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PART XVI
POTENTIAL QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
1ST QUESTION: Doesn't Marxism overemphasize
the importance of economics in history?
ANSWER: Although asked by many people, the question itself reveals
an incorrect understanding of Marxian theory. Marxism is not dialectical
economism but dialectical materialism. Economics is too narrow a
term, since such basic factors as heredity and climate are excluded.
All material factors (weather, parents, geology, altitude, etc.) which
impinge on an organism are important. The most significant element
throughout history, however, has been the environment, which has been closely
allied to economics. The economic arrangement of society has been
a critical determinant but not the only material factor affecting man's
existence and for this reason Marxism is a materialistic analysis of history
and not an economic interpretation. Materialism is a much broader concept
than economics. Giving emphasis only to economic controls and motivation
would lead to the incorrect conclusion that nobody does anything except
for economic gain or wealth. The fact that people go to the theater,
play golf, read a novel, or engage in various other activities can't be
related to economic causes but can be related to material causes in general.
When a generally satisfactory environment (primarily related to economics)
and less important material factors such as indoctrination (political,
philosophical, religious, legal, cultural, etc.) by television, books,
magazines, the schools, etc. are combined, an organism could understandably
be motivated by something other than a direct desire for wealth.
As was mentioned previously, a person's basic needs must first be satisfied.
And once fulfilled indoctrination on virtually any topic could easily become
a dominant influence over his behavior. Indoctrination, itself, is
a material influence for it is nothing more than a material rearrangement
of the cellular structure of the brain and nervous system of an organism
by way of the senses. All life, all existence, is nothing more than
matter in motion with some aspects of matter exercising a greater degree
of influence for a particular period of time than others. Until now
the arrangement and quality of the environment has been the most important
influence. And because this has been closely tied to economics and
economic systems, observers have incorrectly concluded that Marxism has
excluded other material factors and is little more than an economic interpretation
of history.495
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495 (a) "But where have you read in the
works of Marx or Engels that they necessarily spoke of economic materialism?
When they described their world outlook they called it simply materialism."
(b) "The whole point, however, is that Marx did not content himself with
this skeleton, that he did not confine himself to 'economic theory' in
the ordinary sense of the term...."
(c) "According to the materialist conception of history, the ultimately
determining element in history is the production and reproduction of real
life. More than this neither Marx nor I (Engels--Ed.) have ever asserted.
Hence if somebody twists this into saying that the economic element is
the only determining one, he transforms that proposition into a meaningless,
abstract, senseless phrase. The economic situation is the basis,
but the various elements of the superstructure--political forms of the
class struggle and its results, to wit: constitutions established by the
victorious class after a successful battle...juridical forms, and even
the reflexes of all these actual struggles in the brain of the participants,
political, juristic, philosophical theories, religious views...also exercise
their influence upon the course of the historical struggles and in many
cases preponderate.... There is an interaction of all these elements
in which...the economic movement finally asserts itself as necessary....
Marx and I are ourselves partly to blame for the fact that the young people
sometimes lay more stress on the economic side than is due it. We
had to emphasize the main principle vis-a-vis our adversaries, who denied
it, and we had not always the time, the place, or the opportunity to give
their due to the other elements involved.... But when it came to
presenting a section of history, that is, to making a practical application,
it was a different matter and there no error was permissible."
(d) "To prove that the theory lacks foundation, Mr. Mikhailovsky first
distorts it by ascribing to it the absurd intention of not taking the sum-total
of social life into account, whereas quite the opposite is the case: the
materialists (Marxists) were the first socialists to raise the issue of
the need to analyze all aspects of social life, and not only the economic."
(Footnote: "Marx directly demanded that matters must not be confined to
the economic aspect.")
(e) "...while the material mode of existence is the primary cause this
does not preclude the ideological spheres (which are other material influences--Ed.)
from reacting upon it in their turn...."
(f) (Add) "Political, juridical, philosophical, religious, literary, artistic,
etc., development is based on economic development. But all these
react on one another and also upon the economic basis. It is not
that the economic situation is cause, solely active, while everything else
is solely passive. There is rather an interaction....the economic
relations, however much they may be influenced by the other (material influences--Ed.)--the
political and ideological relations, are still ultimately the decisive
ones...."
(g) (Add) "If therefore Barth supposes that we deny any and every reaction
of the political and other (material--Ed.) reflexes (ideas, ideologies,
religious beliefs, etc.--Ed.) of the economic movement upon the movement
itself, he is simply tilting at windmills. ...why do we fight for
the political dictatorship of the proletariat if political power is economically
impotent? Force (that is, state power) is also economic (material--Ed.)
power! ...What these gentlemen all lack is dialectics. They
always see only here cause, there effect. ...while (actually--Ed.) the
whole vast process goes on in the form of interaction--though of very unequal
forces, the economic movement being by far the strongest...most decisive...."
Page 232
2ND QUESTION: Is Marxism a dogma?
ANSWER: If by dogma is meant a set of beliefs which are followed
regardless of valid proofs to the contrary, then Marxism is precisely the
opposite. Marxism accepts no eternal truths, no absolutes and no
unscientific allegations.496 There
are no verifiable absolute truths; truth is relative.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
496 (a) "But Communism abolishes eternal
truths...."
(b) "I do not say absolutely certain, because nothing is absolutely certain."
(c) "...there can be no 'immutable' social systems, no 'eternal principles'...."
(d) "A system of natural and historical knowledge, embracing everything,
and final for all time, is a contradiction to the fundamental law of dialectic
reasoning."
(e) "Dialectics tells us that nothing in the world is eternal, everything
in the world is transient and mutable; nature changes, society changes,
habits and customs change, conceptions of justice change, truth itself
changes--that is why dialectics regards everything critically; that is
why it denies the existence of a truth established once and for all.
Consequently, it also repudiates abstract 'dogmatic' statements, which
once discovered had merely to be learned by heart."
(f) "While discussing Hegel with whom he agreed, Engels once said, "Truth
lay now...in the long historical development of science, which mounts from
lower to ever higher levels of knowledge without ever reaching, by discovering
so-called absolute truths, a point at which it can proceed no further,
where it would have nothing more to do than to fold its hands and gaze
with wonder at the absolute truth to which it had attained. ...dialectical
philosophy (Marxism--Ed.) dissolves all conceptions of final absolute truth....
For it...nothing is final, absolute, sacred. It reveals the transitory
character of everything and in everything; ...its revolutionary character
is absolute--the only absolute dialectical philosophy admits."
(g) "If mankind ever reached the stage at which it should work only with
eternal truths, with results of thought which possess sovereign validity
and an unconditional claim to truth, it would then have reached the point
where...the famous miracle of the counted uncountable (infinity--Ed.) would
have been performed."
(h) "...an adequate, exhaustive scientific exposition of this interconnection,
the formation of an exact mental image of the world system in which we
live, is impossible for us, and will always remain impossible. If
at anytime in the evolution of mankind such a final, conclusive system
of the interconnections within the world--physical as well as mental and
historical--were brought about, this would mean that human knowledge had
reached its limit, and, from the moment when society had been brought into
accord with that system, further historical evolution would be cut short--which
would be an absurd idea, sheer nonsense."
(i) (Add) "...Hegel's dialectical method, which repudiates all immutable
ideas, is from beginning to end scientific and revolutionary."
Page 233
Even the most basic Marxist assumptions such as, all that exists is
matter and all matter is in motion, are only acceptable as long as theories
based upon these assumptions are borne out through scientific investigation.
If this were no longer to occur, these theories would be discarded and
new, more accurate truths formulated. One never knows if the latest
truths are absolutely true for they may be replaced tomorrow by more accurate
truths. Thus, all truths are only valid for a definite period of
time and under certain conditions; they are relative.497
Any proposition or statement every formulated by Marx, Engels or any other
scientist could be disproven by new data at some time in the future.498
But, for the present, all available evidence and theoretical analyses prove
that the tenets of Marxism are the latest, the most reliable, the most
accurate description of the universe. For now they are the truth.
No philosophy in the world today can compare with Marxism in accuracy.
Thus, all other philosophies are basically false and the tenets of Marxism
are truth.499
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
497 (a) (Add) "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."
(b) (Add) "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."
498 (a) (Add) "Marxism-Leninism has in no
way exhausted truth but ceaselessly opens up roads to the knowledge of
truth in the course of practice."
(b) (Add) "Marxism must certainly advance; it must develop along with the
development of practice and cannot stand still. It would become lifeless
if it remained stagnant and stereotyped."
499 (a) "Now--since the appearance of Capital--the
materialist conception of history is no longer a hypothesis, but a scientifically
proven proposition. And until we get some other attempt to give a scientific
explanation of the functioning and development of some formation of society...another
attempt just as capable of introducing order into the 'pertinent facts'
as materialism is, that is just as capable of presenting a living picture
of a definite formation, while giving it a strictly scientific explanation--until
then the materialist conception of history will be a synonym for social
science. Materialism is not 'primarily a scientific conception of history,'
as Mr. Mikhailovsky thinks, but the only scientific conception of it."
Source 20, Vol. 1, page 142
(b) (Add) "The Marxian doctrine is omnipotent because it is true. It
is complete and harmonious, and provides men with an integral world conception
which is irreconcilable with any form of superstition, reaction, or defence
of bourgeois oppression." Source 43, page 8
(c) (Add) "The sole conclusion to be drawn from the opinion held by
Marxists that Marx's theory is an objective truth is that by following
the path of Marxian theory we shall draw 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." Source 27, page 129
Page 234
Anyone who alleges that he possesses a truth that is good for all time
and under all conditions is rash, irresponsible and unscientific.500Dogma
is the antithesis of science. Marxism is science not dogma and should
be studied as such.501
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
500 (a) "But a man who applies the measure
of genuine, immutable, final and ultimate truth to knowledge...such a man
only proves thereby his own ignorance and perversity...."
(b) (Add) "Anyone therefore who here sets out to hunt down final and ultimate
truths, genuine, absolutely immutable truths, will bring home but little,
apart from platitudes and commonplaces of the sorriest kind...."
501 (a) "Marxism is a science."
(b) "...Marxism--the sole genuinely scientific philosophy...."
(c) "First of all, we know now of only one proletarian science--Marxism."
(d) "Marx, on the other hand, considered the whole value of his theory
to lie in the fact that it is 'in its essence critical and revolutionary....
The irresistible attraction of this theory, which draws to itself the socialists
of all countries lies precisely in the fact that it combines the quality
of being strictly and supremely scientific (being the last work in social
science) with that of being revolutionary, it does not combine them accidentally
and not only because the founder of the doctrine combined in his own person
the qualities of a scientist and a revolutionary, but does so intrinsically
and inseparably."
(e) "Our teaching--said Engels...is not a dogma, but a guide to action."
(f) "...Marxism is not a lifeless dogma, not a final, finished and ready-made,
immutable doctrine but a living guide to action...."
(g) "Our theory is a theory of evolution, not a dogma to be learnt by heart
and to be repeated mechanically."
(h) "The teaching of Marx and Engels is not a dogma to be learnt by heart.
It must be taken as a guide to action.... I have said before, and
I repeat once again, that this teaching is not a dogma, but a guide to
action."
(i) "But his (Marx--Ed.) way of viewing things is not a doctrine but a
method. It does not provide ready-made dogmas, but criteria for further
research and the method for this research."
(j) "...it (Marxian socialism--Ed.) is founded on the sum total of human
knowledge, presupposes a high level of scientific development, demands
scientific work, etc., etc."
(k) "Socialism, having become a science demands the same treatment as every
other science--it must be studied."
(l) "In particular, it will be the duty of the leaders to gain an ever
clearer insight into all theoretical questions, to free themselves more
and more from the influence of traditional phrases inherited from the old
world outlook, and constantly keep in mind that socialism, since it has
become a science, demands that it be pursued as a science, that is that
it be studied."
(m) "A knowledge of proletarian conditions is absolutely necessary to be
able to provide solid ground for socialist theories, on the one hand, and
for judgments about their right to exist, on the other; and to put an end
to all sentimental dreams and fancies pro and con."
(n) "...the youth in general that wants to pass to communism, should learn
communism."
(o) "You can become a Communist only when you enrich your mind with the
knowledge of all the treasures created by mankind.... You must not
only assimilate this knowledge, you must assimilate it critically, so as
not to cram you mind with useless lumber.... If I know that I know
little, I shall strive to learn more; but if a man says that he is a Communist
and that he need know nothing thoroughly, he will never be anything like
a Communist."
(p) (Add) "The truth about any important question cannot be found unless
a certain amount of independent work is done, and anyone who is afraid
of work cannot possibly arrive at the truth."
(q) (Add) "...to subscribe to what Marxism demands of all serious policy,
namely that it be based on and grounded in facts capable of exact and objective
verification."
(r) (Add) "...those very same 'Bolsheviks' at whom the bourgeoisie always
hurl the abusive term 'doctrinaires,' because of their faithfulness to
the 'doctrine' i.e., the fundamentals, the principles, teachings, aims
of socialism."
(s) (Add) "We (the Russian Marxists--Ed.) anticipate...(that--Ed.) the
shouts will rise that we want to convert the socialist party into an order
of 'true believers' that persecutes 'heretics' for deviations from 'dogma,'
for every independent opinion, and so forth. We know about all these
fashionable and trenchant phrases. Only there is not a grain of truth
or sense in them. There can be no strong socialist party without
a revolutionary theory which unites all socialists, from which they draw
all their convictions, and which they apply in their methods of struggle
and means of action. To defend such a theory, which to the best of
your knowledge you consider to be true, against unfounded attacks and attempts
to corrupt it is not to imply that you are an enemy of all criticism.
We do not regard Marx's theory as something completed and inviolable; on
the contrary, we are convinced that it has only laid the foundation stone
of the science which socialists must develop in all directions if they
wish to keep pace with life."
(t) (Add) "What a handy little word 'dogma' is! One need only slightly
twist an opposing theory, cover up this twist with the bogy of 'dogma'--and
there you are!"
Page 235
3RD QUESTION: Doesn't socialism violate
human nature?
ANSWER: This question was discussed earlier. Human nature
is a myth. Nobody had been able to describe this alleged human nature,
which is supposedly common to all people, because every characteristic
presented (greed, the desire for power, dishonesty, aggressiveness, etc.)
is virtually nonexistent in many persons.
4TH QUESTION: Are Marxists seeking
to make everyone equal?
ANSWER: This question, too, was discussed earlier. The abolishment
of classes and inequality of wealth are sought but not identical intellectual
and physical faculties.502
------------------------------------------------------------------------
502 (a) "Engels was a thousand times right
when he said that the concept of equality is a most absurd and stupid prejudice
if it does not imply the abolition of classes. Bourgeois professors
attempted to use the concept 'equality' as grounds for accusing us of wanting
all men to be alike. They themselves invented this absurdity and
wanted to ascribe it to the socialists. But in their ignorance they
did not know that the socialists--and precisely the founders of modern
scientific socialism, Marx and Engels--had said: equality is an empty phrase
if it does not imply the abolition of classes. We want to abolish
classes, and in this sense we are for equality. But the claim that
we want all men to be alike is just nonsense, the silly invention of an
intellectual who sometimes conscientiously strikes a pose, juggles with
words, but says nothing--I don't care whether he calls himself a writer,
a scholar, or anything else."
(b) "..his (i.e., Professor Tugan-Baranovsky--Ed.) is the reasoning of
a liberal scholar who repeats the incredibly trite and threadbare argument
that experience and reason clearly prove that men are not equal, yet socialism
bases its ideal on equality. Hence, socialism, if you please, is
an absurdity which is contrary to experience and reason, and so forth!
Mr. Tugan repeats the old trick of the reactionaries: first to misinterpret
socialism by making it out to be an absurdity, and then to triumphantly
refute the absurdity! When we say that experience and reason prove
that men are not equal, we mean by equality, equality in abilities or similarity
in physical strength and mental ability. It goes without saying that
in this respect men are not equal. No sensible person and no socialist
forgets this. But this kind of equality has nothing whatever to do
with socialism. If Mr. Tugan is quite unable to think, he is at least
able to read; were he to take the well-known work of one of the founders
of scientific socialism, Frederick Engels, directed against Duhring, he
would find there a special section explaining the absurdity of imagining
that economic equality means anything else than the abolition of classes.
But when professors set out to refute socialism, one never knows what to
wonder at most--their stupidity, their ignorance, or their unscrupulousness....
By political equality Social Democrats mean equal rights, and by economic
equality, as we have already said, they mean the abolition of classes.
As for establishing human equality in the sense of equality of strength
and abilities (physical and mental), socialists do not even think of such
things.... The abolition of classes (which Marxists do seek--Ed.)
means placing all citizens on an equal footing with regard to the means
of production belonging to society as a whole. It means giving all
citizens equal opportunities of working on the publicly-owned means of
production, on the publicly-owned land, at the publicly-owned factories,
and so forth. ...when socialists speak of equality they always mean
social equality, equality of social status (in other words, the abolition
of classes--Ed.), and not by any means the physical and mental equality
of individuals."
(c) (Add) "By equality, Marxism means, not equalisation of personal requirements
and everyday life, but the abolition of classes, i.e. (a) the equal emancipation
of all working people from exploitation after the capitalists have been
overthrown and expropriated; (b) the equal abolition for all of private
property in the means of production after they have been converted into
the property of the whole of society; (c) the equal duty of all to work
according to their ability, and the equal right of all working people to
receive in return for this according to the work performed (socialist society);
(d) the equal duty of all to work according to their ability, and the equal
right of all working people to receive in return for this according to
their needs (communist society).... To draw from this the conclusion...that
according to the Marxist plan all should wear the same clothes and eat
the same dishes in the same quantity--is to utter vulgarities and to slander
Marxism."
(d) (Add) "We have not promised equality (under socialism--Ed.) and we
have not got it. There can be no equality so long as one has plenty
of corn (or any other commodity--Ed.) and the other has none."
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5TH QUESTION: Are Marxists trying to
make the perfect man?
ANSWER: Nothing can be made perfect, man included. In a socialist
society man is constantly improving but will never attain perfection.
