Leave it to the Market?

For more than twenty years now, the “free market” has been the rallying cry of American politics. Conservatives sing its praises while occasionally betraying it when it suits their constituency, liberals won’t criticize it but claim that it needs to be fixed, and then you have the libertarians, for which the market is, for all intents and purposes, a stand-in for God. Like many other words often heard in politics such as “liberty” or “democracy,” the “free market” has been used so frequently that it is rarely ever questioned. This concept of a “free market” is accepted as something real; the only disagreements arise when people discuss what constitutes a violation of free market principles, or in other words, what actions fetter the market to the point where it can no longer be called “free?” All the loudest voices in American politics tell us that one way or another the market will solve our problems, either with prudent regulation by the state or by leaving it completely unfettered by government interference. What you will not hear, at least in the mainstream discourse, is that the market itself, or more correctly its dominance of our society and our entire way of life, is the real root of the problem facing human society.

Before tackling the market and its influence over human society, one point should be clarified. This article will deal primarily with the arguments of neo-liberals and libertarians as opposed to modern liberals. Since liberals do not openly preach the virtues and supremacy of the free market, choosing instead to insist that market excesses can be limited, fixed, or altogether prevented by wise government regulation, their arguments fall outside the scope of this article. There are plenty of arguments to explain why the regulation proposed by liberals will either not succeed or will not have a lasting, much less permanent impact, the strongest being the fact that liberals themselves often point to the regulation and government intervention of past decades to support their own arguments. It stands to reason that if past regulations could be repealed over time thanks to successful lobbying on the part of wealthy corporations and businesses, the same thing could happen again five, ten, or maybe twenty years after the passing of new regulatory laws in some hypothetical future. And of course, this also assumes that these regulations would even pass through the political system at all. In any case, the liberal solution of correcting the market via limited government intervention is a topic for another article. This article shall deal specifically with the arguments of those who exalt the market the most, namely, the libertarians.

Libertarianism has a long history in the United States and a few other privileged countries, all of which, incidentally, achieved their economic greatness by doing more or less the exact opposite of what libertarians believe in. While the Libertarian Party has existed since 1971, the ideology seems to have gained widespread mainstream attention with the presidential campaigns of Representative Ron Paul and his “Ron Paul Revolution,” which has effectively utilized the internet to bring his message to a wider audience. It is amusing to note that the internet, which has its roots in government-sponsored research, serves as the basis for the success of Ron Paul’s movement. Ironic though that may be, no objective observer can deny that Paul’s populist message has gained considerable success among many segments of the population who should otherwise be politically opposed to one another. This fact speaks to two fundamental truths about American politics. The first is that populist messages, which are specifically designed to appeal to a broad spectrum of political belief systems, are highly potent. The second is that widespread dissatisfaction with the mainstream political system and the usual politics of our two-party system has left many people wide open to such populist messages, and it would do well for many of them to dig a little deeper into the ideology espoused by Ron Paul and his ilk. While Paul sets himself up as a hero of the so-called “middle class” against the powerful elite represented by the mainstream candidates of both parties, he is in fact nothing more than an agent of the wealthiest segment of the American ruling class. While Ron Paul and his supporters claim that they oppose corporate power over the United States, the ultimate result of his libertarian rhetoric is the preservation of that very same power.

Of course stating this inevitably causes outrage among Paul’s cultist-like supporters. Many Ron Paul supporters, and in particular the disturbingly large amount of confused “leftists,” insist that they oppose large corporations. In fact they insist that our system is not “real capitalism” and hasn’t been for some time; they say it is “crony capitalism” or “corporatism.” In the past the Red Phoenix has dealt with this question of “real capitalism” vs. “crony capitalism,” and suffice to say that asking people who make this claim to clarify just when the American system was “real capitalism” can provoke some really ridiculous answers, if any answer at all. Here, however, we shall look at one aspect of libertarian ideology, namely the claim that libertarianism opposes corporate power. We shall see that the solution to this problem, like the libertarian solution to every problem, is to leave everything to the market to decide. Lastly, we will see why this non-solution, assuming it actually could be implemented, would only lead to literal corporate tyranny with no democratic accountability.

Many of Ron Paul’s supporters, particularly those lured from the left, are unaware of his ideological background. As it turns out, in the political realm what you don’t know can in fact hurt you. Paul’s economic and social theories are inspired primarily by the so-called Austrian School of economics, so named for the nationality of its original founders and adherents such as Karl Menger, Eugene Bohm-Bauwerk, Ludwig von Mises, and Friedrich Hayek. This article is no place to delve into the myriad of problems with Austrian economic theory, so we shall focus rather on the modern arguments advanced by populists such as Ron Paul when it comes to the market and our current system.

The Austrians were not the first to propose that the market reconciles the self-interest of individuals for the better of society; this idea can be traced to Adam Smith’s idea of the “invisible hand” which would promote the general welfare even though individuals in the market would be acting out of self-interest. There are a few key differences between this classical view and that of Austrian Schoolers, however. The first is that adherents to Austrian School economics, and indeed virtually all libertarians in general, express no concern over whether market activity promotes a better society; society does not matter, only individuals. Secondly, Austrian school supporters see the market as the only reliable source of information which can be used by individuals to allocate scarce resources in the most efficient way. In other words, without the market, which labels commodities with prices, it would be impossible for investors to know the best avenues for investing their capital. Hence it is necessary to leave the market alone so as not to cause any distortions which might lead bad investments. It is obvious that this theory contradicts those in favor of a planned economy, and indeed Austrian School theorists such as Bohm-Bauwerk, Hayek, and von Mises all received great praise for their attempts to “refute” Marxist theory. In fact, while the Austrian School is generally rejected even by mainstream neo-liberal economists, they just happen to more or less agree on the idea that socialist planning will always be inherently flawed. Even the most ridiculous ideas will find their proponents if they serve the status quo, and that is the main reason why people like Ron Paul still have a job.

According to libertarians like Ron Paul and his supporters, government regulation and intervention are to blame for “too-big-to-fail” banks and the consolidation of power into the hands of a small group of multi-national companies. The market, left to its own devices, would supposedly prevent the rise of such mega-corporations, which we are told received their power via government aid on their behalf, including stifling regulations which supposedly bar potential competitors from entering the market. In fact, whatever the issue, you can rest assured that to the libertarian, the culprit is always “government,” and the answer is always the free market. If one wants to try to get a handle on what libertarian society would actually look like, it is necessary to dig into these concepts a little deeper.

First, there is no disputing the claim corporations and private companies have benefitted from government largesse, and this certainly does benefit the largest multinational corporations. Businesses lobby the government, back electoral campaigns, and in return they receive deregulation legislation, subsidies, favorable trade deals and other perks. Libertarians tell us they are against this unholy marriage of the private and state sector, but there are a number of flaws with their understanding of this relationship.

According to libertarians, large corporations use their lobbying power to support stifling regulations which will bar potential competitors from entering the market. In other words, if it weren’t for mean old Monsanto and their lobbying efforts, you’d have all kinds of mom and pop chemical producers popping up all over the country to engage in healthy capitalist competition and prevent the rise of monopolies. Now some people might suggest, for example, that one reason it’s difficult to start your own airline is because airplanes are expensive to buy and operate. This would be wrong however; the market decides the price of airplanes, spare parts, and so on, ergo it is fair and just. Government regulation is the problem!

The problems with this claim are so manifold it’s difficult to decide where to begin. Perhaps the most glaring flaw is the idea that corporate lobbyists support regulatory legislation. In almost all cases the opposite is true; corporations lobby to eliminate, not implement, government regulation in their various spheres. The second most obvious error is the implication that if we could somehow roll back our current system to that non-existent form which libertarians insist is “true capitalism,” successful capitalists wouldn’t use their wealth to influence the remnants of the state to their favor. We’re supposed to believe that the new generation of capitalists, without any restriction whatsoever, will all play fair and not try to gain any unfair advantage by lobbying the government for benefits such as tax breaks or subsidies. The very idea is laughable, but it is by no means the most serious logical flaw this ideology has to offer.

We must at some point in the debate ask, “What is the market?” The market, in abstract, is an institution where exchange and distribution take place. In concrete terms, however, the market consists of people, that is to say individual buyers and sellers. This condition, where individuals confront each other in the market for the purpose of exchange, and more importantly the dominance of this institution in the case of capitalist society, forms the basis for the liberal cult of the “individual,” but this is a matter for another article. Here it is enough to say that in theory, buyers and sellers enjoy formal equality. This is where the problem lies, for while buyers and sellers are formally equal, they are unequal according to their possessions, that is to say they differ according to how much and what kind of property they own, what they have to sell, and how much money they have. Since distribution is determined by market transactions, agents must enter and participate in market exchange to get their necessities of life. To engage in exchange, agents need money, and in order to get money they must have a commodity they can sell. The worker’s commodity is labor power, the capacity to perform productive labor. Again, in theory, the worker and capitalist are allegedly on an equal footing when they confront each other in the market. Outside of the realm of economic theory, we can easily see this isn’t the case. Capitalists own capital, that is both money capital and means of production, hence in the market they hold all the cards. Since workers don’t possess necessary property, that is means of production, to produce everything they need to survive, they do not have the choice of withholding their labor power from the capitalists; starvation would be the result.

Once we step out of the realm of ruling-class economic theory and into the real world, we understand that “leaving it to the market” doesn’t mean leaving our fate to some abstract institution but rather putting it in the hands of a few real, live people, and hoping they will somehow arrive at the best, most beneficial results for all of society out of their own self-interest. In other words, it’s not that far removed from the libertarians’ inaccurate description of socialism, only replace government with private capitalists.

Worse still, libertarians exalt the individual and openly declare that they do not care about society, nor the “greater good,” indeed some have routinely and openly insisted that society doesn’t exist. That should give one pause any time a libertarian evangelist insists that their way of thinking would be best for “our nation.” Try as they might, however, libertarians cannot bend material reality. While their worldview divides human civilization into the “state” and “private sector” and holds as sacred the concept of “private property,” in the real world there can be no private property without the state and its organs of violence with which it enforces the existing property relations. If we look back into history we see that the rise of the very first state coincides with the emerging necessity to establish and enforce property rights, and as these rights and relations changed over time, so too has the state.

Ron Paul and his populist goons are selling a chimerical Utopian vision which runs contrary to the historical record. While his supporters will claim that our contemporary system isn’t “real capitalism,” they aren’t so forthcoming when asked to say when this “real capitalism” allegedly existed. When they attempt to do so, it is only a matter of pointing out the atrocious living conditions of the majority of people, crushing restrictions on civil rights, poor quality products, and of course the ever-present government intervention in the economy, if not in the form of regulation but rather protectionism, subsidies, and other handouts. Whenever they insist that we had a truly “free market” at some time in the past, ask for specifics, do a little research, and you’ll find that the market had restrictions on it then. In fact as Ha Joon Chang so eloquently pointed out in his book 23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism, there is no such thing as a free market, and never has been. More importantly, there has never been a single country in world history which has followed Austrian School economic theories to economic prosperity, if at all; anyone who tells you otherwise is either blatantly lying or simply ignorant. Support for Ron Paul is ultimately support for the ruling class, only by another route. Do not be fooled by populist hucksters who promise to explain the world in bite-sized nuggets of bumper-sticker “common sense.” If Ron Paul truly believed in his principles he wouldn’t work for the federal government, and that goes doubly if he were truly a threat to the working class. Paul may seem a world apart from Obama or Romney, but he exists to lead us to the very same destination.

The Austrian School of economics is a complicated subject. Though it is generally rejected by all mainstream schools of economic thought, the latter more or less agree with the former on some key concepts, such as the concept of marginal utility. With this in mind, the reader is invited to look into the matter further with a number of critiques of Austrian theory from several different perspectives, including Marxist and mainstream.

Further Reading

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Austrian_School

http://world.std.com/~mhuben/austrian.html

https://critiqueofcrisistheory.wordpress.com/responses-to-readers-austrian-economics-versus-marxism/

http://kapitalism101.wordpress.com/2011/11/15/law-of-value-8-subjectobject/

http://www.marxists.org/archive/bukharin/works/1927/leisure-economics/index.htm

Source

Left Anticommunism: the Unkindest Cut

BY MICHAEL PARENTI

Despite a lifetime of “shaming” the system, NOAM CHOMSKY, America’s foremost “engagé” intellectual, remains an unrepentant left anticommunist.

In the United States, for over a hundred years, the ruling interests tirelessly propagated anticommunism among the populace, until it became more like a religious orthodoxy than a political analysis. During the Cold War, the anticommunist ideological framework could transform any data about existing communist societies into hostile evidence. If the Soviets refused to negotiate a point, they were intransigent and belligerent; if they appeared willing to make concessions, this was but a skillful ploy to put us off our guard. By opposing arms limitations, they would have demonstrated their aggressive intent; but when in fact they supported most armament treaties, it was because they were mendacious and manipulative. If the churches in the USSR were empty, this demonstrated that religion was suppressed; but if the churches were full, this meant the people were rejecting the regime’s atheistic ideology. If the workers went on strike (as happened on infrequent occasions), this was evidence of their alienation from the collectivist system; if they didn’t go on strike, this was because they were intimidated and lacked freedom. A scarcity of consumer goods demonstrated the failure of the economic system; an improvement in consumer supplies meant only that the leaders were attempting to placate a restive population and so maintain a firmer hold over them. If communists in the United States played an important role struggling for the rights of workers, the poor, African-Americans, women, and others, this was only their guileful way of gathering support among disfranchised groups and gaining power for themselves. How one gained power by fighting for the rights of powerless groups was never explained. What we are dealing with is a nonfalsifiable orthodoxy, so assiduously marketed by the ruling interests that it affected people across the entire political spectrum.

Genuflection to Orthodoxy

Many on the U.S. Left have exhibited a Soviet bashing and Red baiting that matches anything on the Right in its enmity and crudity. Listen to Noam Chomsky holding forth about “left intellectuals” who try to “rise to power on the backs of mass popular movements” and “then beat the people into submission. . . . You start off as basically a Leninist who is going to be part of the Red bureaucracy. You see later that power doesn’t lie that way, and you very quickly become an ideologist of the right. . . . We’re seeing it right now in the [former] Soviet Union. The same guys who were communist thugs two years back, are now running banks and [are] enthusiastic free marketeers and praising Americans” (Z Magazine, 10/95).

Chomsky’s imagery is heavily indebted to the same U.S. corporate political culture he so frequently criticizes on other issues. In his mind, the revolution was betrayed by a coterie of “communist thugs” who merely hunger for power rather than wanting the power to end hunger. In fact, the communists did not “very quickly” switch to the Right but struggled in the face of a momentous onslaught to keep Soviet socialism alive for more than seventy years. To be sure, in the Soviet Union’s waning days some, like Boris Yeltsin, crossed over to capitalist ranks, but others continued to resist free-market incursions at great cost to themselves, many meeting their deaths during Yeltsin’s violent repression of the Russian parliament in 1993.

Some leftists and others fall back on the old stereotype of power-hungry Reds who pursue power for power’s sake without regard for actual social goals. If true, one wonders why, in country after country, these Reds side with the poor and powerless often at great risk and sacrifice to themselves, rather than reaping the rewards that come with serving the well-placed.

For decades, many left-leaning writers and speakers in the United States have felt obliged to establish their credibility by indulging in anticommunist and anti-Soviet genuflection, seemingly unable to give a talk or write an article or book review on whatever political subject without injecting some anti-Red sideswipe. The intent was, and still is, to distance themselves from the Marxist-Leninist Left.

Adam Hochschild: Keeping his distance from the “Stalinist Left” and recommending same posture to fellow progressives.

Adam Hochschild, a liberal writer and publisher, warned those on the Left who might be lackadaisical about condemning existing communist societies that they “weaken their credibility” (Guardian, 5/23/84). In other words, to be credible opponents of the cold war, we first had to join in the Cold-War condemnations of communist societies. Ronald Radosh urged that the peace movement purge itself of communists so that it not be accused of being communist (Guardian, 3/16/83). If I understand Radosh: To save ourselves from anticommunist witchhunts, we should ourselves become witchhunters. Purging the Left of communists became a longstanding practice, having injurious effects on various progressive causes. For instance, in 1949 some twelve unions were ousted from the CIO because they had Reds in their leadership. The purge reduced CIO membership by some 1.7 million and seriously weakened its recruitment drives and political clout. In the late 1940s, to avoid being “smeared” as Reds, Americans for Democratic Action (ADA), a supposedly progressive group, became one of the most vocally anticommunist organizations.

The strategy did not work. ADA and others on the Left were still attacked for being communist or soft on communism by those on the Right. Then and now, many on the Left have failed to realize that those who fight for social change on behalf of the less privileged elements of society will be Red-baited by conservative elites whether they are communists or not. For ruling interests, it makes little difference whether their wealth and power is challenged by “communist subversives” or “loyal American liberals.” All are lumped together as more or less equally abhorrent.

Even when attacking the Right, the left critics cannot pass up an opportunity to flash their anticommunist credentials. So Mark Green writes in a criticism of President Ronald Reagan that “when presented with a situation that challenges his conservative catechism, like an unyielding Marxist-Leninist, [Reagan] will change not his mind but the facts.” While professing a dedication to fighting dogmatism “both of the Right and Left,” individuals who perform such de rigueur genuflections reinforce the anticommunist dogma. Red-baiting leftists contributed their share to the climate of hostility that has given U.S. leaders such a free hand in waging hot and cold wars against communist countries and which even today makes a progressive or even liberal agenda difficult to promote.

A prototypic Red-basher who pretended to be on the Left was George Orwell. In the middle of World War II, as the Soviet Union was fighting for its life against the Nazi invaders at Stalingrad, Orwell announced that a “willingness to criticize Russia and Stalin is the test of intellectual honesty. It is the only thing that from a literary intellectual’s point of view is really dangerous” (Monthly Review, 5/83). Safely ensconced within a virulently anticommunist society, Orwell (with Orwellian doublethink) characterized the condemnation of communism as a lonely courageous act of defiance. Today, his ideological progeny are still at it, offering themselves as intrepid left critics of the Left, waging a valiant struggle against imaginary Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist hordes.
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Sorely lacking within the U.S. Left is any rational evaluation of the Soviet Union, a nation that endured a protracted civil war and a multinational foreign invasion in the very first years of its existence, and that two decades later threw back and destroyed the Nazi beast at enormous cost to itself. In the three decades after the Bolshevik revolution, the Soviets made industrial advances equal to what capitalism took a century to accomplish–while feeding and schooling their children rather than working them fourteen hours a day as capitalist industrialists did and still do in many parts of the world. And the Soviet Union, along with Bulgaria, the German Democratic Republic, and Cuba provided vital assistance to national liberation movements in countries around the world, including Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress in South Africa.

Left anticommunists remained studiously unimpressed by the dramatic gains won by masses of previously impoverished people under communism. Some were even scornful of such accomplishments. I recall how in Burlington Vermont, in 1971, the noted anticommunist anarchist, Murray Bookchin, derisively referred to my concern for “the poor little children who got fed under communism” (his words).

Slinging Labels

Those of us who refused to join in the Soviet bashing were branded by left anticommunists as “Soviet apologists” and “Stalinists,” even if we disliked Stalin and his autocratic system of rule and believed there were things seriously wrong with existing Soviet society. Our real sin was that unlike many on the Left we refused to uncritically swallow U.S. media propaganda about communist societies. Instead, we maintained that, aside from the well-publicized deficiencies and injustices, there were positive features about existing communist systems that were worth preserving, that improved the lives of hundreds of millions of people in meaningful and humanizing ways. This claim had a decidedly unsettling effect on left anticommunists who themselves could not utter a positive word about any communist society (except possibly Cuba) and could not lend a tolerant or even courteous ear to anyone who did.

Saturated by anticommunist orthodoxy, most U.S. leftists have practiced a left McCarthyism against people who did have something positive to say about existing communism, excluding them from participation in conferences, advisory boards, political endorsements, and left publications. Like conservatives, left anticommunists tolerated nothing less than a blanket condemnation of the Soviet Union as a Stalinist monstrosity and a Leninist moral aberration.

That many U.S. leftists have scant familiarity with Lenin’s writings and political work does not prevent them from slinging the “Leninist” label. Noam Chomsky, who is an inexhaustible fount of anticommunist caricatures, offers this comment about Leninism: “Western and also Third World intellectuals were attracted to the Bolshevik counterrevolution [sic] because Leninism is, after all, a doctrine that says that the radical intelligentsia have a right to take state power and to run their countries by force, and that is an idea which is rather appealing to intellectuals.” Here Chomsky fashions an image of power-hungry intellectuals to go along with his cartoon image of power-hungry Leninists, villains seeking not the revolutionary means to fight injustice but power for power’s sake. When it comes to Red-bashing, some of the best and brightest on the Left sound not much better than the worst on the Right.

At the time of the 1996 terror bombing in Oklahoma City, I heard a radio commentator announce: “Lenin said that the purpose of terror is to terrorize.” U.S. media commentators have repeatedly quoted Lenin in that misleading manner. In fact, his statement was disapproving of terrorism. He polemicized against isolated terrorist acts which do nothing but create terror among the populace, invite repression, and isolate the revolutionary movement from the masses. Far from being the totalitarian, tight-circled conspirator, Lenin urged the building of broad coalitions and mass organizations, encompassing people who were at different levels of political development. He advocated whatever diverse means were needed to advance the class struggle, including participation in parliamentary elections and existing trade unions. To be sure, the working class, like any mass group, needed organization and leadership to wage a successful revolutionary struggle, which was the role of a vanguard party, but that did not mean the proletarian revolution could be fought and won by putschists or terrorists.

Lenin constantly dealt with the problem of avoiding the two extremes of liberal bourgeois opportunism and ultra-left adventurism. Yet he himself is repeatedly identified as an ultra-left putschist by mainstream journalists and some on the Left. Whether Lenin’s approach to revolution is desirable or even relevant today is a question that warrants critical examination. But a useful evaluation is not likely to come from people who misrepresent his theory and practice.

Left anticommunists find any association with communist organizations to be morally unacceptable because of the “crimes of communism.” Yet many of them are themselves associated with the Democratic Party in this country, either as voters or members, seemingly unconcerned about the morally unacceptable political crimes committed by leaders of that organization. Under one or another Democratic administration, 120,000 Japanese Americans were torn from their homes and livelihoods and thrown into detention camps; atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki with an enormous loss of innocent life; the FBI was given authority to infiltrate political groups; the Smith Act was used to imprison leaders of the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party and later on leaders of the Communist Party for their political beliefs; detention camps were established to round up political dissidents in the event of a “national emergency”; during the late 1940s and 1950s, eight thousand federal workers were purged from government because of their political associations and views, with thousands more in all walks of life witchhunted out of their careers; the Neutrality Act was used to impose an embargo on the Spanish Republic that worked in favor of Franco’s fascist legions; homicidal counterinsurgency programs were initiated in various Third World countries; and the Vietnam War was pursued and escalated. And for the better part of a century, the Congressional leadership of the Democratic Party protected racial segregation and stymied all anti-lynching and fair employment bills. Yet all these crimes, bringing ruination and death to many, have not moved the liberals, the social democrats, and the “democratic socialist” anticommunists to insist repeatedly that we issue blanket condemnations of either the Democratic Party or the political system that produced it, certainly not with the intolerant fervor that has been directed against existing communism.

Pure Socialism vs. Siege Socialism

The upheavals in Eastern Europe did not constitute a defeat for socialism because socialism never existed in those countries, according to some U.S. leftists. They say that the communist states offered nothing more than bureaucratic, one-party “state capitalism” or some such thing. Whether we call the former communist countries “socialist” is a matter of definition. Suffice it to say, they constituted something different from what existed in the profit-driven capitalist world–as the capitalists themselves were not slow to recognize.

First, in communist countries there was less economic inequality than under capitalism. The perks enjoyed by party and government elites were modest by corporate CEO standards in the West [even more so when compared with today's grotesque compensation packages to the executive and financial elites.—Eds], as were their personal incomes and life styles. Soviet leaders like Yuri Andropov and Leonid Brezhnev lived not in lavishly appointed mansions like the White House, but in relatively large apartments in a housing project near the Kremlin set aside for government leaders. They had limousines at their disposal (like most other heads of state) and access to large dachas where they entertained visiting dignitaries. But they had none of the immense personal wealth that most U.S. leaders possess.

The “lavish life” enjoyed by East Germany’s party leaders, as widely publicized in the U.S. press, included a $725 yearly allowance in hard currency, and housing in an exclusive settlement on the outskirts of Berlin that sported a sauna, an indoor pool, and a fitness center shared by all the residents. They also could shop in stores that carried Western goods such as bananas, jeans, and Japanese electronics. The U.S. press never pointed out that ordinary East Germans had access to public pools and gyms and could buy jeans and electronics (though usually not of the imported variety). Nor was the “lavish” consumption enjoyed by East German leaders contrasted to the truly opulent life style enjoyed by the Western plutocracy.

Second, in communist countries, productive forces were not organized for capital gain and private enrichment; public ownership of the means of production supplanted private ownership. Individuals could not hire other people and accumulate great personal wealth from their labor. Again, compared to Western standards, differences in earnings and savings among the populace were generally modest. The income spread between highest and lowest earners in the Soviet Union was about five to one. In the United States, the spread in yearly income between the top multibillionaires and the working poor is more like 10,000 to 1.

Third, priority was placed on human services. Though life under communism left a lot to be desired and the services themselves were rarely the best, communist countries did guarantee their citizens some minimal standard of economic survival and security, including guaranteed education, employment, housing, and medical assistance.

Fourth, communist countries did not pursue the capital penetration of other countries. Lacking a profit motive as their motor force and therefore having no need to constantly find new investment opportunities, they did not expropriate the lands, labor, markets, and natural resources of weaker nations, that is, they did not practice economic imperialism. The Soviet Union conducted trade and aid relations on terms that generally were favorable to the Eastern European nations and Mongolia, Cuba, and India.

All of the above were organizing principles for every communist system to one degree or another. None of the above apply to free market countries like Honduras, Guatemala, Thailand, South Korea, Chile, Indonesia, Zaire, Germany, or the United States.

But a real socialism, it is argued, would be controlled by the workers themselves through direct participation instead of being run by Leninists, Stalinists, Castroites, or other ill-willed, power-hungry, bureaucratic, cabals of evil men who betray revolutions. Unfortunately, this “pure socialism” view is ahistorical and nonfalsifiable; it cannot be tested against the actualities of history. It compares an ideal against an imperfect reality, and the reality comes off a poor second. It imagines what socialism would be like in a world far better than this one, where no strong state structure or security force is required, where none of the value produced by workers needs to be expropriated to rebuild society and defend it from invasion and internal sabotage.

The pure socialists’ ideological anticipations remain untainted by existing practice. They do not explain how the manifold functions of a revolutionary society would be organized, how external attack and internal sabotage would be thwarted, how bureaucracy would be avoided, scarce resources allocated, policy differences settled, priorities set, and production and distribution conducted. Instead, they offer vague statements about how the workers themselves will directly own and control the means of production and will arrive at their own solutions through creative struggle. No surprise then that the pure socialists support every revolution except the ones that succeed.

