- What follows is my reply to this commentary on recent developments in Wisconsin and where they're headed:
"...what is most important is that we support the union in their struggle..."
I thoroughly disagree!
Here, sharply posed, is the reality of the matter:
The "workers" in question make EXPONENTIALLY more than you do, and probably even two or three times what I do, as things are. They are NOT, as you portray them, desperately poor and just trying to eek out a living on the verge of starvation. They are so wealthy that a very large percentage of them probably even own businesses of their own on the side, as well as stock portfolios, real estate, etc.! 5.8% of $35,000-$70,000+ a year isn't going to kill anyone, or even close.
The hard and painful truth for the American "left" to accept is that these "workers" would actually lose more under AUTHENTIC socialism than is being demanded of them right now by "the Mubarak of the Midwest"! That they compare themselves to the Egyptian masses is an insult to the latter. Their conditions are not remotely similar and their demands are for the retention of their existing privileges OVER the Egyptian and other Third world masses. And moreover there isn't going to be any imperialist bourgeoisie or imperialist government with which to bargain/collaborate under socialism if it can at all be helped.
Even the Tea Party racists can spout out anti-corporate dribble when it is opportunistically convenient. They complain of the bank bailouts, of executive bonuses, of powerful bureaucrats, even sometimes of the Iraq War. Does this make them progressive? That'll be a cold day in hell!
The problem with the union movement in Wisconsin isn't that it's doomed to fail, it's that their objectives are reactionary! There is no "good" or "progressive" side to the debacle in Wisconsin. The situation instead reminds me of a lecture my law professor gave us in college one time. She described to us a case wherein a member of a pair of bank robbers decided he had been cheated by his partner and thus decided to sue for "his share" of the loot. Naturally, the court frowned on the case itself and found that neither of them had the right to stake a claim in the first place, given the means by which they had acquired the money in question.In that connection, one of the various particularly disgusting features of the Wisconsin action has been the celebration of American patriotism, which is inevitably the celebration of American colonialism and imperialism. Check out Tom Morello's little number. News flash to spoiled Wisconsin morons: this land AIN'T your land! And it ain't my land either. This land WASN'T "made for you and me"! This is stolen land and the debacle in question is over stolen loot! What we are witnessing in that video thus amounts to a celebration of genocide and plundering. And no, throwing in a verse about relief lines does not change that overarching essence.
We shouldn't just "be the best protesters we can be". We need to ask these hard questions about the political contents of protests. We should not support ANY section of American exploiters in fighting for the retention, let alone extension, of their privileges. No one has a right to plunder, no matter how employed or waged they are. The proletariat is more essentially defined by the property-less condition than by the employed status anyway. The property-less condition is what gives the proletariat its class interest in bringing all property under common ownership. That's the only way the proletariat AS A CLASS can acquire property. The former First World proletariat, on the other hand, has acquired it by way of the de facto exploitation of the Third World masses, thereby rendering the latter the place where the international proletariat is overwhelmingly concentrated today. There is no First World proletariat to speak of. And even the 30% of these Wisconsin protesters you describe who allegedly have sympathies with socialism are, in fact, coming from a social-imperialist understanding of that, given the nature of their demands, as explained above.
Does all this mean that real communists, Maoist Third Worldists, have no role to play in this situation? Are we to just sit at home and lament from afar? Of course not! We have a role. Real communists, leading light communists, need to be in really any given "mass" action that arises in America, be it one of these unionist actions or even a Tea Party rally, precisely in order to undermine them and actively attract as many people as will be interested to the genuine communist pole. We are looking for the few First Worlders, for the few Americans, who are willing to betray their own class interests and their country and fight on the side of the world's oppressed and exploited majority in the Third World. We are working behind enemy lines. Genuinely progressive mobilization in this country is bound up with opposing American imperialism and supporting revolution in the Third World.
Saturday, February 26, 2011
Dear Wisconsin Morons: This Land WASN'T "Made For You and Me"!