For all practical purposes "perfect" is a nonsense term when applied to
anything.
6TH QUESTION: Aren't Marxists attempting
to create a heaven on earth?
ANSWER: Certainly not! As was stated earlier, existence and life
are a journey not an arrival. Man will never attain a utopian society
in which all problems have been resolved,503
although dialectical materialists do constantly seek to improve the majority's
welfare.504 It is in the nature of
heaven that problems are nonexistent and everything is perfect. Marxism
denies both possibilities.505 One can
only wonder what people do in heaven since everything is perfect and all
problems have vanished. To carry out any form of activity would be
to alter that which is perfect and make it less than perfect. On
the other hand, to just sit and stare for an eternity sounds more like
hell than heaven.
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503 (a) "...we cannot and do not promise
them a land flowing with milk and honey."
(b) "We are no quack-mongers advocating a system that shall be a cure-all."
(c) "In classless society (communism--Ed.) the struggle between the new
and the old and between truth and falsehood will never end."
(d) "In the opinion of the (bourgeois--Ed.) author, communist society is
a bed of roses, without any darkness or contradiction; all is well, without
the existence of opposites. Society will thereby cease to develop....
Social development will then come to an end, and society will for ever
remain the same. Here the author discards a fundamental Marxist law--that
the development of all things, all human society, is pushed forward by
the struggle of opposites, by contradiction. What the author is doing
here is preaching metaphysics and discarding the great theory of dialectical
and historical materialism."
(e) "Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established,
an ideal to which reality will have to adjust itself."
(f) (Add) "The bourgeoisie want nothing better than to answer the people's
queries about the scandalous profits of the war supplies deliverers, and
about economic dislocation, with 'learned' arguments about the 'utopian'
character of socialism."
(g) (Add) "In other words, the spread of materialism and scientific socialism
in breadth is due to the fact that this doctrine promises the workers a
better future! But a most elementary acquaintance with the history
of socialism and of the workingclass movement in the West is enough to
reveal the utter absurdity and falsity of this explanation. Everybody
knows that scientific socialism never painted any prospects for the future
as such: it confined itself to analyzing the present bourgeois regime,
to studying the trends of development of the capitalist social organization,
and that is all."
(h) (Add) "The worker cannot fail to see that he is oppressed by capital,
that his struggle has to be waged against the bourgeois class. And
this struggle, aimed at satisfying his immediate economic needs, at improving
his material conditions, inevitably demands that the workers organize,
and inevitably becomes a war not against individuals, but against a class,
the class which oppresses and crushes the working people not only in the
factories, but everywhere. That is why the factory worker is none
other than the foremost representative of the entire exploited population.
And in order that he may fulfill his function of representative in an organized,
sustained struggle it is by no means necessary to enthuse him with 'perspectives;'
all that is needed is simply to make him understand his position, to make
him understand the political and economic structure of the system that
oppresses him, and the necessity and inevitability of class antagonisms
under this system."
504 "The modern class-conscious worker...enlightened
by urban life, contemptuously casts aside religious prejudices, leaves
heaven to the priests and bourgeois bigots and tries to win a better life
for himself right here, on earth. The proletariat of today sides
with socialism, which enlists science in the battle against the fog of
religion, and frees the workers from their belief in a hereafter by welding
them together in a genuine fight for a better life on earth."
505 "...a perfect society, a perfect 'state,'
are things which can only exist in imagination."
Page 237
7TH QUESTION: Aren't people free to
buy and sell property under capitalism while under socialism everyone works
for the government?
ANSWER: Under capitalism everyone has a permit to steal and exploit
while only those with sufficient resources actually benefit from this activity.
Just because one man may be wealthier or more intelligent than another
does not grant him permission to take advantage of the less endowed person,
even though the latter may agree to unequal trades. No doubt some
will say, "If Bob is naive enough to give Joe $50 for a $5 radio or accept
$75 in wages after having created $100 worth of value, that's Bob's problem."
But is it? Should one man have a right to take advantage of another
man's weakness. Marxists are unalterably opposed to exploitation
in any form regardless of who agrees. No one should have the "freedom"
to prosper at the expense of his neighbor,506
which is inseparable from private ownership of the means of production
and the accompanying exchange of commodities.
Whether or not people are working for the government depends on the
degree to which the government is of the people. If the state is
an elitist directing agency as is implied by the question, then the answer
is yes. The masses are only working for the government. If,
on the other hand, the state is essentially the people in organized form,
then the people are laboring for themselves and not the government.
Whether or not people are working for the government is, in large part,
dependent on the degree to which the citizenry and not just a small clique
benefit from that which is produced. The mass support received by
Chinese, Cuban, North Korean, and Vietnamese governmental policies should
provide the answer. How many regimes supported by the United States
(e.g., those represented by Batista, Franco, Diem, Trujillo, etc.) would
have dared to distribute millions of weapons to the populace as did Fidel
Castro, Mao Tse-tung and Ho Chi Minh? That act alone is more than
sufficient to tell any objective observer which leaders have mass support.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
506 (a) "...we do not recognise 'equality'
between the exploiter and the exploited...nor the 'freedom' of the former
to rob the latter."
(b) (Add) "Gentlemen! Do not allow yourselves to be deluded by the
abstract word freedom. Whose freedom? It is not the freedom
of one individual in relation to another, but the freedom of capital to
crush the worker."
(c) (Add) "We maintain that the freedom you accuse the Bolsheviks of contravening
is the freedom of capital, the freedom of an owner to sell grain (or any
other product--Ed.) on the open market, i.e., the freedom for the few to
make profits, (i.e., the freedom to exploit--Ed.)...."
(d) (Add) "Down with the liars who speak about freedom and equality for
all, while there is an oppressed sex, oppressing classes, private ownership
of capital and shares and people with bursting bins who use their surplus
grain to enslave the hungry. Instead of freedom for all, instead
of equality for all, let there be struggle against the oppressors and exploiters,
let the opportunity to oppress and exploit be abolished."
(e) (Add) "It (Soviet rule--Ed.) suppressed the 'freedom' of the exploiters
and their accomplices; it deprives them of 'freedom' to exploit, 'freedom'
to fatten on starvation, 'freedom' to fight for the restoration of the
rule of capital, 'freedom' to compact with the foreign bourgeoisie against
the workers and peasants of their own country."
(f) (Add) The dictatorship of the proletariat will be marked by, "ruthless
suppression of the resistance of the exploiters.... 'Liberties' and
democracy not for all, but for the working and exploited masses, to emancipate
them from exploitation, ruthless suppression of exploiters...."
(g) (Add) "This organization has but one object, and that is, to overthrow
capitalism. No false slogans, no fetishes like 'freedom,' and 'equality,'
will deceive us. We recognize no freedom, no equality, no labour
democracy if it conflicts with the cause of emancipating labour from the
yoke of capital."
(h) (Add) "You accuse us of violating freedom. But we say that all
freedom is deception if it is not subordinated to the task of emancipating
labour from the yoke of capital."
(i) (Add) "Needless to say, for every revolution...freedom is a very, very
important slogan. But our programme says that if freedom runs counter
to the emancipation of labour from the yoke of capital, it is a deception.
And every one of you who has read Marx--and, I think, even everyone who
has read at least one popular exposition of Marx's theories--knows that
Marx devoted the greater part of his life, the greater part of his literary
work, and the greater part of his scientific studies to ridiculing freedom,
equality, the will of the majority, and the Benthams who wrote so beautifully
about these things, and to proving that these phrases were merely a screen
to cover up the freedom of the commodity owners, the freedom of capital,
which these owners use to oppress the masses of the working people.
At the present time, when things have reached the stage of overthrowing
the rule of capital all over the world...in this historical epoch, when
the struggle of the oppressed working people for the complete overthrow
of capital and the abolition of commodity production stands in the forefront,
we say that all those who in such a political situation talk about 'freedom
in general,' who in the name of this freedom oppose the dictatorship of
the proletariat are doing nothing more nor less than aiding and abetting
the exploiters, for unless freedom promotes the emancipation of labour
from the yoke of capital, it is a deception....we say that we are opposing
capitalism in general, republican capitalism, democratic capitalism, free
capitalism; and, of course, we know that it (the capitalist class--Ed.)
will raise the standard of liberty against us. But to this we have
our answer, and we deemed it necessary to give this answer in our programme--all
freedom is deception if it runs counter to the emancipation of labour from
the yoke of capital."
(j) (Add) "In order to abolish classes a period of the dictatorship of
one class is needed, the dictatorship of precisely that oppressed class
which is capable not only of overthrowing the exploiters, not only of ruthlessly
crushing their resistance, but also of breaking ideologically with the
entire bourgeois-democratic outlook, with all the philistine phrase-mongering
about liberty and equality in general (in reality, this phrase-mongering
implies, as Marx demonstrated long ago, the 'liberty and equality' of commodity
owners, the 'liberty and equality' of the capitalist and the worker)."
(k) (Add) "...whoever conceives the transition to socialism without the
suppression of the bourgeoisie is not a socialist.... We do not want
freedom for the bourgeoisie, we do not recognize equality of exploiters
and exploited."
(l) (Add) "...the dictatorship of the proletariat suppresses the 'freedom'
of action of the bourgeoisie, petty bourgeoisie and bourgeois intelligentsia...."
(m) (Add) "...in order to achieve freedom for the working people it is
first of all necessary to overcome the resistance of a whole class, it
is obvious that I cannot promise this class either freedom, equality, or
majority decisions."
(n) (Add) "It is inevitable that the slogans of our era are and must be:
the abolition of classes; the dictatorship of the proletariat for the purpose
of achieving that aim; the ruthless exposure of petty-bourgeois democratic
prejudices concerning freedom and equality and ruthless war on these prejudices.
Whoever does not understand this has no understanding of the dictatorship
of the proletariat, Soviet government, and the fundamental principles of
the Communist International."
(o) (Add) The struggle has now assumed world-wide dimensions, and therefore,
anybody who opposes us with such catchwords as 'democracy,' and 'freedom,'
takes the side of the propertied classes, deceives the people, for he fails
to understand that up to now freedom and democracy have meant freedom and
democracy for the propertied classes and only crumbs from their table for
the propertyless."
(p) (Add) "...mere defence of 'liberty' and 'equality,' while private ownership
of the means of production is preserved, turns into 'collaboration' with
the bourgeoisie, and undermines the rule of the working class. The
dictatorship of the proletariat means that the state uses its whole machinery
of power to uphold and perpetuate 'no liberty' for the exploiters to continue
their oppression and exploitation, 'inequality' between the owner of property...and
the non-owner."
(q) (Add) "Those who try to solve the problems involved in the transition
from capitalism to Socialism on the basis of general talk about liberty,
equality, democracy in general, equality of the labouring democracy, etc....thereby
only reveal their petty bourgeois, philistine nature and ideologically
slavishly follow in the wake of the bourgeois."
(r) (Add) "Freedom and equality within the limits of labour democracy (which
is proposed by some pseudo-Marxists--Ed.) mean freedom for the small peasant
owner...to sell his surplus grain at profiteering prices, i.e., to exploit
the workers. Anyone who talks about freedom and equality within the
limits of labour democracy when the capitalists have been overthrown but
private property and freedom to trade still survive is a champion of the
exploiters.... As long as private ownership of the means of production...and
freedom to trade remain, so does the economic basis of capitalism.
The dictatorship of the proletariat is the only means of successfully fighting
for the demolition of that basis, the only way to abolish classes (without
which abolition there can be no question of genuine freedom for the individual--and
not for the property owner--of real equality, in the social and political
sense, between man and man--and not the humbug of equality between those
who possess property and those who do not, between the well-fed and the
hungry, between the exploiter's and the exploited). The dictatorship
of the proletariat leads to the abolition of classes; it leads to that
end on the one hand, by the overthrow of the exploiters and the suppression
of their resistance and on the other hand by neutralising and rendering
harmless the small property-owner's vacillation between the bourgeoisie
and the proletariat."
(s) (Add) "All talk about equality of rights is nonsense. We are
not waging the class struggle on the basis of equality of rights, nor can
we if the proletariat is to prevail."
(t) (Add) "We did not promise liberties right and left; on the contrary,
we, in our Constitution, ...said definitely that we shall deprive socialists
of their liberties, if they use them to the detriment of the socialist
revolution, if they are used to cover up liberties for the capitalists....
We have openly stated that in the transition period, the period of fierce
struggle, we not only refrain from promising liberties right and left,
but say in advance that we shall deprive of their liberties those citizens
who hinder the socialist revolution. Who will judge whether they
do so or not? The proletariat will?
(u) (Add) "We have not promised equality to anyone; if you want to be with
the workers, come with us, come over to the socialist side; if not then
go over to the Whites. We never promised a liberal regime; the one
we have has helped us to escape the bondage of the landowners and the capitalists."
(v) (Add) "During the Allied invasion of Russia after the 1917 Revolution
Lenin said, "I ask calmly and categorically which is better, to imprison
several scores or hundreds of instigators, guilty or innocent, deliberate
or unwitting, or lose thousands of Red Army men and workers? The
first is better. I don't care whether I am accused of committing
every mortal sin imaginable and of violating liberties, I plead guilty,
but the interests of the workers will be furthered."
(w) (Add) "We Communists have been reproached with the desire of abolishing
the right of personally acquiring property as the fruit of a man's own
labour, which property is alleged to be the ground work of all personal
freedom, activity and independence.... Do you mean the property of
the petty artisan and the small peasant (the petty bourgeoisie--Ed.)...?
There is no need to abolish that; the development of industry has to a
great extent already destroyed it, and is still destroying it daily. Or
do you mean modern bourgeois private property? But does wage labour
create any property for the labourer? Not a bit. It creates
capital, i.e. that kind of property which exploits wage labour....
You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property.
But in your existing society (the United States, for example--Ed.) private
property is already done away with for nine-tenths of the population; its
existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of
those nine-tenths."
Page 238
8TH QUESTION: Isn't the state more
important than the individual under socialism?
ANSWER: Again the implication is that the state (government) and
the people are separate entities with divergent interests. Only under
private property is this true. The state represents a financial clique
whose interests clash with those of the masses.507
In a socialist system, on the other hand, the welfare of the masses and
the government are identical. Consequently, to say that the welfare
of one individual in a socialist system is less important than governmental
policy is to say that the welfare or desires of one individual are less
important than the status of the people in general, which is true.
Individuals are not sacrificed for the group, as bourgeois apologists would
have people believe, but are required to take cognizance of how their behavior
affects the lives of others. With everyone constantly judging his
behavior in light of its influence on others and performing the needed
corrections, the position of all people is protected in the long run and
far fewer individuals are crushed. The "every man for himself" philosophy
of private property systems, which masquerades under the euphemisms of
"individualism" and "freedom," unavoidably sacrifices a large percentage
of the total population. For the latter the words "individualism"
"equality," "democracy," and "freedom" are meaningless.508
------------------------------------------------------------------------
507 (Add) "...in Europe and America, in
countries of advanced culture. The presidents in those republics
are all businessmen, agents or puppets of a bourgeoisie rotten to the core
and besmirched from head to foot with mud and blood...the blood of striking
workers shot down in the name of progress and civilization. In those
countries the presidents represent the bourgeoisie, which long ago renounced
all the ideals of its youth...."
508 (a) (Add) "...the masses of the people,
learning from reality and not from books, speedily gain practical experience
of the impotence of all types of equalitarian plans, impotence in the face
of the power of capital."
(b) (Add) "Free competition has caused the workers suffering enough to
be hated by them; its apostles, the bourgeoisie, are their declared enemies.
The working-man has only disadvantages to await from the complete freedom
of competition."
(c) (Add) "There is no 'equality,' nor can there be, of oppressed and oppressor,
exploited and exploiter."
(d) (Add) "...as long as property remains in the hands of the capitalists
democracy is nothing but a thoroughly hypocritical cover for the dictatorship
of the bourgeoisie. They (people claiming to be teachers of Marxism--Ed.)
failed to understand that there cannot be any serious question of the emancipation
of labour from capital as long as this hypocritical cover is not torn away.
...while property remains in the hands of the capitalists, all democracy
will be nothing but a hypocritical cover for the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.
All talk about universal suffrage, about the popular will and about equality
at the polls will be a sheer fraud, for there can be no equality between
the exploiter and the exploited, between the owner of capital and property
and the modern wage-slave. ...all talk of democracy expressing the
popular will is obviously sheer deception, nothing but the privilege of
the capitalists and the rich to dupe the more backward sections of the
working people both through their press, which remains in the hands of
the property-owners, and by all other means of political influence."
(e) (Add) "Capitalism combines formal equality with economic and, consequently,
social inequality. That is one of the principal features of capitalism,
one that is deliberately obscured by the supporters of the bourgeoisie,
the liberals, and is not understood by petty-bourgeois democrats."
(f) (Add) "Marx scoffed most of all at empty talk of freedom and equality,
when it serves as a screen for the freedom of the workers to starve to
death, or the equality between the one who sells his labour-power and the
bourgeois who allegedly freely purchases that labour in the open market
as if from an equal, and so forth. Marx explains this in all his
economic works. It may be said that he whole of Marx's Capital is
devoted to explaining the truth that the basic forces of capitalist society
are, and must be, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat--bourgeoisie, as
the builder of this capitalist society, as its leader, as its motive force,
and the proletariat, as its gravedigger and as the only force capable of
replacing it. You can hardly find a single chapter in any of Marx's
works that is not devoted to this."
(g) (Add) "The talk of parity of rights is 'nothing but meaningless phrases,'
said Bebel (a German Marxist leader--Ed.)."
(h) (Add) "Human dignity is something one need not look for in the world
of capitalists."
(i) (Add) "But what do they mean by freedom? By freedom these civilized
Frenchmen, Englishmen, and Americans mean, say freedom of assembly.
The constitution should contain the clause: 'Freedom of assembly for all
citizens.' 'This,' they say, 'is the substance, this is the principal
manifestation of freedom. But you Bolsheviks have violated freedom
of assembly. To this we answer indeed, the freedom that you British,
French, and American gentlemen preach is a deception if it runs counter
to the emancipation of labour from the yoke of capital. You have
forgotten a detail, you civilized gentlemen. You have forgotten that
your freedom is inscribed in a constitution which sanctions private property.
