"Shower Under A Hail of Bullets For the People!" - Mike Martinez WWP Nat'l Conference 2010

Fred Goldstein on the Economic Crisis in Europe

Upcoming Event!

Presented by the Atheist Humanist Agnostics of Baldwin-Wallace College:

Reading Marx in 2010:

Revolutionary Socialism and The Future of Our Generation

Caleb T. Maupin, Workers World Party and FIST organizer, co-author of "What is Marxism all about?"

9PM, Feb. 16th, 2010.

Malicky Center, 2nd Floor, Baldwin-Wallace College.

Combat Impossibilism, Defend Marxism-Leninism

By Caleb T. Maupin


Among the most crude distortions of the teachings of Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin is the ideology of “impossiblism.” Most of the practitioners of this vulgar revisionism do not know what they are practicing, or even that it has a name. However, impossiblist thought is prevalent among modern day leftists, including those who proclaim themselves to be Marxist-Leninists, in addition to Anarchists, Syndicalists, and other trends of modern anti-capitalist radicalism.

The word “impossiblism” was coined by Daniel DeLeon, the socialist academic who founded the Socialist Labor Party of America, the first “Marxist” organization in the United States. “Impossiblism” is the belief that all reforms to capitalism, and all victories for the working class short of the seizing of the means of production, are counter-productive. The impossibilist believes that voting, forming unions, passing progressive legislation, defending victims of state repression, and all other activities that put the class struggle in motion, and lay bare the contractions of capitalism are merely frivolous and worthless reformism.



The impossibilist believes that such things “reinforce” in workers the mind the morality, or ability to "become human" of the capitalism. The impossibilist counter-poses class struggle with agitation. In affect, the impossibilist transforms the role of a Marxist-Leninist from that of a “tribune of the people” and champion of the oppressed, to that of a religious fanatic or a street corner preacher.

The impossibilist trades in the organization of unions, the formation of militant working class organizations, and the combating of the ruling classes, for simply standing on the side-lines proclaiming the benefits and necessity of socialism.


Utopian Preaching, Not Scientific Class Struggle

By doing so, they not only reject activism, but they reject the key point of Marx and Lenin’s teachings that being the existence and necessity of class struggle. The impossibilist forgets that society is divided into classes that are constantly in political war for control of wealth. The impossibilist sees Socialism as a utopian ideal to be reached upon the fulfillment of a great amount of agitation, a great amount of religious like conversions, in essence the “saving of souls” from all strata society by the evangelism of a church of revolution.

The impossibilist loses credibility to workers, who see them as mentally ill, phrase-mongering, and out of touch with the conditions of reality. Amid the horrors of economic crisis, the worker is in a constant struggle against unemployment, eviction, foreclosure, criminal prosecution, and all the horrors of the present day. A worker who is approached by an impossibilist, sees in them no program to combat these woes or overcome their day to day hardships.

Rather, the impossiblist presents them only with a utopian vision of an imaginary society nowhere to be seen. The impossibilist offers as much consolation and hope to an oppressed worker as a science fiction or fantasy novel, available for purchase at any drug store, book dealer, or library.

When a worker tells an impossiblist of the horrors of their daily life, the impossibilist can only tell them the necessity of a revolution and a new society to follow as a solution Knowing full well that no such revolution is on the near horizon, the worker does not see the impossiblist as of any assistance to them.


Material Basis of Impossiblism

Among the working class and the movement of its emancipation, there are very few impossibilists. Impossibilism is an ideology at home only among intellectuals, artists, and other strata of society with the comfort and free time, as well as the intellectual training to see the necessity of socialism and debate the merits of it.

The impossiblist is often not only out connection with the working class, but sometimes even loathing of it. When the workers reject the teachings of the impossibilist, the impossibilist views this as an inherent fault of the workers and is further reinforced in his/her hatred of the workers and lack of faith in them as an agent of social change.
Lenin’s work "What Is To Be Done? specifically lays out the role of Marxist-Leninists in society. Marxist-Leninists seek to do two things:

1. Organize among the working class, while conducting agitation about the necessity of revolutionary change.

2. Break the working class from the leadership of one wing or other of the capitalist class, and allow it organize in its own, independent interests, strengthening itself to eventually seize control of all of society and destroy class differences.