Saturday, February 19, 2011
4% of Yankees Consider Aggressive War a Major Problem
CBS News Poll. Feb. 11-14, 2011. N=1,031 adults nationwide. Margin of error ± 3. | ||||||
| | ||||||
| "What do you think is the most important problem facing this country today?" Open-ended | ||||||
Economy and jobs: 48%
Budget deficit/National debt: 7%
Health care: 6%
War/Iraq/Afghanistan: 4%
Education: 3%
Big government/Bureaucracy: 3%
Crime: 2%
Misc. social issues: 2%
Other: 21%
Unsure: 4%
Need I explain?
Thursday, February 17, 2011
A New Breakthrough on the Topic of People's War!
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
The Failure of the Second United Front: Incidental or the Result of an Incorrect Perspective?
The idea of the Maoist block of 4 progressive classes is that you can not only establish a temporary unity toward a particular set of objectives (as the various revisionist groups tell us the Nepali "Maoists" are doing), but also that you can ultimately resolve the contradictions therein non-antagonistically. The block of 4 classes is, in that way, a permanent alliance.
Going back to the historical case of China, if one actually reads the contents of the Maoists' writings throughout the Second United Front period, one sees that they saw Chiang Kai-Shek and the Kuomintang as a relatively unified whole. They believed the entire organization to be essentially patriotic and thus part of the block of 4 progressive classes. That's why during the said period they sought to form a coalition government with the Kuomintang as the expression of people's democracy applicable to China. Yes, they wanted to include even Chiang and his group within the KMT as part of that coalition government. It wasn't that they recognized Chiang and those around him within the KMT to be reactionary foreign puppets and were just seeing them as sort of a "lesser evil"next to Japan; they genuinely believed that Chiang and Co. were patriots with serious progressive potential.
However, tt was not factually the case that the Kuomintang as a whole was a nationalist bourgeois party. The KMT government was a one-party state. That doesn't mean the contradictions of bourgeois economic interests...the differing political positions resulting from market competitions, etc....disappeared in the KMT-ruled part of China because they had that political set-up. Rather, it meant that these differing political perspectives, including both patriotic and comprador ones, were basically suppressed into one party organization in their political expression. In other words, the KMT always featured both patriotic sections and comprador sections. So there was always a sort of good side and a bad side to them. Looking back historically, we can identify, for example, that Sun Yat-Sen was a patriotic KMT element, whereas Chiang Kai-Shek was really a foreign puppet.
That the theory of the Maoists on Chiang and his group of compradors was wrong is borne out in events. While the Chinese Maoists sought to maintain this united front with the KMT under Chiang's leadership, in reality Chiang, really from 1939, had dissolved it in practice by resuming the civil war on a low level and approaching that, rather than the war of resistance against Japan, as their primary war effort. (We'll recall that, at a certain point, Chiang had even threatened to surrender to Japan if Amerika didn't step up its assistance to the Kuomintang government.) So the 8th Route Army was fighting a more or less offensive war against Japan while simultaneously being forced to fight a more or less defensive, low-level war against Chiang Kai-Shek's forces. After World War 2's conclusion (which the Chinese Communists hadn't expected would come as soon as it did), they attempted a rapprochement with the KMT in earnest that very much resembled what the Nepali "Maoists" are doing right now: they reached an agreement in January 1946 to form a coalition government with the KMT under Chiang's leadership and to unify their armies. This is a topic most "Maoists" I know carefully dodge because frankly it was obviously a huge mistake!! And no, it wasn't an agreement reached in cynicism, as our media insists. It was sincere. Mao was submitting to the Soviet Union's new 30-year trade agreement with the KMT-led government. The breaking point of the agreement was Manchuria. The Soviet Union basically handed the Chinese Communists the manufacturing center of Manchuria on a silver platter and this stirred up the ire of Chiang, who in turn responded by sending in 1.6 million troops to conquer the liberated areas and destroy the Communists. At that point, the Chinese Communists hardly had any alternative but to jettison the Second United Front and shift the strategic focus from from the maintaining of world "peace" under imperialist domination to that of liberation against the new, Western-backed puppet government.
