Gus Hall Action Club

Study the Communist Manifesto!

2011-08-24T13:52:00.000-07:00

GHAC has circulated International Publishers' edition of Marx & Engels’ Communist Manifesto to working class youth.

Gus Hall, stellar past Marxist-Leninist warrior with the Communist Party of the United States and a founder of the United Steelworkers union, frequently hailed one of the Manifesto's crucial lessons: "of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie today, the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class." (Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Communist Manifesto, 1848, Int'l Publishers)

(Karl Marx & Frederick Engels: 'Communists 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 its future.')

William Z. Foster of the CPUSA once wrote that: "the Communist Manifesto was the first revolutionary program of the world’s workers. It laid down the solid foundations of proletarian thought and action for the workers thenceforth on their road to socialism. It showed them how to protect themselves under capitalism, how to abolish the capitalist system, and how to build the structure of the new socialist society. Marx, Engels, V.I. Lenin, Joseph Stalin, and others were to write many books on Marxism in the ensuing decades, and their writings served to elaborate and to buttress the basic propositions of the Manifesto. Today, (more than 160) years after the great document was written, the Communist Manifesto stands as firm as a rock, a clear guide for the international working class, justified by generations of revolutionary experience, and altogether impervious to the attacks of capitalist enemies." (William Z. Foster, History of the Three Internationals, 1955, International Publishers)

Lenin, the great successor of Marx and Engels, summed up the significance of the Communist Manifesto:

"With the clarity and brilliance of genius, this work outlines a new world-conception, consistent materialism, which also embraces the realm of social life; dialectics, as the most comprehensive and profound doctrine of development; the theory of the class struggle and the world-historic revolutionary role of the proletariat--the creator of a new, communist society." (Lenin, Karl Marx, 1914)

And Lenin could add, with every justification: "This little booklet is worth whole volumes." (Lenin, Frederick Engels, 1895)

Read Karl Marx and Frederick Engels' epic classic online at this link:

Manifesto of the Communist Party.

Order the Manifesto in print from International Publishers.

Long Live Victory Day День Победы May 9!

2011-05-03T15:44:00.000-07:00

Gus Hall, Marxist-Leninist fighter extraordinaire, hailed the Soviet Union's lead role in the war against "Hitler fascism, the most brutal and bloodiest capitalist dictatorship!" This post is dedicated to the Communist Party of the Russian Federation КПРФ.

May 9 is Victory Day День Победы, a holiday marking the USSR's heroism in smashing imperialist Hitler Germany in WWII!

Henry Winston, stellar late CPUSA chair, put it squarely: "the Soviet Union played the decisive role in saving the world from the racist, genocidal consequences of anti-Sovietism and anti-Communism." William Z. Foster wrote that "had Hitler been able to demolish the Red Army that would have been the end of democracy for an indefinite period. The US, though not falling an immediate victim, could not have long withstood the tremendous power Hitler would then have had at his disposal." (Winston, Race, Class and Black Liberation, 1977, International Publishers; Foster, History of the Communist Party of the United States, 1952, I.P.)

"The Soviet people won their historic victory in the Great Patriotic War because of the socialist social and state system." (B. Ponomarev, Short History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, 1970, Progress Publishers, Moscow)

The Communist Party, the party of Lenin, was "the great organizer and inspirer of the national resistance". It "set an example in both battle and labor and greatly strengthened morale. The Party transformed the country into a vast military camp. Hundreds of thousands of Communists went to the front, and their selfless valor and devotion to their socialist homeland, their implacable hatred for the fascist invaders, served as an inspiring example for millions of Soviet soldiers." (Liberation, Progress Publishers, 1974)

(William Z. Foster: "the epic offensive of the Soviet people and their Red Army against the Nazi hordes was guided daily by Generalissimo Stalin")

Stalin roused the Red Army and the guerrilla detachments: "May you be inspired by the victorious banner of Lenin!" (1941)

The American Marxist-Leninist William Z. Foster chronicles the past: "When Hitler’s armies swept across the Soviet border in June 1941, the bourgeois military experts of the West were unanimous in prophesying that it would only be a few weeks until Hitler would crush the USSR completely. In fact, Hitler’s ’blitz’ did carry him fast and far, to the very gates of Leningrad by September, a city he was never to capture. On October 3, the vainglorious Hitler blared out to the world that the Soviet Union was crushed and would never rise again.

"But he counted his chickens before they were hatched. Hitler vastly underestimated the fighting power of the Soviet people, their Red Army and socialist system. The Wehrmacht had been made to pay a terrible price in its drive across Russia. It was battered again in its fruitless attempt to take either Moscow or Leningrad.

"And in January 1943, the fascist’s back was broken at Stalingrad, the most decisive battle in the history of the world. Then began, for the Nazis, their terrible 1, 500 mile retreat, with the Red Army slashing them to pieces all the way, while the United States and Britain kept their enormous armies idling in Britain." Foster declared: "The Communists were wonderful people while they were saving the world from the criminal follies of the capitalist system." The Allies launched the western front "after the European war was basically decided and Hitler licked." (Foster, History of the Three Internationals, 1955, International Publishers)

"The Red Army carried out Stalin’s order: the flag of victory was hoisted over Berlin!" (Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute, Joseph Stalin, 1949)

"The memory of the undying exploits of the peoples of the Soviet Union in the Great Patriotic War will live through the ages." (Ponomarev, Short History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, 1970, Progress Publishers)

This is the superb anthem Victory Day День Победы.

Enjoy this stunning video with a beautiful song by Joseph Kobzon Иосиф Кобзон:

Bow to Those Great Years

The КПРФ hails A. Harchikov's spectacular Victory.

A legendary piece performed by Eduard Khil Эдуард Хиль:

We'll Stand and Pay the Price!

Fight for Jobs or Income Now!

2011-01-06T13:38:00.000-08:00

"The forest of uplifted arms demanding work becomes ever thicker, while the arms themselves become ever thinner."--Karl Marx, "Wage-Labor and Capital"

The United States is in a jobs crisis. The AFL-CIO Now blog reports (Dec. 2010) that the unemployment rate is near ten percent. 15.1 million proletarians are 'officially' jobless and 27 million more seek work. Black and Latino working class people are hit the hardest. Capitalism, as Karl Marx pointed out long ago, spreads mass pauperization. The army of the unemployed grows. Economic insecurity and poverty, Gus Hall boldly said, is part of the bourgeois pattern "exposed and laid out by Marx, Engels and Lenin."

"The capitalist class," the Communist economist Victor Perlo noted, "has always needed a reserve army of unemployed." V.I. Lenin was right on the mark: "An industrial reserve army of labor is an indispensable attribute of the capitalist economy." Unemployment is a weapon against labor to drive down wages. In times of economic crisis, capitalists lay off workers and impose speed up on workers with jobs. The Soviet Union abolished unemployment. "Not only was there no joblessness in the U.S.S.R.," Hall wrote, "but there was full employment without racism or discriminatory practices."

The working class needs to stand up, speak out and fight back! We require class struggle picketlines, protests and mass people's lobbies that demand Jobs or Income NOW! We must battle for a federal law against layoffs. For a public works program which can provide jobs. Money should be spent to create jobs and rebuild America, not wage imperialist war and occupation. End racism in hiring. Unemployment insurance and food stamps also need to be extended--with no exclusion of workers on strike.

(V.I. Lenin: 'Only struggle educates the exploited class. Only struggle discloses to it the magnitude of its own power, widens its horizon, enhances its abilities, clarifies its mind, forges its will.')

Gus Hall, the Marxist-Leninist former leader of the Communist Party of the United States, put it squarely: "It's time to demand that People Come Before Profits!"

In order to turn the economy around and prevent layoffs, the working class must fight to nationalize basic industries--let the proletariat call the shots. Tax the rich. We need to raise our voices for the passage of Employee Free Choice Act, a law which would make it easier to form and join a union in order to bargain for better wages, benefits and conditions. Slash the work week with no cut in pay. Put Labor up front!

Only socialism will finally end unemployment forever. The day approaches when American workers will turn to socialism and completely eliminate joblessness. Socialism will be, William Z. Foster of the Communist Party of the USA of yesteryear eloquently declared, the "climax" of "the everyday struggles of the workers." And Foster is right that "the time will come when the victorious toilers will build a monument to Lenin in New York." But in order to win this society without exploitation, Marxist theory must, as V.I. Lenin taught in What Is To Be Done?, be brought to the working class. We need a vanguard Marxist-Leninist Party and a proletarian revolution!

A Pro-Soviet View of Stalin

2010-11-25T18:06:00.000-08:00

Lenin put it squarely: "there can be no 'impartial' social science in a society based on class struggle."

J.V. Stalin, a Marxist political figure of the Lenin type, saved the Revolution. Objective conditions in his era were complex. The Soviet Union was a "besieged fortress" facing a hostile capitalist encirclement. Economically backward, it's "advance towards socialism was attended by a sharpening of the class struggle in the country and within the Party." 1941 brought the Nazi "war of plunder and aggrandizement against the USSR." Stalin made grave errors but Marx would have proclaimed that the CPSU and the Soviet people in his epoch "stormed heaven!" J.V. Stalin industrialized the Land of Lenin and built socialism: "the first phase of Communist society." He guided the Great Patriotic War "which ended in the utter defeat of Hitler Germany." The world famous Marxist led the battle against "trends hostile to Leninism within the Party" and popularized ML theory. The memory of Stalin, proletarian fighter extraordinaire, will live through the ages. (Quoted: Lenin, Letter to American Workers, 1918; Stalin and the Central Committee of the CPSU, History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, 1939, International Publishers; Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute, Joseph Stalin, 1949, International Publishers; Karl Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme, 1875; MELI, ibid; Malinin, Fundamentals of Marxist-Leninist Philosophy, 1974, Progress Publishers)

Nikita Khrushchev’s vicious denunciation of J.V. Stalin at a "secret" session of the 20th Congress of the CPSU was a shock to the world’s Communist and Workers’ Parties. It influenced their view for decades. Khrushchev’s "exaggerated, one-sided and incomplete" distortions "wrote Stalin out of Soviet history and discussion of his role more or less stopped." Friends of the socialist homeland "gave up the effort of an overall assessment" in "a critical but balanced way." The "enemies of the USSR readily filled this vacuum with shelves of books portraying Stalin as a monster or madman." (Roger Keeran and Thomas Kenny, Socialism Betrayed: Behind the Collapse of the Soviet Union, International Publishers, 2004)

Don Currie spoke out eloquently: "The anti-Soviet historical revisionists of our day really don’t care a nit about Stalin or his alleged victims. What they care about is the re-writing of the historical record." (Currie,'Open Letter to Heather Mallick on the Distortions of the Role of Stalin in the Defeat of Hitler Germany', Focus On Socialism)

(Workers raise high the banner of Stalin at a protest led by the Communist Party of the Russian Federation КПРФ)

Yesterday’s genuine Marxist-Leninist movement, partisan towards the USSR, had dual lines. B. Ponomarev’s Short History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, authored in Moscow’s Brezhnev era, was more rounded than Khrushchev’s ravings: "the CPSU sees two aspects in Stalin’s work: a positive one, which the Party values and a negative side, which it criticizes and denounces.

"During the years Stalin was General Secretary of the CC (he was elected to this post in 1922), the Soviet people, led by the Communist Party and its Central Committee, carried out a task that was colossal for its importance and the difficulties it involved: they built the world’s first socialist society and turned an economically backward country into a leading industrial power.

"During the Great Patriotic War, under the leadership of the Party, the Soviet masses accomplished an immortal feat: they defeated Nazi Germany and her allies, upheld the superb gains of socialism and saved mankind from the threat of enslavement by fascism. After the war, led by the Party, they quickly restored the country’s economy and started the building of communism.

"Along with other leaders of the Party and government, Stalin, as a prominent organizer and theoretician, worked to carry through socialist reforms in the USSR, headed the battle against enemies of Leninism (Trotskyites, Right opportunists and bourgeois nationalists), exposed the intrigues of the capitalist encirclement and did much to enhance the Soviet Union’s defense capability. Moreover, he promoted the world communist and entire liberation movement. All this earned him considerable prestige and popularity.

"But with time all the achievements of the Soviet people, led by the Party, began to be ascribed to him. The personality cult gradually took shape. Stalin overestimated his own contribution to the successes of the party and the whole populace, believed he was infallible and began to abuse the power placed in his hands.

"This was furthered by some negative features of his character. Stalin began to depart from the Leninist principles of collective leadership and the norms of Party life. He committed particularly grave errors in the last years of his life. There were unjustified limitations on democracy, flagrant violations of socialist legality and unfounded repressions."

But Stalin’s errors "neither changed nor could change the nature of socialist society, the genuinely people’s nature of the Soviet system, and they could not shake or weaken the theoretical, political and organizational foundations of the CPSU’s activity. The policy pursued by the Party expressed the basic interests of the Soviet citizens, always enjoyed their support and ensured the successful building of socialism and communism in the USSR." (B. Ponomarev, Short History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, 1970, Progress Publishers, Moscow)

(Henry Winston: 'Communists refuse to lend monopoly our assistance in its anti-Soviet perversions of history!')

Here’s the past Marxist stalwart and author of History of the Communist Party of the United States, William Z. Foster, assessing Stalin before the CPSU's 20th Congress:

"On March 5, 1953, in his 74th year, Joseph V. Stalin died as the result of a stroke suffered during his sleep a few days before. This ended over half a century of revolutionary struggle on the part of one of the greatest fighters ever produced by the world’s working class. His death was a tremendous loss to the Soviet people and to the international movement for peace and freedom.

"Stalin was a major theoretician. Perhaps his greatest theoretical work was on the national question, on which he was the world’s leading expert. His epic ideological battle with the Trotsky-Zinoviev-Bukharin wreckers also constitutes a Marxist classic. And just on the eve of his death he gave a last example of his profound capacity as an economist by working out the basic economic laws of capitalism and socialism, in his last work, ’Economic Problems of Socialism in the U.S.S.R.’

"Stalin was a magnificent organizer. His building of the Communist Party, the Soviets, and other immense mass organizations of the Soviet people was a real masterwork. His leadership of the party in the mobilization of the people for the driving through of the successive five-year plans, with their building of industry and collectivization of farming, was organizational work beyond compare.

"Stalin, too, was a militant fighting leader of the masses. His whole life was one relentless battle against the enemies of socialism, both within and outside the party. He was a tower of strength as a military commander in the civil war of 1918-1920, and in leading the Soviet people to victory over the Hitler barbarians in 1941-1945, he displayed a peerless fighting spirit and outstanding military genius. During the Cold War, the arrogant capitalist imperialists also came to dread the indomitable spirit and brilliant diplomacy of Stalin. He was indeed a man of steel, as his name signified.

"At Stalin’s funeral, Malenkov said of this brilliant and courageous leader: ’Comrade Stalin, the great thinker of our epoch, creatively developed the teaching of Marxism-Leninism in the new historical conditions. The name of Stalin rightly stands alongside the names of the greatest men in human history--Marx, Engels, Lenin.’" (William Z. Foster, History of the Three Internationals, 1955, International Publishers)

Peruse the Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute’s biography: Stalin.

Read J.V Stalin's Foundations of Leninism.

The book History of the CPSU (B) is an excellent source.

A. Harchikov's song Stalin - Our Flag! is stellar.

Enjoy You Tubes by Communist Party of the Russian Federation (КПРФ) cadre Vladlena1917.

Celebrate Victory Day День Победы May 9!

2010-05-02T14:33:00.000-07:00

This post has been updated:

Long Live Victory Day День Победы May 9!

For a Marxist-Leninist Vanguard Party!

2010-03-11T16:35:00.000-08:00

Gus Hall Action Club dedicates this blog post to African-American steel worker, Communist fighter and proletarian hero Frank Lumpkin (1916-March 1, 2010). We call on the working class to read his story in 'Always Bring a Crowd!' by Beatrice Lumpkin.

The Gus Hall Action Club appreciates the submission from the Myspace group Gus Hall Discussion Forum to the 29th National pre-Convention period of the Communist Party USA. GHDF, declaring that V.I. Lenin's What Is To Be Done? is the quintessential text on the Party, aimed for a concise, fraternal and ideological piece to inspire study of Marxism-Leninism and CP history.

For a Marxist-Leninist Vanguard Party!

The Gus Hall Discussion Forum, a Myspace group bringing the Communist plus to the online arena, extends revolutionary fraternal greetings on the occasion of your 29th National Convention of the Communist Party USA.

Our country requires a Communist Party which is the vanguard of the proletariat: the advanced, class conscious section with the capacity to lead the fight to overthrow bourgeois exploitation and construct socialism. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, in the Communist Manifesto, theoretically substantiated the Marxist party’s vanguard role.

(Lenin: ’We see in the independent, uncompromisingly Marxist party of the revolutionary proletariat the sole pledge of socialism’s victory and the road to victory that is most free from vacillations’)

The pages of Otto Kuusinen’s Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism explain that:

"Of all the organizations created by the working class, only a political party can give proper expression to the proletariat’s basic interests and lead it to victory. With the aid of trade unions, mutual aid societies and other similar organizations, workers will never be able to put an end to capitalism and build a socialist society.

"For this the working class needs an organization of a higher type that does not confine itself to the struggle for the satisfaction of the current needs of working people but aims at bringing the proletariat to power in order to effect a revolutionary transformation of society. Such is a Communist Party." (Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism)

The Marxist-Leninist party is the organizer and leader of the workers’ class struggle. The advanced, conscious and organized detachment of the working class, it is the vanguard of the proletariat because it wields the weapon of Marxist-Leninist theory and applies it to the world.

The highest type of proletarian class organization, the Party gives leadership to the working class’ battles and combines all of its' forms into an assault on capitalism. Without the commanding vanguard role of a Marxist-Leninist Communist Party, socialism cannot be won.

As V.I. Lenin once eloquently put it:

"We see in the independent, uncompromisingly Marxist party of the revolutionary proletariat the sole pledge of socialism’s victory and the road to victory that is most free from vacillations." (A Militant Agreement for the Uprising)

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

In the United States, Gus Hall remarked, "the Communist Party is a working class party of Marxism-Leninism. It is the main fountainhead for the introduction and development of this science in our land." ("The Party of Marxism-Leninism", Political Affairs, Sept-Oct. 1969)

Proletarian fighters must read, study and circulate the classic Marxist books.

The Gus Hall Discussion Forum wishes your 29th National Convention success in the battle to forge "a mass vanguard Communist Party in the heartland of world capitalism." (William Z. Foster, History of the Communist Party of the United States)

GHDF: http://groups.myspace.com/GusHall

The Online Battle for Marxism-Leninism and Communist Education

2009-09-10T16:00:00.000-07:00

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!

2009-06-23T14:50:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-14T14:30:00.001-07:00

"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

2009-04-22T14:55:00.000-07:00

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.’)
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!

2009-03-29T12:30:00.000-07:00

(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!

2009-02-27T13:08:00.000-08:00

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

2009-02-20T15:34:00.000-08:00

(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."

The Lie of Soviet Anti-Semitism

2009-01-25T12:25:00.000-08:00

(A few preliminary words: V.I. Lenin was right: "Shame on those who foment hatred towards the Jews!" Down with the lie that equates anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism! Zionism is reactionary bourgeois nationalism that upholds Israel's state policies of aggression in league with the forces of Wall Street imperialism. "It is U.S. imperialism which has bolstered and dominated the Israeli economy and has supplied Israel with arms (and billions in grants, credits and cash). It has followed such a policy because it accords with the interests of the dominant sections of U.S. finance capital in the Middle East, with their desire to use Israel as a weapon against the Arab liberation movement and its threat to U.S. oil investments."--Hyman Lumer. )

Gus Hall, Marxist-Leninist former leader of the Communist Party of the United States, said that "Zionism is an unmitigated force for reaction and deadly enemy of the Jewish (and Palestinian) people." Instead of condemning the Zionist expansionist imperialist state policies of the aggressive Israeli ruling class, capitalist propaganda screams that Jews were persecuted in the former socialist Soviet Union! The USSR is slandered as the land of anti-Semitism. But this lie, as Gus Hall expressed eloquently, "turns historical facts on their head!" Victor Perlo noted that "such propaganda is forced to nitpick at dubious or marginal cases (in order to) distract attention away from the massive and continuous expressions of anti-Semitism and racism in the United States and other capitalist countries, as well as the racist actions and anti-Semitic actions--stoning of synagogues, etc., which have no counterpart in the USSR." Gus Hall, the great Communist, tore through the lie about the USSR: "the truth is there is anti-Semitism. But it is in the capitalist world. And, like racism, it is on the rise right here in the United States." (Victor Perlo, Economics of Racism USA, 1980, Third Printing, International Publishers; Gus Hall, "The Big Lie and the Jewish-American Community," in Anti-Semitism and Zionism, First Printing, 1987, International Publishers)

Before the October Socialist Revolution of 1917, anti-Semitism was whipped up and frenzied chauvinist mobs attacked Jewish communities. The Tsar used anti-Semitism as a weapon to divide working class, peasant and oppressed peoples in order to carry out a monstrous robbery of the people. The great Communist leader V.I. Lenin, an enemy of anti-Semitism, spoke out: "Shame on accursed Tsarism which tortured and persecuted the Jews. Shame on those who foment hatred towards the Jews!" And Lenin ripped the smokescreen off of anti-Semitism: "Capitalists foment hatred towards the Jews in order to blind the workers, to divert their attention away from the real enemy of the working people--capital." (Lenin, Anti-Jewish Pogroms, 1919)

(V.I. Lenin: ’It is not the Jews who are the enemies of the working people. The enemies of the working people are the capitalists of all countries.’)
Socialism in the former Soviet Union, by smashing capitalism’s material basis for racism, achieved unprecedented gains for Jews and masses of distinct nationalities. Anti-Semitism, rotten in every fiber, was a "throwback to the past" days of an exploitative society and, as Hall revealed: "Soviet socialism completely wiped out the degrading oppression, the poverty-stricken, pogrom ridden ghetto existence of the Jewish people under czarism." Henry Winston, a deceased African-American militant with the Communist Party USA, witnessed the gains made by oppressed peoples in the USSR and spoke out boldly: "the Soviet Union (was) a multi-racial, multinational society born out of a struggle based on the solidarity of the Russian working classes of more than 50 oppressed nations and peoples." The great Communist Gus Hall was indignant: "The Soviet Union is accused of anti-Semitism but it (was) the only country in the history of the world that had pursued a policy of affirmative action, the Leninist policy of equality and justice for all peoples and nationalities!" And in the former socialist Soviet Union, racist, nationalist and anti-Semitic propaganda and actions were illegal. (Henry Winston, Strategy for a Black Agenda; Gus Hall, "The Big Lie and the Jewish-American Community," in Anti-Semitism and Zionism, First Printing, 1987, International Publishers)

Jews were educated, not persecuted, in the working class' first homeland of socialism. A book which examined the socialist countries reveals that "more Jews attended college in the USSR than in Israel, despite the fact that the Jewish population of the USSR was smaller than that of Israel. The percentage of Jews among Soviet college students (was) twice as high as the percentage of Jews in the Soviet population as a whole." And "according to Soviet sources, the USSR (had) a greater proportion of college graduates per 1,000 Jews than any other country in the world." (Erwin Marquit, The Socialist Countries, 1981, Third Printing, MEP)

Capitalist America, not the former Soviet Union, is a cesspool of anti-Semitism. As Gus Hall said, "the Jewish people in the U.S. (overwhelmingly working class) are subjected to discrimination in employment, housing and other aspects of life. And they are a chief target of the fascist ultra-Right." We must fight against anti-Semitism and anti-Jewish discrimination in the United States! We also have to speak out in America, along with progressive Jewish people, against Zionist "bourgeois nationalism" that is "a base of support to Israel’s policies of aggression." Down with the Zionist lie that equates anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism! Zionist government policies make Israel U.S. imperialism’s expansionist watchdog in the Middle East, oppressing Arab peoples and "separating Jewish working people from other workers and (tying) them to the Jewish capitalists." As Black Communist Henry Winston said: "Zionism is imperialism; it is racism." (Gus Hall, Our Nation’s Crisis and How to Solve It; Henry Winston, "Against Apologists for Imperialism, Zionism, Racism," Anti-Semitism and Zionism, First Printing, 1987, International Publishers)

Also posted on the Central Valley Communists blog!

