May Day— Need for wider unity of workers

Bharat Dogra

Countercurrents | May 01, 2022

This year May Day is being observed at a time of increasing need for wider unity by workers in the wake of adverse government policies leading to increasing burden of unemployment and inflation at the same time. Policies relating to demonetization, poorly conceived tax reform in the form of GST, privatization, excessively stringent and poorly planned lock-downs have led to massive job losses and reduced income across vast areas of economic activity, while policies which favor big business interests contribute at least partly to rise of price of several essential commodities.

At a time of adverse external factor including the Ukraine war policy distortions have made the situation for workers much more difficult than would have been the case of more protective policies had been followed. Workers employed in smaller units of unorganized sector and women workers have faced excessive burden and loss from   policy distortions. Hence the need for increasing unity of workers in increasingly felt.

Dispossessed: Origins of the Working Class

Deprived of land and common rights, the English poor were forced into wage-labor

CAPITAL VERSUS COMMONS, 4

Ian Angus

Climate and Capitalism | December 12, 2021

Articles in this series:

1. Commons and classes before capitalism
2. ‘Systematic theft of communal property’
3. Against Enclosure: The Commonwealth Men
4. Dispossessed: Origins of the Working Class

Who built the seven gates of Thebes?
The books are filled with names of kings.
Was it the kings who hauled the craggy blocks of stone?
—Bertolt Brecht, “A Worker Reads History”

Much academic debate about the origin of capitalism has actually been about the origin of capitalists. Were they originally aristocrats, or gentry, or merchants, or successful farmers? Far less attention has been paid to Brecht’s penetrating question: who did the actual work?

The answer is simple and of world-historic importance. Capitalism depends on the availability of large numbers of non-capitalists, people who are, as Marx said, “free in the double sense.” Free to work for others because they are not legally tied to a landlord or master, and free to starve if they don’t sell their labor-power, because they own no land or other means of production. “The possessor of labor-power, instead of being able to sell commodities in which his labor has been objectified … [is] compelled to offer for sale as a commodity that very labor-power which exists only in his living body.”^[1]

104 Years Ago: The October Revolution in Pictures

IN PICTURES: The Bolsheviks seized the Winter Palace 104 years ago in 1917, paving the way for the establishment of the world’s first socialist state. This piece was published by the teleSUR on November 06, 2017.

A BRILLIANT MARXIST THEORIST AND POLITICIAN, BOLSHEVIK LEADER VLADIMIR LENIN GALVANIZED SUPPORT AMONG WORKERS AND PEASANTS.PHOTO:WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

Under the revolutionary leadership of Vladimir Lenin, the Petrograd Soviet, the Bolshevik Red Guards and masses of workers occupied and seized government buildings on Nov. 7, 1917, decisively taking the Winter Palace and toppling the Provisional Government.

Although the February Revolution had ousted the hated Tsarist monarchy, the Provisional Government that took over was incapable of meeting the needs of the people for “Peace, Bread and Land,” leading Lenin to argue for its ouster as well.

The armed, but nearly bloodless insurrection, paved the way for the establishment of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the world’s first socialist state.

Immediately after taking power, the new revolutionary government held elections for a constituent assembly and began the process of nationalizing private property and industry to build socialism in what had only months before been a semi-feudal society.

THE PETROGRAD SOVIET AND BOLSHEVIK RED GUARDS, BACKED BY WORKERS, STORMED THE WINTER PALACE, TAKING IT WITHOUT MUCH DIFFICULTY. PHOTO:WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

THE WINTER PALACE WAS TAKEN WITH LITTLE VIOLENCE. PHOTO:WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

BOLSHEVIK WOMEN’S BATTALION STANDS GUARD AFTER THE WINTER PALACE WAS SEIZED. PHOTO:WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

FACED WITH IMPENDING DEFEAT, THE LAST GUARDS OF THE WINTER PALACE UNDER THE PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT STAND WATCH. PHOTO:WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

WORKERS GATHERING OUTSIDE THE WINTER PALACE. PHOTO:WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

A BOLSHEVIK RED GUARD UNIT IN 1917. PHOTO:WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

SOURCE: https://www.telesurtv.net/english/multimedia/100-Years-Ago-The-October-Revolution-in-Pictures-20171030-0022.html

[THIS ARTICLE IS POSTED HERE FOR NON-PROFIT, NON-COMMERCIAL, EDUCATIONAL PURPOSE]

Capitalist globalization, Eurocentrism and immigration, proletarianization of the world and pseudo “postmodernism” – Part I

Said Bouamama

Translated by K. Philippe Gendrault

The murder of George Floyd by US police detonated worldwide protests against racism and other accumulated grievances. In the capitalist metropolis, however, especially the US, the movement continues to lack a coherent programmatic vision and leadership. The BLM protests show, once again, that spontaneism, besides opening the door to co-optation by cynical players like the Democrat party,  can never defeat an entrenched global system, like US imperialism. 

