Socialist Quotes for Sunday Reflection pt 68

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"In truth, cultural deregulation is an aspect of the market-expanding ambitions of those who favour economic deregulation. Won’t our economy be more vibrant if talented women commit to careers rather than families? Achieving that end requires deconstructing sex roles, family norms, and maternal impulses. And that work has been undertaken on behalf of freedom. After all, a woman can still decide to be a stay-at-home mam. What about those commerce-impeding blue laws? Again, freedom must win! Casting them off is the obvious course. Nobody will be forced to shop on Sundays. Liberal principles are honoured!

The liberal end game is easy to formulate. Ideally, we would reach a state of affairs where people would feel no loyalty to non-economic goods such as family, community, or nation. This would free them for the liberal dream of complete autonomy (the final end of cultural deregulation). It would also make them more available as mobile, productive workers and eager consumers unhindered by disciplines or compunctions that have no utility value, thus fulfilling the liberal dream of non-coercive market coordination of all aspects of life (the final end of economic deregulation)."

- R.R. Reno

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UK claims to be a Democracy but yet we still have old systems such as this.

House Of Lords must go. It does NOT serve the people. The lords are unaccountable, lets make them accountable.

Dismantle the common-wealth and let the nations be truly free. Give full independence to all of our Territories and support them till they can become more self-sufficient.

- Chris James Boardman, Socialist Motherland Party (SMPBI) Youth

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Sayed Abdel Malik al Houthi to the House of Saud:

"When the sea is with you, and the air is with you, and land is with you, and petroleum is with you, and money is with you, and mercenaries are with you, and America, Israel, Britain, France and the coalition of the Arabs are with you, and you aren't victorious, then rest assured with absolute certainty that God is NOT with you."

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"These are the times that try men's souls.  The Summer Soldier, and the sunshine patriot, will, in this crisis shrink from the service of their country.

But, they that stand it now deserves the love and thanks of men and women.  Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered.  But, the harder the conflict:  The more glorious the triumph. Heaven knows how to put a put a proper price upon it's goods. It would be strange indeed, if so celestial an article as freedom should not be highly rated.

I fear not.  I see no cause of fear:  In the end we will be the victors.  For, though the flame of liberty may sometimes cease to shine;  it's ember will never expire."

- Thomas Paine

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In the savage fight which imperialism and social-imperialism, world capitalism and reaction are waging against the revolution, socialism and the peoples, they have the support of the modern revisionists of all trends. These renegades and traitors assist imperialism in the implementation of its global strategy by undermining from within, splitting and sabotaging the efforts of t he proletariat and the struggle of the peoples to get rid of social and national bondage. Modern revisionists have taken upon themselves to denigrate and distort Marxism-Leninism, to confuse people's minds and to alienate them from the revolution- struggle, to assist capital, to preserve and perpetuate its system of oppression and exploitation.

Enver HOXHA
(Imperialism and the Revolution)

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Capitalism, in theory, idealizes the laissez faire: a dynamic where everything is private, everyone is competing, there is no state, and there are no barriers to entry.

As some private players begin to monopolize over the market, they will charge exorbitant prices and will be undercut by new competitors backed by the speculation of private banks and investors

In open-market economies, boom and bust cycles represent the closing and opening of markets through loss leader strategies and ponzi or pyramid schemes that eventually achieve economies of scale and set the monopoly price only to be subverted by the very speculation that fuelled them.

The result is: waste, poor capital reallocation, stagflation (whereby speculation limits the growth of individual firms), and a growing debt bubble. And the reason for this is because usurious banks can: increase their debt slaves, increase interest rates, increase their influence over the monetary base, expand their control over the monetary supply, and devalue the currency (thereby increasing the burden of the debtor).

– M. P., Secretary, Canadian Union
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“Capitalism grew so rich precisely by exploiting the average American, leaving them in a state that Marx would have called ‘immiseration’ — being paid just enough to subsist, and having all the cream of your labour, which is to say, your energy, creativity, ideas, passion, or just plain hard work, skimmed off the top. You can think of ‘immiseration’ as something like ‘being offered the lowest price possible for your labour, and having no choice but to take it — while also having to pay the highest price possible for the very things you create.’ What a beautiful trap — if you’re a capitalist, that is. But what if you’re not?”

“So capitalism is not a magic formula for riches. It is for capitalists, sure — but the dirty secret which American economists and thinkers never discuss is that most Americans aren’t capitalists, and they never will be, and hence, it doesn’t just not benefit them — it has hurt them badly over the last few decades. And that is because it has left Americans in the pincers’ grip of immiseration — they are charged exorbitant, absurd prices by the very capitalists who barely pay them enough to subsist on any more, and who never raise their wages a dime.”

