Check out the new article on www.houstonpeacecouncil.com on the protest we held today in solidarity with the peace activists repressed by the FBI.

ON January 11, 2011, the United States government announced new measures in relation to Cuba. Although it is necessary to await the publication of the regulations in order to understand their true significance, according to preliminary information released by the White House press office, the measures will:

* Authorize travel to Cuba by U.S. citizens for academic, educational, cultural and religious purposes.

* Allow U.S. citizens to send limited remittances to Cuban citizens.

* Authorize U.S. international airports to request permission to operate charter flights to Cuba under certain conditions.

The adoption of these measures is the result of efforts by broad sectors of U.S. society which, in their majority, have been demanding the end of the criminal blockade of Cuba and the elimination of the absurd prohibition of travel to our country.

It is also an expression of recognition that the U.S. policy towards Cuba has failed and new ways to accomplish the historic objective of dominating our people are being sought.

Although the measures are positive ones, they are much less than what is being justly demanded, their reach is very limited and they do not modify policy against Cuba.

The announcement by the White House is basically limited to reestablishing the regulations which were in place in the 1990’s during President Clinton’s administration and were eliminated by George W. Bush in 2003.

The measures only benefit certain categories of U.S. citizens and do not reinstitute the right to travel to Cuba for all U.S. citizens, who will continue to be the only people in the world who cannot freely visit our country.

These measures confirm that there is no willingness to change the policy of blockade and destabilization against Cuba. Upon announcing them, U.S. government officials made it very clear that the blockade will remain in force and that the administration is proposing to use the new measures to strengthen subversion and intervention in Cuba’s internal affairs. This confirms the charges presented in the MINREX statement of January 13.

Cuba has always been in favor of interchanges with the people of the United States, its universities, academic, scientific and religious institutions. All the obstacles which make visits by U.S. citizens difficult have always been, and continue to be today, created by the U.S. government.

If a real interest in broadening and facilitating contact between our peoples exists, the U.S. should lift the blockade and eliminate the prohibition that makes Cuba the only country to which U.S. citizens cannot travel.

Havana, January 16, 2011

Twenty-first century science and technology make it possible for all the world’s people to have good food, good health, good education, a good job and a fulfilling life.

What stands in the way? Capitali$m – an economic and political system that puts profits before people.

Q: What’s wrong with capitalism?

A: It puts profits before people.

The heart of capitalism is the drive for more and more profits for banks and corporations no matter what happens to our nation’s people and environment. The results of this built-in greed are horrible:

• 20 million people out of work, including 25% of our young adults.
• Exporting jobs to wherever workers get paid the least. Wiping out American industry.
• Draining the public treasury with tax breaks and bailouts for the super-rich and giant corporations.
• People’s needs go down the toilet. Public schools, health services, parks, libraries, and transit systems are cut back or closed.

• Poisoning our drinking water, air, food supply and oceans.
• Cutting workers’ pay and benefits, stealing pensions.
• Corruption of Congress and our democratic institutions by corporate dollars and lobbyists.
• Denying workers the right to join unions.
• Record levels of inequality.
• Greed for profits is the impetus for war – for oil, for domination of other countries’ markets and profits of military contractors.

• Capitalism foments racism, sexism, homophobia and anti-immigrant campaigns.

Capitalism is un-American. Instead of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, it traps us in a political system and economy focused on greed and the pursuit of private profits.

FACT: The richest 400 people in America have more wealth than 155 million other Americans combined!

FACT: The average corporate executive makes $500 for every $1 paid to the average worker even though it is the workers who actually create our nation’s wealth.

IN A SOCIALIST ECONOMY, PEOPLE COME FIRST, NOT PROFITS

Socialism means re-structuring our economy to be fairer and more democratic.

Right now Americans already produce our nation’s wealth socially. We work together in factories, offices, schools, stores, laboratories, hospitals and on farms and construction sites.

