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

Please check out the new website http://www.houstonpeacecouncil.org/

Let us know what you think.

Saturday, Jan 8, US Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, Federal Judge John Roll and many others, including a nine-year-old girl were shot during the congresswoman’s constituency meeting at a Tucson, Ariz. Safeway grocery store parking lot. As of Sunday morning six have been reported killed, including Judge Roll, and 12 wounded, including Rep. Giffords, who was shot in the head and is expected to survive.

In no uncertain terms, the Communist Party USA strongly and unequivocally condemns this outrageous act of violence. We extend our condolences to the family and friends of the victims. We hope for full recoveries for all the wounded, including Rep. Giffords.

It is reported that law enforcement has in custody a 22-year-old white man, Jared Lee Loughner, as the accused shooter. It is not clear whether the shooter acted alone or with accomplices.

Many are dubbing this a tragedy, which undoubtedly it is. But it doesn’t end there.

While we do not yet know the motivation of the crime, many have surmised that the motivation is political because of the atmosphere of violent language and threats against Rep. Giffords and other Congressional Democrats. Political or not, the extreme right-wing tea party movement and their anti-government rantings and ravings helped create an atmosphere that allowed or even encouraged this attack. For instance, until the day of the event when it was removed, Sarah Palin featured Giffords on her webpage with the congresswoman’s district in the crosshairs of a gun, targeting her for her support of healthcare reform.

Political hate speech has consequences. Giffords herself said, “Palin has crosshairs on our district; people have to realize there are consequences to that.” She said that in a TV interview after her Arizona office had been broken into and vandalized after her vote for the national health care reform bill. Giffords was a frequent target of the tea party movement. Judge Roll, a Republican, had also received threats from the right.

Yet, the link to rhetoric and violence doesn’t end with the Palin and her tea party. It extends to the political leadership of Arizona and the Republican Party, who have fomented laws and policies that logically lead to violence. Starting with the anti-immigrant SB 1070 and banning ethnic studies, leaders like Governor Jan Brewer, and Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio have to take as much responsibility for this violence as Palin and her cohorts. All their condolences ring hollow because of their callous inflammatory rhetoric and romanticization of guns and “Second Amendment remedies”. Arizona is burning. It is Ground Zero for this extreme far-right, and their corporate, multi-billionaire sponsors. In the words of Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik in responding to political mood leading to the shooting shooting, “Arizona I think has become the capital. We have become the mecca for prejudice and bigotry.”

In the hours after the shooting, some right wing elements seem to have created fake social networking pages in order to associate Loughner with the Left. The full story about the mental state and political motivations for the shooter will hopefully come to light soon. The attempt to paint this suspect as a leftist continues the far-right’s use of anti-communism and anti-democratic rhetoric to cover-up their own role in continuing the hate until its logical violent conclusion.

It was Giffords father, 75-year-old Spencer Giffords, who wept when asked if his 40-year-old daughter had any enemies, and answered, “Yeah,” to The New York Post, “The whole tea party.”

This shooting marks a dangerous and sad day for our country. It’s up to the American people to say, “Enough” to the hate, the racism, incitement to violence and the fascist-like behavior of anti-government thugs. Political violence and assassination has no place in our democracy.

Written by Communist and Workers` Parties

The 12th International Meeting of Communist and Workers` Parties took place in Tshwane, South Africa from the 3rd to the 5th of December 2010 with theme “The deepening systemic crisis of capitalism. The tasks of Communists in defence of sovereignty, deepening social alliances, strengthening the anti-imperialist front in the struggle for peace, progress and Socialism”.

102 delegates representing 51 participating Parties from 43 countries and from all continents of the world came together in order to take forward the work of our previous meetings, and to promote and develop common and convergent action around a shared perspective

The Deepening Capitalist Crisis

The international situation continues to be dominated by the persisting and deepening crisis of capitalism. This reality confirms the analyses outlined in the declarations in Sao Paulo in 2008 and New Delhi in 2009, the 10th and 11th International Meetings. The current global crisis of capitalism underlines its historical limitations and the need for its revolutionary overthrow. It shows the intensification of the basic contradiction of capitalism between the social character of production and the private capitalist appropriation.

