owns the means of production, and the working class that lives by selling its labor power to the capitalists. It outlines the historical development of these two classes, and their trajectory moving forward. 

Marx and Engels explain the contemporary, bourgeois epoch like this: “Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify.” And they emphasize, capitalism’s predatory internal logic reshapes the world in its image. “The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere.” 

Here, also, Marx and Engels put forward the basic principle of historical materialism, that social progress is driven by the contradiction in any given historical mode of production between the forces of production and the relations of production. As the Manifesto states, “At a certain stage in the development of these means of production and of exchange, the conditions under which feudal society produced and exchanged, the feudal organization of agriculture and manufacturing industry, in one word, the feudal relations of property became no longer compatible with the already developed productive forces; they became so many fetters. They had to be burst asunder; they were burst asunder.” 

Marx and Engels explain how, in capitalist society, the relations of production – that is, the class relations of ownership and power – likewise hold back the development of the productive forces, resulting in crises of overproduction:

“The essential conditions for the existence and for the sway of the bourgeois class is the formation and augmentation of capital; the condition for capital is wage-labor. Wage-labor rests exclusively on competition between the laborers. The advance of industry, whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the laborers, due to competition, by the revolutionary combination, due to association. The development of Modern Industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.”

Following the sweeping analysis of the first chapter, which gives a picture of the terrain of struggle and the laws of motion driving things, the second chapter explains the aims of the communists: “formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the proletariat.” 

The Manifesto explains the goal of socialism is to abolish all “class antagonisms and … classes generally.” This is an explanation, in a very concise and sweeping form, of the transition period from capitalism to communism, which Marx elsewhere calls the “dictatorship of the proletariat.”

“Political power, properly so called, is merely the organized power of one class for oppressing another. If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organize itself as a class, if, by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class.”

This is the first phase of socialism, the transition from capitalism to communism, where the working class wields state power in order to systematically uproot “the conditions for the existence” of classes. By doing this it abolishes the need for a state as such, as “the organized power of one class for oppressing another,” thus making possible a new stateless and classless world. Marx elaborates on this in his Critique of Gotha Program and Lenin further develops this in The State and Revolution. 

In the third chapter, Marx and Engels distinguish scientific socialism from various forms or reactionary, conservative, and utopian socialist movements. Here, Marx and Engels are dealing with their predecessors and their contemporaries: Moses Hess, Proudhon, Saint-Simon, Fourier, and Owen. 

Finally, in the last section, they distinguish the Communist League from other parties and revolutionary forces. They explain that “the Communists fight for the attainment of the immediate aims, for the enforcement of the momentary interests of the working class; but in the movement of the present, they also represent and take care of the future of that movement.” They explain that in different places, they forge alliances with different class forces based on the concrete conditions in which those struggles find themselves. “In short, the Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things.” 

The Manifesto boldly and courageously declares that “the Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions.” Many opportunists today, who insist on equivocating on their positions, would do well to remember this important principled stand. “Let the ruling classes tremble,” the Manifesto says. No attempt at liberal respectability will protect them whenever the ruling class inevitably decides to show its teeth. The capitalists know who their enemy is, and so must we. “The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.” 

The Manifesto in practice 

In March of 1850, Marx gave his famous “Address to the Central Committee of the Communist League,” where he explains the practical implications of his theory, from the perspective of the concrete conditions of the revolutionary movement at the time. In this speech, Marx ends with the call for “permanent revolution.” This is a term that has been twisted away from Marx’s intent by the Trotskyites, who only confuse things by using the slogan to name Trotsky’s theory of world-wide-revolution-or-nothing, which Lenin called “absurdly Left.” For the Trotskyites, it is a matter of the workers fighting alone against capitalism, everywhere at once. By “permanent revolution,” Marx and Lenin mean advancing the revolution from the bourgeois democratic to the proletarian socialist stage, while Trotsky, on the other hand, means revolution can only succeed by spreading immediately from one country to all countries, with the working class alone fighting against all non-proletarian classes. 

Marx and Lenin advocated revolution in two stages, uniting with other classes, and establishing and consolidating socialism one country at a time. When Marx talked about permanent revolution in this address, he clearly intended this to mean that the revolutionary upsurge must not halt at the democratic stage, but that the working class must lead it forward into its second, proletarian socialist stage. As Marx puts it, 

“While the democratic petty bourgeois want to bring the revolution to an end as quickly as possible … it is our interest and our task to make the revolution permanent until all the more or less propertied classes have been driven from their ruling positions, until the proletariat has conquered state power and until the association of the proletarians has progressed sufficiently far – not only in one country but in all the leading countries of the world – that competition between the proletarians of these countries ceases and at least the decisive forces of production are concentrated in the hands of the workers.”

Indeed, Marx gives us sound and practical advice that resonates today as we work to build a united front against monopoly capitalism. He says, “The relationship of the revolutionary workers’ party to the petty-bourgeois democrats is this: it cooperates with them against the party which they aim to overthrow; it opposes them wherever they wish to secure their own position.” 

But Marx insists on what Mao Zedong would later refer to as “independence and initiative in the united front.” The working class must be independently organized and prepared to resist the reactionary turn of the bourgeois class forces following the bourgeois democratic stage, where they will attempt to consolidate their power at the expense of the working class. Thus, in order to be prepared to carry the revolution forward to its second, proletarian socialist stage, “To be able forcefully and threateningly to oppose this party, whose betrayal of the workers will begin with the very first hour of victory,” Marx says, “the workers must be armed and organized.” Marx also insists that “alongside the new official governments they must simultaneously establish their own revolutionary workers’ governments.” Marx and Engels organized to see this come to fruition, but this was first put into practice with lasting success in the Bolshevik revolution in 1917. 

The Manifesto today

Today we live in the era of imperialism. Since the 1970s imperialism has been in a state of prolonged decline. Its defeat is inevitable, but in the meanwhile, like a cornered and wounded animal, it is fighting fiercely. U.S. imperialism is waging war at home and abroad, and we are seeing powerful mass movements mobilizing against it. Militant resistance is coming from the student encampments and building occupations protesting the U.S.-backed Zionist genocide in Gaza against the Palestinian people. These heroic students are facing tremendous repression with courage, knowing they are on the right side of history. Likewise, people are also organizing to resist border militarization, to oppose police brutality, to protect the environment, to stop attacks on women and LGBTQ people, and workers are unionizing and going on strike. People everywhere are fighting back. But in order to advance in a strategic way, and turn resistance into revolution, we need to build a new, Marxist-Leninist communist party. The lessons of the Manifesto and the “Address to the Central Committee of the Communist League” can help us find our way forward, just as they did for so many workers and oppressed people who came before us.

The importance of the Communist Manifesto, and the “Address,” which explained the practical, revolutionary work that the Manifesto outlined in theory, cannot be overstated. We see in these works, for the first time, a truly revolutionary, working-class program, together with the struggle to carry out that program in practice. These works clearly demonstrate that Marx and Engels were revolutionaries, and studying these works ought to expose every opportunist and revisionist who argues for a reformist, social-democratic, or merely academic reading of Marx. They expose all of those who would say that Marx wasn’t a revolutionary, and that Marxists shouldn’t be either. Marxism lays bare the laws at work in history and shows the way forward, and that way forward is a revolutionary road.

J. Sykes is the author of the book “The Revolutionary Science of Marxism-Leninism”. The book can be purchased by visiting tinyurl.com/revsciMLbook

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Vladimir Lenin was the great leader of the Bolshevik Revolution that overthrew tsarism and capitalism in Russia and built a new socialist society, for the first time in history. His book The State and Revolution is one of his greatest contributions to Marxist theory and is a cornerstone of Leninism.

