By James Thompson

Revisionism and opportunism are tactics employed by the bourgeoisie to dilute and ultimately destroy the contributions of Marxism-Leninism to the progress of humankind. They use a variety of arguments to reduce the power of the working class and subvert its efforts to gain power in the form of a state which operates in the interests of workers.

In the past, the arguments went that bourgeois democracy eliminates the existence of classes, so that there is no more class struggle.

History, and particularly recent history has taught us that nothing could be further from reality.

More recently, revisionist arguments take the direction that it is hopeless to fight the capitalists at this stage, so that progressives must align themselves with the lesser of the evils expressed in capitalist political struggles.

Revisionists have historically argued for dropping the concepts of a vanguard party of the working class and the dictatorship of the proletariat, i.e. the coming to power of the working class. Revisionists have also historically argued for dropping “Marxism-Leninism.”

The idea seems to be that if concessions are made to the bourgeois, they won’t be so hard on working people. Revisionists forget the old working class saying, “Give them an inch and they will take a mile.”

Obama’s many efforts to negotiate and make concessions to the right wing have shown us where that leads. Chamberlain’s concessions to Hitler took a similar course.

Lenin offers these thoughts on revisionism in the 1973 edition of his Collected Works, Volume 15, pages 29-39:

In the sphere of politics, revisionism did really try to revise the foundation of Marxism, namely, the doctrine of the class struggle. Political freedom, democracy and universal suffrage remove the ground for the class struggle—we were told—and render untrue the old proposition of the Communist Manifesto that the working men have no country. For, they said, since the “will of the majority” prevails in a democracy, one must neither regard the state as an organ of class rule, nor reject alliances with the progressive, social-reform bourgeoisie against the reactionaries.

It cannot be disputed that these arguments of the revisionists amounted to a fairly well-balanced system of views, namely, the old and well-known liberal-bourgeois views. The liberals have always said that bourgeois parliamentarism destroys classes and class divisions, since the right to vote and the right to participate in the government of the country are shared by all citizens without distinction. The whole history of Europe in the second half of the nineteenth century, and the whole history of the Russian revolution in the early twentieth, clearly show how absurd such views are. Economic distinctions are not mitigated but aggravated and intensified under the freedom of “democratic” capitalism. Parliamentarism does not eliminate, but lays bare the innate character even of the most democratic bourgeois republics as organs of class oppression. By helping to enlighten and to organise immeasurably wider masses of the population than those which previously took an active part in political events, parliamentarism does not make for the elimination of crises and political revolutions, but for the maximum intensification of civil war during such revolutions. The events in Paris in the spring of 1871 and the events in Russia in the winter of 1905 showed as clearly as could be how inevitably this intensification comes about. The French bourgeoisie without a moment’s hesitation made a deal with the enemy of the whole nation, with the foreign army which had ruined its country, in order to crush the proletarian movement. Whoever does not understand the inevitable inner dialectics of parliamentarism and bourgeois democracy—which leads to an even sharper decision of the argument by mass violence than formerly—will never be able on the basis of this parliamentarism to conduct propaganda and agitation consistent in principle, really preparing the working-class masses for victorious participation in such “arguments”. The experience of alliances, agreements and blocs with the social-reform liberals in the West and with the liberal reformists (Cadets) in the Russian revolution, has convincingly shown that these agreements only blunt the consciousness of the masses, that they do not enhance but weaken the actual significance of their struggle, by linking fighters with elements who are least capable of fighting and most vacillating and treacherous. Millerandism in France—the biggest experiment in applying revisionist political tactics on a wide, a really national scale—has provided a practical appraisal of revisionism that will never be forgotten by the proletariat all over the world.