The pure socialists had a vision of a new society that would create and be created by new people, a society so transformed in its fundamentals as to leave little room for wrongful acts, corruption, and criminal abuses of state power. There would be no bureaucracy or self-interested coteries, no ruthless conflicts or hurtful decisions. When the reality proves different and more difficult, some on the Left proceed to condemn the real thing and announce that they “feel betrayed” by this or that revolution.

The pure socialists see socialism as an ideal that was tarnished by communist venality, duplicity, and power cravings. The pure socialists oppose the Soviet model but offer little evidence to demonstrate that other paths could have been taken, that other models of socialism–not created from one’s imagination but developed through actual historical experience–could have taken hold and worked better. Was an open, pluralistic, democratic socialism actually possible at this historic juncture? The historical evidence would suggest it was not. As the political philosopher Carl Shames argued:

How do [the left critics] know that the fundamental problem was the “nature” of the ruling [revolutionary] parties rather than, say, the global concentration of capital that is destroying all independent economies and putting an end to national sovereignty everywhere? And to the extent that it was, where did this “nature” come from? Was this “nature” disembodied, disconnected from the fabric of the society itself, from the social relations impacting on it? . . . Thousands of examples could be found in which the centralization of power was a necessary choice in securing and protecting socialist relations. In my observation [of existing communist societies], the positive of “socialism” and the negative of “bureaucracy, authoritarianism and tyranny” interpenetrated in virtually every sphere of life. (Carl Shames, correspondence to me, 1/15/92.)

The pure socialists regularly blame the Left itself for every defeat it suffers. Their second-guessing is endless. So we hear that revolutionary struggles fail because their leaders wait too long or act too soon, are too timid or too impulsive, too stubborn or too easily swayed. We hear that revolutionary leaders are compromising or adventuristic, bureaucratic or opportunistic, rigidly organized or insufficiently organized, undemocratic or failing to provide strong leadership. But always the leaders fail because they do not put their trust in the “direct actions” of the workers, who apparently would withstand and overcome every adversity if only given the kind of leadership available from the left critic’s own groupuscule. Unfortunately, the critics seem unable to apply their own leadership genius to producing a successful revolutionary movement in their own country.

Tony Febbo questioned this blame-the-leadership syndrome of the pure socialists:

It occurs to me that when people as smart, different, dedicated and heroic as Lenin, Mao, Fidel Castro, Daniel Ortega, Ho Chi Minh and Robert Mugabe–and the millions of heroic people who followed and fought with them–all end up more or less in the same place, then something bigger is at work than who made what decision at what meeting. Or even what size houses they went home to after the meeting. . . .

These leaders weren’t in a vacuum. They were in a whirlwind. And the suction, the force, the power that was twirling them around has spun and left this globe mangled for more than 900 years. And to blame this or that theory or this or that leader is a simple-minded substitute for the kind of analysis that Marxists [should make]. (Guardian, 11/13/91)

To be sure, the pure socialists are not entirely without specific agendas for building the revolution. After the Sandinistas overthrew the Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua, an ultra-left group in that country called for direct worker ownership of the factories. The armed workers would take control of production without benefit of managers, state planners, bureaucrats, or a formal military. While undeniably appealing, this worker syndicalism denies the necessities of state power. Under such an arrangement, the Nicaraguan revolution would not have lasted two months against the U.S.-sponsored counterrevolution that savaged the country. It would have been unable to mobilize enough resources to field an army, take security measures, or build and coordinate economic programs and human services on a national scale.

Decentralization vs. Survival

For a people’s revolution to survive, it must seize state power and use it to (a) break the stranglehold exercised by the owning class over the society’s institutions and resources, and (b) withstand the reactionary counterattack that is sure to come. The internal and external dangers a revolution faces necessitate a centralized state power that is not particularly to anyone’s liking, not in Soviet Russia in 1917, nor in Sandinista Nicaragua in 1980.

Engels offers an apposite account of an uprising in Spain in 1872-73 in which anarchists seized power in municipalities across the country. At first, the situation looked promising. The king had abdicated and the bourgeois government could muster but a few thousand ill-trained troops. Yet this ragtag force prevailed because it faced a thoroughly parochialized rebellion. “Each town proclaimed itself as a sovereign canton and set up a revolutionary committee (junta),” Engels writes. “[E]ach town acted on its own, declaring that the important thing was not cooperation with other towns but separation from them, thus precluding any possibility of a combined attack [against bourgeois forces].” It was “the fragmentation and isolation of the revolutionary forces which enabled the government troops to smash one revolt after the other.”

Decentralized parochial autonomy is the graveyard of insurgency–which may be one reason why there has never been a successful anarcho-syndicalist revolution. Ideally, it would be a fine thing to have only local, self-directed, worker participation, with minimal bureaucracy, police, and military. This probably would be the development of socialism, were socialism ever allowed to develop unhindered by counterrevolutionary subversion and attack. One might recall how, in 1918-20, fourteen capitalist nations, including the United States, invaded Soviet Russia in a bloody but unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the revolutionary Bolshevik government. The years of foreign invasion and civil war did much to intensify the Bolsheviks’ siege psychology with its commitment to lockstep party unity and a repressive security apparatus. Thus, in May 1921, the same Lenin who had encouraged the practice of internal party democracy and struggled against Trotsky in order to give the trade unions a greater measure of autonomy, now called for an end to the Workers’ Opposition and other factional groups within the party. “The time has come,” he told an enthusiastically concurring Tenth Party Congress, “to put an end to opposition, to put a lid on it: we have had enough opposition.” Open disputes and conflicting tendencies within and without the party, the communists concluded, created an appearance of division and weakness that invited attack by formidable foes.

Only a month earlier, in April 1921, Lenin had called for more worker representation on the party’s Central Committee. In short, he had become not anti-worker but anti-opposition. Here was a social revolution–like every other–that was not allowed to develop its political and material life in an unhindered way.

By the late 1920s, the Soviets faced the choice of (a) moving in a still more centralized direction with a command economy and forced agrarian collectivization and full-speed industrialization under a commandist, autocratic party leadership, the road taken by Stalin, or (b) moving in a liberalized direction, allowing more political diversity, more autonomy for labor unions and other organizations, more open debate and criticism, greater autonomy among the various Soviet republics, a sector of privately owned small businesses, independent agricultural development by the peasantry, greater emphasis on consumer goods, and less effort given to the kind of capital accumulation needed to build a strong military-industrial base.

The latter course, I believe, would have produced a more comfortable, more humane and serviceable society. Siege socialism would have given way to worker-consumer socialism. The only problem is that the country would have risked being incapable of withstanding the Nazi onslaught. Instead, the Soviet Union embarked upon a rigorous, forced industrialization. This policy has often been mentioned as one of the wrongs perpetrated by Stalin upon his people. It consisted mostly of building, within a decade, an entirely new, huge industrial base east of the Urals in the middle of the barren steppes, the biggest steel complex in Europe, in anticipation of an invasion from the West. “Money was spent like water, men froze, hungered and suffered but the construction went on with a disregard for individuals and a mass heroism seldom paralleled in history.”

Stalin’s prophecy that the Soviet Union had only ten years to do what the British had done in a century proved correct. When the Nazis invaded in 1941, that same industrial base, safely ensconced thousands of miles from the front, produced the weapons of war that eventually turned the tide. The cost of this survival included 22 million Soviets who perished in the war and immeasurable devastation and suffering, the effects of which would distort Soviet society for decades afterward.

All this is not to say that everything Stalin did was of historical necessity. The exigencies of revolutionary survival did not “make inevitable” the heartless execution of hundreds of Old Bolshevik leaders, the personality cult of a supreme leader who claimed every revolutionary gain as his own achievement, the suppression of party political life through terror, the eventual silencing of debate regarding the pace of industrialization and collectivization, the ideological regulation of all intellectual and cultural life, and the mass deportations of “suspect” nationalities.

The transforming effects of counterrevolutionary attack have been felt in other countries. A Sandinista military officer I met in Vienna in 1986 noted that Nicaraguans were “not a warrior people” but they had to learn to fight because they faced a destructive, U.S.-sponsored mercenary war. She bemoaned the fact that war and embargo forced her country to postpone much of its socio-economic agenda. As with Nicaragua, so with Mozambique, Angola and numerous other countries in which U.S.-financed mercenary forces destroyed farmlands, villages, health centers, and power stations, while killing or starving hundreds of thousands–the revolutionary baby was strangled in its crib or mercilessly bled beyond recognition. This reality ought to earn at least as much recognition as the suppression of dissidents in this or that revolutionary society.

The overthrow of Eastern European and Soviet communist governments was cheered by many left intellectuals. Now democracy would have its day. The people would be free from the yoke of communism and the U.S. Left would be free from the albatross of existing communism, or as left theorist Richard Lichtman put it, “liberated from the incubus of the Soviet Union and the succubus of Communist China.”

In fact, the capitalist restoration in Eastern Europe seriously weakened the numerous Third World liberation struggles that had received aid from the Soviet Union and brought a whole new crop of right-wing governments into existence, ones that now worked hand-in-glove with U.S. global counterrevolutionaries around the globe.

In addition, the overthrow of communism gave the green light to the unbridled exploitative impulses of Western corporate interests. No longer needing to convince workers that they live better than their counterparts in Russia, no longer restrained by a competing system, the corporate class is rolling back the many gains that working people have won over the years. Now that the free market, in its meanest form, is emerging triumphant in the East, so will it prevail in the West. “Capitalism with a human face” is being replaced by “capitalism in your face.” As Richard Levins put it, “So in the new exuberant aggressiveness of world capitalism we see what communists and their allies had held at bay” (Monthly Review, 9/96).

Having never understood the role that existing communist powers played in tempering the worst impulses of Western capitalism, and having perceived communism as nothing but an unmitigated evil, the left anticommunists did not anticipate the losses that were to come. Some of them still don’t get it.

International Conference of Marxist-Leninist Parties and Organizations (ICMLPO): On the Death of Comandante Hugo Chavez

On the Death of Comandante Hugo Chavez

The Coordinating Committee of the International Conference of Marxist-Leninist Parties and Organizations expresses our regrets at the death of Comandante HUGO CHAVEZ FRIAS, the President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, stating our solidarity with the working class and people, with the government of the Boliviarian Republic, with the revolutionaries and the communists, who are bravely fighting for the social and national liberation of Venezuela.

The revolutionary process taking place in Venezuela, that involves millions of people, workers and youth, is engaged in the task democratizing the society; giving the poor sectors the right and possibility of health, education and social security; breaking the opposition from the reactionaries and the oligarchs; and has mobilized the working masses and the youth to defend this process.

The Venezuelan government with Hugo Chavez at the head has established an important policy of integration on the Latin American level, including the various countries of the region, in particular those that are integrated in ALBA. This process aims at an independent development and confronts the unveiled opposition of north American imperialism, that refuses to loose, what it has traditionally considered as its backyard.

For these reasons Comandante Chavez has won the support of the fighters for social liberation and the revolutionaries, of the workers and peoples of Latin America and other continents. He emerges as a fighter, a resolute patriot, a consistent anti-imperialist. His death seems to be a great loss to the struggle against tyranny and to the unavoidable, but hard and difficult process of liberation of the peoples.

But this painful blow will not put an end to the struggle. On the contrary we are convinced that the Venezuelan working class, people and youth will carry it forward. They will know to distinguish between true friend and both the open and disguised enemies, and resolutely march forward in the struggle for liberation, on the road of revolution, towards socialism. With the revolutionary proletarians in the lead they will bury capitalism and imperialism, as will the other peoples of Latin America and the world.

The Marxist-Leninist parties and organizations of the ICMLPO renew our commitment to the international proletarian revolution, to proletarian internationalism, and express once more our conviction that the members of the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party of Venezuela and the genuine revolutionary forces in the country shall continue the struggle for the revolution and socialism, until victory.

The Coordinating Committee of ICMLPO

March 7th 2013

Marxist Leninist Communist Party of Ecuador: Political Declaration on the Death of Comandante Hugo Chavez Frias

March 6, 2013

The Marxist-Leninist Communist Party of Ecuador is deeply dismayed and deplores the death of Colonel Hugo Chavez Frias, President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, the undisputed leader of the his people, revolutionary political leader of the anti-imperialist and anti-oligarchic struggle being waged by the workers, peasants, youths, women and the poor in the fraternal Latin American country.

The death of Comandante Chavez is certainly a great loss for the peoples struggling for their emancipation, for the progressive, democratic and leftist forces of Venezuela and the continent, who are confronting imperialism, especially U.S. imperialism. It is an unfortunate event that will, however, forge a greater and unwavering determination of struggle that should serve the oppressed, to advance unstoppably in the achievement of the goals of the revolution and socialism.

Under the leadership of Hugo Chavez, some years ago Venezuela began a patriotic and democratic political process of changes to deal with the privileges, high-handedness and arrogance of the traditional sectors of the oligarchy, achieving a series of social gains and demands, setting that fraternal country on the course of the defense and preservation of independence and national sovereignty.

The Bolivarian Government of Hugo Chavez, the democratic, leftist and progressive sectors, together with large contingents of the working masses, have mobilized to defend their sovereignty and confront the pressure, blackmail and anti-national, anti-popular plots of imperialism and reaction. Overcoming their conspiratorial actions and evil plots, including perpetrating a coup, the people defeated these negative actions and ensured the continuation of the process.

The Bolivarian Government of Hugo Chavez and the mobilization of the people approved, by a referendum, an advanced Constitution that enshrined their rights and freedoms; Comandante Chavez made it a tool to deepen significant changes in favor of the majority. Thus, they developed the so-called “missions,” massive programs of education, health care and social security for the benefit of the poor; labor, economic and social policies that benefited the workers, peasants, women, youths and children. The Chavez government relied on the social movement and its organizations to confront the privileges of the oligarchies and reaction, to curb the voracious pretensions of the foreign monopolies, especially from the U.S.

With the presence of Comandante Hugo Chavez, Bolivarian Venezuela has made many valuable efforts to promote Latin American integration and unity in favor of the countries of the continent, faced with the pressures and interests of imperialism and at that level, they have created different organizations and taken measures to resist the imperialist designs in the region.

The death of Comandante Hugo Chavez is certainly a blow to the desire for emancipation of the Venezuelan people and the workers and peoples of Latin America; moreover the example of his patriotic and democratic dedication, of his promotion of Latin American revolutionary unity, are important factors for the process of popular unity and change to continue, deepen, and further contribute to the consciousness that the social revolution is the necessary road to achieving freedom and independence. This will clear the way for the working class and peoples in the struggle for the seizure of power to create the new society of labor and well-being, a socialist society.

We reiterate our solidarity and deep sympathy with the people of Venezuela, the United Socialist Party of Venezuela, with all the democratic and leftist political and social organizations of the fraternal country and we reaffirm our commitment to struggle for Popular Power and Socialism.

Sincerely,

Central Committee

Marxist Leninist Communist Party of Ecuador

Enver Hodja on Eurocommunism

“In a situation when the European bourgeoisie is in great difficulties because of the grave economic and political crisis, when the revolt of the masses against the consequences of this crisis and capitalist oppression and exploitation is mounting to ever higher levels, nothing could serve it better than the anti-Marxist views and anti-worker activity of the Eurocommunists. Nothing could give greater assistance to the strategy of imperialism for the suppression of the revolution, the undermining of liberation struggles and domination of the world than the revisionist, pacifist, capitulationist, collaborationist trends, including Eurocommunism.”

— Enver Hodja, “Eurocommunism is Anti-communism”

The Path of the Danish People: Programme from 1952 of the Communist Party of Denmark

DKP: The Path of the Danish People

Adopted by the 17th Congress of the Communist Party of Denmark, 22-25 May, 1952

The time has come, where Denmark must embark on new tracks. It cannot continue like it does! After years with economic crisis and unemployment came the tribulation of the foreign rule. And now the country is clenched with fear for war, fear for want, and fear for the fate of Denmark under a development that goes against everything that the people wish for and hopes. But there is a way forward for Denmark and the Danish people.

Denmark has previously gone through tough times. Also previously headstrong rulers have mortgaged the country, or lead it to defeat, default, and dissolution. But always new forces have broken forth. They have united the people, so that it with united strength carried the country forward again.

Therefore, through the history of the Danish people, there goes an unbroken line of willingness for peace and prosperity, for popular rule and independence. This willingness has become the supreme hallmark of the Danish people, and it lives with unimpaired strength today.

The liberation struggle under the occupation still stands clearly in the memory.
When the people joined their ranks in a united front and swept the false leaders away, broke the subjugation and humiliation of the Scavenius-policy[1].
The Danish people took its place in the common struggle of the peoples for freedom, and the liberation opened paths for prosperity and a new era.

At that time all opportunities were present. Consensus and commitment to break with the old reigned like never before among the people. But the will of the people wasn’t followed.

The old politicians surely spoke pretty words about a “new policy”, that should fulfil the demands of the people, but in reality they turned everything into the old rut.

They are responsible for that we instead of peace, freedom, and social progress have gotten the circumstances, that reigns now. Their policy has failed.

But the people were on the right track. And for Denmark to escape the trouble, the people must stand firm, that its interests will be respected. The power of the ruling political clique must be broken. A whole other scheme must be created.

The Danish people own the strength to enforce the needed changes.

In our time it is the working class that is the backbone in the nation and in the struggle of the people. In its rising it has defied reaction and men of wealth and guarded the most cherished values of the Danish people.

It created powerful organizations that were of irresistible strength, when they were put into the struggle for the case of the poor. In crucial moments – like under the occupation – it has shown itself as the power that united the people and took the lead in its struggle against internal and external enemies. It is this task, that now again accrues the Danish working class.

Ever since the working class rose up as an independent force, its goal has been socialism, a society where no one thrives on the labour of others. The people would have long ago been won for socialism, if not the social democratic leaders had betrayed the struggle and dishonoured the name of socialism. But their political failure doesn’t mean the failure of socialism. That is demonstrated by the development there, where socialism has been victorious and has created societies with lasting prosperity and public happiness. More and more realize that there must be decisive societal changes in Denmark. But what needs to be done, and how should it be done?

This programme shows how a real safeguarding of the interests of the people must lead to a socialistic transformation of society. 

The power of the high finance has led Denmark into misfortune.

It is not the people that have the power in Denmark today. The real power rests within a small circle of money men, industrialists, and landlords, who via their capitalistic monopolies own the banks, the large industry, the large commerce and the manors, and by virtue of their dominance over the credit control the agriculture, fisheries, commerce, and crafts.

Such monopolies are e.g. the large banking groups and shipping companies, the oil companies, the cement trust, the margarine trust, etc. Via the monopolies a dozen persons rule over two thirds of all share capital in Denmark. “Money rules everything” is the slogan of the high finance, and so it is in today’s Denmark. By their economic power the financial lords have directly and indirectly secured influence on the state apparatus and willing politicians, so that the government and the state administration carry out their will. Profit is their intent and goal. They only achieve that on the expense of the working people. Therefore their policy is directed against the interests of the people.

Through many years the capitalists in Denmark managed partly to conceal these facts and propagate the belief that lasting prosperity could be created for the Danish people without a revolution.

In the beginning of the century capitalism was still in its relatively peaceful period of development.

Danish capitalism was by virtue of specific circumstances in a favourable position.

It was, when England still flourished as a colonial power. At that time the English market was capable of purchasing and pay quality prices for Danish agricultural products.

Thereby Danish capitalism also obtained a part of the extra profits that the English high finance squeezed out of the slave labour of the colonial peoples.

It was, when British and German power politics kept each other in balance in Denmark.

At that time Danish capitalism obtained special advantages by acting as “neutral” and therefore did not participate in the weapons race.

Under those circumstances the Danish working class managed through tough struggles, although easier than in many other countries, to win certain economic and social concessions

But now all that is over. Capitalism is in decline and decay. It is therefore not temporarily inconveniences, but a profound crisis it has brought over the Danish society.

The British Empire flourishes no more, but sinks into ever deeper dependence on the USA.

Rather than leaving a bit of its profits to the Danish capitalists, British monopoly capital plunders Denmark in a most brutal way by the trading conditions laid down by the England Agreement. While the majority of Danish agricultural export is being sold to England to established low prices, England has free hands to turn the prices on its deliveries of goods to Denmark up high and to default on its delivery obligations.

Danish capitalism no longer acts ”neutral”. The monopoly capital of Denmark which itself is dependent on the giant trusts of the capitalistic world has economically and politically handed out our country to the imperialism of England and above all to the imperialism of USA.

For this the Marshall Plan has served. Its golden promises about “help to economic progress” have shown itself to only conceal the intent, which is to harness Denmark into the war economy of USA.

Devaluation of the Danish currency, shortages of raw materials for the peace industry, shortages of foreign currency, flagrant interference and control with Danish business, and American dictate about continuous reduction of Denmark’s trade with Eastern Europe is the true nature of the Marshall “Aid”. On all this the American capitalists enrich themselves, so they have taken plenty of payment for the “aid”.

While the Marshall Aid meant a surrender of the Denmark’s economic independence, the North Atlantic Treaty meant that our political and national independence was put at risk.

Denmark has been fully involved in the capitalistic armament madness that is about to transform the country into a fortified poorhouse.

The Danish people are now being exploited twice, both by the British-American monopoly capital and at the same time by the domestic capitalist class which exploits the war economy and the inflation to turn its profits higher and higher up.

The work effort of the people and the production has reached heights like never before.

So the conditions to improve the circumstances of the people are there.
When they nevertheless are deteriorated it is due to the fact that the government and the Rigsdag carry out the policy of the monopoly capital.

The deception against the Danish people.

How could it happen that such a policy has been imposed on the Danish people?
It has first and foremost happened through a huge deception. Those who have the money have the power over the press and the general propaganda.

They have used it to keep the people in ignorance of the actual development at home and in the world around us. Always the policy of the big business is presented as altruistic acts, and systematically and mendacious has it been denied that the consequence would be all this that we now are in.

At the same time the socialistic world is being depicted as a misfortune for the people and as a threat against Denmark, regardless that the facts of the socialistic construction every day testify to the contrary.

The American war propaganda is being more and more unidirectional parroted.
The callous lifestyles of the official USA is being mimicked and spread through the press and literature, film and radio. Danish cultural life is forced back and is offered deteriorating conditions in an attempt to break the self-respect of the Danish people.

The ”old politicians” who claimed to defend the interests of the people, has on the contrary served the moneymen and the foreign powers to mislead the people and bring it into doubt about its own strength. They put every effort in to split the people’s unity after the liberation.

They strewed around with empty promises, waged political sham fencings between themselves, while in reality they were in agreement to make the Rigsdag[2] into a mere channel for foreign orders in all essential affairs.
Thus they have eroded the democracy from inside and made the people’s freedom rights illusory. Police state methods are invoked, while bureaucracy and corruption are spreading in the swollen police- and judicial apparatus.

The deception against the Danish people could not have been done without the right-wing socialist leaders. This was seen in 1945, at that time everything was to gain. They put their influence into bringing the advance of the working class to a halt. In words they proclaimed: “Three steps to the left!”. In actions they helped Knud Kristensen[3] to power.

Step by step the social democratic leaders have evolved to play such a role, so that they today have nothing in common with the ideas that the Danish labour movement was build upon and was carried forward. They have betrayed socialism long time ago and adapted themselves in warm positions in the capitalistic society. Thus they sank down to conduct bourgeois-liberal reform policy.

But their fall has become even deeper. Today they are in league with the capitalistic right-wing parties to implement the most anti-popular and reactionary policy Denmark has known in living memory. They receive praise from the militarists for their indispensable support to the armament policy that they once professed to fight. The actively fight to maintain the capitalistic social system.

Also internationally they have associated themselves with the worst enemies of the working class. They praise the USA, the country of the most brutal and ruthless monopoly lords, and praise its “leadership in the world”. They are the most officious whips for the American war policy which they follow and praise, no matter how disastrous it is for the working class and the Danish nation.
Their theory that ”national sovereignty is an outdated concept” is to serve as a cover over their betrayal against the interests of the nation. As they under Hitler’s heyday adapted to a life under his supremacy, they now submissively assist the USA of the high finance.

They base their influence on the power, they have within the bureaucracy in the labour organizations. They seek to stifle the democracy in them and get them tied and bound through legislation. Thus, in the service of their anti-popular policy, they have been able to abuse the workers’ loyality to organizations that have been built up through the arduous work of the generations.

There is now in standard of living and thinking a gap between the right-social democratic leaders and the ordinary workers. When many ordinary workers still follow the Social Democracy, it happens in an honest but vain hope that the leaders, however, sometime will go to battle for the cause of the working class and the people.

To keep that hope alive the leaders regularly present well-sounding programs and manifestos.

With words they seek to win the trust of the workers, in action they continue the policy of the big business.

In reality they have put all their influence to create division and to sow discouragement in the working class, to weaken and disorganize its and thus the people’s struggle.

Their phrases about “democratic socialism” have only had to serve to cover over a policy that neither is democratic nor socialist. They have in all things guarded the interests of the monopolies, while they continuously prevent the workers in guarding theirs.

When the workers raise their demands, the only answer is streams of shameful lies and hateful smear campaigns against the Soviet Union and every country that builds socialism.

The victories of socialism.

The deceit of capitalism is not feasible, when the people become aware of the truth about the development in the countries of socialism. For it delivers the proof that the working class in its struggle for socialism has steered towards the correct target.

Socialism has in practice shown itself as a social system that is superior to capitalism, and the one which will replace it in history.

In the Soviet Union the socialist society, which workers through generations have dreamt about and fought for, has become reality. All means of production, all the riches of society, have become the common property of the people, and thus the exploitation of humans by humans has been removed. The production is organized according to a plan after the needs of the people. Therefore the right to work could be realized. Unemployment is unknown, living standards are raised rapidly, and the culture is brought to a thriving development.

The people live without fear for the future and participate actively in the management of the society.

In the ordeal of the war the Soviet Union showed, how a socialist society by virtue of the devotion of the people becomes an invincible power. After the war the Soviet people not only have been able to overcome the appalling devastations of the war by putting its full power into peaceful construction, but have also embarked on new gigantic works that will make the land fertile and increase its wealth.

Through the progress that in the Soviet Union has been created for the people, through the peaceful coexistence that within the Union is created between the nations, the first country of socialism shows the way forward for the oppressed masses in the capitalist countries and the colonies.

Since the war the peoples in the most of Eastern Europe have seized power and have begun to build socialism. Thus the countries, where the people until just a few years ago lived in misery and fascistic oppression, have been transformed into free people’s communities in rapid development. In the Far East China has pulled itself out of the oppression and backwardness that the landowners, speculators, and foreign financial lords through centuries have kept it down in and now builds a free future for itself.

In contrast to this development the countries of capitalism are having crises, decline, and all-encompassing preparations for war.

The victories of socialism prove that it doesn’t have to be so. This is the truth that the political leaders of capitalism fear, but which they in the long run will not manage to hide from the peoples.

The struggle for peace.

The most terrible danger that threatens our land and our people is a new world war.

More than anything else this calls on the people to take the fate of Denmark in their own hands.

It is capitalism that has led to the world wars of our time. It is the big monopolies who benefit from the armament. By war they rob colonies and territories which they squeeze for new profits. For them war isn’t a terrible thing, but a terribly lucrative thing.

The American monopolies that are the biggest and strongest of capitalism strive after world domination. They morbidly fantasize about an atomic war as a mean to subdue everything under their will. The war has become the main objective of their policy.

