Frederick Engels’ Speech at the Grave of Karl Marx

REMEMBERING KARL MARX

Highgate Cemetery, London. March 17, 1883

On the 14th of March, at a quarter to three in the afternoon, the greatest living thinker ceased to think. He had been left alone for scarcely two minutes, and when we came back we found him in his armchair, peacefully gone to sleep — but for ever.

An immeasurable loss has been sustained both by the militant proletariat of Europe and America, and by historical science, in the death of this man. The gap that has been left by the departure of this mighty spirit will soon enough make itself felt.

Just as Darwin discovered the law of development or organic nature, so Marx discovered the law of development of human history: the simple fact, hitherto concealed by an overgrowth of ideology, that mankind must first of all eat, drink, have shelter and clothing, before it can pursue politics, science, art, religion, etc.; that therefore the production of the immediate material means, and consequently the degree of economic development attained by a given people or during a given epoch, form the foundation upon which the state institutions, the legal conceptions, art, and even the ideas on religion, of the people concerned have been evolved, and in the light of which they must, therefore, be explained, instead of vice versa, as had hitherto been the case.

Karl Marx

REMEMBERING KARL MARX

Eleanor Marx

There is no time perhaps so little fitted for writing the biography of a great man as that immediately after his death, and the task is doubly difficult when it falls to one who knew and loved him. It is impossible for me to do more at present than give the briefest sketch of my father’s life. I shall confine myself to a simple statement of facts, and I shall not even attempt an exposition of his great theories and discoveries; theories that are the very foundation of Modern Socialism — discoveries that are revolutionising the whole science of Political Economy. I hope, however, to give in a future number of Progress an analysis of my father’s chief work — “Das Kapital,” and of the truths set forth in it.

Marx in this pandemic point

REMEMBERING KARL MARX

Farooque Chowdhury

Countercurrents | May 05, 2021

“And the first birthright of capital is equal exploitation of labor-power by all capitalists.” Marx thus describes a reality dominated by capital. Today, in this pandemic point, when death is sweeping away thousands of lives in countries, in India and Brazil, in cities, in New Delhi, Mumbai and Reo de Janeiro, when ordinary citizens are gasping for oxygen, when their relatives don’t know the way to find that oxygen, now pricier than diamond and gold, when cremation fires redden night sky of parts of cities, when crematoriums work round the clock, crematorium chimneys fall down out of heat from over-burning, when thousands of human souls with identity of laborers don’t know the way to survive, Karl Marx, born on May 5, 1818, demands a hearing of capital that constantly destroys all that humane on this planet, as the theoretician of proletarian revolution, scientific socialism and communism dissected capital to find out ways for survival of humanity from death clutches of capital.

SOCIALIST RHETORICAL AND DIALECTICAL COMMUNICATION: OVERCOMING BRAINWASHING, PROPAGANDA, ENTERTAINMENT

FIGHTING PROPAGANDA 

Bruce Lerro

PERSPECTIVES |  April 28, 2021

ORIENTATION

How effective is the socialist left at winning over people in public meetings who are not already socialists? I would think that being socialists would make the people practicing socialism very good at being social. How true is this? There are two purposes in this article. One is to identify the similarities and differences between six forms of information control. The second part is to assess how good leftists are in using the two forms of control called “rhetoric” and “dialectic” at making their points. My claim is that the socialist left knows or cares little for these argumentation forms. This is one of many reasons why it is difficult to persuade or convince the public to become socialists or support socialist programs. These attempts could be in public gatherings such as rallies, city council meetings or in the workplace.

Silicon Valley Algorithm Manipulation Is The Only Thing Keeping Mainstream Media Alive

MAINSTREAM MEDIA 

Caitlin Johnstone

The emergence of the internet was met with hope and enthusiasm by people who understood that the plutocrat-controlled mainstream media were manipulating public opinion to manufacture consent for the status quo. The democratization of information-sharing was going to give rise to a public consciousness that is emancipated from the domination of plutocratic narrative control, thereby opening up the possibility of revolutionary change to our society’s corrupt systems.