The State and Revolution was written in 1917, during a period of heightened repression against the Bolsheviks by the Provisional Government led by the Mensheviks and the rightist Social-Revolutionaries. It was written when many of the party leaders were underground or in jail. Lenin himself had first been hidden from the police by Stalin and then escaped the country in disguise. This period, known as the “July days” is summed up well in the 1943 book, Vladimir I. Lenin: A Political Biography, prepared by the Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute. “When he went into hiding in Finland he gave the manuscript of his book The State and Revolution to the comrade who was escorting him with instruction to pass it on to Stalin in the event of his being arrested.” Furthermore, Lenin “wrote to party leaders that in the event of his being killed by the agents of the Provisional Government they were to take all measures to publish his notebooks on Marxism and the State.” Following this turn, the Bolshevik’s sixth congress, led by Stalin while Lenin was in exile, decided that the way forward for the socialist revolution was through armed insurrection.

Clearly Lenin considered the work to be of great importance to the revolution. This is because the book outlines the views of Marx and Engels on the state and further develops them. He explains the importance of proletarian dictatorship, how it must come about, and what its primary tasks are.

The main goal of The State and Revolution is to inoculate the revolutionary movement against opportunist currents (namely the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries) who would distort Marxism to their own ends and lead the revolution astray. Lenin had to explain why the revolution not only couldn’t stop short with the bourgeois February Revolution that overthrew the tsar, but must advance to its second, socialist stage, to break up the bourgeois state and establish a new, proletarian state. In other words, Lenin understood that the question of how to advance depends on a correct theoretical understanding of the state and its role.

Marxism and the state

Lenin sums up the Marxist understanding of the state like this, “The state is a product and a manifestation of the irreconcilability of class antagonisms. The state arises where, when and insofar as class antagonism objectively cannot be reconciled. And, conversely, the existence of the state proves that the class antagonisms are irreconcilable.”

Drawing from Engels’s book The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, Lenin explains that the state is an instrument of class power. “What does this power mainly consist of? It consists of special bodies of armed men having prisons, etc., at their command.” Indeed, because class antagonism exists, the state becomes an instrument by which the dominant class preserves its interests by use of force, or the threat of force, and as long as class antagonism exists, the state will exist as a result of that antagonism. Capitalism is built upon maintaining these class antagonisms, which are inherent in the relations of production at the core of the capitalist system. Without such class antagonism, the capitalist class cannot continue to reap its obscene profits at the expense and impoverishment of the working class. Thus the state represents the way in which these antagonisms are held at bay, so that society can function in the way that benefits the ruling class.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. If the working class takes power, because it has no material interest in exploitation and oppression, it can and must eliminate class antagonism. This causes the state to lose its purpose, resulting in its “withering away.”

Thus, society is able to progress from capitalism (the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie) through socialism (the dictatorship of the proletariat), to communism (a society without class antagonism and therefore without a state). Lenin sums this up, saying, “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’.”

Revolution

Marx and Engels gave particular attention to the summing up the revolutionary upheavals of their time, and Lenin draws upon their analysis of the 1848 revolutions in Europe and the 1871 Paris Commune. In fact, it is in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonapart, Lenin notes, that “Marxism takes a tremendous step forward compared with The Communist Manifesto.” Lenin explains that in the Manifesto, Marxism treats the question of the state abstractly, but following the experience of 1848, the summation presented by Marx becomes concrete, “and the conclusion is extremely precise, definite, practical and palpable: all previous revolutions perfected the state machine, whereas it must be broken, smashed.”

Lenin emphasizes that this is “the chief and fundamental point in the Marxist theory of the state.”

What does this mean? Lenin explains that “the centralized state power that is peculiar to bourgeois society came into being in the period of the fall of absolutism. Two institutions most characteristic of this state machine are the bureaucracy and the standing army. In their works, Marx and Engels repeatedly show that the bourgeoisie are connected with these institutions by thousands of threads.”

To understand this question of the “thousand threads” it is essential to understand how the state arises. Every mode of production has a superstructure that arises from the economic base, reproducing and reinforcing it. The state is part of the superstructure. As such, it isn’t just dreamed into existence, but arises as the result of definite material processes. So, in the course of development of bourgeois society, the state arose in service to the ruling class, in order to protect and promote its class interest. Throughout that process, all of the various mechanisms of the state were deeply entwined with the needs and interests of the capitalist class, to the extent that one could say that capitalism is the fabric of the bourgeois state. Put another way, capitalism is embedded in the bourgeois state’s DNA.

After the February Revolution in Russia, when the Provisional Government took power, Lenin says, “The official posts which formerly were given by preference to the Black Hundreds have now become the spoils of the Cadets, Mensheviks, and Social-Revolutionaries.” Rather than smash the state, they simply took over its bureaucracy, its police, and its military. In this way, they too entwined themselves in the “thousand threads” of the existing state machinery.

The Provisional Government sought a lengthy period of capitalist development in Russia, which could only intensify class antagonisms between the bourgeois and petty bourgeois ruling parties on the one hand, and the working masses on the other. This, concretely, led the Provisional Government “to intensify repressive measures against the revolutionary proletariat, to strengthen the apparatus of coercion, i.e., the state machine.” Lenin therefore concludes, “This course of events compels the revolution ‘to concentrate all its forces of destruction’ against the state power, and to set itself the aim, not of improving the state machine, but of smashing and destroying it.”

The socialist transition period

Importantly, Lenin asks what should replace the smashed machinery of the bourgeois state. The bourgeois state is a democracy for the ruling class, for the rich minority, and a dictatorship over the toiling and oppressed majority. But the proletarian state that replaces it must be something altogether different. The task is to abolish class antagonism, but until that task is complete, class antagonism and class struggle remain. “In reality, this period inevitably is a period of an unprecedently violent class struggle in unprecedentedly acute forms,” Lenin writes, “and, consequently, during this period the state must inevitably be a state that is democratic in a new way (for the proletariat and the propertyless in general) and dictatorial in a new way (against the bourgeoisie).”

Summing up the Paris Commune of 1871, which Marx called the first instance of proletarian dictatorship, Lenin writes, “It is still necessary to suppress the bourgeoisie and crush their resistance. This was particularly necessary for the Commune; and one of the reasons for its defeat was that it did not do this with sufficient determination.”

Lenin emphasizes that Marxism is scientific. It takes things as they are, rather than dreaming up a new society of thin air.

“We are not utopians, we do not ‘dream’ of dispensing at once with all administration, with all subordination. These anarchist dreams, based upon incomprehension of the tasks of the proletarian dictatorship, are totally alien to Marxism, and, as a matter of fact, serve only to postpone the socialist revolution until people are different. No, we want the socialist revolution with people as they are now, with people who cannot dispense with subordination, control, and ‘foremen and accountants.”

Against all such fantasies, Lenin asserts that we cannot be rid of the state all at once, the day after the revolution. Instead, he says, we must “smash the old bureaucratic machine at once and … begin immediately to construct a new one that will make possible the gradual abolition of all bureaucracy.”

The main theoretical source Lenin draws upon here is Marx’s important text, The Critique of the Gotha Program, especially as it concerns the transition period between capitalism and classless society, which Marx calls the “higher-stage” of socialism, or communism.

In order to overcome class antagonism, socialism must, in a systematic way, overcome all of the problems carried over from capitalism which serve to recreate and reproduce capitalist class relations. This means getting rid of what Marx calls “bourgeois right,” meaning the legal rights of property ownership and the social and political power that the capitalist derives from owning capital. Lenin sums up Marx’s view in Critique of the Gotha Program as follows:

“In the first phase of communist society (usually called Socialism) ‘bourgeois right’ is not abolished in its entirety, but only in part, only in proportion to the economic revolution so far attained, i.e., only in respect of the means of production. ‘Bourgeois right’ recognizes them as the private property of individuals. Socialism converts them into common property. To that extent—and to that extent alone— ‘bourgeois right’ disappears.

