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

On January 20, Trump stood in the Capitol rotunda promising a “golden age” and vowed to stem the decline of the U.S. empire, which in fact is something he will not and cannot do. The opposite is the case. The economic policies he promotes, such as continued decoupling the U.S. economy from that of People’s China and erecting a wall of tariffs, will accelerate the decline of the United States. Increased military spending for the Pentagon or the deployment of more military forces into the Pacific will not change this.

Over the long run, a decrease in economic power will be followed by a decline of political power. The role of the U.S. in the world economy is shrinking. In 1960, the U.S. had about 40% of the world GDP. Today it is about half that, depending on how you measure.

This U.S. has is abandoning projects that put it at the center of the international economy, such as the World Trade Organization. The 2017 withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, carried out by Donald Trump days after his first inauguration eight years ago, is another symptom of deterioration. The relative weakness of the U.S. economy is being accompanied by a fragmentation of the world economy.

Looking at statistics from the International Monetary Fund to compare the size of the respective economies, People’s China has surpassed that of the U.S. The metric of Purchasing Power Parity (PPP), which allows one to compare which commodities and services can be purchased with a given currency, indicates that in 2024 China had about 19% of the world GDP and the U.S. had about 14% of the world GDP. One could also look at a host of industries, from auto and to ship building to steel and green technologies, and see that the U.S. is being left behind.

Two issues to consider

We are looking at U.S. policy and plans in the Pacific in general. Two things need to be considered as we try to get a handle on what is coming next.

First, there is a fair amount of overlap on the China policy pursued by Democratic and Republican politicians. We can have some confidence that Trump will be unmatched when it comes to pronouncements infused with chauvinism and xenophobia, such as he did before, calling COVID the “China virus.” While he may well adopt a more extreme anti-China position than the Biden administration, there is a certain continuity in U.S. policy from administration to administration.

For example, when Defense Secretary Austin was testifying on the 2024 defense appropriation bill at the Senate Armed Services Committee, he stated, “This is a strategy-driven budget – and one driven by the seriousness of our strategic competition with the People's Republic of China.”

The second issue is Taiwan Province, the great unsolved issue of the Chinese revolution. The U.S. has long encouraged reactionary and separatist forces on the island to “contain” China.

Communist Party of China General Secretary Xi Jinping has said, “The people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait are one family. No one can sever our family bonds, and no one can stop the historical trend of national reunification.” The CPC has also made it clear that separatism will not be allowed to flourish, and the current situation cannot continue forever. Biden said the U.S. would intervene militarily to block reunification, and Trump says socialist China is afraid of him. So, we will see – it is a safe bet that what Xi Jinping says is right – if reunification is “inevitable.”

Trump, trade and tariffs

Countries that enact tariffs generally do so as a means to protect internal markets for industrial development. Monopoly capitalist powers in decline, like this U.S., have a bias towards tariffs as they shield internal markets and out of date industries from competition. For example, China has developed a steel industry that much more advanced than that in the U.S. – hence lots of tariffs for China’s steel and steel products.

The Biden administration kept many of the China tariffs from the first Trump administration and upped some – like those on electric vehicles and aluminum. Now Trump who bills himself as “tariff man” has vowed to take things to another level – at times talking about 60% tariffs on some Chinese goods, or 25% tariffs, and most recently 10% China tariffs starting February 1. We will see.

One impact of tariffs will be an upward pressure on prices in the U.S. at a time when many of us are tired of inflation. Also, tariffs will not result in a huge number of manufacturing jobs, because of the advances in automation technologies.

There is also a political/military dimension to the aspiration to “delink” the two economies and “protect” supply chains

It’s worth noting that the high tariffs were one of the factors that deepened the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Looking to the future

Current U.S. strategy towards China has several elements, including a massive military buildup – things like more naval spending, more troops and missiles in the Philippines, and Pentagon programs like the Pacific Deterrence Initiative. There is no reason to think the Trump administration will pull back on this or change direction.

U.S. strategy also includes drawing countries of the Pacific region into hostile alliances, formal or informal, against China. Trump may find that more difficult, largely because a U.S. under Trump cannot be counted on to honor its commitments – even to its lackeys.

On the balance, it can be said that the U.S. is on the road to greater conflict with China and the possibility of the U.S. provoking a major military conflict can not be ruled out – in fact it would be a likely consequence of where things are heading now.

Progressives, revolutionaries and those of us in the anti-war movement need to stand with China. China has done nothing wrong – it is developing socialism and working for peace. And not surprisingly, China has friends all over the world, including right here in the United States.

We are going to be busy over the next four years. We have an enemy in the White House that will wage an unrelenting war on people at home and abroad, it is our job to make sure that war is not a one sided one.

#RevolutionaryTheory #International #China #Trump #FRSO

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

#RevolutionaryTheory #RedReviews #MarxismLeninism #Mao

At the invitation of the Comitati di Appoggio alla Resistenza per il Comunismo (CARC), Michela Martinazzi of the Central Committee of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization delivered the following speech to a national meeting against NATO, held in Italy, December 8.

Good morning from New York comrades,

On behalf of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization, I extend warm greetings and solidarity to the participants and organizers of this important gathering. The violent involvement of NATO is felt throughout the world. As communists, we have a special task to oppose U.S. monopoly capitalism, the wars that it brings, and its tools like NATO. We’re honored that you invited us to take part in this meeting to fight NATO on a global scale. And we’re ready to continue the fight alongside you!

The downward spiral of imperialism

Imperialism is steadily spiraling towards its end. The decline picks up speed with each new world event that stresses the antagonisms between the war-mongering class and those who foot the bill.

Post World War II, the U.S. built a web of economic institutions where Wall Street and Washington DC were at the center. That original web is long gone, and in its place is a world economy that is breaking and fragmenting. With each new break, the decline of U.S. imperialism is picking up speed, and the Trump presidency will accelerate its downfall.

A symptom of declining imperialism is the sharpening of inter-imperialist contradictions. These can take on both political and military scopes. For example, Trump campaigned that Ukraine is primarily a concern for Europe and that the U.S. should no longer concern itself with the issue. If Trump is true to his word, the policy shift will force European imperialist powers, mainly Germany, to bolster Ukraine while putting stress on NATO.

As the power of the U.S. economy shrinks, Trump relies on threats of tariffs to recover a semblance of power. He ran on the promise of tariffs on all Chinese-imported products. While the U.S. working class will be the ones who shoulder the burden of this trade war, Trump continues to barrel forward in de-linking the U.S. economy from the People’s Republic of China.

With each misstep on behalf of the imperial powers, we’re seeing a clearer definition in the developing spheres of influence and domination. The U.S. has a smaller role to play, while the other two centers of monopoly capitalism – Japan and the European Union – are also taking up smaller shares of the world GDP.

Anti-imperialism in the 21st century

As we see the steady decline of U.S. imperialism, and, broadly, the decline of imperialism around the world, we see the inverse, as the people rise up against it. As the U.S. monopoly capitalist class stumbles, the people continue their march to victory.

People around the world are facing economic hardships as the warmongers steadily beat the drums of war. United States military spending went from $366 billion under Bush to $1,109 billion, or more than $1 trillion, under Biden. In the last two decades, this budget destabilized Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya; funded attempted coups in Bolivia and Venezuela; supplies weapons to reactionary governments in the Philippines and Ukraine. and spearheads the genocide of Palestine.

The people are tired of their tax dollars funding war

Since the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, we’ve seen the anti-war movement have its highs and lows, but the overall trend has been to fight against imperialist wars.

The pandemic in 2020 sharpened many contradictions and it culminated in the George Floyd rebellion. This laid the groundwork for a new generation of organizers to not only question the ruling class but gain confidence in the power of protest. The landscape of the movement completely changed after that summer.

The same people who took to the streets for the George Floyd rebellion, were some of the same ones who joined the protests in 2023 for Palestine – some of the largest protests for Palestine we’ve seen in the West.

As inflation rose, jobs were lost, and debts were left unpaid, everyday people continued to question why the government continued to spend money on war rather than people’s needs. Worsening conditions only deepened the antagonism between the interests of the working class and the ruling class.

When the heroic Palestinian resistance carried out the Al-Aqsa Flood, the same generation that the George Floyd rebellion revolutionized, took to the streets in the millions. Politicians who cried for Israel could not gather the same support they were used to just a few years back.

FRSO released a statement on October 9th where we said:

“Those of us who stand in solidarity with Palestine have our work cut out for us. The Zionist regime is carrying out horrific crimes – including indiscriminate bombings in Gaza that have destroyed homes, schools and health care facilities. Their logic is genocidal. We need to act fast.

Demonstrations in solidarity with Palestine should be organized everywhere. The role of the U.S. needs to be highlighted. U.S. weapons are killing people. Biden wants to send Israel more weapons. Not one U.S. dollar should be funding the occupation of Palestine.

In the days ahead, lots of politicians are going to be saying “stand with Israel.” They will lie and cry. Do the opposite. This is time to stand with Palestine. Time is on the side of the oppressed. And a new stage of the freedom struggle has arrived.”

The people of the world understand that the imperialist rulers are selling out their livelihoods for profits and domination. They see it embodied in the ongoing genocide in Palestine. The U.S. alone has sent $17.9 billion since October 2023.

And that’s why the people cannot stand by as Israel carries out a genocide. That’s why millions have been marching, boycotting, and organizing since October 7.

We’re entering a new era of the anti-war movement, and as communists we must seize it!

Organizing against the war

The forces organizing for Palestine are the same forces that will be ready to organize against NATO. Our role is to cultivate a campaign against NATO forces that harnesses the raw revolutionary passion of this new generation of activists.

When the protest against the NATO summit took place in Washington DC this past summer, I was happy to see that the majority of attendees were people my age and younger. Broad calls against war are gaining popularity amongst all progressive people. The question of “Why are we sending money overseas?” is on everyone’s mind.

However, to sustain a strong anti-war movement, we must have strong organizations to support it. It requires an understanding of meeting the masses where they’re at and bringing their demands forward through the lens of Marxism.