None of this is to say that the concept of the strategic 4-class alliance was wrong. On the contrary, I would particularly highlight the emergence of the Revolutionary Committee of the Kuomintang in 1948, which, in betrayal of their former party, joined up with the Communist-led side. This was an organization of political representatives of China's genuinely patriotic bourgeoisie. It became an important party in the revolutionary united front led by Communists. When they established a people's republic, the loyal KMT elements were not treated in a hostile way, but rather were given a position in the government alongside other loyal parties. In the mid-50s, China transitioned into socialism in earnest. This was done in a mainly non-antagonistic way wherein the assets of the remaining bourgeois elements generally were bought by the socialist state, rather than seized aggressively. Ongoing ideological struggle was a crucial part of that mixture. They had to and basically did win over even these native bourgeois elements to the idea of giving up their private capital holdings and becoming part of the workforce in a socialist economy. In that way, it can be said that the bulk of the class contradictions between the Chinese proletariat and the Chinese bourgeoisie were actually resolved in favor of the proletarian perspective in a primarily non-antagonistic way. That is a historical expression of what the progressive block of 4 democratic classes is all about. It was ultimately a successful idea.
We have to remember that all of the 4 Alls are factors in terms of who you can work with. Maoists seek the abolition of 1) all class distinctions, 2) all exploitative production relations, 3) all oppressive social relations, and 4) all the corresponding, reactionary ideas. Many would-be communists focus in only on the first two of those 4 Alls and forget about the relevance of the latter two. The native bourgeoisie of the third world is (obviously) not exploited, but it is oppressed, and this oppression can form the basis for a strategic alliance with them. Through that alliance, you can win them over more decisively to the side of the proletariat through ideological struggle with them over such matters as morality questions. Now that's not going to plausibly be as rock solid a unity as you could have between various working classes (e.g. between the proletariat and the peasantry)...these bourgeois forces do, after all, have some investment in the capitalist system and thus will tend to waver a lot more...but that is why you "lean to one side" of this united front: the side of the working classes, under the leadership of the proletariat. Yes, the third world 4-class alliance concept differs qualitatively from Lenin's conception of the dictatorship of the proletariat (i.e. it is a different form of proletarian rule): it's more fully mass-based and more strategic. It's better, in my view.
My point though for this post is that the Chinese people's war wasn't all just some smooth, 2-stage operation that all went perfectly according to plan, as so many convey it. There were major, unexpected twists and turns along the way that very easily could have led them in the wrong direction on a lasting basis. It was a complex process. And I would argue that they did not completely learn the lesson. The Second United Front was a failure for real, not incidental, reasons. It failed not because it was a bad idea, but because of the form it took. The Chinese Communists didn't seem to really much appreciate the dynamics that existed within the KMT and approach the KMT with the according nuance. Rather, they, at least initially, treated it as a unified, all-patriotic body. The Communists' petitions for the establishment of a united front with the genuine KMT patriots was a good thing, and it ultimately resulted in Chiang's arrest, precisely for treason. Sending in Zhou Enlai to negotiate Chiang's release was the mistake. As soon as he got back into safe territory, Chiang immediately placed the coup leaders under arrest. He was always insincere about the united front. (As another observation, pretty much anything "special" like this that Zhou Enlai did had basic, opportunist flaws, much like Zhou himself did.)
Now if we exclusively look back at the historical record through the narrow lenses of official history, such as recorded in Lin Biao's Long Live the Victory of People's War!, then we may fail to see these mistakes as mistakes. After all, if the principal contradiction in the world was, as the Chinese Maoists themselves concurred with the Comintern (under clear Soviet leadership) that it was at the time, between fascistic forces on the one hand and democratic forces on the other, then uniting with "democratic" comprador elements and working with "democratic" imperialists like the United States and the other imperialist Allies makes sense. On the other hand, if the principal contradiction throughout the whole imperialist era has been between the first world on the one hand and the third world on the other, then uniting with imperialists and compradors of any stripe made no sense. I would argue that the latter perspective seems to be a closer match for the historical record. It clarifies the record on this matter that has been so difficult for so many people to flesh out.
Now that we have this clearer view of the Second United Front and the actual historical implications thereof, it becomes much easier for us to see how the Prachanda Path is indeed revisionist and capitulationist: they are following the path of forming a "national" united front with traitors to their nation. All compradors are reactionaries and principal class enemies, just like the imperialists they're shielded by.