Racism: Instrument of Capitalist Class Rule, Weapon of Big Business

2009-01-14T15:25:00.001-08:00

The United States of America has it’s first African-American president, Barack Obama, but we ain’t "overcome" the terror of racism yet. Racism is a weapon of capitalists to split the working class and produce superprofits. Working class African-Americans are the prime victims of the scourge of racism. American monopoly capitalism, rotten to the core, kicks working class Black people in the teeth.

V.I. Lenin’s words ring true today: "Shame on America for the plight of the (African-Americans)!!" Economic crisis, the loss of manufacturing jobs and racism in employment, wages, education and healthcare deals the heaviest blows to working class African-Americans. Capitalist robbery in the form of wage differentials cost Black workers over $275 billion in income every year. The Black median family income is about half of whites. 50% of young Black men are part of the growing army of the unemployed. Poverty, spreading like a plague, stalks the Black community. 1/3 of African Americans live in poverty and 53% live in starvation conditions. Black women, especially mothers, triply exploited and oppressed--as women, as workers and as Black folks--bear the brunt of the rotting capitalist society. There is one law for the capitalist class and another for the working class. The imprisonment rate for Black men is higher in the US than in South Africa. And, to add to the outrages caused by the obsolete capitalist system, "monopoly (capital), " as Black militant and Communist Henry Winston said, "ceaselessly generates racist ideology to, as (Karl) Marx put it, ’deform’ the class struggle." (Facts cited in Victor Perlo’s Economics of Racism II; Winston, Class, Race and Black Liberation, 1977, International Publishers)

"Historically, " Gus Hall, the Marxist-Leninist former leader of the Communist Party of the United States said, "racism in this country originated with slavery. Only with a racist ideology, bigotry and prejudice, could the slaveholders attempt to justify and rationalize such a monstrous, inhuman institution. Today the basic cause of racism is monopoly capital--the giant corporations that dominate the economy, the government, the media and educational institutions of our country. It is the corporations who mainly benefit from racism--who maintain it, stir it up, and use it for making huge super-profits and to divide and rule." (Gus Hall, Basics, 1980, International Publishers)

Gus Hall exposed that "the corporations make billions each year by paying artificially low wages to racially oppressed workers." This holds down the wages of all workers, including the white working class. Hall, a founder of the Steelworkers union, gave an example: "In a plant, racism is used to pit one group of workers against another. It is an instrument of dividing the trade union and labor movements and to hold back the whole working class movement. It (racism) is an instrument of (capitalist) class rule. Racism is a weapon of big business." (Gus Hall, Basics, 1980, International Publishers)

(V.I. Lenin’s words ring true today: "Shame on America for the plight of the (African-Americans)!!")
White working class people are also major losers from racism against Black and Latino workers. Racism, an instrument of rule for the parasitic capitalist class, lowers the wages and living conditions of the white working class. Capitalism, a system of legalized robbery of the working class, uses racism as an offensive against the entire proletariat. Victor Perlo, a Communist economist, said that "racism facilitates anti-labor legislation." The South, the "traditional stronghold of racism" has anti-union ’right-to-work’ laws. Adding that racism is linked to blood-stained Wall Street imperialism abroad, Perlo says, "Racism favors militarism and aggression." And the scourge of racism, a weapon of the capitalist class against working class unity, is connected to the exploiter class’ wringing of extra profits from workers at home. "Racism (and anti-Communism), " explains Perlo, "have been the main political weapons used by reaction to divert, weaken, or wholly eliminate the positive social directions chartered by New Deal reform policies." Racism, a tool of big business, attacks the entire working class’ right to work at living wages, with unions, good education and medical services, decent housing. (Victor Perlo, Economics of Racism USA, Third Printing, 1980)

"Marxism-Leninism shows that racism is an obstacle to class unity, " said Henry Winston, a former Black Marxist-Leninist with the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA). And he was exactly right that both "white and Black workers have a material stake in removing this obstacle to progress." Karl Marx hit the nail on the head way back in 1867: "Labor cannot emancipate itself in the white skin where in the black it is branded." White workers have a heavy, special responsibility in the fight against racism, in the struggle to wipe out every form of material and social inequality. In the United States, as Winston pointed out, this is a "Marxist-Leninist principle." (Henry Winston, Class, Race and Black Liberation, 1977, International Publishers; Karl Marx, Capital)

We need to fight back! The government should take over and nationalize businesses who discriminate! Hire Blacks in proportion to their numbers in an area’s population! No free speech for racists! Make all racist propaganda and actions a felony! Slash the military budget! End imperialist war and occupation! Pass a law against layoffs! Jobs or Income Now! Nationalize basic industries, tax the rich and create a public works program! Wage War on Poverty, Not the Poor! For an independent working class political party that will fight racism! Gus Hall expresses the Communist attitude: "taking on monopoly capital is a big job. But there’s no way around it. Without an all out united fightback against the monopolies there’s no way the problems can be solved." (Gus Hall, Basics, 1980, International Publishers)

The working class must fight racism tooth and nail today. But only socialism will completely eliminate racism, national oppression and discrimination. Socialism and the dictatorship of the proletariat destroys the roots of racism and holds down the chauvinist beasts. And, as the great Communist William Z. Foster said, "The (African-American) people will be the greatest gainers under socialism" because of the super-exploitation, monstrous oppression and brazen outrages that they suffer under capitalism. (William Z. Foster, The Negro People in American History, 1954, International Publishers)

What a Communist Party is Good For

2009-01-05T16:59:00.000-08:00

Gus Hall, the Marxist-Leninist former leader of the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA), hit the nail on the head in Our Nation's Crisis and How to Solve It: "Today life confirms more vividly than ever the need for a Marxist-Leninist Party. Only such a Party is a truly viable instrument of progress and socialism." A Soviet book said that "the Party's role is particularly great in the imperialist era where the socialist revolution becomes a direct, practical task. (V. Afanasyev, Marxist Philosophy)

The Marxist-Leninist Party is the organizer and leader of the proletariat's class struggle. Stalin called the Party "the political leader of the working class." Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, in the "Communist Manifesto", theoretically substantiated the Marxist party's vanguard role. A Marxist-Leninist Party, the advanced, conscious and organized detachment of the working class, is capable of being the vanguard of the proletariat because it wields the weapon of Marxist-Leninist theory and applies it to the world. The highest form of proletarian class organization, the Party gives leadership to the working class' struggle and combines all of it's forms into an assault on capitalism. Without the leading vanguard role of a Marxist-Leninist Communist Party, socialism cannot be won.

Communists bring Communist consciousness to the working class and fight for the purity of the Marxist-Leninist world outlook. "The Party constantly develops the people's socialist consciousness and protects the working class from the influence of corrupting bourgeois ideology; the Party wages an implacable struggle against any attempt to falsify or 'revise' Marxism. It develops Marxist theory in the light of the latest scientific achievements and the practical experience of society." (V. Afanasyev, Marxist Philosophy)

(V.I. Lenin: We need an "organization of revolutionaries.")
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)

Homelessness Stalks the Land of Minnesota and the USA

2008-12-20T18:54:00.000-08:00

"It is another Great Depression for the American people, " Gus Hall, Marxist-Leninist of the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA), once said. "As hard-won economic cushions like unemployment, welfare and Social Security checks run out, millions are being thrown into the streets, on souplines and in shelters for the hungry and homeless." Economic crisis and poverty, Gus Hall continued, is part of the capitalist pattern "exposed and laid out by Marx, Engels and Lenin." (Gus Hall, Karl Marx: Beacon for Our Times)

More than 13% of the U.S. population, a part of the working class, lives in poverty. Homelessness goes hand in hand with cannibalistic capitalism. It is, Frederick Engels said in 'The Housing Question', a "secondary evil" of capitalism and is linked to the system where capitalists exploit workers. Monopoly ridden American capitalism throws 12 million working class people unto the streets at least once a year. Millions more are "full-time" homeless throughout the entire year, as decaying capitalism forces them to live in shelters, cars or on the streets. (U.S. Census Bureau, 2005)

In Minnesota, 9200-9300 people are homeless. American capitalism’s monstrous treatment of Blacks is exposed in the modern day scourge of homelessness. African-Americans are 3% of Minnesota’s population but are 38% of the homeless. (Wilder Research, 2007)

(Socialism will end homelessness forever because, as V.I. Lenin said, "the best buildings, the palaces, the mansions and manor houses" are "taken away from the bourgeoisie." Socialism would build housing for all.)
30 million working class people, including every homeless man, woman and child, could be housed in the vacant homes and apartments of America tonight! 12 million places sit empty year round and 4 million more luxury homes of wealthy parasites are vacant on any given night. (U.S. Census Bureau, 2005) A proletarian socialist revolution would, as Frederick Engels said, "expropriate the present owners" and "quarter the homeless in their houses!" (Frederick Engels, The Housing Question, 1872)

The American working class needs to stand up, speak out and fight back today against homelessness! We must advance our own demands with protests and mass people's lobbies. Nationalize the construction of new housing! This is the only way to quickly build millions of good housing units with cheap rent (no more than 10% of the renter's income). Nationalizing the construction of new housing also provides employment opportunities to Black people and other workers. Expand HUD and other government housing programs! Expand welfare--with no lifetime limit. Prevent homelessness by standing against layoffs and housing foreclosures and fighting for universal healthcare! One out of five homeless people are employed by capitalists at low wages. We should fight tooth and nail for living wage, not poverty wage, jobs!

Socialism will end homelessness forever because, as V.I. Lenin said, "the best buildings, the palaces, the mansions and manor houses" are "taken away from the bourgeoisie." Socialism would build housing for all. (V.I. Lenin, Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky, 1918)

'Capitalism is the Sick Element in our Society': Marxism and Psychology

2008-12-12T13:23:00.000-08:00

Under capitalism psychology, a science which studies the human mind, embellishes the capitalist system of exploitation. Socialism will strike the capitalist fetters from science and sweep the anti-working-class, racist and national chauvinist, sexist, individualist, subjective and idealist ideologies which poison capitalist psychology into the dustbin of history!

V.I. Lenin's is right: "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." (Lenin, Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism)

"Under capitalism," said William Z. Foster, Marxist-Leninist former leader of the Communist Party of the United States, "science is a slave to the class interests of the bourgeoisie." He continues: "Biology justifies the mad class struggle and war; economics puts an unqualified blessing upon wage slavery; history proves that capitalism is perfected; psychology explains away poverty on the basis of the inferior beings, etc." (William Z. Foster, Towards Soviet America)

On the one hand, capitalism breeds mental health problems. On the other hand, capitalism distorts the science of psychology and infuses it with reactionary bourgeois ideology. Capitalism restrains the scientific role of psychology by injecting the venom of anti-working-class, racist and national chauvinist, sexist, individualist, subjective and idealist ideologies into psychology. The great Communist Gus Hall was exactly right: "Capitalism is the sick element in our society."

The fight between materialist and idealist philosophy rages in psychology. "The great basic question of all philosophy," Frederick Engels once said, concerns "the relation of thinking and being, spirit and nature." There are "two great camps": idealists and materialists. Those who believe that spirits or our mind is primary to nature are "idealists." Those who regard nature and the material world as primary are materialists. (Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach)

Marxist-Leninists take a side in the struggle between materialism vs. idealism.Lenin wrote: "Marx's philosophy is a consummate philosophical materialism which has provided mankind, and especially the working class, with powerful instruments of knowledge."

Marxism-Leninism's dialectical and historical materialism makes contributions to psychology:

"1. Marxism rejects as invalid and unscientific all theories of intellectual, emotional or behavioral inferiority of race, class, sex or national minority. It emphasizes the crucial importance of studying human development in the concrete reality of its existence, social and individual.

"2. Marxism approaches the human mind and consciousness as a product of the brain and central nervous system...

"3. Marxism stresses the important relationship of the individual to society. The psychology of individuals in the United States must be examined in the context of a class society with a specific--capitalist--superstructure. The effects of the ideological superstructure on the individual’s psychology is of vital significance in psychological study...

"4. Marxism sees the science of psychology as playing an important role in advancing human development...

"5. Marxism emphasizes that psychology and psychiatry are sciences which need to be advanced through careful, meticulous, comprehensive scientific work...

"6. Science is international in scope and requires the best efforts of scientists in all countries for full progress...

"7. Marxism believes that science advances through struggle, both scientific and social. (Struggle can expose false theories, correct one-sidedness and expose racist and reactionary ideology under the guise of scientific psychological theories.)

""8. Marxism believes that a socialist society can produce great changes in people’s psychological health and welfare. The provision of full, comprehensive, available, free health and mental health care is guaranteed under socialism. Likewise, the guarantee of employment, social security, education, equal opportunity, facilities for working mothers, equal pay, and an ever-expanding economic and social system provide psychological security for people under socialism." (Joseph Nahem, Psychology and Psychiatry Today: A Marxist View, 1981, International Publishers)

"Socialism," William Z. Foster said, "strikes the fetters from science." Science has the freest development under socialism because it isn't misused to defend the exploitation of another class. Contrary to the bourgeois slanders, the emergence of socialism in the Soviet Union showed the world that psychology can be made to be humane and fully scientific!

Jobs or Income Now!

2008-12-07T13:44:00.000-08:00

"The forest of uplifted arms demanding work becomes ever thicker, while the arms themselves become ever thinner."--Karl Marx, "Wage-Labor and Capital"

The United States is bleeding jobs. The latest (Dec. 5, 2008) unemployment figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) show that 533,000 jobs were lost in November. 1.9 million proletarians have lost their jobs this year. Black and Latino working class people are hit the hardest. Capitalism, as Karl Marx pointed out long ago, spreads mass pauperization. The army of the unemployed grows. Economic crisis and poverty, Gus Hall boldly said, is part of the bourgeois pattern "exposed and laid out by Marx, Engels and Lenin."

"The capitalist class," the Communist economist Victor Perlo noted, "has always needed a reserve army of unemployed." V.I. Lenin was right on the mark: "An industrial reserve army of labor is an indispensable attribute of the capitalist economy." Unemployment is a weapon against labor to drive down wages. In times of economic crisis, capitalists lay off workers and impose speed up on workers with jobs. The Soviet Union abolished unemployment. "Not only was there no joblessness in the U.S.S.R.," Hall wrote, "but there was full employment without racism or discriminatory practices."

The working class needs to stand up, speak out and fight back! We require class struggle picketlines, protests and mass people's lobbies that demand Jobs or Income NOW! We must battle for a federal law against layoffs. For a public works program which can provide jobs. Money should be spent to create jobs and rebuild America, not wage imperialist war and occupation. Unemployment insurance and food stamps also need to be extended--with no exclusion of workers on strike.

(V.I. Lenin: 'Only struggle educates the exploited class. Only struggle discloses to it the magnitude of its own power, widens its horizon, enhances its abilities, clarifies its mind, forges its will.')
Gus Hall, the Marxist-Leninist former leader of the Communist Party of the United States, put it squarely: "It's time to demand that People Come Before Profits!"

In order to turn the economy around and prevent layoffs, the working class must fight to nationalize basic industries--let the proletariat call the shots! We also need to raise our voices for the 111th Congress to pass the Employee Free Choice Act, a law which would make it easier for laborers to form and join a union in order to bargain for better wages, benefits and working conditions. Tax the Rich.

Only socialism will finally end unemployment forever. The day approaches when American workers will turn to socialism and completely eliminate joblessness. Socialism will be, William Z. Foster of the Communist Party of the USA of yesteryear eloquently declared, the "climax" of "the everyday struggles of the workers." And Foster is right that "the time will come when the victorious toilers will build a monument to Lenin in New York." But in order to win this society without exploitation, Marxist theory must, as V.I. Lenin taught in What Is To Be Done?, be brought to the working class. We need a vanguard Marxist-Leninist Party and a proletarian revolution!

Revisionism vs. the Vanguard Role of the Marxist-Leninist Party

2008-12-02T16:17:00.000-08:00

Revisionist falsification of, and attacks on, the need for a Marxist-Leninist Party and its leading vanguard role come fast and furious. Gus Hall, Marxist-Leninist former leader of the Communist Party of the USA, didn't tolerate the revisionist assault: "we have to fight for the concept, and for the absolute need of a revolutionary working class party in the ranks of workers." (Gus Hall, Capitalism on the Skids to Oblivion)

And V.I. Lenin, anti-revisionist to the core, taught that "by educating a workers' party, Marxism educates the vanguard of the proletariat, capable of assuming power and of leading the whole people to socialism, of directing and organizing the new order, of being the teacher, guide and leader of all the toiling and exploited in the task of building up their social life without the bourgeoisie and against the bourgeoisie." (Lenin, State and Revolution, 1917)

The Soviet book Right-Wing Revisionism Today rightly says: "The leading role of the communist party in socialist revolution comes naturally from the leading role of the working class in the revolutionary process, as scientifically established by Marxism-Leninism."

Stalin rightly said of a Communist Party in Foundations of Leninism: "The Party is the vanguard of the working class." He continued: "The Party is the advanced organized detachment of the working class. The Party is the highest form of class organization of the proletariat. The Party is the political leader of the working class." The Party is "an instrument in the hands of the proletariat for achieving the dictatorship (of the proletariat)" and for "consolidating and expanding the dictatorship (of the proletariat" once socialism is won.(Stalin, Foundations Of Leninism, 1924)

"To deny it (the Marxist-Leninist Party) the leading role," the Soviet book "Right-Wing Revisionism Today" says, "is to decapitate the socialist revolution."

But revisionism within the revolutionary Communist party of the working class ultimately means the liquidation of the party.

"By revisionism," a Soviet book points out, "Lenin understood an opportunist trend alien to Marxism and socialism that existed within the revolutionary party of the working class." Under the guise of "creative non dogmatic Marxism", revisionism rejects the fundamentals of Marxist-Leninist theory, replacing the basic principles with bourgeois and petty-bourgeois ideas. (Right-Wing Revisionism Today, 1976, Progress Publishers)

Otto Kuusinen wrote in Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism that revisionism aims to liquidate the Party or transform it into a reformist organization. He said that Lenin's teachings on the Party was one of the revisionist's chief targets. And, whether it's openly stated or concealed, "the theoretical and practical efforts of the revisionists are in the final analysis always subordinated to their attempt to liquidate the Party or to transform it into a reformist organization."

The Soviet book smashes through the web of revisionism: "The surrender of a class and scientific (Marxist-Leninist) position in the activity of a Communist Party invariably leads to that Party's liquidation." (Right-Wing Revisionism Today, 1976, Progress Publishers)

Gus Hall, Marxist-Leninist former leader of the Communist Party of the United States, lived through the Earl Browder debacle and wrote often about liquidationism. Gus Hall once stated, "The most dangerous liquidationist trend is not disbanding the Party structure, but eliminating the Communist essence in our mass work." (Gus Hall, "Opportunism--the Destructive Germ," Political Affairs, May 1979)

"Middle Class" Workers

2008-11-28T15:04:00.000-08:00

Victor Perlo, who headed the Communist Party USA’s economics commission and launched the People’s Weekly World People Before Profits column, wrote: “[An] important weapon of capitalists in their attempt to split the working class is to define ‘working class’ away, so to speak.”

He once made the point: the capitalists attempt to divide the working class by confusing “class” with “income.” He said "the term ’middle class’ as used by the capitalists, actually refers to people in a supposed ’middle income group.’" (Victor Perlo, Superprofits and Crises, 1988, International Publishers)

Perlo commented, in Superprofits and Crises, that, “‘Middle-class’ workers are portrayed as those whose historic status as wage workers has been so improved that they can plausibly be considered to have advanced out of the working class proper and into the ‘middle class.’”

The science of Marxism-Leninism teaches us to look for the economic and class interests behind ideas, institutions and events in our society. V.I. Lenin, who applied Marxism to the struggles of the working class, cut through the smokescreen: “The fundamental feature that distinguishes classes is the place they occupy in social production, and, consequently, the relation in which they stand to the means of production.”

(V.I. Lenin painted by Brodsky)
The Marxist-Leninist analysis teaches us that what distinguishes classes is not differences in income, habits or mentality, but their relation to society’s means of production.

And the middle class is the small capitalists, owners of means of production, who occupy an intermediate position in between the class of workers and big monopoly capital.

Marxism-Leninism teaches us to oppose ideas that serve the capitalist class against the working class to overcome the power of the capitalists and build socialist society. We need a fighting party of the working class, a Communist Party. V.I. Lenin said "we see in the independent, uncompromisingly Marxist party of the revolutionary proletariat the sole pledge of socialism's victory and the road to victory that is most free from vacillations." (Lenin, A Militant Agreement for the Uprising)

Fight for the Employee Free Choice Act!

2008-11-24T13:58:00.000-08:00

V.I. Lenin said, in What Is To Be Done?, that Frederick Engels distinguished three basic forms of the proletarian struggle: economic, political and theoretical.

The class struggle in the economic arena has sharpened up with the fight for the passage of the Employee Free Choice Act!! One of the AFL-CIO's top priorities in the 111th Congress, the Employee Free Choice Act would make it easier for working class people to form and join a union in order to bargain for better wages, benefits and working conditions. It would establish stronger penalties against bosses for violation of employee rights when workers seek to form a union and during contract negotiations.