The great Chairman Mao Tse Tung said in his speech A Talk to the Editorial Staff of the Shansi-Suiyuan Daily, “If we tried to go on the offensive when the masses are not yet awakened, that would be adventurism. If we insisted on leading the masses to do anything against their will, we would certainly fail. If we did not advance when the masses demand to advance, that would be Right opportunism.”

Our organization is growing quickly. We’re taking up the demands of the people in the belly of the beast, and channeling them into campaigns. Relying on sloganeering to build our movements will only result in burning out the revolutionary fire of the people. As Marxist-Leninists, we must deliver tangible victories to the people as we face the many-headed monster that is imperialism.

To grow the fight against NATO, let us find the demands of the people and show them who the true enemy is: NATO and the monopoly capitalist class!

The road ahead

We have a challenge ahead of us. We’ve seen the election of right-wing populists throughout the world. We also face politicians that parade around progressive slogans, but actively work against the needs of the people. These figureheads are enemies of progress, justice and freedom.

But while we have many enemies, we have even more allies. As we’ve seen in the last year, millions are ready for change. Millions are marching against a rotten system that has only delivered death and misery. Millions are ready to fight towards a better future!

Our role as communists is to unite all that we can against tyranny. Our task is revolution, and we’re armed with the tools of Marxism-Leninism. The road ahead may be filled with challenges, but we’re well equipped to face them!

Down with NATO!

Down with imperialism!

Long live international solidarity!

#International #Italy #CARC #NATO #AntiWarMovement #FRSO #Statement #RevolutionaryTheory

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.

#RevolutionaryTheory #RedReviews #Lenin #MarxismLeninism

Comrades and friends:

On behalf of the Central Committee, and indeed the entire membership of Freedom Road Socialist Organization, we thank the National Democratic Front of the Philippines and its member organizations for organizing this important conference. We salute all of you who are gathered here. Having a developed understanding of imperialism and national oppression, as well as the fights for national liberation, is vital for understanding the world as it is and what one needs to do to change it. This conference will no doubt further this end.

Trump and the decline of U.S. imperialism

The election of Donald Trump to the presidency of the U.S. is symptomatic of a monopoly capitalist power in decline. His return to power reflects a failure of the other party of monopoly capitalism (the Democratic Party of Biden/Harris) and its inability to address the needs and aspirations of the working class. Drawing from a toxic brew of national chauvinism and reactionary currents of all kinds, Trump’s return to the White House will signal the sharpening of a host of contradictions domestically and internationally.

Trump has referred to himself as “Tariff Man,” promising to slap 20% tariffs on all imports and substantially more – 100 or 200% – on things like electric vehicles from China. The people around him, like some of the Biden crowd, look towards “delinking” the U.S. economy from the People’s Republic of China.

In his outstanding work, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism, Lenin made the point that one of the features of imperialism, of decaying monopoly capitalism, was that big capital finds it increasingly difficult to utilize science and holds back advances in the productive forces. This phenomenon is on full display in the U.S., where someone like “vaccine skeptic” RFK Jr will be put in charge of public health, and where industrial policy is turning against technologies that cause less harm to the environment, such as electric vehicles.

The role of the U.S. in the world economy is shrinking. In 1960 the U.S. had about 40% of the world GDP. Today it is about half that. There was a day when U.S. imperialism championed free trade. For the past decade-plus, Washington DC has moved away from the neoliberal trade model, erecting a growing tariff blockade. The abandonment of the Trans-Pacific Partnership and paralysis of the World Trade Organization are signs of things to come.

After World War II, the United States constructed a web of economic intuitions where Wall Street and Washington DC occupied center place. That world is gone, and it has been replaced by a fragmenting world economy, where the decline of U.S. imperialism is picking up speed. Trump will accelerate the process.

One of the symptoms will be a sharpening of inter-imperialist contradictions, which will have political and military dimensions. For example, Trump’s view of the Ukraine is that it is mainly a concern of Europe and that too much U.S. time and treasure has been wasted on it. If implemented as policy, this shift on the Ukraine will force the European imperialist powers, especially Germany, to carry out a military buildup while putting new stress on NATO.

What we are seeing is clearer definition in the developing spheres of influence and domination – where the U.S. has a smaller role to play. Also worth noting is that the two other monopoly centers of monopoly capitalism, i.e. Japan and the European Union, are also producing a smaller share of the world GDP.

People vs. imperialism

The principal contradiction in the world today is between the peoples, nations and countries of the developing world versus imperialism. The U.S. is presently the principal imperialist power, and as such, it is the main danger to the world’s peoples. From Puerto Rico to the Philippines and Palestine, people are rising up and fighting for liberation.

The battle taking place in the Middle East is vital to the world revolutionary process in the current period. On one side you have Western imperialism, Zionism and Arab reaction. On the other, we have the heroic resistance of Palestine and Lebanon, and a whole axis of resistance, which encompasses Yemen, Syria and the popular forces of Iraq and Iran. This is a battle of world historic importance.

The U.S. cannot continue to exist as a world empire without dominance of the Middle East, and this fact explains why the bond between imperialism and Zionism is so strong. The broad masses of people throughout the Middle East hate foreign domination and want it to end. Israel is the cop on the beat for Western imperialism, a reliable nightstick that can be used against those who want freedom and independence. This means that Trump will double down on the Gaza genocide facilitated by Biden/Harris.

It is also worth noting that things can turn into their opposite, that Israel can move from being an asset to a liability: if the genocide and carnage in Palestine and Lebanon provoke uprisings in the Arab world, the position of imperialism will be impacted.

The fact that many of the forces fighting imperialism and Zionism are not led by the working class does not change the revolutionary, anti-imperialist nature of the struggle that is taking place. Stalin, an outstanding Marxist-Leninist and pathbreaking theorist on national question, wrote in the great work, The Foundations of Leninism:

“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; whereas the struggle waged by such ‘desperate’ democrats and ‘Socialists,’ ‘revolutionaries’ and republicans as, for example, Kerensky and Tsereteli, Renaudel and Scheidemann, Chernov and Dan, Henderson and Clynes, during the imperialist war was a reactionary struggle, for its results was the embellishment, the strengthening, the victory, of imperialism.”

That said, the struggle for working class leadership in the movements for national liberation is important, and as communists we have the responsibility to support other communists who are contending for leadership in the national movements – be it in Palestine or anywhere else.

Marxism-Leninism and the fight for national liberation

In an environment of declining imperialism, there are some important things to keep in mind.

First, there needs to be a strategic alliance, a “union” as Lenin put it, between the working class in the advanced capitalist countries, and the broad masses of the oppressed in the developing countries. There are hundreds of millions of people in rural areas locked in semi-feudal property relations, which in part provides the material conditions for people’s war.

Second, while there has been a resurgence of the communist and national liberation movements, party building and the construction of revolutionary, communist organizations is a vital task in the present period. Ending, or breaking free of imperialism is not easy, and to successfully do so over the long run requires organizations that embody the theory and practice of Marxism-Leninism. Building a new communist party should be the central task of revolutionaries in the U.S., and great progress is being made on this front.

Third, national liberation movements which weaken imperialism are objectively progressive and will hasten imperialism’s end. Self-determination of oppressed nations is a democratic demand, and, to the extent and degree that the fight for self-determination weakens imperialism, those fights should be supported. This has an application in multinational states, including the U.S.

Fourth, monopoly capitalism is a law-governed system where the drive to seek the highest rate of profit is basic. While capitalism is always incapable of genuine long-range planning, imperialism in decline is animated by the shortest of short-term gain and contingency. One of the things that makes the Trump administration dangerous is precisely a reactionary pragmatism that is reshaping the U.S. empire. It is a recipe for more wars and intervention, particularly in Latin America and the Pacific.

Finally, we need to be proletarian internationalists who are serious about uniting the working and oppressed people of the world. Looking around this room, that is exactly who we are. Mao made the point that imperialism is strategically a paper tiger. He was right – in the short term imperialism is an “iron tiger,” it is dangerous. In the long run it will certainly be defeated.

Long live proletarian internationalism!

Long live the unity of the people of the world!

Long live the unity of working and oppressed people – we have nothing to lose but our chains!

#RevolutionaryTheory #FRSO #Statement #Imperialism #Trump #NDFP #OppressedNationalities

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.

#RevolutionaryTheory #MarxismLeninism #NationalQuestion #OppressedNationalities

Por Mick Kelly, Secretario Político, Organización Socialista Camino de la Libertad (OSCL).

Este documento, escrito por Mick Kelly, Secretario Político de la Organización Socialista Camino de la Libertad (OSCL), fue presentado en la conferencia internacional titulada “Stalin: Las enseñanzas para la lucha de los comunistas de hoy”. La conferencia del 15 de octubre se celebró en Milán, Italia y fue organizada por el Partito dei CARC (Partido CARC), la Resistenza Popolare Milano (Resistencia Popular de Milán) y la Associazione Stalin (Asociación Stalin). También participaron el Partido Comunista de Cuba y el Partido Comunista de Filipinas. El documento fue presentado en la conferencia por el organizador nacional de la OSCL, Andy Koch.

Estimados camaradas,

En nombre de la Organización Socialista Camino de la Libertad, extiendo nuestro más cálido saludo a los participantes y organizadores de este evento importante sobre las enseñanzas de J. V. Stalin y la lucha de los comunistas hoy. Conferencias como ésta son vitales para el movimiento comunista internacional, ya que brindan un espacio para que los marxistas-leninistas profundicemos nuestra comprensión del mundo y cómo cambiarlo. También nos complace saber que se publicaron las Obras Completas de Stalin en Italia — como en todas partes, la difusión del pensamiento y las contribuciones de Stalin ayuda a iluminar el camino hacia la revolución y el socialismo.

El enemigo de clase odia a Stalin. Cuando se menciona su nombre, mienten — y justo cuando crees que van a terminar — mienten aún más. Lo hacen porque Stalin dirigió un vasto movimiento de la clase obrera y de los pueblos oprimidos que se extendió por todo el mundo, con la capacidad de plantear un serio desafío al capitalismo mundial. Al igual que Marx, Engels, Lenin y Mao, los atemorizó.