In league with them are the forces around the world who expect to benefit from the war, or who in the war see a mean to subdue the increasingly stronger rising of the peoples, in the colonies as in the capitalist countries. Above all they seek a war against the Soviet Union, because they fear the upswing of socialism and want to lay its construction results desolate.

In spite of the contradictions and conflicting power interests among them, these powers have united themselves in a war camp which is subject to the dictatorship of the American power policy. It has shattered the allied collaboration of great powers and split the world. It misuses the UN which was created for peace and collaboration, as a tool to organize war. It launches deafening war propaganda to incite the peoples to enmity and fratricide.

On the other side stand the countries and the forces that fight for peace and independence.

Hundreds of millions of people, regular people who know what they have to defend, belong together in the peace camp, whose strongest and guiding force is the socialist Soviet Union.

For socialist countries peace is a vital interest. Under socialism there is no one who can benefit from war. War is a disaster for each as well as the entire society.
The Soviet Union who more than anyone else knows the horrors of war therefore leads an indispensable peace policy, and makes one initiative after another for the cause of peace.

For the peoples in all the countries of the world, the struggle for peace is the struggle for life itself.

The seriousness of present time therefore compels all good forces to across any political, religious, or other kind of dividing line to get together about one thing: the preservation of peace.

A lasting peace must build on the following principles:

Disputes between the states must be solved through negotiations, not through war. Freely made commitments must be respected.

Countries with socialist and countries with capitalist economic systems must live side by side in peaceful emulation and in relations on equal footing.

Changes in a state’s social system must be in accordance with the will of the people and not imposed or prevented by aggression.

These principles are recognized by the communists and must be recognized by anyone who sincerely wants peace. These principles are recognized by the socialist countries and furthermore by any country that pursues a policy of peace. It is the powers and groups, who through threats about atomic war and with the most brutal acts of war seek to impose their will on other peoples, who break these principles and puts peace in jeopardy.

But the bellicose rulers can be stopped. Repeatedly the peoples’ opposition has forced them to stop in their ventures. If the peoples stand invariably fixed, they can enforce respect for their demands about negotiation instead of war, and the foundation will be laid for cooperation between the states in accordance with the spirit and letter of the UN charter.

The peoples join their ranks in defence of peace. An organized peace front has arisen worldwide, with a force that history never has seen before. It already includes a majority of the world’s population and is in constant strengthening and growth.

Although peace is in imminent danger, it is therefore false to claim, that a new world war should be inevitable. Such propaganda is only spread to undermine the determination of the peoples in the resistance against the war preparations and in the struggle to prevent the war.

This time it can be prevented, that capitalism’s armament rush and war hysteria ends up in a new war. Peace will be preserved and strengthened if the peoples take the cause of peace in their own hands and defend it to the utmost.

This is the task of present time that is above all others.

For a Danish peace policy out of the North Atlantic Treaty.

For the Danish people peace is a necessity of life. The war is an immediate threat to the very existence of Denmark as a habitable area.

This is a consequence of Denmark’s incorporation into the aggressive North Atlantic Treaty.

If it comes to war, the North Atlantic Treaty makes Denmark from the outset a war participant and battleground. When the North Atlantic Treaty was signed, it was asseverated that its purpose was to secure peace, democracy, and independence. But it has resulted in British and American generals arrange Denmark as an attack base against the Soviet Union, that we are being allied with the worst enemies of democracy, from German Nazis to Franco, and that our political and military independence is compromised. It is obvious that the pact was signed under false pretence.

The Danish people has never got the treaty submitted, has never approved it, and can not be bound by it. If Denmark is to secure its peace, the people must first and foremost free itself from the North Atlantic Treaty and regain its independence.

Alone the Danish people don’t manage to secure the peace. But it can do its independent effort for the peace by keeping its own country outside all involvement to war plans and stand up for the cause of peace. Thereby it also provides its valuable contribution to that common struggle of the peoples that is necessary for the preservation of peace. Denmark has by virtue of its geographical and political position special opportunities for this.

Denmark must go from Atlantic policy to peace policy. Danish peace policy is:

Denmark is in favour, that a peace pact is concluded between the five great powers, which is open for all states.

Denmark terminates all pacts that violate its independence, first and foremost the Marshall Agreement and the North Atlantic Treaty.

Denmark opposes the misapplication of the UN in the interest of one group of power and is in favour of détente and cooperation.

Denmark is in favour of general and controlled disarmament and prohibition of nuclear weapons and other means of mass destruction.

Denmark is in favour of a ban on war propaganda. Denmark breaks with the systematic poisoning of the relations with the Soviet Union and replaces it with good neighbourly relations.

The same applies to the relations to China and the people’s democracies.
Denmark is in favour of a united, demilitarized and democratic Germany.

Denmark develops its trade relations to all sides on the ground of equal rights.

The transition from war policy to peace policy means, that the burdens that now rest heavily on the Danish people are immediately facilitated.

The armament madness is halted, so taxes can be eased.

The foreign trade is reorganized, so the currency crisis can be resolved.

The war economy will be broken, so that peace production can provide labour and cheap goods to the people.

The policy of cuts is brought to an end, so social improvements can be implemented.

Military construction is halted, so that residential construction can be started.

The Americanization of the culture is prevented, so that Danish cultural life can flourish.

The crushing pressure of the dread for war over the minds will be lifted, and the Danes can live as Danish.

This is the policy that corresponds to the interests of the Danish people. This is the policy that meets the just demands that today come from worker as from the peasant, from scientist as from shopkeeper.

This policy can be brought to victory, when the Danish people united raise up against the impoverishment, which has been inflicted on them by the armament for a foreign matter, and when it resolutely refuses to make its youth and land available to the American war plans.

It will happen through a people’s unity on peace and independence. As the Danish people once rejected the Scavenius-politicians, it must now reject the excuses and pretexts of the Atlantic-politicians to lead the country into disaster after foreign order. If the people stand united and firm in their opposition against impoverishment and war-policy, the Atlantic-politicians will experience their 29th August.[4]

But there is no time to waste! All those, who see where the war policy is carrying us, must find each other in common opposition while there still is time.

The communists therefore declare themselves willing to cooperate, regardless of other differences of opinion, with all persons, movements, or organizations, that are in favour of peace policy, that will break the policy of national defeatism, and will use the war billions for the good of the people. They will provide support to any government and any political initiative that takes steps in this direction.

Aware that the whole future of the country and the people depends on the victory of peace, the communists will make every effort to bring such a unity about. They will as always loyally respect the obligations they assume in such cooperation. At the same time they will as an independent party show the paths onwards for Denmark and work to win the people for the socialist transformation of society.

Only the people’s power ensures lasting prosperity.

Transition to peace policy would be a huge victory for the Danish people, but their problems will not be solved by that alone. Poverty would still exist, and there would still be rich people, who would use their economic power to extort the people, corrupt the political life, and once again drive the country in ruin. It happened like that in 1945. At that time there wasn’t put an end on the forces that betrayed Denmark and worked against the interests of the people. The result was, that speculators, collaborators, and cooperation politicians once again entered their old positions, began to split the people, and continued their pernicious policy, which once again brought the country into trouble.

If lasting prosperity is to be created for the Danish people, there must be a profound societal change. The power of the high finance must be broken. The real power in society must be laid into the hands of the people.

The people must actively defend their own interests. They must do away with the politicians who in the interest of the monopoly capital have deceived them and led them into misfortune.

They must secure a renewed people’s representation, a Rigsdag of parties and persons, who make the will of the people the law of the country.

Carried forward by the active support of the overwhelming majority of the people the people’s representation and the people’s government will take the measures which are necessary of primary importance to break the power of the big exploiters:

Nationalization – societal takeover – of big industry, banks, insurance companies, and the other monopolies of the business, whereby these are placed in the service of the people.

The foreign trade is placed in the service of the people through nationalization.

The ground of the landowners is seized and given to those, who cultivate it.

Democracy is ensured through the active employeeship of the people in all spheres of public life – in production, administration, public education, and press.

Thus the key centres of power would be put into the hands of the people, and the wealth and opportunities of Denmark will be utilized to create prosperity and happiness for the people.

These measures will result in the beginning to the transformation of the Danish society to a socialist society, where the exploitation of men by men is abolished, and where the people’s freedom and right to decide is guaranteed.

The unity of the people – the victory of the people.

The time has for a long time ago become ripe for the transforming of the Danish society.

The overwhelming majority of the people are interesting in that happening. In the long run it will therefore not be possible to withhold it. Not only the working class, but also the working agriculture, fishermen, officials, traders, mental workers, and even more are weighed down to their knees under the burdens from the ruling social order. The youth is being offered a future without prospect, and the old are being offered a hopeless old age. The whole people hate the war and want to live as Danish.

United the people form an immense force. That was what, we experienced in the country in the days of the resistance. As long as the working class was united, and the whole working people stood together, it went forward. The setback first came, when the people were successfully split again. But now, in the struggle against war policy and brutal cuts, the unity is again strengthened in people and in the working class. Old prejudices fade, when they in concord defend their immediate interests in struggle against external and internal enemies. From the shared vision of today’s problems grows a shared vision of the future.

Thus arises the unity in the people that gives them strength to form the future of Denmark.

The unity in the people can only happen on the basis of unity in the working class which is the largest and most closely knit part of the population. When the working class in unity actively sets in against any attack, against any cuts, against any violation of the people’s democratic rights, when it uses its trade unions and its other organizations in the struggle for its just demands, the result will not only be much needed improvements, but the working class will become the political force that at the head of the people paves the way for new times.

The enemies of the people fear the unity, above all in the working class. They bring into action both power and cunning to prevent it. The working class must in reply steadily continue its struggle and reject all attempts to create division in the ranks. This applies especially to the shameful acts of the right–social democrats, when they with poisonous gossip want to create artificial contradictions among the workers, or when they spread their propaganda about capitulating to the capital and the reaction. Unity and combat power in the working class can only be secured through incessantly work to break the influence of the false leaders and make their propaganda ineffective.

When the unity is obtained, when it is maintained and strengthened, so that it not goes into decline like in 1945, then the foundation is created to implement key changes to the Danish society and tread the path to socialism. An active, alert, and united working class will throng the large majority around itself and carry a people’s government to power.

That is the path that the communists urge to go on.

It will be the path to accomplishment of the historical struggle of the Danish people for peace and freedom, for democracy and independence. 

The people’s democracy – the path to socialism.

The people’s takeover of the power in the society means democracy for the people. Through the people’s democracy, the path of Denmark will go to socialism.

The Rigsdag will not as now be a tool for domestic financial cliques or a channel for foreign orders.

It will be renewed through free elections. The Rigsdag will be the true seat of popular sovereignty, such as the Danish people has fought for against absolutism and the provisory-dictatorship of Estrup[5]. Therefore the Landsting will also be abolished, the youth will get the right to vote from 18 years, and the electoral law will be made completely fair. The elected representatives of the people will be made accountable for violations on their programme and the obligations they have undertaken to the voters.

The democratic rights will not as now be restricted and conditional for the majority of the people.

People’s democracy means abolishment of all the privileges of the wealthy that make the democratic liberties to hollow words. The country’s legislative and executive organs will at any time be accountable to the people, and the people will be drawn into active participation in the administration and control in all spheres of public life.

The trade unions of the workers will play a significant role. They will come to serve the purpose, for which they were built: as direct defenders of the workers’ interests. The legalisms of the unions will be abolished, and the freedom of the trade-union movement will be secured. There will be democracy in the trade-union movement, and the power of trade-union careerists will be abolished.

The trade unions will, as representatives for the working class participate in the organization of the economic policy of the country, in the management of industry and other businesses, and in the shaping and administration of the labour- and social legislation.

Similarly the other organizations of the working people, small-holder unions, fishermen unions, the associations of the mental workers, the youth organizations, etc., will participate in the shaping and administration of the legislation, just as the cooperative movement with its experiences will come to play an important role in organizing the people’s supply of goods.

The securing of the principle of democracy: from the people – for the people – by the people, will be done by that on all responsible positions in the state apparatus will sit men and women, coming from the people, who take care, that the laws are observed in the spirit, in which they are enacted. All attempts to bureaucracy and sabotage, to police regime, will be broken with the participation of the people’s democratic control.

The democratic rights of the citizens will not only be enshrined in the constitution, but will be guaranteed, because the law provides the people the means to realize them. The freedom of press, speech, and assembly will not be limited by the fact, that a minority through property relations control printing houses and assembly rooms. Thus the monopoly of the money men on the press will be broken. The ownership of the papers will be handed over to the democratic organizations of the working class and the general population that on the basis of the law work for their interests.

Equality before the law will be guaranteed regardess of race, nationality or gender. Freedom of belief will be guaranteed. The legal rights will be assured by the democratization of the judicial system.

By these measures the people is secured real political power that enables the transformation of the society.

It cannot be expected, that the big capitalists and the landowners, that the united reaction will give up their robbed properties and privileges without further ado. On the contrary it must be assumed, that they will use all their influence and all their connections to by undermining and sabotage, coupled with open and violent opposition prevent the implementation of a democratic and socialist policy. Therefore the Danish people and its people’s government must be ready to resolutely strike such opposition down.

The Danish people’s path to peace, prosperity, and freedom can only be ensured by the power of the working people. 

What the people’s government will mean for the people.

The people’s government does not give empty promises. It fullfills the demands of the people.

It can do that because it breaks the power of the monopolies. It will do that because it stands in the service of the people and under the control of the people.

A people’s government will consolidate the victory of the peace policy by invariably be in favour of peace and national independence. It will and can do that, because it builds directly on the Danish people and their honest desire to live in peace and friendship with all other peoples, and because it is freed from any kind of dependence on the capitalistic spheres who are interested in armament and war.

Just as the people’s government will cherish the Danish people’s natural right to decide over the fate of their land and themselves, it recognizes the same right in all other peoples, and on this basis wants cooperation with them on the basis of friendship and equal rights. This also applies to the Faroese and Greenlandic peoples. A people’s government can never approve a policy that sacrifices these peoples and their countries to the war plans of the imperialistic great powers.

A people’s government will in accordance to its peace policy stop the militarization and lower the military spending to what is necessary to create a democratic defence in accordance with Denmark’s own interests.

Already this will lead to, that it gets substantial funds in its hands for improvement of the conditions of the people. Far more, however, it means that the nationalization of the monopolies in industry, banking, shipping, big trade, etc. places their enormous profits at the disposal of the state and thus of the people. At the same time it means, that the production can be organized and developed according to a plan which aims to meet the needs of the people.

This nationalization, which makes the key means of production to the property of society, i.e. of the people, should not be confused with what we have known up to now with regard to the takeover and operation of certain businesses by the state and the municipialities. These enterprises have still been operated as capitalistic enterprises in the interest of the capitalistic society and in a special bureaucratic manner. It has nothing to do with socialism.

Under a people’s government the nationalized companies will instead be democratically managed.

The management will consist of workers along with technicians and the representatives of society, just as the entire operation will continuously be subject to the participation and control of the trade unions. The production will no longer be dictated by the private profit hunger of the capitalists, but organized according to a common plan based on what benefits the society as well as the workers of the company’s workers. The working people, and no private capitalist, will benefit from improvements in methods of production and work. This will increase the pace of development in an unprecedented degree.

The production plan will be organized in such way that there will be a significant expansion of the Danish industry. Such an industrialization of Denmark is a necessity when the economic opportunities of the country are to be utilized to continuously raise the standard of life and to extend the employment opportunities, in order to ensure work for all.

The nationalization of banks and other financial institutions as well as of the insurance system will break the power of the interest capital, provide cheap capital at the disposal of production for the benefit of society, and will in general allow an effective societal control of the economic development.

The nationalization of the foreign trade is essential for the improvement of Denmark’s economic position. Only this way it will be possible to organize our trade policy purely in the interests of the whole people, according to where we are offered the best conditions for our exports, while the supplies of the country, particularly of necessary raw materials, are secured.

The import monopoly of the financially strong merchants will be broken, and the import goods will be distributed according to the interests of the production and the consumers.

A land reform will be implemented. First of all the landed estates, the aristocratic foundations, etc, which some time ago was robbed from the working peasants, will be given back to the people.

Thereby there will be created opportunities to create thousands of new farms through parcellation.

There will be created economic conditions so that the rural workers and the youth can get their own homes this way, and there will be additional land to the cramped smallholders.

The yoke of interest will be broken, the debt will be cancelled, and speculation in Danish soil will be made impossible. The economic policy of the people’s government will for ever abolish agricultural crises, and ensure the agriculture sale of its products at fair prices.

The further development of the cooperative movement, maintenance of machine pools, common stables, and other forms of rational utilization of the progress of technology, etc. will be supported.

Collective farming will be promoted to the extent that the farmers want. All this, combined with increased support for agronomical research work will form the foundation for a further rapid development of Danish agriculture.

At the same time the technical development will also be utilized to improve the conditions of the rural workers and the rural youth, so that their demands for equality with other workers with regards to wages, working hours, and holidays are finally realized. The rural youth will get access to education and cultural activities.

The fishery will be promoted and developed in accordance with our country’s natural conditions. State subsidy and credits for the improvement of the fishing boat fleet and the fishing gear will be provided. The sea fishing is organized and developed with the support of the people’s government. The release of fry is increased to the extent, the fishermen and science in cooperation consider appropriate.

Unloading centres, freeze centres, canned food factories, and similar, will be established on cooperative basis by state subsidy. Thereby remunerative sale of the catch is secured at any time. Intermediaries on the fish’s way from the fishermen to the consumers, who make it more expensive, will be abolished. The new trade policy will provide great opportunities for the sale of fish in foreign markets.

The middle class in trade, industry, and crafts will be liberated from the yoke of the interest capital, and will benefit from the social security. Small savers will get full compensation for the losses, they may suffer by the nationalization, but others may also get compensation to the extent they take a position of loyalty to the people’s power.

When the economic centres of power of the society are under control, the economy is no longer subject to blind laws. The planned expansion of the production will provide ample supplies to falling prices. The standard of life will be able to be continuously raised. The typical capitalistic crises with their so-called overproduction, with their unemployment, and with economic disasters for the peasants and for thousands of small traders will no longer be known. For all parts of the working people the life will be easier and happier.

Social security and cultural flourishing. 

When the profits of the monopolies are confiscated through nationalization, when the foreign plundering is stopped through a reorganization of the foreign trade, and when the armament is halted, then a people’s government will have the necessary means to realize the social progress that the labour movement through generations has fought for. And yet the taxes will be able to be reduced significantly for the working people. The social legislation of the people’s government will put an end to the fear of tomorrow, for illness, accident, unemployment, and old age which now often rides the people as a mare.

The right to work will be legally established and will by virtue of the economic basis be realized.

By introducing state pensions without dues the society will fulfil its duty towards the old and ensure them an evening of their life in comfort and good conditions. Invalids, the ill, and the injured will receive full compensation for lost earnings and will furthermore be secured a decent existence on equal footing with other citizens.

Through free medicine, medical care, and hospital treatment the public’s health is protected.

The preventive healthcare is expanded. The family will be secured. There will be implemented an up-to-date maternity allowance and a genuine child allowance. The preventive child care will be extended and the needed childcare institutions will be set up.

All condescension and bureaucracy in the administration of the social assistance will be done away with through direct participation of the representatives of the working people.

The housing question will finally be solved. The rents will be able to be significantly reduced through the confiscation of the interest. The nationalization of the credit and the buildings materials industry will make the initiation of an extensive construction of apartments to cheap prices possible.

Three weeks of vacation with full pay will be the minimum for all workers. Holiday houses and sanatoriums for the working people are established in appropriate and healthy buildings.

For the women a people’s government will mean, that they not only in words but also in fact achieve equality with the man in terms of politics, economics, and wage.

A new life will be opened up for the youth. There will be implemented a genuine youth legislation. The young workers will get shorter working time and longer vacation, and the apprentices will have day schools and a guarantee for an efficient utilization of the apprenticeship. In all spheres the youth will get huge expanded opportunities for development of its skills and interests.

Sports and the recreational pursuits of the youth will be encouraged through the necessary funding from state and municipalities, and through construction of the needed sports facilities, assembly houses, after-school recreation centres, cultural centres, etc. Money speculation in the sports will no longer be a question. Everyone will have equal right to education. Only abilities and aptitudes should be decisive for the opportunities of the individual. The necessary study grants are made available. The number of schools and higher education institutions are expanded, as the society will develop an extraordinary need for specialists and experts in all spheres.

There will be put an end to all pettiness towards the cultural life and on its dependence on private capital interests. The society requires a strong development of Danish science, art, and public education. Scientific institutions will be expanded or newly established. Under the leadership of research councils that will have extensive funding available, science will be developed and utilized for the good of the people. Ample resources will secure the work of the artist and the development of art. Through an extensive network of community centres, libraries, theatres, concert halls, exhibition rooms, etc., and by placing the press and publishing houses in the service of public education the conditions will be created to bring the cultural life into close and fruitful connection with the entire people.

Thus the cultural life will no longer be a matter for narrow circles. On the contrary, the entire people will participate in a further development of our rich cultural heritage, carried by faith in the future and concern for man. A genuine people’s government will ensure that the Danish society is transformed in order to take the necessary steps towards socialism. The wealth of the society and self-expression of man will flourish as never before. Only under such social conditions one can speak of freedom, of a genuine human existence. Without regard to the possibility of persecution by employers or money men can the citizens freely discuss how to make the life easier and more eventful for everyone in the best and fastest way. For the first time in our country’s history the opinions and decisions the working people arrives at will be made real by the help of the society. And the people will continue their march – still forward, towards new and higher goals. 

The communists and the path to socialism.

The communists present this programme to show, that there for the Danish people exists another perspective than the one of war policy, cuts, and national humiliation. There is a way forward and behind the strife and struggle of everyday life a great and achievable goal can be seen ahead.

The Communist Party of Denmark devotes all its efforts to the task of calling the Danish people to the struggle for peace, freedom, and their threatened interests of life, in order to achieve the great goal.

The Communist Party of Denmark is an organic part of the Danish people. It has grown out from our old socialist labour movement, born at the time the right-social democrats betrayed the banners of socialism. It has no interests which differ from the interests of Denmark and the Danish people.

In its ranks it gathers the most self-sacrificing and best fighters for the cause of the working class.

It has, even in the most difficult times, faithfully stood in the service of the Danish people.

The Communist Party of Denmark builds in all its work on the experiences of the working class and the liberation movements, as they are summarized in the doctrine of scientific socialism developed by Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin. The Marxist theory has historically proved its correctness as the doctrine of the victory of the working class and socialism. History has also established that the struggle for socialism can nowhere be won without a party that works on the basis of and in accordance with the socialist theory.

The Communist Party is in favor of the true and genuine democracy. It wants, that the majority of the people should be deciding. It seeks a socialistic democracy where all the riches of the society belongs to the society – the whole people – and are managed by the organs of the society under the participation and control of the people, a society where democracy prevails economically, politically, and culturally. Only with the support of the great majority of the people the communists will achieve this goal. The communists are opposed to a dictatorship of a minority. They will fight against all attempts to impose or maintain such a thing. The communists want that the majority of the people should decide in the interest of the vast majority of the people.

That is the foundation for the struggle of the communists for the interests of the people and for the revolution from capitalism to socialism. The victories of socialism in a number of countries have shown that different paths to socialism are given. Every country, every people must walk the path that follows from its own circumstances and conditions. But without the majority of the people and its struggle effort there is no path to socialism and thereby to lasting peace and freedom.

For Denmark the path goes in continuation of the rich-in-tradition battle of the Danish people throughout the ages that only will be accomplished in a free and happy, socialistic Denmark.

---

[1] Erik Julius Christian Scavenius, social-liberal collaborator Prime Minister of Denmark, 9 November 1942 – 29 August 1943 (under the Occupation). He supported the policy of cooperation with Nazi Germany. Was forced from his post after he and his government didn’t want to introduce the death penality against saboteurs.

[2] Danish bicarmial legislature (1849-1953). Consisted of the Folketing (lower chamber) and Landsting (upper chamber). The Landsting was abolished in 1953.

[3] Danish liberal prime minister, 7. november 1945 – 13. november 1947.  He became prime minister after the first election after the Liberation. He was impeached because he wanted Southern Schleswig to be part of Denmark.

[4] The 29. August 1943 the Danish collaborator government abdicated after the Germans asked it to introduce death penalty for saboteurs after big strikes and unrest in August 1943, thus ending the period of collaboration.

[5] Jacob Brønnum Scavenius Estrup. Ultra-conservative prime minister of Denmark 11 June 1875 – 7 August 1894.

Under his time the Landsting was dominated by landowners and the big bourgeoisie, while the Folketing was dominated by pro-peasant politicians, who were more democratic. The more progressive Folketing tried to prevent Estrup from making his budget laws, with the result that he in 1877 dissolved the Rigsdag and made a “provisional budget law”. He did it all the years 1885-1894, the so called “provisory era”.  This together with restrictions on the freedom of press and speech and introduction of the “Blue Gendarmes” made Estrup basically a dictator.

The opponents of Estrup created rifle associations, and often peasants would deny paying taxes.

Marxism & Bourgeois Nationalism

As always, a re-posting of articles does not necessarily imply an absolute endorsement of the entirety of its content. However, this well-written article does make a good point about the duality of the bourgeois class, particularly in the Third World and oppressed countries.

– Espresso Stalinist.

Tripoli is burning. Thousands of black Libyans and African immigrants are rounded up by the NATO-backed rebels and thrown into prisons. Supporters of the ousted nationalist government wait with baited breath for the inevitable and bloody purge by the new rebel government. Libyan oil gushes out of Benghazi into the pipelines of Western energy companies. And militia groups, deputized by Interpol and the now-victorious National Transitional Council (NTC) government, hunt for Colonel Muammar Qaddafi and his family across the Libyan desert.

Now that NATO has won this asymmetrical imperialist war, at least in the short term, no one can reasonably say that the Libyan people are better off with the rebel government in power. For all of the flaws of Qaddafi’s government – and other nationalist governments like his – the Libyan people enjoyed the highest standard of living on the African continent, rising from the lowest standard of living in the world as of 1951. (1) The national and tribal governments had an amicable working relationship that allowed for decentralized planning and local decision-making. Moreover, Libya’s natural resources were controlled by a national government at-odds with Western energy corporations, and the wealth they generated was publicly owned and shared. (1) In other words, the Libyan nation exercised its inherent right to self-determination.

Qaddafi’s government wasn’t socialist; it was nationalist. The relations of production in Libya were capitalist in nature, but to deny that Qaddafi’s government was more progressive and objectively anti-imperialist ignores the brutal material reality that millions of Libyans are facing because of the NTC government.

As the West begins to re-calibrate its war machine and set its crosshairs on President Bashar al-Assad’s government in Syria, Marxist-Leninists need to understand their relationship with nationalist bourgeois states, like Qaddafi’s Libya. History has objectively proven those “leftists” who were cheerleaders for the fall of Qaddafi’s government in Libya or Saddam Hussein’s government in Iraq wrong.

At the same time, every bourgeois state operates fundamentally in the interest of some sector of the capitalist ruling class, whether national or international, and in time the proletariat will replace that old machinery with socialism through revolution.

I posit these theses:

Because of their relation to imperialism after the fall of the socialist bloc, the objective historical position of nationalist states in the Third World is progressive.