A natural complement to the economic and political tendencies of revisionism was its attitude to the ultimate aim of the socialist movement. “The movement is everything, the ultimate aim is nothing”—this catch-phrase of Bernstein’s expresses the substance of revisionism better than many long disquisitions. To determine its conduct from case to case, to adapt itself to the events of the day and to the chopping and changing of petty politics, to forget the primary interests of the proletariat and the basic features of the whole capitalist system, of all capitalist evolution, to sacrifice these primary interests for the real or assumed advantages of the moment—such is the policy of revisionism. And it patently follows from the very nature of this policy that it may assume an infinite variety of forms, and that every more or less “new” question, every more or less unexpected and unforeseen turn of events, even though it change the basic line of development only to an insignificant degree and only for the briefest period, will always inevitably give rise to one variety of revisionism or another.
The inevitability of revisionism is determined by its class roots in modern society. Revisionism is an international phenomenon. No thinking socialist who is in the least informed can have the slightest doubt that the relation between the orthodox and the Bernsteinians in Germany, the Guesdists and the Jaurèsists (and now particularly the Broussists) in France, the Social Democratic Federation and the Independent Labour Party in Great Britain, Brouckère and Vandervelde in Belgium, the Integralists and the Reformists in Italy, the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks in Russia, is everywhere essentially similar, notwithstanding the immense variety of national conditions and historical factors in the present state of all these countries. In reality, the “division” within the present international socialist movement is now proceeding along the samelines in all the various countries of the world, which testifies to a tremendous advance compared with thirty or forty years ago, when heterogeneous trends in the various countries were struggling within the one international socialist movement. And that “revisionism from the left” which has taken shape in the Latin countries as“revolutionary syndicalism”,[4] is also adapting itself to Marxism,“amending” it: Labriola in Italy and Lagardelle in France frequently appeal from Marx who is understood wrongly to Marx who is understood rightly.

We cannot stop here to analyse the ideological content of this revisionism, which as yet is far from having developed to the same extent as opportunist revisionism: it has not yet become international, has not yet stood the test of a single big practical battle with a socialist party in any single country. We confine ourselves therefore to that “revisionism from the right” which was described above.

Wherein lies its inevitability in capitalist society? Why is it more profound than the differences of national peculiarities and of degrees of capitalist development? Because in every capitalist country, side by side with the proletariat, there are always broad strata of the petty bourgeoisie, small proprietors. Capitalism arose and is constantly arising out of small production. A number of new “middle strata” are inevitably brought into existence again and again by capitalism (appendages to the factory, work at home, small workshops scattered all over the country to meet the requirements of big industries, such as the bicycle and automobile industries, etc.). These new small producers are just as inevitably being cast again into the ranks of the proletariat. It is quite natural that the petty-bourgeois world-outlook should again and again crop up in the ranks of the broad workers’ parties. It is quite natural that this should be so and always will be so, right up to the changes of fortune that will take place in the proletarian revolution. For it would be a profound mistake to think that the “complete” proletarianisation of the majority of the population is essential for bringing about such a revolution. What we now frequently experience only in the domain of ideology, namely, disputes over theoretical amendments to Marx; what now crops up in practice only over individual side issues of the labour movement, as tactical differences with the revisionists and splits on this basis—is bound to be experienced by the working class on an incomparably larger scale when the proletarian revolution will sharpen all disputed issues, will focus all differences on points which are of the most immediate importance in determining the conduct of the masses, and will make it necessary in the heat of the fight to distinguish enemies from friends, and to cast out bad allies in order to deal decisive blows at the enemy.

The ideological struggle waged by revolutionary Marxism against revisionism at the end of the nineteenth century is but the prelude to the great revolutionary battles of the proletariat, which is marching forward to the complete victory of its cause despite all the waverings and weaknesses of the petty bourgeoisie.

The complete article can be read at http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1908/apr/03.htm

Gus Hall instructs us on “Opportunism” in his book Working Class USA: The Power and the Movement (p. 95):

“In a period of ebb in social, political and economic struggles it is not always easy to judge what are necessary adjustments in tactics. And it is not easy to separate tactics that correctly reflect the new problems, the new relationship of forces of the ebb period, from actions that are motivated by an opportunistic retreat from the difficulties of struggle of such a period. What adds to the difficulty is that there are pressures for both.

Opportunistic retreat and a shift in tactics appear simultaneously because they are reactions to the same realities. It is further complicated by the fact that in most cases the paths of opportunistic retreat starts with very necessary and correct steps of tactical adjustment. Where one ends and the other begins is at times very difficult to determine because there also are periods when one individual can reflect a mixture of both and also because the rationale for a retreat often sounds very much like the rationale for a tactical shift.

The key word in determining one from the other is “struggle.” A correct tactical adjustment is not a shift away from struggle. It is a shift of tactics for and in struggle. Tactics after all have meaning only when they are an integral part of the struggle. On the other hand an opportunistic retreat is an edging away from struggle. It is a process of giving up positions, making unnecessary concessions, and all this without struggle. A correct tactical shift is to find a new path to struggle, while an opportunistic retreat is a way of avoiding struggle, and giving up positions, thinking this will placate the enemy.”

