Harry Powell in Turkey as witness to local Elections

The Life and Legacy of Fred Hampton

Nothing is important but stopping Fascism - Fascism will stop us all - Fred Hampton

Socialism: Utopian and Scientific by Engels - Red Menace Explanation

Democracy and Class Struggle finds this explanation of Socialism Utopian and Scientific innovative and useful.

Criticism: Again Markets under Socialism have historically been the basis of a transition back to capitalism ( historical materialist fact in 20th Century) - if you use them we must call them what they are as Lenin did CAPITALISM.

Karl Popper and Marx

https://democracyandclasstruggle.blogspot.com/2018/05/marx-200-karl-popper-and-creationism.html

Science must be applied to Society: For further understanding of Science and its relationship to Marxism read :

Marxism and Science by J D Bernal

https://democracyandclasstruggle.blogspot.com/2018/12/marxism-and-science-by-j-d-bernal.html

Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism - V.I. Lenin - Red Menace Explanation

Democracy and Class Struggle always welcomes new ways of explaining key Marxist ideas - Red Salute to Red Menace for its attempt.

Our main criticism of Red Menace is their reluctance to identify China as Imperialist - for those that want to investigate this question in more detail read:

Imperialism, ultra-imperialism and the rise of China by Hua Shi

https://democracyandclasstruggle.blogspot.com/2018/12/imperialism-ultra-imperialism-and-rise.html


IMPORTANT STUDY ON CHINESE IMPERIALISM
http://www.iboninternational.org/sites/ibon/files/resources/LII2C_English.pdf

Brexit: Will Tories Risk an Election Corbyn Might Win?

The internal contradictions in Tory and Labour Parties are driving the Brexit Crisis in Britain but there are also other forces at play from United States and Israeli Embassies and MI5 and MI6 determined to take down Corbyn - they also now have influence in Momentum which is becoming more remain by the day.

New leadership in Tory Party - talk of National Government anything to sabotage Corbyn - history shows the Right Wing Social Democrats will bring Corbyn down not the Tories.

The Ideological Struggle in the Working-Class Movement by V I Lenin

Published: Put Pravdy No. 77, May 4, 1914. Published according to the text in Put Pravdy.
Source: Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, 1972, Moscow, Volume 20, pages 277-280.
Translated: Bernard Isaacs and The Late Joe Fineberg
Transcription\Markup: R. Cymbala
Public Domain: Lenin Internet Archive (2004). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source. • README

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The profound ideological change that has taken place among the opposition, or progressive, sections of the people is an extremely important and distinctive feature of post-revolutionary Russia. To forget this distinctive feature is to prevent oneself from understanding the Russian revolution and its character, as well as the tasks of the working class in our time.

The ideological change among the liberal bourgeoisie is expressed in the rise of an anti-democratic trend (Struve, Izgoyev and V. Maklakov openly, the rest of the Cadets secretly, “bashfully”).

Among the democrats this change is expressed in the utter ideological confusion and vacillation that prevail among both the Social-Democrats (proletarian democrats) and the Socialist-Revolutionaries (bourgeois democrats). Even the best representatives of democracy confine themselves to bewailing this confusion, vacillation and back sliding. The Marxists, however, look for the class roots of this socialphenomenon.

The chief symptom of this break-down is liquidationism, which as far back as 1908 was officially defined as “an attempt by a certain part of the intelligentsia to liquidate” the “underground”, and to “substitute” for it a legal workers’ party, a definition that was endorsed by “the entire Marxist body”.^[2] At the last official meeting of leading Marxists held in January 1910, which was attended by representatives of all “trends” and groups, there was not a single person who protested against the condemnation of liquidationism as a manifestation of bourgeois influence on the proletariat. This condemnation, which was also an   explanation of the class roots of liquidationism, was adopted unanimously.

Over four years have passed since then, and the vast experience of the mass working-class movement has provided a thousand proofs that this appraisal of liquidationism is correct.

