Housing, Democracy, Communism

State and Revolution, Part 4

                                                                                                                           

Housing, Democracy, Communism

This fourth chapter of Lenin’s “The State and Revolution” (linked below) presents a study circle with a problem. As short as it is, yet there is too much in this chapter to discuss in a 1½ hour session. 


So, one must remember that the Freirean requirement from any text is only that it provides a good occasion for dialogue. The dialogue is where the value lies, because it generates socialised learning. We are not trying to learn the text in its entirety, as individuals.

Therefore, since this chapter is a rehearsal, almost a catalogue, of critical contributions made by Frederick Engels, plus remarks of Lenin’s own, here are some of the many topics that could be taken in a dialogue, from it:

Housing Question

"How is the housing question to be settled then? In present-day society, it is settled just as any other social question: by the gradual economic levelling of demand and supply, a settlement which reproduces the question itself again and again and therefore is no settlement.” [Engels]

Authority

"Have these gentlemen ever seen a revolution? A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is an act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon, all of which are highly authoritarian means. And the victorious party must maintain its rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionaries.” [Engels]

Monopoly capitalism (remarks on the Erfurt Programme)

The "proximity" of such capitalism to socialism should serve genuine representatives of the proletariat as an argument proving the proximity, facility, feasibility, and urgency of the socialist revolution, and not at all as an argument for tolerating the repudiation of such a revolution and the efforts to make capitalism look more attractive, something which all reformists are trying to do.

…the democratic republic is the nearest approach to the dictatorship of the proletariat. [Lenin]

National Question

Engels, like Marx, never betrayed the slightest desire to brush aside the national question. [Lenin]

Religion

…the party struggle against the opium of religion which stupifies the people. [Lenin]

The State (in the Paris Commune)

"... in order not to lose again its only just-gained supremacy, this working class must, on the one hand, do away with all the old machinery of oppression previously used against it itself, and, on the other, safeguard itself against its own deputies and officials, by declaring them all, without exception, subject to recall at any time...."

“…in Germany particularly the superstitious belief in the state has passed from philosophy into the general consciousness of the bourgeoisie and even of many workers.” [Engels]

Communist and Social-Democrat

Engels wrote that in all his articles he used the word "Communist", and not "Social-Democrat". [Lenin]

Overcoming of democracy

…it is constantly forgotten that the abolition of the state means also the abolition of democracy; that the withering away of the state means the withering away of democracy.

At first sight this assertion seems exceedingly strange and incomprehensible; indeed, someone may even suspect us of expecting the advent of a system of society in which the principle of subordination of the minority to the majority will not be observed - for democracy means the recognition of this very principle.

No, democracy is not identical with the subordination of the minority to the majority. Democracy is a state which recognizes the subordination of the minority to the majority, i.e., an organization for the systematic use of force by one class against another, by one section of the population against another.

We set ourselves the ultimate aim of abolishing the state, i.e., all organized and systematic violence, all use of violence against people in general. We do not expect the advent of a system of society in which the principle of subordination of the minority to the majority will not be observed.

In striving for socialism, however, we are convinced that it will develop into communism and, therefore, that the need for violence against people in general, for the subordination of one man to another, and of one section of the population to another, will vanish altogether since people will become accustomed to observing the elementary conditions of social life without violence and without subordination. [Lenin]

This is a very full concretisation of the question of democracy and communism.

Image: Lenin in late 1917, probably only a few weeks after writing “The State and Revolution”. And yes, we do know that Trotsky can be seen lounging against the woodwork in the uncropped version of this photo; but this post is not about Trotsky.

Click here to download the text of State & Revolution, Chapter 4, Engels’ Supplementary Explanations, Lenin (9007 words, 12 pages)

  

Previous main Communist University posts:
Channel [members]	Course Archive	Weeks	Posted
SADTU Pol Ed [435]	Lenin’s The State & Revolution	3/6	18 June 2010
CU Africa [229]	Marx’s Capital, Volumes 1, 2 & 3	3/33	22 June 2010
CU [3146]	Philosophy and Religion	2/10	26 June 2010
Courses completed in 2010 to date:
SADTU Pol Ed	National Democratic Revolution	12	March - June
	Basics	10	January - March
SADTU Pol Schools	3-Day School	3 days	2-4 June
CU	No Woman, No Revolution	10	March - June
	Basics	10	January – March
Click here to visit Marxists Internet Archive

  

The Paris Commune, 1871

The Paris Commune, 1871

This is the third part of Lenin’s “Generic Course” on The State and Revolution. It is devoted to the Paris Commune [pictured in the photograph, above, and memorialised in Soviet artwork, below] and to the lessons that Karl Marx in particular drew from that experience.

