The Online Battle for Marxism-Leninism and Communist Education

American Communists have hyped "the world of online possibilities" which are presented by sites such as Facebook and Twitter.
The United States’ Communist newspaper, the People’s Weekly World, has even given notice that it will cease hard copy production on January 1, 2010 in favor of going electronic!

(Note: In truth, the Communist Party has been on the Internet since the 1990s.)
Lenin spoke as a militant in What Is To Be Done?: “a (Communist) newspaper is not only a collective propagandist and a collective agitator, it is also a collective organizer." And the newsprint paper of the Communist Party USA was conceived and used as an organizational instrument - a spark for activism, socialist consciousness and Party recruitment– to be distributed at mill gates, shop floors, picket lines and mass meetings.

The newspaper of the CPUSA in Gus Hall’s day was "Marxist-Leninist, Communist" and it "(fought) for reforms" as "a revolutionary newspaper." The importance of a Communist newsprint and press has not diminished in any way, shape or form since Lenin’s era. Hall pronounced boldly: "to do away with the People’s Daily World would be the first step in liquidating the Party." (Gus Hall, Working Class USA; Power of Ideology)

We peruse the online edition of PWW (or the People’s World) when not at the industrial plant gates. We call on Communists to distribute Marxist leaflets with your blog address and contact info at protests and in proletarian neighborhoods or workplaces!

On the other hand, we need to, as the titanic Black American Communist Henry Winston put it, "struggle in every arena." This includes on the Internet!
V. I. Lenin said in What Is To Be Done? that Communist consciousness must be brought to the working class. Quite honestly, though, there isn’t an abundance of electronic sites providing solid Marxist-Leninist ideological education - especially on Facebook (which can’t be read by workers without FB accounts).

William Z. Foster taught future generations that a low Marxist-Leninist ideological level in the Communist Party can pave the way for revisionism and Party liquidation! (William Z. Foster, April 1948, Political Affairs)
But the Gus Hall Action Club is impressed by the statement of the Myspace group: Gus Hall Discussion Forum. We share it below the picture of Lenin. This declaration, rich in book extracts and Marxist-Leninist content, is especially distinguished by it’s defense of the concept of a fighting Communist Party, the Communist policy of industrial concentration and it’s lashing out against revisionism. We are pleased that selections from the outstanding 1970 "New Program of the Communist Party U.S.A." are woven throughout, too.

Michael, Gus Hall Action Club

(V.I. Lenin: 'without revolutionary theory, there can be no revolutionary movement')
from the Gus Hall Discussion Forum:
People Before Profits!
For Peace, Jobs and Equality! For Health Care for All! For a People's Front Against Reaction, War and Racism! For a Coalition Against Monopoly Capital!
"Study Marxism and you will understand that there's no way out under capitalism"--Frank Lumpkin (from 'Always Bring a Crowd')
(Note: This forum's statement below might be challenging for those who are new to Marxism. No one was born with a Karl Marx book in one hand and a Lenin book in the other. Topics on this group will explain the ideas of socialism and the what the Reds say and do today. The basic ideas of Marxism-Leninism are the science of our class--the working class. With study and effort, one can master the fundamentals. Marxist-Leninist books and writings can, as Betty Gannet once put it in a Communist pamphlet, "be grasped by the ordinary man or woman who works for a living. It was written for you--you can understand it." We, as workers, are dedicated to educating one another in the principles of Marxist-Leninist ideology. Just ask!)
Our group respects the Communist Party USA as a Party. "The Communist Party," Gus Hall, the great American Communist and former leader of the CPUSA, explained, "can be proud of its decades of contributions. It has been a major factor in the building of our trade unions. It was the main force in the organization of the mass production unions. It was the spark plug in the struggles for Social Security, for unemployment insurance. It has an uninterrupted record of struggle against racism since its founding. It has been a leading force in the struggle for equality of women. It has continued to provide the anti-imperialist content to all struggles for world peace. It has an honorable record in the struggles of family farmers. It has provided leadership in the struggle for democratic rights and against the ultra-Right and fascism. It survived the years of McCarthyite, anti-Communist hysteria." (Gus Hall, Working Class USA, 1987, International Publishers)

We uphold the principle of a vanguard Marxist-Leninist Communist Party. A Communist Party is the vanguard of the working class, i.e., its advanced, class-conscious part, capable of leading the masses in the struggle for the overthrow of capitalism and the building of socialism. Otto Kuusinen, a friend of Lenin’s and principle author of Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism, was correct: "of all the organizations created by the working class, only a political party can give proper expression to the basic interests of the working class and lead it to victory. With the aid of trade unions, mutual aid societies and other similar organizations alone the workers will never be able to put an end to capitalism and build a socialist society. For this the workers need an organization of a higher type, an organization that does not confine itself to the struggle for the satisfaction of the current needs of the working people but aims at bringing the working class to power in order to effect a revolutionary transformation of society. Such an organization is the Communist Party." (Otto Kuusinen, et al., Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow)