Union workers, especially Black and Latino workers, earn higher wages and get more benefits than workers who don't have a voice on their job with a union. And Frederick Engels was right that unions, broad organizations of workers, are "the real class organizations of the proletariat, in which the latter wages its day-to-day struggle against capital." (Engels, Letter to Bebel, 1875)

(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)
Communists join the fight for the passage of the Employee Free Choice Act!! Gus Hall, the Marxist-Leninist former leader of the Communist Party USA once said: "great weight falls on the union and economic questions--jobs, wages, relief, union rights, strikes...Communists must be resolute, outstanding fighters for these." (Gus Hall, Working Class USA, 1987, International Publishers)

Karl Marx and Engels advocated in the Communist Manifesto that "Communists fight for the attainment of the immediate aims, for the enforcement of the momentary interests of the working class." Communists must, V.I. Lenin said, "develop the workers' class consciousness by assisting them in the fight for their most vital needs" and in promoting workers' organization.

But the economic struggle will not abolish capitalism by itself. It must be linked with the political struggle to overthrow capitalist rule. And Lenin called for smashing "the ideological enslavement of the workers by the bourgeoisie" by bringing Communist consciousness to the working class. He stressed this repeatedly in What Is To Be Done?. We need a fighting Marxist-Leninist party, the highest form of proletarian class organization, to smash capitalism and build socialism.

What you can do to join the Fight for the Employee Free Choice Act:

Sign the AFL-CIO's online petition at AFL-CIO Online Petition to Fight for the Passage of EFCA.

Get the word out on your blog or myspace page! Go to the AFL-CIO's site: AFL-CIO on EFCA for more information and to find web buttons that you can post!

Read and Reread Marx, Engels, Lenin

2008-11-16T13:28:00.001-08:00

Communist pioneer Frederick Engels put it squarely: "socialism, having become a science, must be pursued as a science, that is, it must be studied." And we need to read and reread the writings of Karl Marx, Frederick Engels and V.I. Lenin.

"To understand Marxism," Howard Selsam explained, "there is no better way than to go to the original sources--to read what Marx, Engels and Lenin actually wrote." (Howard Selsam, main editor, Dynamics of Social Change: A Reader in Marxist Social Science, 1983, Fifth Printing, International Publishers)

Studying and rereading the classics by Karl Marx, Frederick Engels and V.I. Lenin will prove that Lenin is right: "the Marxist doctrine is omnipotent because it is true!" (Lenin, Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism, 1913)

(V.I. Lenin: "without revolutionary theory, there can be no revolutionary movement." - What Is To Be Done?, 1902)

Gus Hall, the Marxist-Leninist former leader of the Communist Party of the United States, said in Working Class USA that our study of Marxism will be deepened by rereading Marx, Engels and Lenin. Struggle and study must be combined!

Religion is a 'Buttress for Capitalism'

2008-11-11T10:56:00.000-08:00

American capitalist reaction whips up religious fervor and attacks on materialism and science, especially evolution, come fast and furious. Brazen religious reactionaries split the working class and divert attention away from capitalist robbery of the workers. These religious sharks carry on a fanatical war to throw women back to the Dark Ages, not fight Wall Street profits.

Not for nothing did William Z. Foster, the Marxist-Leninist former leader of the Communist Party of the United States, say that religion is "a buttress for capitalism." (William Z. Foster, The Twilight of World Capitalism)

Idealism and materialism are locked in mortal combat. Frederick Engels once wrote that idealists are "those who assert the primacy of spirit to nature," while materialists, including Marxist-Leninists, "regard nature as primary." (Frederick Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach, 1886)

And, V.I Lenin said, the fight against religious idealism is "subordinated" to a Marxist's "basic task--the development of the class struggle of the exploited masses against their exploiters." (Lenin, The Attitude of the Workers' Party to Religion, 1909)

In this, we can unite with religious folks for working class struggle and the fight for social progress. Gus Hall said this in Karl Marx: Beacon for our Times. And none other than V.I. Lenin pointed out that religious workers should be recruited to join the Marxist Party! On the other hand, religion can not set the terms of the struggle.

"Religion," a Soviet writer pointed out, "is a distorted, fantastic reflection of reality." Afanasyev continues by quoting Frederick Engels: "...All religion, however, is nothing but the fantastic reflection in men’s minds of those external forces which control their daily life, a reflection in which the terrestrial forces assume the form of supernatural forces, Engels wrote." (Engels, Anti-Duhring)

(V.I. Lenin: 'We must combat religion--that is the ABC of all materialism and consequently of Marxism')
"Religion," Afanasyev said, "arose only at a definite stage in society’s development. The origin of religion can be traced to ignorance of the true causes of natural and social phenomena, to the awe-inspiring power of nature’s spontaneous forces and social oppression.

"The crux of religion is belief in the supernatural. Being dependent on nature’s forces, men endowed them with supernatural properties, made them into gods and spirits, devils and angels...

"(Then came the rise of classes and exploitation and) the working people sought in religion salvation from the suffering inflicted on them by exploiting society.

"It (religion) is an instrument of spiritual oppression, ideological enslavement of the working people, a means of strengthening the rule of the exploiters....Being an element of the superstructure, religion in an antagonistic class society seeks to reinforce the economic basis on which it rests, to strengthen the exploiting system....

"(With stories about a better life in Heaven), religion diverts the working people from the...revolutionary struggle against exploitation and for a just, genuinely humane social system...

"The reactionary role of religion is also manifested in its deep hostility to science, to a scientific world outlook....Science and religion are irreconcilable. Science gives man true knowledge of the world and the laws of its development. It helps him master natural and social forces and to organize production. Religion distorts the essence of the world, gives the wrong interpretation of it, stultifies the mind and will of man and deprives him of confidence in the triumph of science and progress." (Afanasyev, Marxist Philosophy, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow)

"The class struggle," William Z. Foster said, "and the development of the revolutionary movement of the workers, guided by Marxist dialectical materialism, (will) weaken the grip of religion upon the people's minds." (William Z. Foster, The Twilight of World Capitalism)

Communists Led the First National Demonstration During the Great Depression!

2008-11-08T14:46:00.000-08:00

Many folks are comparing the capitalist crisis of today with the Great Depression, the great economic crisis of 1929-1933. It’s worth a look at those days.

The Communist Party of the United States, as the vanguard of the proletariat, led the first national protest against unemployment during the Great Depression on March 6, 1930. They organized working class folks on Main Street against Wall Street. In Minneapolis, Minnesota, Gus Hall, the Marxist-Leninist former leader of the Communist Party, and the Communists led the mass struggles.

Written about the Great Depression, William Z. Foster's words ring with clarity today. He wrote that "with the outbreak of the economic crisis the bourgeoisie immediately embarked upon the same course that it had following all previous crises; namely, to unload the burden of the economic breakdown upon the shoulders of the workers and poorer farmers." (William Z. Foster, History of the Communist Party of the United States, 1952, International Publishers)

The Great Economic Crisis of 1929-1933 meant Fight Back! Carl Winter, Communist leader of the Unemployed Councils in NY and one of the organizers of the National Hunger Marches of the 1930s said that: "The first nationwide organized protest (on March 6, 1930) against the burdens of the economic crisis, being shouldered by the working people of the United States, was organized upon the initiative of the Communist Party." (Carl Winter, "Unemployment Struggles of the Thirties," in Bart, Highlights of a Fighting History, 1979, International Publishers)

(William Z. Foster: The great demonstration of March 6, 1930 was 'a magnificent demonstration of the Leninist leading role of the Communist Party')
William Z. Foster, Marxist-Leninist former leader of the Communist Party of the United States preceding Gus Hall, said "With relatively few members, but with a clear head and a stout heart, the (Communist) Party boldly organized the famished unemployed...

"March 6, 1930 (was) the historic national unemployment demonstration, led by the Communists. The Communist Party, the Young Communist League, and the Trade Union Unity League threw their united forces into the preparations. A million leaflets were circulated and innumerable preliminary meetings were organized. The national demonstration was held under the auspices of the T.U.U.L. The central demand was for unemployment relief and insurance, with stress upon demands for the Negro (African-American) people, against wage cuts, and against fascism and war.

"Among the mobilizing slogans were 'Work or Wages!' and 'Don't Starve--Fight!'...

"The March 6th turnout of the workers was immense--110,000 in New York; 100,000 in Detroit; 50,000 in Chicago; 50,000 in Pittsburgh; 40,000 in Milwaukee; 30,00 in Philadelphia; 25,000 in Cleveland; 20,000 in Youngstown, with similar huge meetings in Los Angeles, Boston, San Francisco, Seattle, Denver, and other cities all over the country. All told, 1,250,000 workers demonstrated against the outrageous conditions of hunger and joblessness. In the demonstrations, Negro (African-American) workers were a pronounced factor...

"Under the leadership of the Communists, the unemployed had stepped forth as a major political force. The great demonstration at once made the question of unemployed relief and insurance a living political issue in the United States. It showed that the masses were not going to starve tamely, as the bosses and reactionary union leaders had thought they would...It was a magnificent demonstration of the Leninist leading role of the Communist Party." (William Z. Foster, History of the Communist Party of the United States, 1952, International Publishers)

The national demonstration inspired many hundreds of class struggle actions of the unemployed across the country. And Gus Hall, the Marxist-Leninist former leader of the Communist Party USA, said that "in Minneapolis, (MN) we Communists led the mass struggles of the unemployed." (Gus Hall, Working Class USA, 1987, International Publishers)

'We Have to Hold the Fire under Obama’s Feet!'

2008-11-06T15:56:00.000-08:00

(Note: The popular phrase "to hold the fire under someone's feet" means simply to put pressure on someone and hold them accountable. The use of the phrase in this article is not meant in any way, shape or form to condone violence against Obama or anyone else.)

Barack Obama, in a victory over racism, will be the first Black president in the White House. State-monopoly capitalism and Wall Street imperialism have not been smashed. Nor has racism and white chauvinism been eliminated in the U.S.A. The struggle continues. Hours after the election, anti-war activists in the Twin Cities, Minnesota responded with a protest on November 5 demanding that U.S. imperialism get out of Iraq and Afghanistan and opposing war against Iran. The rally was initiated by Women Against Military Madness. Roger Cuthbertson, a long time activist, hit the nail on the head when he said "we have to hold the fire under Obama’s feet!"

Fighting sprinkling rain, wind and U.S. imperialism, leaders and activists in the peace, union and Communist movements stood boldly with anti-war signs on "the peace bridge" crossing the Mississippi River. Hundreds of cars passed by and members of ATU 1005 waved while driving buses. One young sister at the rally passionately said that U.S. troops need to be pulled out of Iraq because "Enough is enough!!" And her friend, a Latina woman, added in a quiet but determined voice, "Troops out NOW! The struggle continues."

A Black member of the Gus Hall Action Club clenched his fist in the air as he held a Communist sign with the slogan "Say No To Imperialism!"

The system of state-monopoly capitalism and imperialism breeds wars for maximum corporate profit. Imperialism is the breeder of crises and war. Imperialism is, as V.I. Lenin taught, "the monopoly stage of capitalism."

(V.I. Lenin: Imperialism is 'moribund capitalism.')
"Imperialism," Gus Hall, the Marxist-Leninist former leader of the Communist Party USA said, "cannot be separated from capitalism." Hall continued: "Imperialism is an ugly monster, spawned and bred in the incubator of capitalism, nurtured by the greed for private profits, fattened on the exploitation of the millions, gorged on the blood, sweat and tears of millions of people in all the continents." (Gus Hall, Imperialism Today, 1973, International Publishers)

The struggle continues and Wall Street imperialism can be fought! We must forge a militant anti-monopoly coalition, with the working class at its core. And we have to, as Roger Cuthbertson said, "hold the fire under Obama’s feet!"

A new social system must be built out of the capitalist welter of war, crises and exploitation of the working class. Only socialism will finally end war forever. And William Z. Foster, a former leader of the Communist Party USA, is right that "the time will come when the victorious toilers will build a monument to Lenin in New York." (William Z. Foster, Toward Soviet America, 1932, International Publishers)

Stalin: 'His Name Stands Alongside the Names of Marx, Engels and Lenin'

2008-11-04T17:19:00.000-08:00

We need a historical and objective analysis of Stalin from a working-class and Marxist-Leninist position. Proletarians must reject "condemnations" from anti-communist bourgeois propaganda, Trotskyist or revisionist Big Lies and slanders. Yep, Generalissimo Stalin made mistakes later in his life. But, overall, he was a "left" Soviet leader and part of the anti-revisionist tendency. Our era's Communist Party of the Russian Federation (КПРФ) proudly declares: "the memory of Stalin will live forever!"

(’Thank you, dear Stalin, for our happy childhood!’)

Here’s the stellar Marxist-Leninist past head of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), William Z. Foster, assessing Stalin after his tragic passing:

"On March 5, 1953, in his 74th year, Joseph V. Stalin died as the result of a stroke suffered during his sleep a few days before. This ended over half a century of revolutionary struggle on the part of one of the greatest fighters ever produced by the world’s working class. His death was a tremendous loss to the Soviet people and to the international movement for peace and freedom.

"Stalin was a major theoretician. Perhaps his greatest theoretical work was on the national question, on which he was the world’s leading expert. His epic ideological battle with the Trotsky-Zinoviev-Bukharin wreckers also constitutes a Marxist classic. And just on the eve of his death he gave a last example of his profound capacity as an economist by working out the basic economic laws of capitalism and socialism, in his last work, ’Economic Problems of Socialism in the U.S.S.R.’

"Stalin was a magnificent organizer. His building of the Communist Party, the Soviets, and other immense mass organizations of the Soviet people was a real masterwork. His leadership of the party in the mobilization of the people for the driving through of the successive five-year plans, with their building of industry and collectivization of farming, was organizational work beyond compare.

"Stalin, too, was a militant fighting leader of the masses. His whole life was one relentless battle against the enemies of socialism, both within and outside the party. He was a tower of strength as a military commander in the civil war of 1918-1920, and in leading the Soviet people to victory over the Hitler barbarians in 1941-1945, he displayed a peerless fighting spirit and outstanding military genius. During the Cold War, the arrogant capitalist imperialists also came to dread the indomitable spirit and brilliant diplomacy of Stalin. He was indeed a man of steel, as his name signified.

"At Stalin’s funeral, Malenkov said of this brilliant and courageous leader: ’Comrade Stalin, the great thinker of our epoch, creatively developed the teaching of Marxism-Leninism in the new historical conditions. The name of Stalin rightly stands alongside the names of the greatest men in human history--Marx, Engels, Lenin.’" (William Z. Foster, History of the Three Internationals, International Publishers)

This excellent biography by the Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute was once reprinted by International Publishers and distributed by the CPUSA:

Stalin

Industrial Workers: 'Front Rankers in the Class Struggle'

2008-10-30T14:57:00.000-07:00

A comrade recently said: "I agree with you that industrial workers are the front rankers in the class struggle. However, I would extend "industrial" in modern times to include the service industry."

My response: Service workers are not industrial workers. Service workers are not the same as steelworkers, autoworkers, workers in mass industry and transport, etc. Service workers are definitely part of the working class and they can be militant unionists. But Henry Winston, an African-American militant with the Communist Party USA of yesteryear, made the point 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." And industrial workers are the "front rankers in the class struggle." (Henry Winston, Class, Race and Black Liberation, 1977, International Publishers)

Gus Hall, a great Marxist-Leninist and former leader of the CPUSA, raised the question sharply: "mass production workers are to the working class what monopoly is to the capitalist class. They are the sector of special importance for the working class and for the class struggle as a whole." (Gus Hall, Working Class USA, 1987, International Publishers)

Henry Winston explained that "the basic industrial sector has a common interest with the majority of wage workers but it does not have an identical place with them in the system of capitalist exploitation and the struggle against it." Industrial workers are "the greatest direct producers of surplus value, the source of capitalist profit." Industrial workers occupy the central position within the capitalist system. (Henry Winston, Class, Race and Black Liberation, 1977, International Publishers)

(Henry Winston: Industrial workers are the "front rankers in the class struggle.")
Jobs in the service industry are flourishing as industrial plants have been closing. "The working class is changing," Gus Hall declared in 1987, but "none of the changes in the profile of the working class diminishes the role of the industrial core." (Gus Hall, Working Class USA, 1987, International Publishers) A core that includes, as Henry Winston noted, many Black "front rankers."

"It is these 'front rankers'," remarked Winston, "who will provide the most consistent leadership in raising the struggle to higher levels." Workers in the industrial sector are "decisive in forging the unity of all the diverse segments of wage workers and in forming an alliance between the workers of hand and brain with all the exploited and oppressed." (Henry Winston, Class, Race and Black Liberation, 1977, International Publishers)

"The (Communist) Party," Winston continues, "places its industrial concentration policy at the center of its strategy. Merging theory with practice, it recruits into its ranks the best fighters among the 'front rankers.' At the same time, it also recruits the most devoted fighters from all other segments of the working class. In this way, the Party plays its role in uniting all detachments of the working class, in representing the interests of the entire class. 'This struggle,' stated Lenin, 'places [leads] the working-class movement onto the high road, and is the certain guarantee of its future success.'" (Henry Winston, Class, Race and Black Liberation, 1977, International Publishers)

The Proletariat Alone is a Really Revolutionary Class

2008-10-27T16:54:00.000-07:00

Brothers and Sisters, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat are the basic classes of capitalist society. The proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class whose mission it is to abolish capitalism and build a classless communist society.

William Z. Foster, the former leader of the Communist Party USA and a great Marxist-Leninist, once said that "The bourgeois contention that there are no classes and no class struggle in the United States is, of course, silly. Here, as in other capitalist countries, are well-defined social classes and a constant struggle is going on between them over the division of the toiler's products and for political control. The class struggle is just as American as Plymouth Rock." (William Z. Foster, Twilight of World Capitalism, 1949)

Years after William Z. Foster penned these words, ideologists from both the right and the left pick up the bludgeon of capitalist ideology to deny the existence of the class struggle and to snort with derision at the working class of the United States. In the 1987 book, Working Class USA, Gus Hall, the leader of the CPUSA after William Z. Foster, penned that "one of the basic theoretical concepts that has of late come under question and suspicion, and is in fact being openly challenged, is the Marxist concept that the working class is the only consistent progressive and revolutionary class in our society." (Gus Hall, Working Class USA, 1987, International Publishers)

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels made no bones about the working class' role. "Of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie today," Marx and Engels declared, "the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class." (Marx and Engels, Communist Manifesto, 1848)

So, who is the working class? Karl Marx and Frederick Engels wrote in a footnote to the Communist Manifesto that the proletariat is "the class of modern wage labourers who, having no means of production of their own, are reduced to selling their labor power in order to live." The proletariat (the working class) is defined not by it's income but by it's relation to the means of production. The exploited class, with it's various income levels, doesn't own the means of production so it is forced to sell their labor-power to a capitalist. And the laboring class isn't the hackneyed stereotypes assigned to it by ideologists of both the right and the "left". Gus Hall pointed out that the working class includes both unionized and unorganized workers, Black folks, women and unemployed people and those on welfare, among others. The American working class is multi-racial, multinational, male-female and young and old but it is united as a class.

But Henry Winston, an African-American militant with the Communist Party USA of yesteryear, made the point that the while all toilers 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." Industrial workers are the "front rankers in the class struggle." He declared that "the basic industrial sector has a common interest with the majority of wage workers but it does not have an identical place with them in the system of capitalist exploitation and the struggle against it." Industrial workers, "the greatest direct producers of surplus value, the source of capitalist profit," occupy the central position within the system. Winston taught that "it is these 'front rankers' who will provide the most consistent leadership in raising the struggle to higher levels." Workers in the industrial sector are "decisive in forging the unity of all the diverse segments of wage workers and in forming an alliance between the workers of hand and brain with all the exploited and oppressed." (Henry Winston, Class, Race and Black Liberation, 1977, International Publishers)

(Henry Winston: Industrial workers are the "front rankers in the class struggle.")
Afanasyev, a Soviet philosopher, put it correctly said in his book Marxist Philosophy:"the bourgeoisie and the proletariat are the basic classes of capitalist society. The bourgeoisie, in quest of profit, exploits the proletariat and this exploitation is intensified as capitalism develops. The worker's labor is increasingly speeded up and he is reduced to a mere appendage of the machine. The proletariat especially suffers from such intrinsic features of capitalism as economic crises, unemployment and predatory wars.

"The working class naturally cannot reconcile itself to all this. The nature of capitalism which robs the worker of the fruits of his labor and the workers position in society impel him to fight the bourgeoisie. The history of capitalist society is therefore the history of struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. This struggle is law-governed and is the primary source of capitalist development. The struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie grows especially keen in the epoch of imperialism when the economic and political contradictions of capitalism become extremely acute.

"It is the proletariat's mission to abolish capitalism and build a classless communist society, for no other class is consistently revolutionary.

"The bourgeoisie was only revolutionary when it fought the fuedal lords for domination in society. But having captured power, it became more and more reactionary, and now its sole aim is to perpetuate exploitation.

"The middle sections, in particular the peasants and artisans who are quite numerous under capitalism, are not revolutionary to the end. They hold no independent position in society and, with the development of capitalism, they become stratified. The majority...are ruined and join the ranks of the proletariat; only a negligible number breaks its way into the capitalist class...

"The intelligentsia (engineers and technicians, doctors, teachers, scientists and others) cannot be consistently revolutionary either. The overwhelming majority of intellectuals are compelled to serve the exploiting classes.

"The proletariat is the only consistently revolutionary class in capitalist society. It is connected with the most progressive form of production, machine industry, and is constantly growing and developing. The very nature of capitalist production helps unite, organize and educate the working class. The workers are deprived of property and have nothing to lose in the struggle. In fighting for its liberation, the proletariat is capable of organizing and leading all other working people who share its hatred for the capitalist system. By emancipating itself, it emancipates all other working people and abolishes forever exploitation of man by man. On gaining victory, it returns to the working people everything they produce, eliminating the greatest social injustice--a social system in which a handful of oppressors appropriate the fruits of labor of the millions." (Afanasyev, Marxist Philosophy, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow)

Marxism-Leninism Has Not Grown Old and Never Will!

2008-10-20T20:18:00.000-07:00

Some folks wrongly say that Marxism-Leninism is "outdated." Boris N. Ponomarev says in the book Marxism-Leninism: A Flourishing Science that:

"Scientific socialism, Marxism-Leninism, is the only basis on which the present deep crisis of capitalist society can be analyzed, and the ways out of the impasse into which imperialism and its ruling element has driven its countries, can be determined...