Los revolucionarios tienen una perspectiva, y aquellos que sirven como voceros del capital monopólico tienen otra. Mao señaló que cada idea, sin excepción, está “estampada con la marca de una clase”. Lo mismo se aplica a la forma en que se evalúa a Stalin. Los comunistas tienen una suma positiva del pensamiento y la práctica de Stalin.

Valoramos las numerosas contribuciones de Stalin a la teoría del marxismo-leninismo. En la práctica, fue un revolucionario proletario excepcional que ayudó a dirigir la revolución en Rusia y a establecer lo que luego sería la URSS. Stalin dirigió el proceso de construcción socialista, transformando un país con una economía atrasada y centrada en lo rural en un país verdaderamente moderno en el mejor sentido de la palabra. Los planes quinquenales desarrollaron la industria a un ritmo desconocido hasta entonces. En las vastas zonas rurales se revolucionaron las relaciones de producción — las antiguas relaciones de propiedad, que llevaban las huellas de la servidumbre, fueron barridas por el movimiento hacia la agricultura colectiva. Al mismo tiempo, se llevó a cabo una revolución en la superestructura social y se alimentó una nueva cultura socialista.

La URSS era un país rodeado de países capitalistas hostiles que querían destruirlo. Stalin demostró ser un maestro en el uso de las contradicciones en el campo enemigo, y cuando llegó el momento, proporcionó un liderazgo competente a la Gran Guerra Patria contra el fascismo.

JV Stalin fue un gran internacionalista proletario que se interesó profundamente por los movimientos obreros y de liberación nacional en todo el mundo. La teoría y la práctica de Stalin, tal como se pueden aplicar a la situación en la que nos encontramos hoy, será el enfoque del resto de este documento.

El Capitalismo Monopolista y el “Excepcionalismo Estadounidense”

En 1929, la Comisión Americana del Presídium del Comité Ejecutivo de la Internacional Comunista se vio sacudida por un debate que se estaba desarrollando dentro del Partido Comunista de los Estados Unidos.

Stalin se dirigió a la comisión durante un largo rato, planteando dos puntos importantes que son de verdadera importancia para los comunistas de hoy. El primero era el peligro del faccionalismo y cómo el faccionalismo socava la unidad que necesita un partido comunista para actuar con eficacia. Stalin habló de una posible crisis revolucionaria en desarrollo y afirmó:

“Para eso es necesario mejorar y bolchevizar el Partido Comunista de los Estados Unidos. Para eso es necesario trabajar por la completa liquidación del fraccionalismo y de las desviaciones en el Partido. Para eso es necesario trabajar por el restablecimiento de la unidad en el Partido Comunista de los Estados Unidos. Para eso es necesario trabajar para forjar verdaderos cuadros revolucionarios y una verdadera dirección revolucionaria del proletariado, capaz de conducir a los muchos millones de miembros de la clase obrera estadounidense hacia las luchas de clase revolucionarias. Para eso es necesario dejar de lado todos los factores personales y las consideraciones fraccionales y poner por encima de todo la educación revolucionaria de la clase obrera de los Estados Unidos.”

Stalin continuó afirmando:

“Tomemos una fábrica o una planta cualquiera. Supongamos que la mayoría de los obreros de esa fábrica se muestran inclinados a ir a la huelga, mientras que la minoría, alegando sus convicciones, se declara en contra de la huelga. Se inicia una guerra de opiniones, se realizan reuniones y, al final, la gran mayoría de la fábrica decide ir a la huelga. ¿Qué dirías de diez o veinte obreros, que representan a una minoría en la fábrica, que declaran que no se someterán a la decisión de la mayoría de los obreros, porque no están de acuerdo con ella? ¿Cómo los llamarías, queridos camaradas? Ya sabes que a esos obreros se les suele llamar rompehuelgas”.

El hecho de que el faccionalismo es un veneno para una organización comunista revolucionaria es bien conocido y debe ser tratado en consecuencia. Menos conocido era el debate subyacente entre los comunistas estadounidenses que estaba contribuyendo a alimentar la batalla faccional — el problema del “excepcionalismo estadounidense”. Mucho antes de que se convirtiera en una palabra de moda en los círculos políticos burgueses y en las campañas presidenciales estadounidenses, en el período previo a la Gran Depresión, la cuestión del excepcionalismo era un tema de debate entre los comunistas.

Un grupo de oportunistas de derecha dentro del Partido Comunista, liderado por J. Lovestone, argumentó que las leyes generales del capitalismo — incluyendo la teoría de crisis — no se aplicaban realmente a los Estados Unidos, que sería inmune a la crisis que envolvía al mundo capitalista.

“Sería un error ignorar las peculiaridades específicas del capitalismo estadounidense. El Partido Comunista, en su labor, debe tenerlas en cuenta. Pero sería aún más erróneo basar las actividades del Partido Comunista en estas características específicas, ya que la base de las actividades de cualquier Partido Comunista, incluido el Partido Comunista estadounidense, debe ser las características generales del capitalismo, que son las mismas para todos los países, y no sus características específicas en un país determinado.”

Lo que Stalin quiere decir aquí es que debemos entender las leyes del capitalismo y que estas leyes se aplican en todos los lugares donde hay capitalismo.

Hoy en día todavía surge la cuestión del “excepcionalismo estadounidense”. En los Estados Unidos y en algunos otros países capitalistas desarrollados, hay quienes sostienen que las leyes del cambio — que son, de hecho, las leyes del desarrollo de la sociedad, y que fueron expuestas por Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Mao y muchos otros — ya no se aplican (si es que alguna vez se aplicaron). Por eso, dicen cosas como que la clase obrera está “comprada” y es incapaz de cumplir su papel histórico de enterradora del sistema capitalista, atribuyendo en cambio ese papel a los movimientos sociales. O tomemos como ejemplo a los revisionistas modernos, que eliminan todo lo que es revolucionario en el marxismo. Niegan la necesidad de la dictadura del proletariado y plantean el argumento absurdo de que es posible tener una transición pacífica al socialismo, o niegan la inevitabilidad de las guerras libradas por las potencias imperialistas.

La Decadencia del Imperialismo Estadounidense

El capitalismo monopolista es un sistema regido por leyes, y los revolucionarios pueden entender esas leyes. El imperialismo es un sistema moribundo, y el declive del imperialismo estadounidense se está acelerando. En 1960, la economía estadounidense representaba aproximadamente el 40% de la economía mundial. Hoy, es alrededor de la mitad de eso. En su obra Los Fundamentos del Leninismo, Stalin afirma: “Lenin llamó al imperialismo ‘capitalismo moribundo’. ¿Por qué? Porque el imperialismo lleva las contradicciones del capitalismo hasta sus últimos límites, hasta el límite extremo, más allá del cual comienza la revolución”.

El declive del capitalismo monopolista es un fenómeno real que está configurando todas las contradicciones sociales en los Estados Unidos. Las contradicciones dentro de la clase dirigente se están agudizando, y Trump es el representante político ideal de una potencia imperial en decadencia.

El hecho de que Biden y Harris hayan mantenido muchas de las políticas de Trump relacionadas con la arquitectura financiera internacional — incluidas las que limitan el funcionamiento de la Organización Mundial del Comercio, el proteccionismo y la “desvinculación” de las economías de los Estados Unidos y la China Popular — son indicadores de que hay fuerzas económicas más amplias en juego, que llevan a la clase dirigente estadounidense a algunos puntos de acuerdo sobre qué hacer en un mundo en el que el poder estadounidense está decayendo. Pero en una serie de cuestiones, especialmente las que implican rivalidad inter-imperialista, como la OTAN o la guerra en Ucrania, no hay ningún consenso.

En la sociedad estadounidense, las contradicciones entre clases y nacionalidades también se están agudizando. Hay un notable aumento de huelgas importantes por parte de trabajadores estadounidenses, la más reciente en Boeing por parte de 30.000 miembros de la Asociación Internacional de Maquinistas.

La Cuestión Nacional

Entre las contribuciones teóricas más importantes de Stalin al socialismo científico se encuentra su trabajo sobre la cuestión nacional. A partir de su obra pionera de 1913 El Marxismo y la Cuestión Nacional, Stalin estudió y escribió sobre los movimientos de liberación nacional durante toda su vida.

En Los Fundamentos del Leninismo, Stalin señala:

“Anteriormente, la cuestión nacional se consideraba desde un punto de vista reformista, como una cuestión independiente que no tenía conexión con la cuestión general del poder del capital, del derrocamiento del imperialismo, de la revolución proletaria. Se suponía tácitamente que la victoria del proletariado en Europa era posible sin una alianza directa con el movimiento de liberación en las colonias, que la cuestión nacional-colonial podría resolverse en silencio, ‘por su propia cuenta’, fuera del camino de la revolución proletaria, sin una lucha revolucionaria contra el imperialismo. Ahora podemos decir que ese punto de vista antirrevolucionario ha quedado expuesto.”

Lo que se quiere decir aquí es que quienes se enfrentan a la opresión nacional y la clase obrera de la nación opresora se enfrentan a un enemigo común y que los movimientos de liberación nacional deben ser apoyados activamente. Bajo el liderazgo de Stalin, la Unión Soviética apoyó activamente los movimientos de liberación nacional.

Hoy en día, la importancia de este enfoque se destaca con claridad. Palestina es actualmente el eje del proceso revolucionario en el Medio Oriente, donde los golpes más duros se están asestando al imperialismo estadounidense y occidental. Asimismo, los Estados Unidos es una prisión de naciones. La opresión nacional y la desigualdad sistemática recaen sobre la nación afroamericana, cuyo territorio nacional se encuentra en el Cinturón Negro del Sur, y sobre la nación chicana, cuyo territorio nacional se encuentra en la parte suroeste de los Estados Unidos.

En el contexto de la rápida decadencia del imperialismo, la cuestión de la opresión nacional dentro de los Estados Unidos está desempeñando un papel importante en la definición de los contornos de la lucha — por ejemplo, las 27 millones de personas que salieron a las calles después del asesinato de George Floyd o las manifestaciones masivas en apoyo de Palestina durante el año pasado. La comprensión de la cuestión nacional ha permitido a nuestra organización, OSCL, ocupar un papel importante en estos eventos.