What’s not decided together is how the wealth we create could be fairly distributed. In a socialist economy, there would be social ownership and social control instead of private ownership and control.

The people would decide. The deciding factor would no longer be what’s best for corporate profits.

• Banks, oil companies, utilities and key sectors of the economy such as steel and transportation would be publicly owned and operated.

• Small business would still be a vital part of the process
• There would be enough resources freed up to fully fund public education, health care, mass transit, child care and any other priorities the American people decide on.

• In a socialist society, people would get paid for the work they do and rewarded for the initiatives they take. The difference? No corporate big shots getting paid billions for the work others do.
• War, racism, sexism and homophobia would lose their corporate sponsors.
• Reversing climate change, developing green industries, and sustainability would be top priorities. No doubt millions of young people would lead the way with such initiatives.
• The rich and diverse multi-cultural American heritage could flourish in music, literature, dance, sports, film and art.

BILL OF RIGHTS SOCIALISM

Socialism in the United States would be built on the strong foundation of our Constitution’s Bill of Rights, guaranteeing freedom of speech, freedom of religion and equality for all. Other fundamental rights, such as the right to a job, health care and education could be added.

A socialist society would need to create organizations at the grass roots level to assure democratic controls.

Americans already have great traditions of such grass roots organizations such as town hall meetings, PTAs, unions, churches and charitable organizations. In a socialist society, we could expand those traditions to make our country’s economic life more democratic.

Another world is necessary – and possible!

HOW DO WE GET THERE?

Capitalism in the United States can and will be replaced with a people-first socialist system. This will happen when a majority of our country’s people are convinced of the need for such revolutionary change and are ready to make it happen.

To make that change will require a very broad coalition, a movement with workers, including unemployed workers, at its heart. This coalition must also include small business people, students and professionals. The union movement as well as African American, Latino, Asian American, immigrant and Native American communities will be central parts of that alliance. The involvement of youth, women, seniors, the LGBT community, environmentalists and people of faith is vital. It will be the same kind of people’s movement that is fighting for progress today, but even bigger and broader.

We can gain this majority by uniting for people’s needs. That means combating racism, sexism, anti-immigrant hysteria, and homophobia. It means showing in the course of grass roots struggles how these are used to divide and conquer the movement for progressive change. In the fight for jobs, education, the environment, health care, peace and human rights, at the workplace, at the polling place and in the community, this unity can be built.

AMERICANS ALREADY HAVE LOTS OF EXPERIENCE WITH PUBLIC OWNERSHIP

Here are some examples:

• Bank of North Dakota – founded in 1919, its profits go to benefit the people of that state.

• Credit union – 87 million Americans participate in these local financial institutions that are owned and controlled by their members.

• Cleveland Public Power – which provides electricity at affordable rates to that city.

• Cooperative societies – farmer co-ops, housing, co-ops, food co-ops, etc.

• Union pension funds.

• Social Security.

• Veteran’s Administration health care network.

• 16,000 municipally owned and operated sewage treatment systems.

• Tennessee Valley Authority – provides electrical power for 8.5 million Americans in 7 states.

Some famous American socialists: Angela Davis, Juan Chacon, W.E.B. DuBois, Paul Robeson, Helen Keller, Woody Guthrie, Eugene Debs, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Albert Einstein.

More on socialism and social change on the People Before Profits Network:

Communist Party USA | cpusa.org

4. Dialectical Materialism

This section is organized in a sequence similar to a textbook on dialectical materialism. After discussing the nature and role of philosophy, the quotations focus on materialism and the basic conflict with philosophical idealism, then on the nature of dialectics, the three laws of dialectics and some categories (less important laws), and finally the theory of knowledge, the nature of knowledge and how to gain knowledge.

“As philosophy finds its material weapons in the proletariat, so the proletariat finds its spiritual weapons in philosophy.” Marx, Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Law.