“However, it continues to exist as far as its other part is concerned; it continues to exist in the capacity of regulator (determining factor) in the distribution of products and the allotment of labor among the members of society. The socialist principle: ‘He who does not work, neither shall he eat,’ is already realized; the other socialist principle: ‘An equal amount of products for an equal amount of labor,’ is also already realized. But this is not yet Communism, and it does not yet abolish ‘bourgeois right,’ which gives to unequal individuals, in return for unequal (really unequal) amounts of labor, equal amounts of products.

“This is a ‘defect,’ says Marx, but it is unavoidable in the first phase of Communism [Socialism]; for if we are not to indulge in utopianism, we must not think that having overthrown capitalism people will at once learn to work for society without any standard of right; and indeed the abolition of capitalism does not immediately create the economic premises for such a change.

“And there is no other standard than that of ‘bourgeois right.’ To this extent, therefore, there still remains the need for a state, which, while safeguarding the public ownership of the means of production, would safeguard equality in labor and equality in the distribution of products.”

So, we have to understand that the goal of socialism is communism, and the role of the socialist state is to usher in the transition to a classless society, whereby the state will wither away. If socialism means distribution based on work, and communism is distribution based on need, then to get there, people must first learn to work for society without the bourgeois right of equal pay for equal work, and the fundamental inequalities that reproduce bourgeois right must be uprooted. These are inequalities based on things like physical strength, endurance, and fitness, education, skill, family connections, inequalities of agricultural land, contradictions between town and country, between mental and manual labor, inequalities relating to the gendered division of labor, and persisting inequalities resulting from national oppression, among others. The class struggle continues under the dictatorship of the proletariat, particularly in the superstructure. Further, the material basis, in terms of advanced productive forces and division of labor, required for distribution based on need rather than work, must be in place.

The State and Revolution today

Lenin finishes his book with a look at the various opportunist trends in Marxism that were, in various ways, distorting the revolutionary understanding of the State.

Lenin writes,

“It is often said and written that the main point in Marx's theory is the class struggle. But this is wrong. And this wrong notion very often results in an opportunist distortion of Marxism and its falsification in a spirit acceptable to the bourgeoisie….Only he is a Marxist who extends the recognition of the class struggle to the recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat.”

The capitalists always hide their class interest behind an ideology that pretends to be universal. They speak of democracy and freedom in the abstract, as if they are something that exist for everyone. But Lenin always emphasizes that whenever the capitalist ideologues attempt to hide behind such abstractions, we must ask, “but for whom, for which class?” Marxism seeks to expose these class interests, and the question of democracy in the transition period is no different. Thus, Lenin writes of socialist democracy, defining it as “democracy for the vast majority of the people, and suppression by force, i.e., exclusion from democracy, of the exploiters and oppressors of the people.”

Today, we see the repressive side of bourgeois democracy laid bare. The Zionist genocide in Gaza is bankrolled by the U.S. monopoly capitalist class, led by Joe Biden and the Democratic Party. As the resistance to these horrific crimes grows, in Palestine and here at home, everything is being exposed for what it really is. We are currently seeing a prairie fire of resistance sweeping the campuses of U.S. colleges and universities, where brave and heroic students are setting up encampments, occupying their schools, and demanding divestment from Israel and an end to the genocide. They are being met with tremendous state repression and mass arrests, and yet, in the face of all of this, the movement only continues to grow stronger, larger, and more militant.

In this context, it should be clear to anyone paying attention that the state's job, from the politicians to the courts, the police and the National Guard, is to protect the interests of the monopoly capitalists, who would use Israel as its proxy and as a foothold for its hegemony in the Middle East. The “thousand threads” connecting the universities themselves to imperialism are likewise laid bare for all to see.

All the same, there are many who don’t understand this main point. For example, the social democrats insist that socialism can be brought about through electoral means, and that a reformed capitalism, along the lines of the Nordic countries, is sufficient to build socialism. Even some who call themselves Marxist-Leninists advocate for a peaceful transition to socialism while arguing that the socialist state ought to be built upon the most foundational elements of the bourgeois state, such as the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights.

Certainly, it is true that the masses have always waged a struggle for democratic demands, to increase democracy. But this has been a struggle against the machinery of the bourgeois democratic state, which is fundamentally designed to uphold and reproduce the power of the capitalists. This is a point driven home in the book We the Elites: Why the U.S. Constitution Serves the Few, by Robert Ovetz, which argues convincingly that the Constitution “was intentionally designed…to impede political democracy and prevent economic democracy.” It is an essential part of the “thousand threads” that connect the state to the class that it serves.

On the other hand, anarchists try to convince people that the state can be abolished all at once, and that the day after the revolution we can simply put all of the baggage left over from capitalist society behind us and live in classless and stateless heaven on earth. But Lenin explains why that is a recipe for defeat, and that if we don’t replace the state power of the capitalists with the revolutionary state power of the working class, then the door is left open for the capitalist class to restore their power.

To avoid all these pitfalls, we need to understand clearly what the state is, what its class nature is, and how to overcome it. Revolutionaries today should study Lenin’s State and Revolution, and, as the great leader of the Chinese revolution, Mao Zedong, once said, “cast away illusions and prepare for struggle.”

J. Sykes is the author of the book “The Revolutionary Science of Marxism-Leninism”. The book can be purchased by visiting tinyurl.com/revsciMLbook

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Karl Marx is best known in the realm of political economy for his great work, Capital. Marx is the original theorist, together with his associate Friedrich Engels, of scientific socialism. Marx wrote Capital in order to expose the inner workings of capitalism, so that workers could understand the system behind their exploitation, how this system arose historically, and the laws of motion inherent within it.

While Marx was writing Capital, he gave a lecture over two separate meetings to the General Council of the International Workingmen's Association, the First International. This was in June of 1865. This important lecture was published after Marx’s death in the form of a small pamphlet titled Wages, Price, and Profit, edited by Marx’s daughter, Eleanor Marx. It has also been published under the title Value, Price, and Profit. This important text summarizes some of the key ideas of Capital that he was engaged with writing at the time. 

The purpose of the lecture was to respond to John Weston, a follower of the utopian socialist Robert Owen. In a letter to Engels from May 20, 1865, Marx explains Weston’s position: “(1) that a general rise in the rate of wages would be of no use to the workers; (2) that therefore, etc., the trade unions have a harmful effect.” He goes on to elaborate that Weston’s “two main points are: (1) That the wages of labor determine the value of commodities, (2) that if the capitalists pay five instead of four shillings today, they will sell their commodities for five instead of four shillings tomorrow (being enabled to do so by the increased demand).” Marx ridicules these points, but notes that refuting them will be no simple task. “You can’t compress a course of political economy into one hour,” he writes, “But we shall have to do our best.”

So here we will further compress Marx’s already very concise argument, doing our best to draw out the main threads of his response to Weston and show why it is important to study this important work.

Marx’s argument

Marx summarizes Weston’s views like this: “If the working class forces the capitalist class to pay five shillings instead of four shillings in the shape of money wages, the capitalist will return in the shape of commodities four shillings' worth instead of five shillings' worth. The working class would have to pay five shillings for what, before the rise of wages, they bought with four shillings.” Put another way, Marx writes that, “reduced to their simplest theoretical expression,” Weston’s arguments are simply expressed as follows: “’The prices of commodities are determined or regulated by wages.’”

How so? Basically, according to Weston’s view, an increase in wages for the working class will increase its purchasing power, which will, in turn, increase demand relative to supply, thereby raising the price of commodities alongside the raise in wages. We’ve all heard this argument before. If the working class wins an increase in wages, then capitalists will simply raise prices to make up the difference, and nothing will have been accomplished. 

Ultimately, Marx notes, Weston’s argument goes nowhere. 

