by Gus Hall, Former National Chair
Communist Party USA

via http://epa.cpusa.org/bill_of_rights.htm

We Communists believe that socialism is the very best replacement for a capitalist system that has served its purpose but no longer meets the needs and requirements of the great majority of our people.

We believe that Socialism USA will be built according to the traditions, history, culture and conditions of the United States. Thus, it will be different than any other socialist society in the world. It will be uniquely American.

What will be the goals of our socialist society?

A life free of exploitation, insecurity, deprivation; an end to unemployment, hunger and homelessness.

An end to racism, national oppression, anti-Semitism; of all forms of discrimination, prejudice and bigotry. An end to the unequal status of women.

Renewal and extension of democracy; an end to the rule of corporate America and the private ownership of the wealth of our nation. Creation of a truly humane and rationally-planned society that will stimulate the fullest flowering of the personality, creativity and talent of the individual.
The advocates and ideologues of capitalism hold that such goals are utopian; that human beings are inherently greedy and selfish. Others argue that these goals can be fully realized under capitalism.
We are confident, however, that such goals can be realized – but only in a socialist society.

Why socialism?

Since its inception capitalism has been fatally flawed. Its inherent laws – to maximize profit on the backs of the working class – gives rise to the class struggle.

History is a continuous story of people rising up against those who exploit and oppress them to demand what is theirs. Our country’s historic beginning was revolutionary. The ideals of justice and equality have inspired people for centuries.

Up until the time of Karl Marx, those who advocated socialism were “utopians,” that is, motivated by ideals only. It was Marx and his friend and collaborator, Frederick Engels, who uncovered the inner laws of capitalism – where profit comes from and how societies develop. Marx and Engels transformed wishful thinking for socialism into socialism with a scientific, materialist basis.

Communists say that capitalism won’t be around forever, just like previous societies weren’t around forever either. Slavery gave rise to feudalism and feudalism to capitalism. So, too, capitalism gives rise to socialism.

In a socialist USA political power would be in the hands of working people. Socialism starts with nationalization of the main means of production – the mines, factories, agribusiness farms and everything necessary to produce what society needs. The large monopoly corporations and banks would come under public ownership – that is, under the collective ownership of the entire working class and people, who have the leading role in building socialism.

Socialism also means public ownership of the energy industry and all the natural resources. It eliminates forever the power of the capitalist class to exploit and oppress the exploited majority.

A socialist government draws up plans covering the entire economy. They are drawn up with maximum participation of the people, from the shop level on up. Such plans harmonize the interests of all, because there are no conflicts arising from exploitation of workers and the dog-eat-dog competition of capitalism.

A socialist government is based on all-around democracy, starting with economic democracy. The more people participate in running their own economy, the more firmly people’s power is established, the more successful a socialist America will be.

Trade unions in a socialist USA will insure a fair balance between what workers produce and what they receive. They will have decisive power to enforce safety and health provisions, prevent speedup, guarantee good transportation, working conditions and plant facilities.

Public services – schools, hospitals, utilities, transit, hospitals, parks, roads – are crumbling under capitalism. Under socialism public services will be updated and vastly expanded. They will be broadened in their scope beyond anything dreamed of under capitalism.

The U.S. will become a vast construction site. Homes, schools, hospitals, places of recreation will be built to end shortages, replace substandard infrastructures and public facilities.

Full employment will be quickly achieved as production is expanded to satisfy the needs of people. Automation at the service of the working people will lead to both reduced hours of work and higher living standards. There will be no danger of overproduction since production will be planned and people’s incomes will increase in line with the rising output of consumer goods and services.

Poverty will be ended quickly, with the recovery of the vast resources now wasted in war production, advertising and the extravagant lifestyles of the filthy rich.

All education will be tuition-free. Every person will have access to medical and health care without charge. These rights will be realized as rapidly as facilities can be built and the personnel trained.

With capitalism gone, organized crime will also go, for it is the vicious profit system that corrupts people and breeds crime.

Some ask whether guaranteeing basic necessities, free education and health care will encourage people to avoid working, or doing one’s best. The principle of socialism is: From each according to his/her ability, to each according to his/her work.

Socialism provides incentives for working better, producing more and higher quality goods, acquiring advanced skill. It does not equalize wages. Wages vary according to occupation and efficiency, although everyone is guaranteed a livable wage.