That is the whole point. In your constitution you have freedom side
by side with private property."
Page 239
In order that no one be crushed and everyone experience freedom, the
behavior of each citizen must be coordinated with the behavior of all.509
Only socialism, which substitutes overall planning for the inherent anarchistic
jungle of private ownership and commodity trading, provides freedom for
the masses.510
------------------------------------------------------------------------
509 (Add) "We do not rule by dividing,
as ancient Rome's harsh maxim required, but by uniting all the working
people with the unbreakable bonds of living interests and a sense of class."
510 (a) "We are convinced...that in no social
order will personal freedom be so assured as in a society based upon communal
ownership."
(b) "As long as the rule of capital remains, no equality...will save the
people from poverty, unemployment and oppression.... In socialist
society, liberty and equality will no longer be a sham; ...the wealth accumulated
by common labor will serve the mass of the people and not oppress them...."
(c) "The worker is free only when he is the owner of his instruments of
labour--this can be the case either in individual or in collective form;
the individual form of ownership is being eliminated by the economic development,
and more so with every day; hence there remains only that of collective
ownership." Of this statement Engels said, "A masterpiece of cogent
argumentation rarely encountered and couched in a few clear words for the
masses; I myself was astonished by this concise formulation."
(d) (Add) "In bourgeois society capital is independent and has individuality,
while the living person is dependent and has no individuality. And
the abolition of this state of things is called by the bourgeois, abolition
of individuality and freedom! And rightly so. The abolition
of bourgeois individuality, bourgeois independence, and bourgeois freedom
is undoubtedly aimed at."
Page 240
9TH QUESTION: Isn't socialist society
a totalitarian dictatorship?
ANSWER: Any dictatorship of one class over another, whether under slavery,
feudalism, capitalism or socialism, is a total dictatorship. How
could control be effectively maintained if certain aspects of life (e.g.,
economics, politics, music or literature) were outside the purview of the
dominant class. When discussing systems the implicit word, "totalitarian,"
is not needed, although often added for dramatic effect by bourgeois apologists
and propagandists.
10TH QUESTION: Why isn't the state
withering away in China and Cuba as is suppose to happen under socialism?511
ANSWER: Although the state will fade away, that does not mean
the withering process will begin immediately after the revolution.
It might not start for many years.512
Only when material conditions and ideological development have sufficiently
matured can deterioration of the state proceed. Because much greater
maturity of both is needed within the socialist sphere and because worldwide
capitalism is still ominous, the socialist state can not be allowed to
wither.513
11TH QUESTION: Why can't people think
as individuals and be unique? Why is their class position so important
in determining their thought processes?
ANSWER: A person's ideology reflects the material conditions in
control of his life. As the material conditions are bent so shall
the ideology grow. The greatest determinant of an individual's material
conditions is, of course, the amount of property owned or, stated differently,
the class--be it bourgeois, petty bourgeois, semiproletarian or proletarian--to
which he belongs. Thus, the possibility that a person's ideology
will reflect his class status is tremendous.514
------------------------------------------------------------------------
511 "The state is not abolished. It withers
away."
512 "It is clear that there can be no question
of defining the exact moment of the future withering away--the more so
as it must obviously be a rather lengthy process."
513 (a) "Don't you want to abolish state
power? Yes, we do, but not right now; we cannot do it yet.
Why? Because imperialism still exists, because domestic reaction
(internal bourgeois ideas, etc.--Ed.) still exists, because classes still
exist in our country."
(b) "It is too early for that. To proclaim the withering away of
the state prematurely would distort the historical perspective."
(c) (Add) "...the anarchist theory of 'blowing-up' and 'abolishing' the
state must not be confused with the Marxist theory of the 'withering away'
of the proletarian state...."
(d) (Add) "The state will wither away, not as a result of weakening of
the state power, but as a result of strengthening it to the utmost, which
is necessary for finally crushing the remnants of the dying classes...."
514 "In class society everyone lives
as a member of a particular class, and every kind of thinking, without
exception, is stamped with the brand of a class."
Page 241
12TH QUESTION: Which system allows
greater freedom of ideas?
ANSWER: It is easy for the bourgeoisie to erect a facade of liberty.
A private property system can exist quite easily if erroneous philosophies
are rampant. In fact, this is the only means by which it can continue.
The capitalists could no more allow the truth to be sprinkled throughout
society than the devil could take showers in holy water. One can
say with a high degree of accuracy that the general unwritten law dominant
throughout the world of private property is that an individual may believe
anything he desires as long as it's wrong.515
And since there are far more incorrect than correct answers to any question,
the illusion of free speech is easily created. Only the elite need
know the truth for the system to operate effectively. On the other
hand, to the extent that erroneous beliefs pervade a socialist system,
to that extent the system is dying. Truth is to socialism what deception
is to capitalism--its life blood.
13TH QUESTION: Doesn't the capitalist
system allow more political freedom than exists under socialism?
ANSWER: For many reasons affluent private property societies can
allow several political parties (even those which claim to be Marxist)
to exist.
Firstly, the bourgeoisie know there is little possibility that the masses
will seek an alternative system as long as they are relatively well off.
Since material conditions dictate ideological choices, allowing open activities
by "Marxist" oriented political parties during periods of affluence does
not pose a serious threat to the system. In fact, allowing them to
exist provides grain for capitalist propaganda mills. Secondly, if
"Marxist" parties are to gain support, they must perform good deeds; preaching
alone is insufficient. And if they aid the masses by working for
better housing, higher wages, lower rents, more welfare benefits, etc.,
they could very well be prolonging the life of private property by causing
people to be more content with their plight. As long as parties do
not actively work for the system's overthrow and do not teach that liberty
and prosperity are only obtainable through revolution, their other activities
could easily work to the system's advantage. If a "Marxist" party
is somehow converted into a modified group of social workers and social-democrats,
as has often happened, it becomes a threat in name only. Thirdly,
the capitalists know that their control of all major communications media516
and the decisive importance of financial power in any significant political
campaign obviate the possibility of any serious electoral challenge by
"Marxists," baring critical difficulties with the system. This contention
is strengthened by the fact that those possessing the needed financial
resources are the very people who are least likely to aid Marxism.
And finally, if all of the above roadblocks to political control by the
masses somehow failed, the military arm of the propertied class could be
ordered to cancel the election on the grounds that it was "rigged" or signified
an immanent "Communist takeover." Nullification by the United States
of the unification election which should have occurred throughout Vietnam
in July 1956 clearly demonstrates the deceptive and hypocritical nature
of bourgeois politics. The Vietnamese socialists (Viet Minh) would
have won and everybody knew it. Eisenhower knew it; Dulles knew it;
Diem knew it, and Ho Chi Minh knew it. The situation was easy to
visualize. The Vietnamese wanted the essential elements of socialism
and the United States-Vietnamese landlord coalition was not going to permit
this to occur through an electoral process because American capitalism
and the affluence of Vietnamese landlords would be endangered. Other
examples of discarding elections or post-electoral results or preventing
elections through military takeovers because of possibly unfavorable outcomes--Chile,
Greece, Argentina, Brazil, and parts of India--provide additional evidence
that whenever private property is considered to be in danger, the democratic
facade will be torn away and the true nature of bourgeois politics exposed
(fascism). As long as the masses and the ruling class agree on leaders
and policies, the charade remains. But when a split develops, the
will of the latter and not the former prevails.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
515 (Add) "...it becomes all the clearer
to us that so-called modern democracy...is nothing but the freedom to preach
whatever is to the advantage of the bourgeoisie, to preach, namely, the
most reactionary ideas, religion, obscurantism, defence of the exploiters,
etc."
516 (a) (Add) "Under capitalism, a newspaper
is a capitalist enterprise, a means of enrichment, a medium of information
and entertainment for the rich, and an instrument for duping and cheating
the mass of the working people."
(b) (Add) "Capitalism would not be capitalism if it did not, on the one
hand, condemn the masses (either foreign or domestic--Ed.) to a downtrodden,
crushed and terrified state of existence, to disunity...and ignorance,
and if it (capitalism) did not, on the other hand, place in the hands of
the bourgeoisie a gigantic apparatus of falsehood and deception to hoodwink
the masses of workers and peasants, to stultify their minds, and so forth."
(c) (Add) "All over the world, wherever there are capitalists, freedom
of the press means freedom to buy up newspapers, to buy writers, to bribe,
buy and fake 'public opinion' for the benefit of the bourgeoisie."
(d) (Add) "For the bourgeoisie, freedom of the press meant freedom for
the rich to publish and for the capitalists to control the newspapers,
a practice which in all countries, including even the freest, produced
a corrupt press."
(e) (Add) "In all capitalist countries, including the democratic republics,
the attention of the people is diverted at such times by the corrupt...press,
which wears the label of freedom of speech, and which will invent and circulate
anything to fool and deceive the masses."
Page 242
With respect to socialist society, however, to allow other political
groupings could in no way work to the system's benefit. Political
parties represent classes517 and there is
only one class--the proletariat--that is revolutionary and progressive
by nature. All other classes and, thus, all other parties are inherently
more reactionary than progressive and possess more negative attributes
than positive. Ultimately, only proletarian parties seek the abolishment
of private property while all others seek its preservation by one means
or another. The big bourgeoisie, the petty bourgeoisie, the landowners,
etc. support non-proletarian parties which favor private ownership.518
The proletariat is the only growing and thriving class that has a direct
interest in the elimination of private property and exploitation.519
Thus, only that party which upholds proletarian interests can work for
the welfare of the people and be allowed to operate.520
------------------------------------------------------------------------
517 (a) "Contemporary society is admittedly
a class society. Can there be a party in a class society which does
not represent a class?"
(b) "Parties are the result and the political expression of highly developed
class antagonisms."
518 (a) "Conservatives, Liberals, Radicals,
all of them represent but the interests of the ruling classes, and various
shades of opinion predominating amongst landlords, capitalists and retail
tradesmen. If they do represent the working class, they most decidedly
misrepresent it."
(b) "And in accordance with Engels' advice..the paragraph stating that
'the emancipation of the workers must be the act of the working class itself,
since all the other classes stand for private ownership of the means of
production and have the common aim of preserving the foundations of the
present-day society'...was adopted...."
519 (a) (Add) "Of all the classes that stand
face to face with the bourgeoisie today, the proletariat alone is a really
revolutionary class. The other classes decay and finally disappear
in the face of modern industry.... The...small manufacturer, the
shopkeeper, the artisan, the peasant, all these fight against the bourgeoisie,
to save from extinction their existence as factions of the middle class
(as small property owners versus big property owners--Ed.). They
are therefore not revolutionary, but conservative. Nay more, they
are reactionary, for they try to roll back the wheel of history (by preserving
small private ownership--Ed.)."
(b) (Add) "Lenin several times stressed the fact that 'the main thing
in the doctrine of Marx is that it brings out the historic role of the
proletariat as the builder of a socialist society."
(c) (Add) "When socialist writers ascribe this historic role to the proletariat,
it is not as Critical Criticism pretends to think, because they consider
the proletarians as gods."
520 (a) "We proceed from the fact that the
Party, the Communist Party, is the principle instrument of the dictatorship
of the proletariat, that the leadership of one party, which does not and
cannot share this leadership with other parties, constitutes the fundamental
condition without which no firm and developed dictatorship of the proletariat
is conceivable."
(b) (Add) "When we are reproached with having established a dictatorship
of one party and, as you have heard, a united socialist front is proposed,
we say, 'Yes, it is a dictatorship of one party! This is what we
stand for and we shall not shift from that position because it is the party
that has won, in the course of decades, the position of vanguard of the
entire factory and industrial proletariat."
(c) (Add) "Unlike all other philosophical and political systems Marxism
expresses the fundamental interests of the working class and of all toiling
humanity."
(d) (Add) "...the world outlook of Marxism alone is the right expression
of the interests, the viewpoint, and the culture of the revolutionary proletariat."
(e) (Add) "Only the theory of revolutionary Marxism can be the banner of
the class movement of the workers...."
(f) (Add) "...there is only one strictly proletarian ideology, and that
is Marxism."
(g) (Add) "...the only consistent, the only truly proletarian world outlook,
Marxism."
(h) (Add) "...the only international theory of revolutionary socialism
existing today, i.e., from Marxism."
(i) (Add) "The only theory of revolutionary socialism known to contemporary
mankind, i.e., Marxism...."
(j) (Add) "...with the present level of knowledge there can be no revolutionary
theory apart from Marxism."
(k) (Add) "Anyone who wants to uphold intelligently the interests of the
working class and all working people must know which party is really able
most consistently and resolutely to defend these interests."
Page 243
Non-proletarian political groups within any socialist system would act
as a cancer within a healthy organism. Unlike "Marxist" oriented
groups within capitalist society, no activities on their part could work
to the system's benefit.
While actually a covert poison, the superficial facade of capitalist
preachings is often very alluring. Bourgeois propaganda resembles
a bushmaster snake; it's beautiful but deadly. If other parties were
allowed to advocate the re-establishment of private ownership, the freedom
to buy and sell as one chooses, the freedom to engage in cultural activities
which generate egotistical satisfaction (e.g. allowing certain kinds of
clothing, art, music, and literature) as well as the legalization of vices
(prostitution, gambling, pornography, etc.), regardless of the immediate
and long term social effects, some unwary individuals would undoubtedly
be lured into the net and suffer the consequences. Like millions
of small investors on Wall Street, each thinks he will reach the top, not
realizing that failure is almost certain. Once they succumbed in
economic competition, people who thought they would improve their condition
by helping to reconstruct capitalism and becoming free lance buyers and
sellers (exploiters), would join the exploited in the very system which
they helped re-establish.
Anytime a person does not know where his interests lie, someone will
be there to seize the advantage, unless protection is provided. The
unwary person can be, and often is, turned against not only his friends
but also that arrangement of society which best meets his needs and those
of others. The masses must be protected from the venomous sugar of
other parties. Some may grumble in the short run but they will praise
the Party in the long run.521 The path
to victory is long and hard. It requires self-sacrifice, self-control,
self-denial, and social concern. People must do without today in
order to have more tomorrow, just as the capitalist, by reinvesting his
profits and seeking greater wealth tomorrow, foregoes consumption and enjoyment
today. Some will pursue another way--an easier path; the rigors of
the journey will be more than they can endure. Like the Las Vegas
gambler or the small investor, they will seek a short cut to happiness--a
get rich quicker scheme.522
------------------------------------------------------------------------
521 (a) "The Party cannot be a real party
if it limits itself to registering what the masses of the working class
feel and think.... The Party must stand at the head of the working
class; it must see farther than the working class; it must lead the proletariat
and not follow in the tail of the spontaneous movement."
(b) (Add) "A party is the vanguard of a class, and its duty is to lead
the masses and not merely to reflect the average political level of the
masses."
(c) (Add) "Naturally, we shall not submit to everything the masses say,
because the masses, too, sometimes--particularly in times of exceptional
weariness and exhaustion resulting from excessive hardship and suffering--yield
to sentiments that are in no way advanced."
(d) (Add) While the Allies were invading Russia after the socialist revolution
of 1917 Lenin said, "This is exactly what the dictatorship of the proletariat
means--one class leads the other because it is more organized, more solid
and more class-conscious. The ignorant masses fall to every bait
and because of their weariness (of the war--Ed.) are ready to yield to
anything. But the class-conscious section says that we must hold
out...."
(e) (Add) "Neither of us (Marx and Engels--Ed.) cares a snap of the fingers
for popularity."
522 (Add) "That the ordinary man in the street
should behave in this way is natural. He is never guided by a definite
world-outlook, by principles of integral party tactics. He always
swims with the stream, blindly obeying the mood of the moment....
But what is natural for the ordinary man in the street is unpardonable
for a party man, and altogether reprehensible for a Social-Democrat."
Page 244
Such individuals should be both condemned and pittied--condemned because
of their egoistic philosophy, pittied for their weakness and vacillation.
There is no easy road. The hardest road to communism in the short
run is the easiest path in the long run and the easiest route in the short
run is the hardest path in the long run.523
The slot machine operated by other parties may pay off in the short stretch
but over a period of time it will turn the tide and begin to twist the
gambler's arm. Lenin once implied that maintaining the forward movement
of a socialist system is more difficult than carrying out the revolution
from which the system emanated. Regretfully, he did not live to see
the accuracy of his prediction materialize.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
523 (a) "There is no royal road to science,
and only those who do not dread the fatiguing climb of its steep paths
have a chance of gaining its luminous summits."
(b) (Add) "Anyone who resorts to the old capitalist methods, anyone who
at a time of famine and want argues in the old, capitalist way--if I sell
grain (or any other commodity--Ed.) on my own, I shall make a bigger profit;
if I set out on my own to get grain (or any other commodity--Ed.) I shall
get it easier--anyone who argues in that way may be choosing the easier
road, but he may never arrive at socialism. It is simple and easy
to keep within the old realm of customary capitalist relations; but we
want to take a new road. It is one which demands of us and of all
the people a high level of political consciousness and organization...."
Page 245
14TH QUESTION: Why are capitalism
and socialism the only choices open to modern man?
ANSWER: Private ownership of the basic means of production and
distribution either does or does not exist. If it does, capitalism
or a dying form of feudalism will prevail with all that they entail; if
it does not, socialism will exist with all that it involves.524
An intermediate condition is not feasible since neither side could long
permit the other to exert significant influence. Either one or the
other must dominate.525 Coalitions
are not possible unless one side agreed to accept an impotent status.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
524 (a) "There are two forces on earth
that can decide the destiny of mankind. One force is international
capitalism, and should it be victorious it will display this force in countless
atrocities--this may be seen from the history of every small nation's development.
The other force is the international proletariat, which fights for the
socialist revolution through the dictatorship of the proletariat...."
(b) "...there are now two worlds: the old world of capitalism that is in
a state of confusion, but which will never surrender voluntarily, and the
rising new world, which is still very weak, but which will grow, for it
is invincible."
(c) (Add) "...(and is not the struggle against capitalist property a struggle
for socialism?)."