"Those who maintain that Marxism-Leninism is 'outdated' and that the fundamental ideas of Marx, Engels and Lenin are 'incompetent' may be asked: whose teaching is it that provided and continues to provide solutions to all the agonizing problems facing millions upon millions of people in the capitalist world...

"Why are capitalist countries continually gripped by economic crises, who do the poor there grow poorer and the rich grow richer, why is there unemployment, with millions of people deprived of jobs? Why is ruin the lot of millions of farmers? What are the causes of the first and second world wars? Why are militarization and the arms race being intensified in capitalist countries, and preparations are under way for new wars?

"No bourgeois or petty-bourgeois theory has been able to answer these vital and burning questions. Marxism-Leninism is the only teaching that gives substantiated scientific answers to these and other problems of our time, and shows the ways and means of resolving them." (Boris N. Ponomarev, Marxism-Leninism: A Flourishing Science, 1979, International Publishers)

(Stalin: ’Leninism is Marxism of the era of imperialism and the proletarian revolution. Leninism is the theory and tactics of the proletarian revolution in general, the theory and tactics of the dictatorship of the proletariat in particular. Leninism is the further development of Marxism.’)

Protest to Save Main Street Not Wall Street!

2008-10-16T19:35:00.000-07:00

Protest to Save Main Street Not Wall Street!

Saturday, October 25 at 3:00 p.m.

Federal Reserve Bank, Minneapolis, 90 Hennepin Ave. downtown (by corner of Hennepin Avenue and N. 1st St.--Near South Side of Hennepin Ave. Bridge)

Initiated by Gus Hall Action Club, a Marxist-Leninist Communist club, but you don’t need to be a Communist to attend!!

Life becomes worse for the working class as capitalists intensify their drive against our living standards. But the U.S. government's given more than $700 billion dollars to bail out billionaires and bankers!! This swindle gives almost unlimited authority for doling out billions to Wall Street fat cats. This bailout bill is not geared to help working-class homeowners, workers in debt or our entire working class. Instead, it shifts the burden of the capitalist’s financial crisis unto the backs of the working class. The bailout of the banks is a bailout of the crisis-ridden system of capitalism. William Z. Foster of the Communist Party USA of yesteryear pointed out that capitalism is "legalized robbery of the working class." Financial crisis and the bailing out of billionaires and bankers is not capitalism "gone wrong." Bailing out bankers is not "socialism." It is the fullest expression of what capitalism really is.

The history of capitalism shows that the capitalist ruling class always tries to throw the burden of economic crisis unto the shoulders of the working class. We need a class struggle program to wage an organized fight to save Main Street not Wall Street. The demands of our protest on October 25 are: Bail Out Main Street Not Wall Street! Finance Projects Needed by the Working Class! Tax the Rich! For a Moratorium on Home Foreclosures and Evictions! Protect Workers’ Pensions and Savings! For a Law Against Plant Shutdowns! Nationalize Industry to Prevent Job Loss! Freeze all Workplace Closings and Job Layoffs! Stop Cuts in the Budgets of Social Programs! Slash the Military Budget!

Please feel free to make a sign with some of these slogans and bring it to the rally at 3:00 on Saturday, Oct. 25 at the Federal Reserve Bank, Minneapolis, 90 Hennepin Ave. downtown (by corner of Hennepin Avenue and N. 1st St.)!

Socialism is the final answer to the exploitation, terrors and hardship of rotting capitalism, breeder of crises and war. See our blog post: FAQ: What is Socialism?

(Karl Marx: 'In crises there breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurdity--the epidemic of overproduction.')

FAQ: Socialism and Crime

2008-10-13T13:23:00.000-07:00

Some preliminary words by the Marxist-Leninists Gus Hall and Henry Winston, former militants with the Communist Party USA, followed by a a picture by a prisoner of Black heroes behind bars, and then thoughts on crime and capitalism and socialism by William Z. Foster:

Our working class communities are all too often torn apart by anti-social crime. William Z. Foster once said that "capitalism, by its very nature, is a prolific breeder of crime." And Gus Hall, the former leader of the Communist Party USA, said that "Street crime--assaults on the property and persons of working and poor people--is a serious crime...

"Crime cannot be excused or justified. However, most street crime has its roots in poverty, hunger, frustration, anger and generations of unemployment...

"While deploring crime in the streets, we have to point the finger at the source of most big city crime--the big landlords and bankers (and) runaway corporations." Gus Hall also said that cuts in social and economic programs goes hand in hand with street crime. "Jobs, education, recreation and cultural centers are the only realistic, effective crime fighters." (Gus Hall, Fighting Racism, 1985, International Publishers)

We must also have an anti-racist approach to abolishing crime. American capitalism's criminal injustice system, with it's prison warehouses for the working class, is permeated by racism. Almost one million African-Americans are behind bars. In the U.S, black people comprise 13% of the population, but constitute half of the country’s prisoners. A tenth of all black men between 20 and 35 are in jail or prison; black workers are incarcerated at over eight times the white rate. We must, to use Henry Winston's words, "challenge the inhuman, racist character of the prison (and policing) system." (Henry Winston, Strategy for a Black Agenda, 1973, International Publishers)

(Picture by Charles Tatum from the Federal Correctional Institution in Sandstone, Minnesota of fighters for Black Liberation.)
William Z. Foster, a Marxist-Leninist former leader of the Communist Party USA, rightly said that:

"Capitalism, by its very nature, is a prolific breeder of crime. It is a system of legalized robbery of the working class. The whole process of capitalist business is a swindle and an armed hold-up. In capitalist society what constitutes crime and what does not is a purely arbitrary distinction. The capitalists do not recognize any line of demarcation for themselves. They do whatever they can 'get away with.' The record of every large fortune and big corporation in this country is smeared with brutal robbery of the workers...

"In a society where each grabs what he can at the expense of the rest, naturally the government offers a wide field of corruption...Such corruption is not a special condition, but of the very tissue of capitalism.

"It is not surprising that in a society where the aim is to get rich by any means, crime of every kind should flourish. Faced by low wages and other impossible economic conditions on the one hand and by the corrupt example of capitalism generally on the other, many naturally take the lives of open crime and try to seize at the point of the gun what the capitalist 'big shots' steal through exploiting the workers, by a corner on the stock exchange, or by corrupting the government. The main difference between their operations is primarily one of dimension. Al Capone is an altogether legitimate child of American capitalism, and it it no accident that he is an object of such widespread admiration...

"Socialism, by putting an end to capitalist exploitation, deals a mortal blow at crime of every description. The economic base of crime is destroyed. The worker is enabled to live and work under the best possible conditions. There is no place for human sharks to prey upon their fellow men. Not only does the abolition of capitalism destroy the basis of the so-called crimes against property, but the revolutionized economic and social conditions, involving an intelligent moral code and effective educational system, also greatly diminishes the 'crimes of passion'...

"Capitalism blames crime upon the individual, instead of upon the bad social conditions which produce it. Hence its treatment of crime is essentially one of punishment." And "capitalist prisons are actually schools of crime...

"Socialist criminology, on the other hand, attacks the bad social conditions. While the American (socialist) government will ruthlessly break up up the...gangs that brazenly infest all American cities and will also give short shrift to grafting politicians, its prison system will be essentially educational in character." (William Z. Foster, Towards Soviet America, 1932, International Publishers)

Soviet Union: Where Workers Had Power

2008-10-09T15:12:00.000-07:00

Written especially for the Central Valley Communists blog:

Gus Hall, the former Marxist-Leninist leader of the Communist Party USA, said that the former Soviet Union was a society where workers had power. Gus Hall considered the Soviet Union as "the most powerful, successful and influential socialist society." He explained the Russian Socialist Revolution in a few words. "In 1917," Hall writes, "the working class of the Soviet Union decided they didn't need the owners who were getting richer while the people got poorer. In fact it was just this class of leeches that held back all social advances for working people. So the working people took over." (Gus Hall, "Where Workers Have Power," Working Class USA, 1987, International Publishers)

William Z. Foster, the Marxist-Leninist leader of the Communist Party USA preceding Hall, pointed out that "the Communist Party (was) the brain and heart and nerves of the Russian Revolution, and so it must be in any proletarian revolution." (William Z. Foster, Toward Soviet America, 1932, International Publishers)

And the ruling capitalist classes of the world freaked out! V.I. Lenin, great Communist leader of the Russian 1917 Socialist Revolution, answered their capitalist slanders of the Soviet Union eloquently. V.I. Lenin said: "for every hundred mistakes which we commit and which the bourgeoisie and their lackeys are dinning into the ears of the world, ten thousand great and heroic deeds are performed." (Lenin, Letter to American Workers, 1918)

In his book, Working Class USA, the American Communist Gus Hall exposes the capitalist lies about the Soviet Union. The former USSR was a society where, Gus Hall stated, "workers (had) power." John Eaton, in Political Economy, notes that: "Socialism is planned production for use on the basis of public ownership of the means of production." Leontyev said that "the building of socialism begins only after state power passes from the hands of the bourgeoisie into the hands of the working class." And socialism in the former USSR, Gus Hall wrote in an essay entitled "Where Workers (Had) Power," brought free education, medical and dental care. Employment was guaranteed and workers were the majority on all government bodies. The socialist economy guaranteed that there was no economic crisis or corporate capitalist profit. Racism and discrimination were outlawed as criminal offenses. Unions were a valued part of socialist society. There had been no unemployment in the Soviet Union since 1930. And all profits from production went to funds to provide for the mass welfare, paid vacations and housing for the Soviet people. (Gus Hall, "Where Workers Have Power," Working Class USA, 1987, International Publishers)

(V.I. Lenin: 'for every hundred mistakes which we commit and which the bourgeoisie and their lackeys are dinning into the ears of the world, ten thousand great and heroic deeds are performed.')

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels taught that communist society had two phases. Socialism, which Karl Marx referred to as "the first phase of communist society" is a transitional stage to highly developed communism, "a higher phase of communist society," where there is a classless social system and full social equality of all members of society. (Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme, 1875)

And socialism, "the first phase of communist society," in the former Soviet Union brought enormous gains to the working class. Gus Hall explained that the working class and unions, not the capitalists, called the shots in the former Soviet Union and socialist countries. "In the socialist countries," Gus Hall said, "workers are their own bosses. They are the real economic and political power. There is no drive for maximum private profits, there are no privately-owned corporations, and no tax shelters inducing companies to close plants and move to more profitable locations leaving human devastation in their wake...

"The basic truth is that it is only in a socialist society that trade unions acquire real political and economic power because they work, speak and act for the class in power--the working class...Under socialism people come first and profits are made to serve them." (Gus Hall, "Where Workers Have Power," Working Class USA, 1987, International Publishers)

William Z. Foster correctly said that "In a world thrown into deepening disorder and demoralization caused by the growing general crisis (of capitalism), the superiority of the system of planned socialist economy stands out like a great mountain!" (William Z. Foster, Toward Soviet America, 1932, International Publishers)

And V.I. Lenin was absolutely right that, with the birth of the Soviet Union, "a new era in world history has begun!" (Lenin, The Third International and It's Place In History, 1919)

Superb Books:

Daily Worker Labor Editor and Moscow Correspondent, George Morris, wrote Where Human Rights are Real.

Victor Perlo's excellent text Dynamic Stability: the Soviet Economy Today cited the 1977 Soviet Constitution.

Revolt with a Vote! Communist Candidates are a Must, Says Gus Hall.

2008-10-06T17:09:00.000-07:00

Written especially for the Communist Party Discussion blog:

William Z. Foster, former Marxist-Leninist leader of the Communist Party USA and Communist presidential candidate, said that "The Republican party is the party of finance capital, of the great bankers and industrialists of Wall Street....From the Republican party no relief, but only a worsening of existing conditions may be expected." On the other hand, "the Democratic party is no less the party of the big capitalists." It is "the second party of capitalism" which has "a flood of demogogy to delude the masses and to prevent their taking steps against the capitalists by keeping them fettered with the two party capitalist system." (William Z. Foster, Towards Soviet America, 1932, International Publishers)

Nevertheless, Gus Hall, a later leader of the Communist Party USA and Communist presidential candidate, noted that Marxist-Leninists support "the defeat of the most reactionary anti-labor, racist and pro-war candidates." But he makes the point that "class collaboration in the field of politics is a sell out." (Gus Hall, Capitalism on the Skids to Oblivion, 1972, New Outlook Publishers)

Both Foster and Hall fought for a broad coalition against monopoly capitalism and looked forward to working-class political independence from the two parties of capitalism.

(Gus Hall: ’Communist candidates’ are ’a must.’)
Gus Hall said that Communist electoral candidates are a must and ran for president on the Communist Party USA ticket many times. He said, in Labor Up-Front, that Communist electoral candidates "stimulate" movements for political independence. They are "an indispensable element of the people’s anti-monopoly struggle." (Gus Hall, Labor Up-Front, 1979)

"Communist candidates, " Gus Hall said, are "a must." And he noted that "a presidential campaign presents a unique opportunity to speak to millions of our people." Hall continued: "It is an opportunity to influence--and yes, to change--the thought patterns of great numbers. It is an opportunity to present our (Communist) Party, our program and positions to the majority of our people. It is an opportunity to take on the ideological challenge of Big Lie anti-Communism." (Gus Hall, For Peace, Jobs, Equality, 1983, New Outlook Publishers)

Drawing from experience, Gus Hall said that Communist electoral candidates have an opportunity to "struggle against racism, " "to speak to millions about socialism, about nationalization and public takeover" and "expose state monopoly capitalism in every area of life." And "without Communist participation as candidates many issues will never be discussed, debated or even raised, such as: the crisis of capitalism...corporate profits (and) socialism." (Gus Hall, For Peace, Jobs, Equality, 1983, New Outlook Publishers)

But, arguing against Communists who minimize the importance of Communist electoral candidates, Hall boldly states that "abandoning the electoral arena is liquidationism." "Some may argue, " Gus Hall said, "that we can be a factor in the election campaign from the sidelines, without fielding (Communist electoral) candidates. That is not a serious argument. During election campaigns people listen to candidates--their positions, platform, statements, promises, etc." (Gus Hall, For Peace, Jobs, Equality, 1983, New Outlook Publishers)

And Hall exposes the content of the arguments from other Communists against Communist electoral candidates. "For some reason, " he said, "the necessity of running Communist candidates in election campaigns is not self-evident in our Party...In essence, the questions raised are very similar to the ones raised against the concept of a Communist public presence, or the arguments one hears against the Party being an action-oriented organization. They are also very similar to arguments against integrating the Communist essence into our mass work. All the arguments have a familiar liquidationist ring." Gus Hall brings down the liquidationist line when he boldly declares that "to give up the Party’s electoral activity is to retreat before the class enemy’s political pressures and the legal obstacles they place." (Gus Hall, For Peace, Jobs, Equality, 1983, New Outlook Publishers)

FAQ: On Socialism and Personal Property

2008-10-04T14:10:00.000-07:00

Please also see previous post: FAQ: What is Socialism?

Will socialism take away your toothbrush (or home and VCR)? No. Will socialism seize the means of production--the land, factories, mills, mines, transport--from the capitalists? Yes.

Both Karl Marx and Gus Hall had things to say about this.

Marx and Engels said, in the Communist Manifesto, that: "Communism deprives no man of the power to appropriate the products of society; all that it does is to deprive him of the power to subjugate the labor of others by means of such appropriation." (Marx and Engels, Communist Manifesto, 1848)

Gus Hall, the former Marxist-Leninist leader of the Communist Party USA, explained Marx and Engels' thinking when he answered this question in 1977: "I worked hard to buy a home. If socialism comes to this country would I lose it? Would it become the property of the state?"

Hall answered: "What is good for the people is socialism. Socialism is the most people oriented society in all of history. What is good for the people is the basic guideline to all questions about socialism.

"This year the handful of major stockholders and the banks who own General Motors are going to pocket the hog's share of about $4 or $5 billion dollars of what is referred to as profits. And the president of G.M. will take almost $1 million in what is called a salary. Grand larceny is a more accurate description!

"This is done by picking the pockets of GM workers. That is not good for the GM workers or the people. What happens in GM is what happens in all of the big industries throughout our country. That is the very essence of capitalism. That is why socialism will turn the GM complex into public property. That is why socialism will transfer all of the privately owned industrial properties, the railroads, bus lines, utilities, mines, TV and radio networks, the banks, telephone and the big agri-businesses into socially owned and operated complexes...

"Socialism will not permit anyone to get rich by exploiting other people.

"The propagandists of big business have always tried to frighten people with the falsehood that socialism will take away our homes, our cars and our babies. Socialism will do nothing of the kind. There will be some exceptions, however. For example there are a few mansions around Tarrytown, N.Y., one of which is the Rockefeller’s. That will be taken over because it is not in the interests of the people to permit a few to waste all that potential housing space.

"The land and the operation of the big agri-corporations will be turned into state-owned and people-operated agri-complexes. The people who have small farms and lots will continue to operate them as long as they want to.

"So, my friends, enjoy your homes and cars. Join in the movement for socialism and be assured you will not have to give these things up, because what is good for the people is socialism." (Gus Hall, Basics, 1980, International Publishers)

Main Street Not Wall Street! Communists Fight Back!

2008-09-29T16:30:00.000-07:00

Brothers and Sisters,

Working class Americans are grappling with the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s and with the Bush Administration’s demand that they hand over $700 billion of their hard-earned tax dollars to bail out Wall Street. No Bailouts for Billionaires!

Since many folks are comparing the capitalist crisis of today with the Great Depression, the great economic crisis of 1929-1933, it’s worth a look at those days. We should note that the Communist Party of the United States was a leader in the fight-back against unemployment, evictions and wage cuts.

William Z. Foster, former Marxist-Leninist leader of the Communist Party USA, wrote that: "The golden era of ’permanent prosperity’ in the United States was brought to a sudden end by the terrific stock-market crash of October 1929. This was accompanied by a headlong fall in all spheres of the national economy, a decline which continued without let-up for the next four years. Over $160 billion in stock-market values were wiped out, basic industry production sank by 50 percent, 5,761 banks failed, and the value of farm products fell from $8.5 billion to $4 billion. Wage cuts for all industries ran to at least 45 percent. By 1933 some 17 million workers were walking the streets unemployed, and many millions more were on part time...

"The crisis was one of overproduction--an explosion of the basic capitalist internal antagonism between the private ownership of industry and the social character of production. That is, rapidly expanding production had far outrun the limited power of the capitalist markets to absorb this output, owing to the systematic exploitation of the toiling masses by the robber capitalists. This condition was accentuated by the anarchy of capitalist production. Hence the general economic glut and violent crisis catastrophe resulted.

"The cyclical crisis was far and away the most severe in the history of world capitalism, in its depth, duration and universality. This exceptional severity was due to the fact that the breakdown took place within the framework of the deepening crisis of the world capitalist system....

"With the outbreak of the economic crisis the bourgeoisie immediately embarked upon the same course that it had following all previous crises; namely, to unload the burden of the economic breakdown upon the shoulders of the workers and poorer farmers. Without the slightest concern for the welfare of their wage slaves, out of whose labor they had amassed their fortunes, the capitalists proceeded to throw millions of workers out on the streets without any relief, much less unemployment insurance...

"There was only one party in the United States from which leadership could and did come for the unemployed--the Communist Party." (William Z. Foster, History of the Communist Party of the United States, 1952, International Publishers)

The Communist Party USA led and participated the mass struggles during the Great Depression, the great economic crisis of 1929-1933, for unemployment insurance. The Communists fought for public work at union wages, against housing evictions and wage cuts and racism. They demanded food for school children.

(Police attack a Hunger March organized by the Unemployed Councils in 1931. Carl Winter said that ’The thrust of the Unemployed Councils, under Communist leadership and influence, was to place both the responsibility and the burden for relief upon the government and the employers.’)

Carl Winter, Communist leader of the Unemployed Councils in NY and one of the organizers of the National Hunger Marches of the 1930s points out that before the Communists could conduct and lead the mass struggles during the Great Depression, "the Party first had to settle accounts with Right-opportunist forces within its own leadership who refused to assume the responsibilities of a vanguard party of the working class." He said that the expulsion of a revisionist leadership and their small band of supporters "was accompanied by a new turn to the masses and serious efforts to organize for the solution of their most pressing problems." (Carl Winter, "Unemployment Struggles of the Thirties," in Bart, Highlights of a Fighting History, 1979, International Publishers)

William Z. Foster, former Marxist-Leninist leader of the Communist Party USA, said that we must "turn towards socialism. For that is the only final answer to the many basic contradictions which produce the terrors and hardships of rotting capitalism." He added that "the capitalist system has become hopelessly obsolete and reactionary. It must be replaced by socialism." (William Z. Foster, History of the Communist Party of the United States, 1952, International Publishers)

Celebrate the 160th Anniversary of the Communist Manifesto!

2008-09-28T12:41:00.000-07:00

Brothers and Sisters,

The year 2008 marks the 160th anniversary of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels’ excellent book Communist Manifesto. William Z. Foster, the former Marxist-Leninist leader of the Communist Party USA, wrote that:

"The Communist Manifesto was the first revolutionary program of the world’s workers. It laid down the solid foundations of proletarian thought and action for the workers thenceforth on their road to socialism. It showed them how to protect themselves under capitalism, how to abolish the capitalist system, and how to build the structure of the new socialist society. Marx, Engels, V.I. Lenin, Joseph Stalin, and others were to write many books on Marxism in the ensuing decades, and their writings served to elaborate and to buttress the basic propositions of the Manifesto. Today, (160) years after the great document was written, the Communist Manifesto stands as firm as a rock, a clear guide for the international working class, justified by generations of revolutionary experience, and altogether impervious to the attacks of capitalist enemies." (William Z. Foster, History of the Three Internationals, 1955, International Publishers)

(Marx, Engels and Lenin)

Lenin, the great successor of Marx and Engels, summed up the significance of the Communist Manifesto:

"With the clarity and brilliance of genius, this work outlines a new world-conception, consistent materialism, which also embraces the realm of social life; dialectics, as the most comprehensive and profound doctrine of development; the theory of the class struggle and the world-historic revolutionary role of the proletariat--the creator of a new, communist society." (Lenin, Karl Marx, 1914)

And Lenin could add, with every justification: "This little booklet is worth whole volumes." (Lenin, Frederick Engels, 1895)

FAQ: What is Socialism?

2008-09-25T15:49:00.000-07:00

What is socialism? Below is an introductory but hard-hitting article. But, to start with, here is a soundbite answer for a Marxist-Leninist definition of socialism: A society where the working class holds commands state power and the working class and masses of the people owns the principal means of production--the mines, the mills and the factories--and planned production is carried on for use and not for capitalist profit.