Marx’s work “The Civil War in France” was written during, and immediately after, the events of early 1871 in Paris. Lenin’s summary of Marx, as usual, is brief. It misses very little and cannot easily be beaten, but Lenin’s summary itself has its highlights and these are what we will note here.

The first is where Lenin notes that Marx would have made a correction to the Communist Manifesto of 1848 on the basis of the experience of the Paris Commune. In 1871 Marx wrote: “…the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery and wield it for its own purposes” - by which he meant that proletariat had to "to smash the bureaucratic-military machine" and to replace it with a state that is "the proletariat organized as the ruling class" and as an "armed people" that had disbanded the bourgeoisie's "special bodies of armed men".

Lenin wrote: “Marx did not indulge in utopias; he expected the experience of the mass movement to provide the reply to the question as to the specific forms this organisation of the proletariat as the ruling class would assume and as to the exact manner in which this organisation would be combined with the most complete, most consistent ‘winning of the battle of democracy.’"

The Commune was “a practical step that was more important than hundreds of programmes and arguments.”

Lenin proceeds in the second and third sections of this chapter to relate how the practical steps were executed.

In the fourth part, Lenin addresses the question of centralism and clearly shows that centralism is not imposed but must be won politically, as a matter of free-willing action. All the time, Lenin is carrying on a secondary argument against the “opportunists” and the “anarchists, whom he says are “twin brothers.” Lenin writes:

“The anarchists dismissed the question of political forms altogether. The opportunists of present-day Social-Democracy accepted the bourgeois political forms of the parliamentary democratic state as the limit which should not be overstepped; they battered their foreheads praying before this 'model', and denounced as anarchism every desire to break these forms.”

“…now one has to engage in excavations, as it were, in order to bring undistorted Marxism to the knowledge of the mass of the people,” says Lenin.

As it was in 1917, so it remains in 2010. One has to engage in excavations.

Download:

Click here to download the text of State and Revolution, Chapter 3, The Paris Commune, Lenin (6609 words)

Previous main Communist University posts:
Channel [members]	Course Archive	Weeks	Posted
SADTU Pol Ed [430]	Lenin’s The State & Revolution	1/6	14 June 2010
CU Africa [227]	Marx’s Capital, Volumes 1, 2 & 3	1/33	15 June 2010
CU [3140]	Philosophy and Religion	0/10	18 June 2010
Courses completed in 2010 to date:
SADTU Pol Ed	National Democratic Revolution	12	March - June
	Basics	10	January - March
SADTU Pol Schools	3-Day School	3 days	2-4 June
CU	No Woman, No Revolution	10	March - June
	Basics	10	January – March
Click here to visit Marxists Internet Archive

Young revolutionaries to the front, Umsebenzi Online

Umsebenzi Online, Volume 9, No. 10, 17 June 2010

In this Issue:

• Young revolutionaries to the front, to galvanise our youth around our Five Priorities

Red Alert:

Young revolutionaries to the front, to galvanise our youth around our Five Priorities

Blade Nzimande, General Secretary

This month we celebrate the 34thanniversary of the 1976 student and youth uprisings in our country. As our May SACP Central Committee said, this period calls for true revolutionaries to come to the front, to deepen and consolidate the national democratic revolution. So is the SACP also calling upon all of South African youth - young women, young workers, students and our unemployed youth - to rededicate themselves to the struggle for the total elimination of all forms of racism, exploitation, gender oppression and all other forms of discrimination in South African society.

The SACP May Central Committee called for true revolutionaries to come to the front mainly because in so many ways our revolution is at a crossroads. Amongst other things the Political Report to the May Central Committee observed that:

"Our national democratic revolution has entered a critical phase in which the many advances made in the run up to, and especially since, the Polokwane conference (and indeed our own SACP 12th Congress) can either be deepened or face the danger of being seriously rolled back"

The Central Committee argued in this way principally because despite the many advances made there are serious threats to our revolution.

Some of the major advances upon which we need to consolidate our democracy are the lessons of the unity of all the components of our democratic movement - the workers, youth women, former MK soldiers, communists and civic formations; a unity that saw the reclaiming of the ANC in Polokwane by its constituent components.

The ANC's overwhelming electoral victory in 2009 re-affirmed the confidence of our people in the ANC-led alliance, and that electoral victory also marked a defeat of a right-wing ANC breakway faction - Cope - whose aim was to try and steal our movement for narrow and selfish interests to accumulate wealth. It is that electoral victory that has also laid the basis for the very deep crisis that threatens to tear this right wing breakaway apart. Our youth has a responsibility to build on the achievements of this electoral victory.