Marxist-Leninists must uphold the right of nations to self-determination, which in the present is principally characterized by freedom from imperialist subjugation.

Where it arises, Marxist-Leninists must support genuine revolutionary proletarian struggles for socialism against bourgeois nationalist governments.

Josef Stalin, author of Marxism & the National Question

What is nationalism?

To understand when and why Marxist-Leninists should support nationalism, it’s important to examine the material conditions from which nationalism arises.

As a starting point, it’s important to distinguish a nation from other units of social or geographical organization, like a tribe or country. Historically speaking, national identity is a relatively recent development in class society. In his seminal 1913 work, Marxism and the National Question, Josef Stalin outlines the characteristics of a nation as “a historically evolved, stable community of people, formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life and psychological make-up manifested in a common culture.” (2)

Two important characteristics to note about Stalin’s definition. First, while territory and geography is a defining feature of a nation, it is not its sole determining characteristic, meaning that within the existential boundaries of a country–itself a recent social development–many nations may exist. Second, while a common economic life is also a defining characteristic, nations are not formed on the basis of class unity. In other words, there is no proletarian nation or bourgeois nation, but rather these two classes are both part and parcel of their respective nations.

In its inception, nationalism arises as an ideology of the bourgeoisie. From Marxism and the National Question:

The chief problem for the young bourgeoisie is the problem of the market. Its aim is to sell its goods and to emerge victorious from competition with the bourgeoisie of another nationality. Hence its desire to secure its “own,” its “home” market. The market is the first school in which the bourgeoisie learns its nationalism. (2)

Though all classes in a given nation are capable of embracing nationalism, Stalin argues that its historical basis lies in the bourgeoisie and its need for capital accumulation as a class. While other classes can appropriate and have transformed this concept, the demand for national self-determination begins as a bourgeois demand for exclusive access and control of its own national markets and resources.

European and American nationalism, for instance, arose from the break-up of feudal empires and the fledgling bourgeoisie’s struggle to establish itself as a class via primitive accumulation. American merchants, traders, shopkeepers, and speculators, denied full access to the readily available land and resources in North America by British mercantilism, led revolution of 1776 on the basis of American national unity. Though the American revolution of 1776 was waged in the interests of the fledgling bourgeoisie, the working masses rallied to the banner of American nationalism and led a successful struggle against British colonialism. Stalin notes that the “strength of the national movement is determined by the degree to which the wide strata of the nation, the proletariat and peasantry, participate in it.” (2)

Though the role of American nationalism in 1776 was historically progressive, the triumph of the American national movement was fueled by and resulted in the further subjugation of the African masses kidnapped and violently lashed into slave labor, along with the indigenous tribes ruthlessly slaughtered in the expansion of the American empire. Dialectically, American nationalism’s progressive features became the basis for the rise of the most oppressive imperialist power in the history of the world.

Without the subjugation of the African masses as a slave labor force, the Western bourgeoisie could never have established itself as an independent ruling class. Indeed, the same American nationalism that united the colonists against British mercantilism would unite the country in waging genocidal wars for land against indigenous people and Mexicans. After the series of successful European bourgeois revolutions, all ideologically fueled through nationalism, colonialism in Africa, Asia, South America, and the Pacific Islands became central to acquiring the cheap labor and resources necessary to generating extreme national wealth.

Because of the cheap labor and resources acquired through ruthless expansion, American capitalism transformed into imperialism, in which developed countries use force and comparative advantages in trade to violently extract resources and exploit the labor force of other colonies. Central to maintaining the colonial apparatus was the denial of equal rights and the cultivation of racist myths about colonized people, which materially manifested itself in slave labor, apartheid, and denial of access to the liberal democratic institutions established by the colonial bourgeoisie in imperialist countries.

Inevitably, the placement of capital in colonial countries allowed some small fraction of the colonized population to gain access to limited amounts of their own capital, albeit usually dependent on the colonial power. In other words, this small class of propertied yet colonized people constituted a bourgeoisie. Of this bourgeoisie, Stalin writes:

The bourgeoisie of the oppressed nation, repressed on every hand, is naturally stirred into movement. It appeals to its “native folk” and begins to shout about the “fatherland,” claiming that its own cause is the cause of the nation as a whole. It recruits itself an army from among its “countrymen” in the interests of… the “fatherland.” Nor do the “folk” always remain unresponsive to its appeals, they rally around its banner: the repression from above affects them too and provokes their discontent. (2)

The bourgeoisie of oppressed nations has the same basic features as the American and European bourgeoisie, in that both classes sought greater access to their own markets, resources, and labor. However, the conditions around the oppressed national bourgeoisie are qualitatively different than those around the Western bourgeoisie; they cannot seize control of their own national resources because of the fetters of colonialism.

Unquestionably the type of colonial oppression faced by the oppressed national bourgeoisie was different than that felt by the colonized proletariat and peasantry, who faced more brutal repression from the state and worse terms of labor. However, these colonized classes all had something to gain by overthrowing colonial and imperialist rule and achieving self-determination for their nation.

Nationalism becomes vital to the colonized bourgeoisie because it unites themselves and the colonized laboring masses in the struggle for national liberation. At the point where the laboring masses embrace nationalism, “the national movement begins.” (2)

National liberation struggles are not exclusively led by the nationalist bourgeoisie, and historically the bourgeoisie in colonial or semi-colonial nations is often too weak or too connected to the colonizing nation to exert itself independently as a class. Numerous examples of successful revolutionary proletarian national liberation movements exist, including the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA). These successful communist movements, like the MPLA, also made use of nationalism to unite the country around the central task of expelling the colonizers. In essence, although nationalism is originally a bourgeois ideology, other revolutionary classes can appropriate it during the national liberation struggle phase.

Saddam Hussein, with an AK-47

Bourgeois nationalist states in the Third World

Because the nationalist bourgeoisie finds itself opposed to imperialism in the Third World, they can function as a tactical ally for the proletariat and peasantry in these same oppressed nations. Marxist-Leninists should never accept this alliance as permanent, however, and must carefully evaluate the place of the national bourgeoisie in relation to imperialism and the vast laboring masses.

Iraq provides one of the most potent examples of the fickle and unreliable nature of the nationalist bourgeoisie. The Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party, for instance, was primarily bourgeois in its orientation and leadership, but it also attracted a mass following in the wake of the Iraq’s independence from British colonialism in 1958. (3)

Ba’ath was not committed to socialist revolution in Iraq, but they did preside over an aggressive nationalization program in 1972, which seized oil refineries from British and American companies and allowed them to diversify Iraq’s economy. Though these nationalizations were motivated by the access considerations of the national bourgeoisie, they also allowed the Ba’ath state to redirect revenues into public works projects that lifted nearly half the country out of poverty. In a 2006 profile piece on Saddam, PBS News writes of Ba’ath’s accomplishments:

As vice chairman, he oversaw the nationalization of the oil industry and advocated a national infrastructure campaign that built roads, schools and hospitals. The once illiterate Saddam, ordered a mandatory literacy program. Those who did not participate risked three years in jail, but hundreds of thousands learned to read. Iraq, at this time, created one of the best public-health systems in the Middle East — a feat that earned Saddam an award from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. (4)

True to form, Saddam and Ba’ath rose to power in direct response to British colonialism. Acting in the interests of the Iraqi national bourgeoisie, they ‘took back’ the resources monopolized by the West’s colonial subjugation and used the revenues to rapidly construct a modern Iraq, which required an educated populace, secular government, a functional road system, and social infrastructure like hospitals. One can question the sincerity of Ba’ath’s actions towards the masses, but one cannot dispute the profoundly positive effect these nationalist policies had on the lives of ordinary Iraqis.

However, the social accomplishments of bourgeois nationalist regimes should never obscure their reactionary character. With both Ba’ath and the Communist Party of Iraq (ICP) vying for supremacy after the 1958 revolution, hostile confrontations between the parties continued until 1963, when Ba’ath launched a coup d’etat against Prime Minister Abdul Karim Qasim. (5) During the coup, communists organized massive militant resistance to Ba’ath, and over the course of the three days in Baghdad, “5,000 Iraqi citizens were apparently killed, including 80 Ba’th Party activists and 340 Iraqi communist activists.” (6)

Following the consolidation of Ba’ath rule in Iraq, the ICP experienced two separate waves of repression: one in 1963 following the coup and the subsequent unrest, and the other in 1977, led by Saddam. (5) Historian Bob Feldman writes in a February 2006 piece on Iraq that “By March 1963, an estimated 10,000 Communist Party of Iraq members had been arrested by the Ba’th regime and many imprisoned Iraqi leftist activists were not treated gently.” (6) Quoting Said Aburish’s book, “A Brutal Friendship: The West and the Arab Elite”, Feldman continues:

The number of people eliminated remains confused and estimates range from 700 to 30,000. Putting various statements by Iraqi exiles together, in all likelihood the figure was nearer five thousand…. There were many ordinary people who were eliminated because they continued to resist after the coup became an accomplished fact, but there were also senior army officers, lawyers, professors, teachers, doctors and others. (6)

The CPI was correct to resist the 1963 Ba’ath coup and oppose the consolidation of a bourgeois nationalist regime. Iraq’s independence in 1958 had shifted their primary adversary from British colonialism to the Iraqi bourgeoisie, seeing as no colonial entity to struggle against still existed. Saddam’s case reminds Marxist-Leninists that it’s strategic to enter into a popular front with bourgeois nationalists against imperialism, but after the national liberation struggle is complete, they constitute a vicious and dangerous foe.

Palestinian women wave PFLP flags

Nationalist governments support revolutionary people’s struggles in the Third World.

Failure to conform to imperialist foreign policy is the most common wedge issue between bourgeois nationalists and the West. Often driven by pan-national ideological unity, bourgeois nationalist countries objectively support revolutionary people’s struggles and national liberation movements abroad, placing them at odds with imperialism.

Finding common ground with the Shi’a-led Iraqi resistance to US occupation, Iran has provided weapons to Iraqi insurgents, as well as training for assembling their own weapons. (7) While many allegations about Iranian aid to the Iraqi resistance are exaggerated by Western capitalist media to ratchet up tensions, journalist Michael Perry describes Iran’s rationale in a February 2007 article:

But let’s go even further and say, for the sake of argument, that the Iraqi insurgents are receiving officially authorized aid from the Iranian state. It is true that having a neighboring nation in chaos does not generally benefit any country, but the Iranians have been under the gun from the U.S. for a very long time –decades in fact. The recent threats and provocations from the Bush administration make it clear that Iran is an imminent target. I’m quite sure the Iranians realize that the quagmire in Iraq is the primary impediment to an American invasion of Iran. Troubles for U.S. forces in Iraq may buy the Iranians more time. Could the Iranians be so blind to their own self-interests? (8)

At odds with Saddam’s secular Sunni government for decades, the Iranian bourgeoisie would relish the opportunity to have an oil-rich Shi’a-dominated Iraq to its west. More pressing, however, is the collective national fear of having another US-client state in the region. There’s a reason that Tehran, and not Qatar, the UAE, or Saudi Arabia, is actively subverting US occupation by materially supporting the Iraqi resistance. That reason, of course, is because the Iran’s ruling nationalist bourgeoisie has a material class interest in anti-imperialism.

The best evidence for the progressive quality of the Iranian nationalist bourgeoisie, embodied in President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is the attempted color revolution in 2009 by the US-backed Mir-Hossein Mousavi. This so-called ‘Green revolution’ was financially supported by both the West and the wealthy neo-liberal bourgeoisie, represented by multi-millionaire former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. (9) In the 2005 Presidential elections, Ahmadinejad defeated Rafsanjani largely on the basis of the latter’s gaudy neo-liberal orientation. A 2005 article in GreenLeft by Doug Lorimer highlights the divergent class interests represented by Ahmadinejad and Rafsanjani. While both accept the fundamental tenents of the Iranian capitalist state:

In the same TV interview [Ahmadinejad] claimed the country’s vast oil wealth was controlled by one powerful family — a reference to Rafsanjani, who is alleged to have enriched himself through his son’s management of the country’s nationalised oil industry. The Rafsanjanis also have investments worth US1 billion in pistachio farming, real estate, automobile manufacture and a private airline.

“The whole Iranian economy is set up to benefit the privileged few”, Ray Takeyh, a professor and director of studies at the US National Defense University’s Near East and South Asia Center in Washington, told the Bloomberg news agency last December. “Rafsanjani is the most adept, the most notorious and the most privileged.” (10)

Rafsanjani, and his running dog Mousavi, hoped to rise to power via a US-supported color revolution and open Iran to Western markets; in other words, they represent the comprador Iranian bourgeoisie. Despite the best efforts of the imperialist powers to oust Ahmadinejad–who by every objective measure legitimately won the 2009 election–the Iranian people resisted these attacks on their national sovereignty. (11) Even as he nears the end of his two terms as President, Ahmadinejad remains popular with the Iranian masses because of his consistent anti-imperialism on the world stage, along with the social programs he has championed at home despite Western sanctions.

Pivoting to another nationalist state, Syria has consistently functioned as the most progressive of the multitude of Middle Eastern countries by substantially supporting the major national liberation movements in the region. Trinity University professor of history David Lesch writes in his fantastic book, The New Lion of Damascus: Bashar al-Asad and Modern Syria that:

Syria does not deny claims of support for Hizbollah, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad, viewing that such operations constitute legitimate resistance and not terrorism; indeed, Damascus often views Israeli activities vis-a-vis the Palestinians and its actions in Lebanon as terrorism. (12)

Since the Syrian Ba’ath party took power in 1963, the state has always supported the Palestinian and Lebanese liberation struggles and sought to keep Israeli imperialism in-check. (13) Sharing the common trait of secularism, Syria allows the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), the largest Marxist-Leninist revolutionary movement in Palestine, to operate comfortably out of Damascus and materially supports their struggle with supplies and resources. (14) Because of the Syrian bourgeoisie’s desire for regional secular pan-Arab unity–rooted in the Alawi faith of President Bashar al-Assad and others–and the Israeli occupation of the Golan Heights, Assad’s government is objectively anti-imperialist.

Similarly, Saddam’s Ba’ath state in Iraq financially supported and championed the cause of Palestinian national liberation, which was played up by the West in the months leading up to the 2003 invasion. On March 13, 2003–just six days before the invasion–the BBC reported, “Saddam Hussein has paid out thousands of dollars to families of Palestinians killed in fighting with Israel. Relatives of at least one suicide attacker as well as other militants and civilians gathered in a hall in Gaza City to receive cheques.” (15) Later, the same article estimates that the Iraqi government had paid out nearly $35 million to Palestinian families since 2000.

In hindsight, the timing and purpose of this BBC article is obvious, but that Saddam’s support for ‘terrorist groups’ was one of the reasons for the 2003 invasion demonstrates the extreme degree to which his support for the Palestinians offended and scared the West. Startlingly few people remember that Israel invaded Syrian airspace and bombed a peaceful nuclear power plant in September 2007 for many of the same reasons. When a bourgeois state in the Third World becomes nationalist in its orientation, as opposed to comprador bourgeois states, it demands a response from the West.

Emperor Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia

Never confuse your primary and secondary contradictions!

Although a multitude of contradictions exist in class societies, at any given time, one of these contradictions is principal in comparison to the others. If a person goes for a walk, decides s/he wants a cigarette, and then gets bitten by a rattlesnake, the order of the day is to call a doctor and receive medical attention immediately for the venom. As much as that person might have wanted–or even needed–a cigarette, only a great fool would tell this person that s/he should prioritize smoking over seeking medical attention.

Primary and secondary contradictions seem like common sense, but a multitude of so-called ‘leftists’ and revolutionaries confuse them when analyzing imperialism. Ultimately, the approach that Marxist-Leninists ought to take to bourgeois nationalist governments is tied up in correctly identifying and acting on primary and secondary contradictions.

Though largely ignored in Marxist-Leninist writings, the experience of the Ethiopian revolution offers valuable insight as to how communists ought to struggle against bourgeois nationalist governments. Having played an instrumental role in repelling the Italian fascist occupation of Ethiopia, Emperor Haile Selassie I began as an archetype bourgeois nationalist. He encouraged pan-African unity, promoted decolonization, and began an aggressive process of modernizing Ethiopia.

That said, Selassie’s government became firmly aligned with the West after World War II and opened the country up to an influx of foreign capital. Presiding over and encouraging severely unequal land distribution, Selassie’s government was also responsible for a series of famines and foot shortages, the worst of which claimed an estimated 40,000 to 80,000 victims. (16) Ahmed Khan of the Communist Workers and Peasants Party in Pakistan writes this of Selassie’s government:

During the monarchical period, life expectancy was a mere 38 years and 90% of the people were illiterate. Only a tiny handful of feudal landowners and royal sycophants controlled the entire wealth of the country.

…

Severe drought and famine engulfed Ethiopia which led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of peasants, and led to widespread hunger and food crises in the urban areas. (16)

Even bourgeois sources regard these famines as the product of Selassie’s destructive policies. A 1997 report by Human Rights Watch called “Rebellion and Famine in the North under Haile Selassie” indicted the nationalist government for its culpability in this famine, saying:

The Wollo famine was popularly blamed on drought, a backward and impoverishedsocial system, and the cover-up attempted by the imperial government. These factors were all-important — though it must be remembered that specific actions by the government, especiallyafter the Ras Gugsa and Weyane revolts, were instrumental in creating the absence of development. (17)

By 1974, Selassie’s bourgeois government lost all legitimacy in the eyes of the masses. Because of the widespread crises brought on by Selassie’s selective industrial development and close trade relations with the West, Ethiopian workers and peasants began to mobilize against the government. Khan writes, “The inability of the monarchy to deal with the crisis and the propensity of the feudalists to bleed the peasantry dry led to increasing hatred for the monarchy on part of the oppressed peasants, workers and a section of the emergent urban middle class.” (16)

Although no Marxist-Leninist vanguard party existed in Ethiopia at this time, a communist council of military officers known as the Derg organized alongside labor leaders in the urban centers and peasant communities in the countryside to produce the Ethiopian revolution of 1974. (18)

The revolutionary experience of the Ethiopian people in overthrowing Selassie’s government and establishing the People’s Democratic Republic of Ethiopia–firmly committed to socialist construction–has tremendous lessons for Marxist-Leninists about their relation to bourgeois nationalists. Objectively, Selassie’s government was essential to the anti-imperialist and anti-fascist struggle waged against fascist Italy in 1935. The Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA) went so far as to launch a “Hands off Ethiopia” campaign in the same year, which included substantial demonstrations supporting Ethiopia’s right to self-determination (19).

However, classes do not exist in a vacuum. While one class may play a historically progressive role at one time, a change in the material conditions–like increased trade relations with the West following World War II–may render that same class reactionary. For as important as nationalism was to Ethiopia repelling fascist Italy in 1941, the same nationalist government’s reactionary policies reached a boiling point in 1974, resulting in a popular socialist revolution.

The lesson from Ethiopia is clear: Marxist-Leninists in nationalist states must organize with a keen awareness of primary and secondary contradictions. For a moment, let’s assume that an organization like the Derg existed in Ethiopia circa-1935. Said organization would commit a grave error in throwing in with the fascists in hopes of toppling an admittedly reactionary monarchy. First, the organization would undeniably alienate the Ethiopian masses, who despite their poverty and poor military training, flocked to defend their homeland, the only African state never colonized by the West, from fascist occupation. (20) Second, although Selassie’s bourgeois government was at-odds with the interests of Ethiopian workers and peasants, that contradiction receded into the background the moment that fascist Italy began poison gassing entire villages of Ethiopians.

When Mussolini’s forces invaded Ethiopia in 1935, there was only one organized military force capable of mounting a resistance: Selassie’s nationalist government. Unsuccessful at first, Ethiopian patriots of all classes, albeit predominantly workers and peasants, struggled onward to victory and liberation in 1941. That this liberation struggle took place across class lines on a nationalist basis is no small detail. It’s paramount that Marxist-Leninists, in light of Iraq, Libya, and increasing aggression towards Syria, comfortably identify anti-imperialism as the primary contradiction facing the international proletarian revolution today.

Proletarian internationalism is superior in every way to bourgeois nationalism, but so long as neo-colonialism and imperialism exist, communists must unite all who can be united in the anti-imperialist struggle. Simultaneously, though, communists must remember the other side of the dialectic: When bourgeois nationalists become complicit partners in Western imperialism and alienate themselves from the masses, communists must never hesitate to overthrow that state with extreme prejudice and on its ruins erect revolutionary socialism.

The irrelevance and obscurity of the Iraqi Communist Party (ICP) following the toppling of Saddam’s Ba’ath regime demonstrates the devastating effects of incorrectly identifying primary and secondary contradictions.

Saddam was by no means a consistent anti-imperialist throughout his reign. Though Ba’athist Iraq established diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union and China, it still retained casual relations with the West; relations that were strengthened following Saddam’s condemnation of Soviet intervention in the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan, as well as the Iranian Revolution in 1979. (21) Between the overthrow of the US-backed Shah, the establishment of a militant Islamic republic, and the Iranian hostage crisis, Iraq began to work closely with the West to curb Tehran’s influence in the Middle East. Though the Reagan Administration would notoriously fund the Iranians also, the US comfortably placed their initial bets behind Saddam in the devastating Iran-Iraq war of 1983-1988.

Even though the imperialists used Saddam during the Iran-Iraq war to sow chaos in the Middle East, the Ba’ath state remained largely at odds with Western interests because of its nationalist orientation. Refusing to privatize its oil industry and allow Western capital to fully penetrate its national markets, the West increasingly saw Saddam as a danger to imperialist interests in the Middle East. Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait over territorial disputes, the subsequent Gulf War, and Saddam’s unabashed support for the Palestinian liberation struggle cemented Iraq’s status as a pariah state in the eyes of the West by the early 1990s.

In an effort to eliminate an unfriendly pro-Palestinian government perched atop massive oil reserves, the US and UK fabricated the now-infamous falsehood that Saddam’s government had weapons of mass destruction. While communists around the world uniformly condemned the imperialist invasion of Iraq, “the Iraqi Communist Party (ICP) welcomed Saddam Hussein’s removal and is happy that the ousted president is to be put on trial.” (22) Exhausted and furious from decades of repression by Ba’ath, the ICP’s position is understandable on a purely visceral and emotional level. However, Marxist-Leninists must remain level-headed during periods of crisis and correctly identify primary and secondary contradictions; a task at which the ICP uniformally failed.

In the coming years, the ICP would come to participate in the puppet state erected by the West–most recently in the liberalizing ‘Political Reconciliation’ movement–and integrate themselves into this comprador government imposed from without. (23) Despite comprising the strongest opposition to the Ba’ath government during the 1960s, the ICP has descended into relative obscurity, having lost any credibility with the masses for their blunder. Instead, Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army and other religious sects comprised the mass base of resistance after Saddam was captured, though their bourgeois and petty-bourgeois class character has led them to also participate in Maliki’s bogus government.

One would think that the international ‘left’ would have learned about correctly handling primary and secondary contradictions after witnessing the failure of the ICP to lead a mass revolutionary resistance to imperialist occupation. Instead, the same ‘leftists’ who witnessed the invasion of Iraq cheerled a racist, imperialist-backed ‘rebel movement’ in Libya, and many made the full leap into supporting NATO’s invasion to oust Qaddafi.

When a nation achieves self-determination, the secondary contradiction between the proletariat and the national bourgeoisie will ascend to the forefront as the new primary contradiction. Before that time, however, the primary contradiction facing the masses in oppressed nations is between imperialism and national liberation. In bourgeois nationalist states, this contradiction can and must draw in all who can be united to strike a blow against imperialism.

Countries want independence.

Nations want liberation.

People want revolution.

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(1) Gerald A. Perreira, “Libya Getting it Right: A Revolutionary Pan-African Perspective,” March 4, 2011, Dissent Voice, http://bit.ly/mQT4iz

(2) Josef Stalin, Marxism & the National Question, March-May 1913, http://bit.ly/cwOCSQ

(3) Said K. Aburish, “How Saddam Hussein Came to Power,” 2002, From Saddam Hussein: The Politics of Revenge, Published in The Saddam Hussein Reader, pg. 41-42

(4) Jessica Moore, “Saddam Hussein’s Rise to Power,” 2003, PBS News, http://to.pbs.org/65tro

(5) Turi Munthe (Editor), The Saddam Hussein Reader, 2002, pg. xv-xviii

(6) Bob Feldman, “A People’s History of Iraq: 1950 to November 1963,” February 2, 2006, Toward Freedom, http://bit.ly/qwCar2

(7) CNN, “Iraqi insurgents being trained in Iran, US says,” April 11, 2007, http://bit.ly/nHra0S

(8) Michael Perry, “So what if Iran is Interfering in Iraq?,” February 21, 2007, AntiWar.com, http://bit.ly/ogwqxd

(9) Paul Craig Roberts, “Are the Iranian Protests Another US Orchestrated ‘Color Revolution’?,” June 20-21, 2009, CounterPunch, http://bit.ly/pmXj7w

(10) Doug Lorimer, “IRAN: A vote against neoliberalism,” July 6, 2005, Green Left, http://bit.ly/nYcOll

(11) Terror Free America, New America Foundation, “Ahmadinejad Front Runner in Upcoming Elections,” June 12, 2009, http://bit.ly/k8x0w

(12) David W. Lesch, The New Lion of Damascus: Bashar al-Asad and Modern Syria, 2005, pg. 102

(13) Reuters, “Syrian President Vows to Keep Supporting Hezbollah, Hamas,” August 2, 2007, http://bit.ly/qex219

(14) Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, “PFLP condemns attack on Syria,” November 3, 2008, Fight Back! News, http://bit.ly/qWDlmo

(15) BBC News, “Palestinians get Saddam funds,” March 13, 2008, http://bbc.in/9BWsXr

(16) Ahmed Khan, “Defend Comrade Mengistu! On the struggle of our Ethiopian brothers,” November 19, 2008, Red Diary, http://bit.ly/jbYhks

(17) Human Rights Watch, “3. Rebellion and Famine in the North Under Haile Selassie,” 1997, http://bit.ly/pzy53w

(18) Christopher Clapham, Transformation and Continuity in Revolutionary Ethiopia, 1988, Cambridge University Press.

(19) Robin D.G. Kelley, Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression, 1990, pg. 123.

(20) A.J. Barker, The Rape of Ethiopia, 1936, 1971.

(21) Said K. Aburish, “How Saddam Hussein Came to Power,” 2002, From Saddam Hussein: The Politics of Revenge, Published in The Saddam Hussein Reader, pg. 44

(22) Shaheen Chughtai, “Iraqi communists celebrate change,” June 1, 2004, http://aje.me/qp5rVW

(23) Talal Alrubaie, “The Iraqi Communist Party and Hegel’s Owl of Minerva,” February 2, 2010, http://bit.ly/rqF6fr

Source

Protests 2. October 2012: The opening of the Folketing and the 40. anniversary of the referendum about Danish membership of EEC (EU)

Labour union banners in front of the Labour Court: The employers and blue bloc want to have pickets ruled illegal – Krifa [2] – The Christian Trade Union (read: unchristian anti-trade union) – has referred the picket of 3F [3] , the picket of Vejlegaarden [4], to the court.