First iteration  3 January 2020  

The year 2019 was marked by popular movements unprecedented for decades in many countries around the world. From Algeria to Sudan via Lebanon, France or Haiti, these movements brought millions of demonstrators into action. This same year, coups d’état and reactionary offensives multiplied, as well as the attempts at instrumentalizing and diverting these great popular movements. The chronological perception of these struggles disseminated by the media prevents us from taking stock of the common issues represented by these mobilizations. Likewise, the pervasiveness of a Euro-centric reading framework masks the beginning of a new historical period of the world imperialist system and the resumption of popular initiatives that accompany it. How can we understand this new cycle of struggle? Can we link these movements to a common material foundation? Are these disconnected from the dominant ideological discourses? Etc.

Lenin on Class Tasks of Proletariat

LENIN 151

POLITSTURM 

The 150th Anniversary of the Paris Commune

PARIS COMMUNE

POLISTRUM | March 18, 2021

Even though the Commune lasted only 72 days, falling in an unequal struggle against the French counter-revolution, supported by the German war machine, it left an indelible mark in the history of the liberation struggle of the working class in France and the world.

The Commune provided the most important lesson and historical experience, proving that “the working class cannot simply seize a ready-made state machine and put it to work for its own ends,” as Marx noted in “The Civil War in France”. The proletariat must completely destroy it by creating a principally new state, a state of dictatorship of the people, of the working masses, which is true democracy, devoid of the exploitation of man by man.

Paris Commune 150: the economics

PARIS COMMUNE

Michael Roberts Blog | March 18, 2021

Today is the 150^th anniversary of the beginning of the Paris Commune.  The Commune (Council) was formed as result of what should be considered the first uprising and revolution led by the working class in history.  This new class was the product of the industrial revolution in the capitalist mode of production that Marx and Engels first spoke of most prominently in the Manifesto of the Communist Party published in March 1848.

Before the Paris Commune, revolutions in Europe and North America had been to overthrow feudal monarchs and eventually put the capitalist class into political power.  While socialism as an idea and objective was already gaining credence among the radical intelligentsia, it was Marx and Engels who first identified the agency of revolutionary change for socialism as the working class, namely those who owned no means of production but their own labour power.

The Paris Commune of 1871, banks and debt

PARIS COMMUNE 

Éric Toussaint

CADTM (Committee for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debt) | March 18, 2021

On the occasion of the 150^th anniversary of the extraordinary experience of the Paris Commune, it is fundamental to draw a number of lessons from it. The measures a government takes regarding its Central Bank, the debts of working class people, public debt and private banks are decisive. If a popular government does not implement radical financial measures, it will be responsible for ending in failure, with possibly tragic consequences for the population. The Commune, an extraordinary and dramatic experiment, exemplifies this, and must thus be analyzed from this point of view.

The role of debt in the emergence of the Paris Commune⁽¹⁾

It was the desire of the reactionary government to pay off its debt to Prussia and continue to repay existing public debts that precipitated the Commune experiment. Let us recall that it was Louis Bonaparte (Napoleon III) who declared war on Prussia in July 1870 and that that military venture soon ended in a total fiasco.⁽²⁾ The Prussian Army beat the French Army in early September 1870, and imprisoned Napoleon III in Sedan, triggering the fall of the Second Empire followed by the proclamation of the Republic.⁽³⁾ The payment of 5 billion francs was the condition laid down by Bismarck for signing the peace treaty and withdrawing the forces of occupation.

Guangzhou 1927: The Paris Commune of the East

HISTORY OF PEOPLE’S STRUGGLE 

Tings Chak

Peoples Dispatch | March 18, 2021

(Article originally commissioned and published by The Funambulist 34 (Mar-Apr 2021))

It was in the Russian autumn of 1920 when Qu Qiubai first heard L’Internationale – the socialist anthem born of the Paris Commune of 1871. Eugène Pottier, author of the song’s lyrics, was a Communard and elected member of the workers’ state that lasted 72 days in the French capital. Though written nearly half a century earlier, that song had been adopted only recently as the anthem of the Bolshevik Party. Until today, this song is one of the most translated and sung anthems of the oppressed around the world. Qu was attending the third anniversary celebration of the October Revolution, having traveled through Harbin – China’s northernmost provincial capital – to reach Russia. Fluent in French and Russian, he was sent to be a correspondent in Moscow for the Beijing Morning News (晨报), covering the early years of the Bolshevik Revolution.

‘May First’ as Reason

A Frontier Editorial

Frontier Weekly | Vol. 48, No. 43, May 1 – 7, 2016

 

Facts on May Day are widely known: suppression of justified demands, struggles and sacrifices. A few more facts are startling : the world proletariat has made strides and clinched victories in the world stage for a number of times in a number of areas despite setbacks in areas and at times, the struggle goes on despite onslaught by capitals, and the world capital has failed to cover its misdeeds, and continues to muzzle down the world proletariat.