Massed Pipes and Drums of the Scottish highlands gather in Deeside for f...

Hollywood in Washington, D.C.

The way it was under President Barack Obama

By Daniel Paquet

Don’t miss the latest show!  Let’s have first a look at the scenario:  the story of a US President in quest for an agreement that will allow his administration to spend more money; well, to increase the debt ceiling.  According to the mass media, he needs the support of members of both factions of the Congress, Republicans and Democrats.  At first glance, it could give the impression that they are enemies, aren’t they?

“One of America’s strengths immediately following the war (WW2, Ed.) was a degree of domestic consensus surrounding foreign policy.  There might have been fierce differences between Republicans and Democrats, but politics usually ended at the water’s edge; professionals, whether in the White House, the Pentagon, the State Department, or the CIA, were expected to make decisions based on facts and sound judgment, not ideology or electioneering.”  (Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope, Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream, Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto, 2008, p. 338).

Would the plot of this piece have been different nowadays?   Mr. Obama delivered a statement on July 29, 2011 and said:  “What’s clear now is that any solution to avoid default must be bipartisan. […] And today I urge Democrats and Republicans in the Senate to find common ground on a plan that can get support –that can get support from both parties in the House – a plan that I can sign by Tuesday (August 2^nd, 2011, Ed.).  Now, keep in mind, this is not a situation where the two parties are miles apart.” (BREAKING: President Obama’s Statement on Debt Negotiations, The White House, Washington).

He added for US citizens’ purpose: “… let your members of Congress know.  Make a phone call.  Send an email. Tweet.”  (Idem).  (The White House can be reached at:  infor@messages.whitehouse.gov)

What was the answer of the organized labor movement?  At the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), a 9 million strong trade-union, the leadership, without questioning the US government spending – for instance the military budget- walked in the President’s footsteps and invited its members and asked them:  “Can you write polite but firm messages on some or all of these Facebook pages (for example Sen. Scott Brown, Ed.), asking for key Republican senators to pass a clean increase in the debt ceiling so America doesn’t default on its debts?” (ref. www.aflcio.org)

The U.S. CEOs and representatives of Big Capital can just applaud to this initiative.  Let’s recall that war on Afghanistan costs $ 450 billion so far and the recent war on Libya swallows $ 1 billion, even though that the so-called “rebels” are practically in total rout.

One can understand that US workers need a new type of trade-union movement:  a movement for peace, a movement for real jobs creation.  That’s what the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) is all about.  Born after WW2 in Paris (France), this 80 million members union is now based in Athens (Greece).  They just hold their last Congress in April 2011.  They want to deepen their relations with workers of USA and Canada; it won’t replace the AFL-CIO, but give a new impetus to US working people in their struggles on one hand and also reinforce the movement abroad in the fight against US monopolies and multinationals; in a nutshell, the battle against US imperialism.

A lack of leadership in the labour movement

The Communist Party USA makes a fair appreciation of some aspects of the arrangement, “the budget cuts reportedly included in the deal appear to be, thankfully, heavily weighted towards cuts in the military as wars in Afghanistan and Iraq ‘draw down’. This is a sign that the economic crisis has finally helped force a long overdue retrenchment in the U.S. global military profile”.   However, their People’s World electronic newsletter wrongly concludes:  “It is no doubt true that a Democratic president and Senate prevented a much worse outcome than the current deal.  Many have criticized the president for being too soft and weak in negotiations with the Republicans.  I had nearly 20 years’ experience in the labor movement which proved me it’s hard to judge from the outside what is really possible, and what is not, in such bargaining.  The balance of forces is hard to evaluate if you are not at the table.  Maybe the president gave too much; maybe this is the best outcome possible to avert disaster for now.” (http://peoplesworld.org/debt-ceiling-disaster-postponed-but-not-for-long/ )

The cherry over this opportunist “coating” is the political stand of the General Secretary of the CP USA, Sam Webb:  “The president boxed himself into a corner, not because he is a bad negotiator, but because he and his aides made the calculus on the heels of the 2010 elections that his appeal to independent voters, and thus his reelection, depend on his credentials as a ‘responsible fiscal manager’. […] Paul Krugman reminds us that President Roosevelt pursued this course of action in 1937 to disastrous results.  Let’s hope that president Obama fares better.” (http://www.peoplesworld.org/debt-deal-is-bad-for-america/) .

Now, what does that mean?!  It is in fact the rubber stamp of the US “communists” on capitalist policies.  And there is no question of struggling for socialism in USA, of ending ruinous and unfair wars abroad.  The Webb and Co.’s so-called communists are not ready to give people- in USA and abroad-, a “break”.  Of course, opposition is growing among the rank-and-file members and they are better and better organized; in New York City, they publish a paper bulletin, Ideological Fightback, which talks to the workers and calls for a new leadership in the US communist movement.

