People always have been the foolish victims of deception and self-deception in politics, and they always will be until they have learnt to seek out the interests of some class or other behind all moral, religious, political and social phrases, declarations and promises. Champions of reforms and improvements will always be fooled by the defenders of the old order until they realise that every old institution, how ever barbarous and rotten it may appear to be, is kept going by the forces of certain ruling classes. And there is only one way of smashing the resistance of those classes, and that is to find, in the very society which surrounds us, the forces which can—and, owing to their social position, must—constitute the power capable of sweeping away the old and creating the new, and to enlighten and organise those forces for the struggle.

Marx’s philosophical materialism alone has shown the proletariat the way out of the spiritual slavery in which all oppressed classes have hitherto languished. Marx’s economic theory alone has explained the true position of the proletariat in the general system of capitalism.

Independent organisations of the proletariat are multi plying all over the world, from America to Japan and from Sweden to South Africa. The proletariat is becoming enlightened and educated by waging its class struggle; it is ridding itself of the prejudices of bourgeois society; it is rallying its ranks ever more closely and is learning to gauge the measure of its successes; it is steeling its forces and is growing irresistibly.

#Lenin, The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of #Marxism (1913)

@Communism

The contradiction between socialized production and capitalistic appropriation manifested itself as the antagonism of proletariat and bourgeoisie.


Frederich Engels
“Socialism: Utopian and Scientific”

#Engels

@Communism

As long as capitalism remains what it is, surplus capital will be utilised not for the purpose of raising the standard of living of the masses in a given country, for this would mean a decline in profits for the capitalists, but for the purpose of increasing profits by exporting capital abroad to the backward countries.

Vladimir Lenin
Imperialism: the Highest Stage of Capitalism

#Lenin

@Communism

✍🏻 wcharabicLearn

On this day, 11 November 1936, the UK's Peel Commission arrived in Palestine in response to the Great Palestinian Revolt. The committee recommended, in its final report, the division of Palestine into two states, one Jewish and the other Arab, and the deportation of more than 200,000 Palestinians from their homes.The British army in Palestine used brutal methods to crush the revolt, including mass arrests, house demolitions, and executions. They also armed and trained Zionist militias to assist with the repression.The chairman and other members of the committee were senior colonial officials who had served in places including India, Tanzania and Kenya.The Arab Higher Committee rejected the idea of a Jewish state and demanded an independent Palestinian state that would protect the rights of Jews and minorities, and demanded an end to immigration and land purchases that were managed by the Zionist movement with the intention of establishing a Jewish state.While the Palestinians gave public testimonies to the commission, the Zionists provided public and secret testimonies. On July 7, 1937, the final report was published, and the recommendation for partition was presented briefly at the end, with an attached map. Zionists were consulted about the borders drawn on the map before issuing the report, which enabled them to persuade the British to include specific areas of great importance within the borders of the Jewish state, which included the Hula Valley, and most of the best, most fertile land.The partition map included in the Peel Report was later used as a basis for the partition map approved by the United Nations in 1947. With the end of British occupation, the plan to partition Palestine was implemented through the 1948 war, and the ethnic cleansing that expelled around 750,000 Palestinians.

Working Class History

#FreePalestine

'We'll sweep away the fascist barbarians from the face of the earth!' (Russian #poster by Nikolai Dolgorukov/ Iskusstvo, Moscow. Soviet Union, 1941).

@Communism

✍🏻 Paul Lafargue
🔴 Simple Socialist Truths
1️⃣ Part 1

Worker. But if there were no masters, who would give me work?

Socialist. That’s a question I am often asked; let us examine it. In order to work, three things are required: a workshop, machines, and raw material.

W. Right.

S. Who builds the workshop?

W. Masons.

S. Who made the machines?

W. Engineers.

S. Who grew the cotton you weave, who sheared the wool your wife spins, who dug the mineral your son forges?

W. Husbandmen, shepherds, miners – workers like myself.

S. Consequently, you, your wife, and your son can only work because these various other workers have already supplied you with buildings, machinery, and raw material.

W. That’s so; I could not weave calico without cotton and without a loom.

S. Well then, it is not the capitalist or master who gives you work, but the mason, the engineer, the ploughman. Do you know how your master has procured all that is necessary for your work?

W. He bought it.

S. Who gave him the money?

W. How do I know. His father had left him a little; to-day he is a millionaire.

S. Has he earned his million by working his machines and weaving his cotton?

W. Not very likely; it is by making us work that he gained his million.

S. Then he has grown rich by loafing; that is the only way to make a fortune. Those who work get just enough to live on. But, tell me, if you and your fellow workers did not work, would not your master’s machines rust, and his cotton be eaten by insects?