“In Europe, though, the story was very, very different. Socialism, not capitalism, organized the provision of the essentials of life — and both paid people fairly and protected them carefully, in the very jobs of providing things like healthcare, education, finance, retirement, media, transport, and childcare to one another. The result is that people grew richer over time. Their incomes grew into accumulated savings, and their net worth rose. They began to live with a genuine feeling of safety and security and happiness. Europeans were liberated — not immiserated.”

- Umair Haque

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The Royal Prerogative

by Warwick Alderman

We have had radical Socialist governments, beginning in 1945.  The reason that they have never abolished the monarchy, is that all our Prime Ministers recognise that THEY ARE MORE POWERFUL with the monarchy extant, than without it.

Because they rule under the:  "Royal Prerogative," which gives them a lot more power than if our head of state was an elected President.  They can go to war without even consulting the House Of Commons, if they want to!

The fact that such a negative and anachronistic institution as the monarchy exists in Britain, in 2019, is defacto proof of my argument on The Royal Prerogative.


Dear Comrades,

The Queen committed treason by signing the Maastricht Treaty, which surrendered large amounts of our national sovereignty to the EU:

The Queen's constitutional role, in practice has long been to obey Westminster politicians, and, both to do, and sign whatever they want her to.

She is scared - and, probably rightly - that, if she ever seriously disobeys the will of the Commons, that, 'our' MP's, will use the ultimate sanction against her, and move to abolish the monarchy, and create the second British Republic:

As a lifelong Republican, I look forward to the day:  But, I must point out that:  THE QUEEN IS CURRENTLY OUR HEAD OF STATE, and that she has both stern duties and obligations in that role.  Duties she willingly assumed in her Coronation Oath.

She was used by the Quisling, and Traitor John Major, and badly advised by her assistants to sign The Maastricht Treaty:  But, she should also have known, and:  MUST HAVE KNOWN that to sign this treaty was completely at odds to, and opposed to her duties and responsibilities as our head of state.

Moral strength by a head of state can be crucial in democratic politics, at times of great trauma:

History shows the heroic stand of the Austrian President against the Nazis before the Anschluß;  and also the resistance of the German head of state, President Hindenburg, against Adolf Hitler, despite being very old.

These two men took their role as state head very seriously indeed, and, so should our Queen, while she remains head of state.

I say to the Queen, that, no matter what happens about Brexit, or how it develops, she must make amends for her personal weakness, in the early 1990's,  NOW, by unilaterally renouncing this treaty, the Maastricht Treaty;  and the Lisbon Treaty also.

This will bring her actions into line with her Coronation Oath, and they will be congruent with her duties.

Socialist Quotes for Sunday Reflection pt 67

With the shift towards the tertiary economy (services, cultural goods), culture is less and less a specific sphere exempted from the market, but its central component. What this short circuit between market and culture entails is the waning of the old modernist avant-garde logic of provocation, of shocking the establishment. Today, more and more, the cultural-economic apparatus itself, in order to reproduce itself in competitive market conditions, has not only to tolerate but directly to provoke stronger and stronger shocking effects and products… Here again, as in the domain of sexuality, perversion is no longer subversive: such shocking excesses are part of the system itself, the system feeds on them in order to reproduce itself. Perhaps this is one possible definition of postmodern as opposed to modernist art: in postmodernism, the transgressive excess loses its shock value and is fully integrated into the established artistic market.

- Slavoj Žižek

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Great Soviet Encyclopedia concerning the family:

As a result of socialist transformations, family relations are freed from the social forces of the old society, including proprietary law, the influence of the church, and class, estate, and national prejudices. All forms of discrimination against women are eliminated. At the same time, there is a systematic expansion in the network of social institutions designed to aid the family in childrearing and in managing the household. The rising prosperity and cultural level of the population lead to the formation of the socialist family.

Marxism-Leninism refutes the bourgeois and anarchist assertions that the socialization of the means of production in socialist and communist society is necessarily accompanied by the “socialization” of women and children and the destruction of the family. In reality, the communist ideal of relations between the sexes is “civil marriage with love”

- V. I. Lenin, Soch., 5th ed., vol. 49, p. 56

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This ideology, like a cuckoo, has filled a void that once nested class struggle and scientific socialism. Unfortunately, its academic endorsement has created similar issues for our movement as did the previous state sanctioning of Trotskyism or the ‘New Left’, with whom it shares many similarities. However, unlike its predecessors it need not pay even lip service to the class struggle. It has nevertheless imbued a new generation of university-going ‘radicals’ with a faux progressive ideology quite alien to, and extremely chauvinistic towards, the lower strata of the workers.