Under capitalism, improvements in skill, organization and technology are rightly feared by workers because they threaten jobs. Under socialism, they offer the chance to make the job more interesting and rewarding, as well as to improve the living standard.

Socialism provides moral incentives because the fruits of labor benefit all. No person robs others of the fruits of their labor. When social goals are adopted by the majority, people will want to work for these goals. Work will be less a burden, more and more a creative activity, where everyone is his or her neighbor’s helper, instead of rival.

It is true socialism will nationalize or socialize all large-scale production, property and real estate. But socialism does not require abolition of all privately owned businesses. It does not require nationalization of those small businesses owned by people who work for themselves and do not hire others to make a profit. Personal property – private homes and automobiles – will remain just that, personal property.

In highly mechanized U.S. agriculture there will still be a place for the family farmer. But the farm family will be relieved of the pressure of trying to compete with agribusiness monopolies.

Socialism USA

There will be rapid elimination of racial and national oppression. Socialism will bring complete equality for all racially and nationally oppressed. There will be no compromise with racism, for there will no longer exist a capitalist class which profits from it. Racism, national oppression, anti-Semitism, sexism, anti-immigrant discrimination and all forms of prejudice and bigotry will be banned by law, with strict measures of enforcement.

Affirmative action will be greatly expanded immediately to begin to undo – to make up for – hundreds of years of the ravages of racism. Full equality will be one of the main priorities of the new society.

The only privileged sectors will be the children, our future, and seniors, who have earned the right to a healthy, carefree and secure retirement.

The children will reap all the benefits of socialist child care, free nurseries and schools with the very best facilities and teachers. Children will have wonderful recreational and sports facilities. They will have the option to choose whatever career they wish, and the free education and training to achieve it.

Socialism provides the economic foundation for effective democracy for the masses of people. To carry through the economic and social transformation requires political rule by the working class – a government of, by and for the working people.

Socialism USA will benefit from the experiences, the mistakes and successes of the countries who built and are building socialism. But mainly it will reflect the distinctive features of U.S. development and our specific environment.

Unique historical advantages, like the unequaled natural resources, fertile soil and perfect weather, coupled with the contributions of generations of working people, enabled U.S. capitalism to achieve higher productive levels and living standards than capitalism in other countries.

The development of socialism here will have some other distinct advantages:

A highly developed industrial base with a highly trained and educated work force.

Free from the threat of foreign intervention, Socialism USA will not have to divert human and economic resources to defend itself.

Socialism USA will avoid the terrible problems of extreme poverty, illiteracy, civil wars, wars of intervention and world wars that the Soviet Union had to deal with.

Socialism USA will extend democracy to its fullest, taking as its starting point the democratic traditions and institutions of the American people.

Path to socialism

We say that it may be possible in the U.S. to bring socialism through peaceful means. Perhaps through the ballot box. One thing is clear: there won’t be socialism in the U.S. until the majority of the American people want it.

I like to say that when workers enter the corporate boardrooms to take over and the ruling class says something like: “Okay, you’re right, we made a mess of things and now you should run it all.” Well, then there won’t be any trouble.

But if the ruling class says: “Forget it!” and calls out the army, the police and the National Guard, that is how revolutions become violent. It starts with the ruling class. Workers and their allies have to defend themselves to fight for what is rightfully theirs.

We believe and advocate a socialist society in our country that will guarantee all the liberties defined in the Bill of Rights, but have never beenfully realized. These include the right of people to express themselves fully and freely through organizations of their choice and competing candidates who respect and are guided by the concept of building socialism.

Indeed, the freedoms in the Bill of Rights will take on far greater meaning for the great majority, who will then own the meeting halls, press, radio and TV, and will be able to exercise that freedom effectively.

That’s why we call ours “Bill of Rights Socialism USA.” Socialism is our vision for America’s future. It is a vision we are winning more and more people to because it is the logical – really a great – replacement for capitalism. And, because it is the next inevitable step up the ladder of human civilization.

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 James Thompson

In the recent experience of the Occupy movement, the role of the state has become all too apparent. In the beginning, the movement was met with little resistance from police or other representatives of the state. However, more recently, the state has unmasked itself and the agents of the state, the police, have openly attacked peaceful Occupy movement participants and have arrested them on both a small scale and on a mass scale. Heads of Iraq war veterans have been bashed and many others brutalized by the unleashed guard dogs of state power. The irony lies in the fact that the police are working people themselves who have been coerced into attacking those people who are currently most visible in the fight for the rights of working people.