The impossibilist will falsely accuse genuine Marxist-Leninists of being “economists” and “revisionists.” They will make these accusations on the basis that genuine Marxist-Leninists organize for demands other than Proletarian Revolution. It is then falsely inferred that the goal of Socialist Revolution has been dropped or dis-valued.


Lenin’s Definition of Economism

Such is a distortion of Marxism-Leninism’s concept of “Economism.” Economism is when the abolition of capitalism is rejected, and agitation and theory become absent from the practice of revolutionaries. Economism is often coupled with class collaboration. An economist often finds his/her movement subordinating itself to one wing of the bourgeoisie or other, thinking that it can offer a “better deal” to the working class.



Economism and Impossiblism are but two sides of the same false, revisionist coin. The economist believes that the working class can find liberation only through appeasing liberal capitalists. The Impossiblists believes the working class can find liberation only through be “witnessed” to by themselves, and upon being so enlightened, smashing capitalism under the direction of the wise men who “showed them the way” from their misery. The economist believes that the bourgeoisie must be collaborated with, and morally convinced to accept socialism, as the working class is not strong enough to enact it independently.

Both Economism and Impossiblism reject the idea that the working class are agents of social change and revolution. Economists and Impossiblists both think like the bourgeoisie, because they believe in the theory of “great men” as the makers of history.

The Working Class as the Makers of History

Just as history according to the bourgeoisie tells of slavery being ended by the wisdom of Lincoln, or of segregation ending because of the “I Have A Dream” speech of Martin Luther King, and fails to mention the role of the millions who took up these visions, fighting, bleeding and dying for them, the impossiblists sees the class struggle as similar. They see themselves as the Lincolns or Kings who can strike down material conditions with their words and thoughts, no proletarian action or involvement needed, other than merely standing before their podiums in applause, or marching unthinkingly behind their banners, convinced of their greatness and following their orders.

The economist sees the bourgeoisie as being necessary allies to the working class in its struggle for liberation, underestimating not only the material interest of capitalists in the present order, but the ability of the workers to define their own future and program as was done in 1871, 1917, 1959, 1949, and currently in Latin America when revolutionary struggles gave the Proletariat Political Independence.

Marxist-Leninists, unlike the revisionist twins of Economism and Impossibilsm, realize that the masses are the makers of history. As such Marxist-Leninists seek to direct the masses into confrontation with the bourgeoisie, inspire them to take their independent political line, and build them up as a force to seize the means of production and overturn the brutal economic status quo amidst its self-destruction.


Impossiblism is a false, distortion of Marxism-Leninism. Impossiblism offers no road to Socialism, Communism, or Progress Toward the Empancipation of Humanity.

Long Live The Class Struggle! Long Live Working Class As the Makers of History! Down With Impossibilist Revisionism!

Video: Sam Marcy on the Fundamental Contradiction of Capitalism

Television Learning, “Disrespect”, and the U.S. Psyche: The Unlikely Discourse

I recently had the misfortune of attending Baldwin-Wallace College. Baldwin-Wallace is a private school that costs roughly $30,000 per year to attend. The school has been named as one of the top 15 schools in the Midwest by U.S. News and World Report for the entirety of the last 10 years. Its considered to be an iconic “liberal arts college.” It’s the kind of college that is considered to be the ideal school for a child of the middle class in the United States.

In addition to preparing its students for a career, the college is also “training us how to think.” Among it courses offered at the institution is a course with the call number LAS 150, entitled “Enduring Questions for an Inter-Cultural World.”

Though it is historically affiliated with the Methodist Church, the college is definitely not a “Christian College” or a “Bible College.” The campus appears to be quite liberal on its surface, with a strong LGBT organization, and policy of non-discrimination for that community. The college has also hosted various well-known leftist speakers such as Michael Eric Dyson and Noam Chomsky. Cornel West is slated to appear at B-W in the spring.

If one were to believe what the likes of David Horowitz print in his books such as “The Professors” and “One Party Classroom”, I, a young Marxist-Leninist should have been in paradise. The courses in Sociology, History, Political Science, Psychology, should all have been indoctrination in the teachings of Marx, Lenin, and Mao.

