Friday, February 27, 2009

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!"

Friday, February 20, 2009

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 director of Russia’s proletarian revolution, beautifully 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 capitalist 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."(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 eloquently wrote that a "dictatorship of the proletariat will not work except through the Communist Party." Working People's State Power can take diverse forms but it's political leader is a CP.)

Karl Marx spoke boldly: "between capitalist and communist society lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat." But revisionism, swimming with the tide of bourgeois ideology and falsifying Marxism-Leninism, opposes proletarian dictatorship. "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, epic Marxist-Leninist former leader of the Communist Party of the United States and one of the founders of the United 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 proclaimed, socialism can’t be built and "the proletariat cannot achieve victory without breaking the resistance of the bourgeoisie, without forcibly suppressing its enemies." (Karl Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme, 1875; Right-Wing Revisionism Today, 1976, Progress Publishers, Moscow; Gus Hall, Working Class USA, 1987, International Publishers, New York; Lenin, State and Revolution, 1917; Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky, 1918)

Peruse Part Five, Chapter 21 in Otto Kuusinen's Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism : "Dictatorship of the Proletariat & Proletarian Democracy."