Communist News: août 2018

lundi 27 août 2018

Жубор вода жуборила - Марија и Марина Гобовић (2009)

New political era: compromise between the world working class and US bourgeoisie

Donald Trump’s answers to the status quo

By Daniel Paquet dpaquet1871@gmail.com

Since the return to capitalism in Soviet Union, world stagnates in a stalemate; we could say, rather in an apprehension of a World War III … to overpass the situation (with the looming of economic warfare). There was no possible way out. With the election of a pragmatic billionaire in USA, Mr. Donald Trump, there could have been a détente in the universal class struggle. First let us have a look to the economic situation in North America, chiefly in financial terms.

“Despite the recent rise in long-term interest rates, monetary policy in advanced economies remains highly accommodative, including the use of unconventional policies, and has helped support elevated asset valuations globally across most asset classes. Since the June Financial System Review (FSR), corporate spreads have edged down and stock markets have rallied in the United States and Canada. The volume of corporate bond issuance in the United States is at a historical high. Concern about the capitalization of some European banks has also increased over the past six months, however. This concern is compounded by uncertainty around potential public sector’s support for these banks, and the situation has weighed on their stock and bond prices.”[1]

Economy was in a mess, especially in USA. “Who deserves to go to prison more, the bank executives who almost destroyed the global financial system in 2008, rigged market and broke sanctions or the auto executives whose diesel cars were stuffed with illegal software designed to falsify tailpipe emissions? (…) If the White House under President Barack Obama had gone after reprobate bankers with the same alacrity with which it’s going after reprobate auto executives, maybe the anti-establishment tide that swept Donald Trump to election victory might not have been so successful. (…) Why the United States is letting bankers who behave badly go, but not the auto guys, is an open question – is it because Volkswagen is a foreign company? Whatever the case, the Obama White House and the Democrats in general did themselves zero favours by going easy on the bank bosses. Bankers are unpopular, and immoral bankers who walk free are especially unpopular – hated even. Their free passes no doubt help to stoke the anti-establishment sentiment that propelled Mr. Trump to power.”[2]

“The hectoring of three global giants in the world’s largest manufacturing industry by the most powerful politician sent shudders through head offices from Japan to Detroit to Ontario. The threat of tearing up NAFTA or imposing big tariffs on vehicle exports into the United States is a serious one as Mr. Trump seeks to force companies selling in the U.S. market to keep jobs in the country.”[3]

“But the NAFTA deal was not without controversy – especially when maverick presidential candidate Ross Perot got some traction with his campaign against it. ‘If you’re paying $12, $13, $14 an hour for factory workers and you can move your factory south of the border, pay a dollar an hour for labour … and you don’t care about anything but making money, there will be a giant sucking sound going south,’ he said in one presidential debate.”[4]

“(The industry is much interconnected and it’s much related :) Mr. Trump’s hostility toward NAFTA and its threats to impose tariffs of a much as 35 percent on vehicles made in Mexico (explains why).”[5]

“’I think we have one of the great cabinets ever put together, ‘Mr. Trump said. We will have it to history to judge. The one thing they are most definitely not, however, is representative of the working-class Americans who voted for Mr. Trump. (…) Negatives aside, they are successful and experienced, and they are not stupid. Mr. Trump – who has zero government experience – is supposed to rely on their advice and their abilities in order to manage the vast American federal bureaucracy. (…) The worry with Donald Trump is that there is nothing left to learn (but) the expectation that everything will work out just because ’Trump’ says it will.”[6]

There are two arguments here: since we cannot make Trump change his mind, let us put some pressure on his cabinet; and rather unusual (and since it is convenient) let us call on the working class to contest, as the cannon fodder, Trump decisions in his war against the establishment. Of course, it is political opportunism, since the bourgeoisie does not expect the workers to make more gain under Trump’s administration; at least anything more than they did with Barack Obama. We will take some space to deal with the current figures related to the working class in USA.