The crisis is systemic – despite pre-2008 capitalist illusions to the contrary – capitalism cannot escape its in-built, systemic tendency to go through cycles of boom and bust. The current global crisis is a particularly severe manifestation of a capitalist downturn occasioned by capitalist over-production.

Now, as in the past, there is no answer, within the logic of capitalism, to these periodic crises other than crisis itself, marked by the massive and socially irrational destruction of assets, including mass job lay-offs, factory closures, and the wholesale attack on wages, pensions, social security and erosion of people`s livelihoods. This is why, at our previous two meetings, we correctly asserted that the current crisis was not merely attributable to subjective failings, to the greed of bankers or financial speculators. It remains a crisis embedded in the systemic features of capitalism itself.

The persisting crisis is compounded by significant shifts in the international balance of forces. In particular, there is the on-going relative decline of US economic global hegemony, general productive stagnation in most advanced capitalist economies, and the emergence of new global economic powers, notably China.

The crisis has intensified the competition between the imperialist centres and also between the established and emerging powers. This includes the US-led currency war; the concentration and centralization of economic and political power within the EU deepening its character as an imperialist block led by its main capitalist powers; a distinct sharpening of the inter-imperialist struggle for markets and access to raw materials; expanding militarism, including the strengthening of aggressive alliances (for example, the NATO Lisbon Summit with its “new” dangerous strategic concept), the profusion of regional points of tension and aggression (notably in the Middle East, Asia and Africa), coups in Latin America, the intensification of neo-imperialist tendencies of fanning ethnic conflicts and the increasing militarization of Africa through, amongst other things, AFRICOM.

At the same time it has become clear that capitalism`s trajectory with its profit-maximising, headlong destruction of natural resources, and of the environment in general poses a grave threat to the sustainability of human civilization itself. The political elites in the dominant capitalist states with their various proposals for “green technologies” and carbon trading at best represent adjustments which increase the profitability of capital while deepening the commodification of nature, and the transfer of climate change crises onto less developed countries. The crisis of the capitalist system that we face as humankind is directly linked to capitalism`s inability to reproduce itself except through a voracious pursuit of compound growth. It is a crisis that can only be overcome through the abolition of capitalism itself.

Faced with these realities, everywhere capital fights back, seeking to preserve profits and to transfer the burden of its crisis onto the working class by intensifying exploitation based on gender and age, the urban and rural poor, and a wide range of middle strata. Exploitation is intensified, the state is used to rescue private bankers and financial houses while exposing future generations to unsustainable levels of debt, and there are intensified efforts to roll back social gains.

In the entire capitalist world, labour, social, economic, political and social security rights are being abolished. At the same time the political systems are being made more reactionary, restricting democratic and civil liberties, especially trade union rights. The retrenchments, including major spending cuts in the public sector are having a devastating impact on workers, especially women workers. There are also attempts to divert popular distress and insecurity into reactionary demagogy, racism and xenophobia, as well as to legitimise fascist forces. These are expressions of anti-democratic and authoritarian tendencies also marked by the escalation of anti-communist attacks and campaigns in many parts of the world. In Africa, Asia and Latin America we are witnessing the imposition on our peoples of new mechanisms of national and class oppression, including economic, financial, political and military means as well as the deployment of an array of pro-imperialist NGOs.

However, for the mass of peoples, in particular in Africa, Asia and Latin America, it is important to remember that, even before the current global economic crisis, life under capitalism was a continuing crisis, a daily struggle for bare survival. Even before the current global crisis, one billion people were living in squalid slums, and half of the world’s population was surviving on less than $2 a day. With the crisis these realities have been massively aggravated.

Most of these urban and rural poor, along with family members working as vulnerable migrants in foreign countries, are the displaced victims of the accelerated capitalist agrarian development under way in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Global capitalism, spearheaded by the major corporations in the agro-industrial sector, has declared war on nearly one-half of humanity – the three billion remaining rural people in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

At the same time inhuman barriers are being set up against immigrants and refugees. There is an ever-increasing mushrooming of urban and semi-urban slums populated by desperate marginalised masses typically involved in a variety of activities for survival. The accelerated capitalist agrarian transformation in countries with a lower level of capitalist development has genocidal implications.

