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.

December 14, 2010

‘The student protesters of this winter of discontent
are my heroes. Instead of giving up on politicians who
failed to deliver their promises on tuition fees, the
students have been galvanised into action. Their
demonstrations and occupations are the antidote to the
cynical bile that is spewed out on internet forums
against anybody who dares challenge the notion that
free-market capitalism is the answer to all our
problems’

Billy Bragg.English alternative rock
musician and activist

Guardian (UK)
September 14, 2010

http://tinyurl.com/2wrj3cs

By James Thompson

Alienation is the process whereby people become foreign to their own labor.

Workers sell their labor to the business owners in return for wages which they use to survive. As a result, a portion of the product of their labor becomes the property of the owner. The product of the worker’s labor becomes alien to them.

The employer takes control of the product of the worker’s labor and frequently uses part of it against the employee. The boss may use part of the profit they make from the product of the labor of the workers to support politicians who work to reduce the worker’s rights, wages and benefits. The owner may use part of the profit to hire consultants who tell them how to reduce the number of workers and/or cut their benefits. The owner may use part of the profit to support religious leaders who tell the workers to be obedient to their masters so that they will go to paradise when they die. These are but some of the ways the owners use a part of the worker’s labor against them to further the interests of the owners and fight the interests of the workers.

The bosses strive to alienate workers from the value that they produce through their labor. This makes it easier for the capitalists to appropriate (i.e. steal) a portion of what the workers produce. Alienation confuses workers and makes it less likely that they will fight for their rights and for the wealth that they produce.

By James Thompson

The goal of Marxists is to elevate the working class to the status of the ruling class. To do this, Marxists use the scientific method to better understand social, political, cultural and economic conditions and to facilitate the process of change to bring about a better world. In classical Marxist theory, science is referred to as materialism.

Marxists point out that it is important to recognize that there is an opposing point of view. They call this view idealism. This refers to a philosophical system which relies on non-scientific, i.e. religious, mythological, prejudicial or imaginary explanations of phenomena. In other words, idealist explanations are not observable, measurable or provable.

Materialism is a fundamental philosophical concept in the Marxist world view. There has been some confusion in the use of the term due to an alternative version of its meaning. Materialism in its alternative meaning is thought to refer to “The theory or doctrine that physical well-being and worldly possessions constitute the greatest good and highest value in life.” (American Heritage Dictionary, 2nd College Edition). This is not what is meant by the term materialism in the Marxist approach.

Maurice Cornforth in his book Materialism and the Dialectical Method outlines the basic teachings of materialism:
1. Materialism teaches that the world is by its very nature material, that everything which exists comes into being on the basis of material causes, arises and develops in accordance with the laws of motion and matter.
2. Materialism teaches that matter is objective reality existing outside and independent of the mind; and that far from the mental existing in separation from the material, everything mental or spiritual is a product of material processes.
3. Materialism teaches that the world and its laws are knowable, and that while much in the material world may not be known there is no unknowable sphere of reality which lies outside the material world.
The Marxist philosophy is characterized by its absolutely consistent materialism all along the line, by its making no concessions whatever at any point to idealism.

Materialism is irrevocably opposed to idealism. Cornforth points out that there are three main assertions of idealism.
1. Idealism asserts that the material world is dependent on the spiritual.
2. Idealism asserts that spirit, or mind, or idea, can and does exist in separation from matter. (The most extreme form of this assertion is subjective idealism, which asserts that matter does not exist at all but is pure illusion.)
3. Idealism asserts that there exists a realm of the mysterious and unknowable, “above”, or “beyond”, or “behind” what can be ascertained and known by perception, experience and science.
The basic teachings of materialism stand in opposition to these three assertions of idealism.

Cornforth further notes that Frederick Engels offers a definition of materialism and idealism and the difference between them in his book on Ludwig Feuerbach.

“The great basic question of all philosophy, especially of modern philosophy, is that concerning the relation of thinking and being….The answers which the philosophers have given 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 another…comprised the camp of idealism. The others, who regarded nature as primary, belong to the various schools of materialism.”

We can see that idealist conceptions rely on spiritual explanations which are fantastic, not measurable and are unrealistic. An idealist explanation of the cause of a thunderstorm might be that God was angry at the people because they were not obeying their masters. Diseases are explained by the idealist paradigm by a similar ruse, e.g. that diseases are a way God can punish bad people who demand higher wages and better working conditions.