History is dynamic. We should study it that way, rather than just adopting the mindset in advance that "side X was always right and my task is to figure out how".
Leninism vs. Trotskyism: What's the Fundamental Difference?
Leninism consists of some main components including the recognition of imperialism as the final stage of capitalism, the corresponding labor aristocracy theory, democratic centralist vanguard organization, a strategic alliance between all the working people of a society (the proletariat, the peasantry, and the various middle strata) led by the proletariat and peasantry, and the centrality of revolutionary councils and committees to at least the early stages of socialism. Lenin believed that it was possible and desirable for the proletariat, through the aforementioned class alliance, to seize state power even in backward, underdeveloped countries like Russia, and to, from there, develop a mixed economy -- an economy with a mixture of socialist and capitalist attributes -- until such time as the proletariat became the majority of the society by way of the natural workings of capitalistic development: the more bourgeois forces in society gradually running the peasants off their land in order lay the foundation for urbanization. The strategic alliance of all working people would be maintained through the course of all this, and eventually the proletariat would naturally come to be a majority therein as its ranks grew with the development of the economy. Such was the basic idea. Many modern Leninists confuse the Stalin era with representing the application of classical Leninist views. Actually, Lenin was deeply stagist, and fairly dogmatically so. His views roughly corresponded to those which Bukharin voiced at the end of the 1920s and can be justly summed up in Bukharin's slogan for developing socialism "at a snail's pace". Lenin sought a gradual development of socialism in backward countries, seeing said gradualism as necessary in order to maintain a mass base of support for the revolution itself. As such, Lenin more or less mentally associate the objective factor and the subjective factor as inextricably and absolutely linked and inseparable. In Lenin's view, almost every peasant was destined to maintain a narrow, traditionally-peasant outlook on the world, favorable simply to their own further enrichment rather than to the abolition of all exploitative and oppressive relations...etc. The ideological difference between Leninism (a.k.a. Bolshevism) and Menshevism was the difference between whether or not the proletariat should seek to seize state power in the here and now or whether instead this task should be relegated to the distant future, after the bourgeoisie have completed a long period of capitalist development that has placed the proletariat in the majority of society. The latter view was that upheld by the Mensheviks. While still upholding the classical view that a 30 or 50 year-ish transitional stage of development loosely corresponding to the bourgeois-democratic revolution would be required in countries like Russia, the Bolsheviks believed the task of achieving the bourgeois-democratic revolution and carrying it out could be done in an effort led by the proletariat, without bourgeois political power. The proletariat, the Bolsheviks contended, would not seek to develop a full-fledged capitalist economy through this revolution, but would seek to maintain a mixed economy, with the balance of economic and political muscle therein gradually swinging more and more toward the socialist component. Some people confuse the period of emergency 'wartime communism' with the actual Leninist strategy. That was an emergency policy. The New Economic Policy essentially was Lenin's strategy for getting to socialism. The NEP wasn't an ideological compromise of Leninism; it was classical Leninism in practical application. Stalin's move away from the NEP was originally conceived of as another sort of emergency policy, corresponding to the ostensibly forthcoming end of capitalism worldwide. The more distinctly Stalinist flavor of Leninism was only developed from the mid-to-late '30s. So anyhow, the Bolsheviks developed party organization according to their revolutionary approach and the Mensheviks according to their more gradualist approach.