“First he told us that wages regulate the price of commodities and that consequently when wages rise prices must rise. Then he turned round to show us that a rise of wages will be no good because the prices of commodities had risen, and because wages were indeed measured by the prices of the commodities upon which they are spent. Thus we begin by saying that the value of labor determines the value of commodities, and we wind up by saying that the value of commodities determines the value of labor. Thus we move to and fro in the most vicious circle, and arrive at no conclusion at all.” 

In other words, Marx writes, we are left with “value determined by value,” which really tells us nothing at all about value, but rather, only obscures what is really going on. Marx stresses that the will of all capitalists is everywhere the same: to achieve the highest rate of profit. He says, “The will of the capitalist is certainly to take as much as possible. What we have to do is not to talk about his will, but to enquire into his power, the limits of that power, and the character of those limits.”

To push beyond this impasse, Marx explains the labor theory of value, that is, the creation of value by labor. Marx here points out that we must understand commodities as “crystallized social labor.” He goes on to explain it like this. “A commodity has a value, because it is a crystallization of social labor. The greatness of its value, or its relative value, depends upon the greater or less amount of that social substance contained in it; that is to say, on the relative mass of labor necessary for its production. The relative values of commodities are, therefore, determined by the respective quantities or amounts of labor, worked up, realized, fixed in them.” Marx then says that “As a general law we may, therefore, set it down that: — The values of commodities are directly as the times of labor employed in their production, and are inversely as the productive powers of the labor employed.” 

But what does this tell us about the value of labor, which is the crux of this debate? To Marx, this misstates the question. Why? “What the working man sells is not directly his labor, but his laboring power, the temporary disposal of which he makes over to the capitalist.” The real question, then, concerns the value of labor power. Marx tells us that “Like that of every other commodity, its value is determined by the quantity of labor necessary to produce it.” In other words, the value of labor power is determined by the labor that goes into the production of the basic needs of the workers, which allows them to go on living and working. If the basic necessities of the worker aren’t met, then, obviously, the worker can’t work. Marx sums it up by stating that “the value of laboring power is determined by the value of the necessaries required to produce, develop, maintain, and perpetuate the laboring power.” 

By understanding the value of labor power in this way, Marx is able to uncover the key of capitalist exploitation: the production of surplus value. Marx notes, “The daily or weekly value of the laboring power is quite distinct from the daily or weekly exercise of that power.” It is worthwhile to quote Marx at length here as he explains the theory of surplus-value: 

“The quantity of labor by which the value of the workman's laboring power is limited forms by no means a limit to the quantity of labor which his laboring power is apt to perform. Take the example of our spinner. We have seen that, to daily reproduce his laboring power, he must daily reproduce a value of three shillings, which he will do by working six hours daily. But this does not disable him from working ten or twelve or more hours a day. But by paying the daily or weekly value of the spinner's laboring power the capitalist has acquired the right of using that laboring power during the whole day or week. He will, therefore, make him work say, daily, twelve hours. Over and above the six hours required to replace his wages, or the value of his laboring power, he will, therefore, have to work six other hours, which I shall call hours of surplus labor, which surplus labor will realize itself in a surplus value and a surplus produce. If our spinner, for example, by his daily labor of six hours, added three shillings' value to the cotton, a value forming an exact equivalent to his wages, he will, in twelve hours, add six shillings' worth to the cotton, and produce a proportional surplus of yarn. As he has sold his laboring power to the capitalist, the whole value of produce created by him belongs to the capitalist, the owner pro tem. of his laboring power. By advancing three shillings, the capitalist will, therefore, realize a value of six shillings, because, advancing a value in which six hours of labor are crystallized, he will receive in return a value in which twelve hours of labor are crystallized. By repeating this same process daily, the capitalist will daily advance three shillings and daily pocket six shillings, one half of which will go to pay wages anew, and the other half of which will form surplus value, for which the capitalist pays no equivalent. It is this sort of exchange between capital and labor upon which capitalistic production, or the wages system, is founded, and which must constantly result in reproducing the working man as a working man, and the capitalist as a capitalist.”

Marx then makes a crucial point. He writes that “although one part only of the workman's daily labor is paid, while the other part is unpaid, and while that unpaid or surplus labor constitutes exactly the fund out of which surplus value or profit is formed, it seems as if the aggregate labor was paid labor.” In other words, by means of this shell game, the capitalist makes it look like the worker was paid fairly. “This false appearance distinguishes wages labor from other historical forms of labor,” writes Marx. “On the basis of the wages system even the unpaid labor seems to be paid labor.”

By increasing the amount of labor power expended beyond that which is necessary to cover the cost of the worker’s wages, the capitalist can increase the rate of surplus-value, that is, the rate of exploitation. And competition among the capitalists demands that they always strive to increase this rate of exploitation, becoming more and more efficient in their machinery and techniques, or else be devoured by those who do. 

It isn’t possible in this short article to get into all of the important distinctions and clarifications that Marx makes in regard to how this functions, but it is important to understand. In this regard, it is essential to study the text of Wages, Price, and Profit itself. But it is necessary to highlight a final point.

Marx emphasizes that the development of more advanced machinery and techniques, that is, more advanced productive forces, makes it possible to produce more with less labor. While this is essential to the capitalist’s survival within the system, it also has the long-term tendency of driving down the value of human labor power. This is at the root of declining wages under capitalism, and contributes to the cyclical crises that plague capitalism. Marx explains, “These few hints will suffice to show that the very development of modern industry must progressively turn the scale in favor of the capitalist against the working man, and that consequently the general tendency of capitalistic production is not to raise, but to sink the average standard of wages, or to push the value of labor more or less to its minimum limit.”

Because of this, and contrary to Weston’s view, it is all the more essential for workers to organize. Marx writes, “Trades Unions work well as centers of resistance against the encroachments of capital.” But, he notes, they fail over the long term against this encroachment because they limit themselves to addressing the symptoms, rather than the causes, of capitalist exploitation. The working class, Marx says, “ought not to forget that they are fighting with effects, but not with the causes of those effects; that they are retarding the downward movement, but not changing its direction; that they are applying palliatives, not curing the malady.”

Therefore, Marx stresses that while these resistance struggles are unavoidable and necessary, the working class cannot stop there. “They ought to understand that, with all the miseries it imposes upon them, the present system simultaneously engenders the material conditions and the social forms necessary for an economical reconstruction of society. Instead of the conservative motto: “A fair day's wage for a fair day's work!” they ought to inscribe on their banner the revolutionary watchword: “Abolition of the wages system!“

Wages, Price, and Profit today

Today we always hear the same arguments from those who would preserve the current class structure: the capitalists will simply raise prices to offset workers’ wages. This argument is trotted out whenever workers start to organize to fight back. But Marx explains that capitalism is governed by laws, not simply by the whims of even the most powerful and greedy capitalists. To say, as Weston did, that commodity prices are determined by wages, is a naive, superficial view that obscures what is really happening and is intended to make working class struggle for better wages look pointless. This argument does the ideological work of the bourgeoisie and helps to preserve the status quo of capitalist exploitation.

Marx stresses a point driven home later by Lenin in his struggle against the Economists in Russia: if the working class limits itself to this economic struggle alone it will always be on the defensive, fighting a valiant but losing battle as real wages continue to be driven down in a crisis-ridden system. In order to turn the tide, it is also necessary to go on the offensive, to wage a revolutionary, political struggle for working class state power and the abolition of the capitalist system as such. 

Wages, Price, and Profit is essential reading for all working people. It is an important weapon in the ideological arsenal of the working class. It is a theoretical weapon against those who say the economic struggle against capital is fruitless and in vain. And it is also a weapon against those who say that such an economic struggle alone is enough. 