According to media, and many of the students who attend Baldwin-Wallace, it has a “liberal bias.” Supposedly Professors are pushing a “radical leftist agenda” down the throats of students.

My experiences in attending the college for 4 years will tell a very different tale.


The English Language is Biased?

First, I will start with a field that is specifically non-political. Having tested out of the introductory English course, I was moved to take the only remaining required course in the department. I took “Introduction to Argument and Exposition.” This course was supposed to teach students how to frame arguments clearly, and make logical arguments for our beliefs. The course was slated as being a place to learn how to write persuasive texts and make a case for one’s political beleifs.

Seems fine.

The course was taught by a middle-aged adjunct faculty member. She began the course by proclaiming to her students: “One of my goals in this course is convince you to think more like a Libertarian.”

When she learned that I was a Communist she seemed to think this was the greatest thing since sliced bread. Countless classes were spent not discussing English, writings styles, but rather with the class frustratedly listening to attempts to argue me out of my political beliefs via “argumentuam ad nausem”, a forensic technique in which one makes the same arguments non-stop, manipulating their opponent into attempting to refute the point in as many ways as possible.

One wonders what the response would have been if the Professor had begun the course saying “My goal in this course is to make you think more like a Communist.” One also wonders what would have happened if a student was interrogated about being a right-wing Christian during the course material.

Even the content and structure of the course was a bit bizarre. Rather than teach us how to write articles, and frame arguments as the course was slated, instead each class we read and discussed an article from the Atlantic Monthly. We of course, did not discuss the syntax, diction, rhetorical techniques etc. of the articles. Contrarily, we discussed the political ideas expressed in the articles, and exactly how they were wrong or right according to our Professor’s limited “Libertarian” viewpoint.

We also read a certain book as if it were some kind of ground-breaking manifesto, that being the book On Paradise Drive by right-wing New York Times Columnist David Brooks. In this lovely text I learned that all leftist arguments against capitalism are based on an inherent dislike of “McDonalds, Barnes and Noble, and Boob Jobs.” I also learned in Brooks work that the rural areas of the U.S. are good because the inhabitants are not intimidated and afraid to express “God Talk” in language. Ironically, Brooks also took a chapter to explain to me why the college I was studying was dominated by “radical” and “Marxist” professors.

The Professor rambled numerous times about how the U.S. was breaking down as we moved away from the great capitalist system and suppressed the rights of the individual for the good of the collective. I would have learned more than I did in this course, if I had stayed home and downloaded and audio-book of Atlas Shrugged and napped with it is as background music.

I learned very little about “Argument and Exposition.” Contrarily, I learned about how to defend my beliefs in a hostile environment. I also learned how to be hated by your fellow classmates because you won’t just “shut up” and be indoctrinated.


Political Un-Science

Of few leftists I met at B-W, most were in the political science, my major. These leftist professors was hell-bent on not appearing “too liberal” or “indoctrinating his beliefs.” I recall how countless times Professors nearly begged students to argue you with them in order to present “balance.” However, they were met with silence.

Though, from conversation later, I learned that their student evaluations were filled with angry rants about how the course was “liberal propaganda.”

I signed up for one course called “Gender and Law.” The Professor was an adjunct who practiced law. She informed us that the course would educate us as to how “the reforms to family law of the 1960s have hurt men, women, and children by destroying the sacred institution of the family.” She also reassured us that “this isn’t going to be one of those feminist courses where we learn about how evil men are.” At least had the common sense to drop such a course, seeing that I would learn very little. At the time I took this course, I learned it was considered to be a “Diversity” course.

In the numerous courses I took in which we learned about Marxist ideas, rarely did Marxists get to speak for themselves. Occasionally we would read selections from the early philosophical writings of Karl Marx. When studying comparative governmental structures we never read the key book The State and Revolution which lays out the basis for a Marxist-Leninist State.

In one case we learned about the political system of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea by watching a piece from the TV program 60 Minutes. The piece did not interview a single Pro-DPRK person, or government official from the regime. The piece was a one sided attack on the DPRK.

When I called the piece biased in our follow up discussion, I was loudly told by a fellow student in the back of classroom that I was “brainwashed.” The attitude seemed to be “How could any sane person not see a 60 Minutes documentary that interviews only people from a single perspective as anything but honest journalism, dignified scholarship, and irrefutable truth?”