We need a fighting Communist Party in our day! A CPUSA Party Program from yesteryear made no bones about it: The working class requires a "Marxist-Leninist, working class political party--a revolutionary party dedicated to the fundamental transformation of society...A party that applies Marxism-Leninism to the struggles of the workers and their allies, a party that seeks to guide that class to power!" (CPUSA, New Program of the Communist Party U.S.A., 1970, New Outlook Publishers)

"By educating the workers’ party," V.I. Lenin, leader of Russia's proletarian revolution, wrote, "Marxism educates the vanguard of the proletariat which is capable of assuming power and of leading the whole people to socialism, of directing and organizing the new order, of being the teacher, the guide, the leader of all the toilers and exploited in the task of building up their social life without the bourgeoisie and against the bourgeoisie." (Lenin, State and Revolution, 1917)

After the victory of socialism, as the eminent Communist William Z. Foster pointed out, "the leader and organizer of the proletarian dictatorship is the Communist Party."

We are Communists who uphold the science of Marxism-Leninism. A CPUSA Party Program expounded Marxism-Leninism: "Our world outlook, is scientific socialism, or Marxism-Leninism as it is commonly called after Karl Marx and V.I. Lenin, its foremost originators and exponents." Marxism-Leninism, it continued, is the science of social change. Without Marxism-Leninism, the proletariat can not smash capitalism. "Marxism-Leninism is the world outlook of the working class, the theoretical instrument for achievement of working class power. Nowhere has the working class been victorious without its use." (CPUSA, New Program of the Communist Party U.S.A., 1970, New Outlook Publishers)

"Thorough mastery of Marxism-Leninism gives one a profound conviction not only of the correctness of the workers’ cause, but of the historical inevitability of the coming triumph of socialism throughout the world. Marxism-Leninism is a source of strength, even to the weak; a source of steadfast political principle. It instills the unshakable ideological conviction that enables one to withstand all trials and ordeals." (Otto Kuusinen, Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism)

We partisans of the proletariat have confidence that the working class is, has been and will be in the future, the most progressive force in society. Marx and Engels said, in the Communist Manifesto, that: "Of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie today, the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class." The American working class is multiracial, multinational, male-female, young and old. We work at all sorts of jobs or are unemployed. The working class owns no means of production and is compelled to sell their labor power in order to live. On the other side of the class barricade, the bourgeoisie, the capitalist class, owns the means of social production and employs wage-labor. "As long as classes exist," Lenin declared, "the class struggle is inevitable." And for Communists, "class struggle is the frame of reference." (Gus Hall)

Henry Winston, an deceased African-American militant with the Communist Party USA, spelled out that while all working class folks have a common interest in fighting against state-monopoly capitalism, they "do not all have a common place within the capitalist system from which to carry on that fight." In our era, economic restructuring has forced steelworkers, autoworkers, miners, electrical workers and other mass production workers to lose their jobs as capital chases profit around the globe. But industrial workers (workers in basic industry) are still what Winston called them: "front rankers in the class struggle." Marxist-Leninists focuses on and recruits from proletarians in the industrial sector. "The Communist Party places its industrial concentration policy at the center of its strategy." (Henry Winston, Class, Race and Black Liberation, 1977, International Publishers)

In line with the fundamental principles of Marxism-Leninism, we uphold the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the state power and the "political rule of the proletariat." (Lenin) The working class must command state power. This is a fundamental question. The dictatorship of the proletariat produces proletarian democracy. "Simultaneously with an immense expansion of democracy, which for the first time becomes democracy for the poor, democracy for the people, and not democracy for the money-bags, the dictatorship of the proletariat imposes a series of restrictions on the freedom of the oppressors, the exploiters, the capitalists. We must suppress them in order to free humanity from wage slavery." (Lenin, State and Revolution, 1917)

Socialism is "a crowning achievement of the democratic struggle for a better life!" (CPUSA, New Program of the Communist Party U.S.A., 1970, New Outlook Publishers)

And V.I. Lenin hit the nail on the head: "only he is a Marxist who extends the recognition of the class struggle to the recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat. This is what constitutes the most profound difference between the Marxist and the ordinary petty (as well as big) bourgeois. This is the touchstone on which the real understanding and recognition of Marxism is to be tested." (Lenin, State and Revolution, 1917)

Gus Hall, former leader of the Communist Party of the United States and one of the founders of the Steelworkers union (USWA), voiced the Marxist-Leninist position in an 1974 essay, Marxism-Leninism is Creativity: "Not to recognize the dictatorship of the proletariat is to be with the class struggle right up to the moment of economic and political power, only to desert it at that most critical juncture."