“U.S. employment increased less than expected in December, but a rebound in wages pointed to sustained labour market momentum that sets up the economy for stronger growth and further interest rate increases from the Federal Reserve this year. ‘Job creation and overall labour market conditions remain solid. With the potential for stronger fiscal stimulus in the form of infrastructure spending and tax cuts, job creation appears likely to remain on a solid footing in 2017,’ said Jim Baird, chief investment officer for Plante Moran Financial Advisors in Kalamazoo, Mich.”[7]

Organization becomes a necessity for the worker, now faced by big capital. But is it possible to organize a motley mass of people who are strangers to one another, even if they work in one factory? (…) The joint work of hundreds and thousands of workers in itself accustoms the workers to discuss their needs jointly, to take joint action, and clearly shows them the identity of the position and interests of the entire mass of workers. (…) The struggle of the workers against the employers turns into a class struggle. All the employers are united by the one interest of keeping the workers in a state of subordination and of paying them the minimum wages possible. And the employers see that the only way they can safeguard their interests is by joint action on the part of the entire employing class, by acquiring influence over the machinery of state. The workers are likewise bound together by a common interest, that of preventing themselves being crushed by capital, of upholding their right to life and to a humane existence. And the workers likewise become convinced that they, too, need unity, joint action by the entire class, the working class, and that to achieve this they must secure influence over the machinery of state.”[8]

The US national bourgeoisie is uniting around Donald Trump: world war would have been too near with tandem Clinton-Obama and the Democrats altogether. US working-class has now a big challenge. The new Party of Communists USA has a trump nevertheless.

Communist News www.dpaquet1871.blogspot.com

La Nouvelle Vie Réelle www.lnvr.blogspot.com

marxistas-leninistas latinas hojas www.ma-llh.blogspot.com

Le sourire de l’Orient www.lesouriredelorient.blogspot.com

mercredi 22 août 2018

L’union fait la force

lundi 20 août 2018

MARXISM-LENINISM TODAY

By Daniel Paquet

dpaquet1871@gmail.com

Montréal, July 16th, 2017

n 1848, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote the Manifesto of the Communist Party where they assessed in the preamble, that “a spectre is haunting Europe – the spectre of Communism.” Today, we could just add that a spectre is haunting the whole of the capitalist world; especially in its main fortress, the United States of America.

Misconceptions are abundant in regard with contemporary communism, scientific communism. For our two young German revolutionaries, “communism is for us a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality (will) have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolished the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence. Moreover, the mass of property-less workers – the utterly precarious position of labour-power on a mass scale cut off from capital or from even a limited satisfaction and, therefore, no longer merely temporarily deprived of work itself as a secure force of life – presupposes the world market through competition. The proletariat can thus only exist world-historically just as communism, its activity, can only have a ‘world-historical’ existence.” (Tucker, Robert C., The Marx-Engels Reader, W.W. Norton & Company, New York-London, 1978, page 162).

Obviously, the conditions of developed capitalism (for instance in Canada) are present for the passage to Communism. However, the whole process is paralyzed; Lenin wrote about it in 1909. He reflected upon the shortcomings of the revolutionary development in Russia. “The main cause of the Party crisis is indicated in the preamble of the resolution on organization. This main cause is the wavering intellectual and petty-bourgeois elements, of which the workers’ party had to rid itself; elements that joined the working-class movement mainly in the hope of an early triumph of the bourgeois-democratic revolution and could not stand up to a period of reaction. Their instability was revealed both in theory… and in tactics… as well as in Party organization.” (Lenin, On the Organizational Principles of a Proletarian party, Novosti Press Agency Publishing House, Moscow, 1972, page 187).

Insidiously, several members of the Communist Parties, including in the leadership abandoned the study of Marxism-Leninism; Marxism-Leninism is a science and must be treated as such. Once more… Lenin affirmed that “without a revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement. This thought cannot be insisted upon too strongly at a time when the fashionable preaching of opportunism goes hand in hand with an infatuation for the narrowest forms of practical activity.” (Lenin, V.I., What is to be done, Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1973, page 21).