J. Sykes is the author of the book “The Revolutionary Science of Marxism-Leninism”. The book can be purchased by visiting tinyurl.com/revsciMLbook

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Today we are launching a new series on Marxist-Leninist theory, focusing on important texts from the principal theorists of Marxism-Leninism: Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong. In these short reviews, we will look briefly at the historical context of the text, we will break down the main argument and points, and we will talk about how the text remains relevant and applicable to revolutionaries today. We will begin with Socialism, Utopian and Scientific, by Friedrich Engels.

The pamphlet Socialism, Utopian and Scientific was published in 1890, and is extracted from a larger work on Marxist philosophy by Engels, called Anti-Dühring: Herr Eugen Dühring's Revolution in Science, from 1877. That book is a response to the work of Professor Karl Eugen Dühring. Dühring criticized Marxism from an idealist and utopian position, and Engel’s book takes the opportunity to answer Dühring and explain clearly and systematically the philosophical and scientific theories of Marxism.

Paul Lafargue, a leading socialist in France and son-in-law to Karl Marx, requested that the text of Socialism, Utopian and Scientific be published as a small pamphlet. The pamphlet was immediately very popular. Engels writes in the introduction to the 1892 English edition, “I am not aware that any other Socialist work, not even our Communist Manifesto of 1848, or Marx's Capital, has been so often translated.”

The book begins with an analysis of Utopian Socialism, particularly in France. But first, in his introduction to the English edition, Engels gives us an analysis of the historical development of religious thinking among the English bourgeoisie. Here, Engels writes, “The long fight of the bourgeoisie against feudalism culminated in three great, decisive battles.” These are the Protestant Reformation, the English Revolution, and the French Revolution. He also notes the enormous impact of the industrial revolution and the social revolutions of 1848. Engels traces the role of idealist and materialist thought through these struggles. He writes that “Thus, if materialism became the creed of the French Revolution, the God-fearing English bourgeois held all the faster to his religion.” He goes on to note, “The more materialism spread from France to neighboring countries, and was reinforced by similar doctrinal currents, notably by German philosophy, the more, in fact, materialism and free thought generally became, on the Continent, the necessary qualifications of a cultivated man, the more stubbornly the English middle-class stuck to its manifold religious creeds.”

Engels’ point here is to contextualize, for his readers among the English working class, the text that follows, which deals with the development of socialist thought in France.

Utopian socialism

Engels begins his analysis of the origins of contemporary socialism, writing,

“Modern Socialism is, in its essence, the direct product of the recognition, on the one hand, of the class antagonisms existing in the society of today between proprietors and non-proprietors, between capitalists and wage-workers; on the other hand, of the anarchy existing in production. But, in its theoretical form, modern Socialism originally appears ostensibly as a more logical extension of the principles laid down by the great French philosophers of the 18th century. Like every new theory, modern Socialism had, at first, to connect itself with the intellectual stock-in-trade ready to its hand, however deeply its roots lay in material economic facts.”

Engels writes that these philosophers were “extreme revolutionists” who believed that “everything must justify its existence before the judgment-seat of reason or give up existence.” According to them, writes Engels,

“Every form of society and government then existing, every old traditional notion, was flung into the lumber-room as irrational; the world had hitherto allowed itself to be led solely by prejudices; everything in the past deserved only pity and contempt. Now, for the first time, appeared the light of day, the kingdom of reason; henceforth superstition, injustice, privilege, oppression, were to be superseded by eternal truth, eternal Right, equality based on Nature and the inalienable rights of man.”

But Engels stresses “We know today that this kingdom of reason was nothing more than the idealized kingdom of the bourgeoisie.” Engels emphasizes an important Marxist point here: that ideology and class are bound up together, that the dominant ideas in society are determined by the dominant class in society. Therefore, “this eternal Right found its realization in bourgeois justice … this equality reduced itself to bourgeois equality before the law … bourgeois property was proclaimed as one of the essential rights of man; and … the government of reason, the Contrat Social of Rousseau, came into being, and only could come into being, as a democratic bourgeois republic.” Engels sums this point up, by saying that these bourgeois social philosophers of the 18th century “could, no more than their predecessors, go beyond the limits imposed upon them by their epoch.”

And yet, returning to the “three great, decisive battles of the Reformation, the English Revolution, and the French Revolution, Engels points out, “in every great bourgeois movement there were independent outbursts of that class which was the forerunner, more or less developed, of the modern proletariat. For example, at the time of the German Reformation and the Peasants’ War, the Anabaptists and Thomas Münzer; in the great English Revolution, the Levellers; in the great French Revolution, Babeuf.“ In this way Engels acknowledges that there are two ideologies in conflict in developing capitalist society: the dominant ideology of the bourgeoisie, liberalism, and the revolutionary ideology of the proletariat, socialism. This latter current of thought gives rise to the “three great Utopians,” Henri de Saint-Simon, Charles Fourier, and Robert Owen.

Engels notes that these founders of utopian socialism were also limited by the conditions in which they found themselves. “The solution of the social problems, which as yet lay hidden in undeveloped economic conditions, the Utopians attempted to evolve out of the human brain.” Engels explains this further, saying

“Society presented nothing but wrongs; to remove these was the task of reason. It was necessary, then, to discover a new and more perfect system of social order and to impose this upon society from without by propaganda, and, wherever it was possible, by the example of model experiments. These new social systems were foredoomed as Utopian; the more completely they were worked out in detail, the more they could not avoid drifting off into pure phantasies.”

These utopians were still working within the idealist framework they had inherited from the bourgeois philosophers who were their immediate predecessors. “To all these, Socialism is the expression of absolute truth, reason and justice, and has only to be discovered to conquer all the world by virtue of its own power,” writes Engels. “And as an absolute truth is independent of time, space, and of the historical development of man, it is a mere accident when and where it is discovered.”

Dialectics

However well meaning they may have been, the utopian founders of modern socialism were unable to place socialism on a scientific basis. On the one hand, as Engels put it, “To the crude conditions of capitalistic production and the crude class conditions correspond crude theories.” Capitalism in its infancy was based in the workshop handicraft industry, which began in the 16th century and would last through the middle of the 18th century. The period of the development of large-scale mechanized industry had only just begun when the utopians were writing. On the other hand, the utopians lacked the methodology to analyze capitalist development. Engels notes that “the French of the 18th century were almost wholly dominated” by metaphysics.

What does this mean? What is metaphysics? Engels puts it like this.

“To the metaphysician, things and their mental reflexes, ideas, are isolated, are to be considered one after the other and apart from each other, are objects of investigation fixed, rigid, given once for all. He thinks in absolutely irreconcilable antitheses. … For him, a thing either exists or does not exist; a thing cannot at the same time be itself and something else. Positive and negative absolutely exclude one another; cause and effect stand in a rigid antithesis, one to the other.”

Engels contrasts this mode of thinking with dialectics, which he says, “comprehends things and their representations, ideas, in their essential connection, concatenation, motion, origin and ending.”

In other words, metaphysics sees things as absolute, eternal, fixed, and isolated, while dialectics sees things as always in motion, developing in relation to one-another, as the result of conflict and struggle. This dialectical methodology finds its philosophical expression in the system of the German philosopher, G.W.F. Hegel. Engels explains, “In this system – and herein is its great merit – for the first time the whole world, natural, historical, intellectual, is represented as a process – i.e., as in constant motion, change, transformation, development; and the attempt is made to trace out the internal connection that makes a continuous whole of all this movement and development.”

This was a huge step forward, but Hegel still wasn’t able to separate his dialectical method from his fundamentally idealist worldview. He still understood historical development as being driven by ideas, and ultimately, by God. It was Marx, by understanding that historical change and social transformation are driven by material processes, namely by class struggle, who put dialectics on a materialist basis. As Engels put it, “Hegel has freed history from metaphysics — he made it dialectic; but his conception of history was essentially idealistic. But now idealism was driven from its last refuge, the philosophy of history; now a materialistic treatment of history was propounded, and a method found of explaining man's ‘knowing’ by his ‘being’, instead of, as heretofore, his ‘being’ by his ‘knowing’.”