Jan. 1844, MECW, Vol.3, p.187

“Marx’s philosophy is a consummate philosophical materialism which has provided mankind, and especially the working class, with powerful instruments of knowledge.”

Lenin, Three Sources & Three Component Parts of Marxism, March 1913, CW, Vol.19, p.25

“The application of materialist dialectics to the reshaping of all political economy from its foundation up, its application to history, natural science, philosophy and to the policy and tactics of the working class – that was what interested Marx and Engels most of all, that is where they contributed what was most essential and new, and that was what constituted the masterly advance they made in the history of revolutionary thought.”

Lenin, The Marx-Engels Correspondence, 1913, CW, Vol.19, p.554

“From this Marxist philosophy which is cast from a single piece of steel, you can not eliminate one basic premise, one essential part, without departing from objective truth, without falling a prey to bourgeois-reactionary falsehood.”

Lenin, Materialism & Empirio-Criticism, Feb.-Oct. 1908, CW, Vol.14, p.326

“…by following the path of Marxian theory we shall grow closer and closer to objective truth (without ever exhausting it); but by following any other path we shall arrive at nothing but confusion and lies.”

Lenin, Materialism & Empirio-Criticism, Feb.-Oct. 1908, CW, Vol.14, p.143

“The great basic question of all philosophy, especially of modern philosophy, is that concerning the relation of thinking and being – spirit and nature…which is primary, spirit or nature…The answer which the philosophers gave to this question split them into two great camps. Those who asserted the primacy of spirit to nature and, therefore, in the last instance, assumed world creation in some form or other…comprised the camp of idealism. The others who regarded nature as primary, belong to the various schools of materialism..”

Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach & the End of Classical German Philosophy, early 1886, MESW, IP, 1977, p.603-04; MECW, Vol.26, pp.365-66

“Matter is a philosophical category denoting the objective reality which is given to man by his sensations, and which is copied, photographed and reflected by our sensations, while existing independently of them.”

Lenin, Materialism & Empirio-Criticism, 1908, CW, Vol.14, p.130

“…all matter possesses a property which is essentially akin to sensation, the property of reflection…”

Lenin, Materialism & Empirio-Criticism, 1908, CW, Vol. 14, p.92

“Dialectics as the science of universal interconnectedness.”

Engels, Dialectics of Nature, 1873-1882, MECW, Vol.25, p.313

“Dialectics is nothing more than the science of the general laws of motion and development of nature, human society and thought.”

Engels, Anti-Duhring, 1876-1878, MECW, Vol.25, p.131

“Motion is the mode of existence of matter…There is no matter without motion, nor could there ever have been.”

Engels, Anti-Duhring, 1878 (First Ed), FLPH, Moscow, 1954, p.86; MECW, Vol.25, p.55

“Motion, as applied to matter, is change in general.”

Engels, Dialectics of Nature, 1872-1882, unfinished, FLPH 1954, p.328; MECW, Vol.25, p.527

“The whole of nature accessible to us forms a system, an interconnected totality of bodies, and by bodies we understand here all material existencies…In the fact that these bodies are interconnected is already included that they react on one another, and it is precisely this mutual reaction that constitutes motion.”

Engels, Dialectics of Nature, FLPH 1954, p.93; MECW, Vol.25, p.363

“Dialectics is the theory of knowledge of… Marxism.”

Lenin, Philosophical Notebooks, “On the Question of Dialectics”, 1915, CW, Vol.38, p.362

“[With dialectics, the world is seen not] as a complex of ready- made things, but as a complex of processes, in which the things apparently stable…go through an uninterrupted change of coming into being and passing away, in which, in spite of all seeming accidentality and of all temporary retrogression, a progressive development asserts itself in the end…”

Engels, Feuerbach & End of Classical Ger. Philosophy,1886, MESW, p.620; MECW, Vol.26, p.384

“An exact representation of the universe, of its evolution, of the development of mankind, and of the reflection of this evolution in the minds of men, can…only be obtained by the methods of dialectics with its constant regard to the innumerable actions and reactions of life and death, of progressive or retrogressive changes.”