Our group stands four square against the revisionist and liquidationist trend in the Communist movement. A Soviet work, Right-Wing Revisionism Today, notes that "By revisionism, Lenin understood an opportunist trend alien to Marxism and socialism that existed within the revolutionary party of the working class and which, under the guise of Marxism, actually carried out a revision of the fundamental tenets of Marxist theory, replacing the basic principles of that theory by bourgeois and petty-bourgeois ideas." One of it's classical features, Hall commented, was that revisionism gets rid of the concept of proletarian dictatorship. But revisionism, a falsification of Marxism-Leninism, also attacks the concept of the Marxist-Leninist vanguard party. Otto Kuusinen set down that revisionism aims to liquidate the Party or transform it into a reformist organization. Revisionists "have invariably chosen Lenin’s teaching on the Party as one of their chief targets." They deny the leading vanguard role of the Party and reject real democratic centralism. (Otto Kuusinen, Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism)

We are working class activists in the class and mass struggles of today. "Communists," Marx and Engels penned in the Communist Manifesto, "fight for the attainment of the immediate aims, for the enforcement of the momentary interests of the working class; but in the movement of the present, they also represent and take care of the future of that movement."

A CPUSA Party Program from bygone days still breathes meaning: "We Communists strive for the improvement of the conditions of existence for the working class here and now." A working class, it goes on, which did not battle for day-to-day improvements would, as Karl Marx put it, "be degraded to one level mass of broken down wretches past salvation." The Program links work for reform to practice for revolution. "The struggles for day-to-day improvement are basic training for the fight to take complete political power." (CPUSA, New Program of the Communist Party U.S.A., 1970, New Outlook Publishers)

In the present movement, to paraphrase Marx and Engels, Communists represent it's future--Socialism! Capitalism is on the skids to oblivion. Another world is necessary--Socialism!
In our age, if you want to work for an end to racial and class injustice: JOIN THE COMMUNIST PARTY USA!

If you are tired of our government's imperialist war and aggression and want peace: JOIN THE CPUSA!

If you are for an end to poverty, unemployment, homelessness and hunger: JOIN!
Workers of the World, Unite!!

Create a Marxist-Leninist Blog!

Create a fighting Marxist-Leninist blog by going to http://www.blogger.com/start!!
V. I. Lenin said in What Is To Be Done? that Communist consciousness must be brought to the working class. Blogs are a great way to do this! This site, How to Start a Blog (@ http://www.wikihow.com/Start-a-Blog), shares basic information, with tips for when you have the blog up and running. The online manual says that you should find a "blog provider." https://www.blogger.com/start will provide the maximum public visibility. Communists, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels declared in the Communist Manifesto, "disdain to conceal their views and aims!"

It's absolutely important that a Communist blog has solid Marxist-Leninist content and a focus on the working class. The ideological struggle is a reflection of the class struggle. Henry Winston, the great African-American Communist, was correct that scientific socialism is Marxism-Leninism. Marxism-Leninism has not grown old and never will! It is, as Gus Hall explained, "the science of the general laws of development of nature, society and thought. It is the science of the revolutionary transition to socialism." (Gus Hall, Imperialism Today)

Get the Marxist word out! Publicize your blog on leaflets that you distribute at plant gates, protests and proletarian neighborhoods. Prove William Z. Foster right: "wherever there is capitalism there is Communism!"

(Is Lenin writing a new blog post? Signing his name ’V.I. Lenin’ will increase his blog hits from google searches)
Key Words
Marxist-Leninist blogs show up in google searches when working class researchers go to google.com and search for titles or "key words" like "Marxism," "Lenin," "Communism," etc. Including a "key word," such as "Marxism" or "Lenin," or a combination of terms (such as "Marxism-Leninism", "Communist Party"," etc) in your blog's title or article makes your blog appear somewhere in the list of resources when folks go on quests for information related to the key words. So it’s excellent to cite Marx, Engels, Lenin, William Z. Foster, Victor Perlo, Gus Hall, etc in an article when you want working class fighters who are interested in Marxism to find your blog!

Quotes
Frederick Engels once said: "Socialism, having become a science, must be pursued as a science, that is, it must be studied." We need to read and reread the writings of Karl Marx, Frederick Engels and V.I. Lenin. And we should also quote them on our blogs!

Although some of the hard-hitting words by V.I. Lenin on the state are not featured, there’s some remarkable short quotations by Marx, Engels and Lenin arranged by subject on this site: Excerpts from the Classics.

Extracts from other Communist writers and books are really great, too! We can also write book reviews for superb works like Roger Keeran and Thomas Kenny's Socialism Betrayed: Behind the Collapse of the Soviet Union and William Z. Foster's History of the Communist Party of the United States.

