The oligarchy does not perpetuate itself by retaining power permanently in the same hand, but by dropping it with one hand in order to catch it again with the other, and so on.

From Parliament.
[—Roebuck's and Bulwer's Motions]
Karl Marx

Politsturm

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. The other force is the international proletariat that is fighting for the socialist revolution through the dictatorship of the proletariat, which it calls workers’ democracy.

V. I. Lenin
Seventh All-Russia Congress Of Soviets (1919)

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The forms of domination of the state may vary: capital manifests its power in one way where one form exists, and in another way where another form exists—but essentially the power is in the hands of capital, whether there are voting qualifications or some other rights or not, or whether the republic is a democratic one or not—in fact, the more democratic it is the cruder and more cynical is the rule of capitalism. One of the most democratic republics in the world is the United States of America, yet nowhere (and those who have been there since 1905 probably know it) is the power of capital, the power of a handful of multimillionaires over the whole of society, so crude and so openly corrupt as in America. Once capital exists, it dominates the whole of society, and no democratic republic, no franchise can change its nature.

V. I. Lenin
The State: A Lecture Delivered at the Sverdlov University
July 11, 1919

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Vladimir Lenin, the leader of the 1917 October Revolution, passed away on January 21, 1924, but his impact is immortal. Lenin's fusion of Marxist theory with revolutionary action gave rise to the first socialist state and reshaped the world. His analysis of imperialism as capitalism’s highest stage and his vision for a socialist future remain a guiding light for the proletariat. Lenin is alive, and his revolutionary ideas continue to inspire and guide the struggle for liberation and the overthrow of capitalist domination worldwide.

Thank you, Lenin,
for the energy and the teachings,
thank you for the firmness,
thank you for the Leningrad and the steppes...
Thank you, Lenin,
for the hope.

- Pablo Neruda, Ode to Lenin.

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Seen in Milan, Italy: An effigy of Elon Musk appeared on Piazzale Loreto—the site where Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini’s body was displayed in 1945—placed there by a student activist group.

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On this day, 22 January 1891, Italian Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci was born in Sardinia. One of Gramsci's most important contributions to the workers' movement was his theory of hegemony, which describes how the capitalist class maintains its power most of the time not through open violence and repression but through ideology and its domination of culture.
Gramsci was a vocal critic of fascism, and dictator Benito Mussolini, until he was arrested in 1926. He was put on trial, during which his prosecutor stated: "We must stop his brain from working for 20 years."
However, Gramsci continued his work in prison, writing extensively and evading sensors. In one of his letters from prison, he wrote of the importance of both realism and hope:
"The challenge of modernity is to live without illusions and without becoming disillusioned. I’m a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will."

Working Class History

I hate the indifferent
By Antonio Gramsci

I hate the indifferent. I believe that living means taking sides. Those who really live cannot help being a citizen and a partisan. Indifference and apathy are parasitism, perversion, not life. That is why I hate the indifferent.

The indifference is the dead weight of history. The indifference operates with great power on history. The indifference operates passively, but it operates. It is fate, that which cannot be counted on. It twists programs and ruins the best-conceived plans. It is the raw material that ruins intelligence. That what happens, the evil that weighs upon all, happens because the human mass abdicates to their will; allows laws to be promulgated that only the revolt could nullify, and leaves men that only a mutiny will be able to overthrow to achieve the power.

The mass ignores because it is careless and then it seems like it is the product of fate that runs over everything and everyone: the one who consents as well as the one who dissents; the one who knew as well as the one who didn’t know; the active as well as the indifferent. Some whimper piously, others curse obscenely, but nobody, or very few ask themselves: If I had tried to impose my will, would this have happened?

I also hate the indifferent because of that: because their whimpering of eternally innocent ones annoys me. I make each one liable: how they have tackled with the task that life has given and gives them every day, what have they done, and especially, what they have not done. And I feel I have the right to be inexorable and not squander my compassion, of not sharing my tears with them. I am a partisan, I am alive, I feel the pulse of the activity of the future city that those on my side are building is alive in their conscience. And in it, the social chain does not rest on a few; nothing of what happens in it is a matter of luck, nor the product of fate, but the intelligent work of the citizens. Nobody in it is looking from the window of the sacrifice and the drain of a few. Alive, I am a partisan.

That is why I hate the ones that don’t take sides, I hate the indifferent.