Engels, Anti-Duhring. FLPH 1954, p.37; MECW, Vol.25, p.24

“All successive historical systems are only transitory stages in the endless course of development of human society from the lower to the higher.”

Engels, Feuerbach & End of Classical Ger. Philosophy, 1886, MESW IP 1977, p.598; MECW, Vol.26, p.359, MESW, Vol.3, p.339

“The two basic. ..conceptions of development (evolution) are: development as decrease and increase, as repetition, and development as a unity of opposites (the division of a unity into mutually exclusive opposites and their reciprocal relation). “In the first conception of motion, self-movement, its driving force, its source, its motive remains in the shade (or this source is made external – God, subject, etc.). In the second conception the chief attention is directed precisely to knowledge of the source of ‘self’-movement.

“The first conception is lifeless, pale and dry. The second is living.”

Lenin, Philosophical Notebooks, “On the Question of Dialectics”, 1915, CW, Vol.38, p.358

“[to use dialectical method soundly] objectivity of consideration (not examples, not divergences, but the Thing-in-itself)…Firstly, if we are to have a true knowledge of an object we must look at and examine all its facets, its connections and ‘mediacies.’ That is something we cannot ever hope to achieve completely, but the rule of comprehensiveness is a safeguard against mistakes and rigidity. Secondly, dialectical logic requires that an object should be taken in development, in change, in ‘self-movement’ (as Hegel sometimes puts it)…Thirdly, a full ‘definition’ of an object must include the whole of human experience, both as a criterion of truth and a practical indicator of its connection with human wants. Fourthly, dialectical logic holds that ‘truth is always concrete, never abstract’…”

Lenin, Philosophical Notebooks, “Conspectus of Hegel’s Science of Logic”, 1914, CW, Vol.38, p.220, Vol.32, 94

“Views on social phenomena must be based upon an inexorably objective analysis of realities and the real course of development.”

Lenin, The Heritage We Renounce, 1897, CW, Vol.2, p.531

“The whole spirit of Marxism, its whole system, demands that each proposition should be considered a) only historically, b) only in connection with others, c) only in connection with the concrete experience of history.”

Lenin, Letter to Inessa Armand, Nov.30, 1916, CW, Vol. 35, p.250

“…[this approach requires] not to forget the underlying historical connection, to examine every question from the standpoint of how the given phenomenon arose in history and what were the principal stages in its development and, from the standpoint of its development, to examine what it has become today.”

Lenin, The State, July 11, 1919, CW, Vol.29, p.473

Laws of Dialectics

“Proletariat and wealth are opposites; as such they form a single whole. They are both the creations of the world of private property. The question is exactly what place each occupies in the antithesis. It is not sufficient to declare them two sides of a single whole.

“Private property as private property, as wealth, is compelled to maintain itself, and thereby its opposite, the proletariat, in existence. That is the positive side of the antithesis, self- satisfied private property.

“The proletariat, on the contrary, is compelled as proletariat to abolish itself and thereby its opposite, private property, which determines its existence, and which makes it proletariat. It is the negative side of the antithesis, its restlessness within its very self, dissolved and self-dissolving private property.”

Marx & Engels, The Holy Family, Sept.-Nov. 1844,MECW, Vol.4, pp.35- 6

“…The condition for the knowledge of all the processes of the world in their ‘self-movement’, in their spontaneous development, in their real life, is the knowledge of them as a unity of opposites. Development is the ‘struggle’ of opposites.

“…The unity (coincidence, identity, equal action) of opposites is conditional, temporary, transitory, relative. The struggle of mutually exclusive opposites is absolute, just as development and motion are absolute.