Lecciones del Pasado y Mirando Hacia un Futuro Brillante

Sobre todo, Stalin fue un revolucionario que nunca dudó en señalar el camino a seguir para el movimiento comunista internacional y nunca dudó en corregir los errores cuando los encontraba.

Por ejemplo, en los Estados Unidos, durante el último período del frente popular, especialmente durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial, los revisionistas dentro del Partido Comunista llegaron al extremo de liquidar el Partido. Fue el movimiento comunista mundial, encabezado por Stalin, el que llamó la atención sobre el problema y exigió que se abordaran los errores.

Ahora nos encontramos en un período en el que se está produciendo una radicalización a gran escala en los Estados Unidos. Hay más personas que se consideran marxistas-leninistas que en cualquier otro momento desde la década de 1970. La situación para construir un nuevo partido comunista en los Estados Unidos es excelente.

El marxismo-leninismo es una ciencia, y Stalin contribuyó mucho a nuestra comprensión de esa ciencia. Y aprenderemos aún más aplicándola a las condiciones concretas que enfrentamos.

¡Viva el marxismo-leninismo! ¡Viva el movimiento comunista internacional! ¡Tenemos un mundo que ganar!

#RevolutionaryTheory #FRSO #Stalin #Statement #Espanol

Marking the 75th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, Praxis Press, together with Friends of Socialist China, has released an excellent new book, People’s China at 75: The Flag Stays Red. This book is edited by Keith Bennett and Carlos Martinez, and compiles articles by China experts from all over the world explaining and defending Chinese socialism. Anyone who wants to understand socialism in China, from 1949 to today, should read this book.

The articles in the book cover a number of important topics. We can’t cover them all here, but we can look at some highlights. For example, Jenny Clegg’s article “China’s transition to socialism: 1049-1956” explains the period during which China laid the foundations of socialism. She discusses China’s post-war rehabilitation, New Democracy, and how it ensured that China would progress along the socialist road. The article examines the practical, economic elements of this transition, such as the development of Agricultural Producers Cooperatives, together with the political and ideological debates of the period. As Clegg writes in her conclusion, 

A careful handling of class relations allowed the people’s struggles against capitalism to unfold in sequenced steps, workers and peasants discussing and educating themselves as they engaged in policy implementation. Grassroots cadres, learning on the job, built broad support as the dynamics of class struggle exposed the inherent contradictions at each step. 

Leading Chinese scholars Cheng Enfu and Chen Jian, in the article “The significance of China’s fulfilment of its Second Centenary Goal by 2049,” explain and analyze the Communist Party of China’s “goal of building China into a modern socialist country that is prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally advanced, harmonious and beautiful by the centenary of the People’s Republic of China.”

The book also includes a short article by Roland Boer titled “China’s socialist democracy” which addresses the principle that “socialist democracy strengthens the leadership of the Communist Party, and the leadership of the Communist Party strengthens socialist democracy.” Boer is explaining a dialectical relationship at the core of the socialist system. “In other words, the leadership of the Communist Party ensures that the people are masters of the country, and the robust exercise of socialist democracy ensures that the Communist Party continues its role of legitimate leadership.”

J. Sykes, author of The Revolutionary Science of Marxism-Leninism, contributes the article “Mao, China, and the development of Marxism-Leninism.” In this article Sykes explains Mao’s contributions to Marxist theory. He breaks down Mao’s contributions to dialectical and historical materialism, revolutionary strategy, problems of socialist construction, and the defense of Marxism-Leninism against modern revisionism. While concisely explaining Mao’s contributions in each of these areas, Sykes makes the point that “Mao’s contributions to revolutionary theory are not limited to the Chinese context,” but are universal. “The theory-practice dialectic in fact goes both ways. By applying Marxism-Leninism to the concrete conditions of China, Marxism-Leninism itself was further developed and enriched.” 

In the article “Building socialism, building the ecological civilization,” Efe Can Gürcan explains how China is leading the way in environmental sustainability. This article does well to highlight how China is working to develop green technology in a world increasingly put at risk by the perils of climate change. 

Finally, the collection ends with an excellent article from Carlos Martinez: “How China survived the end of history.” Martinez examines how China survived the wave of counter-revolution that swept the socialist world between 1989 and 1991 to continue on the socialist road when so many other countries didn’t. 

Everyone interested in socialism should study the experience of China, and People’s China at 75: The Flag Stays Red stands out as an extraordinary collection of important writings on China's achievements, struggles, and contributions to the world revolutionary movement. 

Buy People’s China at 75: The Flag Stays Red at https://redletterspp.com/collections/current-titles/products/peoples-china-at-75

#RevolutionaryTheory #International #China

This paper, by Political Secretary Mick Kelly of Freedom Road Socialist Organization, was presented to the international conference entitled “Stalin: The teachings for the fight of today’s communists”. The October 15 conference took place in Milan, Italy and was organized by Partito dei CARC (Carc Party), Resistenza Popolare Milano (Popular Resistance Milan) and Associazione Stalin (Stalin Association). The Communist Party of Cuba and the Communist Party of the Philippines also participated. The paper was delivered to the conference by FRSO National Organizer Andy Koch.

Dear Comrades,

On behalf of Freedom Road Socialist Organization, I extend our warmest greeting to the participants and organizers of this important event on the teachings of JV Stalin and the struggle of communists today. Conferences such as this one are vital for the international communist movement as they provide a venue for Marxist-Leninists to deepen our understanding of the world and how to change it. We are also glad to hear about the publication of Stalin’s Collected Works in Italy – as everywhere, spreading the thinking and contributions of Stalin help to illuminate the path to revolution and socialism.

The class enemy hates Stalin. When his name comes up, they lie and – just when you think they are going to wrap it up – they lie some more. They do so because Stalin led a vast movement of working class and oppressed peoples that spanned the globe, with the capacity to mount a serious challenge to world capitalism. Like Marx, Engels, Lenin and Mao, he frightened them.

Revolutionaries have one view of things, and those who serve as mouthpieces for monopoly capital have another. How could it be otherwise? Mao made the point that every idea without exception is “stamped with the brand of a class.” This same applies to how one evaluates Stalin. Communists have a positive summation of Stalin’s thinking and practice.

We appreciate the many contributions Stalin made to the theory of Marxism-Leninism. In practice, he was an outstanding proletarian revolutionary who helped lead the revolution in Russia and in the establishment of what would become the USSR. Stalin led the process of socialist construction, transforming a country that had a backward, rural-centered economy into a land that was truly modern in the best sense of the word. The five-year plans developed industry at a pace that was until then unknown. In the vast rural areas, production relations were revolutionized – the old property relations which bore the marks of serfdom were swept away by the movement to collective agriculture. Simultaneously, a revolution was conducted in the societal superstructure and new socialist culture was nurtured.

The USSR was a country encircled by hostile capitalist countries that wanted to destroy it. Stalin proved to be a master at utilizing contradictions in the enemy camp, and when the time came, he provided able leadership to the Great Patriotic War against fascism.

JV Stalin was a great proletarian internationalist who took a keen interest in the workers and national liberation movements around the world. The theory and practice of Stalin, as it can be applied to the situation we find ourselves in today, will be the focus of the rest of this paper.

Monopoly capitalism and “American Exceptionalism”

In 1929, the American Commission of the Presidium of the Executive Committee of the Communist International was rocked by a debate that was taking place inside the Communist Party of the USA. Stalin addressed the commission at length, making two major points that are of real importance to communists today. The first was the danger of factionalism and how factionalism undermines the unity that is required by a communist party to act effectively. Stalin spoke of a potential developing revolutionary crisis and stated:

“For that end the American Communist Party must be improved and bolshevized. For that end we must work for the complete liquidation of factionalism and deviations in the Party. For that end we must work for the reestablishment of unity in the Communist Party of America. For that end we must work in order to forge real revolutionary cadres and a real revolutionary leadership of the proletariat, capable of leading the many millions of the American working class toward the revolutionary class struggles. For that end all personal factors and factional considerations must be laid aside and the revolutionary education of the working class of America must be placed above all.”

Stalin went on to state:

“Let us take any factory or plant. Let us assume that the majority of the workers of that factory show an inclination to go on strike, whereas the minority, on the plea of their convictions, declare against a strike. A war of opinions commences, meetings are held, and in the end the vast majority in the factory decide to strike. What would you say of ten or twenty workers, representing a minority in the factory, who declared they would not submit to the decision of the majority of the workers, since they were not in agreement with that decision? What would you call them, dear comrades? You know that such workers are usually called strike-breakers.”

The fact that factionalism is poison to a revolutionary communist organization is well known and must be dealt with accordingly. Less well known was the underlying debate among U.S. communists that was helping to fuel the factional battle – that is the problem of “American exceptionalism.” Long before it became a buzz word in bourgeois political circles and U.S presidential campaigns, in the lead-up to the Great Depression the issue of exceptionalism was a topic of debate among communists.

A group of right opportunists inside the Communist Party, led by J Lovestone, made the argument that the general laws of capitalism – including crisis theory – did not really apply to the U.S., which would be immune from the crisis engulfing the capitalist world. Stalin responded:

“It would be wrong to ignore the specific peculiarities of American capitalism. The Communist Party in its work must take them into account. But it would be still more wrong to base the activities of the Communist Party on these specific features, since the foundation of the activities of every Communist Party, including the American Communist Party, on which it must base itself, must be the general features of capitalism, which are the same for all countries, and not its specific features in any given country.”

The point Stalin is making here is that we must understand the laws of capitalism and that these laws apply in all places you find capitalism.

Today the issue of “American exceptionalism” still comes up. In the U.S. and some other developed capitalist countries, there are those who argue that the laws of change – which are in fact, the laws of society’s development, and which were laid bare by Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Mao and many others – do not apply anymore (if they ever did). So, they say things like the working class is “bought off” and unable to serve its historic role as the grave digger of the capitalist system, ascribing that role instead to social movements. Or take for example the modern revisionists, who remove all that is revolutionary from Marxism. They negate the need for the dictatorship of the proletariat and make the silly argument that it is possible to have a peaceful transition to socialism, or they deny the inevitably of wars being waged by the imperial powers.