Gus Hall continues on page 228:

“In essence, opportunism is a policy of making unprincipled concessions to the capitalist class. Opportunism is always related in one way or another to the class struggle, which is not surprising because that is the hub of the relationship between the two classes. That is where the capitalist class presses for concessions. Opportunists invariably soften their stand on the class struggle and from that point onward there is a time of retrogression.

To dilute the concept of the class struggle is to downgrade the role of the working class. From that point on the idea of socialism becomes a conversation piece; the role of the working class in the struggle for and building of socialism is diluted to nothingness. The concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat is dropped, not because the words can be misused but because the concept of workingclass rule is objectionable to the capitalist class and those influenced by it. And, as is the case with at least one Communist Party, the opportunistic decay has reached the point of dropping Marxism-Leninism. When a Party leadership regresses to that level, perhaps dropping the claim to Marxism-Leninism is simply a reflection of the truth.

The idea that the working class is not able to develop intellectuals from its own ranks is turned into a coverup for anti-workingclass concepts.

In some cases this weakness leads to situations where middle-class, professional intellectuals tend to take over and hog the leadership of Communist parties in capitalist countries. Often they use the words “class struggle” and “working class” as clichés, but take no steps to make it possible for the workingclass cadre of these parties to be a factor in policy decisions.
Such leaders are not willing to accept the leading role of the working class in the field of thought or in their parties. They dilute the concept of class struggle. They downgrade the historic role of the working class. They eliminate the working class in the struggle for socialism and they do not think the working class is able to produce an intellectual.

The time has come to bury the idea that the working class is unable to think. In fact, Marxism-Leninism is a science so closely related to the rise of the working class movement that to eliminate the working class as a basic influence and participant in the further development of the science is like eliminating the heart in a living being.

The historic role of the working class was clearly placed by Marx and Engels: ‘Before the proletariat fights out its victories on the barricades and in the lines of battle, it gives notice of its impending rule with a series of intellectual victories.’”

Since the 99% movement is confronting the interests of capital, it is inevitable that it will face the cancers of revisionism and opportunism as all working class movements do.

By James Thompson

Racism is a tool which has been used by the capitalist class to exploit and oppress the working class. Racism has served the capitalists well in their efforts to suppress the wages and benefits of working people and increase the profits of the capitalists. Racism defines certain ethnic groups as “inferior” and this serves to justify the reduction of wages and benefits of these “inferior” workers. This is the most effective means by which the capitalists can increase their profits. A similar tool may be found in sexism. Sexism defines certain gender groups as inferior and this serves to justify the reduction of wages and benefits of women and LGBT people in order to increase profits.

Chauvinism, as we can see, only serves the interests of the capitalists. Chauvinism is used by the capitalists effectively to split and divide working people so that the interests of the capitalists can be easily won. Chauvinism serves as a distraction from the struggle against the capitalists and the capitalist system.

Here is Gus Hall’s 1975 report to the National Committee of the CPUSA as recorded in his classic book Fighting Racism:

“Monopoly’s Hammer Against All Workers

The economic crisis magnifies and brings into sharp focus all the contradictions of capitalism.
This is a moment to lay bare the class roots of economic and political policies. The crisis brings out the cruel and inhuman character of monopoly capitalism.

The present plant closings, layoffs and elimination of second and third shifts in many industries highlight the 200 year racial pattern of last to be hired and first to be fired. For proof of racist patterns one has only to note the overwhelming number of Black workers in many factory departments where the work is dirtiest and hardest, the large number of Black workers in the most dangerous occupations, and the greater number of white workers in skilled and higher paid jobs. Because of all this, the economic crisis is steeper and will last longer for Black, Puerto Rican and Chicano workers.

It does not take a depression to convince the victims of racism that they are oppressed and exploited. They are aware of this every moment of their lives. The problem is not to convince Black workers that they are victims of racism. The real problem is to convince white workers that so long as they are carriers of racism, so long as they acquiesce in or support racist practices against black workers, they are themselves victims of racism.

The crisis makes it easier to prove that the source of racism is the capitalist system of exploitation for corporate profit. The crisis presents new possibilities to convince white workers that racism is against their interests.

This is one of those moments when racism can be dealt a devastating blow. To land a blow, the struggle against racism must be integrated into the fabric of the struggles and issues arising from the economic crisis.