In some of the more theoretical political courses, I got to read the writings of John Locke, as well as Thomas Hobbes. It seems that the age old debate of “capitalist democracy v. monarchial feudalism” rages hard through B-W’s hallowed halls. Perhaps B-W can be transformed into a tourist attraction or a museum spot for young people.

School children can be brought to B-W to listen when learning about the late 1700s.

The teacher can even narrate for the kids:

“Listen Children, these are the very debates they were having in the time of Thomas Jefferson and Jean-Paul Marat. Listen to how good these actors are, that they can keep a straight face while acting as if this a ‘profound discussion’ about whether serfdom should continue or not.”

Historical Lies

If one reads how Colleges and Universities are portrayed, one would expect that our only textbooks were the works of Howard Zinn and Herbert Apetheker.

Contrarily, in the two courses I took in history, the opposite was the case.

The most frustrating course I had was the course in the History of Europe from 1790-1940. I learned among other things that the French Revolution was a crime against humanity with no historical purpose, that Charles Darwin invented “race theory”, and every minute detail about Adolph Hitler one can imagine.

No other political party in Germany other than the NDSAP was ever mentioned. The Spanish Civil War, for the purposes of the course, never happened. Neither did the Paris Commune of 1871, the mass revolutions of 1848, the German revolt of 1918, the Irish Struggle for Independence, or many of the events that might bare a mention in a 3.00 course.

I did learn that “Socialism” was invented by Robert Owen, and had “hatred of religion” as one of its key concepts. I also learned Marie Antoinette was a victim of the brutal rabble of uneducated French buffoons, and the same about Czar Nicholas’ family in Russia.

I learned that Hitler’s Germany was an economic success, but that the USSR was a hellhole worthy of nothing but two slides of starving Ukrainians with no analysis whatsoever of the context of such events.


Learning Without Thinking...

Were their liberals and leftists at B-W? Oh yes. In Philosophy, Art History, Political Science, and Sociology one could find quite a few leftists. However, they were apologetic for their views, and very reluctant to let them be known in class. Nearly every statement or presentation of any leftist material was followed by a lengthy apology and request for conservative material to counter such views.

I wish the Libertarian English Professor or the Jerry Falwell Worshipping Law Professor had the same apologetic and unnecessary openness to criticism as the few apologetic Marxists.

Is this small liberals arts college supposed to be a Socialist Propaganda school? If that’s the case, who needs Bob Jones University. One can get a full education about the war on the family, the evil Bolshevik plots against America, the Darwinian roots of Racism, the personal details of Hitler’s sex life, and the need for U.S. expansion at an accredited institution in the Midwest.

Glenn Beck need not “fear for the Republic” any longer. The Universities he loathes for teaching the merits of John Maynard Keynes, still teach the evils of Marxism and Revolution, and their predecessor, Free Thought and non-conforming ideas.

Keep in mind that the classes I took at Baldwin-Wallace were in the “liberal” fields of the humanities and social sciences. I shiver at the thought of what one would learn in the famed Business classes. Through word of mouth I have learned that the merits of the Taft-Hartley Law and proof that Obama is a Socialist are in some of the curriculum.

Yet, the students at this college all walk around saying “This is a very liberal college.” To so many of them “Liberal” means that Marxist ideas are even presented as viable. The college is “liberal” because it wasn’t a FOX news presentation 24/7.

This says a lot of frightening things. This shows that the discourse in the Colleges and Universities is not only far from liberal, but it is under attack despite its extreme anti-Marxist and anti-leftist slant.

The fact that so many thought the college was “so liberal” is a frightening thing.

Also, the primary enforcers of the closed mindedness were not the faculty, but the students. I learned that most of the students at the college hate debate in any form in class. They disliked the idea of challenging ideas presented by Professors.

I was told verbatim on numerous occasions by fellow students that “disagreeing with a professor is disrespectful.” The idea of so many students raising disagreement with a professor was immoral. I heard countless times from my fellow students that Professors are “smarter than us” and “have the degree.” Students badly disliked anyone who forced them to do anything other than sit an being indoctrinated with whatever the views of a professor are.