The Importance of Resistance Struggles of the Working Class and Popular Forces

Across the world, capital’s attempts to load the burden of the crisis onto workers and the poor is being met by working class and popular resistance.

Over the past year the anti-people assault on labour rights, social-security rights and wages provoked an escalation of popular struggles notably in Europe.

Imperialist aggression in the Middle East, Asia and Latin America continues to meet resolute popular resistance.

In Africa and Latin America, anti-imperialist forces, trade unions, and social movements have escalated their struggles for the rights of the people and against the plunder by the multinational corporations. These struggles have, in some cases, led to the emergence of progressive, popular national governments that declare programmatically for national sovereignty, social rights, development and for the protection of their natural resources and biodiversity, giving renewed impetus to the anti-imperialist struggle.

In the current reality, it is an historic imperative that as Communist and Workers’ Parties we participate, to strengthen and transform these popular defensive battles into offensive struggles for the acquisition of broader workers’ and people rights and for the abolition of capitalism.

In advancing this strategic agenda, communists stress the significance that the organisation of the working class, and the development of the struggles of the labour movement in a class-oriented direction, have in the struggle for the acquisition of political power by the working class and its allies.

Within the framework of this struggle we attach particular importance to:
• The defense, consolidation and advance of popular national sovereignty
• The deepening of social alliances
• Strengthening the anti-imperialist front for peace, for the right to full-time stable work, labour rights and social rights such as free health and education.

The Defense, Consolidation and Advance of Popular Sovereignty

In the face of the intensified aggression of transnational capital, the struggle against imperialist occupation of countries, against economic and political dependency and to defend popular sovereignty has become increasingly salient. In these struggles it is important for communists to integrate these struggles with the struggle for social and class emancipation.

Communists, fighting against imperialism, struggle for equitable international relations between states and peoples on the basis of mutual benefit.

The defence, consolidation and advance of popular sovereignty is of particular importance in Africa and for other peoples that have experienced decades and even centuries of colonial and semi-colonial oppression. 2010 marks the 50th anniversary of the commencement of the formal de-colonisation of Africa. Yet everywhere, including in the African diaspora, the grim legacy of the slave-trade, of colonial dispossession and plunder persist. Notwithstanding 50 years of formal de-colonisation, everywhere imperialist interventions are reinforced, the dominance of the monopolies is being strengthened with the aid of domestic capital. The struggle against them requires active protagonists and the unity of the popular masses, and the broadening of popular democratic rights.

Deepening Social Alliances

The ongoing crisis of capitalism and its anti-civilisation fight-back are creating the conditions to build broad social, anti-monopolistic and anti-imperialist alliances capable of gaining power and promoting deep, progressive, radical, and revolutionary changes.

Working class unity is a fundamental factor in ensuring the construction of effective social alliances with the peasantry, the mass of urban and rural poor, the urban middle class strata and intellectuals. Particular attention needs to be paid to the aspirations of, and challenges confronting youth.

The land question, agrarian reform and rural development are important issues for the development of popular struggle in lesser developed countries. These are inextricably linked to food sovereignty and security, sustainable livelihoods, the defence of bio-diversity, the protection of national resources, and the struggle against agro-industrial monopolies and their local agents.

In these struggles, the legitimate and progressive aspirations of indigenous peoples in defence of their cultures, languages and environments have an important role.

The Role of Communists in Strengthening the Anti-Imperialist Front for Peace, Environmental Sustainability, Progress and Socialism

Imperialism’s crisis and counter-offensive are leading to the broadening and diversification of the forces that objectively assume a patriotic and anti-imperialist stand. Everywhere, in our diverse national realities, Communists have a responsibility to broaden and strengthen the anti-imperialist political and social front, the struggles for peace, environmental sustainability, progress, and integrate them in the fight for socialism. The independent role of Communists and the strengthening of the Communist and Workers’ parties is of vital importance to ensure a consistent anti-imperialist perspective of broader movements and fronts.