525 (a) "And so, the question stands as follows:
either one way or the other, either back--to capitalism, or forward--to
socialism. There is not, and cannot be, any third way. The
theory of 'equilibrium' is an attempt to indicate a third way. And
precisely because it is based on a third (non-existent) way, it is utopian
and anti-Marxist."
(b) "These are the two courses. They reflect the interests of two
opposite classes--the imperialist bourgeoisie and the socialist proletariat.
There is no third course. To reconcile these two courses is as impossible
as it is to reconcile imperialism and socialism. The course of compromise
with the bourgeoisie is doomed to inevitable failure."
(c) "So long as capitalism and socialism remain, they cannot live at peace;
in the long run either one or the other will be victorious, the funeral
dirge will be sounded either over the Soviet Republic or over world capitalism."
(d) "...it is inconceivable for the Soviet Republic to exist alongside
of the imperialist states for any length of time. One or the other
must triumph in the end. And before that end comes there will have
to be a series of frightful collisions between the Soviet Republic and
the bourgeois states."
(e) "...for they cannot understand that either the dictatorship of the
proletariat or the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie is inevitable."
Page 246
15TH QUESTION: Are England and Sweden
socialist countries?
ANSWER: In a socialist system the basic means of production and
distribution, including all land, buildings, equipment, machinery and transportation,
are owned in common. Trading in millions of stocks and bonds on a
stock exchange and the private ownership of banks and insurance companies,
for example, would be prohibited. Has this occurred in England and
Sweden? Of course not. Nationalization of an unprofitable basic
industry, such as coal or steel in England, or the institution of an extensive
welfare program as in Sweden, does not create a socialist society.526
When billions of dollars worth of private property are taken from the minority
and given to the majority, then, and only then, can the advent of socialism
be seriously considered.
16TH QUESTION: How can a successful
proletarian revolution occur in the United States when the American proletariat
is more conservative than revolutionary?
ANSWER: The United States is not a country but a tremendous empire.527
Its boundaries extend far beyond the 50 states to include millions of people
in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. So many people are being exploited
by American investments, so much wealth is being extracted from the underdeveloped
countries and flowing into the 50 states, that a significant amount is
falling off the table of the ruling class and into the hands of the American
proletariat.528
------------------------------------------------------------------------
526 (a) (Add) "To describe every interference
of the state in free competition--protective tariffs, guilds, tobacco monopoly,
nationalization of branches of industry...as 'socialism' is a sheer falsification
by the Manchester bourgeoisie in their own interests."
(b) (Add) "...private property is strictly preserved in that country (the
United States--Ed.); they regard it as 'sacred'." (This statement
is also true of England and Sweden--Ed.)
527 "Now, the center of the financial
exploitation of the world is mainly the United States of America."
528 (a) "Crumbs of the loot...undoubtedly
fall to the share of certain strata of the petty bourgeoisie and of the
aristocracy, and also to the bureaucracy of the working class."
(b) "What did that (the possession of colonies and the expansion of colonial
possessions--Ed.) mean in the economic sense? It meant a sum of super-profits
and special privileges for the bourgeoisie. It meant, moreover, the
possibility of enjoying crumbs from this big cake for a small minority
of the petty bourgeois, as well as for the better-placed employees, officials
of the labour movements, etc. The enjoyment of crumbs of advantage
from the colonies, from privileges, by an insignificant minority of the
working class in Britain (and the United States--Ed.), for instance, is
an established fact, recognized and pointed out by Marx and Engels.
Formerly confined to Britain alone, this phenomenon became common to all
the great capitalist countries of Europe, as their colonial possessions
expanded, and in general as the imperialist period of capitalism grew and
developed."
(c) "A privileged upper stratum of the proletariat in the imperialist countries
lives partly at the expense of hundreds of millions in the uncivilized
nations."
(d) (Add) "In the middle of the nineteenth century Britain enjoyed an almost
complete monopoly in the world market. Thanks to this monopoly the
profits acquired by British capital were extraordinarily high, so that
it was possible for some crumbs of these profits to be thrown to the aristocracy
of labour, the skilled factory workers."
Page 247
Thus, unfortunately, many American workers are also benefiting from
the exploitation of underdeveloped regions and have a rightist philosophy.529
------------------------------------------------------------------------
529 (a) "The imperialist ideology also
penetrates the working class."
(b) "...the comparatively peaceful and cultured existence of a stratum
of privileged workers made them 'bourgeois' (in outlook--Ed.), gave them
crumbs from the profits of their national capital, and isolated them from
the sufferings, miseries, and revolutionary sentiments of the ruined and
impoverished masses (of the world--Ed.)."
(c) "Imperialism has the tendency to create privileged sections also among
the workers, and to detach them from the broad masses of the proletariat....
'You ask me what the English (read: American--Ed.) workers think about
colonial policy. Well, exactly the same as they think about politics
in general. ...the workers gaily share the feast of England's (read:
the United States--Ed.) monopoly of the world market and the colonies'....
The causes of England's (read: the United States--Ed.) monopoly are: (1)
exploitation of the whole world by this country; (2) its monopolist position
in the world market; (3) its colonial monopoly. The effects are:
(1) a section of the British (read: American--Ed.) proletariat becomes
bourgeois (in outlook--Ed.); (2) a section of the proletariat allows itself
to be led by men bought by, or at least paid by, the bourgeoisie."
(d) "The important thing is...that in the epoch of imperialism, owing to
objective causes, the proletariat has been split into two international
camps, one of which has been corrupted by the crumbs that fall from the
table of the bourgeoisie of the dominant nations--obtained, among other
things, from the double or triple exploitation of small nations...."
(e) "One of the chief causes hampering the revolutionary working-class
movement in the developed capitalist countries is the fact that because
of their colonial possessions and the super-profits gained by finance capital,
etc., the capitalists of these countries have been able to create a relatively
larger and more stable labour aristocracy, a section which comprises a
small minority of the working class. This minority enjoys better
terms of employment and is most imbued with a narrow-minded craft spirit
and with petty-bourgeois and imperialist prejudices."
(f) (Add) "The receipt of high monopoly profits by the capitalists...makes
it economically possible for them to bribe certain sections of the workers,
and for a time a fairly considerable minority of them, and win them to
the side of the bourgeoisie of a given industry or given nation against
all the others."
(g) (Add) "...in nearly all the advanced countries, the bourgeoisie, by
plundering the colonial and weak nations, has been able to bribe the upper
stratum of the proletariat with crumbs from the superprofits...."
(h) (Add) "...in all the civilized, advanced countries the bourgeoisie
rob--either by colonial oppression or by financially extracting 'gain'
from formally independent weak countries--they rob a population many times
larger than that of 'their own' country. This is the economic factor
that enables the imperialist bourgeoisie to obtain superprofits, part of
which is used to bribe the top section of the proletariat and convert it
into a reformist, ...petty bourgeoisie that fears revolution."
(i) (Add) "...monopoly yields superprofits, i.e., a surplus of profits
over and above the capitalist profits that are normal and customary all
over the world. The capitalists can devote a part (and not a small
one, at that!) of these superprofits to bribe their own workers, to create
something like an alliance...between the workers of the given nation and
their capitalists against the other countries.... ...Superprofits
have not disappeared; they still remain. The exploitation of all
other countries by one privileged, financially wealthy country remains
and has become more intense.... The bourgeoisie of an imperialist
'Great' Power can economically bribe the upper strata of 'its' workers
by spending on this (strata--Ed.) a hundred million or so francs a year,
for its superprofits most likely amount to about a thousand million."
(j) (Add) "The exploitation of worse paid labour from backward countries
is particularly characteristic of imperialism. On this exploitation
rests, to a certain degree, the parasitism of rich imperialist countries
which bribe a part of their workers with higher wages while shamelessly
and unrestrainedly exploiting the labour of 'cheap' foreign workers.
The words 'worse paid' should be added and also the words 'and frequently
deprived of rights'; for the exploiters in 'civilized' countries always
take advantage of the fact that the imported foreign workers have no rights....
It would be expedient, perhaps, to emphasize more strongly and to express
more vividly in our programme the prominence of the handful of the richest
imperialist countries which prosper parasitically by robbing colonies and
weaker nations. This is an extremely important feature of imperialism.
To a certain extent it facilitates the rise of powerful revolutionary movements
in countries that are subjected to imperialist plunder, and are in danger
of being crushed and partitioned by the giant imperialists...and on the
other hand, tends to a certain extent to prevent the rise of profound revolutionary
movements in the countries that plunder, by imperialist methods, many colonies
and foreign lands, and thus make a very large (comparatively) portion of
their population participants in the division of the imperialist loot."
(k) (Add) "Imperialism, which means the partition of the world...which
means high monopoly profits for a handful of very rich countries, creates
the economic possibility of bribing the upper strata of the proletariat...."
(l) (Add) "Is the actual condition of the workers in the oppressor and
in the oppressed nations the same...? No, it is not the same.
(1) Economically, the difference is that sections of the working class
in the oppressor nations receive crumbs from the superprofits the bourgeoisie
of these nations obtains by extra exploitation of the workers of the oppressed
nations. Besides, economic statistics show that here a larger percentage
of the workers become 'straw bosses' than is the case in the oppressed
nations, a larger percentage rise to the labour aristocracy. That
is a fact. To a certain degree the workers of the oppressor nations
are partners of their own bourgeoisie in plundering the workers (and the
mass of the population) of the oppressed nations. (2) Politically,
the difference is that, compared with the workers of the oppressed nations,
they occupy a privileged position in many spheres of political life.
(3) Ideologically,...the difference is that they are taught, at school
and in life, disdain and contempt for the workers of the oppressed nations."
(m) (Add) European workers also receive some benefit from colonial exploitation.
"...as a result of the extensive colonial policy, the European proletarian
partly finds himself in a position when it is not his labour, but the labour
of the practically enslaved natives in the colonies, that maintains the
whole of society. The British bourgeoisie, for example, derives more
profit from the many millions of the population of India and other colonies
than from the British workers. In certain countries this provides
the material and economic basis for infecting the proletariat with colonial
chauvinism. Of course, this may be only a temporary phenomenon, but
the evil must nonetheless be clearly realized and its causes understood
in order to be able to rally the proletariat of all countries for the struggle
against such opportunism. The struggle is bound to be victorious,
since the 'privileged' nations are a diminishing faction of the capitalist
nations."
Page 248
But as conditions worsen at home and resistance develops abroad,530
the "proletarians with a bourgeois outlook" will fade. American workers
will increasingly associate their welfare with that of the downtrodden
and not the property owners. The hard-hats may talk as if their patriotism
is ingrained forever but with sufficient deterioration of their material
conditions (rising unemployment, diminishing incomes, inflation, etc.)
over an extended period of time, their rhetoric and activities will improve
greatly. Indoctrination by the ruling class is effective only in
so far as it does not get too far out of line with material conditions.
Once this occurs, American capitalism is in danger. External material
conditions are primary and propaganda, no matter how shrewd, will not be
able to prolong indefinitely a change in philosophy.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
530 (a) "The social revolution can come
only in the form of an epoch in which are combined civil war by the proletariat
against the bourgeoisie in the advanced countries and a whole series of
democratic and revolutionary movements, including the national liberation
movement, in the undeveloped, backward and oppressed nations."
(b) (Add) "It is perfectly clear that in the impending decisive battles
in the world revolution, the movement of the majority of the population
of the globe, initially directed toward national liberation, will turn
against capitalism and imperialism and will, perhaps, play a much more
revolutionary part than we expect.... And in spite of the fact that
the masses of toilers--the peasants in the colonial countries--are still
backward, they will play a very important revolutionary part in the coming
phases of the world revolution."
(c) (Add) "The present stage in the development of the international communist
movement is marked by the fact that in the vast majority of capitalist
countries, the proletariat's preparations to effect its dictatorship have
not been completed, and, in many cases, have not even been systematically
begun. From this it does not, however, follow that the proletarian
revolution is impossible in the immediate future; it is perfectly possible,
since the entire economic and political situation is most inflammable and
abounds in causes of a sudden flare-up...."
Page 249
17TH QUESTION: If American capitalism
is so undesirable, why does this country have the highest standard of living
in the world?
ANSWER: Through exploitation and ruthless oppression, not only
ancient Romans, Grecians and Persians but also many people in modern capitalist
states531 (e.g., the citizenry of Britain),532
enjoyed or are enjoying a higher standard of living than their contemporaries.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
531 (a) "...the exploitation of oppressed
nations...and especially the exploitation of colonies by a handful of 'Great'
Powers, increasingly transforms the 'civilized' world into a parasite on
the body of hundreds of millions in the uncivilized nations."
(b) "England, France, the United States and Germany--have developed monopoly
to vast proportions, they obtain superprofits running into hundreds, if
not thousands, of millions, they 'ride on the backs' of hundreds and hundreds
of millions of people in other countries and (economically--Ed.) fight
among themselves for the division of the particularly easy spoils."
(c) "...for the old 'cultured' capitalism has evolved into imperialism,
and imperialism is a world system of financial enslavement and colonial
oppression of the vast majority of the population of the earth by a handful
of 'advanced' countries (especially the United States--Ed.)."
(d) "Private property based on the labour of the small proprietor, free
competition, democracy, all the catchwords with which the capitalists and
their press deceive the workers...--are things of the distant past.
Capitalism has grown into a world system of colonial oppression and of
the financial strangulation of the overwhelming majority of the population
of the world by a handful of 'advanced' countries."
(e) "Every country in which capitalist industry develops rapidly has very
soon to seek colonies, i.e., countries in which industry is weakly developed...and
which can serve as a market for manufactured goods and a source of high
profits. For the sake of the profits of a handful of capitalists,
the bourgeois governments have waged endless wars, have sent regiments
to die in unhealthy tropical countries, have squandered millions of money
extracted from the people, and have driven the peoples in the colonies
to desperate revolts or to death from starvation."
(f) "...the capitalist colonial system, i.e., a system of enslavement,
plunder and violence."
(g) "...the brute force required to ensure 'peaceful' rule in the colonies,
for example, can hardly be called peaceful. Peace reigned in Europe,
but this was because domination over hundreds of millions of people in
the colonies by the European nations was sustained only through constant,
incessant, interminable wars, which we Europeans do not regard as wars
at all, since all too often they resembled, not wars, but brutal massacres,
the wholesale slaughter of unarmed peoples."
(h) "All of them (the capitalist countries--Ed.) alike are governed by
the bourgeoisie, which stops at no carnage in its quest for new sources
of profits."
(i) "The bourgeoisie was actually introducing slavery into the colonies
and subjecting the native populations to unprecedented outrages and acts
of violence, 'civilizing' them by the spread of liquor and syphilis."
(j) "Imperialism cannot live without violence and robbery, without bloodshed
and shooting. That is the nature of imperialism."
(k) "...for the entire history of capital is one of violence and plunder,
blood and corruption."
(l) "Do we not constantly see the diplomacy of all the imperialist powers
flaunting magnanimous 'general' phrases and 'democratic' declarations in
order to conceal their robbery, violation and strangulation of small nations?"
(m) "An insignificant minority of imperialist countries is growing
rich and a large number of other countries are actually on the point of
ruin."
(n) "...it must be remembered that the West lives at the expense of the
East; the imperialist powers of Europe grow rich chiefly at the expense
of the eastern colonies...."
(o) (Add) "I am not so sure that the devil is worse than modern capitalism."
532 (a) "...the despot of the world market--England."
(b) "The fact is, there is no army in Europe or America with so much brutality
as the British."
(c) "And in quelling revolts John Bull is known for his unmatched brutality."
(d) "British capitalism has always been, is, and will be the most malignant
strangler of people's revolutions. ...the British bourgeoisie has
always been in the front ranks of the suppressors of the movement for the
emancipation of mankind."
(e) "...Britain...which has created this (its--Ed.) wealth not so much
by the labour of its workers as by the exploitation of innumerable colonies....
...it can be said without exaggeration that there is not a patch of land
in the world today on which this capital has not laid its heavy hand, not
a patch of land which British capital has not enmeshed by a thousand threads."
(f) "...the British have broken the record not only in the number of colonies
they have grabbed, but also in the subtlety of their disgusting hypocrisy."
(g) "Britain has industrialized owing to the fact that it plundered colonies
for decades and centuries, gathered 'surplus' capital there, which it invested
in its own industry, and thus accelerated its own industrialization.
That is one method of industrialization."
(h) (Add) "..the British rulers of India are by no means such mild and
spotless benefactors of the Indian people as they would have the world
believe."
(i) (Add) "There is no end to the acts of violence and plunder which goes
under the name of the British system of government in India."
Page 250
Those within the 50 states are no different in this regard. If all connections
between the 50 states and the exploited people of other lands were severed,
the American standard of living would drop far below its current level.
The American affluence of today can be attributed in large measure to the
decrepit conditions in which millions of people here and abroad must live.
For Americans to live as they do, the exploited must live as they do.
Any country ought to be extremely wealthy if is has been draining over
half the world533 for decades. The
American Empire of today dwarfs the Roman Empire of antiquity.
When the law of the jungle prevails, nations are either exploiters or
exploited. A middle-of-the-road position is impossible. National
independence or self-determination only exists for the minority of exploiting
nations,534 because the weaker nations are
unable to effectively curtail financial investment and domination by the
big powers.
18TH QUESTION: If American capitalism
is so unconcerned with humanity's welfare, why is foreign aid given to
other peoples?
ANSWER: Foreign "aid" does not help other working masses, but
buttresses other governments, the ruling classes of other countries.
The word "aid" is a misnomer since it only applies to the ruling clique.
Military equipment, advisors, etc. are used to strengthen governments which
"co-operate" with the United States. Those which make few demands,
allow entry of American investments and extraction of profits, respect
American ownership, suppress protestors, and are sufficiently anti-Marxist
receive that which is needed to maintain their domination Economic "aid"
(e.g., food, clothing and shelter) is a pacifier given to those peoples
whose conditions are so deplorable that if they deteriorate any further
a distinct possibility of violence, demonstrations, and revolution will
emerge. It's provided when the situation becomes critical, so critical
in fact that the ruling class and private property are threatened.