Certain elementary truths must be repeated at every turn of events. The class nature of racism is one. Racism is an ideological poison that induces white workers to act against their own interests. It is acceptance of rules set by the class enemy. It is letting the enemy con you into believing that you are better than your fellow workers. Racism is a device, a means by which corporations make extra profits from the work of the racially oppressed. It is also a means of increasing the rate of exploitation of the whole working class, squeezing higher profits from all workers. This is the starting point, the foundation upon which the struggle against racism can be built.

The decadent rich of the Roman Empire entertained themselves by having gladiators fight each other. It is not so different now. Wealthy US capitalists enrich themselves by having workers fight each other over jobs, housing and education, and now over layoffs and seniority. It is a basic truth that so long as workers fight each other they will not be in the strongest position to fight the bosses. So long as white workers support policies and practices of discrimination based on race against their fellow workers, there will be no class unity.

Unity is possible only on terms of equality, based on the old maxim that ‘an injury to one is an injury to all.’ This is a fundamental starting point of a working-class outlook. The idea is elementary but basic.

White workers must draw some special lessons from this economic crisis. One such lesson is that past compliance with racist practices against their Black, Puerto Rican and Chicano brothers and sisters in the unions and shops has not given them job security. Millions of white workers are being laid off without any ceremony or compensation, despite their acquiescence to racism. They are joining Black workers on the unemployment lines. Support of racism has not stopped the escalation of prices and rents. On the contrary, their rents and taxes keep going up.
Their real wages, too, are cut by inflation; they too work in unsafe conditions; most white workers are victims of the same deteriorating urban conditions. While racism divides the workers, the corporations speed up production. The production line does not slow down where white workers toil.

Racism is one of the key factors making it possible for US corporations to maintain the highest rate of exploitation and highest profits in the world.

The gap between the average annual income of Black and white households has now reached the astronomical figure of $4640. Multiply this by the total number of Black households, and it is easy to see that this superexploitation results in something like $35 billion in extra profits each year. These super profits go into the coffers of the corporations which oppress the entire working class. By not fighting racism, white workers help the corporations pocket these extra profits. However, the extra profit monopoly capital rakes in as a result of racist policies and practices is greater than $35 billion.

The steel industry is a good example. Wages are based on job classification. Classifications one to eight pay between four dollars and five dollars per hour. Higher classifications pay around seven dollars per hour. There is no reasonable explanation why some jobs are in one or another classification. The system is a perfect structure for racist policies. Most Black workers are in the one to eight classifications. The Black workers-and also the white workers-in these classifications work for $4-$5 per hour. This is clearly a case where the steel corporations get extra profits from racist exploitation of Black workers, and also to a degree from white workers. It would serve the interests of white and Black workers to join in a struggle to put an end to the racist classification structure.

Increased exploitation and racist patterns in the steel industry are closely related to the toadying, class collaborationist policies pursued by Abel and his gang in the leadership of the steel union.

Workers in the North and West of our country face the old problem of runaway shops moving to the South. Corporations move their operations to Southern states because of the 200-year-old wage differential between North and South. Southern wage scales are lower because Southern workers are largely unorganized. They are unorganized mainly because of the influence of racism among white workers.

Because of racism, class consciousness is at a low level. There are few trade unions, which are a basic requirement for a struggle to wipe out the regional wage differential, which in turn would then put an end to runaway shops.

The Southern wage differential is a source of extra profits from Black and also white workers. Lower wages are paid both to Black and white workers in the South.

A new problem US workers face is the transfer of production facilities to lower wage areas of the world by multinational corporations.

The dual culprits are imperialism and racism. The winner in both cases is the corporations.

Many changes are taking place in the South. There is significant progress towards working-class unity. Black and white workers are uniting in local trade unions. But even during the last months there have been elections in some big unorganized shops where the issue has been between a union and no union. The votes have been close. But in a number of cases the workers voted for no union. Racism still blinds many white workers to their class interests. When white workers vote against unions, they are victims of their own racism.

What is the working-class approach to resolving the problems that have surfaced during the economic crisis? The “gladiators” must unite and turn the struggle against the corporate monsters. The working class must take up the battle against all layoffs. This must include the demand for a shorter workweek with no cut in pay. It must include a prohibition on the closing of plants. Let union committees run the plants! Workers must fight to establish a limit to speedup. There must be a united struggle for government programs to build houses and apartments, schools and hospitals. Such programs would not only create jobs, but would provide decent housing for every family, quality, integrated schools and hospital beds for all who need them.

Such a struggle is in the interest of the entire working class. It would turn the struggle against the real foe-monopoly capitalism.