Decline of U.S. imperialism

Monopoly capitalism is a law-governed system, and revolutionaries can understand those laws. Imperialism is a dying system, and the decline of U.S. imperialism is accelerating. In 1960, the U.S. economy represented about 40% of the world economy. Today, it is about half that. In his work, Foundations of Leninism, Stalin states, “Lenin called imperialism ‘moribund capitalism.’ Why? Because imperialism carries the contradictions of capitalism to their last bounds, to the extreme limit, beyond which revolution begins.”

The decline of monopoly capitalism is a real phenomenon that is shaping every social contradiction within the United States. The contradictions within the ruling class are sharpening, and Trump is an ideal political representative of an imperial power in decline.

The fact that Biden/Harris have retained many of Trump’s policies concerning the international financial architecture – including policies that limit the functioning of the World Trade Organization; protectionism; and the “delinking” the economies of the U.S. and People’s China – are indicators that broader economic forces are at work, leading the U.S. ruling class to some points of agreement about what to do in a world where U.S. power is slipping. But on a host of issues, especially those that involve inter-imperialist rivalry such as NATO or the war in Ukraine, there is anything but a consensus.

In U.S. society, the contradictions along class and national lines are also growing sharper. There is a notable uptick in major strikes by U.S. workers, most recently at Boeing by 30,000 members of the International Association of Machinists.

The National Question

Among Stalin’s most important theoretical contributions to scientific socialism was his work on the national question. Starting with his pathing-breaking 1913 work Marxism and the National Question, Stalin studied and wrote about the movements for national liberation his whole life.

In Foundations of Leninism Stalin notes:

“Formerly, the national question was regarded from a reformist point of view, as an independent question having no connection with the general question of the power of capital, of the overthrow of imperialism, of the proletarian revolution. It was tacitly assumed that the victory of the proletariat in Europe was possible without a direct, alliance with the liberation movement in the colonies, that the national-colonial question could be solved on the quiet, “of its own accord,” off the highway of the proletarian revolution, without a revolutionary struggle against imperialism. Now we can say that anti-revolutionary point of view has been exposed.”

What is being said here is that those facing national oppression, and the working class of the oppressor nation, face a common enemy, and that movements for national liberation should be actively supported. Under Stalin’s leadership the Soviet Union actively supported the national liberation movements.

Today, the importance of this approach stands out in sharp relief. Palestine is currently the pivot of the revolutionary process in the Middle East, where the heaviest blows are being landed on U.S. and Western imperialism. Likewise, the U.S. itself is a jailhouse of nations. National oppression and systematic inequality are visited upon the African American nation, which has its national territory the Black Belt South, and on the Chicano nation, which has its national territory in the Southwest portion of the U.S.

In the context of imperialism’s rapid decline, the issue of national oppression inside the U.S. is playing an important role in defining the contours of struggle – for example, the 27 million people came out into the streets after the murder of George Floyd. Or the massive demonstrations in support of Palestine over the past year. Understanding the national question has allowed our organization, FRSO, to play an important role in these events.

Lessons from the past, and looking towards a bright future

Above all else, Stalin was a revolutionary who never hesitated to point the way forward for the international communist movement, and never hesitated to correct errors when he found them.

For example, in the United States, during the later period of the popular front, especially during World War II, revisionists within the Communist Party went so far as to liquidate the Party. It was the world communist movement, headed by Stalin, that called attention to the problem and demanded the mistakes be addressed.

We are now in a period where large scale radicalization is underway in the U.S. There are more people who view themselves as Marxist-Leninists than at any time since the 1970s. The situation for building a new communist party in the U.S. is excellent.

Marxism-Leninism is a science, and Stalin contributed a lot to our understanding of that science. And we will learn still more by applying it to the concrete conditions we face.

Long live Marxism-Leninism!

Long live the international communist movement!

We have a world to win!

#RevolutionaryTheory #Socialism #Stalin

The following speech was delivered by Mick Kelly, Political Secretary, Freedom Road Socialist Organization on September 29, at the New York City event marking the 75th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China.

Comrades and friends,

We are gathered here for an event of genuine importance, and I would like to extend our gratitude to the Friends of Socialist China and the Workers World Party for taking the lead in making this happen.

For the past 75 years the People’s Republic of China, under the able leadership of the Communist Party, has accomplished so much for so many. From Chairman Mao Zedong’s 1949 proclamation, “The Chinese people have stood up,” right up until the present moment, China has set an example for the world. From carrying out a serious effort to eliminate poverty to being a leader in the application of green technology, socialist China has been showing the way.

And greater things lay ahead. At the most recent Congress of the Communist Party of China, General Secretary Xi Jinping stated, “All of us in the Party must stay true to our fundamental purpose of serving the people wholeheartedly, maintain a people-centered mindset, and carry out the mass line.” Later in his speech he noted, “The Party has made spectacular achievements through its great endeavors over the past century, and our new endeavors will surely lead to more spectacular achievements.”

I am certain I speak for all of us in wishing the People’s Republic of China many more victories on its 75th birthday. And that includes hoping for the successful and speedy conclusion of the great unfinished piece of business of the Chinese revolution – the historic mission of achieving reunification with Taiwan.

But all is not right in the world. We all know that. So, let’s examine the international situation, and some of its most important features, especially U.S. hostility towards People’s China, including economic and military measures undertaken by the White House and Pentagon, and the context in which these measures are taking place: the accelerating decline of U.S. imperialism.

The U.S. anti-China policy and imperialism in decline

The U.S. has an empire that spans the globe, but it is an empire in decline, as shown by some basic economic measures. The U.S. share of the world GDP has been halved since the end of World War II. The fall of the U.S steel industry illustrates this process. The plurality of steel was once produced in the U.S. and in 1955 it dominated about 40% of the world market. By 2019 the U.S. was one of the largest steel importers, only producing about 5% of the world’s steel. The same pattern can be shown in industry after industry.

Contrast this with socialist China. Using the measure of Purchasing Power Parity (PPP), which allows one to compare which commodities and services can be purchased with a given currency, the World Bank concluded that the Chinese economy was 23% larger than that of the U.S. in 2022. China produces twice the electricity of the U.S. and almost three times as many autos. According to the Alliance for American Manufacturing, China’s shipbuilding capacity is 232 times greater than that of the United States. The economy of People’s China has grown by leaps and bounds since 1949 and, due to the superiority of socialism, it has never experienced a crisis of overproduction. The PRC is emerging as a central player in the world economy.

The U.S. response to its change in place has been significant. For all practical purposes, it has abandoned the drive for large scale multilateral trade agreements. The U.S. worked hard to establish the World Trade Organization, and now it blocks WTO functioning by refusing to appoint judges to the dispute resolution body. Once the champion of “free trade,” the U.S. is now the practitioner of protectionism.

In the context of declining empire, the U.S. is moving to “delink” its economy from China, and the Biden administration is following in the footsteps of Trump. A few weeks ago, on September 13, the White House announced tariffs of 100% on electric vehicles imported from China. Tariffs have been placed or will be imposed on many more China-made products, such as steel, lithium batteries, personal protection equipment such as masks and much, much more. Also, the Biden administration has elected to move away from the neoliberal model in so far as capital investment goes. There are two aspects to this: restricting investment in Chinese industries and adopting an industrial policy that steers investment to manufacturing. As a result, the greatest building boom in many decades –-possibly 50 years – of U.S. factories is underway.

The acceleration of the U.S. decline is shaping a host of other contradictions and the process of economic “delinking” from China is serious business, especially as it has been accompanied by a host of provocations, threats and war preparations.

War preparations and our tasks

For those of you who are readers of bourgeois foreign policy journals such as Foreign Affairs, you know that they regularly carry articles around the question of whether a U.S. war with China will be long or short. They really do. The Pentagon has made it clear that its number one priority is China, and that is reflected in military spending. It should be noted that it is trying to ensnare the counties of the Pacific into anti-China alliances and groupings – formal and informal. On top of this, the U.S. is getting ready to deliver its largest ever military aid package to Taiwan, a move that will embolden the separatist forces on the island.

People’s China wants peace, and U.S. is on a path towards war. The implications of this are huge and the revolutionary and progressive forces in this country have our work cut out for us. It is imperative that we actively oppose each and every U.S. war, its preparations for war, and stand in solidarity with the oppressed, from Palestine to the Philippines – and stand with the socialist countries like China. The People’s Republic of China is making the world a better place while the U.S is facilitating genocide in the Middle East – the choice is clear. We have a common enemy in the monopoly capitalists.

By standing together and uniting as one, the peoples of the world have a bright future. In 1956, Mao Zedong made the point, “Now U.S. imperialism is quite powerful, but in reality it isn’t. It is very weak politically because it is divorced from the masses of the people and is disliked by everybody and by the American people too. In appearance it is very powerful but in reality, it is nothing to be afraid of, it is a paper tiger. Outwardly a tiger, it is made of paper, unable to withstand the wind and the rain. I believe the United States is nothing but a paper tiger.”

So, in conclusion, away with the paper tiger! Long live the unity of the people of the U.S. with the Chinese people! Long live socialist China!

Thank you, and happy 75th to the People’s Republic of China.

#NewYorkNY #NY #International #China #AntiWarMovement #RevolutionaryTheory #Feature

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

#RevolutionaryTheory #RedReviews #Lenin #MarxismLeninism #Elections #Unions

“One of the most lucid and brilliant leaders in Africa, Comrade Amílcar Cabral instilled in us tremendous confidence in the future and the success of his struggle for liberation.” — Fidel Castro

September 12, 2024 marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of one of the giants of 20th century African liberation struggle and global anti-imperialist movement, Amilcar Cabral.

Progressive and revolutionary people should take this occasion to celebrate the proud revolutionary legacy of Amilcar Cabral, the national liberation movement he led in Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde, and the worldwide anti-imperialist movement he was part of.

Cabral: Fighter for the liberation of Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde

Amilcar Cabral was the principal leader of the national liberation struggle in Guinea Bissau and the islands of Cape Verde on the west coast of Africa. The national liberation movement that he led declared independence from Portugal on September 24, 1973.