Photo reportage: Kommunistisk Politik

Thousands demonstrated and protested at the opening of the Folketing the 2. October on the 40. anniversary of the fateful referendum on Danish membership of EU. In Copenhagen there was a protest in front of the Labour Court and in a great demonstration from the City Hall Square to Christiansborg [1]. Also in Aarhus there was a protest meeting.

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[1] Residence of legislature

[2]  Danish “labour union” which doesn’t have members but costumers, and which doesn’t use strikes, but provides councelling.

[3] A “normal” labour union. Most members are in industry, transport, and building.

[4] A Danish restaurant that made a deal with Krifa instead of 3F (a worser deal), and therefore 3F initiated a conflict against it. 29. November the Court said that 3F has the right to conflict against Vejlegården. Two parties from the blue bloc [openly bourgeois bloc] declared that they wanted to ban unions from conflicting against employers who already had agreements with another union.

The protest in front of the Labour Court

APK-poster at the Labour Court [5]

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[5] It says “Neither “Red” or Blue bloc. – Not to the budget law for 2013. – Stop the impairments of welfare! – Create workplaces and jobs! [A list of demands] – Fight the unemployment – not the unemployed and ill! – Welfare to all! Let the rich pay the crisis!

Demo at the City Hall Square, Copenhagen, with the following specific demands

Stop the impairments of the unemployment benefits!

Traineeships for all!

No deterioration of flexible jobs [6] and disability pension!

Decent living conditions for all on state education grants and “cash benefit [7]”.

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[6] Special jobs for people, that are unable to have a ”normal” job.

[7] Kontanthjælp. Transfer income to people who cannot provide for themselves and/or their families. E.g. after two years of unemployment, where the right to the higher unemployment benefits ends.

Claus Jansson spoke at the City Hall Square about the resistance against the government’s planned disability pension- and flexible jobs-reform – and the link with EU on the 40. anniversary of the Danish referendum in 1972

The leader of FOA [8] Dennis Kristensen said among other things:

”The crisis is being used as a pretext to implement a total careening of the Danish welfare model…

The disability retirement reform, the flexible jobs reform, the tax reform, the reform of the unemployment benefits of the former government, and the now postponed cash benefit reform has a common trait: The labour supply must be increased. Working must pay off.

Sometimes I think the thought that the backside of the expression that working should pay off, surely must be that not working must be punished? We are in any case well underway with creating a new form of A- and B-teams.

An A-team with jobs that must be nursed by the society, and a B-team that doesn’t have jobs because of unemployment, disease, handicap, age, and who must feel both in everyday life and on the standard of life, that they are a burden on the rest of us

It is a perhaps creeping, but not for that reason less sinister development. We simply ought to be ashamed of ourselves.

And it is by no means fair, decent, or responsible.”

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[8] Union for mostly public employees.

Rap on the City Hall Square

Dockers on the City Hall Square

Sign on the City Hall Square [9]

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[9] It says ”Mette Frederiksen [Social-democratic minister of employment] is the new Jesus – She heals the sick and disabled with work!”

A good amount of people on the City Hall Square

At Christiansborg

We demand Work – Unemployment benefits – Traineeships [10]

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[10] On the “smaller side” of the red sign it says “APK Copenhagen”, on the “larger side” it says what also stands under the picture. On the yellow sign it says “A wage to live by – Unemployment benefits – Traineeships – Job”

Jan Jensen from ”Ill in Svendborg” [11] speaks at Christiansborg

Stop the reform of flexible jobs!

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[11] “Syg i Svendborg”. Organization for long-time ill and disabled in Svendborg.

Jesper Juul Mikkelsen from the initiative of 2. October  [12] at Christiansborg

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[12] The main organizers of the protest.

Occupy – again!

Red flag crossing Christiansborg

Fri Galakse: Powerful songs against blue and ”red” reaction

Christiansborg also had visits from Horsens – and many other towns around the country

As the only of the three ”labour parties” in the ”red bloc” that was invited to speak at the demonstration, the Unity List [13]  turned up with Per Clausen as its representative

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[13] Enhedslisten. Revisionist party which supports the government. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red-Green_Alliance_%28Denmark%29

The Fremtidsfighterne [14] were there too, of course.

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[14] Can be translated as “Fighters for the future”. It is an organization of young people, who e.g. protest in front of working places, which doesn’t want to make good collective agreements, and generally fight against the dumping of wage- and labour standards.

The employers were represented by an agitprop troup – that speaks for itself [15]

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[15] An ironic group called “0F”, the name is a parody on “3F”, a Danish trade union. The left sign on the lower picture says “What do you need leisure for, when you cannot afford golfing?”

Remember it! [16]

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[16] Sign says: ”Abolish the unemployment benefits – The wage wont dump itself”

Also in Aarhus there were protests against attacks on the unemployment benefits and welfare impairments – 40 years after the Danish membership of EU

[Sign says: ”40 years are enough! Denmark OUT of EU! www.kpnet.dk APK]

The Netpaper 3. oktober 2012 

Source

A Comment on “A Pathetic Defence of Stalinist Repressions”

Anil Rajimwale, the leader of Communist Party of India and one of the party’s leading theoretician has published a review of Grover Furr’s Book Khrushchev Lied, in the pro CPI and pro Congress magazine Mainstream Weekly, titled A Pathetic Defence of Stalinist Repressions, the link to Rajimwale’s review is http://www.mainstreamweekly.net/article3616.html

Below we are publishing a short comment on the review made by Anil Rajimwale, written by comrade Manbhanjan (member editorial committee of Other Aspect)

One can understand the pain in the heart of die-hard Khrushchevite, Anil Rajimwale, while reviewing the book Khrushchev Lied. The pain is very genuine and inevitable because for some people it is extremely difficult to digest the truth. Since 20th Party Congress they have been deceived by anti-Marxist leadership of CPSU and their blood brother CPI regarding the truth in Soviet Union.

This time the truth was revealed by American Marxist scholar comrade Grover Furr. He has done exemplary research and attempted to publish facts hitherto unknown to the world. He discovered all the lies perpetuated by Khrushchev during the so called Secret speech during the 20th Party congress of CPSU.

This congress is regarded as the “Black Congress” in the history of International Communist Movement, as Khrushchev and his clique were successful in launching coup-d’état and overthrew socialism in the land of the first successful proletariat revolution. Khrushchev distorted the Marxist-Leninist teachings and presented to the world number of so-called “new theses”, i.e. “the peaceful co-existence between two systems”, “peaceful competitions between two system”, “peaceful transition identified with the parliamentary road”. After all in the “secret report “On the Cult of the Individual and its consequences”, that blackened the glorious road pursued by the Bolshevik Party since the death of Lenin. During the period Socialism was consolidated in Soviet Union under Dictatorship of Proletariat that defeated and eradicated the menace called fascism from the face of earth and liberated vast majority of human kind from capitalistic tyranny with the creation of the socialist camp after Second world war.

Comrade Anil Rajimwale in his whole political life has stuck to the lies propagated by Khrushchev and later Gorbachev regarding Stalin and has never moved beyond that. He has not only closed his eyes and seems oblivious about the criticism of Party of Labour of Albania under Comrade Enver Hoxha and later by the Chinese Party on the 20th Party Congress but also about the recent acknowledgement made by the Communist Party of Russian Federation on the achievement of Stalin. This is the high time for all communists to once again do a serious discussion by referring to the documents republished from the Archives by Revolutionary Democracy (India), Direct Democracy (Communist) Party and even by the overtly Trotskyite site Marxist Internet Archive, and then make correct assessment of the work and life of J.V.Stalin and the fundamental changes that occurred in the Soviet Union and the international communist movement, after the disastrous 20th CPSU congress.

Source

MPLA Wins Angolan Elections

Election posters for Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos. The ruling MPLA party, which fought for the national liberation of the country against UNITA, won overwhelmingly in the national elections.

Angola’s MPLA lead with nearly half of votes counted

LUANDA (AFP) – - Angola’s ruling leftwing MPLA party held a big lead with 81.65 percent of votes Sunday after almost half of the ballot papers had been counted in the country’s chaotic landmark vote, the electoral commission announced.

With 49.78 percent of the votes processed, the main opposition party UNITA (Union for the Total Independence of Angola) trailed with 10.59 percent of the votes, Adao de Almeida, a spokesman for Angola’s CNE electoral commission told AFP at 10 am local time (0900 GMT).

The MPLA (Popular Movement of the Liberation of Angola) of President Jose Eduardo Dos Santos , which has been in power for more than 30 years, predicted a sweeping victory after polls closed late Saturday, despite opposition attempts to have the result cancelled.

“We are going to win big time,” MPLA spokesman Rui Falcao said. “The victory is not in question, only whether we get the numbers required.”

Source

16th SEMINARIO INTERNACIONAL “PROBLEMAS DE LA REVOLUCIÓN EN AMÉRICA LATINA”

Apreciados compañeros (as)

Presente.-

De nuestras consideraciones:

Les presentamos un cálido y fraterno saludo del PARTIDO COMUNISTA MARXISTA LENINISTA DEL ECUADOR y del MOVIMIENTO POPULAR DEMOCRÁTICO, organizaciones de izquierda revolucionaria, expresándoles nuestros mejores deseos de éxitos personales, políticos y organizativos, que redunden en el impulso de la tarea común de los trabajadores, la juventud y los pueblos, la revolución, la emancipación social y el socialismo.

Partiendo de los actuales procesos de lucha social y política que se desarrollan en el mundo entero y en nuestro Continente, frente a las políticas del sistema capitalista y los gobiernos que afectan los intereses y lesionan las conquistas de los diversos sectores sociales, los revolucionarios entendemos la necesidad de avanzar y profundizar en la realización de los procesos de emancipación; por ello, consideramos útil, acercar más nuestro mutuo conocimiento, relación, intercambio de experiencias y el trabajo por una sólida unidad y colaboración de nuestras organizaciones.

Por ello, nos complace extenderles la más cordial INVITACIÓN para que una delegación de su Organización Política o Social, Institución o personalmente, participen en el 16to. SEMINARIO INTERNACIONAL “PROBLEMAS DE LA REVOLUCIÓN EN AMÉRICA LATINA”, que en este año abordará el tema:

“El caudillismo populista y la lucha revolucionaria en América Latina”

Además, queremos solicitarles respetuosamente, extender esta INVITACIÓN a otras organizaciones, instituciones y personalidades afines, con los cuales, lamentablemente, no tenemos una relación o dirección específica y que se mostrarían deseosos de integrarse y participar en el mismo.

Los participantes: pueden si lo desean, presentar una PONENCIA SOBRE EL TEMA PROPUESTO, con una máxima extensión de 8 páginas, que será publicada para entregarse a los participantes y un resumen de la misma para que sea expuesta en alocución de veinte minutos, en las diferentes sesiones plenarias del Seminario. Los textos en idioma español, procesados en Word, deben ser enviados con la debida anticipación para asegurar su publicación y la propaganda necesaria.

En el 16to. Seminario se desarrollarán dos Mesas Redondas:

- “La mega – minería a cielo abierto y la posición de los pueblos”. Martes 17 de julio, 17h 00. Participan delegados internacionales y del Ecuador.

- “Los trabajadores y pueblos del Ecuador y el gobierno de Rafael Correa”. Jueves 19 de julio, 10h 30. Participan diversos representantes de organizaciones sociales del Ecuador.

Este evento, arriba a su décima sexta edición con el esfuerzo conjunto de todos los que hemos participado en él, año tras año. Se realizará con ese mismo entusiasmo e incorporación en la ciudad de Quito, a partir del día lunes 16 al viernes 20 de julio del presente año 2012 en los locales de la “Casa del Maestro”, calle Ascázubi N. 271, entre la Avda. 10 de Agosto y 9 de Octubre.

La noche del viernes 20 de julio, tendrá lugar el ACTO CENTRAL DEL 48vo. ANIVERSARIO DEL PCMLE, acto político social para el cual también les invitamos muy cordialmente.

Les pedimos encarecidamente, hacernos conocer de su participación y de cualquier requerimiento al respecto lo más pronto posible, a las siguientes direcciones electrónicas y teléfonos:

pcmle@journalist.com – oswpal@yahoo.com – mpd15dn@netlife.ec

Teléfonos móviles (celulares)
099234491 (Oswaldo Palacios, Vocero Nacional del PCMLE);
096009818 (Abg. Luis Villacís, Director Nacional del MPD)

096804199; 098779541 (Fabiola Bohórquez, Sede Nacional del MPD)

Convencionales:
2503 580; 2526111 (Sede Nacional del MPD)

Los momentos de cambio plantean la necesidad de trabajar juntos por una más estrecha unidad de los trabajadores, la juventud, las mujeres y los pueblos, para asumir con decisión los retos que demanda la situación presente. Por ello es que nuestro Seminario quiere ser una tribuna de debate franco que contribuya a la conciencia y la unidad que requiere en estas horas el movimiento obrero, indígena, campesino, popular y revolucionario, motivo por el cual les reiteramos la importancia de su participación.

Fraternalmente,

Oswaldo Palacios J. Luis Villacís M.
Vocero Nacional del PCMLE Director Nacional del MPD
Abril de 2012.

Source

Democracy, East Germany and the Berlin Wall

Monument dedicated to Karl Marx in East Germany.

The GDR was more democratic, in the original and substantive sense of the word, than eastern Germany was before 1949 and than the former East Germany has become since the Berlin Wall was opened in 1989. It was also more democratic in this original sense than its neighbor, West Germany. While it played a role in the GDR’s eventual demise, the Berlin Wall was at the time a necessary defensive measure to protect a substantively democratic society from being undermined by a hostile neighbor bent on annexing it.

by Stephen Gowans

While East Germany (the German Democratic Republic, or GDR) wasn’t a ‘workers’ paradise’, it was in many respects a highly attractive model that was responsive to the basic needs of the mass of people and therefore was democratic in the substantive and original sense of the word. It offered generous pensions, guaranteed employment, equality of the sexes and substantial wage equality, free healthcare and education, and a growing array of other free and virtually free goods and services. It was poorer than its West German neighbor, the Federal Republic of Germany, or FRG, but it started at a lower level of economic development and was forced to bear the burden of indemnifying the Soviet Union for the massive losses Germany inflicted upon the USSR in World War II. These conditions were largely responsible for the less attractive aspects of life in the GDR: lower pay, longer hours, and fewer and poorer consumer goods compared to West Germany, and restrictions on travel to the West. When the Berlin Wall was open in 1989, a majority of the GDR’s citizens remained committed to the socialist basis of their society and wished to retain it. [1] It wasn’t the country’s central planning and public ownership they rebelled against. These things produced what was best about the country. And while Cold War propaganda located East Germany well outside the ‘free world,’ political repression and the Stasi, the East German state security service, weren’t at the root of East Germans’ rebellion either. Ultimately, what the citizens of the GDR rebelled against was their comparative poverty. But this had nothing to do with socialism. East Germans were poorer than West Germans even before the Western powers divided Germany in the late 1940s, and remain poorer today. A capitalist East Germany, forced to start at a lower level of economic development and to disgorge war reparation payments to the USSR, would not have become the social welfare consumer society West Germany became and East Germans aspired after, but would have been at least as worse off as the GDR was, and probably much worse off, and without the socialist attractions of economic security and greater equality. Moreover, without the need to compete against an ideological rival, it’s doubtful the West German ruling class would have been under as much pressure to make concessions on wages and benefits. West Germans, then, owed many of their social welfare gains to the fact their neighbour to the east was socialist and not capitalist.

The Western powers divide Germany

While the distortions of Cold War history would lead one to believe it was the Soviets who divided Germany, the Western powers were the true authors of Germany’s division. The Allies agreed at the February 1945 Yalta conference that while Germany would be partitioned into French, British, US and Soviet occupation zones, the defeated Germany would be administered jointly. [2] The hope of the Soviets, who had been invaded by Germany in both first and second world wars, was for a united, disarmed and neutral Germany. The Soviet’s goals were two-fold: First, Germany would be demilitarized, so that it could not launch a third war of aggression on the Soviet Union. Second, it would pay reparations for the massive damages it inflicted upon the USSR, calculated after the war to exceed $100 billion. [3]

The Western powers, however, had other plans. The United States wanted to revive Germany economically to ensure it would be available as a rich market capable of absorbing US exports and capital investment. The United States had remained on the sidelines through a good part of the war, largely avoiding the damages that ruined its rivals, while at the same time acting as armourer to the Allies. At the end of the war, Britain, France, Germany, Japan and the USSR lay in ruins, while the US ruling class was bursting at the seams with war industry profits. The prospects for the post-war US economy, however, and hence for the industrialists, bankers and investors who dominated the country’s political decision-making, were dim unless new life could be breathed into collapsed foreign markets, which would be needed to absorb US exports and capital. An economically revived Germany was therefore an important part of the plan to secure the United States’ economic future. The idea of a Germany forced to pour out massive reparation payments to the USSR was intolerable to US policy makers: it would militate against the transformation of Germany into a sphere of profit-making for US capital, and would underwrite the rebuilding of an ideological competitor.

The United States intended to make post-war life as difficult as possible for the Soviet Union. There were a number of reasons for this, not least to prevent the USSR from becoming a model for other countries. Already, socialism had eliminated the United States’ access to markets and spheres of investment in one-sixth of the earth’s territory. The US ruling class didn’t want the USSR to provide inspiration and material aid to other countries to follow the same path. The lead role of communists in the resistance movements in Europe, “the success of the Soviet Union in defeating Nazi Germany,” and “the success of the Soviet Union in industrializing and modernizing,” [4] had greatly raised the prestige of the USSR and enhanced the popularity of communism. Unless measures were taken to check the USSR’s growing popularity, socialism would continue to advance and the area open to US exports and investment would continue to contract. A Germany paying reparations to the Soviets was clearly at odds with the goals of reviving Germany and holding the Soviet Union in check. What’s more, while the Soviets wanted Germany to be permanently disarmed as a safeguard against German revanchism, the United States recognized that a militarized Germany under US domination could play a central role in undermining the USSR.

The division of Germany began in 1946, when the French decided to administer their zone separately. [5] Soon, the Western powers merged their three zones into a single economic unit and announced they would no longer pay reparations to the Soviet Union. The burden would have to be borne by the Soviet occupation zone alone, which was smaller and less industrialized, and therefore less able to offer compensation.

In 1949, the informal division of Germany was formalized with the proclamation by the Western powers of a separate West German state, the FRG. The new state would be based on a constitution written by Washington and imposed on West Germans, without their ratification. (The GDR’s constitution, by contrast, was ratified by East Germans.) In 1954, West Germany was integrated into a new anti-Soviet military alliance, NATO, which, in its objectives, aped the earlier anti-Comintern pact of the Axis powers. The goal of the anti-Comintern pact was to oppose the Soviet Union and world communism. NATO, with a militarized West Germany, would take over from where the Axis left off.

The GDR was founded in 1949, only after the Western powers created the FRG. The Soviets had no interest in transforming the Soviet occupation zone into a separate state and complained bitterly about the Western powers’ division of Germany. Moscow wanted Germany to remain unified, but demilitarized and neutral and committed to paying war reparations to help the USSR get back on its feet. As late as 1954, the Soviets offered to dissolve the GDR in favour of free elections under international supervision, leading to the creation of a unified, unaligned, Germany. This, however, clashed with the Western powers’ plan of evading Germany’s responsibility for paying war reparations and of integrating West Germany into the new anti-Soviet, anti-communist military alliance. The proposal was, accordingly, rejected. George Kennan, the architect of the US policy of ‘containing’ (read undermining) the Soviet Union, remarked: “The trend of our thinking means that we do not want to see Germany reunified at this time, and that there are no conditions on which we would really find such a solution satisfactory.” [6]

This placed the anti-fascist working class leadership of the GDR in a difficult position. The GDR comprised only one-third of German territory and had a population of 17 million. By comparison, the FRG comprised 63 million people and made up two-thirds of German territory. [7] Less industrialized than the West, the new GDR started out poorer than its new capitalist rival. Per capita income was about 27 percent lower than in the West. [8] Much of the militant section of the working class, which would have ardently supported a socialist state, had been liquidated by the Nazis. The burden of paying war reparations to the Soviets now had to be borne solely by the GDR. And West Germany ceaselessly harassed and sabotaged its neighbor, refusing to recognize it as a sovereign state, regarding it instead as its own territory temporarily under Soviet occupation. [9] Repeatedly, West Germany proclaimed that its official policy was the annexation of its neighbor to the east.

The GDR’s leaders faced still other challenges. Compared to the West, East Germany suffered greater losses in the war. [10] The US Army stripped the East of its scientists, technicians and technical know-how, kidnapping “thousands of managers, engineers, and all sorts of experts, as well as the best scientists – the brains of Germany’s East – from their factories, universities, and homes in Saxony and Thuringia in order to put them to work to the advantage of the Americans in the Western zone – or simply to have them waste away there.” [11]

As Pauwels explains,

“During the last weeks of the hostilities the Americans themselves had occupied a considerable part of the Soviet zone, namely Thuringia and much of Saxony. When they pulled out at the end of June, 1945, they brought back to the West more than 10,000 railway cars full of the newest and best equipment, patents, blueprints, and so on from the firm Carl Zeiss in Jena and the local plants of other top enterprises such as Siemens, Telefunken, BMW, Krupp, Junkers, and IG-Farben. This East German war booty included plunder from the Nazi V-2 factory in Nordhausen: not only the rockets, but also technical documents with an estimated value of 400 to 500 million dollars, as well as approximately 1,200 captured German experts in rocket technology, one of whom being the notorious Wernher von Braun.” [12]

The Allies agreed at Yalta that a post-war Germany would pay the Soviet Union $10 billion in compensation for the damages inflicted on the USSR during the war. This was a paltry sum compared to the more realistic estimate of $128 billion arrived at after the war. And yet the Soviets were short changed on even this meagre sum. The USSR received no more than $5.1 billion from the two German states, most of it from the GDR. The Soviets took $4.5 billion out of East Germany, carting away whole factories and railways, while the larger and richer FRG paid a miserable $600 million. The effect was the virtual deindustrialization of the East. [13] In the end, the GDR would compensate both the United States (which suffered virtually no damage in World War II) through the loss of its scientists, technicians, blue-prints, patents and so on, and the Soviet Union (which suffered immense losses and deserved to be compensated), through the loss of its factories and railways. Moreover, the United States offered substantial aid to West Germany to help it rebuild, while the poorer Soviet Union, which had been devastated by the German invasion, lacked the resources to invest in the GDR. [14] The West was rebuilt; the East stripped bare.

The GDR’s democratic achievements

Despite the many burdens it faced, the GDR managed to build a standard of living higher than that of the USSR “and that of millions of inhabitants of the American ghettoes, of countless poor white Americans, and of the population of most Third World countries that have been integrated willy-nilly with the international capitalist world system.” [15]

Over 90 percent of the GDR’s productive assets were owned by the country’s citizens collectively, while in West Germany productive assets remained privately owned, concentrated in a few hands. [16] Because the GDR’s economy was almost entirely publicly owned and the leadership was socialist, the economic surplus that people produced on the job went into a social fund to make the lives of everyone better rather than into the pockets of shareholders, bondholders, landowners and bankers. [17] Out of the social fund came subsidies for food, clothing, rent, public transportation, as well as cultural, social and recreational activities. Wages weren’t as high as in the West, but a growing number of essential goods and services were free or virtually free. Rents, for example, were very low. As a consequence, there were no evictions and there was no homelessness. Education was free through university, and university students received stipends to cover living expenses. Healthcare was also free. Childcare was highly subsidized.

Differences in income levels were narrow, with higher wages paid to those working in particularly strenuous or dangerous occupations. Full gender equality was mandated by law and men and women were paid equally for the same work, long before gender equality was taken up as an issue in the West. What’s more, everyone had a right to a job. There was no unemployment in the GDR.

Rather than supporting systems of oppression and exploitation, as the advanced capitalist countries did in Africa, Latin America and Asia, the GDR assisted the people of the global South in their struggles against colonialism. Doctors were dispatched to Vietnam, Mozambique and Angola, and students from many Third World countries were trained and educated in the GDR at the GDR’s expense.

Even the Wall Street Journal recognized the GDR’s achievements. In February, 1989, just months before the opening of the Berlin Wall, the US ruling class’s principal daily newspaper announced that the GDR “has no debt problem. The 17 million East Germans earn 30 percent more than their next richest partners, the Czechoslovaks, and not much less than the English. East Germans build 32-bit mini-computers and a socialist ‘Walkman’ and the only queue in East Berlin forms at the opera.” [18]

The downside was that compared to West Germany, wages were lower, hours of work were longer, and there were fewer consumer goods. Also, consumer goods tended to be inferior compared to those available in West Germany. And there were travel restrictions. Skilled workers were prevented from travelling to the West. But at the same time, vacations were subsidized, and East Germans could travel throughout the socialist bloc.

Greater efficiencies

West Germany’s comparative wealth offered many advantages in its ideological battle with socialism. For one, the wealth differential could be attributed deceptively to the merits of capitalism versus socialism. East Germany was poorer, it was said, not because it unfairly bore the brunt of indemnifying the Soviets for their war losses, and not because it started on a lower rung, but because public ownership and central planning were inherently inefficient. The truth of the matter, however, was that East German socialism was more efficient than West German capitalism, producing faster growth rates, and was more responsive to the basic needs of its population. “East Germany’s national income grew in real terms about two percent faster annually that the West German economy between 1961 and 1989.” [19]

The GDR was also less repressive politically. Following in the footsteps of Hitler, West Germany banned the Communist Party in the 1950s, and close tabs were kept by West Germany’s own ‘secret’ police on anyone openly expressing Marxist-Leninist views. Marxist-Leninists were barred from working in the public service and frequently lost private sector jobs owing to their political views. In the GDR, by contrast, those who expressed views at odds with the dominant Marxist-Leninist ideology did not lose their jobs, and were not cut off from the state’s generous social supports, though they too were monitored by the GDR’s ‘secret’ police. The penalty for dissenting from the dominant political ideology in the West (loss of income) was more severe than in the East. [20]

The claim that the GDR’s socialism was less efficient than West Germany’s capitalism was predicated on the disparity in wealth between the two countries, but the roots of the disparity were external to the two countries’ respective systems of ownership, and the disparity existed prior to 1949 (at which point GDP per capita was about 43 percent higher in the West) and continued to exist after 1989 (when unemployment – once virtually eliminated — soared and remains today double what it is in the former West Germany.) Over the four decades of its existence, East German socialism attenuated the disparity, bringing the GDR closer to West Germany’s GDP per capita. Significantly, “real economic growth in all of Eastern Europe under communism was estimated to be higher than in Western Europe under capitalism (as well as higher than that in the USA) even in communism’s final decade (the 1980s).” After the opening of the Berlin Wall, with capitalism restored, “real economic output fell by over 30 percent in Eastern Europe as a whole in the 1990s.” [21]

But the GDR’s faster growth rates from 1961 to 1989 tell only part of the story. It’s possible for GDP to grow rapidly, with few of the benefits reaching the bulk of the population. The United States spends more on healthcare as a percentage of its GDP than all other countries, but US life expectancy and infant mortality results are worse than in many other countries which spend less (but have more efficient public health insurance or socialized systems.) This is due to the reality that healthcare is unequally distributed in the United States, with the wealthy in a position to buy the best healthcare in the world while tens of millions of low-income US citizens can afford no or only inadequate healthcare. By contrast, in most advanced capitalist countries everyone has access to basic (though typically not comprehensive) healthcare. In socialist Cuba, comprehensive healthcare is free to all. What’s important, then, is not only how much wealth (or healthcare) a society creates, but also how a society’s wealth (or healthcare) is distributed. Wealth was far more evenly distributed in socialist countries than it was in capitalist countries. The mean Gini coefficient – a measure of income equality which runs from 0 (perfect equality) to 1 (perfect inequality) – was 0.24 for socialist countries in 1970 compared to 0.48 for capitalist countries. [22]

Socialist countries also fared better at meeting their citizens’ basic needs. Compared to all capitalist countries, socialist countries had higher life expectancies, lower levels of infant mortality, and higher levels of literacy. However, the comparison of all socialist countries with all capitalist countries is unfair, because the group of capitalist countries comprises many more countries unable to effectively meet the basic needs of their populations owing to their low level of economic development. While capitalism is often associated with the world’s richest countries, the world’s poorest countries are also capitalist. Desperately poor Haiti, for example, is a capitalist country, while neighboring Cuba, richer and vastly more responsive to the needs of its citizens, is socialist. We would expect socialist countries to have done a better job at meeting the basic needs of their citizens, because they were richer, on average, than all capitalist countries together. But the conclusion still stands if socialist countries are compared with capitalist countries at the same level of economic development; that is, socialist countries did a better job of meeting their citizens’ basic needs compared to capitalist countries in the same income range. Even when comparing socialist countries to the richest capitalist countries, the socialist countries fared well, meeting their citizens’ basic needs as well as advanced capitalist countries met the needs of their citizens, despite the socialist countries’ lower level of economic development and fewer resources. [23] In terms of meeting basic needs, then, socialism was more efficient: it did more with less.