Domestic welfare programs serve the same ends. The purpose of economic
aid is certainly not to abolish poverty but to mitigate the latter's effects
by sufficiently placating the masses. The contention that humanitarianism
is the primary motive is nothing more than a propaganda cloak to hide reality.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
533 (Add) "They (the American billionaires--Ed.)
have converted all, even the richest countries into their tributaries.
They have grabbed hundreds of billions of dollars."
534 "...'equality of nations under imperialism,
where one group of nations (a minority) lives by exploiting another group
of nations, is sheer mockery of the oppressed nations."
Page 251
19TH QUESTION: Why can't capitalism
be reformed and improved from within? Why does the system have to
be abolished?
ANSWER: Reforms,535 "patchwork,"536
should be left to social-reformists, pseudo-socialists and liberals.537
------------------------------------------------------------------------
535 (a) (Add) "Reformism means nothing
more than concessions on the part of the ruling class, but not its overthrow;
it makes concessions, but power remains in its hands."
(b) (Add) "Reformism, in general, means that people confine themselves
to agitating for changes which do not require the removal of the main foundations
of the old ruling class, changes that are compatible with the preservation
of those foundations."
(c) (Add) "A reformist change is one which leaves intact the foundations
of the power of the ruling class and is merely a concession that leaves
this power unimpaired. A revolutionary change undermines the foundations
of power."
(d) (Add) "In Karl Kautsky's well-known book The Social Revolution it was
made perfectly clear that reform differs from revolution in that it preserves
the power of the oppressor class which suppresses the insurrection of the
oppressed by means of concessions that are acceptable to the oppressors
and do not destroy their power."
(e) (Add) "Historical science tells us that the distinction between a reformist
and a non-reformist change in a given political form is, generally speaking,
that in the former case the old ruling class retains power, while in the
latter case power is transferred from the old class to a new one."
(f) (Add) "Reforms are concessions obtained from a ruling class that retains
its rule. Revolution is the overthrow of the ruling class.
Reformist programs, therefore, usually consist of many items of partial
significance."
(g) (Add) "...(the essence of reformism lies in mitigating an evil and
not in destroying it)...."
(h) (Add) "Reform is the name given to changes which leave the power in
the country in the hands of the old ruling class. Changes of the
opposite order are called 'storms.' The class interests of bourgeois
liberalism demand only reforms, since the bourgeoisie is more afraid of
'storms'...."
(i) (Add) "But every reform in capitalist society has a double character.
A reform is a concession made by the ruling classes in order to stem, weaken,
or conceal the revolutionary struggle, in order to split the forces and
energy of the revolutionary classes, to befog their consciousness, etc."
536 "...patchwork social reforms."
537 "A part of the bourgeoisie is desirous
of redressing social grievances, in order to secure the continued existence
of bourgeois society. To this section belong economists, philanthropists,
humanitarians, improvers of the condition of the working class, organizers
of charity, members of societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals,
temperance fanatics, hold-and-corner reformers of every imaginable kind."
Page 252
All discussions of solving racism, poverty, unemployment, inflation,
insecurity, mental illness, crime, city decay, delinquency, immorality,
pornography, drug addictions, prostitution, pollution, wars,538
and other major social problems without abolishing private property are
a waste of time and effort.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
538 (a) "War springs from the clash of
fortunes running to thousands of millions, which have divided up the world,
and if the war is to be brought to an end, the power of capital must be
destroyed."
(b) "...the cessation of international clashes is impossible unless the
economic organization based on exchange is destroyed...."
(c) "...we, however, have always thought, in keeping with our doctrines,
with our socialist teachings, that it is the capitalists who introduce
anarchy and war into human society, that only the transfer of all political
power to the proletariat and the poorest people can rid us of war, of anarchy
and starvation."
(d) "...in the epoch of imperialism wars are inevitable, and...imperialism
threatens the world with a series of wars, unless the proletariat musters
enough strength to put an end to the capitalist system by the final overthrow
of capitalism."
(e) "Wars and all their calamities are produced by capitalism, which keeps
millions of working people in bondage, sharpens the struggle between nations,
and turns the slaves of capital into cannon fodder. A world-wide
socialist army of the revolutionary proletariat is alone capable of putting
an end to this oppression and enslavement of the masses and to these massacres
of slaves in the interests of the slaveowners."
(f) "Only a proletarian socialist revolution can lead humanity out of the
impasse which imperialism and imperialist wars have created."
(g) "...the achievement of socialist society, which alone can save mankind
from wars."
(h) "Only a genuine government of the people, a government belonging to
the majority of the nation, is capable of following the right path leading
mankind to the overthrow of the capitalist yoke, to deliverance from the
horrors and misery of the imperialist war, and to a just and lasting peace.
(i) "Outside of socialism there is no deliverance of humanity from wars,
from hunger, from the destruction of still more millions and millions of
human beings."
(j) "The revolutionary proletariat must carry on a ceaseless agitation
against war, always keeping in mind, however, that wars are inevitable
as long as class rule exists."
(k) "...we (Marxian socialists--Ed.) understand the inseparable connection
between wars on the one hand and class struggles inside a country on the
other, we understand the impossibility of eliminating wars without eliminating
classes...."
(l) "We differ from the former (bourgeois pacifists who are supporters
and advocates of peace--Ed.) in that we understand the inevitable connection
between wars and the class struggle within the country; we understand that
war cannot be abolished unless classes are abolished and Socialism is created...."
(m) "Social-Democracy (Marxian Socialism--Ed.) knows that wars are inevitable
as long as society is divided into classes, as long as the exploitation
of man by man exists."
(n) "The proletariat struggles against war and will always struggle against
it unremittingly, without, however, forgetting for a moment that war can
be abolished only with the complete abolition of society's division into
classes...."
(o) (Add) "But the exploiters all over the world are not strong enough
to prevent the victory of the world revolution, which will free mankind
from the yoke of capital and the eternal menace of new imperialist wars,
which are inevitable under capitalism."
(p) (Add) "If socialism is not victorious, peace between the capitalist
states will be only a truce, an interlude, a time of preparation for a
fresh slaughter of the peoples."
(q) (Add) "...the imperialist wars which will inevitably break out again
and again if the capitalist system remains."
(r) (Add) "...the imperialists need war, for it is the only means by which
to redivide the world, to redivide markets, sources of raw materials and
spheres for the investment of capital."
(s) (Add) "...private property is the source of the exploitation of the
many by the few, the source of mass poverty, the source of predatory wars
between nations, wars that enrich only the capitalists."
(t) (Add) "...the petty bourgeois nationalist illusions that nations can
live together in peace and equality under capitalism."
Page 253
In fact, they are more than useless; they are detrimental and debilitating.
When the growing magnitude of the problem can no longer be ignored, property
owners encourage them as a form of social "safety valve."539
Such conversations and the accompanying activities (welfare, VISTA, Job
Corps, Operation Headstart, CAAP, Recovery, Alcoholics Anonymous, pilot
projects540 and the vast array of programs
associated with the New Deal, the New Frontier and the Great Society) sap
the energy of those who sincerely want to improve society and the status
of their fellow man.541
------------------------------------------------------------------------
539 "The tremendous progress made by capitalism
in recent decades and the rapid growth of the working-class movement in
all the civilized countries have brought about a big change in the attitude
of the bourgeoisie to the proletariat. Instead of waging an open,
principled and direct struggle against all the fundamental tenets of socialism
in defence of the absolute inviolability of private property and freedom
of competition, the bourgeoisie of Europe and America, as represented by
their ideologies and political leaders, are coming out increasingly in
defence of so-called social reforms as opposed to the idea of social revolution.
Not liberalism versus socialism, but reformism versus socialist revolution--is
the formula of the modern, 'advanced,' educated bourgeoisie. And
the higher the development of capitalism in a given country, the more unadulterated
the rule of the bourgeoisie, and the greater the political liberty, the
more extensive is the application of the 'most-up-to-date' bourgeois slogan:
reform versus revolution, the partial patching up of the doomed regime
with the object of dividing and weakening the working class, and of maintaining
the rule of the bourgeoisie, versus the revolutionary overthrow of that
rule. From the viewpoint of the universal development of socialism
this change must be regarded as a big step forward. At first socialism
fought for its existence, and was confronted by a bourgeoisie confident
of its strength and boldly and consistently defending liberalism as an
integral system of economic and political views. Socialism has grown
into a force and, throughout the civilized world, has already upheld its
right to existence. It is now fighting for power and the bourgeoisie,
disintegrating and realizing the inevitability of its doom, is exerting
every effort to defer that day and to maintain its rule under the new conditions
as well, at the cost of partial and spurious concessions. The intensification
of the struggle of reformism against revolutionary Social-Democracy within
the working-class movement is an absolutely inevitable result of the changes
in the entire economic and political situation throughout the civilized
world."
540 (a) (Add) "They (the ruling class--Ed.)
will even give you money 'for experiments,' if only these will divert the
'intelligentsia' from revolutionary work...to such patching up of the antagonisms,
to conciliation and unification."
(b) (Add) "These projects always turn out to be dazzling.... Such
projects always contain much that is comical; in most cases a superficial
reading of them creates no other impression than a desire to laugh.
But try to get at their real meaning and you will say: 'It would all be
funny were it not so sad!"
541 (Add) "'I grant you everything except
power, tsarism declares. 'Everything is illusory except power'; the
revolutionary people reply."
Page 254
Efforts are directed into harmless channels of reform-hunting and application
where all supposedly permanent answers are doom to failure. Crime,
delinquency, poverty, unemployment, etc. have always existed under capitalism--private
property--and always will. Unaware of the true nature of capitalism,
reformers believe that the system is basically sound and needed and have
never ceased trying to devise strategies by which the previously-mentioned
problems can be resolved. Each failure has caused them to redouble
their efforts on the assumption that they have either incorrectly applied
or failed to formulate an adequate reform. It seems reasonable to
assume that sooner or later they would realize the problem lies not in
the inadequacy or incorrect application of this or that reform but in the
exploitation, corruption, and unavoidable failure to satisfactorily provide
for the needs of all mankind inherent in the very nature of the system542
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
542 (a) "And thus it renders more and
more evident the great central fact that the cause of the miserable condition
of the working-class is to be sought, not in these minor grievances, but
in the capitalistic system itself."
(b) "...it is not the lowness of wages which forms the fundamental evil,
but the wages-system itself."
(c) "...the economical subjection of the man of labour to the monopoliser
of the means of labour, that is, the sources of life, lies at the bottom
of servitude in all its forms, of all social misery, mental degradation,
and political dependence.... ...the economical emancipation of the
working classes is therefore the great end to which every political movement
ought to be subordinate...."
Page 255
To eradicate the evils produced by the system, one must necessarily
eliminate the system itself.543
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543 (a) (Add) "...any reform is doomed
to produce paltry results if the basis of the bourgeois system is retained."
(b) (Add) "For it is clear, and the young generation in Russia (read: the
United States--Ed.) realizes it ever more clearly, that condemnations and
resolutions (and reforms--Ed.) are of no avail. It is a question
of the political system as a whole. Historical truth is paving a
way for itself through the haze of deceptive dreams that it is possible
to pour new wine into the old bottles."
(c) (Add) "...anybody who tackles partial problems without having previously
settled general problems (such as the system--Ed.), will inevitably and
at every step 'come up against' those general problems without himself
realizing it."
(d) (Add) "They all want competition without the lethal effects of competition.
They all want the impossible, namely, the conditions of bourgeoisie existence
without the necessary consequences of those conditions."
(e) (Add) "The reduction of the working day is a partial reform, which
eradicates only one form of bondage, viz., enslavement by means of longer
working hours. Other forms of bondage, as, for instance, 'speeding
up' the workers, are not eliminated by this reform, all forms of bondage
in general cannot be eradicated by any reforms on the basis of capitalism."
(f) (Add) What Lenin said of imperialism is applicable here. "Bourgeois
scholars and publicists usually come out in defence of imperialism in a
somewhat veiled form; they obscure its complete domination and its profound
roots, strive to push to the forefront particular and secondary details
and do their very best to distract attention from essentials by means of
absolutely ridiculous schemes for 'reform,' such as police supervision
of the trusts or banks, etc. Less frequently, cynical and frank imperialists
come forward who are bold enough to admit the absurdity of the idea of
reforming the fundamental characteristics of imperialism.... Since
the reform of the basis of imperialism is a deception, a 'pious wish'...."
(g) (Add) "Social-Democrats (Communists--Ed.) do not deceive the peasant,
they tell him the whole truth, they plainly tell him in advance that no
improvements will rid the people of want and poverty as long as the bourgeoisie
is in power."
(h) (Add) "He who confines the class (the proletariat--Ed.) to an 'independent'
corner of 'activity' in an arena, the bounds, form and shape of which are
determined or permitted by the liberals, does not understand the tasks
of the class. Only he understands the tasks of the class who directs
its attention (and consciousness, and practical activity, etc.) to the
need for so reconstructing this very arena, its entire form, its entire
shape, as to extend it beyond the limits allowed by the liberals.'
(i) (Add) "Vivid examples from real life must be used continuously to demonstrate
all the harmfulness of reformism, i.e. the tactics of putting demands for
partial improvement to the fore instead of revolutionary slogans."
(j) (Add) "...in order not to err in policy, one must be a revolutionary,
not a reformist."
(k) (Add) "...it is absolutely impossible to find a way out of the deadlock
unless the policy of trust in and support of the capitalist government
is abandoned."
Page 256
There is no other alternative; there never has been. These evils
compose the very fiber of capitalism and a thorough study of American history
proves this quite clearly. They are not temporary deviations from
an otherwise correct path; they are the path. If private ownership
were eradicated, the majority of the problems would quickly disappear and
those remaining would gradually fade away.
It should be noted in this connection that reforms have actually been
a by-product of active or potential revolutionary activity rather than
reformism. Classes tending toward or actively pursuing a revolutionary
approach to society's ills have caused far more reforms to be instituted
than reformers themselves. In essence, the lesson to be learned from
history is: If you seek reforms, work for revolution; if you seek reforms
and work for reforms, you get nothing.544
Or stated differently. If you seek reforms and work for reforms you get
nothing. If you seek revolution and work for revolution, you get
reforms.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
544 (a) "...all modern history in Europe
and Asia, shows that serious reforms have always been merely the by-product
of a movement completely free of the narrowness of reformism. ...that
same experience says clearly that it is the very classes hostile to reformism
that have produced the greatest effect."
(b) "Partial improvements can be (and always have been in history) merely
a by-product of revolutionary class struggle."
(c) "...it is more than ever necessary to bear in mind the truth that reforms
are a by-product of the revolutionary class struggle...."
(d) "The question is: either revolutionary struggle, by-product of which,
in the event of its not being fully successful, is reforms (the whole history
of revolutions throughout the world has proved this), or nothing but talk
about reforms and the promise of reforms."
(e) "Reformists argue that in urging, popularizing and preparing the socialist
revolution of the proletariat, we are 'losing sight' of the 'practical'
aspect, 'forfeiting' our chances to win reforms. That argument...is
thoroughly unscientific, fundamentally false, a bourgeois lie.... ...(a
reformist--Ed.) poses the question thus: either renunciation of revolution
and that means reforms (could come about--Ed.), or no reforms at all.
Yet all the experience of world history, like the experience of the 1905
Russian Revolution, teaches us the very opposite: either revolutionary
class struggle, of which reforms are always a by-product...or no reforms
at all."
Page 257
20TH QUESTION: Do disagreements exist
within the bourgeois ruling class or is it a monolithic unity?
ANSWER: Generally speaking, the bourgeoisie has always been divided
into two major factions with alternating periods of dominance. One
section alleges that if the masses make demands, dissent arises, or any
form of "boat rocking" develops, the discontented should be shown the mailed
fist. Repression and censorship, they believe, are the answers.
These are the rightists whose methods of protecting capitalism, if carried
to their logical conclusion, lead to fascism. The other group's response
to their strategy is: "No, no, my friend. Do you want to upset the
whole system by your primitive, overly revealing tactics which antagonize
more than persuade? Instead, we should yield pennies, institute a
reform here and there, and 'play them up big' in our news media.
You should seek to instill into the masses the feeling that they are getting
somewhere. Stop using your muscle so much and use your head a little
more." The latter group (the liberals), as represented by Franklin
Roosevelt, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Bill Clinton, and many well-known
figures of today, serves the ruling class545
by deceptively portraying itself as the workingman's friend546
and effectively sucking the masses, most intellectuals and many "leftists"
back into the system by means of hypocritical reforms.547
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
545 (a) "The crudest self-interest of
a bourgeois, the vilest cowardice of a counterrevolutionary--that is what
lies behind the florid phrases of the liberal. He wants the pockets
of the employers to be safe."
(b) (Add) "Thus it has always been, and always will be, with liberal phrases.
They merely screen the narrow egotism and brutal violence (which are created
by the system--Ed.) of the bourgeoisie; they are only artificial flowers
festooning the peoples' chains; they only stupefy the minds of the people,
preventing them from recognizing their real enemy."
(c) (Add) "...the public fail to notice that liberalism merely screens
'freedom of acquisition,' acquisition, of course, at the expense and to
the disadvantage of the mass of working people."
(d) (Add) "In all countries that have parliaments (or congresses--Ed.),
the bourgeois parties (such as the Democrat and Republican or Liberal and
Conservative--Ed.) have long been known to indulge in this playing at opposition--a
harmless game as far as they are concerned, because no government takes
it seriously, and a game which occasionally proves itself useful as a means
of 'soothing' the voter by a show of opposition."
(e) (Add) "As ideologists of the bourgeoisie the liberals understand perfectly
well that the bourgeoisie stands to gain by the 'practicalness, sober-mindedness,
and soundness' of the working class, by actually restricting its field
of activity within the framework of capitalism, reforms, the trade union
struggle, etc."
(f) (Add) "Liberalism is impotent outside a close alliance with the moneybags,
with the mass of the landlords and factory owners...."