Joseph Stalin stressed later on that “instead of an integral revolutionary theory, there were contradictory theoretical postulates and fragments of theory, which were divorced from the actual revolutionary struggle of the masses and had been turned into threadbare dogmas. For the sake of appearances, Marx’s theory was mentioned, of course, but only to rob it of its living, revolutionary spirit. (…) Meanwhile, a new period of imperialism wars and of revolutionary battles of the proletariat was approaching. The old methods of fighting were proving obviously inadequate and impotent in the face of the omnipotence of finance capital.” (Stalin, J.V., The Foundations of Leninism, Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1975, page 12).

Unrest is not yet on the agenda in Canada. “Economic activity has grown strongly in recent quarters. While demand growth is led by robust household spending, early signs that its sources are becoming more balanced include recent pickups in exports and business investment. Growth is also broadening across regions and sectors, with more than two-thirds of industries expanding. Over the projection horizon, the Bank expects the economy to continue to absorb excess capacity by expanding faster than potential output, albeit at a slower pace than in recent quarters. Economic activity will be supported by rising foreign demand, fiscal stimulus and accommodative monetary and financial conditions. Increased exports and investment will contribute to the anticipated broadening in the composition of demand, helping to sustain economic expansion as growth in both residential investment and household consumption slows.” (Bank of Canada, Canadian Economy, Monetary Policy Report, Ottawa, July 2017, page 7).

For Friedrich Engels, “the materialist conception of history starts from the proposition that the production of the means to support human life and, next to production, the exchange of things produced, is the basis of all social structure; that in every society that has appeared in history, the manner in which wealth is distributed and society divided into classes or orders is dependent upon what is produced, how it is produced, and how the products are exchanged. From this point of view the final causes of all social changes and political revolutions are to be sought, not in men’s brains, not in men’s better insight into eternal truth and justice, but in changes in the modes of production and exchange. They are to be sought not in the philosophy, but in the economics of each particular epoch.” (Tucker, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, Ibidem, page 701).

Society is naked now with a State that supposedly maintain the equilibrium between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. “As the state arose from the need to hold class antagonisms in check, but as it arose, at the same time, in the midst of the conflict of these classes, it is, as a rule, the state of the most powerful, economically dominant class which, through the medium of the state, becomes also the politically dominant class, and thus acquires new means of holding down and exploiting the oppressed class. Thus the state of antiquity was above all the state of the slave owners for the purpose of holding down the slaves, as the feudal state was the organ of the nobility for holding down the peasant serfs and bondsmen, and the modern representative state is an instrument of exploitation of wage labour by capital. (…) The society that will organize production on the basis of a free and equal association of the producers will put the whole machinery of state where it will then belong; into the Museum of Antiquities, by the side of the spinning wheel and the bronze axe.” (Tucker, Engels, The Origin of Family, Private Property, and State, Ibidem, page 753, 755).

The bourgeoisie has spread the illusion that things may change in the ballot box where the working people are invited to vote for a different system if he wishes so. For Lenin, “the reason why the omnipotence of ‘wealth’ is better secured in a democratic republic (i.e. Canada, and the Western countries in general) is that it does not depend on the faulty political shell of capitalism. A democratic republic is the best possible political shell for capitalism, and, therefore, once capital has gained possession of this very best shell, it establishes its power so securely, so firmly, that no change, either of persons, of institutions, or of parties in the bourgeois-democratic republic, can shake it. We must also note that Engels is most definite in calling universal suffrage an instrument of bourgeois rule. Universal suffrage, he says, obviously summing up the long experience of German Social-Democracy, is the ‘gauge of the maturity of the working class. It cannot and never will be anything more in the present-day state.’” (Lenin, V.I., The State and Revolution, Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1970, page 10).