And thus, the grandiloquent self-professed intellectuals, who find themselves in ever smaller lefty circles, are greeted with open arms by the trots, revisionists and ‘left’ social democrats who no longer have the taste for class struggle. After all, what better distraction and division for proletarians could the bourgeoisie find for them than an ideology with all the aesthetic of revolutionary politics, but little to no class content, and which is often downright hostile to the proletariat in rhetoric?

- CPGB-ML Red Youth

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The entity of family represents a divine tradition, but the enemies of humanity, i.e. the international and Zionist capitalists’ movement, have decided to destroy the institution of family throughout the world. Therefore, efforts should be made for protecting and strengthening the pillars of family entity in the society.

- Imam Sayyed Ali Khamenei , Feb 26, 2019

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If you are a Socialist it means you are by default a Patriot. You may not love your current government, you may not love the media contained within your country. But without question, as evident by your desire for the Socialist mode of production, you know you would benefit greatly should your fellow countrymen benefit.

You understand the nature of cooperation and collective prosperity. You understand how history is a continuum of causation reflected on the previous moment to produce the next moment. You understand that humanity deserves better than it is treating itself now, and on that pretext you love your country and the people in it. Even if you don't directly realise it. Conservatives don't own patriotism, they aren't even patriots. Don't let your opposition to the conservative identity deny you your right to openly love humanity despite the villainy they are manipulated to perpetrate.

- Meagan Pickard

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Stand United for Brexit - Support the CPBML initiative.

The Communist Party of Britain Marxist-Leninist is organising a national conference on British independence for Saturday 29 June, in central London, to which SMPBI members and supporters are warmly invited (as are all people who are fighting to ensure Brexit happens). Anyone wishing to take part should get in touch at info@cpbml.org.uk.

They are also now organising informal meetings all round the country for people who want to take the discussion further. Again, email info@cpbml.org.uk. for more information.

The SMPBI welcomes this initiative, which is a positive step for all patriotic socialists/communists.  We encourage everyone who is able to do so, to attend the meeting on the 29th (next Saturday).  If you are not able to attend, then please do email the CPBML to discuss how to fight the Brexit-saboteurs in our own locations.


From the CPBML site:

Now finish the job

18 JUNE 2019

Photo Chris Dorney/shutterstock.com

The latest attempt by would-be Brexit wreckers was defeated in Parliament last week. But the job is not yet done. They will try again. We have to keep the pressure on untrustworthy Westminster politicians of whatever party.

On 12 June the Labour Party led an attempt to tie the next prime minister’s hands by ruling out no deal on leaving the EU. It was defeated by 11 votes, 309 to 298, after eight Labour MPs voted with the government and 13 abstained, cancelling out 10 Conservative rebels who voted with Labour.

They won’t rest

The pro-EU conservative MP Oliver Letwin told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that he thought the latest defeat meant Parliament had exhausted the options for preventing a no-deal exit. Perhaps. But the only certainty is that the ruling class and pro-EU forces inside and outside Parliament will not rest. They will do whatever they can to reverse the historic Leave decision.

Listen to Keir Starmer, the Labour shadow for Exiting the EU: “…this House will take every step necessary to prevent a no deal.” Or Philip Hammond, currently Chancellor of the Exchequer: “Parliament will not allow a no-deal exit from the EU.” Both speak for MPs, but not for the British people.

We’ve seen lies and delay – many times. We’ve been told that Parliament is sovereign over the people, like the kings of old who declared their divine right to rule. We’ve seen the government’s negotiating position undermined by MPs openly promoting a second vote or even revoking Article 50, and by Corbyn and others trotting off to cosy up to EU leaders.

Shameful

Nearly all Labour’s MPs have played a shameful role in this saga. Elected on a manifesto that promised to honour the referendum vote and act in the national interest, they have done neither.

The eight Labour MPs who voted to support the government and defeat the wreckers on 12 June should be saluted. What are the others playing at by putting the interests of the EU before those of their country?

On the positive side there has been a resolute response from British people. Whenever people have been given a chance to express their views it’s clear that parliamentary niceties cut no ice. We want out, and cleanly.

As a result of that clarity, the latest prime minister has handed in her resignation. May’s would-be successors seem for the most part to understand that willingness to face up to the EU is a prerequisite for the job.

The establishment fears that whoever wins the Conservative leadership will do what most of his party members and the country want – leave the EU. 