Special attention must be given to the existing relation between various resistance struggles and the necessary ideological offensive for the visibility of the alternative of socialism and to the defence and development of scientific socialism. The ideological struggle of the communist movement is of vital importance in order to repulse contemporary anti-communism, to confront bourgeois ideology, anti-scientific theories and opportunist currents which reject the class struggle, and combat the role of social democratic forces that defend and implement anti-people and pro-imperialist policies by supporting the strategy of capital. We have a key role to play in drawing the critical links in theory and above all in practice between different arenas of popular struggle in the development of internationalist class solidarity.

We are living in an historic epoch in which the transition from capitalism to socialism has become a civilisational imperative. The all-round crisis of capitalism once more underlines the inseparable nature of the tasks of national liberation and social, national and class emancipation.

In the face of deepening capitalist crisis, the experiences of socialist construction demonstrate the conditions of the superiority of socialism.

The strengthening of the cooperation among Communist and Workers` Parties and the strengthening of the anti-imperialist front, should march side by side.

We, the Communist and Workers` parties meeting in Tshwane, in a situation marked by a massive onslaught against workers and popular forces, but also with many possibilities for the development of the struggle, express our profound solidarity with workers and peoples and their intense struggles, reiterating our determination to act and struggle side by side with working masses, youth, women, and all popular sectors that are victims of capitalist exploitation and oppression.

We reaffirm our appeal to the widest range of popular forces to join us in a common struggle for socialism which is the only alternative for the future of humankind.

We point to the following main axes for the development of our joint and convergent actions:
1. With the capitalist crisis deepening, we will focus on the development of workers’ and peoples’ struggles for labour and social rights, the strengthening of the trade-union movement and its class orientation; the promotion of the social alliance with peasants and the other popular strata. Particular attention will be given to the problems of women and youth who are among the first victims of the capitalist crisis.

2. In the face of the all-round imperialist aggression and the sharpening of the inter-imperialist rivalries, we will intensify the anti-imperialist struggle for peace, against imperialist wars and occupation, against the dangerous “new” NATO strategy and foreign military bases, and for the abolition of all nuclear weapons. We will extend active internationalist solidarity with all people and movements facing and resisting oppression, imperialist threats and aggression.

3. We will resolutely fight anticommunism, anti-communist laws, measures and persecution; to demand the legalisation of CPs where outlawed. We will defend the history of the communist movement, the contribution of socialism in advancing human civilisation.

4. We affirm our solidarity with the forces and peoples engaged in and striving for socialist construction. We reaffirm our solidarity with the Cuban people and their socialist revolution, and we will continue vigorously to oppose the blockade and to support the international campaign for the release of the Cuban Five.

5. We will contribute, within the specific context of our national realities, to the reinforcement of international anti-imperialist mass organizations like WFTU (World Federation of Trade Unions), WPC (World Peace Council), WFDY (World Federation of Democratic Youth), and WIDF (Women’s International Democratic Federation). We particularly welcome and salute the 17th World Festival of Youth and Students to be held in South Africa from 13th-21st December 2010.

3. The Socialist and Communist Stage of Social Development

Marx and Engels discuss why capitalism leads to socialism and how socialism resolves the contradictions of capitalism. They also distinguish between utopian and scientific socialism and discuss the distinction between the first socialist transitional phase and the communist phase itself. Marx, Engels and Lenin discuss the “dictatorship of the proletariat” in the transitional phase to communism proper. Lenin notes the universal and the particular in socialism in each country and he also discusses the relationship of radical democratization to socialism. Lenin also discusses concessions by the new socialist state to domestic and foreign capitalists. In the final articles before his death, his “last testament”, Lenin discusses the importance of cooperatives. The Communist Manifesto. 1848, Marx & Engels (Excerpts) “The theoretical conclusions of the Communists are in no way based on ideas or principles that have been invented, or discovered, by this or that would-be universal reformer.

“They merely express, in general terms, actual relations springing from an existing class struggle, from historical movement going on under our eyes.