This would create the basis for unity, but it would still not eliminate racist inequality.
In order to wipe out the effects of racism, white workers must join in the fight for special adjustments. There must be special steps taken to erase inequalities due to past hiring and promotion practices. Workers must fight to end the maneuvering by the bosses and many trade union leaders to bypass the Fairfield decision. They must fight to reject any “consent agreements” which leave overall racist patterns intact. In order to wipe out discrimination in housing, all workers must fight for a government program that will make a decent house or apartment a reality for every family, wherever they choose to live. In order to carry out such adjustments it is necessary to work out concrete steps that meet the problems in each situation. How to approach these adjustments is a key question in molding working-class unity.

The economic crisis has brought these questions into sharp focus. The capitalist establishment is definitely not interested in their solution. They continue their racist policies. They rejoice in the fact that layoffs are creating new obstacles to labor unity and stimulating new racist attitudes and divisions.

Next year will mark the 200th year since the people of the colonies declared their independence from British colonial rule. It will also be the 200th year of oppression of the Black community in this country-first under slavery and then under a special system of discrimination and ghettoization. The question is not only to end discrimination. It is necessary to establish true equality, to wipe out the effects of 200 years of discrimination. There must be special adjustments to compensate for the centuries of racist oppression.

In industry, adjustments must be made in hiring, training and promotion. The economic depression has made this question more urgent.

These are not simple matters. But it is easier to convince white workers of the need for special adjustments when it is placed in the overall framework of the struggle against monopoly capitalism. When the overall struggle is against the class enemy; when the basic demands go in the direction of making the corporations pay; then it is easier to help white workers see their class interests in the fight against racism. Then it is easier to help white workers see the need for special adjustments that also call on them to make personal adjustments.

On the basis of this working-class approach to the struggle against racism in the economic structure, it is possible to simultaneously take on the ideological monster of racism. Once white workers see racism as a tool of the corporations, a means to exploit the working class as a whole, they will see racism as their enemy as well.

This struggle against racism is very much in keeping with the patterns of world developments. Peoples throughout the world have made great strides in repelling racism. The United Nations resolution condemning racism in all its forms reflects the growing strength of the antiracist forces-in the first place the countries of socialism.

The economic crisis of world capitalism brings into sharp focus the fact that there are no economic crises in the socialist countries. Socialism eliminates the causes of crises. The socialist countries stand out in sharp contrast to capitalism because they have not only erased racism, but they have destroyed its roots. The socialist countries are setting an example of life without race prejudice or race hatred.

Struggle is a stimulant of thought. A confrontation compels one to ask: Who is my enemy? What is the ideology, the politics of my enemy? The answers lead workers to a deeper class consciousness. Struggle forces workers to think in terms of class unity, and to recognize obstacles to unity, such as racism and class collaboration.

Each experience with class battle is a spark, a spur to class consciousness. But left to itself the spark never ignites into a flame, the tendency never reaches its potential. By itself the process is one of trial and error.

The crisis makes working-class unity an absolute and urgent necessity. The main obstacle to this unity is racism. It is the most effective weapon that monopoly capital has against the United States working-class. This is the moment to uproot, to reject this poison brewed in the ideological cauldrons of Big Business.”

By Gus Hall

Following is the conclusion statement by Gus Hall to the First Ideological Conference of the Communist Party USA, July 14-16, 1989

Conclusion

“From the beginning we said that ideology is not memorizing formulas. It is a way of thinking, a way of responding, a way of reacting almost reflexively. It is the accumulated rich essence of our theory, philosophy and history, our science of Marxism-Leninism and our experiences in the class struggle.

Our ideology is not stale or lifeless. In the ways of ideology, it reflects and responds to changes in the class struggle.

Read more »

By Raskonikov Radek

The internet has opened up new revolutionary potentialities, unknown to the proletarian movement of the past. The internet is one of the powerful weapons of the working class, both in furthering the ideological struggle and building unity amongst the People. In this essay, I will consider the revolutionary possibilities that the internet has opened up in the struggle for socialism and the fight against capitalism.