Until this point, the utopians sought to theorize socialist society in an idealist and metaphysical way. They didn’t understand the laws of motion of capitalist society, nor did they understand the historic mission of the proletariat to bring class society, exploitation and oppression, to an end. As a result, none of their theories or experiments could bear fruit.

Marx, on the other hand, was able to demonstrate, as Engels notes,

“…the appropriation of unpaid labor is the basis of the capitalist mode of production and of the exploitation of the worker that occurs under it; that even if the capitalist buys the labor power of his laborer at its full value as a commodity on the market, he yet extracts more value from it than he paid for; and that in the ultimate analysis, this surplus-value forms those sums of value from which are heaped up constantly increasing masses of capital in the hands of the possessing classes. The genesis of capitalist production and the production of capital were both explained.”

“These two great discoveries, the materialistic conception of history and the revelation of the secret of capitalistic production through surplus-value, we owe to Marx. With these discoveries, Socialism became a science.”

Historical materialism

The section “Historical Materialism” brings us to the culmination of Engels’s pamphlet. Here he explains the scientific conclusions drawn by applying dialectical materialism to the study of historical development. Engels gives the following general sketch of what historical materialism means:

“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.”

Engels explains the core terms used by historical materialism to understand this process: namely, the mode of production, and within that, the forces and relations of production. The mode of production is the way that society organizes the production and distribution of human wants and needs. The forces of production are the tools, factories, farms, and techniques of labor used in that production. And the relations of production are the concrete relationships of ownership and power that govern who does the work and reaps the profits of that work, the class relations of society.

Engels then gives us a sweeping overview of historical materialism. He explains how the division of labor under capitalism gives to the productive forces a social character, carried out by the working class as a whole, while ownership of the means of production and the accumulation of wealth remains private, hoarded by the capitalists. He explains how this fundamental contradiction inherent in capitalism drives the entire system towards crisis. And he explains that the proletariat has an historic mission to abolish “all class distinction and class antagonisms.” He explains that the state arises from class antagonism, and that by abolishing class antagonism, the state “dies out of itself,” or, as Lenin would later put it, “withers away.”

Engels writes, “Anarchy in social production is replaced by systematic, definite organization,” and “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.” Truly, this is what scientific socialism, that is, Marxism-Leninism, gives to us: an understanding of the laws that govern social development, so that we can use those laws to abolish exploitation and oppression once and for all. Thus, Engels concludes that “To accomplish this act of universal emancipation is the historical mission of the modern proletariat.”

Socialism, Utopian and Scientific today

Anyone interested in social change should read this important pamphlet by Engels. Today, we see all around us various “socialists” who fail to understand the need for dialectical and historical materialism, and so are unable to make their ideas bear fruit. Like the utopians then, today we have various currents of progressive liberals, anarchists, and social democrats, all with their own condemnations of capitalism’s ills, and their own pie-in-the-sky solutions. Like the utopians, they don’t understand the laws of motion that govern social transformation, and they don’t understand that the working class, the proletariat, has a historic mission that only it can achieve. But unlike the utopians, today we have Marxism. We have the theory of dialectical and historical materialism, so we can approach the problems of revolution in a scientific way.

Our job before us today is a big one. We need to bring proletarian ideology home to the workers’ movement, to fuse Marxism with the working-class movement so that workers can get a clear picture of the methods of their exploitation, and the means by which to overcome it. And we need to build a revolutionary, Marxist-Leninist party that can carry out this historic mission to overthrow all existing social relations and build a new, socialist society. Studying this pamphlet by Engels is important to give us the theoretical weapons we need to carry out these tasks.

J. Sykes is the author of the book “The Revolutionary Science of Marxism-Leninism”. The book can be purchased by visiting tinyurl.com/revsciMLbook

#RevolutionaryTheory #RedReviews #MarxismLeninism #Engels #Marx

The following text was presented by Michela Martinazzi, a member of the Central Committee of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization at the International Assembly Against Imperialism in Solidarity with Palestine organized by Workers World Party.

Comrades and friends,

On behalf of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization, let’s start by thanking the organizers of this important event – Workers World Party – for bringing us together at a truly critical juncture in world history. By sharing views and analyses of the world as it actually is, we can learn from each other, and, from those insights, make plans to challenge the existing order of things.

We are certain this International Assembly against Imperialism in Solidarity with Palestine will be a great success. The old world is exploding, something new is coming into being.

The great revolution that is underway in Palestine is nothing short of amazing. In the face of genocide, the Palestinian people are waging a fight that has the potential to end the Zionist project and limit the influence of U.S. imperialism in the Middle East. Israel has always existed on stolen land and borrowed time. The clock is ticking.

Holding this Assembly on the 100th anniversary of the passing of the outstanding revolutionary V.I. Lenin was a good choice. This U.S. working class has a proud history that we sometimes lose sight of. For many years following Lenin’s death, revolutionaries held huge memorial meetings right here in New York City to mourn his passing and recommit to the revolutionary cause. For example, on January 21, 1937, more than 20,000 communists assembled in Madison Square Garden for that very purpose.

Lenin and imperialism

Lenin above all else was a revolutionary, who applied Marxism to the world around him and saw that competitive capitalism was giving way to monopoly capitalism. And this monopoly capitalism is what is referred to as imperialism. The two things are synonymous.

For today’s purposes, there isn’t time to recap Lenin’s great work, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism. If there is anyone in hearing range who has not read it, get yourself a copy and do so. You won’t regret it. If you have done so, there is no harm in going over it again – odds are you will get something out of it.

Lenin drew a number of extremely important conclusions from the reality that capitalism had entered its imperialist stage, and I am going to focus on a few of them.

First, noting the world had been divided up amongst a handful of great powers, Lenin pointed out that wars to redivide the world were inevitable. He stressed that the only way to end imperialist wars was by ending imperialism and replacing it with socialism.

Lenin also appreciated the vital role that the majority of humanity in the colonies and semi-colonies would exercise, and that the contradiction between imperialism and oppressed peoples of the world would occupy a vital place in the era of monopoly capitalism.

In his important 1913 article Backward Europe and Advanced Asia, Lenin contrasts the broad progressive national democratic movement in China with the monopoly capitalist rulers of Europe. Of China, he said “Hundreds of millions of people are awakening to life, light and freedom”, and of Europe’s rulers Lenin stated, “Advanced Europe is commanded by a bourgeoisie which supports everything that is backward.”

Lenin knew what all socialists and communists needed to realize as well, and, quite honestly, it is pretty likely everyone here today gets this – any movement of the oppressed that weakens imperialism is a good thing. It deserves our support and solidarity. It is like the question posed in the old labor song, “Which Side Are You On?”

Every setback for Wall Street is an advance for Main Street. Working and oppressed people in the U.S. have a common cause with all who are oppressed by imperialism. Every ship turned around by Yemen helps those of us who are fighting to end exploitation here in the U.S. – we have the same enemy. Do we want strong enemies? No, we want weak and defeated ones. By the same token, every blow that we are able to inflict on the class enemy aids those suffering under imperialism’s yoke.

Palestine and the decline of U.S. imperialism

The decline of U.S. imperialism is accelerating. The people of Palestine are showing the way. All of us need to learn from their will to sacrifice and determination to win.

Lenin stressed that imperialism was capitalism that is moribund; it is dying. And we can see the symptoms all around them, including their political representatives. I invite you to join us at the Republican National Convention, July 15 in Milwaukee, and at the Democratic National Convention, August 19, in Chicago to confront them.

Marx talked about the vampire-like nature of capitalism. Let’s build unity. The many against the few. The people of the world can and will unite. Together we will put a stake in the heart of imperialism.