“The distinguishing feature of communism is not the abolition of property generally but the abolition of bourgeois property.

(p.23 IP Ed; MESW, p.46-47; MECW, p.498)

“…the first step in the revolution by the working class, is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to establish democracy.

“The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the state, i.e., of the proletariat organized as the ruling class, and to increase the total of productive forces as rapidly as possible.

p.30 IP Ed; MESW, p.52; MECW, p.504)

“When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared, and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character. Political power, properly so-called, is merely the organized power of one class for oppressing another. If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organize itself as a class; if, by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, and , as such sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms, and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class.

“In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonism, we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.”

(p.31 IP Ed; MESW, p.53; MECW, pp.505-06) Communist Manifesto. 1848, Marx & Engels, Chapter II, IP Ed; MESW; MECW, Vol.6 Critique of the Gotha Programme, Marx 1875, Forward by Engels (Excerpts)

“What we have to deal with here is a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society, which is thus in every respect, economically, morally and intellectually, still stamped with the birth mark of the old society from whose womb it emerges (p.323) “In spite of this advance, this equal right is still constantly stigmatized by a bourgeois limitation. The right of the producers is proportional to the labour they supply; the equality consists in the fact that measurement is made with an equal standard, labour. But one man is superior to another physically or mentally and so supplies more labour in the same time… It recognizes no class differences, because everyone is only a worker like everyone else; but it tacitly recognizes unequal individual endowment and this productive capacity as natural privileges. It is, therefore, a right of inequality, in its content, like every right…

“But these defects are inevitable in the first phase of communist society as it is when it has just emerged after prolonged birth pangs from capitalist society. Right can never be higher than the economic structure of society and its cultural development conditioned thereby.

“In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labour and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor has vanished; after labour has become not only a means of life but life’s prize want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-round development of the individual and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly – only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” (p..324) “Between capitalist and communist society lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.”

Critique of the Gotha Programme, Marx 1875, Forward by Engels, MESW, p.323, 331; MECW, Vol.24, p.85-6
Engels, Socialism: Utopian & Scientific (Intro. written 1892; originally a chapter from Anti-Duhring 1875) (Excerpts)

“To the crude conditions of capitalistic production and the crude class conditions, corresponded crude theories. The solution of the social problems, which as yet lay hidden in undeveloped economic conditions, the utopians attempted to evolve out of the human brain. Society presented nothing but wrongs; to remove these was the task of reason. It was necessary, then, to discover a new and more perfect system of social order and to impose this upon society from without by propaganda, and, wherever it was possible,, by the example of model experiments. These new social systems were foredoomed as utopian; the more completely they were worked out in detail, the more they could not avoid drifting off into pure phantasies.

(p.36 IP Ed; MESW, p.403; MECW, p.290)

“To all these, socialism is the expression of absolute truth, reason and justice, and has only to be discovered to conquer all the worldly virtue of its own power.”

p.43 IP Ed; MESW, p.409; MECW, p.297

“From that time forward socialism was no longer an accidental discovery of this or that ingenious brain, but the necessary outcome of the struggle between two historically developed classes – the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. Its task was no longer to manufacture a system of society as perfect as possible, but to examine the historico-economic succession of events from which these classes and their antagonisms had of necessity sprung, and to discover in the economic conditions thus created the means of ending the conflict. But the socialism of earlier days was as incompatible with this materialistic conception as the conception of nature of the French materialists was with dialectics and modern natural science. The socialism of earlier days certainly criticized the existing capitalistic mode of production and its consequences. But it could not explain them, and, therefore, could not get the mastery of them. It could only simply reject them as bad. The more strongly this earlier socialism denounced the exploitation of the working class, inevitable under capitalism, the less able was it clearly to show in what this exploitation consisted and how it arose. But for this it was necessary – 1) to present the capitalistic method of production in its historical connection and its inevitableness during a particular historical period, and therefore, also, to present its inevitable downfall; and 2) to lay bare its essential character, which was still a secret. This was done by the discovery of surplus value. It was shown that the appropriation of unpaid labour is the basis of the capitalist mode of production and of the exploitation of the worker that occurs under it; that even if the capitalist buys the labour power of his laborer at its full value as a commodity on the market, he yet extracts more value from it than he paid for; and that in the ultimate analysis this surplus value forms those sums of value from which are heaped up the constantly increasing masses of capital in the hands of the possessing classes. The genesis of capitalist production and the production of capital were both explained.