Indifference is actually the mainspring of history. But in a negative sense. What comes to pass, either the evil that afflicts everyone, or the possible good brought about by an act of general valour, is due not so much to the initiative of the active few, as to the indifference, the absenteeism of the many. What comes to pass does so not so much because a few people want it to happen, as because the mass of citizens abdicate their responsibility and let things be. They allow the knots to form that in time only a sword will be able to cut through; they let men rise to power whom in time only a mutiny will overthrow. The fatality that seems to dominate history is precisely the illusory appearance of this indifference, of this absenteeism. Events are hatched off-stage in the shadows; unchecked hands weave the fabric of collective life – and the masses know nothing. The destinies of an epoch are manipulated in the interests of narrow horizons, of the immediate ends of small groups of activists – and the mass of citizens know nothing.

But eventually the events that are hatched come out into the open; the fabric woven in the shadows is completed, and then it seems that fatality overwhelms everything and everybody. It seems that history is nothing but an immense natural phenomenon, an eruption, an earthquake, and that we are all its victims, both those who wanted it to happen as well as those who did not, those who knew it would happen and those who did not, those who were active and those who were indifferent. And then it is the indifferent ones who get angry, who wish to dissociate themselves from the consequences, who want it made known that they did not want it so and hence bear no responsibility. And while some whine piteously, and others howl obscenely, few people, if any, ask themselves this question: had I done my duty as a man, had I sought to make my voice heard, to impose my will, would what came to pass have ever happened? But few people, if any, see their indifference as a fault – their skepticism, their failure to give moral and material support to those political and economic groups that were struggling either to avoid a particular evil or to promote a particular good. Instead such people prefer to speak of the failure of ideas, of the definitive collapse of programmes, and other like niceties. They continue in their in-indifference and their skepticism.

August 1916.

🔴 Trotsky’s Support for Fascism


Trotsky was one of the first to put Bolshevism and fascism on a par. This idea was popular in the thirties in reactionary Catholic parties. The Communist Party was their sworn enemy, the fascist party was their most important bourgeois opponent. Once again from Trotsky:

“Fascism is winning victory after victory, and his best ally is the one who makes his way around the world, this is Stalinism.”

“Indeed, nothing distinguishes Stalin’s political methods from Hitler. But the difference in results on an international scale is significant.”

“An important part of the Soviet apparatus, which is becoming more and more important, is formed from the fascists who still have to recognize themselves as such. Comparing the Soviet regime with the fascists would be a great historical mistake … But the symmetry of political superstructures and the similarity of totalitarian methods and psychological profiles are striking …

The agony of Stalinism is the most terrible and most disgusting spectacle on Earth.”

Here, Trotsky presented one of the first versions of the most important issue of propaganda by the CIA and the fascists in the 1950s, namely the topic of ‘Red Fascism’. Using the word fascism, Trotsky tried to direct the hatred that the masses felt towards the terrorist dictatorships of big capital onto Socialism. After 1944-1945, all German, Hungarian, Croatian and Ukrainian fascist leaders, who fled to the West, put on masks of “democrats”; they praised the ‘democracy’ of the USA, the new forces of hegemonism, and the main source of support for the reaction and fascist forces in the world. These ‘old” fascists, faithful to their criminal past, developed the same theme: ‘Bolshevism is the same fascism, but even worse.’

Further, we note that by the time European fascism had already begun its wars (in Ethiopia and Spain, the seizure of Austria and Czechoslovakia), Trotsky insisted that ‘the worst and most disgusting performance’ on Earth was the ‘agony of socialism’!

Read the full article here:

https://otheraspect.wordpress.com/2020/02/20/trotskys-support-for-fascism/

The US-backed dictatorship in Argentina kidnapped hundreds of children in the 70s, taking them from communist parents and handing them to military and conservative ones. They tried and failed to wipe out the next generation of leftists. One of those kidnapped children has just been found and given their original identity.

theredstream

It would, however, be inexcusable to forget that in advocating centralism we advocate exclusively democratic centralism.
On this point all the philistines in general, and the nationalist philistines in particular (including the late Dragomanov, have so confused the issue that we are obliged again and again to spend time clarifying it.

Far from precluding local self-government, with autonomy for regions having special economic and social conditions, a distinct national composition of the population, and so forth, democratic centralism necessarily demands both. In Russia centralism is constantly confused with tyranny and bureaucracy. This confusion has naturally arisen from the history of Russia, but even so it is quite inexcusable for a Marxist to yield to it.

V. I. Lenin
Critical Remarks on the National Question

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✍🏻 Vladimir Lenin’s
🔴 “Left-Wing” Communism: an Infantile Disorder
______________________________________________________
An Essential Condition of the Bolsheviks’ Success


It is, I think, almost universally realised at present that the Bolsheviks could not have retained power for two and a half months, let alone two and a half years, without the most rigorous and truly iron discipline in our Party, or without the fullest and unreserved support from the entire mass of the working class, that is, from all thinking, honest, devoted and influential elements in it, capable of leading the backward strata or carrying the latter along with them.