How could this happen in a “democratic” country that prides itself on “free speech”?

To understand this development it is important to understand the Marxist Leninist concept of the state.

The state serves to protect and serve the ruling class and their interests. In capitalist societies, this would be the bourgeoisie, or ownership class, ultra-wealthy, i.e. the owners of the means of production.

Democracy in capitalist societies refers to the political struggle of various capitalist parties to maintain the state which protects and serves capitalists. Dictatorship of the bourgeoisie refers to the primacy of the state which defends the interests of the wealthy class. The state will do whatever is necessary to defend the interests of its benefactors, the ruling class.

Given these concepts, one has to ask what does “free speech” mean? Obviously, “free speech” refers to the freedom of people in capitalist societies to speak freely on behalf of and in support of capitalism. Serious criticism of capitalism and its state apparatus will be met with fierce hostility, both physical and verbal.

In socialist societies, the state serves to protect the interests of working people, which is socialism. Dictatorship of the proletariat refers to the primacy of the state in defending the interests of the working class. In other words, in a properly running socialist society the state would fight for the interests of working people.

The interests of the working class and the capitalist class are irreconcilable and the class struggle continues until one class is eliminated.

In other words, peaceful protesters against capitalism will continue to get their heads bashed in as long as the capitalists are the ruling class. Legislative reforms and minute advances for the working class will be difficult if not impossible and proceed extremely slowly with many setbacks and reversals of progressive advancements as long as the capitalists are in power. Once the working class becomes the ruling class, the interests of the working people will be protected and defended. The interests, rights and freedoms of the capitalist class to exploit and oppress workers, on the other hand, will be significantly curtailed.

I believe this advancement of the interests of working people is at the heart of the Occupy movement.

The works of Marx, Engels and Lenin are instructive in understanding the relationship of the state and the class struggle.

Lenin wrote in the first chapter of State and Revolution:

“During the lifetime of great revolutionaries, the oppressing classes have visited relentless persecution on and receive their teaching with the most savage hostility, the most furious hatred, the most ruthless campaign of lies and slanders. After their death, attempts are made to turn them into harmless icons, canonize them, and surround their names with a certain halo for the “consolation” of the oppressed classes and with the object of duping them, while at the same time emasculating and vulgarising the real essence of their revolutionary theories and blunting their revolutionary edge. At the same time, the bourgeoisie and the opportunists within the labor movement are cooperating in this work of adulterating Marxism. They omit, obliterate, and distort the revolutionary side of its teaching, its revolutionary soul. They push to the foreground and extol what is, or seems, acceptable to the bourgeoisie. All the social chauvinists are now “Marxists”-joking aside!”

Lenin goes on to quote Engels historical analysis of the concept of state:

“The state is therefore by no means a power imposed on society from the outside; just as little is it ‘the reality of the moral idea,’ ‘the image and reality of reason,’ as Hegel asserted. Rather, it is a product of society at a certain stage of development; it is the admission that this society has become entangled in an insoluble contradiction within itself, that it is cleft into irreconcilable antagonisms which it is powerless to dispel. But in order that these antagonisms, classes with conflicting economic interests, may not consume themselves and society in sterile struggle, a power apparently standing above society becomes necessary, whose purpose is to moderate the conflict and keep it within the bounds of ‘order’; and this power arising out of society, but placing itself above it, and increasingly separating itself from it, is the state.”

Lenin summarizes:

“The state is the product and the manifestation of the irreconcilability of class antagonisms. The state arises when, where, and to the extent that the class antagonisms cannot be objectively reconciled. And, conversely, the existence of the state proves that the class antagonisms are irreconcilable.”

He goes on:

“On the one hand, the bourgeois, and particularly the petty bourgeois, ideologists, compelled under the pressure of indisputable historical facts to admit that the state only exists where there are class antagonisms and the class struggle, “correct” Marx in such a way as to make it appear that the state is an organ for reconciling the classes. According to Marx, the state could neither arise nor maintain itself if a reconciliation of classes were possible. But with the petty bourgeois and Philistine professors and publicists, the state-and this frequently on the strength of benevolent references to Marx!-becomes a conciliator of the classes. According to Marx, the state is an organ of class domination, an organ of oppression of one class by another; its aim is the creation of ‘order’ which legalizes and perpetuates this oppression by moderating the collisions between the classes. But in the opinion of the petty bourgeois politicians, order means reconciliation of the classes, and not oppression of one class by another; to moderate collisions does not mean, they say, to deprive the oppressed classes of certain definite means and methods of struggle for overthrowing the oppressors, but to practice reconciliation.”