(V.I. Lenin)
Karl Marx and Frederick Engels mentioned that communist society had two phases. Socialism, which Karl Marx referred to as "the first phase of communist society" is a transitional stage to highly developed communism, "a higher phase of communist society," where there is a classless social system and full social equality of all members of society. (Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme, 1875)

Maurice Cornforth writes in Historical Materialism that: "Socialism means the establishment of new relations of production, a new economic basis for society, namely, the social ownership of the principal means of production." (Maurice Cornforth, Historical Materialism, 1972, Second Printing, International Publishers)

John Eaton, author of the Marxist book Political Economy, notes that:the "two basic ingredients of socialism as a mode of production" are "(economic) planning and public ownership of the means of production." (John Eaton, Political Economy, 1966, International Publishers)

Eaton says that "the basis of a socialist economy is publically owned means of production, which are used according to a social plan to meet the needs of the community....Socialist production is governed by a plan, consciously conceived and co-ordinated to meet the needs of the community...

"Socialism as an economic system can best be defined by noting the respects in which socialism as a mode of production is the 'opposite' of capitalism. Socialism is planned production for use on the basis of public ownership of the means of production. Capitalism is commodity production for private profit on the basis of private ownership of the means of production.

"The essential respects in which capitalism is the 'opposite' of socialism can be contrasted as follows:

"The regulating principle of capitalism is 'the market' (commodity exchange). The regulating principle of socialism is the 'social plan.'

"The motivating force of capitalism is profit. The motivating force of socialism is the satisfaction of needs.

"The property basis of capitalism is the private ownership of capital. The property basis of socialism is the public ownership of the means of production.

"The political basis of capitalism is the dominance of the wealthy--viz. the owners of capital. The political basis of socialism is the rule of the working people, with their mass organizations playing a major role in government and administration." (John Eaton, Political Economy, 1985, International Publishers)

Maurice Cornforth says that "in capitalist society, the means of production--the land, factories, mills, mines, transport--belong to the capitalists, and production is carried on for capitalist profit. But the essence of socialism is that the means of production become social property, and that, on the basis of social ownership, production is carried on for the benefit of the whole of society.

"With socialism, production is no longer undertaken for profit, but for the sake of producing what people need. The primary consideration is to raise the standards of the people. Production is not carried on for profit but to satisfy the material and cultural requirements of society. And this is ensured because the means of production, all the means of creating wealth, are taken out of the control of a capitalist minority, whose concern is it's own profit, and come under the control of the working people themselves." (Maurice Cornforth, Historical Materialism, 1972, Second Printing, International Publishers)

But "the socialist mode of production cannot develop gradually and within the framework of capitalist society but first requires the winning of political power--that is, State power--by the working class and the masses of the people."(John Eaton, Political Economy, 1985, International Publishers)

Socialism requires the dictatorship of the proletariat. What is the dictatorship of the proletariat? It is, as Otto Kuusinen said, "(state and political ) power in the hands of working people, led by the working class and having as its aim the building of socialism." (Otto Kuusinen, Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow)

Afanasyev wrote that "all previous types of state were tools of the exploiting classes used for the subjection of the working people and designed to reinforce the system of exploitation and to perpetuate the division of society into oppressors and oppressed. The dictatorship of the proletariat, however, is the rule of the working class which...destroys capitalism and builds a new society, a society without exploitation." (Afanasyev, Marxist Philosophy, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow)

Indeed, "the dictatorship of the proletariat is the crux of Marxism." (Afanasyev, Marxist Philosophy, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow)

Socialism and the dictatorship of the proletariat expands democracy for working people. On the other hand, a dictatorship is exercised over the capitalists, exploiters and reactionaries so they may not bring a return of their filth and the system of capitalism. V.I. Lenin said "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)

A Forum to Save the St. Paul Ford Plant!!

2008-09-15T18:32:00.001-07:00

Brothers and Sisters, we invite you to attend a forum about the St. Paul Ford Plant sponsored by the Climate Crisis Coalition of the Twin Cities (3CTC).

3CTC ENVIRONMENTAL FORUM ON PROPOSALS TO SAVE THE ST. PAUL FORD PLANT

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 7:00 PM

MAYDAY BOOKS

301 CEDAR AVENUE SOUTH (corner of Washington Ave. & Cedar)

WEST BANK, MINNEAPOLIS

We are proud that a member of the Gus Hall Action Club will be one of the speakers at this forum. Gus Hall said "people have to see us, to hear us, to talk to us and to struggle with us--as Communists, as a Communist club." (Gus Hall, For Peace, Jobs, Equality) V.I. Lenin pointed out, in What Is To Be Done?, that Communist consciousness must be brought to the working class. More than ever it must be asserted that "Marxism-Leninism has not grown old and never will"! (Ponomarev, Marxism-Leninism: A Flourishing Science, 1979, International Publishers)

We in the Gus Hall Action Club have also advanced a solution to the crisis of the looming threat of the St. Paul Ford Plant's closure. The Ford Plant should be taken over by the government and run by and on behalf of the workers and the community! And anybody who says that we shouldn’t be raising such an advanced demand as nationalization and public ownership the Ford Plant should read these words by Gus Hall: "It is necessary to project the idea of transferring the industries and banks from private to public ownership through the process of nationalization. The crisis has placed the need for nationalization on the order of the day." (Gus Hall, Basics, 1980, International Publishers)

SPEAKERS AT THE 3CTC ENVIRONMENTAL FORUM ON PROPOSALS TO SAVE THE ST. PAUL FORD PLANT

Michael Wood—Gus Hall Action Club

Alan Maki—Organizer, Director of Organizing,Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council

Christine Frank—Volunteer Coordinator, Climate Crisis Coalition of the Twin Cities

David Riehle—Local Chairman, United Transportation Union 650

Forum sponsored by the Climate Crisis of the Twin Cities. Free and open to the public. For more information, e-mail: christinefrank@visi.com or call: 612-879-8937

Gus Hall and the Minneapolis Teamsters Strike of 1934

2008-09-12T17:26:00.001-07:00

Check out our updated article: Red Heroes of the 1934 Minneapolist Teamsters Strike: Gus Hall & the CPUSA

Trotsky is NOT a Communist Hero

2008-09-11T14:50:00.000-07:00

Gus Hall made no bones about it: "Trotskyites, followers of Leon Trotsky, habitually employ splitting tactics in people's movements and promote anti-Communism in pseudo-radical guise!" (Fighting Racism, 1984)

Brothers and Sisters,

The influence of bourgeois propaganda, the lack of availability of authentic Marxist-Leninist books and the influence of revisionism in the Communist movement (see previous posts for a definition of revisionism) has produced a situation where some folks mistakenly believe that Trotsky was a Communist hero. It ain't so. "(Trotsky's) policies," William Z. Foster, former leader of the Communist Party USA, said "would have been fatal to the Russian Revolution and would have brought about the restoration of capitalism in Russia." William Z. Foster explains, in History of the Three Internationals, that:

"Trotsky, whose whole history stamped him as an unstable petty-bourgeois radical and who did not join up with the Bolsheviks until 1917, was a confirmed factionalist and opportunist. Even after he joined the party he continued his opposition to Lenin on many points. When Lenin was in his final illness, during the autumn of 1923, Trotsky made a bid to capture the leadership of the Communist Party. He gathered together the several small opposition groups than in the party and issued an oppositional program, the 'Declaration of the Forty-Six.' The substance of this was to accuse the party leadership of gross bureaucracy, to instigate the youth against the party, to pronounce the N.E.P. a complete retreat, to demand freedom to build factional groupings, to condemn the party for the defeat of the German and Hungarian revolutions, to blame the many economic difficulties upon party mismanagement, and to pronounce the Russian Revolution itself in a state of 'Thermidorian degeneration.'

"It devolved upon Stalin to lead the party fight against this disruptive opposition, and he was to prove brilliantly capable of the task...Stalin, a profound Marxist and a relentless fighter, ideologically shattered the Trotsky case, and at the 13th conference of the party in January 1924, the opposition was condemned overwhelmingly as a 'petty-bourgeois deviation from Marxism.' During this fight Stalin produced his great book, The Foundations of Leninism, which played a big part in the controversy.

(William Z. Foster: Stalin was 'one of the greatest fighters ever produced by the world's working class')

"The defeated Trotsky, tongue-in-cheek, pledged himself to abide by the party decision, a pledge which, however, he immediately began to violate.

"Shortly afterward, the party...was confronted with the basic problem of defining its perspective. Stalin, in early 1925, met this tremendous theoretical task magnificently. He declared, and the Central Committee backed him up, that Soviet Russia possessed all the requirements for the building of socialism. Lenin had previously indicated the possibility, if need be, of building socialism in one country, Russia. Stalin's formulation was a bold departure from commonly held Marxist opinion, which was that in order to make the construction of socialism possible it would be necessary for the workers simultaneously to gain political power in several countries.

"Stalin's basic statement immediately drew fire from the adventurer Trotsky, who came forth with what he called the theory of 'permanent revolution.' Trotsky categorically denied the possibility of constructing socialism in Russia alone. He proposed, instead, an intensification of revolutionary struggle at home against the peasantry (all categories) and war abroad against the bourgeois governments. The fate of the Russian Revolution was at stake in this historic discussion. Stalin succeeded in making the party understand that Trotsky's line would have meant the overthrow of the Soviet government and the end of the Revolution. As a result, at the 14th party conference, April 1925, Trotsky's policy was defeated and Stalin's overwhelmingly endorsed. Again Trotsky agreed to abide by the party decision, but did not." (William Z. Foster, History of the Three Internationals, 1955)

William Z. Foster points out that Trotsky and his friend Zinoviev and their handful of supporters, held "a street demonstration against the party on November 7," 1927.

(William Z. Foster, former leader of the Communist Party USA)

In another book, History of the Communist Party of the United States, Foster says that:

"For several years prior to the sixth Comintern congress Trotskyism, which Lenin had long fought, had become a malignant pest in the Soviet Union. Leon Trotsky, always an opportunist and adventurer, made a reckless grab for the leadership of the Communist Party after the death of Lenin in 1924. The substance of his 'ultra-revolutionary' program was the provocation of civil war against the peasantry as a whole and the unfolding of aggressive foreign policy that could have only resulted in bringing about a war between the capitalist powers and the Soviet Union. His policies to force such an artificial revolution would have been fatal to the Russian Revolution and would have brought about the restoration of capitalism in Russia.

"The Soviet people wanted none of Trotsky's destructive program...At the time of the sixth congress of the Comintern, Trotsky was in exile, as a criminal against the Revolution." (William Z. Foster, History of the Communist Party of the United States, 1952)

And Trotsky became anti-Soviet to the core. "Trotsky, who had been expelled from the Soviet Union in 1929, organized abroad the 'Fourth International' in 1933, which was composed of skeleton groups in many countries. Among its other counter-revolutionary activities, it openly advocated the violent overthrow of the Russian Communist Party leadership and of the Soviet government." (William Z. Foster, History of the Three Internationals, 1955)

We warmly encourage people to read Olgin's Trotskyism: Counter-Revolution in Disguise.

http://marxists.org/archive/olgin/1935/trotskyism/index.htm

Enjoy the 1939 book authorized by the Central Committee of the CPSU: History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks).

Picketline During the RNC to Save the St. Paul Ford Plant and Union Jobs Through Public Ownership of the Plant!

2008-08-25T18:23:00.000-07:00

People Before Profits! Save the St. Paul, Minnesota Ford Plant through Public Ownership of the Plant! Stop Union Busting!

Picketline During the RNC to Save the Ford Plant and Union Jobs Through Public Ownership of the Plant!

Wednesday, Sept. 3, 2008, 3:00-6:00 pm, Ford's Twin Cities Assembly Plant, Ford Parkway and Cretin Ave., St. Paul, Minnesota

The scourge of plant closings across the U.S. has created a crisis for the working class. Here in Minnesota, as in the rest of the nation, Ford CEOs don't make decisions based upon anything other than maximum profits. Ford wants to weaken and bust unions. Job security for auto workers is not a consideration. Ford announced that it would be closing the St. Paul Ford Twin Cities Assembly Plant in 2008 and coerced many members of the United Auto Workers (UAW) union to accept buy-out packages. Ford's profits jumped as workers were laid off and the union was kicked in the teeth. Now, Ford has announced that the plant will remain open a few more years. The threat of plant closure and the unemployment of more than a thousand workers still looms.

Enough is enough. The time has come to nationalize the St. Paul Ford Twin Cities Assembly Plant and guarantee union power and job security by operating it under public ownership. Ford is not entitled to any compensation. The working class has subsidized Ford's manufacturing at the St. Paul Ford Plant for years. We say: "What the tax-payers finance, taxpayers should own!" The St. Paul Ford Plant should be taken over by the government and run by and on behalf of the workers and the community.

Gus Hall, former leader of the Communist Party USA, said at a 1979 People Before Profits rally at Cobo Hall in Detroit, MI., that "workers...have an absolute right--even a duty--to tell the profit mongers: ’This is our city. These are our plants. Here is where we make a living and raise our children. And come h*ll or high water here is where we’re gonna stay. One way or another, these plants will not close.’...

"There is nothing wrong or illegal in the government taking over these plants because there is one sacred and inalienable right that supersedes all others. And that is the right of the people to make a living--to be able to eat, pay rent, raise and educate their children." (Gus Hall, The Working Class Answer to the Deepening Crisis, 1979)

Marxism-Leninism and Art, Culture and Class Struggle

2008-08-19T14:39:00.000-07:00

Brothers and Sisters,

I warmly point out that one Marxist recently objected to Bertholt Brecht's statement that "art is a hammer with which to shape reality." This Marxist called Brecht's comment "almost obscene" and said "oh when will we learn to appreciate and engage something so gentle and so moving and so profound as our creative selves." It is interesting to note that "revisionists attack the Marxist-Leninist principle of partisanship in art." And they have in the past "opposed the guidance of art by the Communist Party." (Afanasyev, Marxist Philosophy, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow)

What is the Marxist-Leninist view of the "diverse kinds of art: poetry and fiction, theatre, music, the cinema, architecture, painting sculpture"? "In a class society art bears a class character, it is partisan. There is no ’pure art, ’ no ’art for art’s sake, ’ nor can there be any. The accessibility, the great power of conviction and emotional influence of art make it an important weapon of the class struggle. That is why classes exploit art as a vehicle of their political, moral and other ideas...

"Contemporary bourgeois art, for example, serves the reactionary imperialist forces. It seeks to divert the working people from struggle against the exploiters...Bourgeois art is employed to glorify the capitalist order of things..." (Afanasyev, Marxist Philosophy, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow)

Whereas "a qualitatively new, socialist art has arisen on the basis of the revolutionary struggle of the working class and its advance to communism. Socialist art assimilates the best from progressive art of the past and constitutes a higher stage in the development of art corresponding to the new conditions. Socialist realism is the creative method of this art." Socialist realism's basic principles are "kinship with the people (and) partisanship and bold pioneering in the artistic portrayal of life." And "the organic ties of socialist art with the people, their life and work are unprecendented...Socialist realism is conspicous by its profound socialist content." (Afanasyev, Marxist Philosophy, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow)

’Art (is)...an an important weapon of the class struggle.’

Gus Hall, the former leader of the Communist Party USA, would agree with the statement that "each class creates an art that corresponds to its class interests and aesthetic requirements." (Afanasyev, Marxist Philosophy, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow)

"Culture," Gus Hall wrote in Power of Ideology, "is used by the ruling class as a potent weapon." And "culture, both bourgeois and working class, influences people on an unconscious level. It influences from the inside of developments. No one says 'this is bourgeois culture' or 'this is working class culture.' There are no tags on the outside. Nevertheless, there is a very clear, distinct difference between the two." (Gus Hall, Power of Ideology, 1989, New Outlook Publishers)

Hall continues: "Some have indicated that we should not try to use our ideology to influence cultural developments. But this is an integral part of the ideological struggle--to influence thought patterns...

"The ideological struggle in the field of culture is very sharp. It takes place on the stage, the screen, in music, art and poetry. It pervades fiction and non-fiction, especially history.

"Culture is also influenced by aesthetics, concepts of beauty, color and form. But the more basic influence is the struggle between the two ideologies (capitalist and working class). Yes, we take sides in this struggle, as we do in other areas." (Gus Hall, Power of Ideology, 1989, New Outlook Publishers)

WAR, IMPERIALISM AND THE FIGHT BACK: dedicated to those who will join the mass protests against the Republican National Convention (RNC)

2008-08-18T14:31:00.000-07:00

This is dedicated, in a comradely spirit, to all those who will join the protest sponsored by the Coalition to March on the RNC and Stop the War on Sept 1, 2008. The Gus Hall Action Club has endorsed the Coalition to March on the RNC and Stop the War's call for demonstrations during the Republican National Convention (RNC). The Gus Hall Action Club, waving a red Soviet flag and a flag with our club's logo, will be at the mass anti-war rally and march on Sept. 1, 2008 @ 11:00 a.m. at the State Capital in St. Paul, Minnesota.

The Gus Hall Action Club, our Communist club in central Minnesota, links the fight against state-monopoly capitalism (the essence of which is direct union of the power of the capitalist monopolies with the enormous power of the state) with the fight against imperialist war. We are Marxist-Leninists and Marxism-Leninism is "a science in the finest sense of the word." (Ponomarev, Marxism-Leninism: A Flourishing Science, 1979, International Publishers) We are also working-class anti-war activists and we participate in many demonstrations in the Twin Cities, Minnesota against imperialist war. We say: U.S. Out of Iraq and Afghanistan NOW! No War Against Iran! For Mass Struggle Against Imperialism! and Slash the Arms Budget! Gus Hall, the former Marxist-Leninist leader of the Communist Party USA, said "there is only one way to get the country out of the economic mess it is in: the way the Communist Party has repeatedly called for--to slash the arms budget!" (Gus Hall, Basics, 1980, International Publishers)

We in the Gus Hall Action Club are unique in the anti-war movement in the Twin Cities, Minnesota, because we openly and boldly promote Marxist-Leninist ideology and encourage folks to read books by Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, V.I. Lenin and American Communists like Gus Hall. We believe that "without Marxism-Leninism, it is impossible to understand and accurately assess imperialism, the origin, inner content, and development prospects of state-monopoly capitalism and its many-sided general crisis, or to draw conclusions from this for the revolutionary class struggle." (Ponomarev, Marxism-Leninism: A Flourishing Science, 1979, International Publishers)

We in the Gus Hall Action Club also stand out because of our emphasis on the working class. Marx and Engels said, in the Communist Manifesto, that "of all the classes that stand face to face today with the bourgeoisie today, the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class" and we believe that the working class possesses the power to end war forever. For us in the Gus Hall Action Club, the word "working class" is not a mere decoration in our rhetoric. The working class is our basis. We reject any "warmed up version of the old story that the working class has become fat, complacent, submissive and totally corrupt" or that it is "a partner of monopoly capital in its imperialist exploitation." (Gus Hall, Working Class USA, International Publishers, 1987)

The book Marxism-Leninism: A Flourishing Science is right that "it is only the Marxist-Leninist approach to war and peace that ensures a correct policy." And "there are no more principled and determined adversaries of war than the Communists. War brings riches to a handful of monopolists, and hardship, privation and grief to the working people." (Ponomarev, Marxism-Leninism: A Flourishing Science, 1979, International Publishers)

The system of state-monopoly capitalism and imperialism breeds wars for maximum corporate profit. In 1916, V.I. Lenin made an exhaustive scientific analysis of imperialism in his classic work Imperialism--the Highest Stage of Capitalism, as well as in a number of other works. Lenin showed that imperialism is a special stage--the highest and last--in the development of capitalism. "Imperialism," V.I. Lenin taught, "is capitalism at that stage of development in which the dominance of monopolies and finance capital has established itself; in which the export of capital has acquired pronounced importance; in which the division of the world among the international trusts has begun; in which the division of all territories of the globe among the great capitalist powers has been completed." (Lenin, Imperialism--the Highest Stage of Capitalism, 1916)

William Z. Foster, a great union activist and former leader of the Communist Party USA, summed up Lenin when he said: "Imperialism sharpens and intensifies all the contradictions of the capitalist system and precipates the present era of world wars and socialist revolutions." (William Z. Foster, Twilight of World Capitalism, 1949, International Publishers)

(V.I. Lenin)
In order to achieve maximum corporate profits in the modern era, imperialism commences an era of struggle and war for the redivision of an already divided world. The "imperialists are playing with fire." (Otto Kuusinen, main author, Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow) As long as imperialism exists, the danger and reality of war will remain.

William Z. Foster explains that imperialism is against the interests of the working class of the United States:

"Wall Street's imperialist expansionism is directly antagonistic to the basic interests of the overwhelming majority of the American people, as well as to those of other peoples. The gigantic expenditures for the armaments program that imperialism produces have sent the cost of living soaring. It sabotages, too, all efforts to establish better government insurance against unemployment, sickness and old age. It is also undermining democracy in this country and is provoking the most serious danger of fascism...What true interest can our nation have in such a program of oppression, profit-grabbing and butchery?" (William Z. Foster, Twilight of World Capitalism, 1949, International Publishers)

Gus Hall, former leader of the Communist Party USA until his death in 2000, said that: "There is only one way to get the country out of the economic mess it is in: the way the Communist Party has repeatedly called for--to slash the arms budget! Slashing the arms budget, dismantling the foreign bases, ending the tax loopholes of the monopolies, controlling their transfer of dollars abroad--that's the only way." (Gus Hall, Basics, 1980, International Publishers)

The people of Iraq and the world have a right to be free from U.S. imperialism. Otto Kuusinen says that "Marxism has been from the very outset an irreconcilable enemy of national oppression in any form and has consistently fought for national equality, for the complete freedom and self-determination of the nations. The formula elaborated by Marx and Engels, 'a people that oppresses other peoples cannot itself be free,' Lenin termed as the 'fundamental principle of internationalism.' And proletarian internationalism is an inalienable part of Marxism." (Otto Kuusinen, main author, Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow)

Otto Kuusinen, friend of Lenin, major figure in the Communist International and one of the founders of the Finnish Communist Party said that the working class possessed "weapons of struggle" against war and war preparation:

"A special responsibility falls on the working class and its revolutionary parties now that the war danger created by imperialism has greatly increased...

"Modern war is mainly a war of machines, of armaments, but these are made by the hands of workers; workers also form the cores of the mass imperialist armies... The working class is in a position to force the capitalist ruling classes to reckon with its will. But for this to happen its will must be clearly expressed in the form of mass anti-war actions, constant pressure on the bourgeois parties, parliaments and the press, and the exposure of the underhand plotting and intrigues of the imperialist government.