On the other hand, AFL-CIO’s general board and executive council members met with President Obama urging him to focus on jobs for the remainder of this first term.  “The president, on national television, shifted discussions away from the debt ceiling deal and declared that the priorities for Congress are passage of measures that will stimulate the sputtering economy, including extending the payroll tax suspensions for workers, beefing up benefits for the unemployed and investing in infrastructure projects. […]  The recession, which began during presidency of George Bush, saw the economy shrink at an annual rate of 8 percent in the last three months of 2008, just before Obama was sworn in.  It shrunk by another 7 percent during his first three months in office.” (http://www.peoplesworld.org/labor-leaders-at-white-house-press-obama-on-jobs/)

At Jobs with Justice’s national conference that took place Aug. 5-7 in Washington, D.C. “workers, students, religious leaders, community activists and many others planned strategies to build a powerful movement of working people to defeat the corporate agenda.” (http://blog.aflcio.org/2011/08/01/join-jobs-with-justices-national-conference-and-fight-back-against-corporate-agenda/).

“When Republican House leaders forced a shutdown of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) last week (published 20-08-05, Ed.), they not only forced the layoff of 4,000 FAA workers, they also put at risk nearly 90,000 construction jobs at airports around the country. […]  Republicans blocked temporary funding in an effort to overturn a new rule making union elections among rail and airline workers more democratic.” (http://blog.aflcio.org/2011/07/25/republican-faa-shutdown-costs-4000-jobs-threatens-90000).

Meanwhile, “the unemployment rate for young workers between ages 16 to 24 has skyrocketed as millions of young people have lost jobs and school enrollment has steadily increased over the past decade.  The jobless rate nearly doubled among young workers to a peak of 19 percent in the fourth quarter of 2009 and has remained high, averaging 17.4 percent in the second quarter of this year, compared with 6.7 percent for older workers and 9.1 percent for all workers.” (http://blog.aflcio.org/2011/08/01/jobs-crisis-hits-young-workers-hard/print/) .

The New York City daily Metro newspaper reported on August 3^rd, 2011 a story about veterans going from deployed to unemployed.  “Abbas Malik guarded the Green Zone in Iraq, but he can’t get hired as a mall security guard in Staten Island (New York City, Ed.). […] Like Malik, 13 percent of the 17,000 New York City war veterans are now unemployed.  That’s higher than the national unemployment rate of 9 percent. […] Malik is considering returning to war just to pay the bills.”

Communists must address the issue and raise the level of political consciousness.  Founders of modern communism once said:  “We must not make too many concessions to gain popularity; we shall not underestimate the intellect and level of culture of our workers.  […] If the working class is not organized well enough to wage a campaign against the collective power, that is against the ruling classes’ political power, we must, anyway, lead it through continuous agitation against the political attitude of the ruling classes, an attitude hostile to us.” (Marx-Engels, Critique des programmes de Gotha et d’Erfurt, Éditions sociales, Paris, 1966, pp. 92-93, 119).

“American efficiency, on the other hand, is an antidote to ‘revolutionary’ Manilovism and fantastic scheme concocting (we searched the meaning in several textbooks, but we could not find the exact definition; obviously, ”manilovism” is not a compliment, Ed.).  American efficiency is that indomitable force which neither knows nor recognizes obstacles, which with its business-like perseverance brushes aside all obstacles; which continues at a task once started until it is finished, even if it is a minor task; and without which serious constructive work is inconceivable.  But American efficiency has every chance of degenerating into narrow and unprincipled practicalism if it is not combined with Russian revolutionary sweep.” (Joseph  Stalin, The Foundations of Leninism, Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1975, pp. 111-112).

Anyhow, the American workers will never remain isolated from the rest of the world.  Already, we spoke about the orientation of the WFTU.  But we cannot cast away the efforts of many communists around the world (France, Greece, Canada, and workers in USA…) who are on the road to rebuild the Communist International (Comintern), which is the association of communist parties worldwide, to support the struggle of the working class movement to replace capitalism with socialism.  Probably several US workers will nod and say:  “I’ll drink to that!”  Yes, it deserves an honest beer…

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

ARCHIVES

La Vie Réelle   www.laviereelle.blogspot.com

Pour la KOMINTERN NOW!   www.pourlakominternnow.blogspot.com

L’Humanité in English   www.humaniteinenglish.com

-30-

IS DONALD TRUMP REALLY A NAZI?