Even the conservative students who disagreed with a Professor from the right never argued with them. Countless times I heard statements in support of Gay Marriage, in support of Abortion Rights, etc. from “liberal professors” and never a peep from conservative students.

Though they wrote angry rants about being propagated to in their evaluations, rarely if ever did a see a defense of right-wing ideas in class except from professors. Even my leftist comments were never argued with by my fellow classmates. Rather, I simply got bizarre hateful e-mails, and childish rumor mongering in response to my “disrespect.”

This is why U.S. society is the way it is. We train children from their youth to shut their mouths and their minds. Children are taught not to “talk back” to their parents. In Elementary School Academic Standards we learn that “authority figures only want to keep us safe.” On TV we learn about how protesters are insane and crazy for speaking out against the government.

We have learned to treat ideas like we treat television. One cannot argue with a TV program, as it cannot hear you. One can only sit and watch it drone on, and “learn” from it. Perhaps http://www.youtube.com is the only thing that can save the mind of U.S. population.

"What is Marxism All About?" FIST Class

Slumdogs, Extracts, and Fascism At The Movies

The right-wing preaches that Hollywood, California is Leftist/Marxist occupied territory. It is true that there have been a great deal of films with a leftist bent in recent times, not including Michael Moore’s documentary film Capitalism: A Love Story. It is indeed true that the recent film Surrogates has an anti-capitalist and consumerist message, as do other great films like V for Vendetta and Revolutionary Road.

However, recently Hollywood has released two films of a racist, sexist, and “survival of the fittest” nature that preach anything but a leftist message. These films, though poorly put together, have been raised as “great art” by the ruling class and treated as such, one of them winning “Best Picture” at the Academy Awards of 2009.

“Slumdog Millionaire” Speaks for Billionaires

The film Slumdog Millionaire is a right-wing, pro-capitalist rant. While it imagines that it is the “grapes of wrath” or “Schindler's List”, it is simply a right-wing propaganda piece with “epic” content and a Horatio Alger plot.

The film portrays a young, impoverished boy in modern India. When Muslims attack his family, the government sits by and lets it occur. He travels throughout India in poverty, and is taken advantage of by a man who tries to blind him. The man attempts this in order to take advantage of those who would give him “charity” with their “compassion” because of his condition.

The Message: Compassion rewards cruelty and the weak.

Of course, through his “free will” and “intuition” the main character triumphs and wins on India’s version of “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?”, but he is tortured by the Indian government, because they refuse to recognize he is capable of success. He is punished brutally for succeeding, by the supposedly lesser human beings who run the state. John Galt would probably wet his pants with happiness at this crude, hateful, right-wing film.

The main character’s brother turns to crime, and ends up dead, of course. He could have got by “honestly” and become a millionaire like his brother, but he broke the “social contract” and became a “criminal.” So, of course, he deserves to die because of “personal choices.”

Two particular sections in this film portray the disgusting atmosphere as blatantly as possible. In one section of the film, the boy is being beaten. A tourist couple from the U.S. stops the man from beating him. The innocent “John Galt” child cries out: “This is what the real India is all about.”

The U.S. couple looks down on him with smiles, and hands him a wad of U.S. federal reserve currency, and tell him: “This is what the real America is all about.”

They rub him on the head, as any good compassionate imperialist carrying their “white man’s burden” would.

The message: The white western civilization of the U.S. is an honest, free market society, in comparison to India, a nation depicted in the film as filled barbaric brown skinned people who do not have “free market” ideas.

In the second sequence the main character looks out from a construction site at a city and speaks of how great it is becoming now that western capitalists have come.

The Message: Western Capitalism and Domination is saving India from its ways.

Slumdog Millionaire foams with racism and colonialism to its core. It tells us that India is a pre-capitalist hell-hole, that is gradually being saved by the free market and Imperialism. The film glorifies western capitalism and depicts the brown-skinned people of South-East Asia as barbaric and ignorant, in need of the guidance and domination of western Capitalists. The film portrays compassion, sympathy, and such as a character flaw, and champions ruthlessness and “the rule of law.”

Ayn Rand, Milton Friedman, and Ludwig Von Mises could not have written a better propaganda film. The worst part of this, is that some on the left are confused, and somehow think the film is an exposure of the poverty created by capitalism. They don’t seem to notice that the thrust of the film is the lie that capitalism destroys poverty and saves indigenous people from their supposed inherent idiocy and socialistic tendencies that justify imperialism.