Trotskyism consists of positions similar to Leninism, but differs with it in one key area: the mass basis of the proletarian state. Trotsky argued that the proletariat, upon achieving state power, would "be unable to contain itself" even generally to the historical tasks of the bourgeoisie and thus would inevitably need to press on to socialism upon the achievement of the basics of the democratic revolution, rather than more or less waiting around for another generation or two until such time as the proletariat was in the majority of society. Trotsky's view of party and societal dynamics was, well, more dynamic than that of the Leninists. He believed there existed real contradictions of class alignments within the Bolsheviks that corresponded to the existing classes within the society; there were, in Trotsky's view, Bolsheviks ideologically aligned with the peasants and Bolsheviks ideologically aligned with the proletariat, among other things. So the party was somewhat less monolithic and more plagued by contradictions in the Trotskyist view, and the task was to take the correct alignment. This meant insisting on always continuing the forward momentum of revolution. That may sound all well and good and even perhaps more essentially comparable to the Maoist outlook and orientation than the classical Leninist perspective, but here is the key issue: whereas the Maoist permanent revolution theory is built upon the foundation of the mass line...that of scientifically-founded trust in and unity with the broad masses of society toward a non-antagonistic reconciliation...the Trotskyist permanent revolution theory, by contrast, is rooted in profound distrust of most of the world's oppressed and exploited majority and takes a corresponding expression. According to the Trotskyist perspective, it is not possible to maintain a permanent united front with the non-proletarian classes. Rather, even in countries wherein the proletariat finds itself a relatively small minority, the proletariat must face off against even the broad masses of peasants that may constitute most of the population. You implement "socialism", in other words, by way of more or less imposing the rigors of 'wartime communism' on the peasants indefinitely; seizing all their surplus output for use by the military and by urban dwellers. Being that this "hostile collision" (being a sort of military exploitation of the peasantry) eliminates the mass basis of proletarian rule in recently-feudal countries (like the Soviet Union at the time), the Trostkyists thus would have the socialist state rely fundamentally on external help; upon "proletarian revolutions" in more developed, imperialist countries wherein allegedly "the proletariat" formed the majority of society already or (again, allegedly) at least was much more nearly in the majority. This makes for a sort of weak, dependent, authoritarian, and frankly exploitative (and thus clearly non-proletarian) 'bailout socialism', if you will.
Classical Leninism may not exactly have been without flaws, but at least it rooted itself in a sort of mass basis! Was that mass basis sufficiently wide? No. Was the classical Leninist outlook terribly dynamic and realistic by comparison to Maoism (or even, in some ways (as explained above), to Trotskyism)? No. Might the complement of a permanent revolutionary theory rooted in a mass basis have been a positive and worthy addition? Certainly! But here is the main point: without a mass basis, what you were inevitably left with as a vision of "socialism" was a nightmarish, warped, oppressive and exploitative puppet state. Or, in other words, you are left with a new variant of the old society. At least classical Leninism was comparatively mass-based.
Sunday, February 6, 2011
A Basic Introduction to Marxism
It occurs to me that, from time to time, some casual readers not versed in Marxism may conceivably find their way to this blog. I therefore think it prudent to provide some information on the basics of scientific socialism and some resources for (definitely recommended) further reading. I plan on writing a small handful of articles covering the most basic and fundamental elements of Marxism, Leninism, Maoism, and perhaps some others if I should feel so inclined: one article per theory, with a list of recommended further readings included. This will be the first of these said articles. It is dedicated to informing the reader on the very, very basics of classical Marxism: the first school of scientific socialism.
Karl Marx and Frederick Engels were German-born intellectuals who worked in various cities in Europe as teachers, journalists, and political activists. As writers, they developed a sweeping theory of society and history, premised on the philosophical perspective of dialectical materialism, which provided them the framework within which to examine history and society in a scientific manner. Dialectical materialism is the perspective that material things are in a constant process of change brought about by the tension between conflicting or interacting forces, elements, or ideas. Historical materialism is that part of the theory of dialectical materialism which holds that the development of social thought and institutions is based upon material, economic forces (the production and distribution of the material requirements of life being the most basic purpose of civilization); it is the factor that enables the scientific analysis of the course of history. The basic idea is that every economic order grows to a state of maximum efficiency, while, at the same time, developing internal contradictions (weaknesses) that contribute to its decay.
Marx and Engels asserted that the key to understanding human culture and history was the struggle between classes. They used the term class to refer to a group of people within society who share the same social and economic status. According to Marx and Engels, class struggles have occurred in every form of society, no matter what its economic structure, or mode of production: slavery, feudalism, or capitalism. In each of these kinds of societies, a minority of people own or control the means of production, such as land, raw materials, tools and machines, labor, and money. This minority constitutes the ruling class. The vast majority of people own and control very little. They mainly own their own capacity to work. The ruling class uses its economic power to exploit workers by appropriating their surplus labor. In other words, workers are compelled to labor not merely to meet their own needs, but also those of the exploiting ruling class. As a result, workers become alienated from the fruits of their labor.