“Furthermore, during the transition from capitalism to Communism suppression is still necessary; but it is now the suppression of the exploiting minority by the exploited majority. A special apparatus, a special machine for suppression, the ’state,’ is still necessary, but this is now a transitional state; it is no longer a state in the proper sense of the word; for the suppression of the minority of exploiters by the majority of the wage slaves of yesterday is comparatively so easy, simple and natural a task that it will entail far less bloodshed than the risings of slaves, serfs or wage labourers, and it will cost mankind far less. And it is compatible with the extension of democracy to such an over whelming majority of the population that the need for a special machine of suppression will begin to disappear. The exploiters are naturally unable to suppress the people without a highly complex machine for performing this task, but the people can suppress the exploiters even with a very simple ‘machine,’ almost without a ‘machine,’ without a special apparatus, by the simple organization of the armed masses…” (Lenin, The State and Revolution, Ibidem, page 77). By the way, some people think that Communists want to suppress democracy; in fact, democracy originates from two Greek words: Demos, the people (at the time of Ancient Greece, this word meant the slave-owners or the proprietors; while Kratos’ meaning is “power”; then power of the landlords.

Currently, the State serves the goals of the bourgeoisie. “The bourgeois state is nothing more than the mutual insurance of the bourgeois class against its individual members, as well as against the exploited class, insurance which will necessarily become increasingly expensive and to all appearances increasingly independent of bourgeois society, because the oppression of the exploited class is becoming ever more difficult.” (Marx, Karl; Engels, Friedrich, Collected Works, volume 10, International Publishers, New York, 1978, page 333).

By the way, there is a Canada-wide campaign led by the trade-union movement to raise the minimum hour wage to $15.00. Already, the bourgeoisie claims that there will be an increase of prices, especially for the daily commodities. Karl Marx already refuted this argument.

“Year after year you will find that the value and mass of production increase, that the productive power of the national labour increase, and that the amount of money necessary to circulate this increasing production continuously changes. What is true at the end of the year, and for different years compared with each other, is true for every average day of the year. The amount or magnitude of national production changes continuously It is not a constant but a variable magnitude, and apart from changes in population it must be so, because of the continuous change in the accumulation of capital and the productive powers of labour. It is perfectly true that if a rise in the general rate of wages should take place to-day, that rise, whatever its ulterior effects might be, would, by itself, not immediately change the amount of production. It would, in the first instance, proceed from the existing state of things. But if before the rise of wages the national production was variable, and not fixed, it will continue to be variable and not fixed after the rise of wages. (…) The will of the capitalist is certainly to take as much as possible. What we have to do is not to talk about his will, but to inquire into his power, the limits of that power, and the character of those limits.”(Marx, Karl, Wages, Price and Profit, Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1975- Reprinted by Red Star Publishers, New York, 2014, page 2, 4).

Nevertheless, working people have really no time to think about those issues. Lenin stressed that “class political consciousness can be brought to the workers only from without, that is, only form outside of the economic struggle, from outside of the sphere of relations between workers and employers.” (Lenin, What is to be done, Ibidem, page 73).

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels concluded that “the production of ideas, of conceptions, of consciousness, is at first directly interwoven with the material activity and the material intercourse of men, the language of real life. Conceiving, thinking, the mental intercourse of men, appears at this stage as the direct efflux of their material behavior. The same applies to mental production as expressed in the language of politics, laws, morality, religion, metaphysics, etc., of a people. Men are the producers of their conceptions, ideas, etc. – real, active men, as they are conditioned by a definite development of their productive forces and of the intercourse corresponding of these, up to its furthest forms. Consciousness can never be anything else than conscious existence, and the existence of men is their actual life-process. If in all ideology men and their circumstances appear upside-down as in a camera obscura, this phenomenon arises just as much from the historical life-process as the inversion of objects on the retina does from their physical life-process.” (Marx, Karl; Engels, Friedrich, The German Ideology, On Historical Materialism, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1972, page 22).

If a problem emerged in the society, a labour dispute for instance, union leaders will very often refer to a tribunal; and this is not new. “That is why, when disputes occur, people have recourse to a judge; and to do this is to have recourse to justice, because the object of the judge is to be a sort of personified Justice. Also they look for a judge as an intermediary between them (indeed in some places judges are called ‘mediators’) in the belief that if they secure a mean they will secure what is just. So justice is a sort of mean, inasmuch as the judge is one.”(Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics, Penguin Books, Hazell Watson & Viney Limited, Harmondsworth, 1976, page 181).