What the Comintern thought of fascism

By Daniel Paquet    dpaquet1871@gmail.com

MONTRÉAL - « … fascism in power was correctly described by the Thirteenth Plenum of the Executive Committee of the Communist International as the open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic and most imperialist elements of finance capital.

The most reactionary variety of fascism is the German type of fascism. It has the effrontery to call itself National Socialism, though it has nothing in common with socialism. German fascism is not only bourgeois nationalism, it is fiendish chauvinism. It is a government system of political gangsterism, a system of provocation and torture practised upon the working class and the revolutionary elements of the peasantry, the petty bourgeoisie and the intelligentsia. It is medieval barbarity and bestiality, it is unbridled aggression in relation to other nations. » (Source: Georgi Dimitrov, Selected Works Sofia Press, Sofia, Volume 2, 1972).

Who is Donald Trump in regard with fascism?  In fact he is the world champion of individualism and uncontested hero of pragmatism.  He is always right.  As an entrepreneur and businessman, he defines his decisions for USA and the West as the key for successes.  At the  moment, he may represent the last chance for imperialists to retain power in front of a growing discontent of workers and generally the peoples all around the planet.  However, he is realistic and has a touch of « humanity » and would not destroy this world that he benefits from.  Right now People’s Republic of China makes him hopping, especially since this country is a strong and righteous competitor.

 

 « The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.

In the earlier epochs of history, we find almost everywhere a complicated arrangement of society into various orders, a manifold gradation of social rank. In ancient Rome we have patricians, knights, plebeians, slaves; in the Middle Ages, feudal lords, vassals, guild-masters, journeymen, apprentices, serfs; in almost all of these classes, again, subordinate gradations.

The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones.

Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinct feature: it has simplified class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other — Bourgeoisie and Proletariat. » ( Manifesto of the Communist Party | Marx-Engels Archive).

« Countries with unstable currencies always, over time, roundly underperform those with sound currencies. (…)  The inevitable reckonong turned into a panic that nearly brought the financial system into catastrophic cardiac arrest. » (Forbes, Steve, Editor-in-Chief, The disaster of 2008, Why it can happen again, Forbes, October, 31, 2018, Harian, USA. Page 21).

« The US expansion remains robust The US economy has been expanding at a solid pace, with recent data signalling more momentum than anticipated in the April Report. Net exports have been unexpectedly robust, reflecting transitory factors, and business investment has been more solid than expected. Job gains continue to be elevated amid a tight labour market, and indicators of consumer sentiment remain high (Chart 3). The US economy is forecast to expand by 3 per cent in 2018 and 2 1 /2 per cent in 2019, well above the estimated rate of its potential output growth. Consumption is anticipated to rise at a healthy pace, underpinned by strong employment growth, past income tax cuts and elevated household net worth. Solid private demand and corporate tax cuts should drive robust business investment growth. GDP growth is projected to ease to around 2 per cent in 2020, close to potential output growth, as fiscal and monetary policy support diminishes. US businesses are starting to report that trade policy uncertainty is dampening an otherwise upbeat outlook for investment, although this is not yet evident in the data. The current base-case projection for the US economy therefore incorporates some modest adverse effects of trade policy uncertainty on investment. US core inflation has firmed as the effects of transitory factors, including past declines in telecommunication prices, have passed. Wage growth has been modest but is expected to pick up with a tightening labour market. With stronger wage growth and support from excess demand, core inflation is forecast to remain close to the Federal Reserve’s inflation target of 2 per cent. » (Bank of Canada, Global Economy, Monetary Policy Report, Ottawa, July 2018, page 3).

« Canada is still free to pursue trade deals with any country it wishes… and in the long run that will likely be true. (…)  But it is apparent that it came at a cost, perhaps temporar, to our sovereignty and independence.  Prime Minister  Justin Trudeau now needs to reassert that sovereignty and demonstrate to Canadians that Mr. Trump does not have a say in how we deal with China.  For the moment, that’s not clear. » (Editorial, Did Canada join Trump’s trade war?, The Globe and Mail, Toronto, Saturday October 6, 2018, page 010).

« For a brief, beautiful moment in time Jeff Bezos and Bernie Sanders were at peace. On October 2nd Mr Bezos, the boss of Amazon and the world’s richest man, announced that he would raise starting wages for American employees to $15 an hour. That thrilled Mr Sanders, a curmudgeonly socialist senator who just last month introduced a “Stop BEZOS Act” which would tax the company for the public benefits received by low-paid workers. “It could well be a shot heard round the world,” he gushed. The billionaire returned the kind words, thanking his gadfly and urging other companies to join him in raising wages. Amazon also announced that its phalanx of lobbyists would start calling for a higher federal minimum wage, which has not increased since 2009. » (The Economist, London, October 6th, 2018, page 24).