Marx and Engels portrayed the grand sweep of Western history (most history that was well-known in their historical context was Western history) as a process of progressively evolving forms of society. The struggle between classes was the motor of social change, fueling revolutions and leading history from one epoch to the next. Just as primitive agrarian society had yielded centuries before to feudal society, and in Europe feudalism given way to industrial capitalism, so too would capitalism be overthrown. Analyzing 19th-century capitalistic society, Marx and Engels observed a class struggle raging between the bourgeoisie, or capitalists who controlled the means of production, and the proletariat, whom they described as the industrial workers of their time, whom they believed were rapidly falling into a proletarian condition; a condition of being property-less (that is, without capital of any kind) and thus rendered dependent upon the sale of their labor power for survival. In their view, the bourgeoisie appropriated wealth from the proletariat by paying low wages and keeping the profits from sales and technological innovation for themselves. Marx and Engels were confident that the conflict between the bourgeoisie and the increasingly large and impoverished proletariat was coming to a head in the foremost societies of the West. The inevitable outcome would be a revolution in which the proletariat, taking advantage of strikes, elections, and violence, would displace the bourgeoisie as the ruling class. A political revolution was essential, in Marx’s view, because the state, with its armed power of enforcement, is the central instrument of capitalist society.
According to the theory of Marx and Engels, labor is the source of all value: all machines and tools produced, all land cultivated, all productive work that contributes to the provision for society of the material requirements for life, originate from labor. Justice therefore requires that, for a time, labor must also become the destiny of value. This morality corresponds to socialism: the short-term objective of the proletariat. Ultimately, however, the most basic problem of capitalistic society is that under capitalism production occurs for exchange purposes rather than for use purposes. In other words, production under capitalism occurs for the purpose of accumulating capital rather than for the purpose of meeting human needs. Private appropriation of the means of production thus comes into conflict with their basically and ever increasingly social character. Marx formulated that the alternative, socially-concerned morality of "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" corresponds to full-fledged communism: the long-term objective of the proletariat.
Being the first property-less class in history, the proletariat (created by the advent of industrial capitalism), in Marxist theory, is therefore the first class in history with a direct, material interest in the bringing of all property under common ownership (because the only way the proletariat as a class can acquire property is by bringing it under common ownership), and of thus abolishing all classes and all exploitation itself. In Marxist theory, the previous non-existence of the proletariat explains why all earlier experiments in collectivism failed and why there is now, for the first time in history, the real possibility of establishing civilized communism.
Marx and Engels were almost silent about the particulars of what would happen after the proletarian revolution. They made provision for a brief transitional period during which workers would form a socialist society with the means of production owned in common. In this period, the proletarian majority of the population would need to enact a temporary dictatorship of the proletariat in order to seize the property of the bourgeois minority and stifle attempts to sabotage the popular government. Unlike previous ruling classes, in keeping with its class interests described above, the proletariat would not seek to install a new system of domination and exploitation; its goal would instead be a system of cooperation in which the immense majority, the proletariat, ruled for the benefit of all. Eventually, society would evolve into full communism, characterized by mutual affluence, the abolition of classes, and an end to the dehumanizing division of labor found in earlier forms of society. In this radically new condition, Marx and Engels wrote, abundance and social harmony would make it possible “for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as I have in mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd, or critic.” Labor performed out of economic necessity would give way to truly voluntary activity such that "the free development of each [becomes] the condition for the free development of all". It would come to be the case that all people would freely share all the world.