The facts have shown that, between them, the theory of Marxism and the practical experience of the mass working-class movement have killed liquidationism, which is a bourgeois and anti-workers’ trend. It is sufficient to recall how, in a single month, March 1914, Severnaya Rabochaya Gazeta vilified the “illegal press” (issue of March 13), and demonstrations (Mr. Gorsky in the issue of April 11), and how Bulkin, in perfect imitation of the liberals, vilified the “underground” (Nasha Zarya No. 3), how the notorious L. M., on behalf of the editors of Nasha Zarya, fully supported Bulkin on this point and argued the case for “building a legal workers’ party”—it is sufficient to recall all this to understand why the attitude of the class-conscious workers towards liquidationism cannot be anything else than that of ruthless condemnation and complete boycott of the liquidators.

But here a very important question crops up: How did this trend arise historically?

It arose in the course of the twenty years’ history of Marxism’s ties with the mass working-class movement in Russia. Up to 1894–95 there were no such ties. The Emancipation of Labour group only laid the theoretical foundations for the Social-Democratic movement and took the first step towards the working-class movement.

It was only the propaganda of 1894–95 and the strikes of 1895–96 that established firm and inseverable ties between Social-Democracy and the mass working-class movement. And immediately an ideological struggle commenced between the two trends of Marxism: the struggle between the Economists and the consistent Marxists or (later) Iskrists (1895–1902), the struggle between the Mensheviks and Bolsheviks (1903–08), and the struggle between the liquidators and the Marxists (1908–14).

Economism and liquidationism are two different forms of the same petty-bourgeois, intellectualist opportunism that   has existed for twenty years. That there is a personal as well as ideological connection between all these forms of opportunism is an undoubted fact. It is sufficient to mention the name of the leader of the Economists, A. Martynov, who subsequently became a Menshevik and is now a liquidator. It is sufficient to call a witness like G. V. Plekhanov, who, on very many points,[1] stood close to the Mensheviks, but nevertheless openly admitted that the Mensheviks absorbed intellectualist opportunist elements into their ranks, and that the liquidators continued the errors of Economism and were disrupters of the workers’ party.

People who (like the liquidators and Trotsky) ignore or falsify this twenty years’ history of the ideological struggle in the working-class movement do tremendous harm to the workers.

A worker who takes an anythingarian attitude towards the history of his own movement cannot be considered class-conscious. Of all the capitalist countries, Russia is one of the most backward and most petty bourgeois. That is why the mass working-class movement gave rise to a petty-bourgeois, opportunist wing in that movement, not by chance, but inevitably.

The progress made during these twenty years in ridding the working-class movement of the influence of the bourgeoisie, of the influence of Economism and of liquidationism, has been tremendous. For the first time, a real, proletarian foundation for a real Marxist party is being securely laid. It is generally admitted, even the opponents of the Pravdists   are compelled to admit—the facts compel them to admit it!—that among class-conscious workers the Pravdists constitute the overwhelming majority. What the Marxist “plenum” of January 1910 recognised theoretically (that liquidationism is “bourgeois influence on the proletariat”), the class-conscious workers have been putting into practice during the past four years; they have secured practical recognition of it by weakening the liquidators, by removing them from office, by reducing liquidationism to a group of legal, opportunist publicists standing outside the mass working-class movement.

During this twenty-year-old conflict of ideas the working-class movement in Russia has been growing in scope and strength and steadily maturing. It has defeated Economism; the flower of the class-conscious proletariat have sided with the Iskrists. At every decisive stage in the revolution they have left the Mensheviks in the minority: even Levitsky himself has had to admit that the masses of the workers sided with the Bolsheviks.

And, finally, it has now defeated liquidationism and, as a result, has taken the correct road of the broad struggle—illumined by Marxist theory and summed up in uncurtailed slogans—of the advanced class for the advanced historical aims of mankind.

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Notes

[1] Why do we say “on very many points”? Because Plekhanov occupied a special position, and departed from Menshevism many times: (1) at the 1903 Congress Plekhanov fought the opportunism of the Mensheviks; (2) after the Congress Plekhanov edited Nos. 46–51 of Iskra, also in opposition to the Mensheviks; (3) in 1904 Plekhanov defended Axelrod’s plan for a Zemstvo campaign in such a way that he passed over its chief mistakes in silence; (4) in the spring of 1905 Plekhanov left the Mensheviks; (5) in 1906, after the dissolution of the First Duma, the stand Plekhanov took was not at all a Menshevik one (seeProletary,^[3] August 1906); (present edition, Vol. 11, pp. 179–83.—Ed.); (6) at the London Congress in 1907—as Cherevanin relates—Plekhanov opposed the “organisational anarchism” of the Mensheviks. One must know these facts in order to understand why the Menshevik Plekhanov so long and so resolutely fought liquidationism and denounced it. —Lenin

[2] This refers to the Fifth Conference of the R.S.D.L.P. (the All-Russia Conference 1908). (See Note 52.)