No doubt we’ll see further dirty tricks and attacks whoever becomes Prime Minster. And more of the vicious attacks on those in the labour movement who dare to speak out for Brexit and against the EU.

The pro-EU forces will not let this rest; nor should we. Finish the job and get on with working on a future for Britain, so far put to one side as we struggle to get what we voted for.

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Socialist Quotes for Sunday Reflection pt 66

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Remember that the enlightenment led directly to the imperialism we see now. They are rational and don't fight in the streets like we do, they don't burn flags, they aren't angry and emotional like we are. We're savages and t*rrorists. They are enlightened, logical, and above the feelings we have. They don't murder, they neutralize threats and when an 11 year old's mother is picking up his limbs after a bomb, that's just collateral damage. Plus if we are being honest, who's to say he wouldn't have grown up a t*rrorist himself?

When they kill us they've voted to do so. C*nts in suits have spent hours talking about it in the calmest manner and together decided to wipe out your family. Maybe they're even concerned about the human rights in your country, I mean imagine! It's really for the best that you get bombed.
Yes, we storm a palace after decades upon decades of their silent violence, of starving children while living in wealth and it's us that are the violent beasts. For when they decided our children will grow up malnourished that wasn't personal and you'd be mad to see systematic poverty as them enacting violence on us.

But that's exactly what it is and this image of "well we're just running our country, why do these savages hate us enough to kill us in the streets" is so deliberate.

They've murdered more of us than they'll ever admit to, but when our day comes, we won't make excuses for the terror.

- Greta Szabó

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Democracy is nothing but the Tyranny of Majorities, the most abominable tyranny of all, for it is not based on the authority of a religion, not upon the nobility of a race, not on the merits of talents and of riches. It merely rests upon numbers and hides behind the name of the people.

- Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

Transgenderism doesn't exist: Mental Illness does

by Warwick Alderman

An extrapolation made by some Maoists is to support the LGBT fantasists, believing it to be in sympathy and spirit with his ideas.

But, it must remain their interpretation:  Not Mao's.  The false agenda of:  "Transgenderism," which divides the proletariat was not extant in his lifetime.  There is simply no way of stating what his view on such a modern plague would be.

This assumption is about as sensible as declaring what Marx's view of smartphones would be.
Racial oppression existed in Mao's lifetime:  And, I think that there is every justification for US Maoists seeking an alliance with black people:

But, Maoist support for LGBT is going too far.  One can question rigorously, the idea of this community being oppressed:   Is it not a fetish of white, middle class people:  I.e.  The bourgeoisie?
People who are genuinely oppressed, don't worry about their birth sex, or question it.  Such indulgent nonsense comes with wealth, prosperity, idleness and confusion.

Transgenderism is a mental disorder, that should be treated psychiatrically, with a psychopharmacological intervention that attacks it, and treats it as it does depression (Melancholia).
"Body Dysmorphia," should be filed alongside.  These are both modern plagues, to which there is no solution within the paradigm of the delusion:

For a Body Dysmorphic patient, no amount of plastic surgery will bring lasting happiness:  Merely temporary relief from self - hatred.  There is no cure to be gained by feeding and supporting the delusion.  Confusion arises from lack of faith and purpose.  To indulge mental delusions is not compassion.

Transgenderism is a delusion: 

God/nature allocates sex:  And he doesn't make mistakes.
The idea that one is inhabiting the wrong gender is psychosis:  Therapeutic intervention should work towards seeking acceptance of the Client's birth sex.

To use public funds, from our hard-pressed NHS to indulge this sickness to the point of surgical mutilation, is a social crime against all genuinely sick people in Britain.

The NHS cannot afford to treat invented diseases:  Real disease grows exponentially.  Type Two Diabetes, Morbid Obesity, Childhood Obesity, as well as many real conditions that require resources, such as:  Parkinson's Disease and Alzheimer's Disease.  Newer drugs are always being streamed:  But, there is a limit to what our NHS can afford.


The Cultural Revolution was genius:  Surely, it is one of the only episodes in world history wherein the established leader proved more radical than the bureaucracy that supported him, and radicalised the proletariat to affect change?

In Britain, Oliver Cromwell would have been capable of such a thing:  But, it is surely a rare phenomena?  He didn't side with his revolutionary army:  But, he was capable of it.

Hitler's revolution of 1944 was forced upon him by an assassination attempt, not his innate radicalism.  An act of revenge against the German bourgeoisie;  of completing a chapter according to his logic.  But, his actions towards the SA describe the limits of his creativity.  He didn't believe that a motivated, revolutionary army could compare to the professional one.  He must have had cause to regret.