W. Everything in the workshop would got to wreck and ruin if we did not work.

S. Consequently, by working you are preserving the machines and raw material necessary for your labour.

W. That is true; I had never thought of that.

@Communism

✍🏻 Paul Lafargue
🔴 Simple Socialist Truths
2️⃣ Part 2

S. Does your master look after what goes on in his works?

W. Not much; he makes a daily round to see us at our work, but he keeps his hands in his pockets for fear of dirtying them. In the spinning-mill, where my wife and daughter work, the masters are never seen, although there are four of them; still less so in the foundry, where my son works; the masters are never seen nor ever known; not even their shadow is seen¾ it is a Limited Liability Company that owns the works. Suppose you and I had five hundred francs saved up, we could buy a share, and become one of the masters, without ever having put, or without putting, a foot in the place.

S. Who, then, directs and superintends the work in this place belonging to the shareholding masters, and in your own shop of one master, seeing the masters are never there, or so seldom that it doesn’t count?

W. Managers and foremen.

S. But if it is workers who have built the workshop, made the machines, and produced the raw materials; if it is workers who keep the machines going, and managers and foremen who direct the work,¾ what does the master do, then?

W. Nothing but twiddle his thumbs.

S. If there were a railway from here to the moon, we could send the masters there, without a return ticket, and your weaving, your wife’s spinning, your son’s moulding, would go on as before.. Do you know what the profit was realised by your master last year?

W. We calculate that he must have got a hundred thousand francs.

S. How many workers does he employ¾ men, women and children, all included?

W. A hundred.

S. What wages do they get?

W. On an average, about a thousand francs, counting in the salaries of managers and foremen.

S. So that the hundred workers in the work receive altogether a hundred thousand francs in wages, just enough to keep them from dying of hunger, while your master pocketed a hundred thousand francs¾ for doing nothing. Where did these two hundred thousand francs come from?

W. Not from the sky; I never saw it rain francs.

S. It is the workers in his works who have produced the hundred thousand francs they received in wages, and, besides, the hundred thousand francs profit of the master, who has employed part of that in buying new machines.

W. There is no denying that.

S. Then it is the workers who produce the money which the master devotes to buying new machines to make them work; it is the managers and foremen, wage slaves like yourself, who direct the production; where, then, does the master come in? What’s he good for?

W. For exploiting labour.

S. Say rather, for robbing the labourer; that is clearer and more exact.

@Communism

On this day, 13 November 1909, suffragette Theresa Garnett attacked then-Home Secretary Winston Churchill with a horsewhip in Bristol, shouting "Take that in the name of the insulted women of England!" Garnett was arrested for assault, but as Churchill did not want to appear in court he did not press charges. So instead she was jailed for one month for "disturbing the peace". In prison, Garnett joined other suffragettes on hunger strike and was then force-fed. She set fire to her cell in protest, and was then moved to a solitary confinement punishment cell.

Working Class History

#TheresaGarnett #Churchill #History

@Communism

In a society based upon class divisions, the struggle between the hostile classes is bound, at a certain stage of its development, to become a political struggle. The most pur poseful, most comprehensive and specific expression of the political struggle of classes is the struggle of parties. The non-party principle means indifference to the struggle of parties. But this indifference is not equivalent to neutrality, to abstention from the struggle, for in the class struggle there can be no neutrals; in capitalist society, it is impossible to “abstain” from taking part in the exchange of commodities or labour-power. And exchange inevitably gives rise to economic and then to political struggle. Hence, in practice, indifference to the struggle does not at all mean standing aloof from the struggle, abstaining from it, or being neutral. Indifference is tacit support of the strong, of those who rule. In Russia, those who were indifferent towards the autocracy prior to its fall during the October revolution tacitly sup ported the autocracy. In present-day Europe, those who are indifferent towards the rule of the bourgeoisie tacitly support the bourgeoisie. Those who are indifferent towards the idea that the struggle for liberty is of a bourgeois nature tacitly support the domination of the bourgeoisie in this struggle, in the free Russia now in the making. Political unconcern is political satiety. A well-fed man is “unconcerned with”, “indifferent to”, a crust of bread; a hungry man, however, will always take a “partisan” stand on the question of a crust of bread. A person’s “unconcern and indifference” with regard to a crust of bread does not mean that he does not need bread, but that he is always sure of his bread, that be is never in want of bread and that he has firmly attached himself to the “party” of the well-fed. The non-party principle in bourgeois society is merely a hypocritical, disguised, passive expression of adherence to the party of the well-fed, of the rulers, of the exploiters.