“These two great discoveries, the materialistic conception of history and the revelation of the secret of capitalistic production through surplus value, we owe to Marx. With these discoveries socialism became a science. The next thing was to work out all its details and relations.

(p.52-53 IP Ed; MESW, p.416; MECW, p.304-05) (Engels ends the 3 sections with an outline.)

“III. Proletarian Revolution – Solution of the contradictions. The proletariat seizes the public power, and by means of this transforms the socialized means of production, slipping from the hands of the bourgeoisie, into public property. By this act, the proletariat frees the means of production from the character of capital they have thus far borne, and gives their socialized character complete freedom to work itself out. Socialized production upon a predetermined plan becomes henceforth possible. The development of production makes the existence of different classes of society thenceforth an anachronism. In proportion as anarchy in social production vanishes, the political authority of the state dies out. Man, at last the master of his own form of social organization, becomes at the same time the lord over nature, his own master – free.

“To accomplish this act of universal emancipation is the historical mission of the modern proletariat. To thoroughly comprehend the historical conditions and thus the very nature of this act, to impart to the now oppressed proletarian class a full knowledge of the conditions and of the meaning of the momentous act it is called upon to accomplish, this is the task of the theoretical expression of the proletarian movement, scientific socialism.”

(P.74-75 IP Ed; MESW, p.434; MECW, p.325)

Engels, Socialism: Utopian & Scientific (Intro. written 1892; originally a chapter from Anti-Duhring 1875), IP Ed, MESW; MECW, Vol.24

“Only he is a Marxist who extends the recognition of the class struggle to the recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat. This is what constitutes the most profound distinction between the Marxist and the ordinary petty (as well as big) bourgeois.”

p.287) Lenin, State & Revolution Aug.-Sept. 1917, SW, p.287, CW, Vol.25,p.412 Lenin, The Impending Catastrophe & How To Combat It, Sept. 10-14, 1917 (Excerpts)

“The basic contradiction in the policy of our government is that, in order not to quarrel with the bourgeoisie, not to destroy the ‘coalition’ with them, the government has to introduce reactionary- bureaucratic control, which it calls ‘revolutionary democratic’ control, deceiving the people at every step and irritating and angering the masses who have just overthrown tsarism. “Yet only revolutionary-democratic measures, only the organization of the oppressed classes, the workers and peasants, the masses, into unions would make it possible to establish a most affective control over the rich and wage a most successful fight against the concealment of incomes. (P.354)

“This requires a revolutionary dictatorship of the democracy, headed by the revolutionary proletariat; that is, it requires that the democracy should become revolutionary in fact. That is the crux of the matter. But that is just what is not wanted by our Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, who are deceiving the people by displaying the flag of ‘revolutionary democracy’ while they are in fact supporting the reactionary-bureaucratic policy of the bourgeoisie, who, as always, are guided by the rule: – after us the deluge! (p.355)

“Now try to substitute for the Junker-capitalist state, for the landowner-capitalist state, a revolutionary-democratic state, i.e., a state which in a revolutionary way abolishes all privileges and does not fear to introduce the fullest democracy in a revolutionary way. You will find that, given a really revolutionary-democratic state, state monopoly capitalism inevitably and unavoidably implies a step, and more than one step, towards socialism!

“Either in the interest of the landowners and capitalists, in which case we have not a revolutionary-democratic, but a reactionary- bureaucratic state, an imperialist republic.

“Or in the interest of revolutionary democracy – and then it is a step toward socialism.

“For socialism is merely the next step forward from state- capitalist monopoly. Or, in other words, socialism is merely state-capitalist monopoly which is made to serve the interests of the whole people and has to that extent ceased to be capitalist monopoly.