Add the Gus Hall Action Club to your blog list.
Check out the the Gus Hall Discussion Forum topics on Myspace: Create a Marxist-Leninist Blog and My New Blog Site.

Red Heroes of the 1934 Minneapolis Teamsters Strike: Gus Hall & the CPUSA

"The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle."--Karl Marx and Frederick Engels
William Z. Foster wrote in his History of the Communist Party of the United States that "important local general strikes and near-general strikes were a pronounced feature of the years 1934-36." Trotskyites in Teamsters union local 574 are generally credited with being the Red heroes of the 1934 Minneapolis, MN Teamsters Strike (also called the Minneapolis Truckers Strike). Trotskyites and their sympathizers, "with their pathological antagonism towards the Communist Party and the Soviet Union," (Foster) declare the 1934 strike as a victory against both bosses and "Stalinists." We note the contributions made by Trotskyist ex-members of the Communist Party USA to making Minneapolis a union town. But the real "untold story" is the role of Marxist-Leninists in the Minneapolis Teamsters Strike of 1934. For, as Gus Hall said: "it would have been a lost strike if it were not for the activities and actions taken by the Communist Party."


(Gus Hall said that the 1934 Minneapolis Teamsters Strike 'would have been a lost strike if it were not for the activities and actions taken by the Communist Party')
The great Communist Gus Hall (known as Arvo Gus Halberg in Minnesota of those days) was recognized for his militancy in the 1934 Teamsters Strike in Minneapolis by an article in the New York Times in 2000. He speaks history in Working Class USA: "in the 1930s a Trotskyite clique got into the leadership of the Teamsters local in Minneapolis. It was a period of great strikes, including the general strike in support of West Coast longshoremen in San Francisco led by Harry Bridges. The Teamsters in Minneapolis also struck. It turned into a bitter battle. The Trotskyites, instead of doing what the West Coast longshoremen did--appealing for support from all the workers and people--played footsie with the governor of the state of Minnesota who was out to break the strike with the use of the National Guard. So the strike began to peter out."

"It would have been a lost strike if it were not for the activities and actions taken by the Communist Party," Gus Hall continues. "I was one of the comrades assigned to give leadership to the strike. The Mayor of Minneapolis had just deputized 15,000 thugs to break the picketline. Developments came to a showdown battle. The Trotskyites repudiated confrontation tactics, but it was the only way to win the strike and it was the only thing that did win it."

And Gus Hall, fighting as a Communist in the trenches with Minneapolis workers in 1934, recalls as a participant the confrontation between thousands of strikers and the 15,000 deputies and the whole police force. He concludes: "To this day the Trotskyites have never admitted that with their opportunistic maneuvering with the Governor they had all but lost the strike. It was our tactic of confrontation at a critical moment and the initiative of workers that won the strike. Tactics of confrontation were correct in the Minneapolis situation." (Gus Hall, "Workers' Initiatives II: The Minneapolis Teamsters Strike," Working Class USA, 1987, International Publishers)

Philosophy is Stamped with the Brand of a Class

This blog post includes the first few pages of the 1953 edition of Maurice Cornforth's Materialism and the Dialectical Method, written while he was a Marxist-Leninist. I have also woven in quotes by Howard Selsam, Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, V.I. Lenin, and William Z. Foster and Gus Hall, former leaders of the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA).

Cornforth's Materialism and the Dialectical Method is part of a three volume series on Dialectical Materialism (which includes the books Historical Materialism and the Theory of Knowledge) and is based on his 1950 lectures for the Communist Party of Great Britain. The three volume series was long-appreciated by the Communist movement around the world.

This post is dedicated to one of our friends from the Minnesota Association of Professional Employees (MAPE):
"Every philosophy expresses a class outlook. But in contrast to the exploiting classes, which have always sought to uphold and justify their class position by various disguises and falsifications, the working class, from its very class position and aims, is concerned to know and understand things just as they are, without disguise or falsification.

"The party of the working class needs a philosophy which expresses a revolutionary class outlook. The alternative is to embrace ideas hostile to the working class and to socialism.

"This determines the materialist character of our philosophy." (Maurice Cornforth, Materialism and the Dialectical Method, 1953)

(V.I. Lenin: ’the Marxist doctrine is omnipotent because it is true! It is complete and harmonious, and provides men with an integral world conception which is irreconcilable with any form of superstition, reaction or defense of bourgeois oppression’)
Party Philosophy and Class Philosophy
"A revolutionary working-class party needs a revolutionary working class philosophy, " Maurice Cornforth begins, "and that philosophy is dialectical materialism. Dialectical materialism has been defined by Stalin as: ’The world outlook of the Marxist-Leninist Party.’ (Joseph Stalin, Dialectical and Historical Materialism)

"This definition must appear a strange one, both to many politicians and to many philosophers. But we will not begin to understand dialectical materialism unless we can grasp the thought which lies behind this definition. Let us ask, first of all, what conception of philosophy lies behind the idea expressed in this definition of party or--since a party is always the political representative of a class--class philosophy.

