The Komintern
– a Vanguard Workers’Union
See the website Pour la
KOMINTERN now! www.pourlakominternnow.blogspot.com
By Daniel Paquet
dpaquet1871@gmail.com
TORONTO – A representative group of
Communists from various countries met in 2011 at the International solidarity meeting with the Soviet peoples. They started to establish a new World
Association of Communists, which could be the nucleus of a new Komintern. This association will be based on the
heritage of Lenin.
Already in the past existed other workers’
international associations. In Canada, the
conservative elements (especially the Catholic Church in the Province of
Québec), opposed themselves to such movements arguing that they were ‘atheist’
by nature.
Confronted to such an attitude, Marxists answered
that “Religious suffering is at the
same time an expression of real
suffering and a protest against real
suffering. Religion is the sigh of the
oppressed creature, the sentiment of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless
conditions. It is the opium of the people. (…)
The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of men, is a demand
for their real happiness. The call to
abandon their illusions about their condition is a call to abandon a condition which requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, the embryonic criticism of this vale of
tears of which religion is the halo.” (Marx, Karl, Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right: Introduction. Tucker, Robert C., The Marx-Engels Reader,
W.W. Norton & Company, New-York-London, 1978, page 54).
“Capital consists of raw materials,
instruments of labour and means of subsistence of all kinds, which are utilized
in order to produce new raw materials, new instruments of labour and new means
of subsistence. All these component
parts of capital are creations of labour, products of labour, accumulated labour. Accumulated labour which serves as a means of
new production is capital.” (Ibidem,
Wage Labour and Capital, page 207).
“The directing motive, the end and aim of
capitalist production, is the extract the greatest possible amount of
surplus-value, and consequently to exploit labour-power to the greatest possible
extent. (…)
The control exercised by the capitalist is
not only a special function, due to the nature of the social labour-process,
and peculiar to that process, but is, at the same time, a function of the exploitation
of a social labour-process, and is consequently rooted in the unavoidable
antagonism between the exploiter and the living and labouring raw material he
exploits.” (Ibidem, Captital, Volume I,
page 385).
“The market is a category of commodity
economy, which in the course of its development is transformed into capitalist
economy and only under the latter gains complete sway and universal
prevalence. (…)
The basis of commodity economy is the
social division of labour. Manufacturing
industry separates from extracting industry, and each of these subdivides into
small varieties and sub varieties which produce specific products, as
commodities, and exchange them for the products of all the others. Thus, the development of commodity economy
leads to an increase in the number of separate and independent branches of
industry; the tendency of this development is to transform into a special
branch of industry the making not only of each separate product, but even of
each separate part of a product – and not only the making of a product, but
even the separate operations of preparing the product for consumption.” (Lenin,
V.I., Development of capitalism in Russia, Foreign Languages
Publishing House, Moscow, 1956, pages 11-12).
“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 distinctive feature; it has simplified the 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.” (The Marx-Engels
Reader, Manifesto of the Communist Party,
page 474).
Marx and Engels wrote the Manifesto in 1848. Before them, in the XVIIIe century,
industrial revolution was neither on the order of the day, nor the proletariat. Thus, the famous philosopher, David Hume,
could just say: “It is evident that there is a principle of connexion between
the different thoughts or ideas of the mind, and that, in their appearance to
the memory or imagination, they introduce each other with a certain degree of
method and regularity. (…)
And even in our wildest and most wandering
reveries, nay in our very dreams, we shall find, if we reflect, that the
imagination ran not altogether at adventures, but that there was still a
connexion upheld among the different ideas, which succeeded each other.” (Hume, David, An Enquiry Concerning Human
Understanding/Philosophic Classics, Kaufman, Walter, Prentice-Hall,
Inc., Englewood Cliffs, N.J., MCMLXI, page 329).
“With this general prosperity, in which the
productive forces of bourgeois society develop as luxuriantly as it at all
possible within bourgeois relationships, there can be no talk factors of a real revolution. Such a revolution is only possible in the periods
when both these, the modern productive forces and the bourgeois
productive forms come in collision
with each other. (…)
A new
revolution is possible only in consequence of a new crisis. It is, however, just as certain as this
crisis.” (Ibidem,
The Class Struggles in France, page
593).
“What is now happening to Marx’s teaching
has, in the course of history, happened repeatedly to the teachings of
revolutionary thinkers and leaders of oppressed classes struggling for
emancipation. During the lifetime of
great revolutionaries, the oppressing classes constantly hounded them, received
their teachings with the most savage malice, the most furious hatred and the
most unscrupulous campaigns of lies and slander. (…)
At the present time, the bourgeoisie and
the opportunists within the working-class movement concur in this ‘doctoring’
of Marxism. They omit, obliterate and distort
the revolutionary side of this teaching, its revolutionary soul.” (Lenin, V.I., The State and Revolution,
Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1970, page 3).