Anyhow, ‘Justice’ could not replace a revolution and the construction of communism, which shape up further on into planning. “If profitableness is considered not form the stand-point of individual plants or industries, and not over a period of one year, but from the standpoint of the entire national economy and over a period of, say, ten or fifteen years, which is the only correct approach to the question, then the temporary and unstable profitableness of some plants or industries is beneath all comparison with that higher form of stable and permanent profitableness which we get from the operation and from economic planning, which save us from periodical economic crises disruptive to the national economy and causing tremendous material damage to society, and which ensure a continuous and high rate of expansion of our national economy.” (Stalin, J.V., Economic Problems of Socialism in the U.S.S.R., Foreign languages Press, Peking, 1972- Reprinted in the U.S.A., 2012, page 21).

In the capitalist world, they don’t predict the economic future; they simply collect the data, the facts. However, they speculate and try to foresee the ins and outs of the buoyant world economy.

“Global economic growth continues to strengthen and broaden across countries and regions. The US economy is expanding at a moderate pace, and there are signs of a more consistent pickup in activity across the euro area. Growth has resumed in some emerging-market economies (EMEs) that had been in recession. Both global trade and investment growth have firmed, reflecting the more synchronous expansion worldwide and the bottoming-out of the effects of the oil price shock. Global economic growth is expected to reach around 3 and half percent in 2017. Core inflation has eased recently in some advanced economies, owing in large part to temporary factors, while existing slack is being absorbed. A number of unknown, particularly with respect to US trade policy, still cloud the outlook. While the global projection continues to incorporate the judgment that such uncertainly will have a negative impact on trade and investment decisions, these unknowns remain a downside risk to the projection”. (Bank of Canada, Ibidem, page 1).

The main classes are the bourgeoisie and the proletariat as we said above; but under capitalism, there are always elements ready de facto to bring their luggage in one or the other class.

“Wherein lies its inevitability in capitalist society? Why is it more profound that the differences of national peculiarities and of degrees of capitalist development? Because in every capitalist country, side by side with the proletariat, there are always broad strata of the petty bourgeoisie, small proprietors. Capitalism arose and is constantly arising out small production. A number of new ‘middle strata’ are inevitably brought into existence again and again by capitalism (appendages to the factory, work at home, small workshops scattered all over the country to meet the requirements of big industries, such as the bicycle and automobile industries, etc.). These new small producers are just as inevitably being cast again into the ranks of the proletariat. It is quite natural that the petty bourgeois world outlook should again and again crop up in the ranks of the broad workers’ parties.” (Lenin, Marxism and Revisionism, On Historical Materialism, Ibidem, page 429).

The advanced strata of the proletariat must be aware of this danger and it may be only by the mastering of the Marxist-Leninist outlook. “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. (…) Theory is the experience of the working-class movement in all countries taken in its general aspect. Of course, theory becomes purposeless if it is not connected with revolutionary practice, just as practice gropes in the dark if its path is not illumined by revolutionary theory. But theory can become a tremendous force in the working-class movement if it is built up in indissoluble connection with revolutionary practice; for theory, and theory alone, can give the movement confidence, the power of orientation, and an understanding of the inner relation of surrounding events; and it alone, can help practice to 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, J.V., The Foundations of Leninism, Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1975 – Reprinted in the United States, 2010, page 19-20).

Nothing whatsoever creates obstacles in their class struggles. “The working classes will have learned by experience that no lasting benefit can be obtained for them by others, but that they must obtain it themselves by conquering, first of all, political power. They must see now that under no circumstances have they any guarantee for bettering their social position unless by Universal Suffrage which would enable them to seat a Majority of Working Men in the House of Commons.” (Marx-Engels, Collected Works, Ibidem, page 275). (…) The workers’ party can use other parties and party factions for its own purposes on occasion but must never subordinate itself to any other party.” (Marx-Engels, Collected Works, Ibidem, page 373).