My theoretical knowledge of Maoism is almost nonexistent.  This is heresy to an ideologue:  But, this position has enormous potential.  To know too much about a subject, is to kill it, creatively:
When you learn to play electric guitar:  You are at your most creative at the beginning.  As your theoretical knowledge increases, your command of scales etc, your playing becomes less creative and more formulaic.

Once you have become expert:  Your creativity is dead.

"In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's there are few."
- Shunryu Suzuki


It is my intention to save Socialism in Britain:  To rescue it from the degeneration of Trotskyism, of:  "Political Correctness," that it has been engulfed by since the early 1980's:  And to return it to the working class, in a form that they can both understand and support.

In order to achieve this:  We must attack everything that is not Socialism:  That means Identity politics and especially Transgenderism.  We must assault it, ideologically, on behalf of the masses:  The larger proletariat.  These unfortunate, depressed people are:  0.000 (something) of the population.  It is not reasonable to expect the larger community to suffer because of them:  In allocating nhs resources to treat a fictional condition.

We all have an instinct, about what real Socialism consists of:  It looks like the 1970's milieu.  It looks like the Britain before Thatcherism, when British Socialism was ascendant.  The voice of the proletariat was strong:   The unions were strong:  It worked:  Why else would Thatcher and Heseltine pledge it's destruction?

Feminism and anti - racism were not fetishised, according to the Trotskyist bent.  There was no war on Smoking, no social reconditioning, no abjuration to healthy eating or exercise.  Free speech was absolute:  We called it:  "Freedom." It was a healthier society:  And we must work towards it.  It is not just our past:  It must become our future.

Notes (with credit to The Red Cebuano):

[People often confuse] Third Worldism [with] Maoism.

1. It's theory does NOT deal mainly with third world countries nor does it claim that first world countries have no potential. Maoism is an international theory first synthesized by the Communist Party of Peru and Abimael Guzman and is being followed in many movements today, most especially in the Philippines, India, Canada, Bhutan and others. It does say that first world countries have lesser revolutionary potential, sure, but it does still have some.

Tactics will however be different. A united front will be built from the workers and the most oppressed classes. For example in the Philippines, you have the basic workers-peasant alliance which is allied with the petty and national bourgeois because those classes are also oppressed through imperialism. Other than this, there is also emphasis on youth, women, LGBT, indigenous people and fisherfolk which are also very oppressed. In the US, Maoist collectives are trying to unite the workers with the black, native and LGBT community which is a correct line since those communities are also pretty oppressed.

2. Maoism does not propose utopian socialism. Ie it does not say workers necessarily have to build their own services. I think this is sort of a misunderstanding of what "building a people's government through the people's war" is.

3. What Maoism is. There are 5 main tenets of Maoism:

• 1. The Law of Contradiction
• 2. The Mass Line
• 3. The People's War
• 4. The New Democratic Revolution
• 5. The Cultural Revolution

1. The Law of Contradiction says that the most important law of dialectics and its real main law is that contradictions are universal. The negation of the negation, quantity into quality, individual to universal, all those are just examples of the law of contradictions. From here, Mao developed the theory of the two worlds outlook - that people either think with the proletarian outlook or the bourgeois outlook. Proletarian ie serving the people, bourgeois ie serving themselves.

Mao also developed the theory of antagonistic and non-antagonistic contradictions which basically says that some contradictions don't have to be solved through tough antagonisms and that some can actually just be solved through other, peaceful means. You can read more about that in "On Contradiction" and "On the Correct Handling of Contradictions"

2. One of Mao's more famous contributions is the mass line which can be summed up in "learn from the masses, then teach them." The basic idea is that the masses always know what's wrong with society and that you have to integrate with them, understand their struggles and sentiments and apply Marxist-Leninist analysis into real life practice. Once you have this understanding, you synthesize it with a scientific approach through Marxism-Leninism and turn it into an actual political line. This political line will be rallied for by your legal front and will be implemented by your illegal front which will be explained in the next section.

3. The People's War is often mistakenly said to be "surround the cities from the countryside" which is wrong. If that were the case, it would just be called agrarian war. The people's war is an effective method of revolution which had closely brought socialism to Peru before the Shining Path's forces were defeated by the reactionary Peruvian army and to Nepal before Prachanda's revisionist line came to power, and it is currently being used to bring in socialism in the Philippines, India, Manipur, Bhutan, and elsewhere. The people's war is divided into three stages - strategic defense, where your forces are small while your enemies are large, strategic equilibrium, where your forces are big enough to take on your enemies, and the strategic offense where your people's army is basically already marching down the streets of victory. As you go through the stages, you build what are called "base areas." In the strategic defense, these are usually just small or big guerilla areas.