One of the fundamentally most important elements in any revolutionary movement is that it has an international character to it. International solidarity means that the national working class is united with the international proletariat in the struggle for socialism and the abolition of capitalism. The internet has made it possible to unite workers across the planet, in even the most remote (and often repressive) places on the globe. Through the internet, communist parties can easily correspond, share tactics, and work together to build an international movement. Communist newspapers, which record the current state of the proletarian struggle in different local areas, can be made accessible to workers across the world. This makes it easier for communists to learn about the current state of struggle in different places, directly through the working class organ. For example, through the internet, I can find out the state of the proletarian movement in Greece by directly accessing their newspaper. I do not even have to know Greek because Google has a translation application that makes it possible to get the sense of the newspaper with the click of a button. Because the internet is a global community, many communist party organs frequently publish their important articles in English. One of our comrades recently translated an article for the Dutch communist newspaper Manifest, which immediately opened up a correspondence with the NCPN. In the past, one would have had to write a letter to the KKE just in order to find out the state of the political struggle in Greece. It would take weeks to get a response back because it would first take a long time for the letter to reach Greece, then it would have to be translated, and would take another week for the letter to return to America. Since most communist parties today have multi-lingual comrades, it becomes very easy for communist parties to correspond with each other. Hence, the internet makes it possible to find out directly through a proletarian press the state of the workers struggle, instead of through the bourgeois media.

Another revolutionary potential of the internet is that it makes it easy for local communist parties to establish a newspaper. In the past, it would have cost a lot of money and time to print a communist newspaper and it would have been very difficult to distribute. Today, by means of the internet, a local communist party can have a fully functioning online newspaper and inform workers of the local issues facing the movement. By means of Twitter, Facebook, and other online networking sites, it becomes very easy to distribute the online newspaper and reach people who never would have heard of the Communist Party otherwise. A local online e-newspaper makes it easy to recruit new members into a local collective of a CP, and to inform communists and activists of local political activities. Mailing lists even strengthen this, for with email, one can find out an hour before an important protest, demonstration, or rally is going to take place. One of our comrades recently protested against the tyrannical Republican, Sarah Palin; he found out about this protest thirty minutes before it was going to happen! A mailing list thus makes it very easy to communicate local, national, and international political activities with great ease.

The internet, however, has yet another revolutionary potential. With YouTube, it is now possible for a proletarian media agency to share videos of the current political struggle. Workers and communists can follow the recent protests in Greece, the revolutionary movement in Nepal, and the nationwide May Day demonstrations against the Arizona legislation across the globe on YouTube. In the past, this would not have been possible, for a vision into Greece or Nepal would only have been possible through the bourgeois lens. Today, communists themselves are making their own videos and showing precisely the unity of working class and the fight against capitalism.

The internet also makes all the important Marxist texts accessible to everyone with the click of the button. The fantastic Marxists Internet Archive, developed by a few communists in Australia, contains every single important Marxist text in dozens of different languages. People who never would have read Lenin, for example, in an isolated place such as Tajikistan, can now easily access the collected works of Lenin in their own native language. Though ideas by themselves do not change the world, they certainly can plant the seed in a person, especially someone in an oppressed country, to get involved in the struggle for liberation. Someone living in a violent country such as Sudan might be inspired to build a communist movement if they read Marx’s Capital and Lenin’s State and Revolution. Reading Marx and Lenin might make it clear where the root of the violence and oppression lies, so that action can be taken towards changing the world. There might be no active communist party in an oppressed region and it might even be illegal, but the internet at least opens up the possibility of building an opposition to oppressive regimes that hold down the workers and make the rich richer.

The Marxist Internet Archive, however, has other functions which unite the working class. One of our comrades started a Marxist Reading Group (his website is: www.marxistreadinggroup.webs.com) a year and a half ago. The Marxist Internet Archive has made it possible for the MRG to study every single important text in Marxist thought, precisely because all the great Marxist classics are made available to everyone. Each week, the group decides on a new text, and only has to go to the Marxist Internet Archive to download and print it. In the past, it would have been much harder to organize a reading group because the texts would not have been accessible to all. They would have had to be purchased, which certainly is beyond the budget of most working people. The Marxist Internet Archive is thus truly a revolutionary movement, in that it makes public the entire history of Marxist thought. A further merit of the internet, in regards to the Marxist Reading Group, is that it makes it easy to correspond with the entire group. The organizer of the group can send out a simple email to everyone, indicating changes in the location, time, or reading, and send reminders with ease. Participants can easily find out when and where the group is meeting, simply by visiting the website. The internet thus makes it possible for the first time in history to share the theoretical, practical, and historical texts of Marxism with everyone.