I'll wrap up this brief sketch of classical Marxism with an excerpt from an article by the International Communist Current (located here: http://en.internationalism.org/wr/271_poc_01.html) because they've done what, in my view, is a good job therein of summing up the aspects of the classical Marxist understanding of history that remain to be discussed:
Marx and Engels described the proletariat as "the working class" of capitalist society because they saw it becoming the principal class that did the toiling under capitalism, providing the wealth of society which the capitalist would essentially and mostly steal for himself. Society, they believed, was thus rapidly polarizing into two great hostile camps: again, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. They believed that more than 90% of the world's population would soon consist of proletarians and this fact, together with the vast wealth created by industrial production and appropriated privately, pretty much guaranteed world proletarian revolution. Their essential strategy is summed up well in the slogan they advanced in The Communist Manifesto: "Workers of the world, unite!" By "workers", they basically meant proletarians, whom they believed either were already in many countries and/or would soon become everywhere the overwhelming majority. Middle classes of non-proletarian workers were a minor and rapidly disappearing factor in this worldview."...Each level of development of the productive forces of a particular society corresponds to a given type of productive relationship. The relations of production are the relations established between men and women in their activity of producing goods destined to satisfy their needs. In primitive societies the productivity of labour was so low that it scarcely satisfied the barest physical needs of the members of the community. Exploitation and economic inequality were impossible in such a situation: if certain individuals had appropriated to themselves or consumed goods in greater quantities than other members of this society, then the poorer off [majority --my addition] would not have been able to survive at all. Exploitation, generally in the form of slavery established as the result of the territorial conquest of one tribe by another, could not appear until the average level of human production had gone beyond the basic minimum needed for physical survival. But between the satisfaction of this basic minimum and the full satisfaction, not only of the material but also the intellectual needs of humanity, there exists an entire range of development in the productivity of labour. By means of such development, mankind steadily became the master of nature. In historical terms, it was this period which separated the dissolution of primitive communist society from the era when fully developed communism would be possible. Just as mankind wasn’t naturally ‘good’ in those ages when men and women weren’t exploited under the conditions of primitive communism, so it hasn’t been naturally ‘bad’ in the epochs of exploitation which have followed. The exploitation of man by man and the existence of economic privilege became possible when average human production exceeded the physical minimum needed for human life to reproduce itself. Both became necessary because the level of human production could not fully satisfy all the needs of all the members of society.
As long as that was the case, communism was impossible, whatever objections the anarchists may raise to the contrary. But it is exactly this situation which capitalism has itself radically modified, owing to the enormous increase in the productivity of labour which it has brought into being. Capitalism methodically exploited every scientific discovery, generalised associated labour, and put to use the natural and human riches of the entire world. But obviously the increase in the productivity of labour set in motion by capitalism was paid for by an intensification of exploitation on a scale unknown in human history. However, such a profound increase in human productivity does represent the material basis for a communist society. By making itself the master of nature, capitalism created the conditions by which humanity may become master of itself."
Strongly recommended further reading:
I'll recommend studying the selected works of Marx and Engels highlighted by Progress Publishers at the Marxist Internet Archive:Volume 1: 1845-1859
Volume 2: 1860-1872
Volume 3: 1875-1895
Three of Vladimir Lenin's works are also valuable in coming to understand the basics of classical Marxism:
Karl Marx: A Brief Biographical Sketch With an Exposition of Marxism
Frederick Engels
The Three Sources and Three Component-Parts of Marxism
Saturday, February 5, 2011
People's War of the Future
People often believe that people's war is necessarily a protracted effort. Not necessarily. In essence, a people's war is any communist-led revolutionary war that applies the guiding principles of the mass line: go to the masses (especially at the point of (net) production), learn what their conditions and demands are, learn from the masses, serve the masses, rely on the masses, and, while doing all these things, guide the masses to revolution, socialism, and communism. Protracted war is the expression this has taken thus far because thus far authentic proletarian revolutions basically have taken place in countries that were mostly rural, consisting primarily of peasants. As populations become more concentrated and more fully proletarian with the natural protracted urbanization that comes with the ongoing consolidation of capitalism worldwide, the necessity of protracted revolutionary efforts likely tends to diminish.
We should remember, at the same time, that while the majority of the world now lives in urban areas, a majority of the third world does not. Thus protracted guerilla wars basing themselves mainly in peasant masses will have to continue to be the rule for some time yet. But there will increasingly also need to be a complex mixture of this type of revolutionary struggle with more urban and possibly faster-paced forms. How do these forms mix in any given case? It's difficult to say and will have to be determined on a case-by-case basis by the peoples of the given nation, I believe. The mixture, however, must involve a people's army, warfare, and the full application of the mass line.
