Friedrich Engels- The Principles of Communism

FRIEDRICH ENGELS: THE PRINCIPLES OF COMMUNISM

October-November 1847.

Selected Works, Volume One, p. 81-97, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1969. Web Source: Marx2Mao.

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Question 1 :  What is Communism? 

Communism is the doctrine of the conditions of the liberation of the proletariat.

Question 2 :  What is the proletariat? 

The proletariat is that class in society which draws its means of livelihood wholly and solely from the sale of its labour and not from the profit from any kind of capital;[2] whose weal and woe, whose life and death, whose whole existence depends on the demand for labour, hence, on the alternations of good times and bad in business, on the vagaries of unbridled competition. The proletariat, or class of proletarians, is, in a word, the working class of the nineteenth century.

Nikos Mottas- Venezuela and the Opportunist Theory of “21st Century Socialism”

Venezuela and the Opportunist Theory of “21st Century Socialism”.

By Nikos Mottas.

Translated version of an article published on atexnos.gr.

Rapid developments have taken place in Venezuela during the last months. From last December's electoral victory of the right-reactionary opposition until the recent assassination of a retired Army General, we have seen a series of events which lead to the destabilization of Nicolas Maduro government. Eighteen years since the rise of Hugo Chavez in power, in 1998, the “Bolivarian Revolution” trembles dangerously, while the conservative opposition is on the counter-attack and a number of external agents (US government, OAS etc.) are variously trying to intervene in the country's internal affairs.

The crisis in Venezuela has two sides: On the one hand, the government and its people are facing a multidimensional attack from imperialist centers which aim in exacerbating the situation to such extend so that a possible (external) military intervention would be justified. The attack on Venezuela must be examined as part of the broader framework of inter-imperialist, inter-bourgeoisie contradictions and antagonisms which- fostered by the US policy- are taking place in Latin America. That comes out also as a result of the developments in Brazil (the 7^th largest economy worldwide) where the inter-bourgeoisie confrontation and the scandal-mongering political orgy led to the expulsion of President Roussef.

V.I.Lenin: "A United States of Europe, under capitalism, is either impossible or reactionary"

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin- On the Slogan for a United States of Europe.

Sotsial-Demokrat No. 44, August 23, 1915. Published according to the text in Sotsial-Demokrat. Source: Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, [197[4]], Moscow, Volume 21, pages 339-343.

In No. 40 of Sotsial-Demokrat we reported that a conference of our-Party’s groups abroad had decided to defer the question of the “United States of Europe” slogan pending a discussion, in the press, on the economic aspect of the matter.

At our conference the debate on this question assumed a purely political character. Perhaps this was partly caused by the Central Committee’s Manifesto having formulated this slogan as a forthright political one (“the immediatepolitical slogan...”, as it says there); not only did it advance the slogan of a republican United States of Europe, but expressly emphasised that this slogan is meaningless and false “without the revolutionary overthrow of the German, Austrian and Russian monarchies”.

Contemporary Problems of the Class Struggle and the Role of the Communist Party

Fundamental Principles of the 

Revolutionary Workers’ and Communist Movement.

By Dimitris Gontikas* / Source: International Communist Review, Issue 3, 2014.

Every Communist Party which remains fixed on its mission and resolutely focussed on its central task to prepare and organise the working class and to guide its struggle for the fulfilment of its historic mission, is obliged to guide the working class on the basis of the fundamental principle of scientific socialism: “Without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement”.

It is obliged to unrelentingly and consistently defend this principled position from every form of undermining. It must defend this by struggling continuously for the continual correlation between theory and practice.

The history of the revolutionary and labour movements teaches us that neither willpower nor declarations are sufficient to safeguard and secure a revolutionary struggle-line and the existence of the party as a revolutionary vanguard.

There is a necessity not only for secure theoretical foundations but also for the continuous enrichment of theory through the study of the developments, with a heightened class criterion, the study of the strategy of the opponent, the generalization of experience, as well as the open ideological front against every revisionist attempt. Ideological struggle should reach the level of an open break with the current of revisionism and opportunism within its ranks.

Basic points of the Leninist criticism in relation to the "parliamentary road" to socialism

The theses of the KKE for the 10th annual conference "V.I.Lenin and the contemporary world" which was held on the 22nd of April 2016 in Leningrad (Source: inter.kke.gr).

• The entire history of the political labour movement from the 19th century until today has as its basic arena of controversy the path that should be taken in order to create a classless society.

• Two basic views emerged over time: the opportunist view about the possibility of reforming, "conquering" and utilizing the bourgeois state for socialism and the revolutionary view regarding the need to smash the bourgeois state. Lenin himself set the following demarcation line: "Only he is a Marxist who extends the recognition of the class struggle to the recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat."

Russian Communist Workers Party- "Mertens vs Martens" (On the role of the Workers Party of Belgium- PTB)

Ludo Martens (left) and Belgium's Workers
Party current leader Peter Martens.

Mertens vs Martens.

By the Analytical Group of the Ideological Commission of the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Workers Party (RKRP).

In recent years, Communists of various countries have been anxiously witnessing the developments within the Workers Party of Belgium (PTB). Our close attention and interest in this party were caused by PTB’s being was one of the parties that actively contributed to the revival of the revolutionary trend of the international Communist movement after the counterrevolutionary coups of 1988-1991 in the USSR and Eastern Europe, when many of the Communist parties of Western Europe ceased to exist or moved to openly reformist positions.

Under these conditions, when bourgeois propaganda was talking about the death of Communism, the Belgian Workers Party, led by its then leader Ludo Martens, an outstanding Marxist theoretician, publicist and revolutionary organizer, initiated the International Communist Seminar in Brussels. These seminars, held since 1992, played an important role in the consolidation of Communists of various countries, in the theoretical understanding of the causes of current events as well as in developing  the strategy and tactics of Communist activity based on Marxist-Leninist theory in the new environment.

V.I.Lenin- Socialism and Religion / The attitude of the Worker's Party to Religion

Socialism and Religion.

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.

Novaya Zhizn, No. 28, December 3, 1905.

Source: Marxists Internet Archives.

Present-day society is wholly based on the exploitation of the vast masses of the working class by a tiny minority of the population, the class of the landowners and that of the capitalists. It is a slave society, since the “free” workers, who all their life work for the capitalists, are “entitled” only to such means of subsistence as are essential for the maintenance of slaves who produce profit, for the safeguarding and perpetuation of capitalist slavery.

The economic oppression of the workers inevitably calls forth and engenders every kind of political oppression and social humiliation, the coarsening and darkening of the spiritual and moral life of the masses. The workers may secure a greater or lesser degree of political liberty to fight for their economic emancipation, but no amount of liberty will rid them of poverty, unemployment, and oppression until the power of capital is overthrown. Religion is one of the forms of spiritual oppression which everywhere weighs down heavily upon the masses of the people, over burdened by their perpetual work for others, by want and isolation. Impotence of the exploited classes in their struggle against the exploiters just as inevitably gives rise to the belief in a better life after death as impotence of the savage in his battle with nature gives rise to belief in gods, devils, miracles, and the like. Those who toil and live in want all their lives are taught by religion to be submissive and patient while here on earth, and to take comfort in the hope of a heavenly reward. But those who live by the labour of others are taught by religion to practise charity while on earth, thus offering them a very cheap way of justifying their entire existence as exploiters and selling them at a moderate price tickets to well-being in heaven. Religion is opium for the people. Religion is a sort of spiritual booze,   in which the slaves of capital drown their human image, their demand for a life more or less worthy of man.