546 (a) (Add) "The duty of a lackey involves
wearing a tail-coat and white gloves and possessing a civilized appearance
and the relevant manners. The lackey is permitted to possess a certain
love for the people; this, on the one hand, is inevitable because the milieu
that provides lackeys must be in needy circumstances; on the other hand,
it is even to the master's advantage, for it gives him an opportunity to
'practise' his philanthropy....
Love for the people is permitted the lackey only to a very modest degree,
of course, and only on the imperative condition that he expresses humble
and servile feelings in addition to his readiness to comfort the working
and exploited people.... The lackey paints and prettifies the artificial
flowers that serve to comfort the slaves who are fettered by wage-slavery.
Champions of the emancipation of people from wage-slavery tear away the
artificial flowers from the fetters they decorate so that the slaves can
learn to hate his fetters more consciously and more strongly, the quicker
to throw them off and reach out his hand for living flowers.
The necessity to combine a very moderate dose of love for the people
with a very big dose of obedience and of protection of the master's interests
that is specific to the position of the lackey, inevitably produces the
hypocrisy that is typical of the lackey as a social type.... A lackey
may be the most honest of men, an exemplary member of his family, an excellent
citizen but he is fatally doomed to hypocrisy because the main feature
of his trade is the combination of the interests of the master whom he
is 'pledged to serve truly and faithfully' and those of the milieu from
which servants are recruited. If this problem, therefore, is studied
from the political point of view, i.e., from the point of view of millions
of people and the relations between millions, one must come to the conclusion
that the chief features of the lackey as a social type are hypocrisy and
cowardice. These qualities are inculcated by the lackey's trade,
and they are the most important from the point of view of the wage-slaves
and the mass of the working people in any capitalist society."
(b) (Add) "The thinking worker knows that the most dangerous of advisers
are those liberal friends of the workers who claim to be defending their
interests,
but are actually trying to destroy the class independence of the proletariat
and its organization."
(c) (Add) "Today, the theories of these petty-bourgeois ideologists, when
they come forward as the spokesmen of the interests of the working people,
are positively reactionary.... They are reactionary, lastly, because
they simply cannot understand the necessity for a struggle, desperate struggle
of the working people themselves for their emancipation.... Socialists
must make a DECISIVE and COMPLETE break with all petty-bourgeois ideas
and theories--THAT IS THE PRINCIPLE USEFUL LESSON to be drawn from this
campaign.... I ask you also to note that I speak of the need for
a break with petty-bourgeois ideas about socialism. The petty-bourgeois
theories we have examined are ABSOLUTELY reactionary INASMUCH AS they claim
to be socialist theories.... But if we understand that actually there
is absolutely nothing in them, i.e., that all these theories completely
fail to explain the exploitation of the working people and therefore cannot
serve as a means for their emancipation that as a matter of fact all these
theories reflect and further the interests of the petty bourgeoisie...."
(d) (Add) "The first lesson of the Belgian strike is: look less to the
Liberals, trust them less, and have more confidence in the independent
and whole-hearted struggle of the proletariat."
(e) (Add) "To influence the workers, the bourgeois must assume the
guise of socialists, Social-Democrats, internationalists, and the like,
for otherwise they can exert no influence."
(f) (Add) "'You are strong when society sympathizes with you,' the liberals
say to the workers. 'Society sympathizes with you when you are strong,'
the Marxists say to the workers."
(g) (Add) "They (the so-called friends of the people such as liberals--Ed.)
simply think (and teach--Ed.) that if you plead with the government nicely
enough and humbly enough, it will put everything right.... This liberal
starts out by pleading with the authorities to grant reforms 'as far as
possible,' then he goes on to beg for 'well, at least something,' and ends
by taking up an eternal and unshakable stand on 'anything, however mean'."
547 (a) "The labour movement is growing irresistibly.
The people's attention must be diverted, the masses must be 'engaged' with
high-sounding schemes for reform, a pretense must be made of waging war
on the conservatives, sops must be promised to prevent the masses from
losing faith in the liberals, to ensure that they follow the industrial
and financial capitalists like sheep following shepherds."
(b) "The bourgeoisie needs hirelings who enjoy the trust of a section of
the working class, whitewash and prettify the bourgeoisie with talk about
the reformist path being possible, throw dust in the eyes of the people
by such talk, and divert the people from revolution by giving glowing descriptions
of the charms and possibilities of the reformist path."
(c) "...in this era of printing and parliamentarism it is impossible to
gain the following of the masses without a widely ramified, systematically
managed, well-equipped system of flattery, lies, fraud, juggling with fashionable
and popular catchwords, and promising all manner of reforms and blessings
to the workers right and left--as long as they renounce the revolutionary
struggle for the overthrow of the bourgeoisie."
(d) "Everywhere and at all times the liberal bourgeoisie tries to bribe
the uneducated masses with sops in order to divert them from revolutionary
Social-Democracy. ...not by violence, but by bribing, flattering,
dividing and cajoling the 'moderates'...."
(e) "Bourgeois reformists (liberals--Ed.) and pacifists are people who,
as a general rule, are paid, in one form or another, to strengthen the
rule of capitalism by patching it up, to lull the masses and divert them
from the revolutionary struggle."
(f) "...the Marxists wage a most resolute struggle against the reformists,
who, directly or indirectly, restrict the aims and activities of the working
class to the winning of reforms. Reformism is bourgeois deception
of the workers, who, despite individual improvements, will always remain
wage-slaves, as long as there is the domination of capital. The liberal
bourgeoisie grant reforms with one hand, and with the other always take
them back, reduce them to nought, use them to enslave the workers, to divide
them into separate groups and perpetuate wage-slavery. For that reason
reformism, even when quite sincere, in practice becomes a weapon by means
of which the bourgeoisie corrupt and weaken the workers. The experience
of all countries shows that the workers who put their trust in the reformists
are always fooled. And conversely, workers who have assimilated Marx's
theory, i.e., realized the inevitability of wage-slavery so long as capitalist
rule remains, will not be fooled by any bourgeois reforms. Understanding
that where capitalism continues to exist reforms cannot be either enduring
or farreaching, the workers fight for better conditions and use them to
intensify the fight against wage-slavery. The reformists try to divide
and deceive the workers, to divert them from the class struggle by petty
concessions. But the workers, having seen through the falsity of
reformism, utilize reforms to develop and broaden their class struggle.
The stronger reformist influence is among the workers the weaker they are,
the greater their dependence on the bourgeoisie, and the easier it is for
the bourgeoisie to nullify reforms by various subterfuges. The more
independent the working-class movement, the deeper and broader its aims,
and the freer it is from reformist narrowness the easier it is for the
workers to retain and utilize improvements. There are reformists
in all countries, for everywhere the bourgeoisie seek, in one way or another,
to corrupt the workers and turn them into contented slaves who have given
up all thought of doing away with slavery."
(g) (Add) "Such is the usual and normal method used by every bourgeoisie
in all capitalist countries: deceiving the masses with a democratic facade
in order to deflect them from a truly democratic theory and truly democratic
practice."
(h) (Add) "It is to the advantage of the capitalists and the bureaucrats
to make 'extravagant promises,' diverting people's attention away from
the main thing, namely, the transfer of real control to the workers.
The workers must sweep aside all high-sounding phrases, promises, declarations,
project-mongering by bureaucrats...who are ever ready to draw up spectacular
plans, rules, regulations, and standards. Down with all this lying!
Down with all this hullabaloo of bureaucratic and bourgeois project-mongering
which has everywhere ended in smoke. Down with this habit of shelving
things. The workers must demand the immediate establishment of genuine
control, to be exercised by the workers themselves."
(i) (Add) "The liberals are enemies of the revolution.... Being afraid
of the revolution, the liberals comfort themselves with the hope of constitutional
reforms...."
(j) (Add) "...the liberals, whose talk about changes and reforms 'pollutes'
the minds of the people."
(k) (Add) "The workers' party tells the masses: trust only your socialist
consciousness and your socialist organization. To surrender priority
in the struggle and the right to lead it to the liberal bourgeoisie is
tantamount to selling the cause of liberty for grandiloquent phrases, for
the tawdry brilliance of fashionable and gaudy signboards."
(l) (Add) "Another great duty that confronts the workers' party is to free
the masses of the ruined, poverty-stricken and doomed urban petty bourgeoisie...from
the influence of the ideas and prejudices of the liberal bourgeoisie."
(m) (add) "If the masses of the urban poor are taken in once more by the
promises.... if they are carried away once more by the clamor of liberal
phrase-mongering and liberal promises of 'peaceful' progress and 'peaceful'
legislation...events will soon shatter their last illusions."
(n) (Add) "The sooner the masses realize what their own interests are,
the sooner will they understand the hostility of the liberals to the mass
movement, the sooner will they alienate themselves politically from the
liberals and enter various democratic, revolutionary organizations, unions,
parties, etc."
(o) (Add) The liberals fear movement by the masses. "Hence the endless
series of equivocations, falsehoods, hypocrisies, and cowardly evasions
in the entire policy of the liberals, who have to play at democracy to
win the support of the masses but at the same time are deeply anti-democratic,
deeply hostile to the movement of the masses, to their initiative, their
way of 'storming heaven,' as Marx once described one of the mass movements
in Europe in the last century."
(p) (Add) "Liberals are prepared to recognize the class struggle in the
sphere of politics, too, but on one condition--that the organization of
state power should not enter into that sphere. In other words, many
liberals are even willing to concede the existence of class struggle providing
the masses do not attempt to assume control.... The bourgeoisie 'want'
to curtail the class struggle, to distort and narrow the conception and
blunt its sharp edge. The proletariat 'wants' this deception exposed."
(q) (Add) "...the liberal who says to the slave of our age, the wage earners:
'Fight to improve your condition as a slave, but regard the thought of
overthrowing slavery as a harmful utopia!"
(r) (Add) "Two worlds of ideas: on the one hand, the point of view of the
proletarian class struggle, which in certain historical periods can proceed
on the basis of bourgeois legality, but which leads inevitably to a denouement,
an open collision, to the dilemma: either 'smash' the bourgeois state 'to
smithereens' or be defeated and strangled. On the other hand, the
point of view of the reformist, the petty bourgeois who cannot see the
woods for the trees.... The reformists imagine themselves to be realistic
politicians, doers of positive work, statesmen. It is in the interests
of the masters of bourgeois society to encourage these childish illusions
in the ranks of the proletariat, but the Social-Democrats must destroy
them ruthlessly."
(s) (Add) "Such is the distinction between socialists and liberals, or
champions of the bourgeoisie. The socialists teach that revolution
is inevitable, and that the proletariat must take advantage of all the
contradictions in society, of every weakness of its enemies or of the intermediate
classes, to prepare for a...revolutionary struggle.... The bourgeoisie
and the liberals teach that revolutions are unnecessary and even harmful
to the workers, that they must not 'shove' toward revolution, but, like
good little boys, work modestly for reforms."
(t) (Add) "...the time-honored police method of divide et empera, divide
and rule, yield the unimportant in order to preserve the essential, give
with one hand and take back with the other...."
(u) (Add) "It cannot be over-emphasized that the system of pseudo-concessions
and of seemingly important steps 'to meet' public opinion has become an
integral part of the policy of every modern government...has trained statesmen
in the shrewd are of domestic diplomacy."
(v) (Add) "...this liberal bourgeoisie succeeded in confusing some Social-Democrats
(socialists of the right wing variety--Ed.), in securing their acceptance
of its political slogans and subjecting them to its political leadership."
(w) (Add) "The entire programme and entire agitation of Roosevelt and the
Progressives turn on how to save capitalism by means of bourgeois reforms."
(x) (Add) "Chanting hallelujahs and effusing humanitarian and benevolent
phrases are the alpha and omega of their 'science,' of their whole political
'activity,' And they even elevate this modest, liberal patching up of the
present order to a regular philosophy."
(y) (Add) "History has never known a single important 'reform,' even though
it has been of a class character, which has not had lofty words and lofty
ideas advanced in its support."
(z) (Add) "In any bourgeois-reformist trend there are two main streams:
the bourgeois bigwigs and politicians, who deceive the masses with promises
of reform, and the cheated masses, who feel that they cannot go on living
in the old way, and follow the quack with the loudest promises."
(aa) (Add) "But from time to time glaring cases of want and poverty side
by side with luxury compel 'discoveries' to be made, particularly if the
health and well-being of the bourgeois gentlemen are endangered!
Once in a while they 'discover,' in every big city and many rural backwoods,
appalling, abominable squalor, want and neglect unworthy of human beings.
They 'discover' them, inform the public through the 'big' newspapers, comment
on the fact for a day or two, (imply that reforms will be forthcoming--Ed.),
and then forget it."
Page 258
Liberals employ the carrot while rightists prefer the stick.548
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548 (a) "...an extremely important cause
of differences among those taking part in the labour movement lies in changes
in the tactics of the ruling classes in general and of the bourgeoisie
in particular. If the tactics of the bourgeoisie were always uniform,
or at least of the same kind, the working class would rapidly learn to
reply to them by tactics just as uniform or of the same kind. But,
as a matter of fact, in every country the bourgeoisie inevitably devises
two systems of rule, two methods of fighting for its interests and of maintaining
its domination, and these methods at times succeed each other and at times
are interwoven in various combinations. The first of these is the
method of force, the method which rejects all concessions to the labour
movement, the method of supporting all the old and obsolete institutions,
the method of irreconcilably rejecting reforms.... The second is
the method of 'liberalism,' of steps toward the development of political
rights, toward reforms, concessions, and so forth. The bourgeoisie
passes from one method to the other not because of the malicious intent
of individuals, and not accidentally, but owing to the fundamentally contradictory
nature of its own position. Normal capitalist society cannot develop
successfully without a firmly established representative system and without
certain political rights for the population, which is bound to be distinguished
by its relatively high 'cultural' demands. ...vacillations in the
tactics of the bourgeoisie, transitions from the system of force to the
system of apparent concessions have been characteristic of the history
of all European countries during the last half-century, the various countries
developing primarily the application of the one method or the other at
definite periods. ...'The positive, real aim of the liberal policy
of the bourgeoisie,' Pannekoek (a Dutch Marxist--Ed.) says, 'is to mislead
the workers, to cause a split in their ranks, to convert their policy into
an impotent adjunct of an impotent, always impotent and ephemeral, sham
reformism.' Not infrequently, the bourgeoisie for a certain time
achieves its object by a 'liberal' policy, which, as Pannekoek justly remarks,
is a 'more crafty' policy. A part of the workers and a part of their
representatives at times allow themselves to be deceived by seeming concessions."
(b) (Add) "In all capitalist countries throughout the world, the bourgeoisie
resorts to two methods in its struggle against the working-class movement
and the workers' parties. One method is that of violence, persecutions,
bans and suppression. In its fundamentals, this is a feudal, medieval
method. Everywhere there are sections and groups of the bourgeoisie--smaller
in the advanced countries and larger in the backward ones--which prefer
these methods, and in certain, highly critical moments in the workers'
struggle against wage-slavery, the entire bourgeoisie is agreed on the
employment of such methods.... The other method the bourgeoisie employs
against the movement is that of dividing the workers, disrupting their
ranks, bribing individual representatives or certain groups of the proletariat
with the object of winning them over to its side. These are not feudal
but purely bourgeois and modern methods, in keeping with the developed
and civilized customs of capitalism, with the (bourgeois--Ed.) democratic
system. For the (bourgeois--Ed.) democratic system is a feature of
bourgeois society...in which the utmost freedom, scope and clarity of the
class struggle are combined with the utmost cunning, with ruses and subterfuges
aimed at spreading the 'ideological' influence of the bourgeoisie among
the wage-slaves with the object of diverting them from their struggle against
wage-slavery."
(c) (Add) "The policy of the police state has long been called that of
the whip and the carrot by West-European democrats, who have had all sorts
of experience in fighting it. The carrot is the sop to the revolutionary
classes, the economic concessions designed to sow discord within these
classes, to win over a section of them and make it believe in the bourgeois
government's sincerity and friendly attitude to the proletariat.
The whip is the police harassment of all those who have no trust in the
government and sow mistrust among others; the whip is keeping in check
all those who want complete freedom and independence for the working class...."
(d) (Add) "The only possible means of struggle against the proletarian
revolutionary trend are ideological influence and repressions."
(e) (Add) "The bourgeoisie rules either by deception or by violence.
Just now flattery and deception prevail, and this lulls the revolution.
The bourgeoisie makes concessions on minor issues, but in matters of primary
importance...they make none."
Page 259
In reality, a liberal is little more than "a rightist in humanitarian
garb"549 and resembles the deceptively treacherous,
yet melodious, sirens of Greek mythology. From the point of view
of the average capitalist it is understandably difficult to decide which
group (liberals or rightists) is contributing more to the preservation
of the system and should receive the greater support.550
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
549 (a) (Add) "...even those ideologists
of the working people who had not the faintest notion of this class struggle,
and who preferred to dream of a better future rather than explain the vile
present, could not help seeing that liberalism was a cloak for plutocracy
(i.e., rule by the rich--Ed.)...."
(b) (Add) However, Lenin did not ignore the differences between the liberals
and the rightists. "How do...the Marxists in particular, carry on
their fight against the liberals? They carry it on in such a way,
and only in such a way, that each...reproach or accusation levelled at
the liberals naturally involves an even sharper reproach, an even graver
accusation levelled at the Rights.... We accuse liberals...of being
counter-revolutionary. Show us a single one of our accusations of
this kind that is not directed with even greater force against the Rights.
We have accused the liberals of being afraid of the movement of the masses.
...the Rights as well.... These examples can be multiplied indefinitely.
You will find that always and everywhere, without any exception, the working-class
democrats (Marxists--Ed.) accuse the liberals exclusively for being close
to the Rights, for the irresolute and fictitious nature of their fight
against the Rights, for their half-heartedness.... 'The fight against
the liberals' waged by...the Marxists is more profound, more consistent
and richer in content, and it does more to enlighten and rally the masses,
than the fight against the Rights... ...in order to forestall any
absurd distortion of the meaning and significance of our fight against
the liberals--to forestall, for example, the absurd theory of 'one reactionary
mass' (i.e., the lumping together of the liberals and the Rights in the
single political concept of a reactionary bloc, of a reactionary mass)--we
always take care, in our official statements, to speak of the fight against
the Rights in terms different from those we use in speaking of our fight
against the liberals."