The internet diminishes the distance between countries and unites the international working class. Communists must not be afraid to fully utilize the internet, taking advantage of all its revolutionary tools. It is crucial that workers and communists educate each other how to use the internet, how to make media, how to run online newspaper blogs, how to use email, and how to post videos online. Communists today can only fight against the bourgeois media, against Fox News and CNN, against the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, if they fully utilize the internet. Communists today can only build the international working class movement and unite the People across the planet if they know how to maneuver in cyberspace. Whether communists only achieve reforms today, or go beyond mere reforms towards a proletarian revolution, will depend on how well they know how to use the internet. The internet is thus a very important element in the revolutionary struggle for socialism and fight against capitalism.

By Raskonikov Radek

The university in capitalist society is a battleground for the class struggle. The struggle has become more intense due to the dramatic rises in the cost of a college education. The structures of capitalist societies are imposed on university faculty and students in a manner similar to that of the factory. The web of the influence of corporate and government (e.g. CIA and military) money is as intense as it is pervasive.

Michael Parenti in his book Against empire writes that in “colleges and universities can be found faculty and administrators…who argue with all seriousness that a university is an independent community of neutral scholars, a place apart from the immediate interests of this world, a temple of knowledge. In reality, many universities have direct investments in corporate America in the form of substantial stock portfolios. By purchase and persuasion, our institutions of higher learning are wedded to institutions of higher earning. In this respect, universities differ little from such other social institutions as the media, the arts, the church, schools, and various professions, all of which falsely claim independence from a dominant class perspective.”

Although the university produces no tangible commodities, it serves the interests of capitalism nonetheless. The university serves to train students in capitalist ideology as well as imparting some useful skills which the students use after graduation to promote themselves and fight for better wages. From the point of view of capitalism, the function of the university is to produce students who, once graduated, are highly trained workers that can influence the production process towards more efficiency and higher production rates. From the point of view of the students and faculty, the function of the university is to increase their wages. Herein we find the class struggle.

However, in the process of training, there are some twists in the road which are unexpected from the capitalist’s point of view. Some students in the process of training acquire important skills in organization as well as critical thinking. This can lead to unwanted (from the capitalist’s point of view) increases in the level of consciousness of the student.

Some students, infected with these intellectual skills and cognizant of their class membership, go on to organize and influence other students and workers by educating them in the nature of the class struggle. Such students use their university acquired skills to fight for a better world. This is, indeed, chilling to the capitalist.

The class struggle is recapitulated within the university at many levels. The drive to constantly increase profit inherent in the capitalist system is no stranger to the university. In recent years, tuition hikes have reached astronomical levels. The result is that only the wealthiest students, i.e. sons and daughters of capitalists, can comfortably afford to attend the university. The rest must mortgage their working lives to banks by taking out students loans that will leave them penniless while they serve their labor up to the corporations.

The corporations hire “the best and the brightest” to deliver sledgehammer blows to the wages of university trained and student loan burdened “professional” workers. It is no wonder that students and workers are so angry. We have seen their anger blossom recently in California over high tuition and in the last few days with violence erupting in London.

Why is all of this happening now? In the past, the socialist countries, led by the USSR, championed universal education. Capitalist countries fought against this, but eventually had to capitulate and provide some minimal structures to provide education to people of all classes who qualified for university education. Now the “evil empire” has been vanquished and capitalist countries have no such motivation to improve the lot of working people. They have chosen to get back to the business of the class struggle, which is to thwart the desires of working people to better themselves and their children. The hammer the capitalists are using is tuition hikes. The anvil is the students.

The class struggle is also carried out with a vengeance in the day to day operations of the university. There is a micro-class system which operates in the university itself. It is apparent at multiple levels. This microcosm of capitalist relations mirrors the relationship between the classes in general capitalist society.

Let’s start with the top of the heap. The university administrators are paid thugs whose job is to keep students and faculty in line and to appeal to the corporations and government for funding. They accomplish their mission by employing repression against the students, faculty and staff, much like the bosses in a factory. Faculty who do not toe the capitalist line are severely punished. This is documented and explicated in Michael Parenti’s book Against empire. He shows how faculty who deviate from the corporate line are marginalized and alienated from their work. Anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist faculty are typically passed up for tenure or not hired in the first place. Such faculty are punished in many ways to include exclusion from grant funding, less desirable teaching assignments and many other brutal assaults on their academic integrity.