In today's China, for example, we can see that nearly half the population is urban, while a fairly slim and diminishing majority is still rural. How does a new communist revolution proceed under such conditions? Does it begin in the countryside or is it strategically initiated in the cities, where theoretically some quicker victories might be won? How does it proceed from the one to the other? Or are both of these things done simultaneously? These are some of the new and emerging types of questions to which I'm referring.
If the current trends continue, eventually the world will actually eventually be polarized into the two great hostile camps to which Marx originally referred: the proletariat (concentrated in the third world here in the era of imperialism) and the bourgeoisie (concentrated in the first world here in the era of imperialism). World revolution in a world of that shape could be theoretically much quicker than the protracted approach we have gotten used to. But that's a distant outlook. At present, most of the world is not yet even objectively proletarian in the sense to which Marx referred. It has the possibility of proletarian revolution already, however, as evidenced by the historical record. In any event, we should pay attention to the way in which the shape of the world is changing and accordingly not be terribly dogmatic in terms of how we understand people's war.
The Real Opinions of Amerikans
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USA Today/Gallup Poll. Dec. 10-12, 2010. N=1,019 adults nationwide. Margin of error ± 4. | ||||||
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| "Do you think the United States does or does not have a special responsibility to be the leading nation in world affairs?" | ||||||
Does: 66%
Does not: 31%
Unsure: 3%
"Because of the United States' history and its Constitution, do you think the U.S. has a unique character that makes it the greatest country in the world, or don't you think so?"
The greatest: 80%
Don't think so: 18%
Unsure: 2%
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The above poll shows that the overwhelming majority of Amerikans are characterized by extreme national chauvinism that leads around two-thirds to openly (not just objectively!) support Amerikan imperialism in principle. This is the mentality of an exploiter society; a nation that collectively benefits from the plundering of foreign countries and peoples.
Let's continue:
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CNN/Opinion Research Corporation Poll. Dec. 17-19, 2010. N=1,008 adults nationwide. Margin of error ± 3. | ||||||
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| "As you may know, a website called Wikileaks has displayed thousands of confidential U.S. government documents concerning U.S. diplomatic and military policies. Do you approve or disapprove of the Wikileaks website displaying these documents?" | ||||||
Approve: 20%
Disapprove: 77%
Unsure: 3%
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To judge from the above, I would say most Amerikans are capable of connecting their own interests to those of the U.S. military. The safety of occupying Yankee troops apparently trumps the right of their victims to have their (horror) stories told, in terms of priority. It does not matter to the Amerikan that torture, rape, and murder have been and are being systematically committed on their behalf and in their name. It matters only that this country advances its own material interests in the world. This too is the mentality of an exploiter society.
Pressing on:
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ABC News/Washington Post Poll. Dec. 9-12, 2010. N=1,001 adults nationwide. Margin of error ± 3.5. | ||||||
| "Do you approve or disapprove of the way Obama is handling the situation in Afghanistan?" Approve: 45% Disapprove: 46% Unsure: 10% | ||||||
USA Today/Gallup Poll. Nov. 19-21, 2010. N=1,037 adults nationwide. Margin of error ± 4. | ||||||
| "Thinking now about U.S. military action in Afghanistan that began in October 2001: Do you think the United States made a mistake in sending military forces to Afghanistan, or not?" | ||||||
Made a mistake: 39%
Did not make a mistake: 58%
Unsure: 3%
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This differs considerably from those polls Amerikan "leftists" typically show us wherein 63-72 percent of Amerikans "oppose" the Afghanistan War. The statistics on the proportion of Amerikans who "oppose" the war rise in proportion to the proportion that sees Amerika as losing that said war and will conversely fall off in the event that Amerika appears to be winning at a given juncture. The same is true of any U.S. war of aggression. In other words, Amerikans are thinking purely in strategic terms of how best to advance their nation's interests around the world, not in moral terms of whether wars are right or wrong.