#FRSO #RevolutionaryTheory #International #Palestine #Imperialism #Lenin #MarxismLeninism

Since the writing of The Communist Manifesto and the founding of the First International, proletarian internationalism has been a cornerstone of scientific socialism, and is a pillar of Marxism-Leninism. Today, in the era of imperialism, putting genuine proletarian internationalism into practice demands that we be consistent anti-imperialists.

Beyond any moral questions, there are two obvious, material reasons for this proletarian internationalist, anti-imperialist unity. On the one hand every dollar that goes to imperialist war is a dollar that could have been spent on people’s needs at home. But even more importantly, every blow struck against imperialism weakens the monopoly capitalist class here.

What imperialism is and what it is not

First, let’s be clear on what imperialism means. Understanding the link between imperialism and monopoly capitalism is essential. Indeed, imperialism and monopoly capitalism aren't just linked, they’re synonymous. Failing to understand this, some people think any kind of big country is an empire and that any empire is imperialist, from ancient Rome to socialist China. But this is an idealist and metaphysical view. In other words, this view fails to look at how imperialism develops historically, according to definite material processes. It should be obvious that the Roman Empire and the U.S. empire are qualitatively different.

If we look at imperialism historically, we have to understand its relationship to the dominant socio-economic system. V.I. Lenin developed the scientific analysis of imperialism in his book Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, to help the working-class movement understand the demands that this new historical stage of capitalism placed on the socialist movement. In “Imperialism and the Split in Socialism,” Lenin writes, “Imperialism is a specific historical stage of capitalism. Its specific character is threefold: imperialism is monopoly capitalism; parasitic, or decaying capitalism; moribund capitalism. The supplanting of free competition by monopoly is the fundamental economic feature, the quintessence of imperialism.”

Lenin goes on to explain that imperialism, as monopoly capitalism, has five principal characteristics:

“Monopoly manifests itself in five principal forms: (1) cartels, syndicates and trusts—the concentration of production has reached a degree which gives rise to these monopolistic associations of capitalists; (2) the monopolistic position of the big banks—three, four or five giant banks manipulate the whole economic life of America, France, Germany; (3) seizure of the sources of raw material by the trusts and the financial oligarchy (finance capital is monopoly industrial capital merged with bank capital); (4) the (economic) partition of the world by the international cartels has begun. There are already over one hundred such international cartels, which command the entire world market and divide it “amicably” among themselves—until war redivides it. The export of capital, as distinct from the export of commodities under non-monopoly capitalism, is a highly characteristic phenomenon and is closely linked with the economic and territorial-political partition of the world; (5) the territorial partition of the world (colonies) is completed.”

This is the historical materialist view of imperialism as it exists today. Thus, Lenin points out that “Imperialism, as the highest stage of capitalism in America and Europe, and later in Asia, took final shape in the period 1898–1914. The Spanish-American War (1898), the Anglo-Boer War (1899–1902), the Russo-Japanese War (1904–05) and the economic crisis in Europe in 1900 are the chief historical landmarks in the new era of world history.” The rise of imperialism in the U.S. led to the colonization of foreign territories and contributed to the development of oppressed nations within the borders of the U.S., such as the Chicano Nation in the Southwest, the African American Nation in the Black Belt South, and the Hawaiian Nation.

Dialectically, the era of imperialism has led to the development of four fundamental contradictions operating on a world-scale: the contradiction between labor and capital, the contradictions between the imperialists among themselves, the contradiction between the imperialists and the movements for national liberation, and, following the Bolshevik revolution in 1917, the contradiction between the imperialist and socialist systems.

It is important to note that some people choose to ignore the historical connection between the development of monopoly capitalism and imperialism. They argue that countries like China are imperialist, because they engage in foreign trade. Looking at the difference between the foreign policy of China and the imperialist countries will help us understand what imperialism is in practice, and what it isn’t. Basically, what these people fail to understand is that imperialism is fundamentally exploitative, extractive and violent.

Imperialism relies upon predatory loans, structural adjustment programs, unequal trade agreements, privatization and liberalization, to ensure that it can extract as much profit from its colonies and neocolonies as possible. Capital is exported to the underdeveloped countries in order to exploit cheap labor. By locking these oppressed nations and peoples into a permanent state of underdevelopment it is able to achieve a higher rate of exploitation than it can otherwise. This super-exploitation allows the imperialist powers to prop themselves up with these super-profits, using them as a kind of life-support, to prolong the existence of the capitalist system far beyond its natural lifespan.

This inevitably leads to the sharpening of the contradictions between the imperialists themselves and the contradiction between the imperialists and the movements for national liberation. For this reason, the imperialists must back all of this up with military force. For the U.S., this includes a network of military bases, spanning the world, and its military alliances, like NATO, which it dominates. It will not hesitate to intervene militarily, or to arm and fund its proxies, such as Ukraine and Israel. It will stage coups and assassinate leaders. There is no price in human bloodshed and suffering that is too high to protect U.S. hegemony and imperialist super-profits.

China’s foreign policy in the developing world is nothing like this. It is neither exploitative nor extractive and is based on equal and mutually beneficial trade agreements. It is also fundamentally peaceful. The countries that benefit from trade and development from China are not locked into underdevelopment by China. Nor are they targeted for Chinese military intervention, or coups. On the contrary, China provides an alternative to imperialist underdevelopment that many countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America are glad to take.

China doesn’t do this because the Chinese are nice and the imperialists aren’t. The imperialists are violent, exploitative and extractive because they must be. The imperialist system is governed by laws, laws inherent to capitalism. China behaves differently because these are laws from which the working class has freed itself in the socialist countries. Socialism, and China in particular, is thus a counterbalance to imperialism in the world. This counterbalance causes the contradiction between the imperialist and socialist systems to sharpen, leading to a constant barrage of anti-China propaganda and increasing aggression from the U.S. towards China.

Imperialism and war

Beyond this question of what imperialism is and what it isn’t, there is further confusion about what it means to be consistently anti-imperialist in relation to the question of war. Because monopoly capitalism relies upon military intervention, that is, upon war, to further its aims, progressive people everywhere rightly oppose imperialist war. But it is possible to make a very dangerous error here.

There is a pacifist trend in the anti-war movement that originates in the ideology of the petite bourgeoisie. These people oppose all war, regardless of who is fighting and for what. They see the violence of the imperialists and the violence of the oppressed as equally bad. These are the kind of people who, in the face of Zionist apartheid in Palestine and the U.S.-backed genocide in Gaza, demand first and foremost the movement’s condemnation of Hamas. They demand peace, condemning both the reactionary violence of the oppressor and the revolutionary violence of the oppressed. There is a material basis for this kind of thinking. The petite bourgeoisie is a class stuck between a rock and a hard place. They are driven down by the monopoly capitalist class, but they also benefit from the exploitation of labor and support the capitalist system. By taking this pacifist approach, they wash their hands of the whole conflict, and try to cling to the status quo.

On the other hand, there are also social-democrats who turn a blind eye towards imperialism. These people believe that “socialism” can be built within the framework of monopoly capitalism, despite the super-exploitation of the oppressed peoples of the rest of the world. This is why the representatives of this ideology tend to lend their support to the U.S. wars for empire, while they clamor for “socialism” at home. They see “socialism” as social programs under capitalism, like Medicare, public works projects, the postal service, and fire departments. Their “socialism” doesn’t challenge the power of the monopoly capitalists but would merely regulate it. Based on the so-called “Nordic model,” this kind of “socialism” is really just imperialism dressed in red—they advocate socialism in words, but imperialist in deeds. This is what Lenin called “social-imperialism.” These reformists argue for class collaboration, denying that the contradiction between the working class and the capitalist class is fundamentally antagonistic. And so, these “socialists” don’t understand that the starting point of socialism is the seizure of political power by the working class.

