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

Media
On this day, 17 November 1982, 50 sex workers, members of the English Collective of Prostitutes, occupied the Holy Cross Church in King's Cross, London, in protest against police harassment, violence and racism. They made six demands: an end to illegal arrests of sex workers; an end to police blackmail, harassment and racism; an end to the taking of sex workers' children; an end to arrests of boyfriends and male relatives (especially Black ones) as "pimps"; welfare and housing for women who wish to leave the sex industry; and finally for arrests to be made of rapists and pimps instead. The occupation was inspired by a similar one undertaken by women in Lyon, France in 1975. Over the course of the 12 days of occupation, more sex workers would join the occupation. While Camden council made promises to the women to monitor illegal police arrests, they did not follow through on them after the occupation ended. However the incident helped catalyse feminist sex worker organising in England.

Working Class History

On this day, 17 November 1915, thousands of housewives and other workers of Glasgow marched on the sheriff's court in support of 20,000 rent strikers. The strike ultimately lead to the introduction of rent controls throughout the UK. One observer, Willie Gallacher, wrote: "From early morning the women were marching to the centre of the city where the sheriff's court is situated. Mrs. Barbour's army was on the march. But even as they marched, mighty reinforcement were coming from the workshops and the yards. From far away Dalmuir in the West, from Parkhead in the East, from Cathcart in the South and Hydepark in the North, the dungareed army of the proletariat invaded the centre of the city."

Working Class History

#RentStrike #WorkersUnite #Proletariat #Glasgow1915 #ClassStruggle #HousingRights #WorkersHistory #OnThisDay

@Communism

The Revolution of 1905 undermined the tsarist autocracy. Out of a mob of muzhiks repressed by feudal slavery of accursed memory, this revolution created, for the first time in Russia, a people beginning to understand its rights, beginning to realise its strength, For the first time, the Revolution of 1905 showed the tsarist government, the Russian landowners and the Russian bourgeoisie that mil lions and tens of millions of people were becoming citizens, were becoming fighters who would no longer permit anyone to treat them like cattle, treat them as a mob. The real emancipation of the masses from oppression and tyranny has nowhere in the world ever been effected by any other means than the independent, heroic, conscious struggle of the masses themselves.

Vladimir Lenin
The Fiftieth Anniversary of the Fall of Serfdom

#Lenin

@Communism

The epoch of the latest stage of capitalism shows us that certain relations between capitalist associations grow up, based on the economic division of the world; while parallel to and in connection with it, certain relations grow up between political alliances, between states, on the basis of the territorial division of the world, of the struggle for colonies, of the “struggle for spheres of influence.

Vladimir Lenin
Imperialism: the Highest Stage of Capitalism

#Lenin

@Communism

Presidents of the G20 countries are met with anti-imperialist protests in the streets of Rio de Janeiro. Social movements expressed their solidarity with Palestine and all struggles against racism and oppression.

theredstream

#AntiImperialist #AntiCapitalist #AntiRacist

Tens of thousands flooded the streets of Thessaloniki to mark the anniversary of the 1973 anti-junta uprising at the Polytechnic University—an event etched in blood and defiance against Greece’s ruling military regime. Tanks tore through the university gates, crushing the rebellion in a brutal crackdown that left at least 40 protesters dead.

The uprising carried demands against imperialism and NATO influence. Its violent suppression reverberated through the decades, shaping the nation’s large anarchist movement and inspiring the now-defunct Marxist-Leninist guerrilla group, “Revolutionary Organization 17 November,” named after the uprising’s final day. Each year, a commemorative march brings the struggle back to life—often accompanied by fierce clashes in the streets.

theredstream

#PolytechnicUniversity #Greece

🔴 Capitalism is perpetual crisis
✍🏻 Alex Snowdon

Capitalism is a system in crisis. We can see that crisis in its failure to satisfy the material needs of so many people. Inequality is more acute than ever. While a tiny number of billionaires amass unimaginably vast wealth, huge numbers of working-class people globally struggle to make ends meet.

There have been recurring economic crises since the post-World War Two boom ended in the 1970s, most significantly with the financial crash of 2008 and the economic turmoil that accompanied the COVID-19 pandemic.

The conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine, together with the huge sums spent by governments on the military, illustrate the fact that imperialist conflict remains a core feature of capitalism. The ecological crises, above all climate change, reveal how our existing economic and social set-up threatens the planet and everything living on it.

Capitalism is perpetual crisis. This is a system that is incapable of anything else: it cannot be benevolently reformed into something rational, humane or stable. Its crises are part of the essential dynamic of the system itself.

Karl Marx, the greatest theorist and critic of capitalism, recognised the dynamism of capitalism. In the Communist Manifesto, in 1848, Marx and his collaborator Frederick Engels referred to the innovations of the new capitalist ruling class, the bourgeoisie:

The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than all the preceding generations put together.

The means of production were transformed, with new technologies revolutionising industry and agriculture. Capitalism’s drive to accumulate is built into the system. However, Marx also grasped that the anarchy of the system ensured enormous waste of that potential to improve people’s lives. Capitalism’s dynamism cannot be separated from its irrationality and inhumanity.

Read more

#Capitalism #Marxism

"In capitalist society, providing it develops under the most favourable conditions, we have a more or less complete democracy in the democratic republic. But this democracy is always hemmed in by the narrow limits set by the capitalist exploitation, and consequently always remains, in effect, a democracy for the minority, only for the propertied classes, only for the rich. Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in the ancient Greek republics: freedom for the slave-owners. Owing to the conditions of capitalist exploitation, the modern wage slaves are so crushed by want and poverty that "they cannot be bothered with democracy", "cannot be bothered with politics"; in the ordinary, peaceful course of events, the majority of the population is debarred from participation in public and political life."

V. I. Lenin
(State and Revolution)

#Lenin

@Communism

Media
On this day, 19 November 1915, Joe Hill, Swedish-American Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) union member and songwriter was executed by firing squad for a murder most historians believe he did not commit. During his life, Hill wrote many songs such as 'There is Power in a Union', 'Casey Jones - the Union Scab' and 'The Preacher and the Slave'. The latter song is the origin of the phrase "pie in the sky", which is promised by preachers to starving working people: "You will eat, bye and bye,/In that glorious land above the sky;/Work and pray, live on hay,/You'll get pie in the sky when you die."In Hill's final letter to IWW leader Bill Haywood he wrote: "Goodbye Bill. I die like a true blue rebel. Don't waste any time in mourning. Organize." He also told Haywood: "I don't want to be caught dead in Utah", and requested that he be cremated, and his ashes used to replenish the earth.Large crowds attended his funeral in Salt Lake City, who were described as a "murderous mob" of "low-grade foreigners" by the Ogden Standard-Examiner newspaper, and as "anarchists, nihilists, socialists, bombs, and hobos" by the New York Times.In 1936, a song was written about Hill by Alfred Hayes and Earl Robinson, describing his spirit which lived on: "I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night,/alive as you and me./Says I “But Joe, you’re ten years dead”/“I never died” says he,/“I never died” says he…"From San Diego up to Maine,/in every mine and mill,/Where workers strike and organize/it’s there you’ll find Joe Hill,/it’s there you’ll find Joe Hill!"

Working Class History

#JoheHill

@Communism

There is Power in a Union
Joe Hill

Would you have freedom from wage slavery,
Then join in the grand Industrial band;
Would you from mis'ry and hunger be free,
Then come Do your share, like a man

There is pow'r, there is pow'r
In a band of workingmen
When they stand hand in hand,
That's a pow'r thats a pow'r
That must rule in every land
One Industrial Union Grand

Would you have mansions of gold in the sky,
And live in a shack, way in the back?
Would you have wings up in heaven to fly,
And starve here with rags on your back?

If you've had nuff of the blood of the lamb,
Then join in the grand Industrial band;
If, for a change you would have eggs and ham
Then come Do your share, like a man

If you like sluggers to beat off your head,
Then don't organize, all unions despise,
If you want nothing before you are dead,
Shake hands with your boss and look wise

Come, all ye workers, from every land,
Come join in the grand Industrial band
Then we our share of this earth shall demand
Come on Do your share, like a man