“…Dialectics in the proper sense is the study of contradiction in the very essence of objects.” (pp.253-54)

Lenin, Philosophical Notebooks: On the Question of Dialectics, 1915, CW, Vol.38, p.358-360

“In nature…qualitative changes can only occur by the quantitative addition or quantitative subtraction of matter or motion.”

Engels, Dialectics of Nature, FLPH 1954, p.84; MECW, Vol.25, p.357

“Any development, whatever its substance may be, can be represented as a series of different stages of development that are connected in such a way that one forms the negation of the other…In no sphere can one undergo a development without negating one’s previous mode of existence.”

Marx, Moralizing Criticism & Critical Morality, Oct. 1847, MECW, Vol.6, p.317

“[Negation of the negation is a] development that repeats, as it were, stages that have already been passed, but repeats them in a different way, on a higher basis.”

Lenin, Karl Marx, July-Nov. 1914, CW, Vol.21, p.54

“The kind of negation is…determined, firstly, by the general and, secondly, by the particular nature of the process…Every kind of thing therefore has a peculiar way of being negated in such a manner that it gives rise to a development, and it is just the same with every kind of conception or idea.”

Engels, Anti-Duhring, FLPH, 1954, p.196; MECW, Vol.25, pp.131-32

“From living perception to abstract thought, and from this to practice, – such is the dialectical path of the cognition of truth, of the cognition of objective reality.”

Lenin, Philosophical Notebooks, “Conspectus of Hegel’s Science of Logic”, 1914, CW, Vol.38, p.171

“Save through sensations, we can know nothing either of the forms of matter or of the forms of motion; sensations are evoked by the action of matter in motion upon our sense-organs.”

Lenin, Materialism & Empirio-Criticism, 1908, CW, Vol.14, p.302

“To regard our sensations as images of the external world, to recognize objective truth, to hold the materialist theory of knowledge – these are all one and the same thing.”

Lenin, Materialism & Empirio-Criticism, 1908, CW, Vol.14, p.130

“From the standpoint of modern materialism, i.e., Marxism, the limits of approximation of our knowledge to objective, absolute truth are historically conditional, but the existence of such truth is unconditional, and the fact that we are approaching nearer to it is also unconditional.”

Lenin, Materialism & Empirio-Criticism, 1908, CW, Vol.14, p.136

“The standpoint of life, of practice, should be first and fundamental in the theory of knowledge. And it inevitably leads to materialism…”

Lenin, Materialism & Empirio-Criticism, 1908, CW, Vol.14, p.142

“Thought proceeding from the concrete to the abstract – provided it is correct -…does not get away from the truth but comes closer to it. The abstraction of matter, of a law of nature, the abstraction of value, etc., in short, all scientific (correct, serious, not absurd) abstractions reflect nature more deeply, truly and completely.”

Lenin, Philosophical Notebooks, “Conspectus of Hegel’s Science of Logic”, 1914, CW, Vol.38, p.171

“The concrete concept is concrete because it is a synthesis of many definitions, thus representing the unity of diverse aspects. It appears therefore in reasoning as a summing-up, a result, and not as the starting point, although it is the real point of origin, and thus also the point of origin of perception and imagination. The first procedure attenuates meaningful images to abstract definitions, the second leads from abstract definitions by way of reasoning to the reproduction of the concrete situation.” Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy,

Aug.1857, IP 1970, p.206; 1. Production, Consumption, Distribution, Exchange, Circulation,MECW, Vol.28, p.38

“[Emphasizing the unity of analysis and synthesis] The union of analysis and synthesis – the break-down of the separate parts and the totality, the summation of these parts.”

Lenin, Philosophical Notebooks, “Conspectus of Hegel’s Science of Logic”, 1914, CW, Vol.38, p.221

“Induction and deduction belong together as necessarily as synthesis and analysis. Instead of one-sidedly lauding one to the skies at the expense of the other, we should seek to apply each of them in its place, and that can only be done by bearing in mind that they belong together, that they supplement each other.”