In the Philippines, for example, nearly all of Far South Mindanao Region is a base area of the New People's Army but you usually don't see in the streets or whatnot because they're constantly moving. The tactic is mainly guerilla warfare. In the strategic equilibrium, these base areas are more consolidated and less easily penetrated by the army. When the Shining Path was in its strategic equilibrium before, there were base areas where you could clearly see forces from the people's army and they launched larger attacks, even being able to take own a military base.

During the strategic offense, you basically just expand these bases into the final areas that haven't been taken yet and win the war. These bases are to be consolidated with a people's government. This government may be "moving" sort of. For example, in the Philippines, they have "people's courts" and guerilla hospitals which move around. They do have people's barrio committees already so that's already a sign that the movement is already heading forward.

With the people's war, there is what we call "Mao's Three Magic Weapons" ie the Party, the United Front and the Army. The Party does the leadership of the revolution, basically Leninist vanguardism. The United Front consists of the Legal parties and the illegal fronts. The party has to unite with other revolutionary and progressive forces in one way or another. For example, in the Philippines, the CPP has legal parties like youth organizations, women's rights organizations, trade unions, etc. and these are mainly left-wing nationalist, Maoist parties that follow the line of the CPP but the CPP can also stand with the Moro democratic nationalists because they also fall under the national question.

The legal fronts are used to gather more people, to implement the mass line and to rally the party's line. The illegal fronts, including the army, are used to implement the party's line. In the Philippines, again, the legal fronts stage protests and encourage people to support land reform, while the NPA already gets rid of landlords (sometimes the landlords can be talked into it but not often) and distributes the land to peasants already which give them popularity.

4. The New Democratic Revolution, this mainly revolves around semi-feudal countries. Semi-feudal countries can finish the bourgeois stage under proletarian leadership. The proletariat has to ally with revolutionary bourgeois classes and finish what needs to be done in the capitalist stage such as industrialization. Once this is done, the allied bourgeois classes slowly turn proletarian as they pass through the socialist stage, therefore removing the need for two revolutions.

5. The Cultural Revolution states that people with bourgeois mentality can get into the party and give out bourgeois laws and therefore a conscious struggle must be regularly launched to get rid of bourgeois mentality and bourgeois ideology.:

Socialist Quotes for Sunday Reflection pt 65

Download before youtube purges this info: https://y2mate.com/youtube/GXjpEZ8b75U

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“In Marx the ideas of development, of preparation, of the sufficiency of objective forces, are otherwise much clearer than those of his predecessors; but it was impossible for him to avoid the general influences that dominated the men of his time. Like them, Marx imagined that the world had set out to know finally the true nature of man, that it would no longer be determined by the laws which eschew its will, that reason would find its expression in a regenerated humanity. All this belongs to that part of Marxism that must be rejected, having been formed only from the remains of the old Utopianism”

 - Georges Sorel (Social Foundations of Contemporary Economics)

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The Class Struggle as a Nationalist Demand - Karl Otto Paetel

The class struggle is not an invention of the ‘Jew Marx.’60

It is a fact of daily life, reflecting the labor contract between employer and employee, as well as the functions of press, state, and cultural life.

It is a battle line established by those who are in possession of the economic means of power, imposed on those ‘below’, who respond with fury. It does not require a moral judgement but instead a stated decision on which side we want to fight.

The class struggle is not some artificial construct. As everywhere in the life of cells, new, young life replaces the old and feeble; so too in the body of the Volk [Volkskörper] is the old leadership class, after fulfilling its function for the community over a certain period, replaced by new forces – usually with violence.

Thus is the class struggle, irrespective of the fact that this process is playing itself out amongst all peoples, a course of events in the life of the Volk [Volkslebens], a process of reversal against the leadership forces within a folk-organism.61 [Volksorganismus]. 

Just as every previous revolution had its sociological bearer – the clearest example being the ‘bourgeois’ French Revolution – so too does the revolution in which we are situated. The working class, which is today pounding at the gates of German history, will have to battle out the class struggle with the current holders of the economic resources and instruments of power so that it can have both transferred into the workers’ hands at the moment of revolution, thus being ready to declare itself a nation and to replace the old leadership.62

60 Incidentally: The Jewish question cannot be resolved at all without being incorporated into the overall racial question – and not at all in a purely negative fashion. Marx’s analysis (“On The Jewish Question”) that the entrepreneurial, usurious, exploitative ‘Jewish spirit’ can be liquidated only at the moment when it is deprived of the basis of the capitalist order is correct. In socialist Germany the Jews will face the decision to emigrate or to productively integrate themselves as a ‘national minority’ into the process of national construction (settlers, artisans). In völkisch-cultural life, like all minorities, their influence will be weak, represented only be a few men who have demonstrated their pre-eminence; for example, Friedrich Gundolf’s work on Goethe, Gustav Landauer’s writing on Hölderlin, or Maximilian Harden’s Heads [“Köpfe”] have proven their authors possible exceptions. In the political arena, like all minorities, they will have the right to vote in and stand for elections to the legislative organs, but not the right to stand for the executive. Rather, they will only be delegable to council meetings in their own cultural representative bodies.   