"By philosophy is usually meant our most general account of the nature of the world and of mankind’s place and destiny in it--our world outlook." (Maurice Cornforth, Materialism and the Dialectical Method, 1953)

In other words, philosophy is "the whole body of thought concerning the kind of world we live in, the kind of beings we are, and our relation to the world." (Howard Selsam, editor, Handbook of Philosophy, 1949, International Publishers)

Cornforth continues: "that being understood, it is evident that everybody has some kind of philosophy, even though he has never learned to discuss it. Everybody is influenced by philosophical views, even though he has not thought them out for himself and cannot formulate them.

"Some people, for example, think that this world is nothing but ’a vale of tears’ and that our life in it is the preparation for a better life in another and better world. They accordingly believe that we should suffer whatever befalls us with fortitude, not struggling against it, but trying to do whatever good we can do to our fellow creatures. This is one kind of philosophy, one kind of world outlook. Other people think that the world is a place to grow rich in, and that each should look out for himself. This is another kind of philosophy.

"But granted that our philosophy is our world outlook, the task arises of working out this world outlook systematically and in detail, turning it into a well-formulated and coherent theory, turning vaguely held popular beliefs and attitudes into more or less systematic doctrines. This is what the philosophers do.

"By the time the philosophers have worked out their theories, they have often produced something very complicated, very abstract and very hard to understand. But even though only a comparatively few people may read and digest the actual productions of philosophers, these productions may and do have a very wide influence. For the fact that philosophers have systematized certain beliefs reinforces those beliefs, and helps to impose them upon wide masses of ordinary people. Hence, everyone is influenced in one way or another by philosophers, even though they have never read the works of those philosophers.

"And if this is the case, then we cannot regard the systems of the philosophers as being wholly original, as being wholly the products of the brain-work of the individual philosophers. Of course, the formulations of views, the peculiar ways in which they are worked out and written down, is the work of the particular philosopher. But the views themselves, in their most general aspect, have a social basis in ideas which reflect the social activities and social relations of the time, and which, therefore, do not spring ready-made out of the heads of philosophers.

"From this we may proceed a step further.

"When society is divided into classes--and society always has been divided into classes ever since the dissolution of the primitive communes, that is to say, throughout the entire historical period to which the history of philosophy belongs--then the various views which are current in society always express the outlook of various classes. We may conclude, therefore, that the various systems of the philosophers also always express a class outlook. They are, in fact, nothing but the systematic working out and theoretical formulation of a class outlook, or, if you prefer, of the ideology of definite classes.

"Philosophy is and always has been class philosophy. Philosophers may pretend it is not, but that does not alter the fact.

"For people do not and cannot think in isolation from society, and therefore from the class interests and class struggles which pervade society, any more than they can live and act in such isolation. A philosophy is a world outlook, an attempt to understand the world, mankind and man’s place in the world. Such an outlook cannot be anything but the outlook of a class, and the philosophers function as the thinking representatives of a class.

"How can it be otherwise? Philosophies are not imported from some other planet, but are produced here on earth, by people involved, whether they like it or not, in existing class relations and class struggles. Therefore, whatever philosophers say about themselves, there is no philosophy which does not embody a class outlook, or which is impartial, as opposed to partisan, in relation to class struggles. Search as we may, we shall not find any impartial, non-partisan, non-class philosophy.

"Bearing this in mind, then, we shall find that the philosophies of the past have all, in one way or another, expressed the outlook of the so-called ’educated’ classes, that is to say, of the exploiting classes. In general, it is the leaders of society who express and propagate their ideas in the form of systematic philosophies. And up to the appearance of the modern working class, which is the peculiar product of capitalism, these leaders have always been the exploiting classes. It is their outlook which has dominated philosophy, just as they have dominated society." (Maurice Cornforth, Materialism and the Dialectical Method, 1953)

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, great Communist pioneers, exposed the fact that "the class which is the ruling material force in society is at the same time its ruling intellectual force." For "the class which has the means of material production at its disposal has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that, thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it." (Marx and Engels, German Ideology)

Thus Marx and Engels declared in the Communist Manifesto: "the ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class."