Engels, Dialectics of Nature, IP, 1940, p.204; MECW, Vol.25, p.508

“In every comparison a likeness is drawn in regard to only one aspect or several aspects of the objects or notions compared, while the other aspects are tentatively and with reservation abstracted.”

Lenin, On Confounding Politics with Pedagogics, June 1905, CW, Vol.8, p.454

By James Thompson

Although the background to the tragic events in Arizona of 1/8/11 is still unfolding, some facts appear fairly clear.

Congresswoman Giffords is fighting for her life in an Arizona hospital after a shooting incident in Tucson. While attempting to meet with her constituents in a very public forum outside a grocery store, a 22 year old man approached her with a semi-automatic pistol and critically wounded her as well as killing Federal Judge John Roll, a 9 year old child and killing and wounding many others.

Giffords, a Democrat, was also the first Jewish person to be elected to public office in Arizona. Her office was vandalized immediately after she voted for the landmark health care legislation sponsored by President Obama and viciously opposed by right wingers across the country. Sarah Palin had put Gifford’s district on the “crosshairs” on her website as well as 20 other Democrats, but pulled this posting down after the Congresswoman was critically wounded. Judge John Roll, a Republican, was killed by the assailant’s bullets and he had drawn the ire of the Republican right wing for some of his progressive rulings.

The American people are not as stupid as the right wing seems to think. For years now the mainstream
TV airwaves have been filled with the images of red faced, ranting, right wing commentators calling for all manner of violence and assault on anyone and any organization that does not agree with them. Indeed, some have advocated the violent overthrow of the U.S. Government if they do not get their way. These hate filled messages have now taken a very fatal toll.

Is it that important that working people should not have access to health care that these people should be wounded and/or killed? Are the interests of the wealthy more important than the lives of public figures and little children? Should racism and hatred continue to permeate our culture?

It is important to analyze this important historical event and recognize the obvious racism, to include anti-semitism. Racism, including anti-semitism is a horrible “pollutant” to our country and our socio-economic system as former CPUSA chairman, Gus Hall, used to say. The vile ravings of these well paid commentators are the fuel to the fire of ugly violence.

It is time to put a stop to this horrible scourge.

We can do it if the people unite and demand legislation which would outlaw advocating violence as well as public displays of hatred based on race, political views, gender, immigration status or sexual orientation. Advocating white supremacy as well as anti-semitism and male chauvinism should be a crime punishable by law. Use of racial slurs should also be punishable by law.

If Nazi Germany had been bound by such laws, perhaps the Holocaust would never have happened. If such laws had been in effect in this country perhaps we would never have seen the lynchings, persecution of the jews and discrimination against women, homosexuals and various ethnic groups to include arabs and Asians. Perhaps this horrible tragedy would never have happened had there been legislation outlawing racism and violence.

Violence and racism have no place in a democracy. Although Free Speech is important in a democracy, Free Speech should not include Hate Speech.

PHill1917@comcast.net

By James Thompson

A Texas judge sentenced former U.S. Congressperson Tom DeLay to 3 years in prison for conspiring to launder and direct some $190,000 in corporate contributions to Texas Republican candidates in 2002. DeLay was also known as the “Hammer” for his unscrupulous misuse of power in manipulating the U.S. Congress to uphold the interests of the most wealthy in this country.

Many Texans are asking “What took you so long?” and would just like to see the disgraced Congressperson get his just due.

His attorneys are, of course, appealing his conviction.

Texans and other interested parties will just have to wait as the justice system carefully considers what is the least punishment they can mete out to Mr. DeLay without arousing the working people who were his victims when he was in Congress.

Some may ask why it is that such a corporate criminal gets such lenient treatment by the justice system when poor working people get the book thrown at them for minor offenses. Perhaps we should ask “what is the purpose of the criminal justice system?” Is it to protect working people or corporate interests?

PHill1917@comcast.net

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