V. I. Lenin
The Socialist Party and Non-Party Revolutionism

#Lenin

@Communism

Peace to the Peoples, #poster. Soviet Artists for Peace. R. Suryaninov, USSR 1982

@Communism

By social-chauvinism we mean acceptance of the idea of the defence of the fatherland in the present imperialist war, justification of an alliance between socialists and the bourgeoisie and the governments of their “own” countries in this war, a refusal to propagate and support proletarian revolutionary action against one’s “own” bourgeoisie, etc. It is perfectly obvious that social-chauvinism’s basic ideological and political content fully coincides with the foundations of opportunism. It is one and the same tendency. In the condilions of the war of 1914-15, opportunism leads to social-chauvinism. The idea of class collaboration is opportunism’s main feature. The war has brought this idea to its logical conclusion, and has augmented its usual factors and stimuli with a number of extraordinary ones; through the operation of special threats and coercion it has compelled the philistine and disunited masses to collaborate with the bourgeoisie. This circumstance has naturally multiplied adherents of opportunism and fully explains why many radicals of yesterday have deserted to that camp.

V. I. Lenin
The Collapse of the Second International

#Lenin

@Communism

Portrait of Lenin with a book of Pushkin, Kuzma Sergeyevich Petrov-Vodkin, USSR 1934

Lenin statue in Košice,1988

If a definite level of culture is required for the building of socialism (although nobody can say just what that definite ‘level of culture’ is, for it differs in every Western European country), why cannot we began by first achieving the prerequisites for that definite level of culture in a revolutionary way, and then, with the aid of the workers’ and peasants’ government and Soviet system, proceed to overtake the other nations?

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
Our Revolution

@Communism

'All hope for you, Red Army soldier!' (Russian #poster by Viktor Ivanov and Olga Burova/ Iskusstvo, Moscow-Leningrad. Soviet Union, 1943).

@Communism

When feudalism was overthrown and “free” capitalist society appeared in the world, it at once became apparent that this freedom meant a new system of oppression and exploitation of the working people. Various socialist doctrines immediately emerged as a reflection of and protest against this oppression. Early socialism, however, was utopian socialism. It criticised capitalist society, it condemned and damned it, it dreamed of its destruction, it had visions of a better order and endeavoured to convince the rich of the immorality of exploitation.

But utopian socialism could not indicate the real solution. It could not explain the real nature of wage-slavery under capitalism, it could not reveal the laws of capitalist development, or show what social force is capable of becoming the creator of a new society.

Meanwhile, the stormy revolutions which everywhere in Europe, and especially in France, accompanied the fall of feudalism, of serfdom, more and more clearly revealed the struggle of classes as the basis and the driving force of all development.

Not a single victory of political freedom over the feudal class was won except against desperate resistance. Not a single capitalist country evolved on a more or less free and democratic basis except by a life-and-death struggle between the various classes of capitalist society.

The genius of Marx lies in his having been the first to deduce from this the lesson world history teaches and to apply that lesson consistently. The deduction he made is the doctrine of the class struggle.

People always have been the foolish victims of deception and self-deception in politics, and they always will be until they have learnt to seek out the interests of some class or other behind all moral, religious, political and social phrases, declarations and promises. Champions of reforms and improvements will always be fooled by the defenders of the old order until they realise that every old institution, how ever barbarous and rotten it may appear to be, is kept going by the forces of certain ruling classes. And there is only one way of smashing the resistance of those classes, and that is to find, in the very society which surrounds us, the forces which can—and, owing to their social position, must—constitute the power capable of sweeping away the old and creating the new, and to enlighten and organise those forces for the struggle.

Marx’s philosophical materialism alone has shown the proletariat the way out of the spiritual slavery in which all oppressed classes have hitherto languished. Marx’s economic theory alone has explained the true position of the proletariat in the general system of capitalism.

Independent organisations of the proletariat are multi plying all over the world, from America to Japan and from Sweden to South Africa. The proletariat is becoming enlightened and educated by waging its class struggle; it is ridding itself of the prejudices of bourgeois society; it is rallying its ranks ever more closely and is learning to gauge the measure of its successes; it is steeling its forces and is growing irresistibly.

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism

#Lenin

@Communism

'Lenin 1870-1980' (Russian poster by unknown artist/ Izdatel'stvo Plakat, Moscow. Soviet Union, 1981).

The immediate task is, while combating "ultra-Left" deviations, resolutely to combat the danger from the Right with the aim of altogether isolating and completely eliminating the Rights. To unite all the genuine revolutionary elements in the Party for the purpose of completely eliminating the Right groups — such is the Party's task, such is the way out of the crisis. Unless this is done it is useless even to think of Bolshevising the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia.

That, of course, does not mean that all the Rights must necessarily be expelled. Expulsion is not the decisive weapon in the struggle against the Rights. The main thing is to give the Right groups a drubbing, ideologically and morally, in the course of a struggle based on principle and to draw the mass of the Party membership into this struggle. That is one of the chief and most important means of educating the Party in the spirit of Bolshevism. Expulsion must come, if it is really necessary, as a natural result of the ideological rout of the enemy. In this respect, the Lefts in Czechoslovakia committed a grave mistake in hastening to expel Bubnik. Instead of utilising the Bubnik "case" to the utmost and linking it with the principles underlying the stand taken by the Rights on the question of mass action, revealing their true countenance, the Lefts hastened with the expulsion, and cut off the road to further attack against the Rights on this ground.