We are commemorating the 34thanniversary of the 1976 uprisings just over a year after the inauguration of the administration led by President Zuma. It is a government founded upon, and focused on, the realization of the five key priorities of our ANC-led Alliance election manifesto - decent work, education, health, fighting against crime and corruption, and rural development. In order to achieve the above, government has also committed itself to the development of a new growth path in our country.

Between the Polokwane conference and the 2009 elections the Alliance held two successful summits, building upon the unity of all progressive forces under the leadership of the ANC.

However since the 2009 elections, despite very significant government plans and programmes and a better functioning alliance, a number of threats have emerged that threaten to undermine the advances we have made. The Central Committee highlighted three of these threats. The first one is that of an emerging, albeit small, white right wing trend that attempts to use our constitution and the courts to try and roll back and frustrate some of our programmes. This include the challenging of affirmative action in courts, the legal banning of revolutionary songs as part of an attempt to wipe out the history of our struggle, and a one-sided fight against crime directed at white farmers, whilst being completely silent about the daily brutalities (including those) faced by many black farm workers and farm dwellers in the hands of some racist white farmers.

The second threat identified by the Central Committee is the intensified exploitation and fragmentation of the working class, through casualisation, outsourcing, 'regionalisation' (increasing employment of more vulnerable workers from the SADC region at the direct expense of South African workers), and labour brokerage. This threatens to undermine the unity of the working class as the main motive force of the national democratic revolution. This is part of the capitalist class strategy to further cheapen and sow divisions within the black working class.

Another threat was identified by the Political Report to the May 2010 Central Committee thus:

"The emergence of a small tendency, both inside and outside the ranks of our movement, that seems to be in such a hurry to get rich quick such that it is even prepared to sacrifice the unity of the ANC and our alliance, if such unity stands in the way of its greed. 'Tenderpreneurship' - the collusion between business elements in the private sector with those in the public sector to corruptly capture government tenders - is one such manifestation of this 'get rich quick' mentality. Whilst tenderpreneurship is not inherently counter-revolutionary, it is nevertheless the most susceptible to degenerating into counter-revolution through its temptation to turn South Africa into one big tender liable to be sold to, and bought by, the highest imperialist bidder"

It is the youth that is most affected by the intensified exploitation and marginalization of the working class, and is also a particular target of tenderpreneurs. It is for these reasons that the period calls for young and genuine revolutionaries to come to the front to defend our revolution against these threats.

The role of the Young Communist League of South Africa (YCL)

It is for the above reasons, amongst others, that the SACP has called upon our YCL to consciously strengthen itself and act as a glue that binds the Progressive Youth Alliance and the broader progressive youth movement behind the struggle to drive our five manifesto commitments. The SACP has committed itself to redouble its efforts to support the building of an even stronger YCL to attain these objectives, so that it gives leadership, direction and hope to our youth that still face many challenges today.

The SACP further calls upon the YCL not to be defocused by counter-revolutionary, populist demagoguery and tenderpreneurship diversions from its mission to mobilize our youth behind the key objectives of the national democratic revolution. Indeed our YCL is intensifying its efforts towards driving the key five priorities in our ANC-led election manifesto.

Last month, the YCL convened the first and historic summit of more than 80 youth organisations and youth NGOs, one of whose outcomes has been a resolution to launch the 'Jobs for Youth Coalition', and a Youth Charter, both to be launched this coming Saturday on 19 June 2010 in Sasolburg.

To this end the YCL is also commemorating this year's youth month under theme, 'Decent Jobs for Youth'. The focus is on education and skills development for youth, support for youth entrepeneurs and youth co-operatives, and campaigning for a new growth path that places at its centre youth development.

The SACP's call to the YCL during this 2010 Youth Month also include the following: 