The people of Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde had been brutally colonized by Portugal for centuries. The first Portuguese people arrived in Guinea Bissau in the 1440s when the Portuguese monarchy began “exploring” the Atlantic coast of West Africa in pursuit of gold. The Portuguese colonizers enslaved hundreds of thousands of people from this region of Africa through the 1800s, many of whom were taken in chains across the Atlantic Ocean to Brazil, which was a Portuguese colony in the Americas, to work as slaves in mines and on plantations. As a result, to this day Brazil has the largest African-descendent population in the Americas.

Under brutal Portuguese colonialism, by the 1950s the literacy rate was as low as 1%; the few schools were more for the Portuguese colonizers. There were barely any doctors and only 300 hospital beds in the whole country.

A wave of national liberation movements gained steam in Africa in the 1940s and 50s, with powerful inspiration and support from the world’s first socialist country, the Soviet Union. Victories for national liberation movements in China in 1949 and Cuba in 1959, which became socialist countries after liberation, provided further momentum and inspiration. This was part of a broader anti-colonial and anti-imperialist movement that was sweeping not just Africa, but also Asia, Latin America and the Middle East, where the majority of humanity had been subjugated by competing European empires for centuries.

In reaction to this wave, and as rival colonial powers were losing their grip on their colonies, Portugal tried to exert an even tighter and more brutal grip on its African colonies. In 1951, Portugal declared Guinea Bissau a province of Portugal itself. In that context, the movement fighting for national liberation advanced in Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde in the 1950s.

Amílcar Cabral was born September 12, 1924 in “Portuguese Guinea” as it was called before liberation, to Cape Verdian parents. He was one of a small number of Africans from Guinea Bissau who was able to pursue higher education in Portugal. He studied agronomy, and while he was there, he participated in the student movement opposing Portugal’s right-wing dictatorship and supporting independence for Portugal’s colonies in Africa.

When he returned home, he carried out a country-wide agricultural census, traveling extensively and learning in great detail about the people, the land and the problems of his country. This deep knowledge of the material reality of his people and his country allowed Cabral to make a materialist assessment of who could be united to fight for liberation, and how they needed to be organized to do so. There is an echo here of Chinese revolutionary leader Mao Zedong’s deep investigation into the material realities of the oppressed peasant majority in China in the 1920s that led to strategic breakthroughs in the Chinese revolution’s path to victory.

In 1956, Amilcar Cabral co-founded the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC), the organization that led the national liberation struggle in Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde. Cabral was the PAIGC’s secretary-general. After Portuguese soldiers carried out a massacre against dockworkers in 1959, the PAIGC moved toward armed struggle to win liberation. The PAIGC began its armed struggle in earnest in 1962-63, fighting a guerrilla war until they liberated the majority of the country and then declared independence.

Tragically, Amilcar Cabral was assassinated on January 20, 1973, on the eve of the PAIGC liberating Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde and declaring independence in September 1973. According to leaders of the PAIGC, agents of colonialism carried out the assassination on behalf of the government of Portugal, who had as a key objective the decapitation of the liberation movement’s leadership. But despite Cabral’s assassination, the movement still won independence.

Cabral: Anti-imperialist and internationalist

“Either we admit that there really is a struggle against imperialism which interests everybody, or we deny it. If, as would seem from all the evidence, imperialism exists and is trying simultaneously to dominate the working class in all the advanced countries and smother the national liberation movements in the underdeveloped countries, then there is only one enemy against whom we are fighting. If we are fighting together, then I think the main aspect of our solidarity is extremely simple; it is to fight.” – Amilcar Cabral

While primarily focused on building the revolutionary movement in Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde, Amilcar Cabral also built Pan-African and worldwide anti-imperialist unity. Starting in 1961, the PAIGC united with national liberation movements in Portugal’s other colonies in Africa, creating the Conference of Nationalist Organizations of the Portuguese Colonies together with the Mozambique Liberation Front (FRELIMO) in and the People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA).

Cabral also built alliances with socialist countries like Cuba as well as other countries that had won liberation from imperialism. Cabral attended the Tricontinental Conference in Havana, Cuba in 1966, where he expressed strong support for Cuba’s socialist revolution and even offered to send fighters to defend socialist Cuba against imperialism if needed.

Cabral was inspired by Marxism-Leninism’s anti-imperialist theory and practice. In 1970 he wrote, “Whether Marxist or not, Leninist or not, it is difficult for anyone not to recognize the validity, even the genius of Lenin’s analysis and conclusions, which prove to be of immense historical scope, illuminating with fruitful clarity the often thorny and even somber path of the peoples who are fighting for their total liberation from imperialist domination.”

In his writings, Cabral talked explicitly about applying a dialectical and a materialist method, and the need for class analysis and class struggle. Along with Kwame Nkrumah and Franz Fanon, Cabral was an early theorist on the dangers of neo-colonialism after winning independence.

When Cabral would come to the U.S. to speak at the United Nations to gain support for the national liberation movement in Guinea Bissau, he sought out meetings with revolutionaries in the U.S., especially African American revolutionaries. Cabral understood that anti-imperialist struggles in colonized countries and the struggle inside the imperialist countries share a common enemy, and that any blow against imperialism from within or without is mutually beneficial.

In a meeting with around 120 Black revolutionaries in the U.S. in 1972, Cabral said, “We try to understand your situation in this country. You can be sure that we realize the difficulties you face, the problems you have and your feelings, your revolts, and also your hopes. We think that our fighting for Africa against colonialism and imperialism is a proof of understanding of your problems in this continent. Naturally, the inverse is also true. All the achievements here are real contributions to our own struggle.”

Cabral’s understanding of the relationship between revolutionary movements in the colonies and in the imperialist countries themselves ended up being prophetic when the surging revolutionary national liberation movements in Guinea Bissau and Portugal’s other African colonies helped spark a progressive uprising of soldiers and then workers in Portugal in 1974 against the reactionary Portuguese government.

Amilcar Cabral stands among the greatest heroes of 20th century fighters for liberation. He studied the concrete conditions of his country and developed a revolutionary strategy based on that. He built a revolutionary organization to lead the struggle for liberation. He built unity on an anti-imperialist basis with liberation movements around the world. He united with socialist countries. By doing these things, he was able to lead a successful national liberation movement that won independence from Portuguese colonialism. His life and contributions should be remembered and celebrated by revolutionaries the world over.

#International #GuineaBissau #CapeVerde #AmilcarCabral #Socialism #NationalLiberation #RevolutionaryTheory #Opinion #Feature

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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To mark the 154th birthday, April 22, of the outstanding revolutionary V.I. Lenin, Fight Back News Service is circulating his famous article “Letter to American Workers” written in 1918.

Comrades! A Russian Bolshevik who took part in the 1905 Revolution, and who lived in your country for many years afterwards, has offered to convey my letter to you. I have accepted his proposal all the more gladly because just at the present time the American revolutionary workers have to play an exceptionally important role as uncompromising enemies of American imperialism—the freshest, strongest and latest in joining in the world-wide slaughter of nations for the division of capitalist profits. At this very moment, the American multimillionaires, these modern slaveowners have turned an exceptionally tragic page in the bloody history of bloody imperialism by giving their approval—whether direct or indirect, open or hypocritically concealed, makes no difference—to the armed expedition launched by the brutal Anglo-Japanese imperialists for the purpose of throttling the first socialist republic.

The history of modern, civilized America opened with one of those great, really liberating, really revolutionary wars of which there have been so few compared to the vast number of wars of conquest which, like the present imperialist war, were caused by squabbles among kings, landowners or capitalists over the division of usurped lands or ill-gotten gains. That was the war the American people waged against the British robbers who oppressed America and held her in colonial slavery, in the same way as these “civilized” bloodsuckers are still oppressing and holding in colonial slavery hundreds of millions of people in India, Egypt, and all parts of the world.

About 150 years have passed since then. Bourgeois civilization has borne all its luxurious fruits. America has taken first place among the free and educated nations in level of development of the productive forces of collective human endeavor, in the utilization of machinery and of all the wonders of modern engineering. At the same time, America has become one of the foremost countries in regard to the depth of the abyss which lies between the handful of arrogant multimillionaires who wallow in filth and luxury, and the millions of working people who constantly live on the verge of pauperism. The American people, who set the world an example in waging a revolutionary war against feudal slavery, now find themselves in the latest, capitalist stage of wage-slavery to a handful of multimillionaires, and find themselves playing the role of hired thugs who, for the benefit of wealthy scoundrels, throttled the Philippines in 1898 on the pretext of “liberating” them, and are throttling the Russian Socialist Republic in 1918 on the pretext of “protecting” it from the Germans.

The four years of the imperialist slaughter of nations, however, have not passed in vain. The deception of the people by the scoundrels of both robber groups, the British and the German, has been utterly exposed by indisputable and obvious facts. The results of the four years of war have revealed the general law of capitalism as applied to war between robbers for the division of spoils: the richest and strongest profited and grabbed most, while the weakest were utterly robbed, tormented, crushed and strangled.

The British imperialist robbers were the strongest in number of “colonial slaves”. The British capitalists have not lost an inch of “their” territory (i.e., territory they have grabbed over the centuries), but they have grabbed all the German colonies in Africa, they have grabbed Mesopotamia and Palestine, they have throttled Greece, and have begun to plunder Russia.

The German imperialist robbers were the strongest in organization and discipline of “their” armies, but weaker in regard to colonies. They have lost all their colonies, but plundered half of Europe and throttled the largest number of small countries and weak nations. What a great war of “liberation” on both sides! How well the robbers of both groups, the Anglo-French and the German capitalists, together with their lackeys, the social-chauvinists, i.e., the socialists who went over to the side of “their own ” bourgeoisie, have “defended their country”!

The American multimillionaires were, perhaps, richest of all, and geographically the most secure. They have profited more than all the rest. They have converted all, even the richest, countries into their tributaries. They have grabbed hundreds of billions of dollars. And every dollar is sullied with filth: the filth of the secret treaties between Britain and her “allies”, between Germany and her vassals, treaties for the division of the spoils, treaties of mutual “aid” for oppressing the workers and persecuting the internationalist socialists. Every dollar is sullied with the filth of “profitable” war contracts, which in every country made the rich richer and the poor poorer. And every dollar is stained with blood—from that ocean of blood that has been shed by the ten million killed and twenty million maimed in the great, noble, liberating and holy war to decide whether the British or the German robbers are to get most of the spoils, whether the British or the German thugs are to be foremost in throttling the weak nations all over the world.