"We can only conclude from this that the working class, if today it intends to take over leadership of society, needs to express its own class outlook in philosophical form, and to oppose this philosophy to the philosophies which express the outlook and defend the interests of the exploiters." (Maurice Cornforth, Materialism and the Dialectical Method, 1953)


(Gus Hall: ’Marxism-Leninism is the philosophy and world outlook of the working class because it is a philosophy of social progress.’ In this photo, Gus Hall, center wearing coat, joins a protest.)
Marxism is a revolution in philosophy. V.I. Lenin, the outstanding leader of Russia’s proletarian revolution, hit the nail on the head: "the Marxist doctrine is omnipotent because it is true! It is complete and harmonious, and provides men with an integral world conception which is irreconcilable with any form of superstition, reaction or defense of bourgeois oppression." (Lenin, Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism, 1913)

Maurice Cornforth quotes Lenin and draws some lessons: "’the services rendered by Marx and Engels to the working class may be expressed in a few words thus: they taught the working class to know itself and be conscious of itself, and they substituted science for dreams, ’ wrote Lenin.

"The great world-wide historical service of Marx and Engels lies in the fact that they proved by scientific analysis the inevitability of the collapse of capitalism and its transition to communism, under which there will be no more exploitation of man by man...that they indicated to the proletarians of all countries their role, their task, their mission: to be the first to rise in the revolutionary fight against capital and to rally around themselves in this struggle all the toilers and exploited.’ (Lenin, Speech at the Unveiling of a Monument to Marx and Engels, 1918)

"Teaching the working class ’to know itself and be conscious of itself, ’ and to rally around itself ’all the toilers and exploited, ’ Marx and Engels founded and established the revolutionary theory of working-class struggle, which illumines the road by which the working class can throw off capitalist exploitation, can take the leadership of all the masses of the people, and so free the whole of society once and for all of all oppression and exploitation of man by man.

"Marx and Engels taught that without its own party, the working class certainly could not win victory over capitalism, could not lead the whole of society forward to the abolition of capitalism and the establishment of socialism. The working class must have its own party, independent of all bourgeois parties. Further developing the Marxist teachings about the party, Lenin showed that the party must act as the vanguard of its class, the most conscious section of its class, and that it is the instrument for winning and wielding political power." (Maurice Cornforth, Materialism and the Dialectical Method, 1953)

From capitalism to socialism, the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party must be the vanguard of the working class. "By educating the workers’ party, " V.I. Lenin said, "Marxism educates the vanguard of the proletariat which is capable of assuming power and of leading the whole people to socialism, of directing and organizing the new order, of being the teacher, the guide, the leader of all toilers and exploited in the task of building up their social life without the bourgeoisie and against the bourgeoisie.’ (Lenin, State and Revolution, 1917)

After the victory of socialism, as the great Communist William Z. Foster pointed out, "the leader and organizer of the proletarian dictatorship is the Communist Party." (William Z. Foster, Toward Soviet America, 1932)

"To fulfill such a role, " Maurice Cornforth concludes, "the party must evidently have knowledge, understanding and vision; in other words, it must be equipped with revolutionary theory, on which its policies are based and by which its activities are guided.

"This theory is the theory of Marxism-Leninism. And it is not just an economic theory, nor yet exclusively a political theory, but a world outlook--a philosophy. Economic and political views are not and never can be independent of a general world outlook. Specific economic and political views express the world outlook of those who hold such views, and conversely, philosophical views find expression in views on economics and politics.

"Recognizing all this, the revolutionary party of the working class cannot but formulate, and having formulated, hold fast to, develop and treasure its party philosophy. In this philosophy--dialectical materialism--are embodied the general ideas by means of which the party understands the world which it is seeking to change and in terms of which it defines its aims and works out how to fight for them.

"In this philosophy are embodied the general ideas by means of which the party seeks to enlighten and organize the whole class, and to influence, guide and win over all the masses of working people, showing the conclusions which must be drawn from each stage of the struggle, helping people to learn from their own experience how to go forward towards socialism.

"And so we see why it is that in our times a philosophy has arisen which expresses the revolutionary world outlook of the working class, and that this philosophy--dialectical materialism--is defined as ’the world outlook of the Marxist-Leninist Party.’

"Experience itself has taught the party the need for philosophy. For experience shows that if we do not have our own revolutionary socialist philosophy, then inevitably we borrow our ideas from hostile, anti-socialist sources. If we do not adopt today the outlook of the working class and of the struggle for socialism, then we adopt--or slip into, without meaning to do so--that of the capitalists and of the struggle against socialism.

"This is why the working class party--if it is to be the genuine revolutionary leadership of its class, and is not to mislead its class by the importation of hostile capitalist ideas, and of policies corresponding to such ideas--must be concerned to formulate, defend and propagate its own revolutionary philosophy." (Maurice Cornforth, Materialism and the Dialectical Method, 1953)

Gus Hall was right: "Marxism-Leninism is the philosophy and world outlook of the working class because it is a philosophy of social progress!" The future belongs to the scientific, Marxist-Leninist world outlook! (Gus Hall, Karl Marx: Beacon for Our Times, 1983)

Stand Up, Speak Out and Fight for the Employee Free Choice Act!