Why were socialist countries, like the GDR, more efficient? First, socialist societies were committed to improving the living standards of the mass of people as their first aim (whereas capitalist countries are organized around profit-maximization as their principle goal – a goal linked to a minority that owns capital and land and derives its income from profits, rent and interest, that is, the exploitation of other people’s labor, rather than wages.) Secondly, the economic surplus the citizens of socialist countries produced was channelled into making life better for everyone (whereas in capitalist countries the economic surplus goes straight to shareholders, bondholders, landowners and bankers.) This made socialism more democratic than capitalism in three ways:

• It was more equal. (Capitalism, by contrast, produces inequality.)

• It worked toward improving as much as possible the lot of the classes which have no other means of existence but the labor of their hands and which comprise the vast majority of people. (Capitalist societies, on the other hand, defend and promote the interests of the minority that owns capital.)

• It guaranteed economic and social rights. (By comparison, capitalist societies emphasize political and civil liberties, i.e., protections against the majority using its greater numbers to encroach upon the privileges of the minority that owns and controls the economy.)

As will be discussed below, even when it came to political (as distinct from social and economic) democracy, the differences between East and West Germany were more illusory than real.

Stanching the outward migration of skilled workers

Despite the many advantages the GDR offered, it remained less affluent throughout its four decades compared to its capitalist neighbor to the west. For many “the lure of higher salaries and business opportunities in the West remained strong.” [24] As a result, in its first decade, East Germany’s population shrunk by 10 percent. [25] And while higher wages proved to be an irresistible temptation to East Germans who stressed personal aggrandizement over egalitarian values and social security, the FRG – keen to weaken the GDR – did much to sweeten the pot, offering economic inducements to skilled East Germans to move west. Working-age, but not retired, East Germans were offered interest-free loans, access to scarce apartments, immediate citizenship and compensation for property left behind, to relocate to the West. [26]

By 1961, the East German government decided that defensive measures needed to be taken, otherwise its population would be depleted of people with important skills vital to building a prosperous society. East German citizens would be barred from entering West Germany without special permission, while West Germans would be prevented from freely entering the GDR. The latter restriction was needed to break up black market currency trading, and to inhibit espionage and sabotage carried out by West German agents. [27] Walls, fences, minefields and other barriers were deployed along the length of the East’s border with the West. Many of the obstacles had existed for years, but until 1961, Berlin – partitioned between the West and East – remained free of physical barriers. The Berlin Wall – the GDR leadership’s solution to the problems of population depletion and Western sabotage and espionage — went up on August 13, 1961. [28]

From 1961 to 1989, 756 East German escapees, an average of 30 per year, were either shot, drown, blown apart by mines or committed suicide after being captured. By comparison, hundreds of Mexicans die every year trying to escape poor Mexico into the far wealthier United States. [29] Approximately 50,000 East Germans were captured trying to cross the border into West Germany from 1961 to 1989. Those who were caught served prison sentences of one year. [30]

Over time, the GDR gradually relaxed its border controls, allowing working-age East Germans to visit the West if there was little risk of their not returning. While in the 1960s, only retirees over the age of 65 were permitted to travel to the West, by the 1980s, East Germans 50 years of age or older were allowed to cross the border. Those with relatives in the FRG were also allowed to visit. By 1987, close to 1.3 million working-age East Germans were permitted to travel to West Germany. Virtually all of them – over 99 percent – returned. [31]

However, not all East Germans were granted the right to cross the border. In 1987, 300,000 requests were turned down. East Germans only received permission after being cleared by the GDR’s state security service, the Stasi. One of the effects of loosening the border restrictions was to swell the Stasi’s ranks, in order to handle the increase in applications for visits to the West. [32]

Pauwels reminds us that,

“A hypothetical capitalist East Germany would likewise have also had to build a wall in order to prevent its population from seeking salvation in another, more prosperous Germany. Incidentally, people have fled and continue to flee, to richer countries also from poor capitalist countries. However, the numerous black refugees from extremely poor Haiti, for example, have never enjoyed the same kind of sympathy in the United States and elsewhere in the world that was bestowed so generously on refugees from the GDR during the Cold War…And should the Mexican government decide to build a ‘Berlin Wall’ along the Rio Grande in order to prevent their people from escaping to El Norte, Washington would certainly not condemn such an initiative the way it used to condemn the infamous East Berlin construction project.” [33]

GDR sets standards for working class in FRG…and abroad

Despite its comparative poverty, the GDR furnished its citizens with generous pensions, free healthcare and education, inexpensive vacations, virtually free childcare and public transportation, and paid maternity leave, as fundamental rights. Even so, East Germany’s standard of living continued to lag behind that of the upper sections of the working class in the West. The comparative paucity and lower quality of consumer goods, and lower wages, were the product of a multitude of factors that conspired against the East German economy: its lower starting point; the need to invest in heavy industry at the expense of light industry; blockade and sanctions imposed by the West; the furnishing of aid to national liberation movements in the global South (which benefited the South more than it did the GDR. By comparison, aid flows from Western countries were designed to profit Western corporations, banks and investors.) What East Germany lacked in consumer goods and wages, it made up for in economic security. The regular economic crises of capitalist economies, with their rampant underemployment and joblessness, escalating poverty and growing homelessness, were absent in the GDR.

The greater security of life for East Germans presented a challenge to the advanced capitalist countries. Intent on demonstrating that capitalism was superior to socialism, governments and businesses in the West were forced to meet the standards set by the socialist countries to secure the hearts and minds of their own working class. Generous social insurance, provisions against lay-offs and representation on industrial councils were conceded to West German workers. [34] But these were revocable concessions, not the inevitable rewards of capitalism.

East Germany’s robust social wage acted in much the same way strong unions do in forcing non-unionized plants to provide wages and benefits to match union standards. [35] In the 1970s, Canada’s unionized Stelco steel mill at Hamilton, Ontario set the standard for the neighboring non-unionized Dofasco plant. What the Stelco workers won through collective bargaining, the non-unionized Dofasco workers received as a sop to keep the union out. But once the union goes, the motivation to pay union wages and provide union benefits disappears. Likewise, with the demise of East Germany and the socialist bloc, the need to provide a robust social safety net in the advanced capitalist countries to secure the loyalty of the working class no longer existed. Hence, the GDR not only furnished its own citizens with economic security, but indirectly forced the advanced capitalist countries to make concessions to their own workers. The demise of the GDR therefore not only hurt Ossis (East Germans), depriving them of economic security, but also hurt the working populations of the advanced capitalist countries, whose social programs were the spill-over product of capitalism’s ideological battle with socialism. It is no accident that the claw back of reforms and concessions granted by capitalist ruling classes during the Cold War has accelerated since the opening of the Berlin Wall.

The collapse of the GDR and the socialist bloc has proved injurious to the interests of Western working populations in another way, as well. From the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 to the opening of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the territory available to capitalist exploitation steadily diminished. This limited the degree of wage competition within the capitalist global labor force to a degree that wouldn’t have been true had the forces of socialism and national liberation not steadily advanced through the twentieth century. The counter-revolution in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, and China’s opening to foreign investment, ushered in a rapid expansion worldwide in the number of people vying for jobs. North American and Western European workers didn’t compete for jobs with workers in Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Russia in 1970. They do today. The outcome of the rapid expansion of the pool of wage-labor worldwide for workers in the advanced capitalist countries has been a reduction in real wages and explosive growth in the number of permanent lay-offs as competition for jobs escalates. The demise of socialism in Eastern Europe (and China’s taking the capitalist road) has had very real – and unfavourable – consequences for working people in the West.

Going backward

Since the opening of the Berlin Wall and the annexation of the GDR by the FRG in 1990, the former East Germany has been transformed from a rapidly industrializing country where everyone was guaranteed a job and access to a growing array of free and nearly free goods and services, to a de-industrialized backwater teeming with the unemployed where the population is being hollowed out by migration to the wealthier West. “The easterners,” a New York Times article remarked in 2005, “are notoriously unhappy.” Why? “Because life is less secure than it used to be under Communism.” [36]

During the Cold War East Germans who risked their lives to breach the Berlin War were depicted as refugees from political repression. But their escape into the wealthier West had little to do with flight from political repression and much to do with being attracted to a higher standard of living. Today Ossis stream out of the East, just as they did before the Berlin Wall sprang up in 1961. More than one million people have migrated from the former East Germany to the West since 1989. But these days, economic migrants aren’t swapping modestly-paid jobs, longer hours and fewer and poorer consumer goods in the East for higher paying jobs, shorter hours and more and better consumer goods in the West. They’re leaving because they can’t find work. The real unemployment rate, taking into account workers forced into early retirement or into the holding pattern of job re-training schemes, reaches as high as 50 percent in some parts of the former East Germany. [37] And the official unemployment rate is twice as high in the East as it is in the West. Erich Quaschnuk, a retired railroad worker, acknowledges that “the joy back then when the Berlin Wall fell was real,” but quickly adds, “the promise of blooming landscapes never appeared.” [38]

Twenty years after the opening of the Berlin Wall, one-half of people living in the former East Germany say there was more good than bad about the GDR, and that life was happier and better. Some Ossis go so far as to say they “were driven out of paradise when the Wall came down” while others thank God they were able to live in the GDR. Still others describe the unified Germany as a “slave state” and a “dictatorship of capital,” and reject Germany for “being too capitalist or dictatorial, and certainly not democratic.” [39]

Much as the GDR was faulted for being less democratic politically than the FRG, the FRG’s claim to being more democratic politically is shaky at best.

“East Germany…permitted voters to cast secret ballots and always had more than one candidate for each government position. Although election results typically resulted in over 99 percent of all votes being for candidates of parties that did not favour revolutionary changes in the East German system (just as West German election results generally resulted in over 99 percent of the people voting for non-revolutionary West German capitalist parties), it was always possible to change the East German system from within the established political parties (including the communist party), as those parties were open to all and encouraged participation in the political process. The ability to change the East German system from within is best illustrated by the East German leader who opened up the Berlin Wall and initiated many political reforms in less than two months in power.” [40]

West Germany outlawed many anti-capitalist political parties and organizations, including, in the 1950s, the popular Communist Party, as Hitler did in the 1930s. (On the other side of the Berlin Wall, no party that aimed to reverse socialism or withdraw from the Warsaw Pact was allowed.) The West German parties tended to be pro-capitalist, and those that weren’t didn’t have access to the resources the wealthy patrons of the mainstream political parties could provide to run the high-profile marketing campaigns that were needed to command significant support in elections. What’s more, West Germans were dissuaded from voting for anti-establishment parties, for fear the victory of a party with a socialist platform would be met by capital strike or flight, and therefore the loss of their jobs. The overwhelming support for pro-capitalist parties, then, rested on two foundations: The pro-capitalist parties uniquely commanded the resources to build messages with mass appeal and which could be broadcast with sufficient volume to reach a mass audience, and the threat of capital strike and capital flight disciplined working class voters to support pro-business parties.

Conclusion

No one would have built a Berlin Wall if they didn’t have to. But in 1961, with the GDR being drained of its working population by a West Germany that had skipped out on its obligations to indemnify the Soviet Union for the losses the Nazis had inflicted upon it in World War II, there were few options, apart from surrender. The Berlin Wall was, without question, regrettable, but it was at the same time a necessary defensive measure. If the anti-fascist, working class leadership of the GDR was to have any hope of building a mass society that was responsive to the basic needs of the working class and which channelled its economic surplus into improving the living conditions and economic security of all, drastic measures would have to be taken; otherwise, the experiment in German democracy — that of building a state that operated on behalf of the mass of people, rather than a minority of shareholders, bondholders, landowners and bankers — would have to be abandoned. And yet, by the history of drastic measures, this was hardly drastic. Wars weren’t waged, populations weren’t expelled, mass executions weren’t carried out. Instead, people of working-age were prevented from resettling in the West.

The abridgment of mobility rights was hardly unique to revolutionary situations. While the needs of Cold War propaganda pressed Washington to howl indignantly over the GDR’s measures to stanch the flow of its working-age population to the West, the restriction of mobility rights had not been unknown in the United States’ own revolution, where the ‘freedoms’ of dissidents and people of uncertain loyalty had been freely revoked. “During the American Revolution…those who wished to cross into British territory had to obtain a pass from the various State governments or military commanders. Generally, a pass was granted only to individuals of known and acceptable ‘character and views’ and after their promise neither to inform or otherwise to act to the prejudice of the United States. Passes, even for those whose loyalty was guaranteed, were generally difficult to acquire.” [41]

Was the GDR worth defending? Is its demise to be regretted? Unquestionably. The GDR was a mass society that channelled the surplus of the labor of all into the betterment of the conditions of all, rather than into the pockets of the few. It offered its citizens an expanding array of free and virtually free goods and services, was more equal than capitalist countries, and met its citizens’ basic needs better than did capitalist countries at the same level of economic development. Indeed, it met basic needs as well as richer countries did, with fewer resources, in the same way Cuba today meets the basic healthcare needs of all its citizens better than the vastly wealthier United States meets (or rather fails to meet) those of tens of millions of its own citizens. And while the GDR was poorer than West Germany and many other advanced capitalist countries, its comparative poverty was not the consequence of the country’s public ownership and central planning, but of a lower starting point and the burden of having to help the Soviet Union rebuild after the massive devastation Germany inflicted upon it in World War II. Far from being inefficient, public ownership and central planning turned the eastern part of Germany into a rapidly industrializing country which grew faster economically than its West German neighbor and shared the benefits of its growth more evenly. In the East, the economy existed to serve the people. In the West, the people existed to serve the minority that owned and controlled the economy. Limiting mobility rights, just as they have been limited in other revolutions, was a small price to pay to build, not what anyone would be so naïve as to call a workers’ paradise, but what can be called a mass, or truly democratic, society, one which was responsiveness to the basic needs of the mass of people as its principal aim.

SOURCES

1. Austin Murphy, The Triumph of Evil: The Reality of the USA’s Cold War Victory, European Press Academic Publishing, 2000.
2. Henry Heller, The Cold War and the New Imperialism: A Global History, 1945-2005, Monthly Review Press, New York, 2006.
3. Jacques R. Pauwels, The Myth of the Good War: America in the Second World War, James Lorimer & Company Ltd., Toronto, 2002; R. Palme Dutt, The Internationale, Lawrence & Wishart Ltd., London, 1964.
4. Melvyn Leffler, “New perspectives on the Cold War: A conversation with Melvyn Leffler,” November, 1998. http://www.neh.gov/news/humanities/1998-11/leffler.html)
5. Heller.
6. John Wight, “From WWII to the US empire,” The Morning Star (UK), October 11, 2009.
7. John Green, “Looking back at life in the GDR,” The Morning Star (UK), October 7, 2009.
8. Shirley Ceresto, “Socialism, capitalism, and inequality,” The Insurgent Sociologist, Vol. XI, No. 2, Spring, 1982.
9. Dutt; William Blum, Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, Common Courage Press, Maine, 1995.
10. Pauwels.
11. Ibid.
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid.
14. Murphy.
15. Pauwels.
16. Green.
17. Ibid.
18. The Wall Street Journal, February 22, 1989.
19. Murphy.
20. Ibid.
21. Ibid.
22. Ceresto.
23. Ibid.
24. Green.
25. Murphy.
26. Ibid.
27. Ibid.
28. Ibid.
29. Ibid.
30. Ibid.
31. Ibid.
32. Ibid.
33. Pauwels.
34. Fred Goldstein, Low-Wage Capitalism, World View Forum, New York, 2008.
35. Ibid.
36. The New York Times, December 6, 2005.
37. The Guardian (UK), November 15, 2006.
38. “Disappointed Eastern Germans turn right,” The Los Angeles Times, May 4, 2005.
39. Julia Bonstein, “Majority of Eastern Germans felt life better under communism,” Der Spiegel, July 3, 2009.
40. Murphy.
41. Albert Szymanski, Human Rights in the Soviet Union, Zed Book Ltd., London, 1984

Source

At Least 30 Killed as South African Police Open Fire on Thousands of Striking Miners

A policeman gestures in front of some of the dead miners after they were shot outside a South African mine in Rustenburg, 100 km (62 miles) northwest of Johannesburg, August 16, 2012. (Reuters/Siphiwe Sibeko)

South African police opened fire at striking miners at the Marikana platinum mine, killing at least 30 protesters. The incident became the bloodiest industrial dispute in South Africa in the 20 years since the end of the country’s Apartheid regime.

­South African Minister of Police Nathi Mthethwa confirmed the death toll: “A lot of people were injured and the number keeps on going up.”

The killings occurred after police, attempting to lay down barricades of barbed wire, were outflanked by a crowd of 3,000 demonstrators armed with machetes and spears.

Nine people were killed prior to Thursday’s clashes in a wave of protest in the mining town, located 100 km northwest of Johannesburg. The platinum mine, owned by Lonmin PLC, has been the focal point of strikes and violence since last Friday stemming from wage disputes.

Fighting intensified over the weekend when two police officers were killed. Striking workers and local security guards also became embroiled in the violence.

Some 3,000 police massed in the area on Wednesday wearing riot gear and supported by helicopters. Demonstrators were reinforced on Thursday by a group of women pledging to stand by their husbands in their demand for increased wages.

Lonmin announced that the disruption means the company is unlikely to meet its 2012 production targets. Shares in the company tumbled 6 percent following Thursday’s violence, bringing total losses since the outset of the strike to 13 percent.

The miners are reportedly demanding a raise in wages to over $1,000 a month.

Reuters/Siphiwe Sibeko

Reuters/Siphiwe Sibeko

A miner runs as they were shot at by the police outside a South African mine in Rustenburg, 100 km (62 miles) northwest of Johannesburg, August 16, 2012. (Reuters/Siphiwe Sibeko)

Policemen fire at striking miners outside a South African mine in Rustenburg, 100 km (62 miles) northwest of Johannesburg, August 16, 2012. (Reuters/Siphiwe Sibeko)

AFP Photo/Str

Source

Review of “Animal Farm” (1954 & 1999 Films)

Introduction

Hailed by capitalist literary critics, Trotskyites and anarchists as a masterpiece, the mediocre book Animal Farm has served a very important role in distorting the history of socialism in the Soviet Union. Modern editions of the book hail author George Orwell’s selfless journalistic integrity in producing the work, which is said to be a totally accurate portrayal of life under socialism.

But a close examination tells differently. Especially important in understanding the true reason Animal Farm is still crammed down the throats of the public are the two film versions of Animal Farm.

“The CIA obtained the film rights to “Animal Farm” from Orwell’s widow, Sonia, after his death and covertly funded the production as anti-Communist propaganda. Some sources assert that the ending of the story was altered by the CIA (in the book, the pigs and humans join forces) to press home their message[.]” [1].

The CIA agent Howard Hunt, who bought the film rights, also helped set up production of the 1984 movie, which also changed the ending of the original book to be more anti-communist.

“The head of the CIA operation to obtain the film rights was none other than E. Howard Hunt, later famous as Nixon’s Watergate burglar. As part of the deal, Sonia Orwell requested that she get to meet her idol, Clark Gable; this was arranged. A large portion of the budget ($300,000 out of a cost of over $500,000) was supplied by the United States’ Central Intelligence Agency, Office of Policy Coordination, through one of its shell corporations, Touchstone Inc” [2].

Animal Farm has become a classic of capitalist propaganda. First published during World War II, it conveniently packages decades’ worth of lies about socialism in the U.S.S.R., and more specifically the leadership of Joseph Stalin, into an easy-to-understand book small enough to fit in your pocket. Animal Farm is supposed to be a classic satire and critique of socialism; however, George Orwell never went to the U.S.S.R., and received all the information he knew from anti-communists. The book is not journalism at all, and should not be considered the be-all end-all of learning about Soviet socialism.

Plot Summery

The original book and the two films have roughly the same basic plot. Subtitled “a political fable,” Animal Farm tells the tale of the poor and ill-run Manor Farm, managed by the drunken farmer Jones, who abuses the animals. The neglected creatures are called to a meeting by a wise old pig named Old Major, who tells them that if they will rise up together, they can overthrow Jones and create a new world where all animals will be free and equal. Led by a clever pig named Snowball, the beasts run Jones off the farm and take all his property for themselves, proudly renaming the plot Animal Farm.

Conditions improve at first, but the pigs (smartest of the animals) begin to keep certain luxuries, like apples, for themselves. The greedy and mediocre pig Napoleon uses a gang of trained dogs he has brainwashed to run Snowball off the farm and institute a new, terrifying society not at all like the one envisaged by Old Major. Life for the pigs gets better and better, but the other animals are murdered and starved and battered into an oppression worse and more horrifying than existed when Jones ran the farm.

Orwell made no attempt at subtlety – even children can see without much difficulty that Animal Farm is a crude metaphor for the Soviet Union – Napoleon is Stalin, and Snowball is Stalin’s rival Leon Trotsky, who was justly exiled from the U.S.S.R. in the mid 1920s.

Review of Both Films

The first of the two films based on the book, released in 1954 and made possible by funding from the notorious American Central Intelligence Agency, is a dark and gloomy cartoon that, true to the book, paints a disgusting picture of Animal Farm and the struggle between the white pig Snowball and the black and conniving Napoleon.

The second film, released in 1999 and produced by Hallmark, is a live action film boasting a cast of stars including Patrick Stewart, Seinfeld’s Julia-Louis Dreyfus and Fraiser’s Kelsey Grammer. Both of these films have been made easily available to anyone with a computer, with the first film streaming for free on Hulu and the second on services like Netflix and YouTube.

What makes these films important is the way they deviate from Orwell’s book, especially when it comes to the endings. In his original work, Orwell closes the novel with a scene in which the animals realize that they are no longer able to tell their bloated pig leaders from the human farmers who oppressed them. It is a closing of cynical misery, driving home Orwell’s anti-revolutionary idea that any attempt by the workers to create a better world for themselves would only end in the same kind of tyranny they overthrew.

But both of the films go a step further. The 1954 animated ends quite differently than the book. The mistreated animals from many farms join together and, instead of attacking their human owners, march defiantly to Animal Farm and kill Napoleon. We must bear in mind who it was that funded this change – the CIA. The message is simple, and directed at the Soviet peoples – “Not only is your new government atrocious, you can and must overthrow it now!” The CIA, of course, was ever working for this to happen, but failed miserably during the Soviet Union’s time as a socialist country.

The 1999 live action version was made decades after the Stalin era, and does not bother leaving the plot and end open to interpretation. In the ending sequence, in a clumsy attempt to be poetic, a heavy rain “washes away” Napoleon’s government, the animals welcome a loving new human family to the farm to boss them about, command them, consume them and exploit them. The film closes with a shot of the sickeningly stereotypical family driving up to what was once Animal Farm, their smiles suggesting that the problem all along was just that Jones was a bad owner. All the animals really needed was to be owned and exploited by a family more like the Cleavers.

In these films, the biased and deceitful nature of Animal Farm is laid bare. Going a step further than the slanders of Orwell’s book, they openly call for violent counterrevolution in the Soviet Union.

Conclusion

The films themselves – taken as art – are as bad as their message. It is a real chore to sit through the creepy “Dr. Dolittle” talking animals of the 1999 Hallmark film or the poorly animated and clumsily sinister tone of the 1954 release. The dialogue is absolutely painful, and the voice performances, even Patrick Stewart as Napoleon, are phoned-in and uninspired.

The artistic elements are secondary, both for us and for the people who made them. What is important to understand about films like Animal Farm is why they are made – for propaganda. Both films, as well as the original book, have no appeal as art whatsoever other than their obvious metaphor for the Soviet Union. Without that, the films are hollow.

The pseudo-history of the U.S.S.R. presented in Animal Farm is junk, but we are pushed to accept it as fact. Many people do, since Animal Farm is a fictional work, there is no need for citations and it can be difficult for the defenders of socialism to argue against its more specific, ludicrous claims because they are hidden within a fairy tale. Worst yet, many people accept the attitude of Animal Farm, believing like the film’s donkey Benjamin that no matter what they do or how hard they fight, things will only end up worse than before.

The two Animal Farm films are worth seeing only as a way to get to know what you’re up against and as a great glimpse into how the capitalist media uses popular culture to promote its ideological objectives. But as films in their own right, they are contrived and soulless. Anyone looking for a good film to relax with for an hour or so should look elsewhere.

Sources

(1) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047834/trivia

(2) http://www.commondreams.org/headlines/031800-02.htm

Source

The MPD accuses the government of persecuting Mery Zamora

Luis Villacis, national director of the Popular Democratic Movement (MPD), said the political activist Mery Zamora is a victim of persecution by the government.

Through a press release, Villacis argued that Zamora is haunted by “the crime of thinking differently,” adding that “political harassment” also comes from the president, Rafael Correa.

On the other hand, reported that Judge Villacis fifth time criminal Guarantees of Guayas, Jose Tamayo, has been issued for trial for sabotage against Mery Zamora as part of the investigations by the September 30, 2010.

“This process is full of legal services, and in the preliminary investigation, ruled and dismiss this case and again starts with political persecution without respecting due process and the right to defend the leader emepedista” said the director.

The leader added that part of MPD exhausted all legal bodies in the country to “expose the processes of criminalization against the militants,” he concluded.

Source

Are Guns the Problem?

Once again, in the wake of a shooting spree, bourgeois media makes the issue about gun control rather than the social pressures and problems that make people go over the edge and go on a rampage. Here’s an article from the Red Phoenix helping to wade through the murk of a debate that ultimately (and purposefully) misses the point.