While the German robbers broke all records in war atrocities, the British have broken all records not only in the number of colonies they have grabbed, but also in the subtlety of their disgusting hypocrisy. This very day, the Anglo-French and American bourgeois newspapers are spreading, in millions and millions of copies, lies and slander about Russia, and are hypocritically justifying their predatory expedition against her on the plea that they want to “protect” Russia from the Germans!

It does not require many words to refute this despicable and hideous lie; it is sufficient to point to one well-known fact. In October 1917, after the Russian workers had overthrown their imperialist government, the Soviet government, the government of the revolutionary workers and peasants, openly proposed a just peace, a peace without annexations or indemnities, a peace that fully guaranteed equal rights to all nations—and it proposed such a peace to all the belligerent countries.

It was the Anglo-French and the American bourgeoisie who refused to accept our proposal; it was they who even refused to talk to us about a general peace! It was they who betrayed the interests of all nations; it was they who prolonged the imperialist slaughter!

It was they who, banking on the possibility of dragging Russia back into the imperialist war, refused to take part in the peace negotiations and thereby gave a free hand to the no less predatory German capitalists who imposed the annexationist and harsh Brest Peace upon Russia!

It is difficult to imagine anything more disgusting than the hypocrisy with which the Anglo-French and American bourgeoisie are now “blaming” us for the Brest Peace Treaty. The very capitalists of those countries which could have turned the Brest negotiations into general negotiations for a general peace are now our “accusers”! The Anglo-French imperialist vultures, who have profited from the plunder of colonies and the slaughter of nations, have prolonged the war for nearly a whole year after Brest, and yet they “accuse” us, the Bolsheviks, who proposed a just peace to all countries, they accuse us, who tore up, published and exposed to public disgrace the secret, criminal treaties concluded between the ex-tsar and the Anglo-French capitalists.

The workers of the whole world, no matter in what country they live, greet us, sympathize with us, applaud us for breaking the iron ring of imperialist ties, of sordid imperialist treaties, of imperialist chains—for breaking through to freedom, and making the heaviest sacrifices in doing so—for, as a socialist republic, although torn and plundered by the imperialists, keeping out of the imperialist war and raising the banner of peace, the banner of socialism for the whole world to see.

Small wonder that the international imperialist gang hates us for this, that it “accuses” us, that all the lackeys of the imperialists, including our Right Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, also “accuse” us. The hatred these watchdogs of imperialism express for the Bolsheviks, and the sympathy of the class-conscious workers of the world, convince us more than ever of the justice of our cause.

A real socialist would not fail to understand that for the sake of achieving victory over the bourgeoisie, for the sake of power passing to the workers, for the sake of starting the world proletarian revolution, we cannot and must not hesitate to make the heaviest sacrifices, including the sacrifice of part of our territory, the sacrifice of heavy defeats at the hands of imperialism. A real socialist would have proved by deeds his willingness for “his” country to make the greatest sacrifice to give a real push forward to the cause of the socialist revolution.

For the sake of “their” cause, that is, for the sake of winning world hegemony, the imperialists of Britain and Germany have not hesitated to utterly ruin and throttle a whole number of countries, from Belgium and Serbia to Palestine and Mesopotamia. But must socialists wait with “their” cause, the cause of liberating the working people of the whole world from the yoke of capital, of winning universal and lasting peace, until a path without sacrifice is found? Must they fear to open the battle until an easy victory is “guaranteed”? Must they place the integrity and security of “their” bourgeois-created “fatherland” above the interests of the world socialist revolution? The scoundrels in the international socialist movement who think this way, those lackeys who grovel to bourgeois morality, thrice stand condemned.

The Anglo-French and American imperialist vultures “accuse” us of concluding an “agreement” with German imperialism. What hypocrites, what scoundrels they are to slander the workers’ government while trembling because of the sympathy displayed towards us by the workers of “their own” countries! But their hypocrisy will be exposed. They pretend not to see the difference between an agreement entered into by “socialists” with the bourgeoisie (their own or foreign) against the workers, against the working people, and an agreement entered into for the protection of the workers who have defeated their bourgeoisie, with the bourgeoisie of one national color against the bourgeoisie of another color in order that the proletariat may take advantage of the antagonisms between the different groups of bourgeoisie.

In actual fact, every European sees this difference very well, and, as I shall show in a moment, the American people have had a particularly striking “illustration” of it in their own history. There are agreements and agreements, there are fagots et fagots, as the French say.

When in February 1918 the German imperialist vultures hurled their forces against unarmed, demobilized Russia, who had relied on the international solidarity of the proletariat before the world revolution had fully matured, I did not hesitate for a moment to enter into an “agreement” with the French monarchists. Captain Sadoul, a French army officer who, in words, sympathized with the Bolsheviks, but was in deeds a loyal and faithful servant of French imperialism, brought the French officer de Lubersac to see me. “I am a monarchist. My only aim is to secure the defeat of Germany,” de Lubersac declared to me. “That goes without saying (cela va sans dire ),” I replied. But this did not in the least prevent me from entering into an “agreement” with de Lubersac concerning certain services that French army officers, experts in explosives, were ready to render us by blowing up railway lines in order to hinder the German invasion. This is an example of an “agreement” of which every class-conscious worker will approve, an agreement in the interests of socialism. The French monarchist and I shook hands, although we knew that each of us would willingly hang his “partner”. But for a time our interests coincided. Against the advancing rapacious Germans, we, in the interests of the Russian and the world socialist revolution, utilized the equally rapacious counter-interests of other imperialists. In this way we served the interests of the working class of Russia and of other countries, we strengthened the proletariat and weakened the bourgeoisie of the whole world, we resorted to the methods, most legitimate and essential in every war, of maneuver, stratagem, retreat, in anticipation of the moment when the rapidly maturing proletarian revolution in a number of advanced countries completely matured.

However much the Anglo-French and American imperialist sharks fume with rage, however much they slander us, no matter how many millions they spend on bribing the Right Socialist-Revolutionary, Menshevik and other social-patriotic newspapers, I shall not hesitate one second to enter into a similar “agreement” with the German imperialist vultures if an attack upon Russia by Anglo-French troops calls for it. And I know perfectly well that my tactics will be approved by the class-conscious proletariat of Russia, Germany, France, Britain, America—in short, of the whole civilized world. Such tactics will ease the task of the socialist revolution, will hasten it, will weaken the international bourgeoisie, will strengthen the position of the working class which is defeating the bourgeoisie.

The American people resorted to these tactics long ago to the advantage of their revolution. When they waged their great war of liberation against the British oppressors, they had also against them the French and the Spanish oppressors who owned a part of what is now the United States of North America. In their arduous war for freedom, the American people also entered into “agreements” with some oppressors against others for the purpose of weakening the oppressors and strengthening those who were fighting in a revolutionary manner against oppression, for the purpose of serving the interests of the oppressed people. The American people took advantage of the strife between the French, the Spanish and the British; sometimes they even fought side by side with the forces of the French and Spanish oppressors against the British oppressors; first they defeated the British and then freed themselves (partly by ransom) from the French and the Spanish.

Historical action is not the pavement of Nevsky Prospekt, said the great Russian revolutionary Chernyshevsky.[2] A revolutionary would not “agree” to a proletarian revolution only “on the condition” that it proceeds easily and smoothly, that there is, from the outset, combined action on the part of the proletarians of different countries, that there are guarantees against defeats, that the road of the revolution is broad, free and straight, that it will not be necessary during the march to victory to sustain the heaviest casualties, to “bide one’s time in a besieged fortress”, or to make one’s way along extremely narrow, impassable, winding and dangerous mountain tracks. Such a person is no revolutionary, he has not freed himself from the pedantry of the bourgeois intellectuals; such a person will be found constantly slipping into the camp of the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie, like our Right Socialist-Revolutionaries, Mensheviks and even (although more rarely) Left Socialist-Revolutionaries.

Echoing the bourgeoisie, these gentlemen like to blame us for the “chaos” of the revolution, for the “destruction” of industry, for the unemployment and the food shortage. How hypocritical these accusations are, coming from those who welcomed and supported the imperialist war, or who entered into an “agreement” with Kerensky who continued this war! It is this imperialist war that is the cause of all these misfortunes. The revolution engendered by the war can not avoid the terrible difficulties and suffering bequeathed it by the prolonged, ruinous, reactionary slaughter of the nations. To blame us for the “destruction” of industry, or for the “terror”, is either hypocrisy or dull-witted pedantry; it reveals an inability to understand the basic conditions of the fierce class struggle, raised to the highest degree of intensity that is called revolution.

Even when “accusers” of this type do “recognize” the class struggle, they limit themselves to verbal recognition; actually, they constantly slip into the philistine utopia of class “agreement” and “collaboration”; for in revolutionary epochs the class struggle has always, inevitably, and in every country, assumed the form of civil war, and civil war is inconceivable without the severest destruction, terror and the restriction of formal democracy in the interests of this war. Only unctuous parsons—whether Christian or “secular” in the persons of parlor, parliamentary socialists— cannot see, understand and feel this necessity. Only a lifeless “man in the muffler”[3] can shun the revolution for this reason instead of plunging into battle with the utmost ardor and determination at a time when history demands that the greatest problems of humanity be solved by struggle and war.

The American people have a revolutionary tradition which has been adopted by the best representatives of the American proletariat, who have repeatedly expressed their complete solidarity with us Bolsheviks. That tradition is the war of liberation against the British in the eighteenth century and the Civil War in the nineteenth century. In some respects, if we only take into consideration the “destruction” of some branches of industry and of the national economy, America in 1870 was behind 1860. But what a pedant, what an idiot would anyone be to deny on these grounds the immense, world-historic, progressive and revolutionary significance of the American Civil War of 1863-65!