J. V. Stalin
The Communist Party of Czechoslovakia

#Stalin

@Communism

🔴 No Woman is Free: Stopping Gender Based Violence
✍🏻 Deirbhle Sheppard

The far-right have no hunger for women’s liberation. The way that they frame refugees and people of colour as dangerous criminals is an age-old racist trope. It comes from the colonial tactic which depicted indigenous people as ‘primitive’ and ‘violent’, and which dehumanised them to justify the discrimination and abuse to which they are subjected.

By spreading racialised myths about sexual and misogynistic violence on social media, they are selectively drawing attention to allegations against immigrants. It is a smoke and mirrors attempt to whip up fear within communities. If someone only cares about women’s rights and safety when the perpetrator is not Irish, then they do not care about women rights; they care about villainising ethnic minorities and people of colour. It distracts from the real issues of capitalism and gender oppression that creates and maintains conditions for violence against women and other marginalised groups, including refugees themselves. The dehumanisation of refugees by the far-right conceals the reality that these people are often fleeing traumatic situations: human rights violations, climate collapse, famine, poverty, and global inequalities fuelled by imperialism and war.

Read more

#Culture #Feminism #HumanRights #Inequality #Europe #Ireland

Autonomy does not imply letting each area designated for self-rule “do its own thing.” The working class and its party will have a general program in education, culture, economic development, etc. “The proletarian cause must come first, we say, because it not only protects the lasting and fundamental interests of labor and of humanity but also those of democracy.”

Principles of Marxism-Leninism on the National Question

#Lenin

@Communism

🔴 Theses On #Feuerbach
✍🏻 Written: by Marx in the Spring of 1845, but slightly edited by Engels

I
The chief defect of all hitherto existing materialism – that of Feuerbach included – is that the thing, reality, sensuousness, is conceived only in the form of the object or of contemplation, but not as sensuous human activity, practice, not subjectively. Hence, in contradistinction to materialism, the active side was developed abstractly by idealism – which, of course, does not know real, sensuous activity as such.

Feuerbach wants sensuous objects, really distinct from the thought objects, but he does not conceive human activity itself as objective activity. Hence, in The Essence of Christianity, he regards the theoretical attitude as the only genuinely human attitude, while practice is conceived and fixed only in its dirty-judaical manifestation. Hence he does not grasp the significance of “revolutionary”, of “practical-critical”, activity.


II
The question whether objective truth can be attributed to human thinking is not a question of theory but is a practical question. Man must prove the truth — i.e. the reality and power, the this-sidedness of his thinking in practice. The dispute over the reality or non-reality of thinking that is isolated from practice is a purely scholastic question.

III
The materialist doctrine concerning the changing of circumstances and upbringing forgets that circumstances are changed by men and that it is essential to educate the educator himself. This doctrine must, therefore, divide society into two parts, one of which is superior to society.

The coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity or self-changing can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionary practice.


IV
Feuerbach starts out from the fact of religious self-alienation, of the duplication of the world into a religious world and a secular one. His work consists in resolving the religious world into its secular basis.

But that the secular basis detaches itself from itself and establishes itself as an independent realm in the clouds can only be explained by the cleavages and self-contradictions within this secular basis. The latter must, therefore, in itself be both understood in its contradiction and revolutionized in practice. Thus, for instance, after the earthly family is discovered to be the secret of the holy family, the former must then itself be destroyed in theory and in practice.


V
Feuerbach, not satisfied with abstract thinking, wants contemplation; but he does not conceive sensuousness as practical, human-sensuous activity.


VI
Feuerbach resolves the religious essence into the human essence. But the human essence is no abstraction inherent in each single individual.

In its reality it is the ensemble of the social relations.

Feuerbach, who does not enter upon a criticism of this real essence, is consequently compelled:

To abstract from the historical process and to fix the religious sentiment as something by itself and to presuppose an abstract – isolated – human individual.
Essence, therefore, can be comprehended only as “genus”, as an internal, dumb generality which naturally unites the many individuals.

VII
Feuerbach, consequently, does not see that the “religious sentiment” is itself a social product, and that the abstract individual whom he analyses belongs to a particular form of society.


VIII
All social life is essentially practical. All mysteries which lead theory to mysticism find their rational solution in human practice and in the comprehension of this practice.


IX
The highest point reached by contemplative materialism, that is, materialism which does not comprehend sensuousness as practical activity, is contemplation of single individuals and of civil society.


X
The standpoint of the old materialism is civil society; the standpoint of the new is human society, or social humanity.


XI
The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.

@Communism