“… if indeed we succeeded in reaching a
point when all, or at least a considerable majority, of the local committees,
local groups and circles actively took up work for the common cause, we could,
in the not distant future, establish a weekly newspaper that would be regularly
distributed in tens of thousands of copies…. This newspaper would become a part
of an enormous pair of smith’s bellows that would fan every spark of class
struggle and popular indignation into a general conflagration. (…)
That
is what we should dream of.” (Lenin, V.I., What
is to be done, Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1973, page 21 /Reprinted
by Red Star Publishers, U.S.A., 2014, page 56).
“When communist workmen associate with one another, theory, propaganda, etc., is
their first end. But at the same time,
as a result of this association, they acquire a new need – the need for society
– and what appears as a means becomes an end.
(…)
Company, association, and conversation,
which again has society as its end, are enough for them; the brotherhood of man
is no mere phrase with them (i.e.
communists), but a fact of life and the nobility of man shines upon us from
their work-hardened bodies.” (Ibidem,
Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, pages 99-100).
“… we are fighting not only to win
socialism for us, not only to ensure that our children shall recollect capitalists
and landlords as prehistoric monsters; we are fighting to ensure that the
workers of the whole world shall triumph together with us. (…)
And this First Congress of the Communist International, which has
established the point that throughout the world the Soviets are winning the
sympathy of the workers, show us that the victory of the international
communist revolution is assured. (…)
The comrades present in this hall saw how
the first Soviet republic was founded; they now see how the Third, Communist
International (i.e. Komintern) has
been founded, and they will all see how the World Federative Republic of
Soviets is founded.” (Lenin, V.I., On
the International Working-Class and Communist Movement, Foreign
Languages Publishing House, Moscow, pages 277-278).
“It scarcely needs proof that there is not
the slightest possibility of carrying out these tasks in a short period, of
accomplishing all this in a few years.
Therefore, the dictatorship of the proletariat, the transition from
capitalism to communism, must not be regarded as a fleeting period of
‘super-revolutionary’ acts and decrees, but as an entire historical era,
replete with civil wars and external conflicts, with persistent organizational
work and economic construction, with advances and retreats, victories and
defeats. The historical era is needed
not only to create the economic and cultural prerequisites for the complete
victory of socialism, but also to enable the proletariat, firstly, to educate
itself and become steeled as a force capable of governing the country, and,
secondly, to re-educate and re-mould the petty-bourgeois strata along such
lines as will assure the organization of socialist production.” (Stalin, J.V., The Foundations of Leninism,
Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1975/Reprinted in the United States, 2010,
pages 40-41).
Further, “it has already been said that the
sphere of operation of commodity production is restricted and placed within
definite bounds by our system. The same
must be said of the sphere of operations of the law of value. Undoubtedly, the fact that private ownership
of the means of production does not exist, and that the means of production
both in town and country are socialized, cannot but restrict the sphere of
operation of the law of value and the extent of its influence on production.
In this same direction operates the law of
balanced (proportionate) development of the national economy, which has
superseded the law of competition and anarchy
of production. In this same direction,
too, operate our yearly and five-yearly plans and our economic policy,
generally, which are based on the requirements of the law of balanced
development of the 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, pages 18-19).
Nowadays, world-wide, the working-class (in
Britain with ‘Brexit’ and elsewhere) is reorganizing its ‘armies’. For instance, the World Federation of
Trade-Unions (WFTU), on the occasion of the International Workers’ Day – 1st
of May 2016 –conveyed a militant salute to all men and women of the working
class, and to its 92 million members (in 120 countries around the world):
‘Men and women, young and old, employed and
unemployed, migrants and refugees, the WFTU wishes you strength, determination,
and courage in your struggles, however big they are. (…)
Multinationals, reactionary governments,
neo-fascist and racist elements, Imperialism, all of them dread May Day, being
the symbol of internationalism, struggle, and class unity. These are our most powerful weapons in our
struggles for a better life, against poverty, and against wars generated by
capitalist Barbarism.’ (WFTU, Statement
on May Day 2016, published in Northstar Compass, Toronto, page 8; WFTU
can be reached at: 40, Zan Moreas
Street, Athens 11745, Greece).
And finally, what about the workers in
Québec? The vast majority amongst them ignores
the existence of WFTU and are members – through lack of knowledge – of the
social-democratic international organization, for that matter.
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