The next level of class differentiation is between faculty and students. The faculty, fighting their own struggle against the university, typically embrace the illusion that they are superior to the students because of their position in the university, i.e. higher pay, greater privileges, and rank. Many students buy into this model and view themselves as inferior because of the factors mentioned above. Many students adopt a position of submission as a survival mechanism but this only serves to quash their creativity. They “go along to get along” and the system rewards mediocrity while punishing creativity.

There is another class of workers at any university. These include support staff, both administrative and custodial/maintenance. These workers are frequently ignored and forgotten but are what keeps the university running and comfortable for the faculty, administration and students. These workers have been subject to the pressures for wage suppression and often suffer the most at the hands of the hired guns in university administration and Boards of Regents. Some workers at the Texas Southern University, for example, have not had a substantial wage increase in 5+ years.

In reality, the faculty, administration and students objectively belong to the same class in that they do not own the university. The wages of faculty, students and administrators are comparable when contrasted with the profits garnished by the wealthy elite. If a student makes $5000 a year, a faculty member makes $40,000 a year and an administrator makes $250,000 a year these wages are closer than those wealthy elite who make $1,000,000,000 a year off of investments for which they do not expend a single hour of labor in a year (or many years).

The professors, just like other workers, are forced to perform the same job until their retirement or death. They might have a great, new, creative idea or desire to teach something else and find that the university administration does not allow it. After 20 years of giving the same old grades and reading the same boring papers, they become dull and bitter, and no longer approach their subject with the same passion. The university, because of its class structure, necessarily fights against those who oppose the class structure. Capital will crush anything it sees as dangerous and develop ideological restraints to opposition. Professors become submissive in order to survive in the repressive environment.

For students also, being submissive is the very essence of being-a-good-student in capitalist society. Subjectively one might be a hard worker and passionately engage a subject, but objectively only those who are submissive are good students in the eyes of Capital. In the classroom, especially in graduate school, the student learns how to put on a mask and please other people, namely the professor. If they do not learn this skill, they may not pass the course. Being very submissive in the classroom, never thinking for oneself and entirely submitting to the popular opinion prevailing in the classroom will get almost every student an A. Yet in getting a good grade, the student has been forced to give up their freedom and is thus in a relation of domination. In the capitalist university, the student is given their freedom of speech on condition that they do not utilize this freedom. The moment the student chooses to speak freely and openly, to express their creative potential and share their own ideas, they will be crushed by Capital and fail the course.

The university is an appendage of the State, for it reproduces the ruling class ideology in all its different forms. It enforces the entire prevailing class-based ideology and sustains its dominance. It is precisely the social relations created by a bourgeois dictatorship that are reproduced within the university. The reproduction of ideology already begins in grade-school, but does not exercise its full power until one begins studying at the university.

There is only one solution to the horrendous state of college education: a revolutionary process that abolishes the bourgeois dictatorship and establishes a new society based on common ownership of the means of production. Since there is currently no revolutionary situation, students must form unions and collectively fight against the university dictatorship. They must demand to be treated like human beings, not sheep who are not allowed to speak. They must fight against the injustices of a system which seeks to quash academic freedom. Furthermore, students must fight for universal education, so that both they themselves and their future comrades can go to college. However, the struggle must not be centered only around the university, but in the larger struggle against capitalism.

The struggle against the university is a struggle against the capitalist system and against the bourgeois dictatorship. To fight against the university means to join the struggle to build a larger movement that can end the oppression created by capitalism once and for all. Communist parties across the world must never abandon the revolutionary vision, for to do so is to directly attack working people and working class students. To abandon the revolutionary vision and instead fight only for reforms means sustaining the bourgeois dictatorship and the ideological relations which it creates. Abandoning revolution means sustaining classrooms where students are treated like sheep, and where only the submissive get good grades. To abandon the revolutionary vision means to sustain the system that allows only the few to get an education, while the rest are left to fend for themselves! We mustn’t abandon the revolutionary vision, for as long as capitalism prevails, no matter what reform is instituted, it will never end the oppression and violence within capitalist society. Students should unite and fight for every reform possible that is in the interest of working people, but also consider the long term strategy of abolishing the bourgeois State. Students should work together and fight for lower tuition, for more academic freedom, and demand to be treated like human beings. At the same time, however, they should consider the strategy of creating a system that will end the very need to struggle against the university dictatorship. Students are bound up in the class struggle, and therefore belong to a larger movement of working people fighting to bring about a classless society, and abolishing the class structure of society for good. Students must therefore go beyond reforms and fight for the revolution! Students of the world, UNITE!