— Espresso Stalinist

Intro: Tragedy, Violence and Bourgeois Discourse

Your average American is no stranger to murder. Periodically, we hear of another senseless crime, another mass murder, another tragedy taking innocent life. Like clockwork, whenever a high-profile shooting takes place in America, two sides of a ceaseless debate seize upon the broken pieces of the aftermath, opportunistically using these pieces in an argument related to legislative policy concerning firearms. On the one hand, you have a side advocating the restriction and prohibition of firearms, on the tightening of laws which confine the ownership and use of firearms, the capacity of their magazines, the level of government scrutiny in their purchase, sale and ownership. On the other hand, you have a group that resists these measures, seeing as the solution the total liberalization of firearms, arguing that the problems associated with firearms are the moral and cultural backwardness of those who use them for murder.

Both sides make themselves red in the face with emotional appeals, with one side envisioning the other as the face of pure evil, of being the side that puts handguns in the hands of children, or the side that burns the constitution and its protection of firearm ownership.

While this debate crops up, and while pop-psychology and cultural scapegoats are used to paint shooters as coming from another planet, the solution-oriented among us aren’t given much to go on as we endeavor to understand and change the phenomena of tragic violence. Sure guns are involved, but why are they picked up in anger for the purpose of homicide? Sure these mass murderers appear unstable, but is there something in the organization of our society that brings them to the breaking point, rather than into a situation where they can be treated? The gun debate will not, and cannot, begin to answer these questions. The reason for this is that the gun debate is a distraction, which purposefully ignores systematic understandings of our society for a convenient yet petty squabble. It is a squabble that ultimately serves power by ignoring the systematic violence and injustice inherent in capitalism.

The Gun Debate’s Two Utopias

Let’s examine the two positions of our “gun debaters” and their solutions for violence. The “anti-gun” crowd would endeavor to get rid of the means which people use to shoot one another by increasing the difficulty for shooters to procure firearms utilizing legal routes. By making it harder to get one’s hands on a gun, the argument may go, one makes it difficult to successfully commit a murder spree, and if the police and military are the only people able to have and use firearms, the would-be murderer may be easier to stop. If “guns are the problem,” then the society of the anti-gun utopians would be one where no civilian has had the opportunity to even touch a gun, let alone own one and use one, and thus be a safer society for the lack of the means to commit murder using firearms. This society, “free of gun violence,” is unlikely. The reason for this is simple: creating legal barriers will not prevent the illegal ownership of firearms. Even if firearms are outlawed, the main users of firearms will still be able to procure them, still find opportunity to use them and still have at their disposal a massive industry which exists to place guns in their hands.

The other side, when we examine the position of gun lobbies like the NRA, has it that guns are not so much a “problem” as they are a “solution.” The argument is that gun violence is the fault of “criminal elements” and that the solution is allowing more “good people” to own and carry firearms to protect themselves from “bad people.” They also argue that any infringement on the right to bare arms, as outlined in the second amendment to the constitution, violates their “freedom,” and as such, is reprehensible. Ignoring the “freedom” argument for a moment, and the implied racism of the “bad people” argument which we will explore more deeply later, let’s consider the “good people” “bad people” analysis and the implications of firearms on this equation. If the “good people” and “bad people” both have equal access to firearms, what necessarily is changed here? In his study on the correlation between gun ownership and gun violence, Gary Kleck found no strong positive correlation between gun ownership and rates of gun violence (meaning no strong trend suggesting that more gun ownership = more gun violence) yet on the same token, there was no evidence of a strong inverse relationship (meaning more gun ownership = less violence). So, despite the implied notion that more guns owned by everyday people will equate more safety for the rest of us by means of deterrence, we’ve no reason to suggest that this will be the case.

Essentially, what these two positions whittle down to is unrealistic “ideal worlds” and emotionalism, ineffective policies for curbing violence and purposeful ignorance of the essence of the problem. The anti-gun crowd will continue to bellow their simplistic analysis of the “gun problem” and the pro-gun position, as put forward by many a reactionary, say the problem is the “criminal element,” which will be solved by a combination of an expansion of our already bloated prison system and allowing those wealthy enough to afford an arsenal of guns to defend themselves from the “criminal element.” None of this solves anything or answers the harder questions. Rather, it regurgitates two ultimately tame and docile positions that are palatable for political discourse in capitalism.

An Argument that Ultimately Avoids the Issue

Let’s apply the logic of the gun debate to the issue of vehicle related death in the United States. In 2010, 32,885 people were killed in car accidents, compared to the 14,748 who were murdered in the same year. What if we had this debate every time a 20 car pileup killed a number of people? Let’s consider our hypothetical belligerents: the “anti car” and “pro car” side. The anti car side might want to raise the driving age to 25, place speed limiters and breathalyzers in every car, have cars guided by rails and rarely driven. The pro car side might find some constitutional argument, may argue that if more people drove cars, less pedestrians would be involved in accidents, and the problem is not cars but irresponsible drivers. Here’s the question that’s ignored, however: why do we have so many cars on the road to collide with one another in the first place?

The answer is several-fold. For one, urban flight and demographic shifts have lead to longer commutes for many workers, necessitating the use of automobiles to get to work. Powerful oil and automotive interests have worked tirelessly to protect their hegemony over transportation by battling efforts at improving public transit, supporting neo-liberal economic practices that prop up these enterprises and drain funding from programs which might offer solutions. Our transportation system, relying on cars as the chief means of getting people to and from work, is incredibly inefficient, pollutes the environment, drastically raises the cost of transportation for individuals through the need for regular vehicle maintenance and is profoundly unsafe, yet persists because of the profitability this system allows for a number of industries who play a key component of our economy. A “pro” “anti” debate in the realm of bourgeois political discussion is never going to result in the serious criticism of our political and economic system, of capitalism’s fault in the social problems that bring about the death and destruction that homicide and car accidents bring about.

The “Usual Suspects” – Scapegoats in Capitalist Discourse

Rather than viewing tragedy as the natural result of systemic problems, bourgeois analysis and debate has prepared a number of scapegoats for us to attack and scrutinize. Outside of firearms, violent video games and violent music culture and movies are blamed as a cause for motivating to action and desensitizing those people who end up shooting others. If it isn’t one of these, it’s the problem of one individual’s psychology, or it’s a problem of a neighborhood, bad parents or bad schools in bad communities. When racial chauvinists want to use tragedy as a pretext for spreading their bile, they’ll say its immigrants, blacks or other groups stereotyped as being “thugs.” The previously mentioned “bad people” are the seen as being culturally, morally and intellectually backward, unwilling (but not unable) to take advantage of “the American dream.” In addition to these, the scapegoats are the sides of the “debates” themselves, whether its “gun-control liberals” attempting to “criminalize self defense” or “gun nuts” trying to “flood our streets with weapons.” The daily controversy as presented within bourgeois media unravels and is engaged with precise choreography, like a well-rehearsed scene in a soap opera.

Each of these scapegoats is taken from an ideological disposition that benefits capitalism. Individualism, racial chauvinism, “politicians” being the problem (as opposed to the class they inevitably serve), “freedoms” being threatened (and a subtle nod to nationalism) – the cards being shuffled in this deck every time a tragedy becomes the topic of debate are as old as the United States itself. Every time this happens, there is a similar result: much talk, some bills shuffled around in the legislature, a protest or two followed by silence in the wake of the next tragedy or issue. A new day dawns on each and every issue, while the true causes remain obscured and the true solutions lie out of reach. This is a function, not a malfunction, of bourgeois democracy. Deeper questions are perceived as the realm of “out of touch” radicals, because the answer to the problems of a system do not lie within the preservation of that system.

The Unquestioned Guns and their Sanctioned Body Count

To illustrate this point, let’s consider some of the boundaries of the “gun issue” as observed by its debaters in the public realm. When Staff Sgt. Robert Bales murdered 17 Afghan civilians in an act of unprovoked, pre-meditated murder in cold blood, the debate didn’t turn to the idea that having the weapon was the problem. Hell, the question of what he and his fellow soldiers were doing in Afghanistan wasn’t taken as seriously as it must, despite a recent poll which suggests that 53% of Americans think we shouldn’t be there, and 68% who see the endeavor going “badly.” Though, the reason that this issue didn’t turn into a gun issue is that it is assumed that, for soldiers and police, gun ownership and use “isn’t the problem,” whether they commit murder or not.

Let’s recall Oscar Grant, who was shot in the back and killed by a police officer while he was cuffed and laying on the ground. The gun isn’t the issue for a cop, even if the cop decides to make an innocent person a murder victim. The United States is a leading manufacturer and exporter of weapons, giving guns to the Libyan rebels which they promptly used to murder blacks in Libya. Is there a gun problem there? No, of course not, since the United States is a “beacon of freedom and democracy” and anyone receiving weapons from them has to be a good guy, whether they are the armed forces of Suharto’s Indonesia, Nicaragua’s Contras, Mobutu Sese Seko’s Zaire, South Africa under Apartheid, Israel (who has used US made white phosphorus to murder civilians of any age). The list goes on.

The gun debate knows certain boundaries because, were it to cross these boundaries, sides in this debate may end up upholding a position that is against the interests of the US government and the ruling class. If we look at the profits of and spending on the U.S. arms industry, making weapons large and small, and how those weapons are spread all over the world and are used in genocide, state repression and general crimes against the world’s people, wouldn’t we have to question the very system that the United States is built on? Wouldn’t we have to question imperialism, colonialism, chauvinism and exploitation? The answer is that we would, and it is for this reason that we can’t ask certain questions within capitalist discourses’ “polite discussion.”

Conclusion: Systems of Violence, Alienation and Oppression are the Problem

In order to understand the problem, and move in the direction of a solution, we need to understand these larger systems which cause the problems, and understand the role they play in protecting the capitalist system and its profits.

Poverty, which is a product of our system and is necessary for the preservation of a reserve army of workers essential to keep wages down, is a major component in violent crime.

Racism is also a force that motivates violence, which we can see from the recent example of Zimmerman’s murder of Trayvon Martin for being black, young and in the wrong neighborhood.

Imperialism requires weapons and munitions of all sizes to expand its hegemony, and the industries themselves have a profit incentive to put weapons in the hands of anyone who can afford to buy them, regardless of their intentions.

The alienation and pain that our capitalist system brings about leads people to act out, whether they do so by harming others, or by using a gun to end their own life, like Dimitris Christoulas, who killed himself in in public while carrying a suicide note detailing the pain that Greece’s austerity measures had brought him. These forces aren’t things you can legislate away, can’t break by having a new suit in the White House, can’t ignore, and most certainly, can’t solve by having more or less guns.

Understanding the origins of a problem are where we must begin. It might not give us a simple or convenient answer, but it will point us in the right direction. Gun violence doesn’t happen in a vacuum, where the only factor bringing about or preventing violence are guns themselves. Our world is not a world of floating independent issues, opinions and actions divorced from everything else. Larger systems, be they economic, political, ideological or cultural, have bearing on what happens in our world. If we pretend that this is not the case, that a utopia can be found by implementing the right reform, or preventing a legislative effort, we blind ourselves to the mechanisms behind everything. When we do the opposite, when we work to understand our world for its component parts, for its class nature, struggles and change, the solutions to problems come into view.

Further Reading

http://www.hawaii.edu/hivandaids/Measures_of_Gun_Ownership_Levels_for_Macro-Level_Crime_and_Violence_Research.pdf

http://theredphoenixapl.org/2011/05/11/poverty-violent-crime/

http://theredphoenixapl.org/2011/05/22/right-wing-terror-on-the-rise/

http://theredphoenixapl.org/2011/05/03/alienation-the-pain-of-all-working-people/

http://theredphoenixapl.org/2011/06/27/the-case-of-oscar-grant/

http://theredphoenixapl.org/2012/04/10/austerity-kills-greeks-declare-financial-murder-at-funeral-of-elderly-man/

http://theredphoenixapl.org/2012/04/03/911-call-trayvon-martin-cried-for-help-before-gunshot/

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PCMLE: Conspiracy and errors

The killing by police of more than a dozen peasants possessed of land belonging to a powerful businessman was the pretext used to initiate a political trial that culminated in the resignation of Fernando Lugo in his role as President of the Republic of Paraguay.

Lugo fell as a result of a conspiracy of imperialism and the right, but also because of its own mistakes and political inconsistency with his offers.

The popular sectors led the former priest for President hopeful that his government will produce real changes in the society, promised to implement land reform and an end to landlordism, spoke to democratize the life of society and meet the needs of the rural poor, among others….. None of this fulfilled, his government was characterized by continued application of neoliberal measures, the violation of human rights was a constant and for this the government applied the so-called Terrorism Act, and again yielded to pressure from the oligarchy, corruption and the impunity remained.

To reach the presidency, Lugo was part of a coalition in which they were right parties and movements, such as the Liberal and collaborators of pass governments. His “partners” in the previous electoral fray now voted for his removal when considering that no longer was useful. For it, they were endorsed to a bourgeois Constitution that Lugo kept intact, which makes clear that the bourgeoisie knows how to prevent and protect resources and “legal.” institutions Lugo served a bourgeois institutions and that fell on him.

Not only their political weakness was observed in only three votes in his favor obtained in the Senate, but also in the little popular mobilization to support him and the timid acceptance of their dismissal. Now he says to ignore such a resolution.

The events in Paraguay leave a great lesson: It is not possible to push a popular political project supported on right-wing forces, and political inconsistency causes the masses give the backs.

Source

PCMLE: Government beneficiary of USAID

Unofficially it is known that the Government would study the culmination of the Framework Convention that Ecuador has with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which would mean leaving our territory. Also, a few days ago it was announced that no more militaries or polices will be sent to the Institute for Security Cooperation in the USA, better known as School School of the Americas.

One or others institutions are instruments of U.S. imperialism to penetrate various strata of society and establish some political, social and military control mechanisms. In the former School of the Americas have trained soldiers from throughout the hemisphere, except Cuba, and many of them have played nefarious roles in their respective countries, whether in the condition of dictators or leaders of research equipment and torture. USAID’s presence is, so to speak, more discreet, then, its work covers through social development projects, public participation and strengthening of democracy.

The expulsion of USAID and the ban on military participation in these courses should have been taken long ago. Although the government tries to build a speech to show an alleged anti-imperialist attitude, there is no doubt that such measures are evidence of double government conduct.

Since the beginning the government of Rafael Correa to June 2011, USAID has invested $ 93.5 million in government projects and the so-called “civil society”. The bulk has to do with conventions adopted from Carondelet, four years ago, the Ministry of Coordination of Production requested the support of imperialist agency to establish sectoral priorities and, from the 20 areas proposed by the USAID, Correa chose 10 strategic sectors such as priority

Currently has agreements with the Ministries of Environment, Tourism, Justice, Agriculture, in Inda, Senplades, with the Council of the Judiciary, the Office, the Electoral Council, among others, over a number of government officials have worked for NGOs, in turn, received funding from USAID.

As for the other subject, we must remember that this measure was taken only after complaint of the SOA Watch organization in the sense that Ecuadorian military and police continued to form in a school run by imperialism.

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Enver Hoxha on the Labor Aristocracy

The development of the economy in the West after the war also exerted a great influence on the spread of opportunist and revisionist ideas in the communist parties. True, Western Europe was devastated by the war but its recovery was carried out relatively quickly. The American capital which poured into Europe through the “Marshall Plan” made it possible to reconstruct the factories, plants, transport and agriculture so that their production extended rapidly. This development opened up many jobs and for a long period, not only absorbed all the free labour force but even created a certain shortage of labour.

This situation, which brought the bourgeoisie great superprofits, allowed it to loosen its pursestrings a little and soften the labour conflicts to some degree. In the social field, in such matters as social insurance, health, education, labour legislation etc., it took some measures for which the working class had fought hard. The obvious improvement of the standard of living of the working people in comparison with that of the time of the war and even before the war, the rapid growth of production, which came as a result of the reconstruction of industry and agriculture and the beginning of the technical and scientific revolution, and the full employment of the work force, opened the way to the flowering amongst the unformed opportunist element of views about the development of capitalism without class conflicts, about its ability to avoid crises, the elimination of the phenomenon of unemployment etc. That major teaching of Marxism-Leninism, that the periods of peaceful development of capitalism becomes a source for the spread of opportunism, was confirmed once again. The new stratum of the worker aristocracy, which increased considerably during this period, began to exert an ever more negative influence in the ranks of the parties and their leaderships by introducing reformist and opportunist views and ideas.

Under pressure of these circumstances, the programs of these communist parties were reduced more and more to democratic and reformist minimum programs, while the idea of the revolution and socialism became ever more remote. The major strategy of the revolutionary transformation of society gave way to the minor strategy about current problems of the day which was absolutized and became the general political and ideological line.

 – Enver Hoxha, Eurocommunism is Anti-Communism

PCMLE: The government wears and the people progress

To the extent that the Correa government experienced the shift to the right and, progressively, reaffirming its authoritarian, arrogant, undemocratic and repressive forces also began to lose popular support. Correa is not now the person with more than 80% of acceptance, Correa is who now with the name of “forgiveness” disguised a defeat, is one that the persecution and imprisonment intended to silence the voices of protest that grow and multiply, who despite having his hands tucked in justice and supervisory organisms to enjoy impunity, can not prevent official corruption splashes and remove the letterhead to be the government of clean hands. The massive participation of people in the March days proves it..

The first skirmishes became apparent confrontation with the population of Dayuma, with social and labor sectors present in Montecristi, requiring consistency in the drafting of the new Constitution, then escalate with teachers in strike, with peasants and indigenous communities that, in defense of water and life, opposed and oppose the extractive policies of the regime, with high school students for the duration of the card and college student by the technocratic and elitist system of admission, the residents of neighborhoods against taxes. A crucial point in this confrontation and measurement of forces, no doubt, was the popular consultation and we know that to win the Pyrrhic victory he held had to resort to fraud and shameful maneuvers. .

All this makes clear that the social struggle against correÃsmo grows in direct proportion to the intensification of its policy right, repressive and prodictatorial. This is a government eroded without implying that it is cornered, but certainly is a time when the people begin to lose their fear, which Correa is down and the people to rise .

PCMLE

Lenin on Social-Democrats

“They [Social-Democrats] are just as much traitors to socialism… They represent that top section of workers who have been bribed by the bourgeoisie… for in all the civilised, advanced countries the bourgeoisie rob—either by colonial oppression or by financially extracting ‘gain’ from formally independent weak countries—they rob a population many times larger than that of ‘their own’ country. This is the economic factor that enables the imperialist bourgeoisie to obtain superprofits, part of which is used to bribe the top section of the proletariat and convert it into a reformist, opportunist petty bourgeoisie that fears revolution.”

— V.I. Lenin, “Letter to the Workers of Europe and America,” Pravda; No. 16, January 24, 1919.

Lenin on Self-Determination

“Imperialism means the progressively mounting oppression of the nations of the world by a handful of Great Powers; it means a period of wars between the latter to extend and consolidate the oppression of nations; it means a period in which the masses of the people are deceived by hypocritical social-patriots, i.e., individuals who, under the pretext of the ‘freedom of nations’, ‘the right of nations to self-determination’, and ‘defence of the fatherland’, justify and defend the oppression of the majority of the world’s nations by the Great Powers.

That is why the focal point in the Social-Democratic programme must be that division of nations into oppressor and oppressed which forms the essence of imperialism, and is deceitfully evaded by the social-chauvinists and Kautsky. This division is not significant from the angle of bourgeois pacifism or the philistine Utopia of peaceful competition among independent nations under capitalism, but it is most significant from the angle of the revolutionary struggle against imperialism. It is from this division that our definition of the ‘right of nations to self-determination’ must follow, a definition that is consistently democratic, revolutionary, and in accord with the general task of the immediate struggle for socialism. It is for that right, and in a struggle to achieve sincere recognition for it, that the Social-Democrats of the oppressor nations must demand that the oppressed nations should have the right of secession, for otherwise recognition of equal rights for nations and of international working-class solidarity would in fact be merely empty phrase-mongering, sheer hypocrisy. On the other hand, the Social-Democrats of the oppressed nations must attach prime significance to the unity and the merging of the workers of the oppressed nations with those of the oppressor nations; otherwise these Social-Democrats will involuntarily become the allies of their own national bourgeoisie, which always betrays the interests of the people and of democracy, and is always ready, in its turn, to annex territory and oppress other nations.”

— V. I. Lenin, The Revolutionary Proletariat and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination, 1915

Lenin on the Colonial Question

First, what is the cardinal idea underlying our theses? It is the distinction between oppressed and oppressor nations. Unlike the Second International and bourgeois democracy, we emphasise this distinction. . . .The characteristic feature of imperialism consists in the whole world, as we now see, being divided into a large number of oppressed nations and an insignificant number of oppressor nations, the latter possessing colossal wealth and powerful armed force.[...]

Comrade Quelch of the British Socialist Party spoke of this in our commission. He said that the rank-and-file British worker would consider it treasonable to help the enslaved nations in their uprisings against British rule. True, the jingoist and chauvinist-minded labour aristocrats of Britain and America present a very great danger to socialism, and are a bulwark of the Second International. Here we are confronted with the greatest treachery on the part of leaders and workers belonging to this bourgeois International. The colonial question has been discussed in the Second International as well. The Basle Manifesto is quite clear on this point, too. The parties of the Second International have pledged themselves to revolutionary action, but they have given no sign of genuine revolutionary work or of assistance to the exploited and dependent nations in their revolt against the oppressor nations. This, I think, applies also to most of the parties that have withdrawn from the Second International and wish to join the Third International.

— V. I. Lenin, Report of the Commission on the National and the Colonial Questions, July 26, 1920

Georgi Dimitrov on Stalinism

The social-democrat lackeys often call us “stalinists” and they think that in this way they insult the communists. But we are proud of this honorary appellation as we are proud of the appellation “leninists”. There is no greater honor for a revolutionary than being a true leninist, a true stalinist, a devoted disciple of Lenin and Stalin until the end. And there is no greater happiness for the communists than fighting under the guidance of Stalin for the triumph of the international proletariat’s just cause. Not everybody can be a stalinist. The honorary appellation “leninist-stalinist” has to be won through bolshevik struggle, persistence and unlimited devotion to the cause of the working class”

(G. Dimitrov “Stalin and the international proletariat”, 1939).

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93 years since the assassination of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht

January 15th, 1919

Today the bourgeoisie and the social-traitors are jubilating in Berlin-they have succeeded in murdering Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg. Ebert and Scheidemann, who for four years led the workers to the slaughter for the sake of depredation, have now assumed the role of butchers of the proletarian leaders. The example of the German revolution proves that “democracy” is only a camouflage for bourgeois robbery and the most savage violence.

Death to the butchers!

— V.I. Lenin, Speech at a Protest Rally Following the Murder of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg

Source

The foregoing lines were written before the brutal and dastardly murder of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg by the Ebert and Scheidemann government. Those butchers, in their servility to the bourgeoisie, allowed the German whiteguards, the watchdogs of sacred capitalist property, to lynch Rosa Luxemburg, to murder Karl Liebknecht by shooting him in the back on the patently false plea that he “attempted to escape” (Russian tsarism often used that excuse to murder prisoners during its bloody suppression of the 1905 Revolution). At the same time those butchers protected the whiteguards with the authority of the government, which claims to be quite innocent and to stand above classes! No words can describe the foul and abominable character of the butchery perpetrated by alleged socialists. Evidently, history has chosen a path on which the role of “labour lieutenants of the capitalist class” must be played to the “last degree” of brutality, baseness and meanness. Let those simpletons, the Kautskyites, talk in their newspaper Freiheit about a “court” of representatives of “all” “socialist” parties (those servile souls insist that the Scheidemann executioners are socialists)! Those heroes of philistine stupidity and petty-bourgeois cowardice even fail to understand that the courts are organs of state power, and that the issue in the struggle and civil war now being waged in Germany is precisely one of who is to hold this power—the bourgeoisie, “served” by the Scheidemanns as executioners and instigators of pogroms, and by the Kautskys as glorifiers of “pure democracy”, or the proletariat, which will overthrow the capitalist exploiters and crush their resistance. The blood of the best representatives of the world proletarian International, of the unforgettable leaders of the world socialist revolution, will steel ever new masses of workers for the life-and-death struggle. And this struggle will lead to victory.

— V.I. Lenin, Letter to the Workers of Europe and America

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Retrospect: A Nervous China Invades Vietnam

By TERRY MCCARTHY
Monday, Sept. 27, 1999

Early in the morning of Feb. 17, 1979, Chinese artillery batteries and multiple rocket launchers opened fire all along the Vietnamese border with protracted barrages that shook the earth for miles around. Then 85,000 troops surged across the frontier in human-wave attacks like those China had used in Korea nearly three decades before. They were decimated: the well-dug-in Vietnamese cut down the Chinese troops with machine guns, while mines and booby traps did the rest.

Horrified by their losses, the Chinese quickly replaced the general in charge of the invasion that was meant, in Beijing’s words, to teach Vietnam a lesson, and concentrated their attack on neighboring provincial capitals. Using tanks and artillery, they quickly overran most of the desired towns: by March 5, after fierce house-to-house fighting, they captured the last one, Lang Son, across the border from Pingxiang. Then they began their withdrawal, proclaiming victory over the Cubans of the Orient, as Chinese propaganda had dubbed them.

By China’s own estimate, some 20,000 soldiers and civilians from both sides died in the 17-day war. Who learned the bigger lesson?

The invasion demonstrated a contradiction that has forever bedeviled China’s military and political leaders: good strategy, bad tactics. The decision to send what amounted to nearly 250,000 troops into Vietnam had been taken seven months before and was well-telegraphed to those who cared to listen.

When Deng Xiaoping went to Washington in January 1979 to cement the normalization of China’s relations with the United States, he told President Jimmy Carter in a private meeting what China was about to do–and why. Not only did Beijing feel Vietnam was acting ungratefully after all the assistance it had received during its war against the U.S., but in 1978 Hanoi had begun expelling Vietnamese of Chinese descent. Worst of all–it was cozying up to Moscow. In November 1978 Vietnam signed a treaty of friendship and cooperation with the Soviet Union. A month later the Vietnamese invaded Cambodia, a Chinese ally. Although Hanoi said it was forced to do so to stop Pol Pot’s genocide and to put an end to his cross-border attacks against Vietnam, Deng saw it as a calculated move by Moscow to use its allies to encircle China from the south.

Soviet adventurism in Southeast Asia had to be stopped, Deng said, and he was calculating (correctly, it turned out) that Moscow would not intervene in a limited border war between China and Vietnam. Carter’s National Security Adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, said Deng’s explanation to Carter of his invasion plans, with its calculated defiance of the Soviets, was the single most impressive demonstration of raw power politics that he had ever seen.

At the time Deng was consolidating his position as unchallenged leader of China. Having successfully negotiated normalization of relations with Washington, he wanted to send a strong signal to Moscow against further advances in Asia. He also thought the Carter Administration was being too soft on the Soviets, although he did not say as much to his American hosts. Hanoi, for its part, was unfazed by Deng’s demonstration of raw power. The Vietnamese fought the Chinese with local militia, not bothering to send in any of the regular army divisions that were then taken up with the occupation of Cambodia. Indeed, Hanoi showed no sign of withdrawing those troops, despite Chinese demands that they do so: the subsequent guerrilla war in Cambodia would bog down Vietnam’s soldiers and bedevil its foreign relations for more than a decade.