Eventually, the working-class (especially in French Québec) needs a newspaper. “It is quite feasible for the proletariat to found a political newspaper. Through the proletariat the newspaper will reach the urban petty bourgeoisie, the rural handicraftsmen and the peasants, thereby becoming a real people’s political newspaper. The role of a newspaper however is not limited solely to the dissemination of ideas, to political education, and to the enlistment of political allies. A newspaper is not only a collective propagandist and a collective agitator; it is also a collective organizer. In this last respect it may be likened to the scaffolding round a building under construction and facilitates communication between the builders, enabling them to distribute the work and to view the common results achieved by their organized labour. With the aid of the newspaper, and through it, a permanent organization will naturally take shape that will engage, not only in local activities, but in regular general work, and will train its members to follow political events carefully, appraise their significance and their effect on the various strata of the population, and develop effective means for the revolutionary party to influence those events.” (Lenin, On the Organizational Principles of a Proletarian Party, Ibidem, page 74).

The regular reader will exclaim: it is nice on paper, but did you ever try it?

Here are some souvenirs of the recent past:

“The Communist Party of America also had a local organization in Montreal, not as big as ours in Toronto, but quite big, not as tightly organized as ours, but more influential in the trade union movement and in general political life. It operated what was called the Montreal Labour College. The Montreal Labour College carried on a lot of very active propaganda work, has all sorts of prominent speakers, and classes going three and four nights a week. They did a lot of very good work even to the point of establishing liaison with a group of French Communists, French-Canadian Communists. (…) My wife, Alice, was also very active, also underground. She was in charge of the newspaper. (…) Alice would work all day for a week, bundling papers and putting them into packages or wrappers…” (Reminiscences of Tim Buck, Yours in the Struggle, NC Press, Toronto, 1977, pages 92-93).

In Canada, the Communists publish the bi-monthly People’s Voice (from Vancouver).

La Nouvelle Vie Réelle

www.lnvr.blogspot.com

Communist News

www.dpaquet1871.blogspot.com

marxistas-leninistas Latinas hojas

www.ma-llh.blogspot.com

Le sourire de l’Orient

www.lesouriredelorient.blogspot.com

Archives:

La Vie Réelle

www.laviereelle.blogspot.com

Pour la KOMINTERN now !

www.pourlakominternnow.blogspot.com

WORKING MEN OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE!

mardi 14 août 2018

Supplement to La Vie Réelle in English; September 1st, 2011

Committee for a Leninist CPUSA

Socialism, USA and the Emperors

By Daniel Paquet

he top priority for mankind is the reproduction of the human species; this is the reason why economy is so decisive. But, there is a sharp contradiction: millions of workers in USA, for instance, use their mental and physical energy –on a daily basis-, to create the national wealth while a few people monopolize the profits; in France and elsewhere, they are known as the “bourgeois”.

“For many decades now the history of industry and commerce has been but the history of the revolt of modern productive forces against modern conditions of production, against the property relations that are the conditions for the existence of the bourgeoisie and of its rule.” (Marx, Karl and Engels, Friedrich, The Communist Manifesto, Washington Square Press, New York, 1977, p. 67)

In the United States of America, the mass media refer often to “American Exception” which allows the working class to by-pass the crisis endured by the working people all around the world. However, this is not an exception; it is rather a lucky situation; chiefly due to the fact that North America is a very rich continent. You can find everything there: oil, gas, forests, water, gold, iron… Name it, you got it! (Photo Internet: Gus Hall, late General Secretary of the Communist Party USA).

Further, the climate is wonderful and diverse. One can grow fruits and vegetables (for example in California and Florida); one can raise cattle on a vast territory (in the Mid-West); there are vast prairies to harvest cereals and grains; immigration brought in quite regularly wise and gifted people; and, though regrettably WW1 and WW2 took their toll in human lives, no material damages occurred in America; on the contrary, as a result new and significant markets opened up for US industries. In addition, USA has a northern “appendage”, Canada, which is a reservoir of natural resources; let us just mention energy (electricity, oil and gas).