[3] Proletary (The Proletarian)—a Bolshevik illegal newspaper, published from August 21 (September 3), 1906 to November 28 (December 11), 1909 under the editorship of Lenin. Fifty issues were published. Active collaborators on the paper were M. F. Vladimirsky, V. V. Vorovsky, I. F. Dubrovinsky, A. V. Lunacharsky and others. The first twenty issues were prepared for the press and set up in Vyborg, but as conditions for the publication of an illegal organ in Russia became extremely difficult, further publication was transferred abroad (Geneva and Paris).

Proletary was virtually the Central Organ of the Bolsheviks. Most of the work on the paper was done by Lenin, several of whose articles appeared in a most every issue. Proletary published over a hundred articles and paragraphs by Lenin an the most important issues of the revolutionary struggle of the working class. The paper dealt with tactical and political questions of general interest and carried reports on the activities of the Central Committee of the R.S.D.L.P., the decisions of conferences and plenary meetings of the C.C., letters of the C.C. on various questions of Party activities, and a number of other documents. A supplement to No. 46 of the newspaper published a report on the conference of the extended Editorial Board of Proletary, as well as the resolutions of that meeting, which was held in Paris on June 8--17 (21–30), 1909. The newspaper was in close touch with the local Party organisations.

During the years of the Stolypin reaction Proletary played an outstanding role in safeguarding and strengthening the Bolshevik organisations, in fighting the liquidators, otzovists, ultimatumists and god-builders.

Publication of the newspaper ceased in 1910 in accordance with the decision of the January Plenum of the C.C. of the R.S.D.L.P.

29th March 2019 - Brexit Betrayal Day - Blast from the Past Republic - let there be a new People's Socialist Republic

Combat Liberalism - No to the Neo Liberal European Union by Nickglais

https://democracyandclasstruggle.blogspot.com/2016/04/combat-liberalism-no-to-the-neo-liberal.html

Article 50 and the National and Social Liberation of the British Isles by Nickglais

https://democracyandclasstruggle.blogspot.com/2017/03/article-50-and-national-and-social_29.html


From the Tories like Moggy and Boris to Labour opportunists they collapse their principles for pelf and power.

Labour's Momentum is moving towards a remain group and the triangulation towards the right wing Social Democracy endangers Corbyn and empowers his assassin Tom Watson.

Self Destruction and Self Deception reaches its peak on 29th March 2019

March 29th 2019 will live in Infamy

Remember Amritsar Massacre 13th April 1919 - Commemorating the Centenary of the Jallianwallah Bagh in Sangrur by Harsh Thakor

SALUTE PUNJAB RADICAL STUDENTS UNION AND NAUJWAN BHARAT SABHA FOR SHIMMERING THE TORCH OF LIBERATION COMMEMORATING CENTENARY OF JALLIANWALLAH BAGH IN SANGRUR IN PUNJAB YESTERDAY THROUGH A POLITICAL CONFERENCE.LIT A SPARK TO CREATE A PRAIRIE FIRE TO RESSURECT SPIRIT OF MARTYRS WHEN MORALLY THE RULERS OF TODAY ARE RE-ENACTING THE EVENT OF JALLIANWALLAH BAGH BY TAKING FASCISM TO ITS CRESCENDO.

Around 700 students and youth assembled in the town hall in Sangrur in a political conference commemorating centenary of Jallianawallah Bagh massacre.A most qualitative success in raising political consciousness in context of modern times .

Rakesh Kumar gave the historical narrative fitting the event in the current context.He covered the topic of how the contribution of martyr Udham Singh was distorted today and portrayed hsi actual contribution.

PRSU President Rashpinder Jimmy spoke about the topics of education and unemployment.He summarized how the govt policies were promoting more and more unemployment by cutting jobs through intense mechanization and how education was virtually becoming unafforadable with the consolidation of privatization. He gave examples of the important struggles opposing closure of colleges ,fee hikes etc.