61 Compare also August Winnig’s* “The Belief in the Proletariat” [“Der Glaube an das Proletariat”] and “Liberation” [“Befreiung”]. Winnig has in the meantime made it clear for everybody in his book From Proletariat to Workerdom[“Vom Proletariat zum Arbeitertum”] and with his essays in the Berliner Börsen-Zeitung that he has since moved into the camp of the propertied bourgeoisie.

62 Even Karl Marx in the “Communist Manifesto” states:

The class struggle is quite clearly grounded in nationalism, and – to make use of a word too often misused by charlatans – absolutely “organically”, as Ernst Krawehl†puts it 63: 

“The nation appears to us as a universal collection of divisions that are characterized through their discordant stratification (horizontal-vertical, religions, professions, ideologies, and so on). One of its most significant structural principles is that of horizontally tiered layers, whose higher points are distinguished by attributes not considered suited to the lowly (tax exemption for the clergy, university education for the bourgeoisie, privilege to political offices for the nobility, economic excess for the capitalists). Each of these national strata develops its own special societal customs and mores – yes, they even form their own separate realm of life (proletarians marry only proletarians, nobles only nobles).  

“But the entirety of these strata only latently belong to the nation. It is a historical law that, at any time, the nation is represented only by one specific group. Every action by this group, all of which serve only its own interests, are suddenly placed into a different light and maintain the most crucial significance for the entire nation.  

“The ratio of stratification, as it presents itself at any given point in time – today, for example – was always based originally on the value and power relationship underlying the stratification’s structure. The group that is in power once incarnated the essence of the nation; it earned its position. Through the biological process, however, the ruling stratum always loses its vitality and its authority to represent the nation more quickly than it does its privileges, while at the same time drawing up new strata from below, to fulfil by itself the destiny of the nation. The ruling stratum has to return to dormancy, it has to  become the wood and trunk of the nation, in other words, to go down in history while new cells are formed that assume the function of the life-giving rings. (This analogy seems a good one; it demonstrates that the formation of the wood is as essential as the steady growth of the bark; it also demonstrates the revolutionary act of infusion with fresh sap in spring, of bursting buds, followed by a period of peaceful growth). 

“The Communists have further been reproached with wanting to abolish fatherland, nationality. The workers have no fatherland. One cannot take from them what they do not have. Since the proletariat must first of all conquer political supremacy, elevate itself to a national class, must constitute itself as the nation, it is itself still national, though by no means in the bourgeois sense.”However, when one reads on... Marx writes that later the nation will nonetheless be overcome.  63Socialist Nation, II/10.

“The lower stratum should on principle demonstrate its strength by infusing itself alone – something which it is dependent on, in most instances. Its fight against the old stratum, which refuses to give up the armchairs of power, is class struggle in the true sense of the term. It embraces all areas of völkisch life: cultural and economic.64

“Our present ascendant class, in whose hands lies the destiny of the nation, not only has the ever-present obstacles to overcome (acquiring education, entry into ‘good society’) but is also hindered by a certain objective state of affairs imposed over its young life: capitalism. This sets against every best intention an insurmountable obstacle.  

“This class must therefore be given at least the ‘chance’ to prove itself, regardless of whether it proves useful or not; this should go unsaid. This can only be achieved through the elimination of capitalism. Only a new economic system can provide the guarantee for a völkisch life. That is to say that the struggle of the proletariat for those things that are all-encompassing – culture and economy – is in its modus a purely economic one. (Which is not to say that the prospective economy then from itself gives birth to a new culture; no, it only sets free the forces for its potential development.)  

“But since capitalism, against which the fight for the proletarian class is directed first and foremost, is superbly held by the sinking bourgeois class (and, conversely, holds fast to the bourgeois class in turn), so is every struggle against the bourgeoisie (against their morality, art, religion, ethics) a struggle against capitalism, and at the same time a struggle for the proletariat. (Which is again not to say that capitalism necessarily conditioned or created this morality, art, religion, or ethics.) 