Some of these social democrats are the “progressive except for Palestine” variety. They support progressive reforms that would help working and oppressed people, but when it comes to foreign policy, especially in regard to support for Israel, they hold social-chauvinist and downight reactionary positions. Right now, as Israel continues to wage a genocidal war against the Palestinian people, these so called “socialists” have nothing but praise for Zionism and the Israeli apartheid state, and nothing but scorn and condemnation for principled anti-imperialists who stand in solidarity for the unified Palestinian Resistance.

We must be absolutely clear: victory for the resistance in Palestine is a victory for working and oppressed people everywhere, and that victory is coming closer every day. History will remember the Israeli state together with apartheid South Africa, as a stain on history and a mark of shame to everyone who ever supported it. As PFLP leader Leila Khaled once put it, “The supreme objective of the Palestinian liberation movement is the total liberation of Palestine, the dismantlement of the Zionist state apparatus, and the construction of a socialist society in which both Arabs and Jews can live in peace and harmony.” When that day comes, not only will the Palestinian people be liberated from oppression, but a mighty blow will be struck against the monopoly capitalist class in the U.S. that relies on the Zionist state to maintain its hegemony in the Middle East.

Social-chauvinist thinking isn’t a new problem, but it must be addressed again. Indeed, Lenin fought these tendencies in the Second International. Lenin argued that true proletarian internationalism means that socialists should support the defeat of their own imperialist governments in their wars of domination and plunder. Lenin put it simply, saying, “During a reactionary war a revolutionary class cannot but desire the defeat of its government.” During World War I, Lenin fought against those in the socialist movement who called for a “class truce” during the inter-imperialist war.

Some “socialists” even supported “defense of the fatherland” wrongly identifying the interests of the working class with the national interests of the capitalist ruling class. In his 1915 essay “The Defeat of One’s Own Government in the Imperialist War” Lenin takes to task those “socialists” like Karl Kautsky in Germany and Leon Trotsky in Russia who opposed the slogan of revolutionary defeatism, that is, the call for the defeat of one’s own imperialist government and the demand to transform the reactionary inter-imperialist war into a revolutionary, civil war. In his 1916 article, “Opportunism and the Collapse of the Second International,” Lenin further attacks these social-chauvinists, saying, “War is often useful in exposing what is rotten…”

But imperialist war is only one side of the equation. The reality is that some wars are unjust and others are just. Mao Zedong put it this way in his book, On Protracted War.

“History shows that wars are divided into two kinds, just and unjust. All wars that are progressive are just, and all wars that impede progress are unjust. We Communists oppose all unjust wars that impede progress, but we do not oppose progressive, just wars. Not only do we Communists not oppose just wars; we actively participate in them. As for unjust wars, World War I is an instance in which both sides fought for imperialist interests; therefore, the Communists of the whole world firmly opposed that war. The way to oppose a war of this kind is to do everything possible to prevent it before it breaks out and, once it breaks out, to oppose war with war, to oppose unjust war with just war, whenever possible.”

The wars carried out by the imperialists for hegemony, to divide and redivide the world, and to protect their super-profits, are unjust. They sacrifice the lives of millions for the sake of profit, to make sure the lines on the graph go up, and that the vaults of the shareholders are filled to the brim. This is why the U.S. gives billions in military aid to its proxies, like Israel, to maintain its foothold in the Middle East. No matter the war crimes or atrocities, the U.S. is always ready with its checkbook. These wars impede progress.

On the other hand, wars that oppose imperialism, that fight for national liberation from foreign capital and their domestic lackeys, are progressive, just wars. From Palestine to the Philippines, people are fighting tooth and nail to throw off the yoke of imperialism and colonialism, to achieve national liberation, independence, and dignity. These wars are just and should be supported.

During World War II, in “The Role of the Chinese Communist Party in the National War,” Mao put it like this:

“The specific content of patriotism is determined by historical conditions. There is the ‘patriotism’ of the Japanese aggressors and of Hitler, and there is our patriotism. Communists must resolutely oppose the ‘patriotism’ of the Japanese aggressors and of Hitler. The Communists of Japan and Germany are defeatists with regard to the wars being waged by their countries. To bring about the defeat of the Japanese aggressors and of Hitler by every possible means is in the interests of the Japanese and the German people, and the more complete the defeat the better.... For the wars launched by the Japanese aggressors and Hitler are harming the people at home as well as the people of the world.”

Because the anti-imperialist struggle is the strategic ally of the working class movement, Mao explains, “in wars of national liberation patriotism is applied internationalism.”

During World War II, the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union transformed the nature of that war. The war began in 1939 as an inter-imperialist war for the redivision of the world between the imperialist powers, but once the Soviet Union came under attack in June of 1941, it was no longer correct to regard the war as a purely inter-imperialist war. The contradiction between the imperialist and socialist systems came to the forefront, leading communists to join in the effort to defeat Nazi Germany, the main danger to the USSR. Furthermore, communist-led resistance movements, particularly in China, Yugoslavia and Albania, were waging just wars for liberation against imperialist occupation.

Friends and enemies

At the core of all this lies an important point, that Mao summed up well: “We should support whatever the enemy opposes and oppose whatever the enemy supports.” Who is the enemy? The imperialist, monopoly capitalist class. Who does the enemy oppose? Everyone fighting against oppression and for liberation, and everyone who challenges their hegemony. Who does the enemy support? Anyone who will serve their interests, who will help them in their drive for domination and exploitation.

Stalin makes this crystal clear in his 1924 book, The Foundations of Leninism, when he says, “The revolutionary character of a national movement under the conditions of imperialist oppression does not necessarily presuppose the existence of proletarian elements in the movement, the existence of a revolutionary or a republican programme of the movement, the existence of a democratic basis of the movement.”

Stalin gives the example of Amanullah Khan in Afghanistan: “The struggle that the Emir of Afghanistan is waging for the independence of Afghanistan is objectively a revolutionary struggle, despite the monarchist views of the Emir and his associates, for it weakens, disintegrates and undermines imperialism.”

To clarify this point, Stalin contrasts the nationalist movement in Egypt to the Labor Party in Britain. He writes “the struggle that the Egyptians merchants and bourgeois intellectuals are waging for the independence of Egypt is objectively a revolutionary struggle, despite the bourgeois origin and bourgeois title of the leaders of Egyptian national movement, despite the fact that they are opposed to socialism; whereas the struggle that the British ‘Labor’ Government is waging to preserve Egypt's dependent position is for the same reason a reactionary struggle, despite the proletarian origin and the proletarian title of the members of the government, despite the fact that they are ‘for’ socialism.”

This may seem strange to some people, but the reason for this is simple. The monopoly capitalist class that is oppressing, in Stalin’s example, the Egyptian independence movement, is the very same monopoly capitalist class that is exploiting the British working class. Their defeat by the Egyptian independence movement weakens them, helping the British working class to overthrow them. There is a strategic alliance that is possible here, even among classes with different interests, because they share this common enemy.

U.S. imperialism is in a state of prolonged and inevitable decline. Since the historic defeat of U.S. imperialism in Vietnam, the United States has grown more and more desperate. Like a cornered beast, it lashes out everywhere. For all of its snarling, biting and clawing, it accomplishes little at great cost. Its place of dominance in the imperialist system, established at the end of World War II, is slipping away. The labor movement is seeing an upsurge, the national liberation struggles are advancing, and the socialist countries are gaining strength. U.S imperialism fights on many fronts, and each defeat it faces is a victory for the working class here and around the world. Everyone who wants socialism should celebrate every blow struck against the imperialist, monopoly capitalist class.

J. Sykes is the author of the book “The Revolutionary Science of Marxism-Leninism”. The book can be purchased by visiting tinyurl.com/revsciMLbook

#RevolutionaryTheory #MarxismLeninism #Imperialism #AntiWar #Lenin #Stalin #Mao #Feature