"It should not be forgotten that the working class also has so potent a weapon of struggle against war and preparation for war as strikes, refusal to fill war orders and transport war cargoes intended for aggressive purposes." (Otto Kuusinen, main author, Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow)

Mass struggle is the answer. "The war hawks always dominate U.S. government policy when the people are silent," Gus Hall stressed, but "mass actions can influence government policy...(and) drive the warmongers out of public office forever." (Gus Hall, Basics, 1980, International Publishers)

"We Communists point out that wars are inevitable during capitalism. This means that capitalism inexorably breeds imperialism and war, but it does not mean that every international tension must develop armed hostilities...The democratic forces of our country and the world are strong enough to bridle the warmongers, that is, the big capitalist imperialists, if they will but awaken and assert their irresistible peace will. They can not only delay war, they can abolish it altogether. One thing is clear--war will always come unless the ways are found by the people to check the war-making expansionism of American imperialism." (William Z. Foster, Twilight of World Capitalism, 1949, International Publishers)

(William Z. Foster, former leader of the Communist Party USA)
But only socialism will end war forever. "The danger of war," William Z. Foster said, "can be finally eliminated, however, only when monopoly capital is decisively defeated by the people, especially big capital here in the United States. This country, precisely because it is the chief center of monopoly capitalism, is at the same time a fortress of world reaction and warmongering." (William Z. Foster, "Twilight of World Capitalism," 1949, International Publishers)

The book Marxism-Leninism: A Flourishing Science correctly says that "it is enough to glance at the...bourgeois parliaments and governments to fully appreciate the fact that their links with the (capitalist) monopolies have grown stronger and more organic." (Ponomarev, Marxism-Leninism: A Flourishing Science, 1979, International Publishers) But Lenin said: "our aim is to create a socialist system of society, which by eliminating the divisions of mankind into classes, by eliminating all exploitation of man by man and nation by nation, will inevitably eliminate the very possibility of war." (Lenin, War and Revolution, 1917)

"Only with the establishment of socialism," William Z. Foster wrote, "can the war-fascist danger be abolished outright. The great industries, the banks, the basic natural resources, and the political control of society must all be taken out of the hands of the capitalists and placed in the hands of the people, with the working class playing the leading political role." (William Z. Foster, Twilight of World Capitalism, 1949, International Publishers)

There is a historical necessity for the dictatorship of the proletariat. Otto Kuusinen points out that "the founders of Marxism-Leninism teach that the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat is the only force capable of effecting such a transformation. What is the dictatorship of the proletariat? It is power in the hands of the working people, led by the working class and having as its aim the building of socialism." (Otto Kuusinen, main author, Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow)

And "the dictatorship of the proletariat is the crux of Marxism." (Afanasyev, Marxist Philosophy, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow)

William Z. Foster continues: "This, and only this, will cut out reaction at the root. There is no other way to avoid the rising danger of devastating war, economic chaos, and the malignant cancer of fascism--all precipitate by American imperialism...

"American socialism would do much more than merely put a stop to the reaction and danger of monopoly capital. It would open up a whole new period of peace, democracy and prosperity for our people. The tremendous productive apparatus of our country, instead of depending upon wars and a war economy to keep it in operation, would find, under conditions of production for use, a boundless outlet for its commodities among our peoples and the famished nations of the world. Instead of being the property of a small minority of capitalists and utilized primarily for their enrichment, which constitutes a monstrous anomaly, the industries would be owned by the people and operated for their benefit. Under socialist conditions, the United States would embark upon the development of the greatest prosperity and well-being its people have ever known." (William Z. Foster, Twilight of World Capitalism, 1949, International Publishers)

More than ever it must be asserted that "Marxism-Leninism has not grown old and never will"! (Ponomarev, Marxism-Leninism: A Flourishing Science, 1979, International Publishers)

Union Review article: 'Ford Closes St. Paul, Minn. Plant; Communists Demand Public Ownership' is Now on this Blog!

2008-08-17T13:18:00.000-07:00

Brothers and Sisters,

Otto Kuusinen once said that: "Communists insist on nationalization being carried out in a way that really curtails the power of monopoly capitalists and improves the lot of the working people." (Otto Kuusinen, Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow)

I proudly point out that I posted a 2007 Union Review article, entitled "Ford Closes St. Paul, Minn. Plant; Communists Demand Public Ownership," as an older post on this blog. The Union Review's article features coverage of our activities while we, the Gus Hall Action Club, were members of the Minneapolis club of the Communist Party USA.

Here is a link to the Union Review article entitled "Ford Closes St. Paul, Minn. Plant; Communists Demand Public Ownership".

Communist Clubs 'ARE the Communist Party'

2008-08-16T15:53:00.001-07:00

"The clubs are not the most important feature of the Communist Party. They ARE the Party." (Gus Hall, Labor Up-Front, 1979, International Publishers)

Brothers and Sisters,

I warmly point out that the question of the role of Marxist-Leninist clubs is important. V.I. Lenin wrote that: "Not a single class in history achieved power without putting forward its political leaders and spokesmen, capable of organizing the movement and leading it." (Lenin, "The Urgent Tasks of Our Movement," Dec. 1901) Communist clubs are absolutely essential to train proletarian Marxist-Leninist leaders. Lenin wrote that: "If the proletariat wishes to defeat the bourgeoisie, it must train from among its ranks its own proletarian 'class politicians' who should not be inferior to the bourgeois politicians." (Lenin, 'Left-Wing' Communism--An Infantile Disorder, 1920)

Lenin also wrote that a Marxist-Leninist party is the vanguard of the proletariat. He said: "By educating the workers' party, 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) A Communist club is a vanguard fighting working-class organization at the groundfloor of class and mass struggle.

(’We see in the independent, uncompromisingly Marxist party of the revolutionary proletariat the sole pledge of socialism’s victory and the road to victory that is most free from vacillations.’--Lenin, A Militant Agreement for the Uprising, 1905)

Gus Hall, the great former leader of the Communist Party USA, wrote that Communist clubs should "work...to influence, initiate and guide movements and struggles." Hall said that a Communist club must "raise the class and socialist consciousness of our shopmates and neighbors." He stresses the value of Marxist-Leninist literature and leaflets. Gus Hall points out that Communists must "participate in mass work," "project advanced ideas...class and socialist consciousness" and never "forget they are Communists."

"When a club is engaged in mass work," Hall said in Labor Up-Front, "the overall work of the Party takes on a different meaning. Then the Party's propaganda, agitation and educational work will deal with and blend in the issues that emerge from the mass struggles. Then the advocacy of socialism takes on an immediacy of being approached as a solution, an alternative to the existing problems. Then the study of Marxism-Leninism becomes a science--not in the realm of abstract theory, but as an approach, as a guide to struggle." (Gus Hall, Labor Up-Front, 1979, International Publishers)

Hall said that "People have to see us, to hear us, to talk to us and to struggle with us--as Communists, a a Communist club." (Hall, For Peace, Jobs, Equality, 1983, New Outlook Publishers)

I assume that Hall might also add that a Marxist-Leninist Communist club must take into account the level and experience of the class consciousness of the masses. But Gus Hall would agree with Otto Kuusinen that: "taking the level of class-consciousness of the masses into account has nothing in common with adaptation to that level, with adopting the level of their backwardness. Such an understanding of connection with the masses is characteristic of opportunism. Revolutionary Marxists understand it differently. They do not drift with the tide." (Otto Kuusinen, et. al., Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow)

And "we must anchor our approach, our attitude, our sense of priorities in the basics of the class struggle." (Hall, For Peace, Jobs, Equality, 1983, New Outlook Publishers)

In an extract from Gus Hall's 1979 essay, The Struggle Ahead, Hall provides some practical ideas for Communist clubs:

"...(A) club purpose must come from working to influence, initiate and guide movements and struggles. The purpose of a club must include concrete ways to bring understanding and clarity to people we work with. It must include specific ways to raise the class and socialist consciousness of our shopmates and neighbors. It must include the building of the press and the creative use of leaflets and pamphlets. Club life must include...regular reading and study...A club purpose must be related to some form of struggle or movement, whether in the shop or neighborhood. A meaningful and serious club purpose must include a periodic review of experiences to see where it has been effective and what are the shortcomings. This should be followed by a discussion of how to improve the work. The work of a club must have continuity.

"The life of a club, the form and content of club meetings, the work of each member, should be related to and geared towards mass activities--activities against high taxes, inflation, soaring electric and gas bills; activities in the electoral arena, forms of political Independence,; activities in the shops and trade unions; activities in the struggle against racism and for working-class unity; activities based on planned educational and propaganda efforts to raise class and socialist consciousness. And as one of the results of mass work, we should be consciously trying to convince people to join the Party. In all our activities we should be creatively using our press...and mass literature. Club activities should include increasing the circulation of our press as well as using it in our particular struggles and movements.

"On the club level, the Party's general policies and assessments must become specific tasks, involving not masses, but particular people, by name; specific local organizations, by name. To have meaning, tactics must emerge in the writing and distribution of leaflets, mailing out pamphlets; convincing people, one-to-one; making telephone calls; visiting people for subscription renewal and a hundred other seemingly small tasks.

"The responsibility of Communist leadership must include a concern for the spirit of a club meeting, giving encouragement to members, attention to their personal problems, and never being too tired to take part in the nitty-gritty work of the club.

"When the economic and military avenues become restricted, monopoly capital increases its activities in the field of ideology. The deepening of the crisis of capitalism, the sharpening of the contradictions and the process of radicalization are all reflected in a sharpening of the contradictions in the arena of ideology and ideas. Because of this, agitation and propaganda have become frontline necessities for the Party. We must bring them up to date, both in form and content. We must increase both our written and our oral word. The circulation of...(Communist literature)...must become a daily task for every member of the Party.

"In our propaganda work we must master the art of exposing, explaining and then answering the question: what can the people do? In our propaganda we must not be satisfied with talking to ourselves. It is not enough to be right for the record. We must be able to be correct AND convincing. The Party must fight for a public presence. We must fight to break through the blockade of the mass media against the Party...Each member of the Party should become involved in this struggle...

"There should not be a club that does not have a plan for the circulation of the press--neighborhood routes, shop gate distributions. There should not be a club that does not issue at least three leaflets a year. When Party pamphlets come out...each club should work out a specific plan for its circulation and distribution, which includes sales, mailings and other forms of mass distribution. The sale of Marxist books is a task for every member of the Party...

"Mass activities means working with, speaking to and organizing people who are not in the Party. The Party does have instruments of agitation and propaganda. The challenge is to get them into the hands of millions. We have...Marxist-Leninist books and pamphlets...

"When put on paper all this sounds overwhelming. It is obvious there is not one club that is going to be able to carry on all these activities and tasks at the same time. The club leadership should take two or three of the key concepts and work them into a very concrete, realistic club-size plan. A sense of priorities is important. After this is done each club should be devoted mainly to a discussion about these selected tasks. What are the experiences? What should be changed or modified? What are some of the new tasks that have emerged and should be added to the plan?

"The club should always be focused on one or two key tasks, key tasks that influence and move all other areas. A Party club that is not related to mass work is a club that has no clear purpose. A member of the Party who is not active in some form of mass activity becomes isolated. The other side of this coin is that Communists who do participate in mass work, but do not project advanced ideas, do not advance class or socialist consciousness, who forget they are Communists, become isolated politically and ideologically.

"A club purpose should always include a plan based on the specifics. However, it must also be realistic. Fantasy--a purpose developed within the framework of a dream world instead of the real world--will not bring results. Finally, the bottom line, the purpose, of a club must include recruiting, and the plan of work must include special, detailed plans for recruiting. We have to face the truth that with the present size of our Party there are limitations on what we can do or contribute. With our present size we can not fully meet the responsibilities of the present moment. We must face the truth that the Party does not grow spontaneously. As a result of our mass work, the influence of the Party does grow. However, without special efforts this does not result in recruiting. Recruiting is a concrete, year-round task of every member. But without concrete actions, without specific forms and methods--open club meetings, special educationals for the specific purpose of recruiting--without special Party-building drives, without special materials to convince people to join the Party--we are not going to grow fast enough. While raising recruiting to a new level we must also systematize and modernize the education of new members. The system of educating new members and recruiting must go hand-in-hand. " (Gus Hall, The Struggle Ahead, 1979, New Outlook Publishers)

Support ATU 1005 in their Fight for a Good Contract!

2008-08-02T14:16:00.001-07:00

Brothers and Sisters,

Statement by the Gus Hall Action Club supporting Support ATU 1005 (the public "bus and train drivers union" in the Twin Cities, Minnesota) in their fight for a good contract:

"The history of all hitherto existing society," Marx and Engels wrote in the Communist Manifesto, "is the history of class struggles." And class struggle runs like a red thread through ATU (the Amalgamated Transit Union) local 1005's fight for a good contract.

State-monopoly capitalism unites the power of capitalist monopolies with that of the state. "The essence of state-monopoly capitalism," Otto Kuusinen said in Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism, "is the direct union of the power of capitalist monopolies with the enormous power of the state." And this, in part, explains why Metro Transit is trying to attack union member's wages and healthcare. Metro Transit's "final offer" for a contract was an insult and an attack on the working class. ATU 1005 is now working without a contract as the struggle continues. As ATU 1005's fighting spirit proves, the working class, as Otto Kuusinen pointed out in Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism, is "a class of fighters, a class of builders."

ATU 1005's struggle is on behalf of our entire working class. It is in the class interests of all working class people to stand in solidarity with ATU 1005, the "bus and train driver's union," and insist that the union's demands and contract proposals be met in full.

Gus Hall, writing in Working Class USA, had exactly that attitude which all working class folks should have towards ATU 1005's fight for a good contract: "We are for any demand that cuts down on profits, ups wages, cuts down on speedup, shortens hours, protects workers' health."

At the same time as Metro Transit refuses to agree to ATU 1005's efforts for a good contract, they are forcing through bus fare increases. This is another attack on working class people. Don't believe the hype that the union is to blame. Gus Hall said in Basics that "the ideological machinery of capitalism grinds out propaganda against labor in an endless stream, like a sausage machine turns out frankfurters." Bosses and their mouthpieces have always tried to split the ranks of the working class, but, as Otto Kuusinen pointed out in Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism, "unity of workers has a firm, objective basis--the community of class interests." Bus riders and drivers have a common interest in ATU 1005's fight for a good contract. An injury to one is an injury to all.

Metro Transit says high fuel costs are to blame for the upcoming bus fare increase. What is a real solution to the high price of fuel? Nationalize the oil, gas and energy industries! Gus Hall wrote in The Energy Rip-Off that "nationalization under democratic people's control can result in real gains for the American people." "Nationalization," Hall says in Working Class USA, is "when an industry is taken over by the government and run for the benefit of the people." Otto Kuusinen points out in Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism that: "Communists insist on nationalization being carried out in a way that really curtails the power of the monopoly capitalists and improves the lot of working people."

It is in the class interests of all working class people to stand in solidarity with ATU 1005, the "bus and train driver's union," and insist that their contract demands and proposals be met in full.

What can you do? Call Metro Transit Council at 651-602-1000 and tell them that you support ATU 1005 and their demands for a good contract. Post a blog or write a letter to the editor of a newspaper supporting ATU 1005 in the contract fight. And make sure that you show the drivers that you support them the next time you get on a bus.

Communist Books

2008-07-17T15:51:00.001-07:00

Classics of Marxism-Leninism:

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: Communist Manifesto. Marx: Capital, Critique of Political Economy, preface; Critique of the Gotha Programme;The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte;Value, Price and Profit; Wage-Labor and Capital. Engels: Anti-Duhring;Ludwig Feuerbach;Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State; Speech at the Graveside of Karl Marx; Socialism, Utopian and Scientific; The Housing Question. V.I. Lenin: Imperialism: the Highest Stage of Capitalism;'Left-Wing' Communism: An Infantile Disorder; Marx-Engels-Marxism; Materialism and Empirio-Criticism; State and Revolution; The Teachings of Karl Marx; Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky; What Is To Be Done?

(International Publishers)

Other Great Marxist-Leninist Books:
Emile Burns: What is Marxism? (also named Introduction to Marxism). Maurice Cornforth: Historical Materialism; Materialism and the Dialectical Method;Theory of Knowledge. William Z. Foster: American Trade Unionism; History of the Communist Party of the U.S.; Twilight of World Capitalism. Gus Hall: Working Class USA; Fighting Racism. Georgi Dimitrov: Against Fascism and War (Report to the 7th Congress of the Communist International, 1935). Otto Kuusinen, main author, Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism. Roger Keeran and Thomas Kenny: Socialism Betrayed: Behind the Collapse of the Soviet Union. Beatrice Lumpkin: Always Bring a Crowd: The Story of Frank Lumpkin, Steelworker. Stalin: Foundations of Leninism. Victor Perlo: Economics of Racism, Vol. I and II; Superprofits and Crises. Howard Selsam: Dynamics of Social Change; Philosophy of Marxism; What Is Philosophy?. Henry Winston: Class, Race and Black Liberation.

What is Revisionism? A Falsification of Marxism-Leninism

2008-07-17T15:32:00.000-07:00

Comrades, Brothers and Sisters,

"Revisionism is by no means novel to the history of the world working class movement. Marxism-Leninism has had to deal with numerous versions of revisionism and opportunism since the end of the 1890s." (Right-Wing Revisionism Today, 1976, Progress Publishers, Moscow)

What is revisionism?

Revisionism is not the old-style bourgeois anti-communism that slanders socialism. Nor are bourgeois and petty-bourgeois ideologists who distort the principles of scientific socialism from outside of the Communist movement adequately defined as revisionists. No, REVISIONISTS CALL THEMSELVES MARXISTS, SOCIALISTS AND EVEN COMMUNISTS. "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." (Right-Wing Revisionism Today, 1976, Progress Publishers, Moscow)

V.I. Lenin said that revisionism is "one of the chief, if not the chief, manifestation of bourgeois influence on the proletariat and bourgeois corruption of the workers." (Lenin, Works, Vol. 20) And, while revisionism changes it's forms and accents, "it continues to be a revision of Marxist theory all along the line--i.e., it revises all the component parts of Marxism (philosophy, political economy and scientific communism)." (Right-Wing Revisionism Today, 1976, Progress Publishers, Moscow)

(Lenin noted that revisionism swims with the tide of bourgeois ideology)
"Revisionism is an opportunist trend in the worker's movement which is hostile to Marxism-Leninism, and the intent of which is to revise and reconsider the Marxist-Leninist theory. Revisionists reject the scientifically founded tenets on the inevitability of the class struggle in antagonistic society and question the significance of the socialist revolution and the role of the dictatorship of the proletariat as a form of rule by the working class in the transition period from capitalism to socialism." (What Are Classes and the Class Struggle, Progress Publishers, 1986)

Gus Hall, yesteryear's leader of the Communist Party U.S.A., taught that "the struggle for the purity of Marxism-Leninism" against opportunism is crucial. He wrote that: "a classical feature of revisionism is its rejection of the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The line runs as follows: 'We accept such fundamental Marxist-Leninist concepts as the class struggle, but we believe the idea of the proletarian dictatorship must be discarded as being no longer valid.'" (Gus Hall, 'World Workingclass Unity, ' 1969; reprinted in Gus Hall's book Working Class USA, 1987, International Publishers)

And the book, Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism, authored primarily by Otto Kuusinen, shares these words: "Modern revisionism seeks to smear the great teaching of Marxism-Leninism, declared that it is 'outmoded' and alleges that it has lost its significance for social progress. The revisionists try to kill the revolutionary spirit of Marxism, to undermine faith in socialism among the working class and the working people in general. They deny the historical necessity for a proletarian revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat during the period from capitalism to socialism, deny the leading role of the Marxist-Leninist Party, reject the principles of proletarian internationalism and call for rejection of Leninist principles of Party organization and, above all, democratic centralism, for transforming the Communist Party from a militant revolutionary organization into some kind of debating society." ("Declaration, Meeting of Representatives of the Communist and Workers' Parties of the Socialist Countries held in Moscow," Nov. 14, 1957, Moscow, Foreign Languages Publishing House)

(Gus Hall: "revisionism tries to sidestep the basic class issues and proletarian approach.")

Revisionism swims with the tide of bourgeois ideology. "In scientific communism and socio-political ideas, revisionism rejects the theory of the class struggle, the opposing nature of liberalism and socialism, and the dictatorship of the proletariat." The text Right-Wing Revisionism Today points out that "the revisionism of scientific communism lies in the renunciation of the leading role of the working class and its party in the fight for socialism, of the Leninist theory of socialist revolution, of the historical necessity of proletarian dictatorship, of the basic principles of socialist democracy and the Leninist theory of the working-class party." (Right-Wing Revisionism Today, 1976, Progress Publishers, Moscow)

Marxism-Leninism holds that a Communist Party must be 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. V. I. Lenin put it squarely: "By educating the workers' party, 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)

But right revisionism attacks the concept of the Marxist-Leninist vanguard party. Otto Kuusinen, a co-worker of Lenin's, wrote in a text entitled Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism that revisionism aims to liquidate the Party or transform it into a reformist organization.

"The ideologists of revisionism endeavor to 'revise,' or, more exactly, to distort all the fundamental theses of Marxist-Leninist theory...But they have invariable chosen Lenin's teaching on the Party as one of their chief targets. The theoretical and practical efforts of the revisionists are in the final analysis always subordinated to their attempt to liquidate the Party or to transform it into a reformist organization. Under some historical conditions this intention is not even concealed, under others it is disguised." (Otto Kuusinen, et. al., Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow)

The revisionist falsification of Marxism-Leninism runs all along the line. "The focal point of revisionism of the economic theory of Marxism is the economic basis of socialism, including its major laws; socialization of the principle means of production (and) economic planning." And revisionists also distort Marxist-Leninist philosophy. (Right-Wing Revisionism Today, 1976, Progress Publishers, Moscow)

Read the selected pieces by Lenin in Against Revisionism, in Defence of Marxism.

Revisionism Swims with the Tide of Bourgeois Ideology

2008-07-17T14:38:00.000-07:00

Comrades, Brothers and Sisters,

We warmly recommend that folks also read our other posts and definitions against revisionism 'cuz "revisionism strikes when the working people drop their guard and relax their fight against it." ("Right-Wing Revisionism Today, " 1976, Progress Publishers, Moscow) I warmly invite us to study more about revisionism.

Revisionism Swims with the Tide of Bourgeois Ideology

I warmly point out that the Soviet book, "Right-Wing Revisionism Today, " points out that:

"Throughout his life, Lenin resolutely fought various opportunist trends. This struggle continued, in the new historical setting, the traditions of Marx and Engels who had created and defended their philosophy in sharp clashes with bourgeois and petty-bourgeois ideas...

"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. He branded opportunism as a betrayal of the liberation of the working class, as a deal with the class enemy of the proletariat and a siding with the bourgeoisie in politics.