550 (a) (Add) "The bourgeoisie, from the moment
it is faced by a conscious and organized proletariat becomes entangled
in hopeless contradictions between its liberal and democratic general tendencies
here, and the repressive necessities of its defensive struggle against
the proletariat there."
(b) (Add) "The bourgeoisie are both liberal and counter-revolutionary.
Hence their ridiculously impotent and wretched reformism."
Page 260
21ST QUESTION: Why not just allow
people to resolve political and economic disagreements through elections
and be done with it?
ANSWER: No political assumption in modern history has deceived more
people than the one upon which this question is based. It lies at the very
core of bourgeois political indoctrination. Without any consideration for
material conditions, people raising this question are assuming the act
of voting involves little more than going into a booth and registering
a choice. Few beliefs are further from the truth. Every politician knows
that money is the oil of all political activity, especially political campaigns.
Name recognition, promotions, staff, posters, travel expenses, lodging,
media appearances, and buildings for equipment, meetings, and rallies cost
millions. Pollsters must be employed to know where weaknesses lie or where
funds can be most effectively utilized. And research to undermine the opposition
must be compensated along with negative advertisements by expensive ad
agencies. A list of this nature can be extended almost indefinitely and
vividly demonstrates why "those who run the dough, run the show." Only
the wealthy can afford costs of this magnitude and they aren't going to
contribute out of the kindness of their hearts. To them expenses of this
size are an investment, like any other investment, and they expect plenty
in return from whomever is the recipient of their largesse. Under this
kind of ridiculous arrangement there is no possibility whatever that government
officials are going to represent the masses. Instead, they are going to
be under the thumb of their financial masters, knowing full well the penalties
for straying off the reservation. Those who represent the overwhelming
majority, such as Marxists, are going to receive the least amount of financial
assistance while those most concerned for the wealthy few are going to
receive the most economic aid. By its very nature this kind of system is
the ultimate in deal-making and political deception. While acting as if
they are concerned with the interests of the masses, because that's where
votes lie, politicians will represent the financial elite because that's
where funds lie. Not only are capitalist politicians beholden to wealthy
interests above all else, but they must be among the most unscrupulous
of political figures. A man or woman of integrity and principle would find
survival to be extremely difficult, if not impossible. Only by sacrificing
what they know to be right could he or she survive in the jungle of bourgeois
politics and lobbyist pressure. Expediency and opportunism are the only
constants. CIA funding of elections and anti-Marxist candidates in post-war
Italy and France clearly showed that if the government of Cuba under Fidel
Castro, for example, were to allow money to flow into the coffers of opposition
political parties and candidates, the results would be drastically skewed
in favor of a wealthy minority. Once the rich get their foot in the door,
an election can no longer be considered free or fair in any sense of the
term. No matter how many elections occur or how the political structure
is arranged, there is no possibility whatever of a man with $5 to his name
ever being equal to a man with $500 million dollars, politically or otherwise.
It's not going to happen, period! The incredible disparity in financial
resources abolishes any possibility of the general welfare being the prime
consideration of political decisions either before or after an election.
Fully cognizant of mass dissatisfaction with the influence of money in
politics, the wealthy and their servants tout campaign finance reform as
an answer to this obvious dilemma, when in reality it's all but impossible
to effectively restrict the movement of economic resources. Property owners
should only be allowed to participate in the electoral process after having
been deprived of private ownership of the means of production and distribution,
in other words, after the institution of socialism. In no other way can
the interests of the masses be protected. Otherwise, it's every man for
himself and those having control of material conditions are going to rule
virtually unhindered.
The critical role of wealth in politics and every other aspect of life
explains why the bourgeoisie scatter the words "freedom" and "liberty"
so profusely. They know that if everyone is free to do as he pleases, then
the Devil will take the hindmost and the most affluent will be freest to
do whatever strikes their fancy. Beyond any doubt their will is going to
dominate the scene. As was stated many chapters ago, one's freedom is directly
proportional to the size of one's pocketbook. There is no such thing as
a free poor man and all those who believe otherwise are only deceiving
themselves. That's also why the more rightwing elements in capitalist politics
object when the masses are able to force the state, especially the federal
government, to step in and level the playing field to some small degree
by alleviating the vast disparities in power and influence. Knowing full
well that wealth "rules the roost," the rich stress freedom and liberty
for all because real freedom will then exist only for a few.
Just because legal restrictions are absent does not mean an act can
be performed. Not by any means! Those lacking resources, which is another
word for wealth, still can't do what they want, law or no law, prohibition
or no prohibition. But the rich can. Bourgeois democracies allow parties
of every political persuasion, including those with socialist programs,
to participate in the electoral process because its leaders fully understand
how wealth differentials determine the outcome and how valuable propaganda
can be obtained by appearing to be proponents of freedom in what is actually
a surreptitious dictatorship.
Capitalists are strong believers in using money to manipulate or prevent
behavior and adhere closely to the maxim that every man has his price.
Everyone can be bought, if you make them an offer they can't refuse in
true godfather style. Instead of telling you how many children to have,
what to consume, how to live, etc., they simply tax most heavily those
activities they wish to prohibit or finance those they wish to promote.
Even though you're free to do many activities they dislike, you'll pay
a price in the process. Since the wealthy can adjust to penalties far more
easily, they are much freer to participate in unwanted behavior than those
who can't afford the luxury. In addition, firings, demotions, reassignments,
replacements, relocations, lockouts and other economic reprisals can be
as inhibiting as any law ever passed. The power of the purse is not only
as effective in restricting freedom as waving a club and imprisonment,
but considerably less revealing and much more easily sold under the label
of "respect for individual rights." The latter could far more accurately
be termed "individual rights based on financial respect."
Page 261
22ND QUESTION: Is the class struggle
always negative in its effect upon mankind?
ANSWER: By no means. For a particular period of time the
class struggle contributes to the progress of man.551
Marx once stated, "No antagonisms, no progress. This is the law that
civilization has followed up to our days. Till now the productive
forces have been developed by virtue of this system of class antagonisms."552
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
551 (a) "...private accumulation of capital,
modern division of labour, automatic workshops, anarchical competition,
the wage system--in short everything that is based upon class antagonism.
Now, these were precisely the necessary conditions of existence for the
development of productive forces and of surplus labor. Therefore,
to obtain this development of productive forces and this surplus labor,
there had to be classes which profited and classes which decayed."
(b) (Add) "if...division into classes has a certain historical justification,
it has this only for a given period, only under given social conditions.
It was based upon the insufficiency of production. It will be swept
away by the complete development of modern productive forces. And,
in fact, the abolition of classes in society presupposes a degree of historical
evolution at which the existence, not simply of this or that particular
ruling class, but of any ruling class at all, and therefore, the existence
of class distinction itself has become an obsolete anachronism."
552 Source 53,
page 59
Page 262
23RD QUESTION: Do Marxists see any
beneficial attributes in capitalism?
ANSWER: Any system, like any form of life, is born, lives, and dies.
It slowly evolves from a period in which the vibrant, dynamic, progressive
aspect is dominant into a stage in which the stagnant, decadent dying elements
prevail. Years ago capitalism was quite beneficial and a marked improvement
over slavery and feudalism. Its progressive side outweighed the regressive,553as
is repeatedly noted in the writings of Marx, Engels, and Lenin.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
553 (a) "Compared to feudalism, capitalism
was an historical advance along the road of 'liberty,' 'equality,' 'democracy,'
and 'civilization'."
(b) "The Manifesto does full justice to the revolutionary part played by
capitalism in the past."
(c) "...we know perfectly well that at one time it was the task of world
capital to create freedom, that it overthrew feudal slavery, that it created
bourgeois freedom. We know perfectly well that this was epoch-making
progress. And yet we say that we are opposing capitalism in general...."
(d) "...there is nothing more absurd than to conclude from the contradictions
of capitalism that the latter is impossible, non-progressive, and so on....
The contradictions of capitalism testify to its historically transient
character, and make clear the conditions and causes of its collapse and
transformation into a higher form; but they by no means rule out either
the possibility of capitalism, or its progressive character as compared
with preceding systems of social economy (such as slavery and feudalism--Ed.)."
(e) "While struggling against free competition, we cannot, however, forget
its progressive character in comparison with the semi-feudal system."
(f) "Just as sharply as Marx stresses the bad sides of capitalist production,
does he also clearly prove that this social form was necessary to develop
the productive forces of society to a level which will make possible an
equal development, worthy of human beings, for all members of society.
All earlier forms of society were too poor for this. Capitalist production
for the first time creates the wealth and the productive forces necessary
for this...."
(g) "...and which Marx's theory wholly accepted, namely, that capitalism
develops the productive forces."
(h) "...that which scientific theory values most in capitalism: its inherent
striving for development, its irresistible urge onwards, its inability
to halt or to reproduce the economic processes in their former, rigid dimensions.
...it is the 'instability' of capitalism that is an enormously progressive
factor, one which accelerates social development, draws larger and larger
masses of the population into the whirlpool of social life, compels them
to ponder over its structure, and to 'forge their happiness' with their
own hands."
(i) "...the capitalist mode of production is the most productive mode (which
it absolutely is, in comparison with previous forms).
(j) "...he (Marx--Ed.) places the question of the instability of capitalism
(which all these three authors admit) on a historical plane and regards
this instability as a progressive factor (compared to earlier systems--Ed.).
In other words: he recognizes, firstly, that existing capitalist development,
which proceeds through disproportion, crises, etc., is necessary development....
Secondly, he recognizes elements of progress in this development, which
are: the development of the productive forces, socialization of labour
within the bounds of the whole of society, increased mobility of the population
and the growth of its consciousness, and so forth."
(k) "Can it be that Mr. Rakitnikov has not read Capital, or The Poverty
of Philosophy, or The Communist Manifesto? If he has not, then it
is pointless to talk about socialism. That will be a ridiculous waste
of time. If he has read them, then he ought to know that the fundamental
idea running through all Marx's works, an idea which since Marx has been
confirmed in all countries, is that capitalism is progressive as compared
with feudalism. It is in this sense that Marx and all Marxists 'put
a gloss'...'upon the capitalist noose'! Only anarchists or petty-bourgeois,
who do not understand the conditions of historical development, can say:
a feudal noose or a capitalist one--it makes no difference, for both are
nooses! That means confining oneself to condemnation, and failing
to understand the objective course of economic development.... Both
feudalism and capitalism oppress the workers and strive to keep them in
ignorance. But feudalism can keep, and for centuries has kept, millions
of peasants in a downtrodden state.... But capitalism cannot keep
the workers in a state of immobility, torpor, downtroddenness, and ignorance.
The centuries of feudalism were centuries of torpor for the working people.
The decades of capitalism have roused millions of wage-workers."
(l) "Recognition of the progressiveness of this role (the historical role
of capitalism--Ed.) is quite compatible...with the full recognition of
the negative and dark sides of capitalism, with the full recognition of
the profound and all-round social contradictions which are inevitably inherent
in capitalism, and which reveal the historical transient character of this
economic regime.... The progressive historical role of capitalism
may be summed up in two brief propositions: increase in the productive
forces of social labour, and the socialization (uniting--Ed.) of that labour."
(m) "...to become convinced of the progressiveness of capitalism, which
is shattering to the very foundations the ancient forms of economy and
life, with their age-old immobility and routine...and creating new social
classes striving of necessity toward contact, unification, and active participation
in the whole of the economic (and not only economic) life of the country,
and of the whole world."
(n) "The socialization (bringing together--Ed.) of labour by capitalism
is manifested in the following processes. Firstly, the very growth
of...(capitalism--Ed.) destroys the scattered condition of small economic
units...and draws together the small local markets into an enormous national
(and then world) market.... Secondly, capitalism replaces the former
scattered production by an unprecedented concentration both in agriculture
and in industry.... Thirdly, capitalism eliminates the forms of personal
dependence that constituted an inalienable component of preceding systems
of economy.... Fourthly, capitalism necessarily creates mobility
of the population, something not required by previous systems of social
economy.... Fifthly, capitalism constantly reduces the proportion
of the population engaged in agriculture.... Sixthly, capitalist
society increases the population's need for association, for organization....
Seventhly, all the above-mentioned changes effected in the old economic
system by capitalism inevitably lead also to a change in the mentality
of the population."
(o) The progressive aspect of early capitalism was also shown in its tendency
to eliminate rural isolation and to modernize farm life. "The 'disciples'
(of Marx--Ed.) would, of course, be deserving of censure if they were 'contemptuous'
of rural inhabitants, crushed as they are by want and ignorance....
While speaking of the 'idiocy of rural life,' the disciples at the same
time point the way out of this state of affairs opened up by the development
of capitalism."
(p) Lenin spoke of the progressive tendency of capitalist competition to
destroy small production and the isolation of peasants and small producers.
"...Social-Democrats (Marxists--Ed.) regard the work of our capitalism
as progressive when it draws these small, scattered markets together into
one nation-wide market, when, in place of the legion of small well-meaning
bloodsuckers, it creates a handful of big 'pillars of the fatherland,'
when it socializes labour and raises its productivity, when it scatters
the subordination of the working people to the local bloodsuckers and subordinates
them to large-scale capital. This subordination is progressive compared
to the former (system--Ed.)--despite all the horrors of the oppression
of labour, of gradual extinction, brutalization, and the crippling of the
bodies of women and children, etc.--because it AWAKENS THE MIND OF THE
WORKER, converts dumb and incoherent discontent into conscious protest,
converts scattered, petty, senseless revolt into an organized class struggle
for the emancipation of all working folk...."
(q) "...the progressive historical work of capitalism, which destroys the
age-old isolation and seclusion of systems of economy (and consequently,
the narrowness of intellectual and political life), and which links all
countries of the world into a single economic whole."
(r) "As Marx saw it, the progressive and revolutionary work of capitalism
consists in the fact that, in socializing labour (bringing more and more
labourers together--Ed.), it at the same time 'disciplines, unites and
organizes the working class' by the mechanism of that very process (the
socialisation of labour--Ed.), it trains them for the struggle, organizes
their 'revolt,' unites them to 'expropriate the expropriators,' seize political
power and wrest the means of production from the 'few usurpers' and turn
them over to society."
(s) "Scattered, individual, petty exploitation, ties the working people
to one locality, divides them, prevents them from becoming conscious of
class solidarity, prevents them from uniting once they have understood
that oppression is not caused by some particular individual, but by the
whole economic system. Large-scale capitalism, on the contrary, inevitably
severs all the workers ties with the old society, with a particular locality
and a particular exploiter; it unites them, compels them to think and places
them in conditions which enable them to commence an organized struggle.
Accordingly, it is on the working class that Social-Democrats concentrate
all their attention and all their activities."
(t) "Capitalism is progressive in its significance precisely because it
has destroyed the old cramped conditions of human life that created mental
stultification and prevented the producers from taking their destinies
into their own hands."
(u) "Large-scale machine industry, which concentrates masses of workers...is
marked by a truly 'contemptuous attitude to the past.' ...the drawing
of women and juveniles into production is, at bottom, progressive.
...endeavors completely to ban the work of women and juveniles in industry...would
be reactionary and utopian."
(v) "Yes, the Marxists do consider large-scale capitalism progressive...."
(w) (Add) "When the producers start working for a distant and indefinite
and not for a local, exactly delimited market and competition, the struggle
for a market develops, these conditions lead to technical progress...."
(x) (Add) In regard to the beneficial aspects of private property in general,
Marx said the following. "...private property is a form of intercourse
necessary for certain stages of development of the productive forces; a
form of intercourse that cannot be abolished, and cannot be dispensed with
in the production of direct material life, until productive forces have
been created for which private property becomes a restricting fetter."
(y) (Add) "We (the communists--Ed.) are no friends of the bourgeoisie.
That is common knowledge. (Yet--Ed.) we are not opposed to the bourgeois'
determination to spread their methods over all the earth. Nay more.
We cannot forbear an ironical smile when we observe the terrible earnestness,
the pathetic enthusiasm with which the bourgeois set to work. They
really believe that they are working in their own behalf! ...They
may as well know beforehand that they are working in our interests (because
they are outcompeting their opponents and proletarianizing the world's
masses--Ed.)."
Page 263
The latter, for example, considered the American Revolution to be one
of the most progressive events in history.554
But the nature of world capitalism has dramatically changed from a dynamic
force for improvement in mankind's condition into a ball-and-chain on the
legs of humanity.555 The America of
1776 and the France of 1789 bear little resemblance to the America and
France of today.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
554 "The history of modern civilized America
opened with one of those great, really revolutionary wars of which there
have been so few...."
555 (a) "The gigantic progress of technology
in general, and of means of transport in particular, and the tremendous
growth of capital and banks have resulted in capitalism becoming mature
and overmature. It has outlived itself. It has become the most reactionary
hindrance to human progress. It has become reduced to the absolute power
of a handful of millionaires and multi-millionaires...."
(b) "...almost the entire globe has been divided up among the 'lords of
capital'.... From the liberator of nations that capitalism was in
the struggle against feudalism, imperialist capitalism has become the greatest
oppressor of nations. Formerly progressive, capitalism has become
reactionary....'
(c) "The existence of a ruling class is becoming daily more and more a
hindrance to the development of industrial productive power, and equally
so to that of science, art and especially of forms of cultural intercourse.
There never were greater boors than our modern bourgeoisie."
(d) "From a rising and progressive class the bourgeoisie has turned into
a declining, decadent, and reactionary class. It is quite another
class (the proletariat--Ed.) that is now on the upgrade on a broad historical
scale."
(e) (Add) "Capitalism is progressive because it destroys the old methods
of production and develops productive forces, yet at the same time, at
a certain stage of development, it retards the growth of productive forces.
It develops, organizes, and disciplines the workers--and it crushes, oppresses,
leads to degeneration, poverty, etc. Capitalism creates its own grave-digger,
itself creates the elements of a new system...."