1. To earnestly work for the deepening of unity with the ANC Youth League and the broader Progressive Youth Alliance, not around personalities, but on a principled programme of action that addresses the many challenges facing our youth today; especially to takei forward the five priorities in our Manifesto. The resolutions of the YCL-convened jobs summit are also just such a platform for principled, and revolutionary youth activism South Africa requires today
2. The YCL should continue with its objective of uniting youth formations and the youth in general behind genuine working class struggles, irrespective of race and gender;
3. The YCL should be at the centre of mobilising white working class youth, as well as youth from other minorities, as part of the broad forces for deepening our democracy. Of particular importance for our YCL is to build upon the spirit of national unity generated by the FIFA World Cup, beyond just being a 'feel good' and a temporary phenomenon but into a permanent force for unity of our youth moving forward
4. The YCL has a particular responsibility to organize young workers into its ranks, through a principled struggle against tenderpreneurship, casualisation, outsourcing and labour brokerage, and by pursuing the agenda for decent work for the youth.
5. The YCL must be in the forefront of organizing unemployed youth through concrete struggles to fight unemployment
6. The YCL must also expand its presence in institutions of higher education, and much more urgently in the Further Education and Training Colleges, as part of turning these latter institutions into major sites for skills development for our young people
7. The YCL must intensify its efforts to root out all counter-revolutionary tendencies amongst our youth, and also be able to distinguish between revolutionary sounding rhetoric and genuine revolutionary action to transform South Africa to be a better country for our youth
8. The YCL must also pay particular attention in building youth power in the countryside, as part of driving rural development for the benefit of rural youth in particular, and the rural population in general. This will require hard work in building YCL structures in the countryside, as part of implementing one of the SACP's major objective, that of building People's Land Committees (PLCs), both in the former Bantustans and the 'white' countryside.
9. Much more importantly, whilst the YCL focuses its energies into building and strengthening its own structures, it must ensure that it expands its influence beyond its own internal structures. It must take out its message to be taken to all the youth of our country, in a non-sectarian, but principled way to represent the aspirations of especially the overwhelming majority of working class and poor youth

The YCL, just like the SACP, must conduct itself not as the only formation of revolutionaries, but must instead seek to mobilize other revolutionaries outside its ranks who are also committed to transform the conditions of our youth in this country. This is the clarion call from the struggle and sacrifices of the youth of June 1976!

The task of the SACP, as it rebuilds its voting district based branches, is to ensure that we incorporate into this work dedicated support to build a stronger YCL and also to fully support its programmes.

Young revolutionaries to the front, to wage principled struggles to advance the objectives of changing the conditions of our youth!

Asikhulume!

Permanent Revolution

Permanent Revolution

Karl Marx’s March 1850 Address to the Central Committee of the Communist League begins by describing the working proletariat as the “only decisively revolutionary class”, and ends with a battle-cry for the workers: “The Permanent Revolution!”

In the Address, Marx is advocating all possible means of achieving revolutionary change which, if not theoretically reversible, would not in practice be reversed.

“The workers' party must go into battle with the maximum degree of organization, unity and independence, so that it is not exploited and taken in tow by the bourgeoisie,” said Marx, with the revolutionary events since 1848 in mind, when the bourgeois allies of the working class had treacherously sold the workers out as soon as they could secure favourable terms for themselves from the reactionary feudal powers.

Marx then very frankly reviews the competing self-interests of the contending classes and fractions of the bourgeoisie.

“There is no doubt that during the further course of the revolution in Germany, the petty-bourgeois democrats will for the moment acquire a predominant influence. The question is, therefore, what is to be the attitude of the proletariat, and in particular of the League towards them,” declared Marx.

“As in the past, so in the coming struggle also, the petty bourgeoisie, to a man, will hesitate as long as possible and remain fearful, irresolute and inactive; but when victory is certain it will claim it for itself and will call upon the workers to behave in an orderly fashion, to return to work and to prevent so-called excesses, and it will exclude the proletariat from the fruits of victory,” warned Marx.

The working class must “be independently organized and centralized in clubs,” and “it is the task of the genuinely revolutionary party… to carry through the strictest centralization,” wrote Marx Reading this section, it is clear that Marx was convinced that the building of the democratic republic and the building of the nation had to be one and the same set of actions.

The working-class tactics in alliance with the bourgeois democrats should be to “force the democrats to make inroads into as many areas of the existing social order as possible,” and constantly to “drive the proposals of the democrats to their logical extreme”.

The workers must always look ahead to the next act of the revolutionary drama. They will “contribute most to their final victory by informing themselves of their own class interests, by taking up their independent political position as soon as possible, and by not allowing themselves to be misled by the hypocritical phrases of the democratic petty bourgeoisie into doubting for one minute the necessity of an independently organized party of the proletariat.”

Download:

Address to the Central Committee of the Communist League, Karl Marx, 1850

Main text:

State and Revolution, Chapter 2, The Experience of 1848-1851, Lenin (4318 words, 6 Pages)

Last week’s main Communist University posts
Channel	Course Archive	Weeks	Date [post]
SADTU Pol Ed	Lenin’s The State & Revolution	1/6	8 June 2010
CU	Philosophy and Religion	0/10	10 June 2010
CU Africa	Marx’s Capital, Volumes 1, 2 & 3	1/33	8 June 2010
Courses completed in 2010 to date:
Channel	Course Archive	Weeks	Run
SADTU Pol Ed	National Democratic Revolution	12	March - June
	Basics	10	January - March
SADTU Pol Schools	3-Day School	3 days	2-4 June
CU	No Woman, No Revolution	10	March - June
	Basics	10	January - March