The country is ready, from a material and objective viewpoint, to embark on the road to socialism. Nevertheless, there is a major obstacle: the absence of a “General Staff” for the working class, in relation with the drift to the right of the leadership of the CPUSA, under Sam Webb and Co.

This is temporary. It has not been always the case, whatsoever were the hysterical anti-communist campaigns of the capitalist class and its mass-media; we should not forget the role of the US State (government and amalgamated institutions: schools, universities, publishing houses…), and other supports, including the stand of corrupted trade-union leaders.

But, we remember the late General Secretary, Gus Hall, who led the party and contributed to the development of communist ideas in his homeland. His successor did not follow suit.

At the time of the Russian revolution in October 1917, the communist leader, Vladimir Lenin, wrote to the US workers: “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 are banking on the inevitability of the world revolution, but this does not mean that we are fools as to bank on the revolution inevitably coming on a definite and early date.” (V.I. Lenin, Letter To American Workers, Collected Works, vol. 28, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1965, pp. 62-75)

On the other hand, Big Capital has the financial capacity to bribe some strata of the working class, aka as the “labor aristocracy”. It is not surprising that the current leadership of the Communist Party USA flirts with reformism and even worse with right-wing opportunism (just read their web page on Internet, named People’s World). Of course, there is a growing opposition within this party, especially among the rank-and-file members and several communist parties in other parts of the world, also opposed to the practical liquidation of the US party.

Stalin and America

For many people, communism equates to Stalin. Right or wrong? Right! Once the general objectives of socialism are known: political power to the workers (the dictatorship of the proletariat), planned economy, prosperity for the people, freedom and general well-being in all aspects of life; we then understand why Big Capital is so afraid of Stalin. On the other hand, since our childhood, we were taught the so-called practices of Stalin: genocide, totalitarianism and terror against the whole of the Soviet people.

Today, with partial access to Russian Archives and the testimonies of contemporary Soviet citizens, we learn that it was a terrible and fantastic mystification. “The image of Stalin as “mass murderer” originated, for all practical purposes, during Khrushchev’s time. The very first such accusations, those that laid the foundation for the myth –and it is precisely a myth with which we are concerned here- are in the ‘Secret Speech.’ […] After the ‘Secret Speech’ the quantity of ‘crimes’ attributed to Stalin continued to grow. For example, not long afterwards Stalin began to be blamed for the executions on false charges of prominent Soviet military leaders. While Khrushchev remained in power a pleiade of semi-official writers continued to work indefatigably on adding to the list of victims of supposedly unjust sentences, and many of those persons were ‘rehabilitated’-declared to have been guilty of nothing.” (Furr, Grover, Khrushchev Lied, Erythros Press and Media, Kettering-Ohio, 2011, p. 148)

There are allegations that Stalin was murdered; with his death, the construction of socialism in Soviet Union was stopped; it is naturally a temporary setback.

USA is a beautiful and rich country; its greatest wealth is the youth, to be more specific: the young workers. They are intelligent and they want to learn and to know; they are even more ready to combat their ignorance.

Events and upheavals show that people do not want to be led the old way; let us recall the struggles in Wisconsin. As Stalin said in his time, “ the new period is one of open class collisions, of revolutionary action by the proletariat, of proletarian revolution, a period when forces are being directly mustered for the overthrow of imperialism and the seizure of power by the proletariat (more or less the case in Tunisia and Egypt, Ed.) In this period the proletariat is confronted with new tasks, the tasks of reorganizing all party work on new, revolutionary lines; of educating the workers in the spirit of revolutionary struggle for power; of preparing and moving up reserves; of establishing an alliance with proletarians of neighboring countries…” (Stalin, Joseph, The Foundations of Leninism, Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1975, p. 95)

Time to struggle

In the maple leaf country, the working people are generally informed about the situation in USA, at least from the economic point of view. The prevailing feeling is admiration for the US people (though there is a strong rejection of wars and the arrogant attitude of domination by the corporate elite). In Canada, they know Julia Roberts, Cameron Diaz and Jim Carrey as if these artists were members of the family.