Another film could show the same horrific conditions, yet champion the Naxalite Rebels of the countryside or the worker’s movements of the industrial centers. These movements do have a chance of stopping these atrocities, and are motivated by a desire for liberation, not capitalist greed.

But this is not the message the film portrays. This film is a product of the “Revolutionary Right-Wing” that proclaims that the world must go backwards toward “good capitalism.” The admiration of western civilization, the demonizing of the indigenous peoples, and the Neitschzian “ubermenchen” theme make this film the kind of magnum opus to expect from Leni Riefenstahl or D.W. Griffith.

“Extracts" of Exploitation

Unlike Slumdog, this fascist piece does not pretend to be an “epic” “groundbreaking” film. Rather, this anti-working class hit piece pretends to be a comedy. It has the snide, crude, nasty cruelty found in every Glenn Beck rant in which he fumes with rage at the oppressed, but of course, throws in a few laugh lines to keep us from drowning in his venom.

The film starts out reminding one of “The Office” or “40 Year Old Virgin.” It’s about a factory that makes vanilla extract, and working at the factory there are slew of funny characters.

The boss who owns the factory, cannot get his wife to have sexual intercourse with him. After consulting a friendly bar tender, he comes up with an elaborate, semi-humorous scheme to morally reprieve him of infidelity by tricking her into being the first to commit adultery, with an intellectual challenged male prostitute who he pays to seduce her.

If this sexist, patriarchal, idiotic plot twist isn’t enough, soon the story shifts from forbidden sex, to the ranting anger of a middle class capitalist against the “idiots” of the working class who don’t appreciate his greatness.

The factory workers attempt to strike to keep their jobs fearing they may lose them if he sells the company, the owner says “why not take the whole company!” He fumes with hatred at the inferiority of the workers. This is clearly an indirect attack on Republic Window and Door Makers who did exactly the same, seizing the plant in order to save their jobs. I suppose whoever wrote this film hates the idea of worker’s believing they have the property right to their jobs.

It seemed to me that nearly a half hour of the films content is merely the main character, a petty-capitalist, bemoaning the fact that “everyone” supposedly sympathizes with the proletariat, but no one sympathizes with him, the guy who owns some means of production and has the ability to exploit the labor of the proletariat because of his “initiative” and “creativity.”



We hear about how this oppressed boss “invented a new formula” in college, and “gave his life to the company that produces.” This is ironic and deceptive as most new chemicals are invented by hired proletarian chemists. Their inventions are then copyrighted by the capitalists who hired them to create it, who reap the profits from their creativity. Inventors, innovators, and such are rarely among the ranks of the modern bourgeoisie. The big dogs of modern capitalism are the bankers who own mountains of stock and mountains of capital to “invest” in other people’s sweat and blood.

The main character bemoans his persecution, and points out that he is not an evil corporation, but a small businessman, who gives all for his employees unlike the ruthless big capitalists who are corrupt and faceless to their workers. I almost expected him to begin parroting Alex Jones about Rockefeller, the union busting monster was a “socialist” because he supported contraception.

Yes, the persecuted middle class, and its love of sarcastic Glenn Beck anger flows out in every line of this films dialogue. I should have seen this bombastic propaganda coming, when I noticed a statue of shrugging Atlas in one scene at a bar.

The "Capitalist Victim" : Fascism's Friend

These two motion pictures share the same theme. That theme is “capitalism is great” and “supermen” are persecuted by the ignorant masses and the demagogues who manipulate them to fight for “handouts” and steal from the “supermen.”

These films point toward compassion as a character flaw, and also portray the rich who “succeed” as “victims” of the “heartless mob” of workers who childishly think they are entitled to what the oh-so-persecuted rich have.

These films are unrealistic by all stretches. Small vanilla extract companies are few and far between. The chances of an impoverished youth from the slums of India winning a million dollars are also slim. It is also ironic that the star of the film, a young boy from India, was homeless once again, after he starred in the film that won “best picture” at the Academy.