"Under cover of Marxist terminology and a claim to be ’creatively’ developing Marxism, revisionists actually replace Marxism by views that are alien and inimical to it. As Lenin said, revisionists allegedly recognize certain principles of Marxism but, in practice, replace them with bourgeois notions. (Lenin, "Collected Works, " Vol. 21)

"Therefore, the class nature of revisionism is a replacement of Marxism by bourgeois ideas, even though the social roots of revisionist ideas are usually associated with the petty bourgeoisie...

"Lenin noted that revisionism swims with the tide of bourgeois ideology." ("Right-Wing Revisionism Today, " 1976, Progress Publishers, Moscow)

A Vanguard Marxist-Leninist Communist Party

2008-06-06T18:10:00.000-07:00

Comrades, Brothers and Sisters,

Revisionism denies both the revolutionary character of and the leading (vanguard) role of the Marxist-Leninist Party. I apologize, my friends, for the long piece, but I realize that this Marxist-Leninist information is not widely available. Please try to read the italicized sections if you study nothing else.

The first section will share information from Otto Kuusinen’s book Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism on the revolutionary character of a Marxist-Leninist Party while the second part of this post will focus on the Communist Party as 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.

"REVOLUTIONARY CHARACTER OF A MARXIST PARTY.

"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. V.I. Lenin wrote that: ’...in order that the bulk of a certain class may learn to understand its interests and its position, in order that it may learn to pursue its own policies, requires precisely that the advanced elements of this class should be organized immediately and at all costs even if these elements at first constitute a negligible part of the class.’ (Lenin, "Works," Vol. 19, 4th Russian Edition)

"As long as the working class wages only an economic struggle, the bourgeoisie does not see any great danger in that for itself; but when the working class organizes politically, i.e. creates a political party which expresses its will as a class, the bourgeoisie begins seriously to fear for its rule. That is why reaction deals its main blows against the political party of the working class. At the same time, trying to undermine the Party from within, capitalist propaganda endeavors to persuade the workers that they can do without their own party...

"...V.I. Lenin wrote: ’Only a political party of the working class, i.e., a Communist party, is capable of uniting, educating and organizing such a vanguard of the proletariat and the whole mass of working people, a vanguard which alone is able to resist the inevitable petty-bourgeois vacillations of this mass, the inevitable traditions and relapses of trade-union narrowness or trade-unionist prejudices amidst the proletariat, i.e., to lead the proletariat politically and through it to lead all the masses of the working people.’ (Lenin, "Works," Vol. 32, 4th Russian Edition)

"However, not every political party claiming the leadership of the working class is capable of accomplishing this task. This is evident from the experience of the Social-Democratic Parties of the Second International. Acting through the opportunist leaders of Social-Democracy, the bourgeoisie was able to a considerable extent to bring these parties under its influence, to ’tame’ them and make them barely indistinguishable from the usual bourgeois parliamentary opposition. As a result, the Social-Democratic Parties, which at first raised high hopes in the working class, lost their ability to organize and lead the working class movement. This was particularly evident when all the social contradictions engendered by the epoch of imperialism became extremely aggravated.

"Objective reality and the interests of the proletariat made the creation of working-class parties of a new type a matter of imperative necessity.

"The first such party was successfully built in Russia, where the imperialist contradictions were particularly sharp. At the end of the 1890s, V.I. Lenin raised the banner of struggle against opportunism in the ranks of Social-Democracy. This struggle set an example for the revolutionary movement throughout the world...

"...The main thing that characterizes the parties of the new type is their irreconcilability to capitalism. The Communists are waging an active struggle for its abolition, for a revolutionary transformation of capitalist society, for they hold that only the taking of political power by the working class and the establishment of a dictatorship of the proletariat are essential conditions for this transformation. Hence the intolerance displayed by Communists for all forms of opportunism, which in practice signifies adaptation to capitalism.

"The Communist Parties do not act blindly, groping in the dark, but...(must be)...guided by the revolutionary theory of Marxism-Leninism which scientifically expresses the fundamental interests of the working class. The Party is a voluntary union of like-minded persons for the purpose of applying the Marxist world outlook and carrying out the historic mission of the working class." (Otto Kuusinen, et al, Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow)

"VANGUARD OF THE WORKING CLASS AND ALL WORKING PEOPLE.

"The 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. V.I. Lenin wrote: ’By educating the workers’ party, 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)

"The party of the proletariat--a Communist Party--while being a class party has at the same time deep roots not only among the workers but also among other sections of the people.

"Communists are in no way peculiar people; they are plain workers, peasants, intellectuals, in a word, ordinary people. But they are distinguished by their greater class-consciousness, ideological steadfastness and, consequently, more intense revolutionary character and readiness to face any ordeal for the sake of the lofty idea which they have united to realize. Their life is bound up with the interests of the people and they are deeply concerned with everything that agitates the peoples minds...

"...History shows us that before becoming real vanguards the revolutionary parties usually pass through a number of stages of political and organizational development. At the outset they are, more often than not, propagandist groups and their work is conducted mainly within their own ranks. This is necessary to ensure ideological unity, educate the membership and improve the organization. Then comes the time when the parties go to the masses and begin to lead strikes and mass actions of the working class. This period is very important for it signifies the merging of the spontaneous working-class movement with the ideas of socialism and its transformation into a class-conscious, organized movement. In the next stage the party becomes a real political force capable of leading not only the majority of the working class but also considerable masses of the people.

"In some capitalist countries the Communist Parties have not yet been able to win the broad masses of the working class and have not yet become mass parties. As the vanguard uniting the most class-conscious section of the working-class in its ranks, they play no small part in the life and struggle of working people. It is clear, however, that they will be able to play a still greater part when they unite the masses around themselves. Then they will become a real political force capable of leading the workers to social emancipation, to the building of a new society.

"The speed with which a party passes from one stage to another depends on objective conditions, as well as on the correctness of its own policies and the ability of its leadership..." (Otto Kuusinen, et al, Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow)

The Historic Mission of the Working Class

2008-04-01T14:10:00.001-07:00

Otto Kuusinen, a Communist, wrote in the book Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism:

"A deep analysis of the economic structure of capitalism led Marx and Engels to the conclusion that this social system contained the seeds of its own collapse and that a new system--socialism--would replace it. But the founders of Marxism not only disclosed the main direction of further development; they also discovered that the proletariat, the working class, was the leading social force destined to bring about the great social transformation, i.e., to destroy capitalism and build socialism.

"Marx and Engels formulated this discovery and fully substantiated it in the Communist Manifesto published in Germany in 1848. It states 'Not only has the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring death to itself; it has also called into existence the men who are to wield those weapons--the modern working class--the proletarians.' 'The development of Modern Industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie, therefore, produces, above all, are its own gravediggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.'(Marx and Engels, Communist Manifesto,1848)" (Otto Kuusinen, et al., Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow)

(United Steelworkers union members on strike and fighting for the living standards of our multiracial, multinational, male-female, young and old working class.)

The Working Class is the Liberator of the Working People.

Otto Kuusinen writes: "On what did Marx and Engels base their conception of the historic mission of the working class?

"In the first place, being the most exploited class in capitalist society, the working class--owing to the very conditions of its life--becomes the most consistent and irreconcilable opponent of the capitalist order. The vital class interests of the workers impel them to an implacable struggle against capitalism. Marx and Engels emphasised that 'of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie today, the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class.' (Marx and Engels, Communist Manifesto, 1848)

"Secondly, Marx and Engels based their conception on the fact that the workers by their very position in production are connected not with its past but with its future and, consequently, with the future of the whole of society.

"What does this mean?

"It means, in the first place, that the development of the material basis of capitalism--large-scale industry--does not threaten the existence of the proletariat as a class, does not undermine its positions in society, but, on the contrary, leads to an increase in the numbers of workers and enhances their role in the life of society.

"It means, furthermore, that the interests and aspirations of the working class coincide with the main trend in the development of the productive forces. The level of development of these forces attained under capitalism requires the abolition of private ownership of the means of production. And it is the working class that is destined to carry out this task. It is objectively interested not only in overthrowing capitalism but also in replacing it with socialism, the system which, having superseded capitalism, gives full scope for a tremendous development of the productive forces of society.

"As Marx and Engels put it, the proletariat executes the sentence which private ownership passes on itself by engendering the proletariat. As a matter of fact, the working class is the only class that has no part in the ownership of the means of production and theerfore does not have to attach any value to it. Moreover, since private ownership of the means of production forms the basis of the exploitation of the worker by the capitalist, its abolition and replacement by social ownership is the only way to liberate the working class.

"In concluding that it was the working class that was destined to destroy capitalism and build socialism, Marx and Engels also based themselves on the fact that it was the only class possessing the fighting qualities needed to accomplish so great an historical objective.

"What are these qualities?

"First of all, the working class has the advantage of mass. It is one of the most numerous and at the same time rapidly growing classes in capitalist society.

"But this is not the only thing. By virtue of the very conditions of its life and labor the working class is capable of the highest degree of organization. The work at a large enterprise daily instills in the workers such qualities as the spirit of collectivism, capacity for strict discipline, and mutual aid and support. These qualities are invaluable not only in labor but also in struggle. By gathering thousands of workers under the roof of plants and factories which are, as a rule, located in large cities, the capitalists themselves help the workers overcome the disunion and isolation that was the curse of the other mass movements of the working people, especially the peasant movement. That is why the workers lend themselves to organisation and union more readily than any other class.

"Of all the oppressed classes the working class is also the most capable of developing its political consciousness and of adopting an advanced, scientific world outlook. Large-scale industry requires more highly educated workers than do the other forms of economy, while the conditions of the class struggle in the capitalist epoch require much higher political consciousness. The proletariat acquires political consciousness not only and not so much from books as from its experience in labor and struggle. In addition, the best minds of the intelligentsia come over to the side of the working class and help it elaborate and gain a scientific, revolutionary world outlook which, by becoming the property of millions of workers, grows into a prodigious force.

"At the same time the working class is the most militant and revolutionary class of society.

"All this gives the working class the mission of abolishing capitalism and replacing it with socialism.

"It is no mere chance that this mission of the working class is called a historic mission.

"In the course of history various classes--slave-owners, fuedal lords, capitalists--found themselves at the head of society. By reshaping society according to their own needs and interests, each of these classes helped to establish a more advanced mode of production. But social injustice and inequality was invariably retained. Each time society was headed by a handful of oppressors and each new step along the path of progress was made at the price of incredible suffering of the working masses, who always constituted the vast majority of society.

"When the working class comes to head society, it puts an end to this injustice forever. By liberating itself it simultaneously liberates all of humanity. By reshaping society according to its own needs and interests it creates a new society in which all people will find true happiness. It is the mission of the working class once and for all to abolish the prime basis of social injustice, the private ownership of the means of production which caused the division of society into rich and poor, exploiters and exploited, oppressors and oppressed. Fulfillment of this task is the only way to free society from poverty and from a situation in which the masses are deprived of their rights, and to put an end to political and national oppression, militarism and wars.

"In the Communist Manifesto Marx and Engels wrote: 'All previous historical movements were movements of minorities or in the interest of minorities. The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority.' (Marx and Engels, Communist Manifesto, 1848)

"The doctrine of the historic mission of the working class constitutes a highly important part of the Marxist world outlook. It was the first to show a feasible way of realising the aspirations of the oppressed and exploited masses for freedom and justice. Many outstanding people and social movements landed in an impasse only because they did not see the social force that could give the peoples freedom, well-being and happiness. Some appealed to the wisdom of monarchs, others hoped society would be saved by the creative genius of scientists and engineers, still others expected a feat from 'critically thinking personalities,' and others again set their hopes on a revival of the patriarchal peasant ways of life and the order of things that had prevailed in the medieval handicraft guilds.

"But all these hopes and expectations only entailed a useless waste of effort and not infrequently the loss of human lives. Socialism, humanity's splendid age-old dream, ceased to be an incorporeal utopia only from the moment that the social force capable of carrying this dream into life appeared and was scientifically established, that the historic mission of the working class became manifest to the workers themselves and to the progressive representatives of the other oppressed classes in capitalist society.

"This is why, in appraising the historical services rendered by the founders of Marxism, Lenin wrote: 'The main thing in the doctrine of Marx is that it brings out the historic role of the proletariat as the builder of a socialist society.'(Lenin, "Collected Works", Vol. 18)" (Otto Kuusinen, et al., Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow)

Socialism Betrayed: Behind the Collapse of the Soviet Union by Roger Keeran and Thomas Kenny

2008-03-04T15:42:00.000-08:00

Brothers and Sisters,

The great book Socialism Betrayed, written by Roger Keeran and Thomas Kenny, explains that, along with economic factors such as the "second economy" and international pressure from imperialism , revisionist and opportunist "forces oppos(ed) socialism from within" the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. There were 'two trends in Soviet politics'--a "leftwing Communist tradition represented in the main by Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin and Yuri Andropov" and a "rightwing Communist tradition represented in the main by Nikolai Bukharin and Nikita Kruschev." And "the Soviet collapse occurred in the main because of the policies that Michail Gorbachev pursued after 1986." Keeran and Kenny declare that: "after 1985, Gorbachev's policies moved to the right, in the sense that they involved what might be called a social democratic vision of socialism that weakened the Communist Party, compromised with capitalism and incorporated into Soviet socialism certain aspects of capitalist private property, markets and political forms." (Roger Keeran and Thomas Kenny, Socialism Betrayed: Behind the Collapse of the Soviet Union, 2004, International Publishers)

(Lenin put it squarely: "We raised the banner of peace and socialism for the whole world to see!")

Keeran and Kenny inquire: "...why could Soviet socialism not survive a Gorbachev?

"The answer is: the subjective factor is vastly more important in socialism than in capitalism. This is both a strength and a vulnerability. A qualitative difference between socialism and capitalism is captured in the saying 'capitalism grows; socialism is built.' At the risk of a tedious simile, the two systems are like a river raft and an airplane. With capitalism--the river raft--the pole man who steers the raft has to avoid shoals, rapids and waterfalls. Mostly the flow of the current down river controls the pace and direction of the raft. It is a simple and mostly automatic system. Only loose supervision is required. Big blunders are usually not fatal.

"An airplane--socialism--is a far superior mode of transportation. It's range, its freedom of direction and manuever, and its speed far exceed that of the river raft. But the airplane requires conscious application of the laws of physics and aerodynamics, forethought, planning, science, training, ground crews, radar and so on. It is a complex system requiring a massive social division of labor. Managing the system--its piloting, the subjective aspect of its steering--is far more crucial to the safe operation of this mode of transportation than is the case with the river raft. Big blunders in piloting a plane, though rare, are often fatal. There is a smaller margin for error. The fact that airplanes sometimes crash does not prove the superiority of the river raft. It is only an argument for better-engineered, better-piloted, safer airplanes.

"The laws of socialist construction differ from the laws of capitalist development. Capitalism's laws operate blindly, without consciousness, like the law of gravity that sends the river raft down stream, no matter what the pole man is doing. But socialism's laws, while objective, require an airplane whose designers consciously master and use the laws governing such forces as gravity, thrust, lift and drag, and a pilot skillful in the technique and grounded in the underlying science.

"Therefore a Gorbachev leadership could do far more damage to socialism than an even more blundering Hoover did to U.S. capitalism." (Roger Keeran and Thomas Kenny, Socialism Betrayed: Behind the Collapse of the Soviet Union, 2004, International Publishers)

Lenin on the State and Democracy from Capitalism to Communism

2008-03-01T17:25:00.000-08:00

Brothers and Sisters,

Lenin taught that "the state is a special organization of force; it is the organization of violence for the suppression of some class" and that the proletariat must gain state power and suppress the bourgeoisie "in the interests of the vast majority of the people, and against the insignificant minority consisting of the slave owners of modern times--the landowners and the capitalists." Lenin also said that the "proletariat needs state power....for the purpose of guiding the great mass of the population...in the work of organizing socialist economy."(Lenin, State and Revolution, 1917)

The bourgeoisie and their class propaganda screams that socialism is anti-democratic. They conceal the fact that "the dictatorship of the proletariat, i.e., the organization of the vanguard of the oppressed as the ruling class for the purpose of suppressing the oppressors" expands democracy, "which for the first time becomes democracy for the poor, democracy for the people, and not democracy for the money-bags." But "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, their resistance must be crushed by force...

"Democracy for the vast majority of the people, and suppression by force, i.e., exclusion from democracy, of the exploiters and oppressors of the people--this is the change democracy undergoes during the transition from capitalism to communism." (Lenin, State and Revolution, 1917)

Below is excerpts from V.I. Lenin's classic work, State and Revolution, on the state and democracy in the transition from capitalism to Communism:

"Between capitalist and communist society"--Marx continues--"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."

"Marx bases this conclusion on an analysis of the role played by the proletariat in modern capitalist society, on the data concerning the development of this society, and on the irreconcilability of the antagonistic interests of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie.

"Previously the question was put as follows: to achieve its emancipation, the proletariat must overthrow the bourgeoisie, win political power and establish its revolutionary dictatorship. Now the question is put somewhat differently: the transition from capitalist society--which is developing towards communism--to communist society is impossible without a "political transition period", and the state in this period can only be the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.

"What, then, is the relation of this dictatorship to democracy?

"We have seen that the Communist Manifesto simply places side by side the two concepts: "to raise the proletariat to the position of the ruling class" and "to win the battle of democracy". On the basis of all that has been said above, it is possible to determine more precisely how democracy changes in the transition from capitalism to communism.

"In capitalist society, providing it develops under the most favourable conditions, we have a more or less complete democracy in the democratic republic. But this democracy is always hemmed in by the narrow limits set by capitalist exploitation, and consequently always remains, in effect, a democracy for the minority, only for the propertied classes, only for the rich. Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in the ancient Greek republics: freedom for the slave-owners. Owing to the conditions of capitalist exploitation, the modern wage slaves are so crushed by want and poverty that "they cannot be bothered with democracy", "cannot be bothered with politics"; in the ordinary, peaceful course of events, the majority of the population is debarred from participation in public and political life...

"Democracy for an insignificant minority, democracy for the rich--that is the democracy of capitalist society. If we look more closely into the machinery of capitalist democracy, we see everywhere, in the “petty”--supposedly petty--details of the suffrage (residential qualifications, exclusion of women, etc.), in the technique of the representative institutions, in the actual obstacles to the right of assembly (public buildings are not for “paupers”!), in the purely capitalist organization of the daily press, etc., etc.,--we see restriction after restriction upon democracy. These restrictions, exceptions, exclusions, obstacles for the poor seem slight, especially in the eyes of one who has never known want himself and has never been inclose contact with the oppressed classes in their mass life (and nine out of 10, if not 99 out of 100, bourgeois publicists and politicians come under this category); but in their sum total these restrictions exclude and squeeze out the poor from politics, from active participation in democracy.

"Marx grasped this essence of capitalist democracy splendidly when, in analyzing the experience of the Commune, he said that the oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class shall represent and repress them in parliament!

"But from this capitalist democracy--that is inevitably narrow and stealthily pushes aside the poor, and is therefore hypocritical and false through and through--forward development does not proceed simply, directly and smoothly, towards "greater and greater democracy", as the liberal professors and petty-bourgeois opportunists would have us believe. No, forward development, i.e., development towards communism, proceeds through the dictatorship of the proletariat, and cannot do otherwise, for the resistance of the capitalist exploiters cannot be broken by anyone else or in any other way.

"And the dictatorship of the proletariat, i.e., the organization of the vanguard of the oppressed as the ruling class for the purpose of suppressing the oppressors, cannot result merely in an expansion of 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, their resistance must be crushed by force; it is clear that there is no freedom and no democracy where there is suppression and where there is violence.

"Engels expressed this splendidly in his letter to Bebel when he said, as the reader will remember, that "the proletariat needs the state, not in the interests of freedom but in order to hold down its adversaries, and as soon as it becomes possible to speak of freedom the state as such ceases to exist".

"Democracy for the vast majority of the people, and suppression by force, i.e., exclusion from democracy, of the exploiters and oppressors of the people--this is the change democracy undergoes during the transition from capitalism to communism.

"Only in communist society, when the resistance of the capitalists have disappeared, when there are no classes (i.e., when there is no distinction between the members of society as regards their relation to the social means of production), only then "the state... ceases to exist", and "it becomes possible to speak of freedom". Only then will a truly complete democracy become possible and be realized, a democracy without any exceptions whatever. And only then will democracy begin to wither away, owing to the simple fact that, freed from capitalist slavery, from the untold horrors, savagery, absurdities, and infamies of capitalist exploitation, people will gradually become accustomed to observing the elementary rules of social intercourse that have been known for centuries and repeated for thousands of years in all copy-book maxims. They will become accustomed to observing them without force, without coercion, without subordination, without the special apparatus for coercion called the state.

"The expression "the state withers away" is very well-chosen, for it indicates both the gradual and the spontaneous nature of the process. Only habit can, and undoubtedly will, have such an effect; for we see around us on millions of occassions how readily people become accustomed to observing the necessary rules of social intercourse when there is no exploitation, when there is nothing that arouses indignation, evokes protest and revolt, and creates the need for suppression.

"And so in capitalist society we have a democracy that is curtailed, wretched, false, a democracy only for the rich, for the minority. The dictatorship of the proletariat, the period of transition to communism, will for the first time create democracy for the people, for the majority, along with the necessary suppression of the exploiters, of the minority. Communism alone is capable of providing really complete democracy, and the more complete it is, the sooner it will become unnecessary and wither away of its own accord....

"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 suppression of the risings of slaves, serfs or wage-laborers, and it will cost mankind far less. And it is compatible with the extension of democracy to such an overwhelming majority of the population that the need for a special machine of suppression will begin to disappear. Naturally, the exploiters are 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 people (such as the Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, we would remark, running ahead).

"Lastly, only communism makes the state absolutely unnecessary, for there is nobody to be suppressed--“nobody” in the sense of a class, of a systematic struggle against a definite section of the population. We are not utopians, and do not in the least deny the possibility and inevitability of excesses on the part of individual persons, or the need to stop such excesses. In the first place, however, no special machine, no special apparatus of suppression, is needed for this: this will be done by the armed people themselves, as simply and as readily as any crowd of civilized people, even in modern society, interferes to put a stop to a scuffle or to prevent a woman from being assaulted. And, secondly, we know that the fundamental social cause of excesses, which consist in the violation of the rules of social intercourse, is the exploitation of the people, their want and their poverty. With the removal of this chief cause, excesses will inevitably begin to "wither away". We do not know how quickly and in what succession, but we do know they will wither away. With their withering away the state will also wither away. (Lenin, State and Revolution, Chapter 5, Section 2, 1917)

Union Review: Ford Closes St. Paul, Minn. Plant; Communists Demand Public Ownership!