The representatives of the bourgeoisie understand that for the sake of overthrowing Negro slavery, of overthrowing the rule of the slaveowners, it was worth letting the country go through long years of civil war, through the abysmal ruin, destruction and terror that accompany every war. But now, when we are confronted with the vastly greater task of overthrowing capitalist wage-slavery, of overthrowing the rule of the bourgeoisie—now, the representatives and defenders of the bourgeoisie, and also the reformist socialists who have been frightened by the bourgeoisie and are shunning the revolution, cannot and do not want to understand that civil war is necessary and legitimate.

The American workers will not follow the bourgeoisie. They will be with us, for civil war against the bourgeoisie. The whole history of the world and of the American labour movement strengthens my conviction that this is so. I also recall the words of one of the most beloved leaders of the American proletariat, Eugene Debs, who wrote in the Appeal to Reason,[4] I believe towards the end of 1915, in the article “What Shall I Fight For” (I quoted this article at the beginning of 1916 at a public meeting of workers in Berne, Switzerland)[5]—that he, Debs, would rather be shot than vote credits for the present criminal and reactionary war; that he, Debs, knows of only one holy and, from the proletarian standpoint, legitimate war, namely: the war against the capitalists, the war to liberate mankind from wage-slavery.

I am not surprised that Wilson, the head of the American multimillionaires and servant of the capitalist sharks, has thrown Debs into prison. Let the bourgeoisie be brutal to the true internationalists, to the true representatives of the revolutionary proletariat! The more fierce and brutal they are, the nearer the day of the victorious proletarian revolution.

We are blamed for the destruction caused by our revolution. . . . Who are the accusers? The hangers-on of the bourgeoisie, of that very bourgeoisie who, during the four years of the imperialist war, have destroyed almost the whole of European culture and have reduced Europe to barbarism, brutality and starvation. These bourgeoisie now demand we should not make a revolution on these ruins, amidst this wreckage of culture, amidst the wreckage and ruins created by the war, nor with the people who have been brutalized by the war. How humane and righteous the bourgeoisie are!

Their servants accuse us of resorting to terror. . . . The British bourgeoisie have forgotten their 1649, the French bourgeoisie have forgotten their 1793. Terror was just and legitimate when the bourgeoisie resorted to it for their own benefit against feudalism. Terror became monstrous and criminal when the workers and poor peasants dared to use it against the bourgeoisie! Terror was just and legitimate when used for the purpose of substituting one exploiting minority for another exploiting minority. Terror became monstrous and criminal when it began to be used for the purpose of overthrowing every exploiting minority, to be used in the interests of the vast actual majority, in the interests of the proletariat and semi-proletariat, the working class and the poor peasants!

The international imperialist bourgeoisie have slaughtered ten million men and maimed twenty million in “their” war, the war to decide whether the British or the German vultures are to rule the world.

If our war, the war of the oppressed and exploited against the oppressors and the exploiters, results in half a million or a million casualties in all countries, the bourgeoisie will say that the former casualties are justified, while the latter are criminal.

The proletariat will have something entirely different to say.

Now, amidst the horrors of the imperialist war, the proletariat is receiving a most vivid and striking illustration of the great truth taught by all revolutions and bequeathed to the workers by their best teachers, the founders of modern socialism. This truth is that no revolution can be successful unless the resistance of the exploiters is crushed. When we, the workers and toiling peasants, captured state power, it became our duty to crush the resistance of the exploiters. We are proud we have been doing this. We regret we are not doing it with sufficient firmness and determination.

We know that fierce resistance to the socialist revolution on the part of the bourgeoisie is inevitable in all countries, and that this resistance will grow with the growth of this revolution. The proletariat will crush this resistance; during the struggle against the resisting bourgeoisie it will finally mature for victory and for power.

Let the corrupt bourgeois press shout to the whole world about every mistake our revolution makes. We are not daunted by our mistakes. People have not become saints because the revolution has begun. The toiling classes who for centuries have been oppressed, downtrodden and forcibly held in the vice of poverty, brutality and ignorance cannot avoid mistakes when making a revolution. And, as I pointed out once before, the corpse of bourgeois society cannot be nailed in a coffin and buried.[*] The corpse of capitalism is decaying and disintegrating in our midst, polluting the air and poisoning our lives, enmeshing that which is new, fresh, young and virile in thousands of threads and bonds of that which is old, moribund and decaying.

For every hundred mistakes we commit, and which the bourgeoisie and their lackeys (including our own Mensheviks and Right Socialist-Revolutionaries) shout about to the whole world, 10,000 great and heroic deeds are performed, greater and more heroic because they are simple and inconspicuous amidst the everyday life of a factory district or a remote village, performed by people who are not accustomed (and have no opportunity) to shout to the whole world about their successes.

But even if the contrary were true—although I know such an assumption is wrong—even if we committed 10,000 mistake for every 100 correct actions we performed, even in that case our revolution would be great and invincible, and so it will be in the eyes of world history, because, for the first time, not the minority, not the rich alone, not the educated alone, but the real people, the vast majority of the working people, are themselves building a new life, are by their own experience solving the most difficult problems of socialist organization .

Every mistake committed in the course of such work, in the course of this most conscientious and earnest work of tens of millions of simple workers and peasants in reorganizing their whole life, every such mistake is worth thousands and millions of “lawless” successes achieved by the exploiting minority—successes in swindling and duping the working people. For only through such mistakes will the workers and peasants learn to build the new life, learn to do without capitalists; only in this way will they hack a path for themselves—through thousands of obstacles—to victorious socialism.

Mistakes are being committed in the course of their revolutionary work by our peasants, who at one stroke, in one night, October 25-26 (old style), 1917, entirely abolished the private ownership of land, and are now, month after month, overcoming tremendous difficulties and correcting their mistakes themselves, solving in a practical way the most difficult tasks of organizing new conditions of economic life, of fighting the kulaks, providing land for the working people (and not for the rich), and of changing to communist large-scale agriculture.

Mistakes are being committed in the course of their revolutionary work by our workers, who have already, after a few months, nationalized almost all the biggest factories and plants, and are learning by hard, everyday work the new task of managing whole branches of industry, are setting the nationalized enterprises going, overcoming the powerful resistance of inertia, petty-bourgeois mentality and selfishness, and, brick by brick, are laying the foundation of new social ties, of a new labour discipline, of a new influence of the workers’ trade unions over their members.

Mistakes are committed in the course of their revolutionary work by our Soviets, which were created as far back as 1905 by a mighty upsurge of the people. The Soviets of Workers and Peasants are a new type of state, a new and higher type of democracy, a form of the proletarian dictatorship, a means of administering the state without the bourgeoisie and against the bourgeoisie. For the first time democracy is here serving the people, the working people, and has ceased to be democracy for the rich as it still is in all bourgeois republics, even the most democratic. For the first time, the people are grappling, on a scale involving one hundred million, with the problem of implementing the dictatorship of the proletariat and semi-proletariat—a problem which, if not solved, makes socialism out of the question.

Let the pedants, or the people whose minds are incurably stuffed with bourgeois-democratic or parliamentary prejudices, shake their heads in perplexity about our Soviets, about the absence of direct elections, for example. These people have forgotten nothing and have learned nothing during the period of the great upheavals of 1914-18. The combination of the proletarian dictatorship with the new democracy for the working people—of civil war with the widest participation of the people in politics—such a combination cannot be brought about at one stroke, nor does it fit in with the outworn modes of routine parliamentary democracy. The contours of a new world, the world of socialism, are rising before us in the shape of the Soviet Republic. It is not surprising that this world does not come into being ready-made, does not spring forth like Minerva from the head of Jupiter.

The old bourgeois-democratic constitutions waxed eloquent about formal equality and right of assembly; but our proletarian and peasant Soviet Constitution casts aside the hypocrisy of formal equality. When the bourgeois republicans overturned thrones they did not worry about formal equality between monarchists and republicans. When it is a matter of overthrowing the bourgeoisie, only traitors or idiots can demand formal equality of rights for the bourgeoisie. “Freedom of assembly” for workers and peasants is not worth a farthing when the best buildings belong to the bourgeoisie. Our Soviets have confiscated all the good buildings in town and country from the rich and have transferred all of them to the workers and peasants for their unions and meetings. This is our freedom of assembly—for the working people! This is the meaning and content of our Soviet, our socialist Constitution!

That is why we are all so firmly convinced that no matter what misfortunes may still be in store for it, our Republic of Soviets is invincible.

It is invincible because every blow struck by frenzied imperialism, every defeat the international bourgeoisie inflict on us, rouses more and more sections of the workers and peasants to the struggle, teaches them at the cost of enormous sacrifice, steels them and engenders new heroism on a mass scale.

We know that help from you will probably not come soon, comrade American workers, for the revolution is developing in different countries in different forms and at different tempos (and it cannot be otherwise). We know that although the European proletarian revolution has been maturing very rapidly lately, it may, after all, not flare up within the next few weeks. We are banking on the inevitability of the world revolution, but this does not mean that we are such fools as to bank on the revolution inevitably coming on a definite and early date. We have seen two great revolutions in our country, 1905 and 1917, and we know revolutions are not made to order, or by agreement. We know that circumstances brought our Russian detachment of the socialist proletariat to the fore not because of our merits, but because of the exceptional backwardness of Russia, and that before the world revolution breaks out a number of separate revolutions may be defeated.

In spite of this, we are firmly convinced that we are invincible, because the spirit of mankind will not be broken by the imperialist slaughter. Mankind will vanquish it. And the first country to break the convict chains of the imperialist war was our country. We sustained enormously heavy casualties in the struggle to break these chains, but we broke them. We are free from imperialist dependence, we have raised the banner of struggle for the complete overthrow of imperialism for the whole world to see.

We are now, as it were, in a besieged fortress, waiting for the other detachments of the world socialist revolution to come to our relief. These detachments exist, they are more numerous than ours, they are maturing, growing, gaining more strength the longer the brutalities of imperialism continue. The workers are breaking away from their social traitors—the Gomperses, Hendersons, Renaudels, Scheidemanns and Renners. Slowly but surely the workers are adopting communist, Bolshevik tactics and are marching towards the proletarian revolution, which alone is capable of saving dying culture and dying mankind.

In short, we are invincible, because the world proletarian revolution is invincible.

#RevolutionaryTheory