These films play into the “Tea Party” mentality. They are films in which the petty-bourgeoisie is glorified as victims of the ruthless “free loaders” of the working class. There is occasionally a bit of anti-corporate petty bourgeois rhetoric like that of Father Coughlin or Huey Long in times before.

These two films, most likely the first of many to come, are the ideological manifestos of the far right-wing fascist movement erupting in response to the dying capitalist system. Though they have an “anti-establishment” air to them, they are dangerous, elitist, anti-proletarian films, that set the basis for the smashing of Democracy to preserve capitalism and imperialism, without the threat of Socialist Revolution.

These films would have you think the National Healthcare, Trade Unions, and Progressive Taxation, are the “tyranny” that needs to be overcome. The logical conclusion of these films is that the state must defend the “supermen” from the “rabble” and the demagogues who manipulate them. This translates to smashing trade unions, outlawing the Socialist and Communist Parties, and in some cases, mass genocide in order to “purify” and “breed” these “supermen” who come from the great “western civilization.”

It will be interesting to see if the battle on the screen of Hollywood will continue to rage as the economic crisis becomes more acute, and more people align with the two anti-establishment armies of Socialism and Fascism. I must of course, recall the 1930s when racist films like “Gone With the Wind” that worship the “oppressed slave masters” filled the screens, countering the radical films like “The Grapes of Wrath” that championed class struggle and “The Watch on the Rhine” that hailed Anti-Nazi resistance.

I suspect Hollywood, will do as it always does, and reflect the contradictions of society. Let us hope soon, when the contradiction is resolved, we are watching film like the master-pieces of Eisenstein for free during May Day Celebrations, not sitting in theaters watching “The International Jew” with guns to our necks, and our hands cuffed down to our seats.

Socialism v. Capitalism: Class at Workers World National Office (Part Two)

Fred Goldstein on Unemployment, Healthcare, Racism, and War

Karl Marx v. Glenn Beck

Glenn Beck's argument that raising wages hurts the working class was ripped to shreds years ago by Karl Marx in his booklet "Wages, Prices, and Profits." Below, Glenn goes on his tirade about how raising the minimum wage will hurt the workers. (As if he cares...) Karl Marx has refuted this logic, when this idea was put forward by Citizen Weston in 1865.

Beck's false economic theory has been refuted since the age of the Civil War. Perhaps Mr. Beck will also begin arguing in favor of treating disease with leeches, or against the abolition of slavery.








Wages, Prices, and Profits
Speech by Marx to the
First International Working Men's Association, June 1865

Citizen Weston's argument rested, in fact, upon two premises: firstly, the amount of national production is a fixed thing, a constant quantity or magnitude, as the mathematicians would say; secondly, that the amount of real wages, that is to say, of wages as measured by the quantity of the commodities they can buy, is a fixed amount, a constant magnitude.

Now, his first assertion is evidently erroneous. Year after year you will find that the value and mass of production increase, that the productive powers of the national labour increase, and that the amount of money necessary to circulate this increasing production continuously changes. What is true at the end of the year, and for different years compared with each other, is true for every average day of the year. The amount or magnitude of national production changes continuously. It is not a constant but a variable magnitude, and apart from changes in population it must be so, because of the continuous change in the accumulation of capital and the productive powers of labour. It is perfectly true that if a rise in the general rate of wages should take place today, that rise, whatever its ulterior effects might be, would, by itself, not immediately change the amount of production. It would, in the first instance, proceed from the existing state of things. But if before the rise of wages the national production was variable, and not fixed, it will continue to be variable and not fixed after the rise of wages.

But suppose the amount of national production to be constant instead of variable. Even then, what our friend Weston considers a logical conclusion would still remain a gratuitous assertion. If I have a given number, say eight, the absolute limits of this number do not prevent its parts from changing their relative limits. If profits were six and wages two, wages might increase to six and profits decrease to two, and still the total amount remain eight. The fixed amount of production would by no means prove the fixed amount of wages. How then does our friend Weston prove this fixity? By asserting it.