The towns captured by the Chinese were all just across the border; it is not clear whether China could have pushed much farther south. Having lost so many soldiers in taking the towns, the Chinese methodically blew up every building they could before withdrawing. Journalist Nayan Chanda, who visited the area shortly after the war, saw schools, hospitals, government buildings and houses all reduced to rubble. The war also showed China just how outdated its battlefield tactics and weaponry were, prompting a major internal review of the capabilities of the People’s Liberation Army. The thrust for military modernization continues to this day, even as the focus of China’s generals has shifted from Vietnam back to Taiwan–a pesky little irritant that could cause Beijing even bigger problems if it decides to administer another lesson.

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Joint Statement on the situation in the Middle East

January 16, 2012

Support the people who have risen up for their rights and their freedom! We condemn the imperialist conspiracies against Syria and Iran!

During 2011 the Arab people in North Africa and the Middle East stood up, one after the other. They did not want to be exposed to the consequences of monopolistic capitalist hegemony, as unemployment and poverty. They said no to oppression from the autocratic dictatorships that have watched this hegemony. But the 30-40 year-old despot regimes has been the main cause of the disorganization of the oppressed masses and has also prevented them from developing their awareness. The people who stood up have won some victories, but could not reap the real fruits of their struggle, to be able to form their own political power. At the same time, these bourgeois reactionary forces, supported by Western imperialists, preserved or try to preserve its hegemony by strengthening the power base with its new partners, although this hegemony has encountered certain difficulties.

The Arab people who stood up realizing their potential and tasted victory, and their struggle has not yet been turned down in any country, except in Libya. Despite the low consciousness and organization continues their people revolt and tries to overcome their weaknesses. They insist on resisting the reactionary forces that have reorganized themselves, especially through the advent of political Islam, which has been moderate and pro-American in almost every country.

“We oppose all imperialist interventions, whatever pretext”

We, the undersigned revolutionary communist and working parties that meet the Turkish Labor Party 6 Congress, expressing our pride and solidarity with the peoples’ mass struggles, not only in the Arab countries of North Africa and the Middle East, but also in Europe, from Spain to Greece, and in Latin America, from Venezuela to Ecuador, who are fighting for their national and social rights and freedoms, and we declare our support for the Palestinian people’s just struggle against imperialism and Israeli Zionism.

However, we are also aware of the fact that our biggest weakness is the inadequate consciousness and organization level of the world’s people, whether to rebel or other fields. And the imperialists and their collaborators exploit this weakness in attempts to renew the decaying basis of its hegemony and suppress the fighting by infiltrating the ranks of the people they claim to support, by manipulating these games in their own interest and remove them from their popular content.

The western imperialists, who have world domination in their hands and trying to strengthen its positions in competition with the rising imperialist powers, has not only aims to strengthen its domination in the countries that traditionally have been under their influence by suppressing the people’s struggles but they are also trying to establish its hegemony by influencing people and their struggles and use them as lifting rods in countries like Syria and Iran, as they have not been able to force the knee.

We support either Assad or Khamenei regime. But we also underlines the fact that when Western imperialists intervene with support from the reactionary forces in the region, the Turkish and Saudi reactionary forces, under the pretext of “democracy” and “dictator’s repression” has such a policy has nothing to do with people’s right to self or with people’s social and democratic aspirations.

We oppose all imperialist interventions – economic, political and military – whatever pretext, whether they are invited by the cooperative lackeys or not, and we condemn such a policy, which only brings war, blood and tears.

We ask all people of the world, and particularly the peoples of Syria and Iran, to be on guard against the imperialist interventions and traps in the style of the Libyan example, to show solidarity with the struggles of the peoples of the region and to continue the struggle against imperialism and the reactionary forces .

Ankara, 20.12.2011

Albania’s communist party
Benin Communist Party
Belgium’s Labour
Cyprus’ new communist party
Ecuador’s Marxist-Leninist Communist Party
Spanish Communist Party (Marxist-Leninists)
Organization for the reconstruction of Greece’s Communist Party (Anasintaxi)
Tunisian Communist Workers’ Party (PCOT)
Turkey’s Workers’ Party (Emek Partisi)

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Averdade: Capitalist growth increases submission of Brazil to foreign capital

Amid the profound crisis which is the world capitalist system and that has dragged on since September 2008, some countries, specifically China, India, Russia and Brazil, the so-called BRIC countries have achieved economic growth rates to be high standards for the capitalists. In Brazil, this growth, albeit with ups and downs, led the country to become the seventh largest economy in the world and beyond Italy, mired in economic and moral crisis ¹.

With the election of Lula (PT) for the presidency of Brazil in 2002 and his decision to take no break with the imperialist system or renationalize privatized state and to guarantee the privileges of the large financial capital and free action for the international monopolies in the economy Brazil, a large international media began to extol the Brazilian economy as the newest wonder of the world.

But, as not everything that glitters is gold and almost everything that the media bourgeois state is a lie, there is no sea-colored pink in the Brazilian economy.

However, in this context of favorable propaganda and the expansion of Brazilian companies in Latin America, performing works and acquiring other companies, this movement supported and financed by the Brazilian government, some sectors have criticized the Brazilian expansionism and fear of a new imperialism in the region .

Some Latin American governments have even acted in order to halt the advance. In Argentina, the Mendoza provincial government suspended a project of potash exploration and mining company Vale, Peru, remains canceled the construction of hydroelectric Inambari, construction work of the OAS and the state Furnas and Eletrobras.

The thesis of a new imperialism in itself is nothing absurd. In fact, at the time of parasitism and decay of capitalist imperialism and during the crisis due to the law of uneven development, while most countries remains stagnant, you may experience some growth in some sectors of the economy and in some countries ². It is a growth that deepens inequality between countries and among various sectors of the economy, as Lenin said: “Certain industries, certain sectors of the bourgeoisie and certain countries, manifest at the time of imperialism, with greater or lesser extent either one or other of these trends. (Complete Works, volume 27, pp.444)

We see the current crisis, while the European Union and the United States have their economies increasingly mired in crisis, China, despite signs of slowing down, keeps an annual growth rate between 9 and 10%.

The history of capitalist imperialism throughout the 20th century is full of examples in this regard. Indeed, in the early decades of last century, England was dictating all the rules of the global economy. After World War I, Germany is growing again and demanded a new division of the world. The U.S. also had a great economic development and came to occupy a prominent place in the world economy. A new correlation of forces has emerged and a new World War came to redefine the areas of influence of the imperialist powers.

Today, in the first decade of the 21st century, China became a major power in the capitalist economy and disputes with the U.S. and other imperialist countries control over important markets in the world, including Latin America. In fact, we can assert that the current U.S. advantage in the global economy is maintained exclusively by blood and iron, or, more precisely, due to the monopoly of the dollar, the control of bodies like the IMF (International Monetary Fund) and World Bank , imperialist wars and powerful nuclear weapons.

However, a deeper analysis of the Brazilian economy found that the current economic boom in the country, as well as volatile and mainly benefit the wealthy classes, does not break the chains that bind him to the world imperialist system, but makes the country even more submissive to this system. In other words, economic growth in the last ten years did not alter the subordination of Brazil to international finance capital to ease the dominance of monopolies on the international economy. On the contrary, there was an amazing process of denationalization and even de-industrialization of the Brazilian economy.

Indeed, the vaunted Brazilian economy has its main base in the export of raw materials, especially agricultural products and minerals and not on industrial products and technology and the expansion of the internal market, thanks to a huge debt of the state population and .

According to the Ministry of Development, 2011 to August exports of primary products accounted for 44.27% (U.S. $ 55.822 billion) of Brazilian exports, while exports of manufactured goods were only 39.74% (U.S. $ 50.100 billion). The involution is clear: for the first time since 1978, the export of primary products (commodities) surpassed the export of manufactured ³.

Soybeans (beans, meal and oil), meat, sugar and ethanol, coffee and forest products represent 81.2% of Brazil’s agricultural exports. However, despite being a major producer and exporter of food, Brazil imports 65% of its fertilizer needs. Among the manufacturers, cars, produced in its entirety by multinational companies in the U.S., Germany, Italy and France, are 2.22% of total exports. Since iron ore exports is 12.63%, 7.92% and oil. Besides iron ore, Brazil is also the world’s largest producer of niobium and manganese.

In addition to this growth based on exports of primary goods, raw materials, there is also a process of deindustrialization.

In 1980, the share of manufacturing in gross domestic product (GDP) was 33%, today is only 16%. The relationship-manufactured exports, which reached 59% during the same period, pulled in 40%.

Another proof of de-industrialization of the Brazilian economy is revealed in the growth of the deficit country’s industrial. Between 2005 and 2010, the deficit of industrial goods fell from a positive U.S. $ 31 billion to $ 34 billion negative. In total, the deficit in foreign trade of industrial goods reached U.S. $ 65 billion. It is worth noting also that this deficit occurs in industry sectors of high and medium technological intensity, such as pharmaceuticals, consumer goods, electronics, computer and office equipment and precision instruments (Luiz Gonzaga Belluzo and Julius G. de Almeida , Capital Letter, 22/06/2011).

Only the aircraft industry had a surplus due to Embraer. However, remember that Embraer is not exactly a Brazilian company. Privatized in 1994, for only $ 154 million, the Company is controlled by the Pension Plan for Employees of Banco do Brazil – Previ – (14.2% of the shares), by BNDES (5%), the Government, (0, 3%) and bank Bozano (10.4%). However, 70% of Embraer’s stock investors are with the Stock Exchange New York Stock Exchange (NYSE acronym in English), and three investment funds with U.S. (Janus Capital Management, Oppenheimer and Thornburg Investments).

De-industrialization of the Brazilian economy is so great that the Minister of Science and Technology, Aloysio Mercadante said that Brazil sells 1,700 tons of soybeans or 21 500 tons of iron ore to buy just a ton of semiconductor China (Portrait of Brazil, No. 46).

This phenomenon has led some economists at the Economic Commission for Latin America (UN ECLAC), called this process “reprimarization” of the economy, that is, returning to the model that characterized the exploitation of Brazil and other Latin American countries during the period Colonial.

Professor of Economics at Unicamp, Cano Wilson, author of several works on the Brazilian economy and Latin America, summed up the situation: “We are singing with Chinese music. Singing to export chicken and soybeans and iron ore. But that future never given to anyone. The leaders agree that it is very nice to be exporting these things, but forget that industry is a regression. ” (Wilson Cano, Folha de S. Paulo, 12/6/2011).

Finally, Brazil exports more raw materials and imports of industrial products. Undoubtedly there is here no feature of an imperialist country.

The subordination of Brazil to international finance capital

“Imperialism is a worldwide system of domination and oppression, in which financial capital put the whole world.”

(J. Stalin, Foundations of Leninism, published by Manoel Lisboa).

Despite being the world’s seventh largest economy, Brazil is still religiously rewarding financial capital with high interest rates (the world’s largest) and allocating annually about 40% of everything he earns to pay the income of speculators, owners of the securities domestic and foreign debt. It also continues its privatization and denationalization companies, allowing free movement of capital in the country, a country of which the subsidiaries of multinational profits refer to their headquarters, and earnestly fulfilling the role of country supplier of raw materials and importer of industrial products. In other words, Brazil is undoubtedly one of the countries that are subjected to this world domination of finance capital. Evidence is not lacking.

Brazil has 352 billion dollars in international reserves, applied primarily in securities of U.S. debt. Unlike what is preached, these reserves, and only sufficient to cover 60% of the country’s needs, is no proof of vitality of the Brazilian economy, but rather a certificate course of submission to the imperialist system. Let’s see. Interest paid by the U.S. government for its debt securities are only 0.4%, therefore this application yields nothing to Brazil, although it is of great importance to the U.S. to maintain its spending on wars and subsidize their banks and monopolies broken. Moreover, to buy these dollars, the reserves, Brazil sold its public debt securities that are paid with interest rates of 11.5% per year, the Selic rate, fixed by the Central Bank. So, with the reservations applied in U.S. securities, the country loses no less than 40 billion dollars per year, equivalent to more than half the budget of Health

Not enough, the finance minister, Guido Mantega, argued with the other BRIC countries, buy debt of European countries: “We will meet in Washington and will discuss how to help the EU out of this situation” . (Reuters, 9/13/11). Recall that in October 2009, Brazil withdrew $ 10 billion IMF loan to the bankrupt and join the global effort to save failed banks and international monopolies. Let us also remember that this year to ensure the payment of interest to this select group of parasites, the government cut $ 50 billion budget, that is, cut social investment areas.

What greater proof of the subordination and total dependence on the current imperialist countries than bail them out at the expense of the misery of their own country.

The denationalization of the Brazilian economy

Debt and remittance of profits

An important aspect of the domination of international finance capital over the nations are the external and internal debts.

Well, according to Professor Maria Lucia Fattorelli, Audit of Public Debt in Brazil, the Brazilian debt is now at about $ 3 trillion and in 2010 consumed 44.93% of the resources of the federal budget, money that ceases to be invested in health, housing and education to ensure income for bankers. In fact, figures from the Central Bank show that domestic and foreign banks and investment funds they own 76% of domestic debt securities. In turn, external debt, and not be over, had a 43% increase, 2009 to 2011, and was $ $ 284.1 billion.

Also indicator of the degree of dependence of Brazil before the international financial system is the growth in remittances of profits abroad.

In 2010, Brazil sent abroad for profits of 30 billion dollars. In 2009, U.S. $ 25.21 billion, and a third of that amount, $ 7.45 billion came from income on financial investments. In the last twelve months, from July 2010 to July 2011, profit remittances amounted to U.S. $ 34.95 billion.

Thus, while the country’s economy grows, also grows the remittance of profits abroad, demonstrating how big the field of international monopolies on the national economy.

According to data from the United Nations Conference for Trade and Development (UNCTAD acronym in English), Brazil is the 5th largest foreign investment destination in the world. But beyond the capital invested in speculation, the other sectors that receive this money are the mineral extraction and acquisition of companies and services.

The denationalization of the Brazilian economy is still evident when one observes that the 50 largest Brazilian companies, 26 are foreign. In fact, more than half of Brazilian companies in leading sectors such as automotive, aerospace, electronics, computers, pharmaceuticals, telecommunications, agribusiness and mining are in the hands of foreign capital. Also according to the Census of Foreign Capital in Brazil, foreign capital is present in 17,605 Brazilian companies account for 63% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and has control of 36% of the banking sector and holds 25% stake in Bradesco and 20% of the shares of the Bank of Brazil. (Nazarene Lamb, Latin American Institute for Socioeconomic Studies).

Illusion Class

To mitigate this field of international monopolies on the national economy, the PT government decided to form “multinational yellow-green.” The bourgeois groups chosen were those with a high degree of influence in government and who generously funded the PT and its allies in the elections.

To form these multinationals, the state, and fund the combined company becomes a member of the project and articulates the state pension funds to do the same. In other words, the state acts as a true executive committee of the capitalist class. This is not something new, it was and is done by all capitalist governments of China to the United States. Recall that in the current crisis, States withdrew more than $ 30 trillion in public funds to bail out banks and private monopolies of the break.

The result of this policy was the formation and strengthening of private monopolies in some sectors such as telephony, civil aviation, refrigerators, beverage and ethanol.

One of these monopolies created yellow-green was the phone company HI. The stated aim was to compete in and outside the country with the multinationals in Spain, Portugal and Italy, which took control of telephony in the country after privatization. To this end, the government changed the existing legislation and public funding released very low interest. On April 25, 2008, HI new born, union of Brazil Telecom with HI, the Supertel yellow-green, owned by businessman Carlos Jereissati and Sergio Andrade and with 43.4 million customers. For this venture, the new HI, received from BNDES R $ 2.5 billion to make the business and $ 5 billion to finance investments in the new company.

However, as the bourgeoisie “has long played out the flag of independence” and “sells the rights and independence of the nation for dollars” 4, after two years, Portugal Telecom acquired control of the Brazilian company buying 22.4% stake. (Capital Letter, 08/04/2011)

Another case of multinational yellow-green was Ambev. In 1999, Brahma and Antarctica, announced the birth of AmBev, a Brazilian giant in the beverage industry that starts earning 10.3 billion per year. The new company came to market as the world’s third largest producer of beer and dominating 70% of the Brazilian market. This multinational ‘Brazilian’ began buying other companies in Latin America, such as Quilmes, Argentina’s largest brewer, in 2002. However, in March 2004, after several exchanges of shares and assets between Belgium’s Interbrew and AmBev, Interbrew announced that the multinational was majority shareholder of Brazilian brewer, with 71% voting interest and 51.6% of total capital.

New “national betrayal” funded by the government and, again, the dream of building a sovereign national economy with the great national bourgeoisie goes down.

The new gangsters of ethanol

In the case of ethanol, the situation is no different. Encouraged by the government, several foreign companies have joined the domestic mills to boost ethanol production and export of the country to meet U.S. demand for ethanol.

Today, 400 plants, most of them in the hands of foreign capital, control virtually all domestic production of ethanol and act as a cartel. As reflected in the price of alcohol this year even shooting in full the sugarcane harvest.

According to the Movement of Landless Workers (MST), foreign capital owns more than 30% million acres in the country to produce sugar cane, cattle and soybeans. Only in the alcohol sector, multinationals hold 33% of all land and plants. (Capital Letter, 03/08/11).

Petrobras also due to the 9478 Act of 1997, which broke the state oil monopoly, is now 51% of its capital under private control, and 35% of that capital is foreign. Not to mention that the National Petroleum Agency (ANP) and the Ministry of Energy Mines follow the policy of conduct auctions of our oil to the international oil companies.

To increase the participation of foreign capital in the country, the Federal Government sent for approval by Congress on April 20, a provisional measure (MP) to allow the increase to the current 20% to 49% of foreign capital in airlines Brazilian and decided to privatize the airports and ports by the end of the year.

The overexploitation of the Brazilian worker

In contrast to this situation, we have over-exploitation of workers and much of the population living in poverty. Although employment growth in the country, the minimum wage should be, according to Dieese R $ 2,279.00 5 is only R $ 545.00, the equivalent of $ 297.81 is a lower salary than that paid in Argentina ($ 475), Chile (U.S. $ 372) and Paraguay U.S. $ 410). In addition, the Brazilian worker has an extended working hours of the world when comparing the wage in Brazil with other countries, as shown in the table below.

To alleviate the growing poverty of the people, the Brazilian government has been developing since 2004, the Bolsa Familia program, which provides families who have minimum income a monthly stipend. Currently, 13 million families, about 70 million people are served by the program, aimed at households with per capita income of up to $ 140 – considered families in extreme poverty. Currently, each beneficiary may receive from $ 32 to 306 dollars per month. In 2004, 5.5 million families were assisted. So, instead of diminishing, increases the number of families because they did not work and need a decent salary grant from the government not to go hungry.

According to Census 2010, the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), Brazil has 16.2 million Brazilians living in extreme poverty, 8% of the population. Of these, 11.4 million have incomes of $ 1 to $ 70 ($ 40) and 4.8 million have no income. Besides, 79 million people stay with family income below R $ 1,020 (U.S. $ 600) and 38% of young people living in extreme poverty, 50% of the population have no sewage and 80 million live with remuneration below $ 700 . Seven million families have no roof over their heads, and according to the Ministry of Labor and Employment, Brazil, in the XXI century, has 20 000 employees working in conditions analogous to slavery.

At the same time, a tiny group of people, owners of major industrial monopolies, and commercial banks, not to enrich. In the first decade of the 21st century, sales of the 200 largest Brazilian companies rose 534% between 2000 and 2010, reaching a gross revenue of R $ 587.9 billion (U.S. $ 270 billion).

As we see, economic growth follows recent Brazilian entirely tied to the chain of world imperialism and subordinate to international finance capital, and deepens the contradiction between a rich minority and the vast majority of Brazilian workers who suffer from low wages and poor working conditions.

This analysis confirms the Leninist thesis that it is not possible to oppose the reforms only with capitalism, it is necessary to modify the basis of the system, replace the system with one that is opposed to this, that is, that instead of relying on property deprived of the means of production, is based on collective ownership of means of production.

Lula Hawk, Central Committee member of the Revolutionary Communist Party of Brazil

Notes:

¹ According to the IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics) in 2008, the Brazilian economy grew 5.2%. In 2009, growth was negative, -0.6%, and in 2010, 7.5%.

For 2011, the Central Bank of Brazil predicts growth of 3.5% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Since the prediction of International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Brazil is 3.8%. Slower growth than expected for other countries in South America, as the IMF projects a growth of 8% for Argentina, 4.9% to 6.5% in Colombia and Chile. For China, the IMF forecasts growth of 9.6%.

² “The unevenness of economic and political development is an absolute law of capitalism” (Lênin. Under the slogan of the United States of Europe).

³ manufacturing and producing industrial goods from the raw material. For example, the cotton is produced jeans. The rubber tires are produced. Generally rich countries buy raw materials from poor countries and then manufactured to resell the product to the same country and others.

4 J. Stalin. Address to the 19th Congress of the CPSU. 1953: “Before, the bourgeoisie was considered part of the nation’s leader, defended the rights and independence of the nation, standing ‘above all’. Currently, there remains not the slightest trace of the ‘national principle’. At present, the bourgeoisie sells the rights and independence of the nation for dollars. The flag of independence and national sovereignty was thrown out. There is no doubt that this flag will be raised by you, the representatives of communist and democratic parties, and brought forward, if you will be patriots of your country, if you will be the driving force of the nation. No one can lift more.. “(Stalin’s speech to the 19th Congress of the CPSU)

The five Brazilian minimum wage worker would be R $ 2,278.77 in August, the second projection of the Department of Statistics and Socioeconomic Studies (Dieese). This value is 4.18 times the floor in place today, from $ 545. For the calculation of the minimum wage, the Dieese takes into account the amount necessary for the worker and his family defray the costs for food, housing, health, education, clothing, hygiene, transportation, recreation and welfare

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PCMLE: An atrocious complicity

published in En March at the 5th of December 2011

International information realizes the resignation of Minister of Labor in Brazil, accused of corruption. With the resigning Carlos Lupi, seven ministers who have left their duties since Rousseff became president of that country in January. In Bolivia, a few weeks ago, three government officials of Evo Morales government resigned for the violent repression unleashed against the peasants that fight to oppose the construction of a road through a national park.

In our country it does not work that way. Here, the President of the Republic protects the corruptors and promotes the repression. When the case of illegal kickbacks and surcharges in the Ministry of Sports, in which is involved the former Minister Raul Carrion, President Correa had no qualms about defending and noted that against Carrion had been committed an injustice. While David Ortiz was in charge of the portfolio of Transport and Public Works was blamed for irregularities in awarding contracts for the construction of bridges and roads and collecting bribes for the same, however Ortiz went breezed out of these functions to take the national leadership of the DINSE. The most famous case is that of illegal contracts signed by Correas’ brother, Fabricio Correa this case is covered by land that is launched from the highest levels because the president himself would be involved for them.

During the strike of teachers, two years ago, Professor Bosco Wisuma died as a result of the violent police repression, in May last year, Javier Garcia, Mejia school student was hit by a projectile launched by police and lost his left eye, the last September Edison Cosíos, student of the same high school, was seriously wounded in the head by the action of the forces of repression, situation that keeps him serious risk even in exile in a hospital. In none of these cases have been punished those responsible.

They are not the unique cases of corruption and repression that remain unpunished, there are many more, but are covered with a blinding government advertising campaign to believe that corruption in high places has virtually been defeated. Nothing is more false than this. The defense of human rights is its logo.

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PCMLE: Albania – Unmasking and Struggling against Titoite Revisionism

From En Marcha, the newspaper of the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party of Ecuador (PCMLE).

Yugoslav revisionism was to the old ideological foundation revisionist theories of Bernstein, Kautsky, anti-Marxist theories of all opportunists and enemies of socialism, the Trotskyites, Bukharin and social democracy.

In tandem with Albania and the Party of Labor of Albania undertook its struggle against Khrushchev revisionism and Chinese revisionism, revisionism Titoist also fought in Yugoslavia, which played a leading role in counter-revolutionary action and in favor of imperialism. Their aim against the Titoist PTA was to transform a Marxist-Leninist party in an opportunist party and make Albania a Yugoslav state.

Titoist Revisionists were a band of renegades who pushed their counterrevolutionary activity since 1948, this group was led by Joseph Tito after World War II, said national-chauvinist accented features and flourished in times of war. The Yugoslavs seized power product of the struggle against fascism and opportunistic traits immediately expressed his resignation to the Marxist-Leninist ideology, in its assumptions about the Soviet Union and Stalin in their attitudes and chauvinistic acts against Albania . According to Enver Hoxha “the Titoist were not for the construction of socialism, were not because the Communist Party of Yugoslavia should be guided by Marxist-Leninist theory and did not accept the dictatorship of the proletariat. In that originated the conflict that erupted between the Information Office of the Communist and Workers Parties and the Communist Party of Yugoslavia. “

Yugoslav revisionism was to the old ideological foundation revisionist theories of Bernstein, Kautsky, anti-Marxist theories of all opportunists and enemies of socialism, the Trotskyites, Bukharin and social democracy.

The Yugoslavs played a difficult role in the spread of anti-Marxist theses which were mainly made at the Seventh Congress of the Communist League of Yugoslavia, they claim to follow an independent policy, but in reality its activity showed an adaptation to the policy of the imperialist camp.

The Titoism was characterized by “a feverish activity against Marxism-Leninism, to organize a worldwide propaganda campaign to present to the Yugoslav system in the form of a regime ‘real socialist’ as a ‘new society’ as a ‘socialism line ‘, which is like Lenin and Stalin had emerged in the Soviet Union, but as a socialist regime with’ human face ‘, which is experienced for the first time in the world and gives’ brilliant result’. Propaganda has been proposed to put in a blind alley to the people and progressive forces who fought for freedom and independence in the four corners of the globe. “

Tito and his band in Yugoslavia adopted forms of government that were fought in time of Lenin and presumed to be used in the Soviet Union by the Trotskyists and other anarchists, they were encouraged by the bourgeoisie to sabotage the building of socialism and Yugoslavia dressed in the capitalist system by the so-called “Yugoslav self-management”, which was dressed in a robe Marxist-Leninist and tried to convince people that this system was the most authentic socialism. According to Enver Hoxha “the ‘self’ was born as an economic system, then extended the domain of the state organization and all other areas of life in the country. The theory and practice of ‘self’ is a denial Yugoslav open the teachings of Marxism-Leninism and the general laws of socialist construction. The economic and political system of ‘self’, is a form of anarcho syndicalist bourgeois dictatorship. “

The thesis of the ‘self’ did much damage to the Yugoslav people, as stated in c. Enver “the system of ‘self’ with all its distinctive features, such as the elimination of democratic centralism, the unique leadership role of the state, federalism, anarchist, anti-state ideology in general, Yugoslavia has caused disorder and economic turmoil political and ideological standing, a weak and uneven development among the republics and regions, major social and class differences, discord and national oppression and degeneration of the spiritual life. It has caused a sharp division of the working class, provoking rivalry between its various detachments and feeding their bourgeois spirit. “

Albania was a great example in the struggle against revisionism, was able to face the various facets counterrevolutionary who sought to distort the Marxist-Leninist theory of imperialism and defend, while it provided an important example of resistance and strength to the communists and workers the world.

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