The dictatorship of the proletariat means a most determined and most ruthless war waged by the new class against a more powerful enemy, the bourgeoisie, whose resistance is increased tenfold by their overthrow (even if only in a single country), and whose power lies, not only in the strength of international capital, the strength and durability of their international connections, but also in the force of habit, in the strength of small-scale production. Unfortunately, small-scale production is still widespread in the world, and small-scale production engenders capitalism and the bourgeoisie continuously, daily, hourly, spontaneously, and on a mass scale. All these reasons make the dictatorship of the proletariat necessary, and victory over the bourgeoisie is impossible without a long, stubborn and desperate life-and-death struggle which calls for tenacity, discipline, and a single and inflexible will.

I repeat:the experience of the victorious dictatorship of the proletariat in Russia has clearly shown even to those who are incapable of thinking or have had no occasion to give thought to the matter that absolute centralisation and rigorous discipline of the proletariat are an essential condition of victory over the bourgeoisie

This is often dwelt on.However,not nearly enough thought is given to what it means, and under what conditions it is possible. Would it not be better if the salutations addressed to the Soviets and the Bolsheviks were more frequently accompanied by a profound analysis of the reasons why the Bolsheviks have been able to build up the discipline needed by the revolutionary proletariat?

As a current of political thought and as a political party, Bolshevism has existed since 1903. Only the history of Bolshevism during the entire period of its existence can satisfactorily explain why it has been able to build up and maintain, under most difficult conditions, the iron discipline needed for the victory of the proletariat.

The first questions to arise are: how is the discipline of the proletariat’s revolutionary party maintained? How is it tested? How is it reinforced? First, by the class-consciousness of the proletarian vanguard and by its devotion to the revolution, by its tenacity,self-sacrifice and heroism. Second, by its ability to link up, maintain the closest contact, and if you wish merge, in certain measure, with the broadest masses of the working people—primarily with the proletariat, but also with the non-proletarian masses of working people. Third, by the correctness of the political leadership exercised by this vanguard, by the correctness of its political strategy and tactics, provided the broad masses have seen, from their own experience, that they are correct. Without these conditions, discipline in a revolutionary party really capable of being the party of the advanced class, whose mission it is to overthrow the bourgeoisie and transform the whole of society, cannot be achieved. Without these conditions, all attempts to establish discipline inevitably fall flat and end up in phrasemongering and clowning. On the other hand, these conditions cannot emerge at once. They are created only by prolonged effort and hard-won experience. Their creation is facilitated by a correct revolutionary theory, which, in its turn, is not a dogma, but assumes final shape only in close connection with the practical activity of a truly mass and truly revolutionary movement.

The fact that, in 1917–20, Bolshevism was able, under unprecedentedly difficult conditions, to build up and successfully maintain the strictest centralisation and iron discipline was due simply to a number of historical peculiarities of Russia.

On the one hand, Bolshevism arose in 1903 on a very firm foundation of Marxist theory. The correctness of this revolutionary theory, and of it alone, has been proved, not only by world experience throughout the nineteenth century, but especially by the experience of the seekings and vacillations, the errors and disappointments of revolutionary thought in Russia. For about half a century—approximately from the forties to the nineties of the last century—progressive thought in Russia, oppressed by a most brutal and reactionary tsarism, sought eagerly for a correct revolutionary theory, and followed with the utmost diligence and thoroughness each and every “last word” in this sphere in Europe and America. Russia achieved Marxism—the only correct revolutionary theory—through the agony she experienced in the course of half a century of unparalleled torment and sacrifice, of unparalleled revolutionary heroism, incredible energy, devoted searching, study, practical trial, disappointment. verification, and comparison with European experience. Thanks to the political emigration caused by tsarism, revolutionary Russia, in the second half of the nineteenth century, acquired a wealth of international links and excellent information on the forms and theories of the world revolutionary movement, such as no other country possessed.

On the other hand, Bolshevism, which had arisen on this granite foundation of theory, went through fifteen years of practical history (1903–17) unequalled anywhere in the world in its wealth of experience. During those fifteen years, no other country knew anything even approximating to that revolutionary experience, that rapid and varied succession of different forms of the movement—legal and illegal, peaceful and stormy, underground and open, local circles and mass movements, and parliamentary and terrorist forms. In no other country has there been concentrated, in so brief a period, such a wealth of forms, shades, and methods of struggle of all classes of modern society, a struggle which, owing to the backwardness of the country and the severity of the tsarist yoke, matured with exceptional rapidity, and assimilated most eagerly and successfully the appropriate “last word” of American and European political experience.