But it never happened. Internet use has become commonplace around the world and humanity is able to network and share information like never before, yet we remain firmly under the thumb of the same power structures we’ve been ruled by for generations, both politically and psychologically. Even the dominant media institutions are somehow still the same.

The Mass Media Will Never Regain The Public’s Trust

MAINSTREAM MEDIA 

Caitlin Johnstone

This year has marked the first time ever that trust in news media dropped below fifty percent in the United States, continuing a trend of decline that’s been ongoing for years.

Mass media punditry is divided on where to assign the blame for the plummet in public opinion of their work, with some blaming it on Russia and others blaming it on Donald Trump. Others, like a recent Forbes article titled “Restoring Public Trust In Technology And Media Is Infrastructure Investment” blame it on the internet. Still others, like a Washington Post article earlier this month titled “Bad news for journalists: The public doesn’t share our values” blame it on the people themselves.

The one thing they all seem to agree on is that it’s definitely not because the billionaire-controlled media are propaganda outlets which manipulate us constantly in conjunction with sociopathic government agencies to protect the oligarchic, imperialist status quo upon which the members of the billionaire class have built their respective kingdoms. It cannot possibly be because people sense that they are being lied to and are fed up with it.

Bezos’ Blog And NATO Lobby Continue To Stir Anti-Chinese Sentiment

EMPIRE’S CAMPAIGN AGAINST CHINA 

Moon of Alabama

The neo-conservative editors of Bezos’ blog want another investigation into the origin of the Covid-19 pandemic:

THE PANDEMIC is a global health calamity, with 3.1 million people dead in little more than a year. Yet almost nothing is known about how it began, and the first attempt to discover the origins went nowhere.

The last statement is a lie. The WHO report of its investigation into the pandemic outbreak was published in early April. While it has not come to a definite conclusion it has ranked the possible origins of the pandemic.

It sees it as highly likely that the virus developed naturally and was adopted by animal hosts before it infected humans and further optimized itself. There is historical evidence that this happened when other coronaviruses changed their hosts became endemic in humans. Other theories, that the virus was developed in and/or escaped from a laboratory, are inconsistent with the structure and functionality of the virus and therefore highly unlikely. The still open question is which animal hosts might have been involved in the evolution of the virus. Research into that will continue.

On the Origins of Great Wealth

POLITICAL ECONOMY OF INEQUALITY 

Gary Olson

Virtually everything was created at public expense and then gobbled up by enterprising opportunists like Gates.

F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in one of his short stories, “The very rich are very different than you and me”. Ernest Hemingway has a character in one his reply by saying “Yes, they have more money.” A more concise retort might be that the secret behind every great fortune is a great theft, to paraphrase Honore de Balzac.

There are 657 billionaires in the United States, whose combined wealth grew by more than $1.7 trillion in the year of the pandemic. Further, we know that the one-tenth of the 1% own more than than the bottom 90%. Where does this wealth originate?

Dario Azzellini (Ed.)

NEW BOOK 

More than a labor dispute!

Workers worldwide against authoritarianism, fascism and dictatorship
A publication by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation

248 pages | 2021 | EUR 16.80
ISBN 978-3-96488-081-9

Short text:  Encouragement in the face of global disorder: Examples from numerous countries on different continents show the central role of the organized working population in the struggle against authoritarianism, fascism and dictatorship.

An English-language edition will be published in May 2021 with the title If Not Us, Who?

The New Oil Rush: Nations scramble for minerals critical to clean energy

POLITICS OF CLEAN ENERGY 

Down To Earth | April 22, 2021

Petro to Electro: A new transition that will change the world, has begun

The geopolitics of the world will shift from oil producing countries to the rare earth and other critical mineral producing countries in the coming years
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