2008-02-02T14:26:00.000-08:00

Brothers and Sisters,

We are proud to share a 2007 article from the Union Review website which featured coverage of our activities while we, the Gus Hall Action Club, were members of the Minneapolis club of the Communist Party USA.

Otto Kuusinen once said that: "Communists insist on nationalization being carried out in a way that really curtails the power of monopoly capitalists and improves the lot of the working people." (Otto Kuusinen, Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow)

Ford Closes St. Paul, Minn. Plant; Communists Demand Public Ownership.

Union Review article by MRL Fri, 06/22/2007:

In January 2006 the Ford Motor Company announced a plan known as "The Way Forward". But Ford's "way forward" is only the way back for thousands in the American working class. The plan calls for the closure of fourteen North American plants five of which are in the U.S. Manufacturing plants in St. Louis, Wixcom, Michigan, and Atlanta were slated for extinction in the first round of U.S. cutbacks. The restructuring comes at the expense of 30,000 U.S. workers which total about 20% of Ford's North American workforce.

Most recently Ford has officially announced that it's St. Paul, Minnesota plant will close by 2008. The plant employs about 1,900 workers whose job prospects will worsen with Ford's departure. Nationwide, jobs in manufacturing are on are on the decline. An economic and budget brief from the Congressional Budget Office dated Feb. 18, 2004 states: "The manufacturing sector of the U.S. economy has experienced substantial job losses over the past several years." The brief indicates these jobs declined by 17.5 percent between July,2000 and January, 2004 bringing employment in the manufacturing field to its lowest point since 1950.

In contrast, Ford's "Way Forward" is nothing but a good thing for the company's new CEO. The Washington Post reported in late summer 2006 that Alan Mulally had accepted the post with a 2 million dollar annual base salary and an 18.5 million dollar up-front payout. He will also receive 4 million stock options and 600,000 restricted stock units.

While the new Ford CEO collects labor profits on the backs of 30,000 workers and the working class at large, employees of the Ford St. Paul, Minn. Plant and their communities have found that they have allies in the Minnesota branch of the Communist Party USA.

On May 8 members of the Minneapolis club of the Communist Party USA entered a public meeting of the "Ford Site Planning Task Force" commissioned by the city of St. Paul. The meeting had in attendance developers and city officials, all attempting to make a profit from the displacement of hundreds of union workers. CPUSA members came carrying signs that read "Public Ownership is the Answer!", "People Before Profits!" and "Save Union Jobs!".

Their demands were simple: public ownership of the Ford plant and the salvation of working-class jobs. A leaflet produced by the Minneapolis Club of the CPUSA states: Ford's downsizing is "economic warfare against our working-class. Ford has become rich off the value produced by the working-class. The buck stops here…The Ford plant should remain open under public, not corporate, ownership." This "would mean that the Ford plant would be taken out of the system of corporate profits and operated in the interests of the working-class and the people."

In support of the organized workers of the Ford plant, the flyer continues, "The hard working union members of United Auto Workers 879 do not deserve to be thrown onto the scrap heap by Ford's president and board of directors. In return for their many years of loyal service, Ford is 'rewarding' workers with layoffs and threats to their security. This is a crime."

The UAW and the workers of the St. Paul Ford plant are not alone. Their struggle is the struggle of the whole workingclass. It is the heart of a common experience that belongs to all workers that find themselves exploited and oppressed for profit. "Unfortunately this is another day in the continuing story of the destruction of the American middle class." said Local 879 president Rob McKenzie. And that is certainly the truth.

Marx, Engels, Lenin: Marxism and the Role of Marxist-Leninist Theory

2008-01-30T16:54:00.000-08:00

Brothers and Sisters,

Marxism-Leninism is "a science in the finest sense of the word." (Boris N. Ponomarev, Marxism-Leninism: A Flourishing Science, 1979, International Publishers)

Check out these excerpts from the Marxist-Leninist classics:

"Just as the economists are the scientific representatives of the bourgeois class, so the Socialists and the Communists are the theoreticians of the proletarian class." (Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy, 1847, pg. 140, Moscow, FLPH)

"Just as Darwin discovered the law of development of organic nature, so Marx discovered the law of development of human history: the simple fact, hitherto concealed by an overgrowth of ideology, that mankind must first of all eat, drink, have shelter and clothing, before it can pursue politics, science, art, religion, etc.; that therefore the production of the immediate material means of subsistence and consequently the degree of economic development attained by a given people or during a given epoch form the foundation upon which the state institutions, the legal conceptions, art and even the ideas in religion, of the people concerned have been evolved, and in the light of which they must, therefore, be explained instead of vice versa, as had hitherto been the case.

"Marx discovered the special law of motion governing the present- day capitalist mode of production and the bourgeois society that this mode of production has created. The discovery of surplus value suddenly threw light on the problem, in trying to solve which all previous investigations, of both bourgeois economists and socialist critics, had been groping in the dark."(Engels, Speech at the Graveside of Karl Marx, March 17, 1883, MESW, IP, 1977, p.435; MECW, Vol.24, pp.467-68)

"These two great discoveries, the materialist conception of history and the revelation of the secret of capitalist production by means of surplus value, we owe to Marx. With these discoveries socialism became a science..." (Engels, Anti-Duhring, 1878, pg 43, International Publishers)

"The communist revolution is the most radical rupture with traditional property relations; no wonder that it's development involves the most radical rupture with traditional ideas." (Marx and Engels, Communist Manifesto, 1848, pg. 29, International Publishers, 1948)

"The great world-wide historical service of Marx and Engels lies in the fact that they proved by scientific analysis the inevitability of the downfall of capitalism and its transition to communism under which there will be no more exploitation of man by man.

"The great world-wide historical service of Marx and Engels lies in this, that they indicated to the proletarians of all countries their role, their tasks, their calling: to be the first to rise in the revolutionary fight against capital and unite around themselves in this struggle all the toilers and the exploited." (Lenin, Speech at the Unveiling of a Monument to Marx & Engels, Nov.7, 1918, CW, Vol.28, p.65)

"We do not regard Marx's theory as something completed and inviolable; on the contrary, we are convinced that it has only laid the foundation stone of the science which socialists must develop in all directions if they wish to keep pace with life. (Lenin, Our Programme, end of 1899, CW, Vol 4, p.211)

"The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it." (Marx, Theses on Feuerbach, 1845, MESW, IP 1977, p.30; MECW, Vol.5, p.5)

"...the only choice is — either bourgeois or socialist ideology. There is no middle course (for mankind has not created a “third” ideology, and, moreover, in a society torn by class antagonisms there can never be a non-class or an above-class ideology). Hence, to belittle the socialist ideology in any way, to turn aside from it in the slightest degree means to strengthen bourgeois ideology." (Lenin, What Is To Be Done?, 1902, International Publishers, 1969)

"Without work, without struggle, a routine knowledge of communism obtained from communist pamphlets and books would be worthless, for it would continue the old divorcement of theory from practice, that old seperation which constituted the most disgusting feature of the old bourgeois society." (Lenin, Address at Congress of Russian Young Communist League, 1920, pg. 28)

"There is no royal road to science, and only those who do not dread the fatiguing climb of its steep paths have a chance of gaining its luminous summits." (Marx, Capital, Vol.I, Preface to the French Edition, March 18, 1872, IP Ed, p.21)

"Practice without theory is blind. Theory without practice is sterile. Theory becomes a material force as soon as it is absorbed by the masses." (Marx, Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Law, Jan. 1844, MECW, Vol. 3, p. 182)

Marx "The Germans [Marxists who moved to the USA] have not understood how to use their theory as a lever which could set the American masses in motion; they do not understand the theory themselves for the most part and treat it in a doctrinaire and dogmatic way, as something which has got to be learned off by heart but which will then supply all needs without more ado. To them it is a credo and not a guide to action." (Engels, Letter to F.A. Sorge, London, Nov.29, 1886, MESC, p.449-50; MECW, Vol.477, pp.531-32)

"Without revolutionary theory, there can be no revolutionary movement." (Lenin, What Is To Be Done?, 1902, CW, Vol.5, p.369)

"The Marxist doctrine is omnipotent because it is true!" (Lenin, Three Sources & Three Component Parts of Marxism, March 1913, CW, Vol.19, p.23)

"Nothing human is alien to me." Marx' favorite aphorism, original by Terence, poet of ancient Rome

"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; for it, 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, Foundations of Leninism, 1924, pg. 28-29, International Publishers, 1977)

Communists Must Respond to the Crises Faced by the Working Class

2007-12-23T15:32:00.000-08:00

Brothers and Sisters,

A Communist response to the immediate crises faced by our working class is absolutely necessary. Our home is in the working class. Gus Hall, the former leader of the Communist Party U.S.A., once wrote that "our Party is a Party FOR the working class. Our Party is a working-class party." (Gus Hall, The Path to Revolution)

Communists have no interests separate and apart from the working class or the majority of the American people. But we have a special viewpoint and approach. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels wrote that Communists are "the most advanced and resolute section of the working-class parties of every country, that section which pushes forward all others" and "'clearly understands the line of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement." (Marx and Engels, Communist Manifesto)

Political parties are instruments which serve class interests. We need a Marxist-Leninist working-class political party--a revolutionary party dedicated to the fundamental transformation of society. V.I. Lenin wrote: "we see in the independent, uncompromisingly Marxist party of the revolutionary proletariat the sole pledge of socialism's victory and the road that is most free from vacillations." (V.I. Lenin, A Militant Agreement for the Uprising)

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 is the science of social change. It is revolutionary because it recognizes in the struggles of today the basis of fundamental social change. It is revolutionary because central to it is the reality that the climactic point of that change, the replacement of one social system by another, is a revolutionary act.

To be a Communist is to be firmly committed to the fight for the welfare and interests of the working class and of working people in general. It is to be selflessly devoted to the noble vision of emancipation of humankind from all exploitation and oppression, to the victory of socialism and communism. In the words of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, "the Communists 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." (Marx and Engels, Communist Manifesto)

(United Auto Workers union strike at American Axle, 2008. Photo: John Rummel for the Labor Up Front blog.)

We Communists, motivated by the elemental human needs of the international working class and our people, fight the evils of capitalist exploitation. Ours is the fate of our class and our people. The trials of their existence are ours. We strive for the improvement of their conditions of existence here and now. At the same time, we are convinced that socialism, and beyond it communism, offers the only fundamental, lasting solution to the problems of exploitation and oppression, that it opens the only door to an immeasurable improvement in the quality of people's lives. Thus the struggle for revolution is the logical continuation of the struggle for a better life.

Through immediate struggle workers organize and learn the need to battle further. They learn to understand the terms of their exploitation and the need for socialist revolution. V.I. Lenin once wrote that: "only struggle educates the exploited class. Only struggle discloses to it the magnitude of its own power, widens its horizon, enhances its abilities, clarifies its mind, forges its will." (Lenin, Lecture on 1905 Revolution) Every successful socialist revolution was carried out by the working class with experience rich in the struggles for immediate demands. A working class 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."

For Communists the constant challenge is to relate everyday struggle to the ultimate goal, to show the relation of reform to revolutionary change. We believe there is an absolute need for a revolutionary working-class party in the ranks of workers and fighting in the immediate day-to-day struggles. Lenin said that "It is to enable the mass of a definite class to learn to understand its own interests and its position, learn to conduct its own policy, that there must be an organization of the advanced elements of the class, immediately and at all costs, even though at first these elements constitute only a tiny fraction of the class." (Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 19)

Our working class requires a Communist Party that applies Marxism-Leninism to the struggles of the workers and their allies, a party that seeks to guide that class to power. Lenin wrote that: "It (Marxism) made clear the real task of a revolutionary socialist party: not to draw up plans for refashioning society, not to preach to the capitalists and their hangers-on about improving the lot of the workers, not to hatch conspiracies, but to organize the class struggle of the proletariat and to guide this struggle, the ultimate aim of which is the conquest of political power by the proletariat and the organization of a socialist society…" (Lenin, Our Programme)

Public Ownership and Nationalization of the St. Paul Ford Plant is the Answer

2007-10-23T12:56:00.000-07:00

PUBLIC OWNERSHIP AND NATIONALIZATION OF THE ST. PAUL FORD PLANT IS THE ANSWER!

Statement by the Gus Hall Action Club about the soon-to-be closing St. Paul Ford Assembly Plant.

Gus Hall, the former Communist Party presidential candidate, called for public ownership and nationalization of basic industries as a practical solution to the crises of state-monopoly capitalism. He wrote, in the 1987 book, Working Class USA, that "nationalization" is "when an industry is taken over by the government and run for the benefit of the people. The Communist Party calls for basic industries in the U.S. to be nationalized and run democratically by representatives of labor and community." (Gus Hall, Working Class USA, 1987, International Publishers)

"Our position is--make the monopoly corporations pay the tab. If the corporations say they cannot operate--which is fakery in 99% of the cases--then take the operation over. Nationalize the industry. We are for a law which states that before a corporation can move a factory it must have the agreement of the union and the community. If it disregards the wishes of the people--take the operation over." (Gus Hall, Capitalism on the Skids to Oblivion)

PUT PEOPLE BEFORE PROFITS!

The scourge of plant closing across the United States has created a crisis for our working class and community. Public ownership and nationalization of the Ford Twin Cities Assembly Plant would guarantee working people job security.

Ford's multi-billion dollar downsizing, which has come at the cost of 30, 000 jobs nationally, cannot be allowed to attack unions and our community in the Twin Cities, Minnesota. Amidst a frenzy of condominium builders and developers, the closing of the St. Paul Ford plant would come at the cost of hundreds of remaining union jobs. This is economic warfare against our working class. Ford has become rich off of the value produced by the working class. The essence of capitalist exploitation of workers is the production of surplus-value (profit). Capitalists are not interested in producing means of production and consumer goods that are useful and needed by society, but in extracting as much surplus-value as possible. In this respect, their appetites are insatiable. The buck stops here.

Ford announced that the St. Paul plant would be closing in 2008 and used this to coerce many of the United Auto Workers members to accept buyout packages. According to a recent article in the "Star Tribune," (Oct. 5, 2007) St. Paul union members said their understanding is that Ford's profit per truck has jumped from a few hundred dollars to more than $6,000 since the plant shed 900 workers through buyouts as of Jan. 1.

The real problem is the system of state-monopoly capitalism. The essence of state-monopoly capitalism is the direct union of the capitalist monopolies with the enormous power of the state.

Now, Ford will be keeping the plant open for another few years. On the other hand, the closure of the St. Paul Ford Plant in the future still looms. The closure of the St. Paul Twin Cities Assembly Plant would coss the loss of hundreds of union jobs. At this late date, there is only one way to address the issue of job security. This is through public takeover and ownership of the St. Paul Ford Plant.

PUBLIC OWNERSHIP AND NATIONALIZATION IS THE ANSWER.

Workers should not be concerned with Ford's corporate profits. Monopoly capitalists such as Ford oppose public ownership of the St. Paul Ford Plant because it would strikingly demonstrate to working people that society can get along very well without capitalists.In order to benefit the union, the working class and the community, the Ford Twin Cities Assembly Plant must not be torn down and it's land sold to wealthy developers and condominium builders. Ford should be taken over and nationalized--placed under public ownership. Taxpayers have subsidized Ford's manufacturing at this plant for years. There is no reason why we, the public, shouldn't own the plant and dam.

Ford CEOs have proven that they will not make any decisions based upon anything other than maximum corporate profits. Job security for auto workers is not a consideration with these monopoly capitalist CEOs. The Ford Plant should remain open, not closed, under public, not corporate, ownership. Public ownership and nationalization would mean that the Ford Plant would be taken over by the government and out of the system of corporate profits and be operated in the interests of the working class and the people. Nationalization under democratic people's control would allow unions and the community to have a voice. The St. Paul Ford Twin Cities Assembly Plant would be operated and controlled as public property and it would dispense with private profits and corporate executive salaries. Public ownership of the Ford Twin Cities Assembly Plant can be paid for by ending corporate tax loopholes and taxing the rich.

Public ownership of industry in France produced such marvels as the high-speed TGV train...and public ownership of the St. Paul Ford Plant would guarantee workers (and their families) job security.

LEGISLATION.

The working people are by no means against all intervention of the state in the economy. We support such intervention as would curb the arbitrary and unlimited power of parasitical monopolies. We demand the nationalization of and public ownership of the Ford Plant. As the very life and livelihood of working people are under attack by the corporate profiteers, lawmakers have dragged their feet too long and not demanded public ownership of the St. Paul Ford Plant.

We demand a strong fight to save the Ford Plant and the jobs of those employed there.Working people can wring concessions from the capitalist state as a result of struggle.

REAL JOBS AT REAL LIVING WAGES.

The exploitation of wage-workers under capitalism is a means of maintaining and increasing values belonging to the capitalist, of extending and increasing the power and domination of capital. Capital is a value that produces surplus-value (profit) from the labor of the working class. Working people, deprived of ownership of the means of production, are compelled by the threat of the bony hand of hunger to sell their labor-power to the capitalists.

Every worker realizes the need to protect and improve their immediate economic interests. Ford said: "We're going to shut our doors and move our operations." The hard-working union members of United Auto Workers 879 do not deserve to be thrown onto the scrap heap by Ford's wealthy president and board of directors. In return for their many years of loyal service, Ford will be "rewarding" the workers with layoffs and threats to their security. This is a crime committed by corporate capitalist profiteers. The United Auto Workers and every working-class person has a right to be mad. Now that the union's being weakened, Ford says they're gonna stay open a few more years.

Present-day society could produce products making for a better life for all working people if only the means of production were utilized not for the sake of capitalist profit, but for the satisfaction of the requirements of all members of society. But this is only possible through private ownership of the means of production being replaced by public ownership. Public ownership and nationalization of the St. Paul Ford Plant is the answer to the crisis posed by Ford's closing of the plant. Public takeover and ownership of the St. Paul Ford Plant would guarantee job security.

The workers' class interests are not something that has been invented by some theoretician or party, they exist objectively. The class struggle of the working class proceeds in various forms--economic, political and ideological. The class struggle of the working class against the capitalist class is the driving force of development of society. The fight to save the St. Paul Ford Plant by nationalizing it and placing it under public ownership and thus saving the jobs of workers is part of the struggle to benefit our entire working class.

SOCIALISM.

Public ownership and nationalization of industries is a demand that should be supported by all people who are concerned with job security in an age of plant closings. We in the Gus Hall Action Club support all progressive reforms and demands--such as public ownership of the St. Paul Ford Plant--which benefit working people. But we also believe that a fundamental and systematic change to socialism will ultimately solve the problems of state-monopoly capitalism.

With socialism, the working class captures state power in order to use its political supremacy to abolish capitalism and build socialism. The founders of Marxism-Leninism teach that what is called the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat (also called a "workers' state") is the only force capable of effecting a socialist transformation.

Unlike the revolutions of the past, the socialist revolution is not carried out to replace one form of exploiting system by another, but to abolish the exploitation of man by man. Socialism means that the vast resources of modern technique are developed and used to meet the needs of the people. The first act in the transformation of the economy is the nationalization of big capitalist industries. Socialist nationalization is one of the general, essential tasks of the socialist revolution. In socialist society, the national economy is an integral organism, directed by a single will and a planned economy. Production is not carried on for profit but to satisfy the material and cultural requirements of society.

The working class, union and community would not be threatened by Ford under socialism. Socialism puts people before profits!

V.I. Lenin!

2007-10-16T14:07:00.000-07:00

(’We see in the independent, uncompromisingly Marxist party of the revolutionary proletariat the sole pledge of socialism’s victory and the road to victory that is most free from vacillations.’--Lenin, A Militant Agreement for the Uprising, 1905)

Who is Gus Hall?

2007-09-18T15:27:00.000-07:00

One of the greatest American Communists. A working class hero. Hated by both the bourgeoisie and the revisionists. What is revisionism? "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." (Right-Wing Revisionism Today, 1976, Progress Publishers, Moscow)

V.I. Lenin said that revisionism is "one of the chief, if not the chief, manifestation of bourgeois influence on the proletariat and bourgeois corruption of the workers." (Lenin, Works, Vol. 20) I warmly point out that revisionism swims with the tide of bourgeois ideology. "In scientific communism and socio-political ideas, revisionism rejects the theory of the class struggle, the opposing nature of liberalism and socialism, and the dictatorship of the proletariat." The book Right-Wing Revisionism Today points out that "the revisionism of scientific communism lies in the renunciation of the leading role of the working class and its party in the fight for socialism, of the Leninist theory of socialist revolution, of the historical necessity of proletarian dictatorship, of the basic principles of socialist democracy and the Leninist theory of the working-class party." (Right-Wing Revisionism Today, 1976, Progress Publishers, Moscow)

Gus Hall fought revisionism. Gus Hall was a major leader of the Communist Party USA until his death in 2000.

Phillip Bonosky penned that: "Gus (Hall) was always the Communist. Wake him up out of the middle of the night and he will come up a Communist. Communism was bred in his bone." (Phillip Bonosky, ’Gus Hall: A Workers Life,’ Intro to Gus Hall’s Working Class USA.)

Gus Hall wrote of opportunists in Working Class USA: "the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat is dropped, not because the words can be misused but because the concept of working class rule is objectionable to the capitalist class and those influenced by it." Gus Hall said that "a classical feature of revisionism is its rejection of the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat."(Gus Hall, Working Class USA, 1987, International Publishers)

The back cover of Gus Hall’s Power of Ideology gives a brief bio of Gus Hall.

"Gus Hall was elected general secretary of the Communist Party USA in 1959, and national chairman in 1987. He has run several times as a candidate of the Communist Party for president of the United States.

"He was born on the Iron Range of Minnesota. As a young man he worked as a laborer, lumberworker and steelworker. He was a founding organizer of the United Steel Workers of America and a leader of the Little Steel Strike in 1937. During World War II he served in the Navy in the Pacific.

"In 1927, Gus Hall joined the Communist Party. During the McCarthy period, he, along with other leaders of the Communist Party, was the victim of a cold-war political prosecution under the repressive Smith Act. He served eight years in Leavenworth prison for the crime of ’thinking.’

"Hall is the author of Working Class USA; Fighting Racism; Karl Marx: Beacon for our Times; Racism, the Nation’s Most Dangerous Pollutant; Imperialism Today; Ecology: Can We Survive Under Capitalism; The Energy Rip-Off and scores of other books, pamphlets, articles and essays. Many of these works have been translated into other languages and distributed widely." (from Gus Hall’s Power of Ideology, 1989, New Outlook Publishers)

Gus Hall passed away in the year 2000. One of his important teachings is that: "A classical feature of revisionism is its rejection of the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat." (Gus Hall, Working Class USA, 1987, International Publishers)