(f) (Add) "...all successive historical systems are only transitory stages
in the endless course of development of human society from the lower to
the higher. Each stage is necessary, and therefore justified for
the time and conditions to which it owes its origin. But in the face
of new, higher conditions which gradually develop in its own womb, it loses
its validity and justification. It must give way to a higher stage
(e.g., capitalism must yield to socialism--Ed.)...."
(g) (Add) "The period of a relatively peaceful capitalism has passed, never
to return. Imperialism has brought the working class unparalleled intensification
of the class struggle, want, and unemployment, a higher cost of living,
and the strengthening of oppression by the trusts, of militarism, and the
political reactionaries, who are raising their heads in all countries,
even the freest."
Page 264
24TH QUESTION: Are there any beneficial
attributes to the early private property system of slavery?
ANSWER: Engels noted the fact that slavery, like capitalism, was
once a progressive force in man's history.
"And when we examine these questions, we are compelled to say--however
contradictory and heretical it may sound--that the introduction of slavery
under the conditions prevailing at that time was a great step forward."556
25TH QUESTION: What did Marx say about
the Utopian Socialists and their approach to humanity's ills?
ANSWER: "The practical proposals for the abolition of all social
evils, these universal social panaceas, have always and everywhere been
the work of founders of sects who appeared at a time when the proletarian
movement was still in its infancy.... The development of the proletariat
soon casts aside these swaddling-clothes and engenders in the working class
itself the realization that nothing is less practical than these 'practical
solutions,' concocted in advance and universally applicable, and that practical
socialism consists rather in a correct knowledge of the capitalist mode
of production from its various aspects."557
"...Saint-Simon, Fourier, and Owen--three men who in spite of all their
fantastic notions and all their utopianism, have their place among the
most eminent thinkers of all times, and whose genius anticipated innumerable
things the correctness of which is now being scientifically proved by us...."558
26TH QUESTION: What are the primary
errors of those claiming to be Marxists?
ANSWER: Firstly, they fail to realize the extent to which their
personal beliefs continue to be infected with bourgeois ideas. By
not exercising sufficient self-criticism, they repeatedly stumble into
the arms of the opposition. Secondly, instead of refuting the basic
beliefs instilled into Americans, they criticize the judgments arising
from those beliefs. They attack the conclusions and not the premises,
the superstructure and not the foundation, the spots and not the measles.
Thirdly, forgetting that ideas are a reflection of material conditions,
they seek to alter the attitudes and activities of people who are not open
to change. Instead of trying to persuade those whose material conditions
are compelling them to seek alternatives, they direct their efforts toward
the contented, the well-to-do, or the affluent. And lastly, alleged
Marxist individuals often fail to distinguish Marxism from liberalism.
They don't correctly separate slogans which are revolutionary from those
which are reformist, those which lead to the perpetuation of capitalism
from those which contribute to its demise.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Page 265
Their problem is compounded by the fact that the boundary between them
is continually in flux and vacillating.559
The programs of nearly every "Marxist" party in the United States, for
example, are models of radical liberalism or petty bourgeois radicalism
in action. Their authors seek to outliberalize the liberals by offering
ever more "radical solutions" within the context of private ownership.560
27TH QUESTION: Were Marx, Engels,
or Lenin perfect?
ANSWER: As stated earlier, "perfect" is a nonsense term when applied
to anything.561 Any individual seeking
perfection is exhibiting a subtle bourgeois influence and will forever
search in vain. The ruling class often propounds the attainment of
perfection because, among other reasons, its denial would lead to constant
dissatisfaction with the status quo. If nothing were perfect or nearly
perfect, people would understandably feel that everything needed to be
repeatedly altered and improved.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
559 "The concept 'reform' is undoubtedly
the opposite of the concept 'revolution.' Failure to remember this
contrast, failure to remember the line that divides these two concepts,
constantly leads to very serious mistakes in all historical discussions.
But this contrast is not something absolute, this line is not something
dead, but alive and changing, and one must be able to define it in each
particular case."
560 "Instead of an 'economic analysis' we
have a first-class hodgepodge and muddle. Instead of Marxism we have
fragments of liberal doctrines and the preaching of servility to the bourgeoisie...."
561 (Add) "Certain errors, of course, have
been committed. Nobody in our Party is absolutely 'infallible.'
Such people do not exist."
Page 266
By their own admission Marx, Engels, and Lenin made errors,562
nearly all of which were later corrected. It is remarkable, however,
that out of every thousand statements they uttered the number of errors
was infinitesimal and few affected the overall accuracy of their philosophy.563
Yet, they are constantly repeated in bourgeois writings for lack of something
better. On the other hand, the number of correct socio-political
bourgeois statements out of 1,000 is far closer to 1 than 1,000.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
562 (a) "Yes, Marx and Engels made many
and frequent mistakes in determining the proximity of revolution, in their
hopes in the victory of the revolution (e.g., in 1848 in Germany)....
They were mistaken in 1871 when they were engaged in raising revolt in
Southern France.... But such errors--the errors of the giants of
revolutionary thought, who sought to raise, and did raise, the proletariat
of the whole world above the level of petty, commonplace and trivial tasks--are
a thousand times more noble and magnificent and historically more valuable
and true than the trite wisdom of official liberalism, which lauds, shouts,
appeals and holds forth about the vanity of revolutionary vanities, the
futility of the revolutionary struggle and the charms of counter-revolutionary
'constitutional' fantasies...."
(b) (Add) "Some of Engels' predictions have turned out differently; and
one could not expect the world and capitalism to have remained unchanged
during thirty years of frenzied imperialist development. But what
is most astonishing is that so many of Engels' predictions are turning
out 'to the letter.' For Engels gave a perfectly exact class analysis,
and classes and the relations between them have remained unchanged."
(c) (Add) To one critic Lenin said, "Engels was not infallible. Marx
was not infallible. But if you want to point out their 'fallibility'
you have to set about it differently, really, quite differently."
563 (a) (Add) In 1872 Marx and Engels said
the following about the Communist Manifesto of 1848. "However much
the state of things may have altered during the last twenty-five years,
the general principles laid down in this Manifesto are, on the whole, as
correct today as ever. Here and there some detail might be improved."
(b) (Add) "But without a moment's hesitation I challenge the English bourgeoisie
to prove that even in a single instance of any consequence for the exposition
of my point of view as a whole I have been guilty of any inaccuracy, and
to prove it by data as authentic as mine."
Page 267
28TH QUESTION: Did Marx, Engels or
Lenin commit any significant errors?
ANSWER: Marxism-Leninism is science (not a science) and as such
grows and develops. Unavoidably some of the theoretical analyses
and formulations of its creators will be superseded by even more precise
descriptions of reality. No man or group of men is the "last word"
in science, not even such intellectual titans as Marx, Engels, and Lenin.
It would be unscientific to expect all of their theoretical formulations
to be so correct as to never warrant improvement or alteration. To
view their analyses as perfect and above reproach would be to attribute
perfection to mortal beings which Marxism obviates from the beginning.
The founders of Marxism-Leninism did commit a significant theoretical error,
if by "significant" is meant that which is of such a magnitude as to materially
affect an accurate presentation of dialectical materialism while leaving
intact the fundamental reliability of the theory. Years of experience
have taught me (the author) that correcting or altering analyses formulated
by Marx, Engels, and Lenin is always risky and, perhaps, I am about to
embark upon a significant error of my own, but for the first time in this
writing the narrative is going to proceed beyond present Marxian theory
by supplementing and restructuring the latter. Wherein lies the need
for a reassessment of Marxism? It resides with the present conception
of a class and the historical role of class struggles. Lenin defined classes
as,
"...large groups of people which differ from each other by the place
they occupy in a historically determined system of social production, by
their means of production, by their role in the social organization of
labour, and, consequently, by the dimensions of the share of social wealth
of which they dispose and the mode of acquiring it. Classes are groups
of people one of which can appropriate the labour of another owing to the
different places they occupy in a definite system of social economy."564
With all due respect to Lenin, his definition of a class needs to be
expanded. He has defined it in terms of economics and group relationship
to the means of production; whereas, in reality, a class is nothing more
than a body of people who have something in common. Teachers are
a class; doctors are a class; soldiers are a class and all people driving
a particular make of automobile or having blue eyes are a class.
Thus, every person is in thousands of classes simultaneously, some of which
are far more important than others. Lenin's definition of a class
leads to an inaccurate analysis of social evolution and to many dilemmas
such as that which follows. All Marxists would agree that if 1,000,000
proletarians were combating 10,000 capitalists and their hired agents,
a class struggle would be occurring because two different classes are engaged
in combat. But suppose 5,000,000 proletarians are fighting 5,000,000
proletarians. Is this a class struggle? When the bourgeoisie
of Germany and England fought during World Wars I and II or their proletariats
fought, depending upon how the wars are viewed, was this a class struggle?
Under Lenin's definition they are not, unless we are to assume that a struggle
within a class can also be a class struggle. Even if Lenin conceded
that proletarians fighting proletarians is a class conflict or bourgeoisie
fighting bourgeoisie is a class struggle, the problems associated with
his definition of a class are by no means resolved. Suppose 10,000
students are struggling with 500 teachers or 15,000 doctors are arguing
with 20,000 pharmacists or 200,000 protestants are fighting 150,000 catholics
or 60,000 blacks are struggling with 100,000 whites. Suppose 50,000
anti-abortionists are arguing with 100,000 advocates of free choice or
100,000 homosexuals are struggling with 50,000 anti-homosexual fundamentalist
Christians. Are these class struggles? Again, Lenin would have
to say no since few of these groups have a common relationship to the means
of production. Yet, in reality, each is a class struggle and the
history of all societies has been replete with such encounters which have
had significant impacts upon the history of man. Lenin's mistake
lies in the fact that he misinterpreted his own theory. Although
on the right road, he failed to continue the journey. Marxism is
not an economic interpretation of history and anyone who portrays economics
or the struggle of economic classes as the sole determinant of society's
history or defines classes solely in terms of relationships to the means
of production has shifted from dialectical materialism to dialectical economism.
The history of man has not been the history of economic class struggles
or the history of one class struggle in particular--the propertied versus
the propertyless--but the history of thousands of class struggles of every
type and variety imaginable. Anytime one group of people having something
in common has struggled with another group having something in common a
class struggle has existed. Lenin depicted the most important, the
most basic, of all struggles--the propertied versus the propertyless, the
rulers versus the ruled--as the only class conflict, as the sole determinant
of society's evolution. In reality, man's history has been the product
of many struggles between a multitude of classes many of which have had
no common relationship to the means of production and distribution.
Lenin tried to resolve his dilemma by calling non-economic classes, such
as the intelligentsia, "stratum," but only succeeded in adding to the confusion.
Society has not been the history of a class conflict or the history of
struggling economic classes, but the history of class struggles in general,
in which the encounter of classes having a particular relationship to the
means of production and distribution has been the nucleus from which other
class struggles have tended to emerge and about which they have tended
to revolve. Lenin's error can probably be attributed to the fact
that he pursued the original train of thought created by Marx and Engels.
The first two paragraphs of the Communist Manifesto are as follows:
"The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class
struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebian, lord and serf,
guild-master and journeyman, (bourgeois and proletarian--Ed.), in a word
oppressor and oppressed stood in constant opposition to one another...."565
Clearly, Marx and Engels viewed the history of society as the continuing
encounter of classes having a special relationship to the means of production
and distribution and not as classes struggling in general. Like Lenin,
they viewed the overwhelmingly dominant struggle among thousands as the
only conflict determining the history of society. The Manifesto should
have begun with the same first sentence and attention should then have
been directed toward the struggles between the major economic classes listed
in the above quotation and the process by which nearly all other kinds
of class struggles emerged from the conflicting interests of those economic
classes listed by Marx and Engels in the above quotation. Reassessing
Marxism-Leninism in this manner reveals, of course, that primitive communal
society was not, and future society will not be, totally classless.
Class struggles grew during primitive communal society, accelerated horrendously
as the result of new struggles brought about by the realization of a SURPLUS,
continued to increase while slavery, feudalism, and capitalism prevailed
and will increasingly fade with the eradication of private property and
the expansion of socialism throughout the world. Yet, they will never
totally disappear. Many basic class distinctions and class struggles,
such as that between the propertied and the propertyless, can be abolished,
but the abolition of all classes is impossible, since more than absolute
equality between individuals would be required. All men would have
to join together in a oneness that could only be contemplated by religious
mystics. In effect, all men would have to be the same person, otherwise
class differences would exist. Earlier in this book class struggles
were defined in terms of plumbers opposing electricians, Indians opposing
whites, road builders struggling with car manufacturers, etc., which probably
surprised some readers. Hopefully the rationale for such a presentation
is now apparent.
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Page 268
29TH QUESTION: What are the aims of
communists?
ANSWER: Marx, Engels, and Lenin provided concise replies to this question.
"I therefore defined the objects of the Communists in this way: (1)
to achieve the interests of the proletariat in opposition to those of the
bourgeoisie; (2) to do this through the abolition of private property and
its replacement by a community of goods; (3) to recognize no means of carrying
out these objects other than a democratic revolution by force."566
"The goal of the Association (the International Workingman's Association--Ed.)
is to overthrow all privileged classes and to subject them to the dictatorship
of the proletariat, through which the revolution will gain permanence until
the materialization of communism, the ultimate organizational form of the
human family."567
"The 'equalization of the classes,' literally interpreted, is nothing
but another way of saying the 'harmony of capital and labour' preached
by the bourgeoisie.... Not the logically impossible 'equalization
of classes' but the historically necessary 'abolition of classes' constitutes
the final aim of the International Workingmen's Association."568
"...the general character of the struggle and its general aim, namely,
the complete and final abolition of all exploitation and all oppression."569
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Page 269
30TH QUESTION: What were the major
contributions of Karl Marx to history?
ANSWER: The following statements by Marx, Engels, and Lenin address
this question.
"Marxism was the first to transform socialism from a utopia into a science,
to lay a firm foundation for this science, and to indicate the path that
must be followed.... It disclosed the nature of modern capitalist
economy by explaining how the hire of the labourer, the purchase of labour-power,
conceals the enslavement of millions of propertyless people by a handful
of capitalists, the owners of the land, factories, mines, and so forth.
It showed that all modern capitalist development displays the tendency
of large-scale production to eliminate petty production and creates conditions
that make a socialist system of society possible and necessary. It
taught us how to discern, beneath the pale of rooted customs, political
intrigues, abstruse laws, and intricate doctrines--the class struggle,
the struggle between the propertied classes in all their variety and the
propertyless mass, the proletariat, which is at the head of all the propertyless.
It made clear the real task of a revolutionary socialist party: not to
draw up plans for refashioning society, not to preach to the capitalists
and their hangers-on about improving the lot of the workers, not hatch
conspiracies, but to organize the class struggle of the proletariat and
to lead this struggle, the ultimate aim of which is the conquest of political
power by the proletariat and the organization of a socialist society."570
"It is to the great historic merit of Marx and Engels that they proved
by scientific analysis the inevitability of capitalism's collapse and its
transition to communism, under which there will be no more exploitation
of man by man. It is to the great historic merit of Marx and Engels
that they indicated to the workers of the world their role, their task,
their mission, namely, to be the first to rise in the revolutionary struggle
against capital and to rally around themselves in this struggle all working
and exploited people."571
"And now as to myself (Marx--Ed.), no credit is due to me for discovering
the existence of classes in modern society or the struggle between them.
Long before me bourgeois historians had described the historical development
of this class struggle.... What I did that was new was to prove:
(1) that the existence of classes is only bound up with particular historical
phases in the development of production, (2) that the class struggle necessarily
leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat, (3) that this dictatorship
itself only constitutes the transition to the abolition of all classes
and to a classless society."572
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Page 270
"The main thing in the doctrine of Marx is that it brings out the historic
role of the proletariat as the builder of a socialist society."573
"The services rendered by Marx and Engels to the working class may be
expressed in a few words thus: they taught the working class to know itself
and be conscious of itself, and they substituted science for dreams."574
"...Marx took his stand on the firm foundation of the human knowledge
acquired under capitalism. Having studied the laws of development
of human society, Marx realized the inevitability of the development of
capitalism, which was leading to communism. And the principal thing
is that he proved this only on the basis of the most exact, most detailed
and most profound study of this capitalist society, by fully assimilating
all that earlier science had produced. He critically reshaped everything
that had been created by human society, not ignoring a single point.
Everything that had been created by human thought he reshaped, criticized,
tested on the working-class movement, and drew conclusions which people,
restricted by bourgeois limits or bound by bourgeois prejudices, could
not draw."575
"Just as Darwin discovered the law of development of organic nature,
so Marx discovered the law of development of human history: the simple
fact, hitherto concealed by an overgrowth of ideology, that mankind must
first of all eat, drink, have shelter and clothing before it can pursue
politics, science, art, religion, etc. that therefore the production of
the immediate material means of subsistence and consequently the degree
of economic development attained by a given people or during a given epoch
form the foundation upon which the state institutions, the legal conceptions,
art, and even the ideas on religion, of the people concerned have been
evolved, and in light of which they must, therefore, be explained, instead
of vice versa, as had hitherto been the case."576
"These two great discoveries, the materialist 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."577
"This historical letter of Engels' (written to Marx in 1847--Ed.) on
the first draft of a work (The Communist Manifesto--Ed.) which has travelled
all over the world and which to this day is true in all its fundamentals
and as actual and topical as though it were written yesterday, clearly
proves that Marx and Engels are justly named side by side as the founders
of modern socialism."578
"Marx's historical materialism was the greatest achievement of scientific
thought."579
31ST QUESTION: What advice should
be given those who realize dialectical materialism is the only correct
analysis of world affairs?
ANSWER: Learn and understand the fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism, gather
accurate data, and then educate, debate, and organize. Debates are
especially important. The occasional defeats which will occur because
of inadequate information or erroneous strategy should provide valuable
educational experience and not excuses to desist. Return to the offensive
again and again. Inform those who are sympathetic or "neutral" and
debate those who are not, because without struggle and interaction there
can be no progress toward truth. That's the essence of the dialectic.
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An Important Supplementary Book by Dennis McKinsey is:
THE CRUX OF CHRISTIANITY