(The Gus Hall Action Club attended a town hall meeting in Minneapolis on March 24 which demanded the passage of the Employee Free Choice Act. We passed out Marxist-Leninist leaflets, bearing a quote by Gus Hall, to the huge labor crowd. Note: Gus Hall was the former leader of the Communist Party of the United States and one of the founders of the USWA, the Steelworkers Union)

"I’m alive today because of unions!" declared a member of ATU 1005 (the bus driver's union) at a rally in Minneapolis for the Employee Free Choice Act. V.I. Lenin was right that "as long as classes exist, the class struggle is inevitable." The working class--owning no means of production and compelled to sell their labor power in order to live--has fought tooth and nail to build the unions. And ever since its birth, "the labor movement, " William Z. Foster pointed out, "has had to develop in the face of the opposition of the most powerful capitalist class the world has ever known." Workers fought back, organizing militant strikes and picketlines (especially in the 1930s). The history of the American labor movement is the history of class struggle. And for Communists, as Gus Hall put it, "class struggle is the frame of reference."

As a great strike movement, which Foster called an "explosion of proletarian wrath," swept the country, the right to organize unions was enacted into federal law as the New Deal's Wagner Act (1935). Communists (Marxist-Leninist fighters) were, as Gus Hall said, the "main force" in unionizing industry and mass production. History is witness that class struggle unionism, not class collaboration, wins victories for the working class! In 2009--in our era of class struggle--Karl Marx’s words ring true: "the battle between labor and capital, between wages and profits, continues."


(The United Steelworkers (USW), Communications Workers of America and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers rally in Pittsburgh to call for passage of the Employee Free Choice Act, 2007)
The passage of the Employee Free Choice Act, the AFL-CIO’s top priority in the 111th Congress, would make it easier to form a union at the workplace. Unions fight for better wages, benefits and working conditions for the entire working class. They, J.V. Stalin once said, "curb capitalist exploitation." Unions--a class organization of the proletariat--produce gains for all workers. Union women earn 32 percent more than non-union women. African American union members earn 28 percent more than their non-union counterparts. For Latino workers the union advantage equals 43 percent. But capitalists, waging an anti-labor offensive, fire workers in 30 percent of workplaces where there is a union organizing drive. The Employee Free Choice Act would penalize bosses for violating workers’ rights to form unions.

Gus Hall, speaking as a partisan of the working class, argued that "to get government to intervene on the side of labor is part of the class struggle." We must fight for the passage of the Employee Free Choice Act! However, as Maurice Cornforth wrote, "the trade union struggle does not get rid of capitalism." Without the leading vanguard role of a Marxist-Leninist Communist Party, socialism cannot be won. Socialism will end the exploitation of labor by capital forever.

What you can do to Fight for the Employee Free Choice Act:
Step 1) Sign the AFL-CIO's online petition at AFL-CIO Online Petition to Fight for the Passage of EFCA.

Step 2) Grab a notebook! At the top of one page, write: "I support the Employee Free Choice Act." Provide some lines with the words: first and last name, street address, city, state, zip code and e-mail address. Then write: "this will be sent to the AFL-CIO."

Step 3) Ask your schoolmates or fellow workers to sign your notebook petition on lunch break or after school. Be prepared to give a soundbite description of the Employee Free Choice Act. Maybe: "the EFCA would make it easier to join a union. Unions give us better wages, benefits and working conditions. EFCA would punish bosses who are anti-union." Point out that the EFCA is backed by the AFL-CIO and the labor movement.

Step 4) When you get 10 signatures on your petitions, send in their e-mail addresses to the AFL-CIO's "Spread the word about EFCA" page.

Fight for the Minnesota People's Bailout!

Capitalism causes economic crises. They are, as Gus Hall said, "an inherent, built in characteristic of the system." Marxism-Leninism teaches that crises are caused by the fundamental contradiction of capitalism--that between the social character of production and the private form of appropriating wealth. This means that: Production is social because people need to enter into relations with one another and the means of production to create products. Social labor, the united efforts of millions, produce all of society’s materials and instruments. But, Frederick Engels noted, "the social product is appropriated by the individual capitalist." Maurice Cornforth adds that this fundamental contradiction of capitalism "is a contradiction within the social system itself, on the basis of which the class struggle arises and operates." It is this fundamental contradiction of capitalism that causes crises. Capitalism, not employed and unemployed workers, is responsible for the economic state of emergency.