NBS President Jagseer spoke about the topics of Communalism and Fascism and explained the similarity between the colonial regime with the rulers of today.He also gave a detailed description of the problem sof the dalit agricultuarl labouresr and the farmers.

The programme was staged after meticulous and painstaking preparations in areas of Sangrur and Patiala,particularly in educational institutions. An intense campaign of posters, leaflets, meetings and rallies in Patiala-Sangrur and hundreds of villages-cities was launched.The goal of anew democratic India was propogated which was the dream of the martyrs.

Goals are-

1- To achieve free and common education.

2 - To get the most appropriate and honorable employment for all the youth.

3- To eradicate the stigma of caste.

4- To remove the Patriarchal and Anti-women ideas from the society.

5- Focus on Democratic, secular and scientific culture, rather than semi-feudal and imperialistic culture.

6 For achieving respectable life, including land, democracy and equality for all the hard work including farmers and laborers.

To say that the martyrs' dream was created a new and democratic India, the youth and the students were invited to come forward and campaign and mobilization on a wide scale. A campaign of posters, leaflets, meetings and rallies in Patiala-Sangrur and hundreds of villages-cities was launched

The Red Pill is a Cult - the Wake Up Call to combat Right Wing and Fascist Cultism.

Democracy and Class Struggle is critical of those who confuse leadership and the Mass Line with cultism in politics but we recognize that the contemporary right and fascist movements are elitist and cultist at core as they have always been.

Those that fall for this shit have serious psychological problems that require de programming- which was why there were de nazification programs after the Second World War.

The need to confront these fascist and right wing cults have never been greater and Christchurch is a wake up call.
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Why and How the New People's Army has preserved itself and grown in strength by Professor Joma Sison

SEE ALSO : STATEMENT ON 50th ANNIVERSARY OF NEW PEOPLES ARMY FROM CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF THE PHILIPPINES

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1L7GtGx3nFeF4qspGEp0crxsxfzKa29Q5/view?fbclid=IwAR3sP2zOFYXxmkpIYx0Aaq-e0kisK-fnl7dnRp7ypajPGHrPcMskVHxE5rQ


March 29, 2019

Academic researchers and journalists often ask me why and how the New People’s Army (NPA) has preserved itself and grown in strength in the last 50 years. I share with you my answers to their questions.

The NPA has a just revolutionary cause, which makes it invincible. It is fighting for the national and social liberation of the Filipino people, mainly the toiling masses of workers and peasants, against the three evil forces of foreign monopoly capitalism, domestic feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism. The revolutionary struggle becomes even more just when it confronts a brazenly treasonous, tyrannical, brutal and corrupt regime like that of Marcor or Duterte.

The NPA is led by the Communist Party of the Philippines. This revolutionary party of the working class has defined the general line of people’s democratic revolution and the strategic line of protracted people’s war, which allows the NPA to avail of the wide countryside and the support of the peasant masses to grow from small and weak to big and strong .

The reactionary armed forces, police, and paramilitary auxiliaries are on the losing side because they are instruments for oppressing the people and preserving the daily violence of exploitation under the rule of the big compradors, landlords and corrupt government officials in the service of US imperialism.

The broad masses of the people understand that they have no way to change the oppressive and exploitative ruling system but to wage people’s war because elections controlled by the exploiting classes always result mainly in the rotation of their political agents.

The underdevelopment of the economy, high rate of unemployment and widespread poverty will remain and grow worse so long as the exploiting classes and their imperialist masters take superprofits and press down the subsistence level of the toiling masses.

The strategic line of protracted people's war has been successful in the last 50 years in allowing the NPA to occupy strategic areas all over the countryside in the archipelago; and to use these for guerrilla warfare in the stage of strategic defensive. The NPA now has 110 guerrilla fronts in 73 out of 81 Philippine provinces. It is now developing the advanced phase of the stage of strategic defensive, in which the tactical offensives of NPA platoons and companies can become more frequent and successful against weak points of the enemy forces.

The time will soon come that the stage of strategic stalemate will be reached when NPA companies and then battalions will be able to wage regular mobile warfare and launch tactical offensives that can wipe out larger enemy formations piece by piece and liberate entire towns and provinces. The strategic stalemate shall be far shorter than the stage of strategic defensive.