“There is no middle course here. The objective process of development is such that it is impossible to advance from monopolies (and the war has magnified their number, role and importance tenfold) without advancing towards socialism. (p.358) “But take the same institution and think over its significance in a revolutionary-democratic state. Universal labour conscription, introduced, regulated and directed by the Soviets of Workers’, Soldiers’ and Peasants’ Deputies, will still not be socialism, but it will no longer be capitalism. It will be a tremendous step towards socialism, a step from which, if complete democracy is preserved, there can no longer be any retreat back to capitalism, without unparalleled violence being committed against the masses. (p.360)

“The more complete the fiasco of the alliance of the bourgeoisie and the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, the sooner the people will learn their lesson and the more easily they will find the correct way out, namely, the alliance of the peasant poor, i.e., the majority of the peasants, and the proletariat.”

p.365) Lenin, The Impending Catastrophe & How To Combat It, Sept. 10-14, 1917, CW, Vol.25

“The key question of every revolution is undoubtedly the question of state power. Which class holds power decides everything. “A courageous and resolute government steering a firm course is nothing but the dictatorship of the proletariat and the poor peasants.”

Lenin, One of the Fundamental Questions of the Revolution, Sept.27, 1917, CW, Vol.25, p.372

“The dictatorship of the proletariat is a persistent struggle – sanguinary and bloodless, violent and peaceful, military and economic, educational and administrative – against the forces and traditions of the old society.”

Lenin, Left-Wing Communism, 1920, LLL Ed, p.29, CW, Vol.31, p.44

“All nations will arrive at socialism – this is inevitable, but all will do so in not exactly the same way. Each will contribute something of its own to some form of democracy, to some variety of the dictatorship of the proletariat, to the varying rate of socialist transformation in the different aspects of social life.”

Lenin, A Caricature of Marxism & Imperialist Economism Aug.-Oct. 1916, CW, Vol.23, p.69

“The granting of concessions under reasonable terms is also desirable for us during the period of the coexistence side by side of socialist and capitalist states…”

Lenin, Letter to American Workers, Sept. 23, 1919, CW, Vol.30, p.39

“Indeed, since political power is in the hands of the working class, since this political power owns all the means of production, the only task, indeed, that remains for us is to organize the population in co-operative societies. With most of the population organized in co-operatives, the socialism which was in the past legitimately treated with ridicule, scorn and contempt by those who were rightly convinced that it was necessary to wage the class struggle, the struggle for political power, etc., will achieve its aim automatically. But not all comrades realize how vastly, how infinitely important it is now to organize the population of Russia in co-operative societies.

“…we must find what form of ‘bonus’ to give for joining the co- operatives (and the terms on which we should give it), the form of bonus by which we shall assist the co-operatives sufficiently, the form of bonus that will produce the civilized co-operator. And given social ownership of the means of production, given the class system of the proletariat over the bourgeoisie, the system of civilized co-operators is the system of socialism.”

Lenin, On Cooperation, Jan.4, 1923,CW, Vol 33, p.467-71 Lenin, On Cooperation II, Jan.6, 1923 (Excerpts)

“Under our present system, cooperative enterprises differ from private capitalist enterprises because they are collective enterprises, but do not differ from socialist enterprises if the land on which they are situated and the means of production belong to the state, i.e., the working class. (p.473)

“Our second task [winning political power was the first, DR] is educational work among the peasants. And the economic object of this educational work among the peasants is to organize the latter in co-operative societies. (p.474)

“Why were the plans of the old co-operators, from Robert Owen onwards, fantastic? Because they dreamed of peacefully remodelling contemporary society into socialism without taking into account of such fundamental questions as the class struggle, the capture of political power by the working class, the overthrow of the rule of the exploiting class. That is why we are right in regarding as entirely fantastic this ‘co-operative’ socialism, and as romantic, and even banal, the dream of transforming class enemies into class collaborators and class war into class peace (so-called class truce) by merely organizing the population into co-operative societies.” (p.473)

Lenin, On Cooperation II, Jan.6, 1923, CW, Vol. 33, p.472-75