Those personalities are promoted by the mass media; but where is the medium of the workers? “The role of a newspaper, however, is not limited solely to the dissemination of ideas, to political education, and the enlistment of political allies. A newspaper is not only a collective propagandist and a collective agitator; it is also a collective organizer. […] With the aid of the newspaper, and through it, a permanent organization will naturally take shape that will engage, not only in local activities, but in regular general work, and will train its members to follow political events carefully, appraise their significance and their effect on the various strata of the population, and develop effective means for the revolutionary party to influence those events.” (Lenin, On the organizational principles of a proletarian party, Novosti Press Agency Publishing House, Moscow, 1972, p. 74).

We hear often: God Bless America! This America is not the America of the pundits, the well-to-do and the merciless tycoons - the modern Emperors-; it is the America of the ordinary workers, Believers or not. We can say to them, like the movie: “Good Night and Good Luck!”

Communist News www.dpaquet1871.blogspot.com

La Nouvelle Vie Réelle www.lnvr.blogspot.com

marxistas-leninistas latinas hojas www.ma-llh.blogspot.com

Le sourire de l’Orient www.lesouriredelorient.blogspot.com

L’Humanité in English www.humaniteinenglish.com

mercredi 8 août 2018

Assata Shakur on Socialism

vendredi 3 août 2018

Βίκυ Λέανδρος - Ενώπιος Ενωπίω

Ανακοίνωση

Μετά την απόρριψη από την πλειοψηφία της Βουλής, της αναπομπής του Προέδρου της Δημοκρατίας του νόμου για την παραχώρηση σύνταξης χηρείας στους άνδρες, ο κ. Αναστασιάδης προχώρησε σήμερα στην αναφορά του εν λόγω νόμου στο Ανώτατο Δικαστήριο.

Ο πρόεδρος Αναστασιάδης επικαλείται την αύξηση των δαπανών του προϋπολογισμού του κράτους που επιφέρει η τροπολογία του ΑΚΕΛ και του Κινήματος Οικολόγων, η οποία ενσωματώθηκε στο κυβερνητικό νομοσχέδιο, παραβλέποντας την ουσία. Ότι δηλαδή η τροπολογία μας αίρει την αδικία και διασφαλίζει τη συνταγματική αρχή της ίσης μεταχείρισης παραχωρώντας σύνταξη χηρείας σε όλους τους άνδρες που πληρούν τα κριτήρια, ανεξαρτήτως του πότε απεβίωσε η σύζυγος τους.

Για το ΑΚΕΛ, το σημαντικότερο συνταγματικό πρόβλημα που προκύπτει είναι η μεγάλη ανισότητα που δημιουργεί το κυβερνητικό νομοσχέδιο, το οποίο στερεί τη σύνταξη χηρείας στους άνδρες των οποίων η σύζυγος απεβίωσε πριν την 1/1/2018.

Η κυβέρνηση, στα πλαίσια της ετσιθελικής πολιτικής της, δεν λαμβάνει υπόψη ούτε τη βούληση της συντριπτικής πλειοψηφίας των κοινοβουλευτικών κομμάτων, αλλά ούτε και της κοινωνίας, προκαλώντας περαιτέρω καθυστέρηση στη ρύθμιση του δικαιώματος των χήρων ανδρών σε σύνταξη χηρείας.

Λόγω της κρισιμότητας του ζητήματος, αναμένουμε ότι η αναφορά θα εκδικαστεί το συντομότερο δυνατό και ότι η απόφαση του Ανωτάτου Δικαστηρίου θα βασίζεται στη συνταγματική αρχή της ίσης μεταχείρισης και θα αίρει τις όποιες διακρίσεις, τόσο μεταξύ των χήρων ανδρών, όσο και μεταξύ των γυναικών που εισέφεραν στο Ταμείο Κοινωνικών Ασφαλίσεων.

3/8/2018