« As for Canada and Mexico, under a different president the three countries  of North America could work together to contain China where necessary, and co-operate with it where possible.  But the Trump administration is going to have to go it alone on China.  It no longer has any friends.  And that includes Canada. » (Ibbitson, John, Canada will not forget how it was treated by Trump, The Globe and Mail, Toronto, Saturday, October 6th, 2018, page A10).

« The restraint makes sense. China’s economy might be slowing but the situation is far from dire. A big stimulus when growth is still running at about 6.5% year on year would be an alarming over-reaction. And it is easy to exaggerate the gloom. Some noted that the 9% rise in visitor numbers over the National Day holiday marked the first time in a decade that domestic tourism had increased at less than a double-digit rate. Yet popular destinations can scarcely handle much more. At the Humble Administrator’s Garden it was impossible to take pictures without dozens of other people in them. A few daring visitors seeking the illusion of solitude instead climbed onto the grey-tiled roofs of its covered walkways. » (The Economist, London, October 13th-19th, 2018, page 71).

« With the division of labour, in which all these contradictions are implicit, and which in its turn is based on the natural division of labour in the family and the separation of society into individual families opposed to one another, is given simultaneously the distribution, and indeed the unequal distribution, both quantitative and qualitative, of labour and its products, hence property: the nucleus, the first form, of which lies in the family, where wife and children are the slaves of the husband. This latent slavery in the family, though still very crude, is the first property, but even at this early stage it corresponds perfectly to the definition of modern economists who call it the power of disposing of the labour-power of others. Division of labour and private property are, moreover, identical expressions: in the one the same thing is affirmed with reference to activity as is affirmed in the other with reference to the product of the activity. »

« Further, the division of labour implies the contradiction between the interest of the separate individual or the individual family and the communal interest of all individuals who have intercourse with one another. And indeed, this communal interest does not exist merely in the imagination, as the “general interest,” but first of all in reality, as the mutual interdependence of the individuals among whom the labour is divided. And finally, the division of labour offers us the first example of how, as long as man remains in natural society, that is, as long as a cleavage exists between the particular and the common interest, as long, therefore, as activity is not voluntarily, but naturally, divided, man’s own deed becomes an alien power opposed to him, which enslaves him instead of being controlled by him. For as soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a herdsman, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic. This fixation of social activity, this consolidation of what we ourselves produce into an objective power above us, growing out of our control, thwarting our expectations, bringing to naught our calculations, is one of the chief factors in historical development up till now. »

« The social power, i.e., the multiplied productive force, which arises through the co-operation of different individuals as it is determined by the division of labour, appears to these individuals, since their co-operation is not voluntary but has come about naturally, not as their own united power, but as an alien force existing outside them, of the origin and goal of which they are ignorant, which they thus cannot control, which on the contrary passes through a peculiar series of phases and stages independent of the will and the action of man, any even being the prime governor of these. »

« How otherwise could, for instance, property have had a history at all, have taken on different forms, and landed property, for example, according to the different premises given, have proceeded in France from parcellation to centralisation in the hands of a few, in England from centralisation in the hands of a few to parcellation, as is actually the case today? Or how does it happen that trade, which after all is nothing more than the exchange of products of various individuals and countries, rules the whole world through the relation of supply and demand – a relation which, as an English economist says, hovers over the earth like the fate of the ancients, and with invisible hand allots fortune and misfortune to men, sets up empires and overthrows empires, causes nations to rise and to disappear – while with the abolition of the basis of private property, with the communistic regulation of production (and, implicit in this, the destruction of the alien relation between men and what they themselves produce), the power of the relation of supply and demand is dissolved into nothing, and men get exchange, production, the mode of their mutual relation, under their own control again? » (Karl Marx. The German Ideology. 1845, Part I: Feuerbach, Opposition of the Materialist and Idealist Outlook, A. Idealism and Materialism).

This article may look like a fabric of excerpts.  It is  voluntarily so; there is no need to re-invent the wheel.  Nevertheless there is a danger to let running fascism. It costed mankind over 50 millions lives; that is enough talking to any conscious and common-sense human-being.

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

ARCHIVES

La Vie Réelle   www.laviereelle.blogspot.com

Pour la KOMINTERN now!   www.pourlakominternnow.blogspot.com

L’Humanité in English   www.humaniteinenglish.com

MARXISM-LENINISM TODAY

By Daniel Paquet

dpaquet1871@gmail.com 

Montréal, July 16th, 2017

I

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!