After many years of obfuscation by the wealthy classes, the current global economic crisis and its natural born child, the occupy movement and worldwide resistance to the ravages of capitalism, have clarified the role of the state in the class war. These events make it impossible to deny the relevance of the classic teachings of Marx, Engels and Lenin.

You can read V. I. Lenin’s State and Revolution online at:

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/

PHill1917@comcast.net

for the people actually doing the occupation
and for those for whom it’s not too late…..

a spectre is haunting communism
the spectre of anarchism
calling communism to explain the
continued reason for it’s raison d’etre

a spectre is haunting communism
the spectre of syndicalism
challenging communism’s understanding
of the importance of party

a spectre is haunting communism
the spectre of roving rebel bands
mao’s view of the black blocs of his time
the examining lens of occupy 2011

a spectre is haunting communism
the spectre of denial that there’s
a capitalism and it’s state and how
heroic acts of individualism
and the self- pulling out of our hair
in want of understanding when we
find out that our old lenses are
not up to usage we wanted these
kids we forgot that they’d bring
with them the socialism as well as
the baggage of their upbringing.

a spectre is haunting communism
the arrival of the new communism
awaiting the shaping both by the
young who shape the clay and by
those of us who know at what
temperature to heat the kiln

berkeley ca, november 2011

gary hicks

By James Thompson

Class warfare is a term which is frequently bandied about these days by both the right and left in U.S. political commentaries. The term comes from Karl Marx and Frederick Engels who coined the history making words “class struggle.”

In my humble view, the class struggle refers to the inherent conflict between the owners of capitalist enterprises and their employees.

Marx and Engels teach us that capitalists strive for increasing profits and must do so in order to survive in the capitalist system. If they do not strive for increasing profits, their competitors will quickly consume them.

Marx and Engels also teach us that the only way for capitalists to increase profits is to lower wages and benefits of the workers. The workers, on the other hand, must fight for adequate wages and benefits so that they and their families and communities can survive. Therein lies the basis for the conflict which is currently being called “class warfare.” Marx and Engels pointed out that the interests of the capitalists, i.e. owners of the means of production or ownership class, are irreconcilable with the interests of the working class.

Here is a quote from Frederick Engels 1888 preface to the Communist Manifesto:

“the fundamental proposition (of the Communist Manifesto)…is: That in every historical epoch, the prevailing mode of economic production and exchange, and the social organization necessarily following from it, form the basis upon which is built up, and from which alone can be explained, the political and intellectual history of that epoch; that consequently the whole history of mankind (since the dissolution of primitive tribal society, holding land in common ownership) has been a history of class struggles, contests between exploiting and exploited, ruling and oppressed classes; that the history of these class struggles form a series of evolutions in which, nowadays, a stage has been reached where the exploited and oppressed class-the proletariat-cannot attain its emancipation from the sway of the exploiting and ruling class-the bourgeoisie-without at the same time, and once and for all, emancipating society at large from all exploitation, oppression, class distinctions, and class struggles.”

Here is another quote from the first chapter of the Communist Manifesto entitled “Bourgeois and Proletarians”:

“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.

Freeman and slave, patrician and plebian, lord and serf, guildmaster and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.”

They end The Manifesto by stating:

“The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at the Communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.

Workingmen of all countries, unite!”

The relevancy of this classic work cannot be denied with the world economic crisis in full bloom and the Occupy Wall Street and its various manifestations expressing the fury of the international working class at the exploiting/capitalist class.

You can read the Communist Manifesto online at:

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm

PHill1917@comcast.net

By James F. Harrington

Anat Kamm is an former female Israeli soldier who during her military service, served as an assistant in the Central Commandbureau. While in this capacity, she secretly copied thousands of classified documents, including many confidential documents. After she finished her military service Kamm copied the documents to a CD and leaked it to the Israeli Haaretz journalist Uri Blau.

Information from the leak suggested that the military had defied a court ruling against assassinating wanted militants in the West Bank who could have been potentially arrested safely.

Because of this, Kamm was later on convicted of espionage and providing confidential information without authorization.

She was recently given a four and one-half year sentence for her actions.