It’s time for us working class people to stand up, speak out and fight back! We must raise the Communist Party USA’s slogan of yesteryear: Jobs or Income Now! We need to organize class struggle picketlines, protests and mass people’s lobbies to demand passage of the Minnesota People’s Bailout legislation (SF 542 and HF 626), an Act that would provide us an immediate measure of security under capitalism. Introduced into the 86th Minnesota legislative session, the People’s Bailout bill calls for an extension of unemployment compensation and the 5 year limit on welfare (MFIP), creates a public works program to "generate new jobs and produce a stronger state economy, " prevents the layoffs of state employees and establishes a two year moratorium (a delay) on housing foreclosures. We in the Gus Hall Action Club propose that all costs be borne by the capitalist class. Tax the rich!


(V.I.Lenin: ’every month brings the world proletarian revolution nearer!’)
Call your Minnesota state Representative and Senator and tell them to support the People's Bailout Bill (SF 542 and HF 626)! Go to District Finder for more information.

Only socialism will finally end crises forever. It is, as Gus Hall pointed out, "the solution to the inevitable economic crises under capitalism." Socialism eliminates capitalism’s fundamental contradiction between the social character of production and the private form of appropriating wealth. Socialism and the dictatorship of the proletariat ushers in a society where social production matches social ownership and appropriation. What is produced by social production and the labor of millions becomes the property of the producers, the working class. With the socialist planned economy, economic crises are done away with. Capitalism is on the skids to oblivion. It’s fundamental contradiction causes crises, but it also gives rise to the class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. The contradiction, Maurice Cornforth stated, "can only be resolved by the victory of the working class" winning state power and building socialism. And, as V.I. Lenin said: "every month brings the world proletarian revolution nearer!"

The Dictatorship of the Proletariat is the Crux of Marxism

(Part one of an upcoming series on the dictatorship of the proletariat) There’s alot of misinformation about the dictatorship of the proletariat, the state power and the "political rule of the proletariat." And this is to be expected, for as V.I. Lenin, outstanding leader of Russia’s proletarian revolution, said: "there can be no “impartial” social science in a society based on class struggle. In one way or another, all official and liberal science defends wage-slavery, whereas Marxism has declared relentless war on that slavery." Instead of condemning the capitalist system which breeds economic crisis, unemployment and war, bourgeois propaganda misrepresents the proletarian dictatorship as "the negation of democracy, as the dictatorship of individual groups or persons, as ’totalitarianism, ’ as political tyranny." The enemies of the working class slander the leading vanguard role of the Marxist-Leninist Party with the bourgeois lie that "proletarian dictatorship (means) the dictatorship of the Party." What garbage! "The state is (and always has been), " Lenin pointed out, "a special organization of force, it is the organization of violence for the suppression of some class." In a class society, Lenin taught, "we can only speak of class democracy." The proletarian dictatorship suppresses the bourgeoisie and creates proletarian democracy. "Simultaneously with an immense expansion of democracy, which for the first time becomes democracy for the poor, democracy for the people, and not democracy for the money-bags, the dictatorship of the proletariat imposes a series of restrictions on the freedom of the oppressors, the exploiters, the capitalists. We must suppress them in order to free humanity from wage slavery."(V. I. Lenin, State and Revolution, 1917; Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism; Otto Kuusinen, Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow; Lenin, State and Revolution, 1917; Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky, 1918)


(Lenin: ’only he is a Marxist who extends the recognition of the class struggle to the recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat’)
Revisionism, swimming with the tide of bourgeois ideology and falsifying Marxism-Leninism, opposes the dictatorship of the proletariat. "By revisionism, Lenin understood an opportunist trend alien to Marxism and socialism that existed within the revolutionary party of the working class and which, under the guise of Marxism, actually carried out a revision of the fundamental tenets of Marxist theory, replacing the basic principles of that theory by bourgeois and petty-bourgeois ideas." In other words, under the cover of Marxist terminology and a claim to be "creatively" developing Marxism, revisionism rips out the revolutionary essence and guts of Marxism-Leninism! Gus Hall, Marxist-Leninist former leader of the Communist Party of the United States and one of the founders of the Steelworkers union (USWA) once said that "a classical feature of revisionism is its rejection of the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat." Gus Hall hit the nail on the head. The dictatorship of the proletariat is the central issue that distinguishes Marxist-Leninists from reformists and revisionists. V.I. Lenin put it bluntly: "only he is a Marxist who extends the recognition of the class struggle to the recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat. This is what constitutes the most profound difference between the Marxist and the ordinary petty (as well as big) bourgeois. This is the touchstone on which the real understanding and recognition of Marxism is to be tested." The question of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the state power and the "political rule of the proletariat, " is the crux of Marxism because, as Lenin said, socialism can’t be built and "the proletariat cannot achieve victory without breaking the resistance of the bourgeoisie, without forcibly suppressing its enemies." (Right-Wing Revisionism Today, 1976, Progress Publishers, Moscow; Gus Hall, Working Class USA, 1987, International Publishers, Lenin, State and Revolution, 1917; Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky, 1918)

Extracts posted on the Myspace group: Gus Hall Discussion Forum