“Through this version of the concept of class and class struggle it is not feasible to see any other outcome than that the proletariat, subsequent to its own time and economic system, is superseded by something new in the struggle. If it is possible to completely eliminate class divisions and bring about new strata which no longer have a class character, then it will be within these new social bodies that the class struggle continues, which is nothing but the 64

 To legitimize the worker’s claim to power merely as a “Gestalt”, consciously ignoring sociological origin, as Ernst Jünger undertook in his magnificent book The Worker (Hanseatische Verlaganstalt), is a visionary and not a political point of view. The ‘new relationship to the elemental’ which separates ‘the Typus’ from the bourgeois says too little about concrete historical tasks. Quite apart from the fact that, within the framework of the ‘planetary planning’ at the head of which the ‘Typus’ is placed, the nation immediately vanishes.  The Jüngerian portrayal, which is of the highest rank artistically and intellectually, is not a political but a psychological analysis, and therefore not capable of shaping history.

struggle of ascending and descending life – a cycle that will never stop, except when the world finally stops.”

The justification by which every semi-fascist rejects the class struggle is a simple conjuring trick: “The class struggle is the reality of capitalism, the Volksgemeinschaftthe reality of socialism.” To operate under this statement is nothing more than an intellectual dishonesty. For it is precisely because socialism is supposed to become a reality that the Volksgemeinschaft can only be preached as a goal, never as a sloganfor whitewashing the prevailing capitalist world as it exists today. To conclude: “We are socialists, hence against the class struggle,” is simply illogical, because one cannot abruptly assign a criterion of ‘tomorrow’ to ‘today’, cannot employ a goal to negate what is existent.

Even the opposing slogan of the 97% used by the ‘Tat-circle’ and the ‘Black Front’ is afiction‡. Even provided that Fried’s65 wealth and income statistics are correct, these 97% do not possess a shared consciousness§. The fight is led by those who want it. Of the statistically ‘disinherited’, as the politics of the day hourly prove, a large part of the 97% willingly defends the 3%. The slogan of the 97% is fantasy, the class struggle is fact.  There are also the comments made by the Archive for Politics and History 66 as early as March 1925:

“The fundamental reality of today’s European social order is that the rift, the polarization from which socialist doctrine emanates, no longer passes through the nation’s bourgeois society, but instead runs through world society, through the nations of Europe, indeed it splits the whole world down the middle.

“The proletarian primal experience of bondage and slavery is in today’s Germany the national social experience – or at least it should be.    

“Today there is no longer simply a politically free, economically and socially unfree, exploited proletarian class and alongside it an eternally oppositional class of exploitative, privileged property owners; or rather, this antinomy is relative to the world-historical polarization process of which we have been witnesses and victims, i.e. it has become secondary according to the ranked order of historical values. 

65 Ferdinand Fried, The End of Capitalism [“Das Ende des Kapitalismus”], Diedrichs, Jena. 
66 A. Salz: “Nationalism and Socialism in Contemporary Germany”. [“Nationalismus und Sozialismus im heutigen Deutschland.”] 

“Instead there are now proletarianized and non-proletarianized nations, and this in the midst of Europe, which in the course of its long history never before knew this kind of antagonism, and at any rate would not stand for it in the long run. 

“The momentous, world-historical document which has established or legalized this new status for Europe is the Versailles ‘Peace Treaty’. 

“It is therefore essential to finally raise this new condition into the clarity of consciousness, so it can be made the basis of experience which determines our whole outlook upon the world.

Socialist Quotes for Sunday Reflection pt 64

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“There is a tendency to explain the Juche idea by using complicated logic and difficult phrases on the grounds that theoretical depth must be provided, but theoretical depth does not necessarily require difficult language. The message of the leader’s ideas and theories is unfathomably profound, yet it is expressed in a language that everyone can understand. If his theories are explained in difficult language, such an explanation cannot be of any help to the study of the original works. We must strive to teach the Juche idea not only in depth but also in plain language.” 

- Kim Jong Il

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“No one any longer knows who will live in this steel-hard casing and whether entirely new prophets or a mighty rebirth of ancient ideas and ideals will stand at the end of this prodigious development. Or, however, if neither, whether a mechanized ossification, embellished with a sort of rigidly compelled sense of self-importance, will arise. Then, indeed, if ossification appears, the saying might be true for the ‘last humans’ in this long civilizational development: narrow specialists without mind, pleasure-seekers without heart; in its conceit, this nothingness imagines it has climbed to a level of humanity never before attained.” 

- Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

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