The Online Battle for Marxism-Leninism and Communist Education

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

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

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

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

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

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

Michael, Gus Hall Action Club

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Create a Marxist-Leninist Blog!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

Fight for the Minnesota People's Bailout!

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

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


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

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

The Dictatorship of the Proletariat is the Crux of Marxism

(Part one of an upcoming series on the dictatorship of the proletariat) There’s alot of misinformation about the dictatorship of the proletariat, the state power and the "political rule of the proletariat." And this is to be expected, for as V.I. Lenin, outstanding 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

(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

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

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)