By the time that conditions are ripe for the stage of the strategic offensive, it shall be the turn of the enemy to be on the strategic defensive. The NPA shall have acquired the capability to mobilize battalions and regiments for knocking out the final strongholds of the enemy and for seizing the cities.

There are those who think that an armed revolution is successful only after it overthrows the city-based government and seizes the presidential palace. But the armed revolution is already establishing the people’s democratic government in the countryside.

This revolutionary government of workers and peasants is in charge of public education, mass organizing, land reform, production, health and sanitation, self-defense, administration of justice and arbitration, cultural work , disaster relief and environmental protection in the guerrilla fronts.

At present in the stage of the strategic defensive, what are the weak points of the enemy that the NPA can at will target in tactical offensives? What else can the NPA do?

1. When the enemy forces concentrate to launch an offensive in superior strength, the NPA can retreat or shift position and observe what weak points appear in the deployment and operations of the enemy side. As sure as the sun rises and sets, the NPA and the people are able to see the wide gaps between enemy points and the lines of supply and patrols, and can proceed to wipe out the enemy forces part by part.

2. Even when the overall armed strength of the enemy is far larger than that of the NPA, the enemy forces are limited and cannot cover more than 10 percent of Philippine population and territory at any given time. The enemy forces can concentrate anywhere but so can the NPA elsewhere to target weak points of the enemy forces, such as small army detachments, police stations, security forces of unfriendly business enterprises and plantations, and bodyguards of hostile politicians, warlords, and crime lords.

3. The reactionary armed forces and police have their own ways of reducing their personnel for combat: they take over civilian functions and use too many patrols and too many checkpoints for the purpose of mass intimidation and extortion. In addition, the NPA can compel the enemy to defensive positions by putting them under a cloud of harassments and by destroying facilities of mining, logging, and plantation companies on the just ground that these are instruments of extreme exploitation of the working people and destruction of the environment and agriculture.

4. Whenever the NPA takes full initiative in launching a tactical offensive against a certain enemy target, it can also prepare an extra force to ambush the reinforcing or pursuing enemy force. On a larger scale, if it has sufficient forces for the purpose, the NPA can deliberately lure in the enemy for annihilation in a series of battles within a certain area. Furthermore it can create the opportunity for other NPA units to launch their tactical offensives elsewhere.

5. The CPP has announced recently that it has laid stress on further developing extensive and intensive guerrilla warfare on the basis of a widening and deepening mass base and delivering headblows to the enemy. More than ever, the NPA has the capability to deliver head blows to enemy command posts or to the urban dens of the most despicable bosses of the regime with rural-based commando teams as well as with armed city partisans.

6. The high-tech equipment of the enemy can be countered. Air planes and helicopters are noisy. The most silent drones cannot distinguish the NPA fighters from the masses. It is not the style of the NPA to make permanent large encampments in isolated areas. It uses only temporary camps in connection with politico-military training and preparing for certain tactical offensives. As regards computers and cellphones, the NPA communications personnel have learned to use codes and delete or store away data.

There is no limit to the kinds of tactical offensives that the NPA forces can launch on its own initiative so long as they have the elements of people’s support, precise intelligence, meticulous planning, training and discipline of the rank and file, and the daring of commanders.

But the NPA has simple overall rules for it to be able to preserve itself and gain further strength: always launch only tactical offensives that it is sure of winning and avoid any decisive engagement that puts at risk the very life of the NPA in any guerrilla front. Thus, the enemy has failed to destroy any guerrilla front, except in its press releases for psy-war.

The propaganda of the US-Duterte regime and its armed minions is that the NPA is on the way to being destroyed. For the purpose, the regime is in a frenzy of faking surrenders and encounters, community support, development projects, and localized peace talks, while they carry out real mass arrests, massacres, artillery shelling, bombings, forced mass evacuations, and landgrabbing to gain the people’s wrath. It has formed a national task force to carry out all these tactics systematically and to prepare for the imposition of fascist dictatorship on the people.

It is absolutely necessary to expose the truth about the crimes of the US-Duterte regime and its armed minions by all means of information. At the same time, the broad masses of the people are calling on the NPA to intensify their tactical offensives, broadcast their fighting victories, and demonstrate that the regime and its armed minions cannot go on committing their grave crimes with impunity. The NPA enjoys the support of the people and the people expect more brilliant victories than ever in the people’s war for national liberation and democracy