Materialist explanations of disease, thunderstorms and all phenomena view them as being due to complex forces which are measurable and understandable through scientific investigation.

Cornforth presents another interesting example.

“Why are there rich and poor? This is a question which many people ask, especially poor people.
The most straightforward idealist answer to this question is to say simply—it is because God made them so. It is the will of God that some should be rich and others poor.
But other less straightforward idealist explanations are more in vogue. For example: it is because some men are careful and farsighted, and these husband their resources and grow rich, while others are thriftless and stupid, and these remain poor. Those who favour this type of explanation say that it is all due to eternal “human nature”. The nature of man and of society is such that the distinction of rich and poor necessarily arises…
The materialist, on the other hand, seeks the reason in the material, economic conditions of social life. If society is divided into rich and poor, it is because the production of the material means of life is so ordered that some have possession of the land and other means of production while the rest have to work for them. However hard they may work and however much they may scrape and save, the non-possessors will remain poor, while the possessors grow rich on the fruits of their labour…”

The difference in the materialist and idealist explanations of disease, thunderstorms and class differences have important theoretical but also practical implications.

A materialist conception of thunderstorms helps us to take precautions against them. Science has developed weather forecasting systems so that people can be warned of impending storms. Buildings and houses can be constructed in such a way that they can withstand storms. However, if our explanation of thunderstorms is idealistic, all we can do is pray or perform other rituals. Similarly with disease, if the conception is materialist, then we can take preventive measure through lifestyle change or engage in treatment if the disease is active. Idealists are again stuck with appeals to God, the Church or other supernatural entities.

If we accept an idealist explanation of the reasons there are rich and poor, all we can do is to accept the existing state of affairs. The materialist approach to society offers a way to work towards changing society.

Cornforth points out:

“…every real social advance—every increase in the productive forces, every advance of science—generates materialism and is helped along by materialist ideas. And the whole history of human thought has been the history of the fight of materialism against idealism, of the overcoming of idealist illusions and fantasies.

Materialism teaches us to have confidence in ourselves, in the working class—in people. It teaches us that there are no mysteries beyond our understanding, that we need not accept that which is as being the will of God, that we should contemptuously reject the “authoritative” teachings of those who set up to be our masters, and that we can ourselves understand nature and society so as to be able to change them.”

By Gus Hall
Main report, 24th National Convention, CPUSA

In the minds of the people today there is a coming together of the two broadest concerns that involve the great peace and democratic majority:
1) the concern for the preservation of humanity and nature because of the threat of nuclear war, and,
2) the deep concern for the preservation of U.S. democracy, the democratic structure and democratic rights.
The danger in both cases comes from the same source: the most reactionary
militaristic, chauvinistic and racist, and anti-labor section of monopoly capital…
The broad forces reflecting overall democratic traditions and feeling include the working class, middle class, intellectuals, professionals and people in the mass media. This includes large numbers of Afro-Americans, Chicano-Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans and other oppressed minorities.
How to tap the potential of this moment with initiatives that will lead to mass actions by the broadest democratic forces is the task at hand. Our task is to tap this potential so as to give rise to forms of political independence that will lead toward a new popular mass political party.
…There is a need for new initiatives, for the building of a people’s movement to establish a new democratic structure, a people’s democratic structure. There is a need for movements and struggles to strip the executive branch of much of its powers, to limit or repeal its war making powers and for constitutional reforms. In a nuclear world, no one individual should have such powers.
There is a need for people’s movements in the struggle to cut the military budget to the bone, to put an end to the war economy and the war budget.
It is possible to go on an ideological offensive against monopoly capitalism. It is a moment when millions can be made to see that monopoly capitalism is the root of all social evils, that it is associated with everything that is anti-democratic, corrupt, immoral, that hard rock of capitalist reality.

By James Thompson

I travelled to Cuba one year ago and met with Cuban doctors who are at the forefront of hurricane preparedness in that country. I was impressed with the organization and comprehensive plan that the Cubans have put together to protect their population from the ravages of hurricanes.

Their plan was based on scientific evidence which they gathered from previous experience in dealing with catastrophic storms. Their goal was to minimize casualties from catastrophic hurricane based disasters. They have largely succeeded in their effort.

For a great video documenting Cuban – U.S. cooperation, go to http://abclocal.go.com/ktrk/story?section=news/local&id=7834855

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!