But even conceding him his assertion, it would cut both ways, while he presses it only in one direction. If the amount of wages is a constant magnitude, then it can be neither increased nor diminished. If then, in enforcing a temporary rise of wages, the working men act foolishly, the capitalists, in enforcing a temporary fall of wages, would act not less foolishly. Our friend Weston does not deny that, under certain circumstances, the working men can enforce a rise of wages, but their amount being naturally fixed, there must follow a reaction. On the other hand, he knows also that the capitalists can enforce a fall of wages, and, indeed, continuously try to enforce it. According to the principle of the constancy of wages, a reaction ought to follow in this case not less than in the former. The working men, therefore, reacting against the attempt at, or the act of, lowering wages, would act rightly. They would, therefore, act rightly in enforcing a rise of wages, because every reaction against the lowering of wages is an action for raising wages. According to Citizen Weston's own principle of the constancy of wages, the working men ought, therefore, under certain circumstances, to combine and struggle for a rise of wages. If he denies this conclusion, he must give up the premise from which it flows. He must not say that the amount of wages is a constant quantity, but that, although it cannot and must not rise, it can and must fall, whenever capital pleases to lower it. If the capitalist pleases to feed you upon potatoes instead of upon meat, and upon oats instead of upon wheat, you must accept his will as a law of political economy, and submit to it. If in one country the rate of wages is higher than in another, in the United States, for example, than in England, you must explain this difference in the rate of wages by a difference between the will of the American capitalist and the will of the English capitalist, a method which would certainly very much simplify, not only the study of economic phenomena, but of all other phenomena.

But even then, we might ask, why the will of the American capitalist differs from the will of the English capitalist? And to answer the question you must go beyond the domain of will. A person may tell me that God wills one thing in France, and another thing in England. If I summon him to explain this duality of will, he might have the brass to answer me that God wills to have one will in France and another will in England. But our friend Weston is certainly the last man to make an argument of such a complete negation of all reasoning.

The will of the capitalist is certainly to take as much as possible. What we have to do is not to talk about his will, but to enquire into his power, the limits of that power, and the character of those limits.

Korea Today: The Secret of Increased Production

BBC and other news sources have reported that this year the DPRK's economy is growing by leaps and bounds after a period of decline known as the "arduous march" ended. BBC has reported the the DPRK's GDP has increased. Agricultural production has also increased by a whopping 11%. Pyongyang currently has a higher gross domestic product than Seoul. In this light, the article, reprinted below from Korea Today the National Magazine of the DPRK, shows the methods of increasing production. It is interesting how the DPRK's economy is arranged so that art, music, education, scientific research, etc. are all centered around the goal of increasing economic output and rebuilding the economy since the collapse of the USSR. Worker controlled means of production bring out a different side of workers who can call it "our factory." This is an excellent piece for understanding of Socialist Economics, whatever differences one may have with the DPRK's leadership aside.



Secret of Increased Production

The Pyongyang 326 Electric Wire Factory is not only the one of high productivity, but also one of those factories leading the country in all undertakings such as the establishment of cultured ways in production and life.

Its workers are especially attached to their workplace.

They all call it “our factory” and improve their workplace and worthwhile working life.


Masters of factory

Every evening at 6 o’clock after the day’s work, there can be seen in the factory compound many workers going to the factory college based on the study-while-working education system. Among them are ex-service persons and workers fresh from secondary school.

Though different from one another in age and job, they all have one and the same desire to contribute to the success of the 150-day campaign now under way in the country and prepare themselves to be the masters of the factory in future by properly combining their experiences in work with what they learn at the college.

Many skilled workers and innovators have been brought up in such a way.

Paek Won Gil, a repairman of the drawing shop, has formed over 30 new conceptions and made technical innovations, including an emulsion heating device and the modification of electrode axis bushings since graduating from the college two years ago, thus making a remarkable contribution to the production of goods. So he is held in affection as the “treasure” of the factory. He told his successes were attributed to his awareness that he is also the master of the factory, and to the advantage of the study-while-working education system.

Most of the workteam leaders, workshop managers and management officials of the factory including So Kwang Chol, a workteam leader who rendered a sizeable benefit to the state by completing a computer-controlled eccentricity measurement device to save a large amount of materials, are the graduates of the college.

The workers of the factory are learning science and technology as required by the new century not only at the college, but also through regular technical studies at the factory.


“Pride”

Jo Ung Hyon, a worker of the insulation workshop, is a prominent “worker writer” of the factory.

Some time ago the factory’s gazette carried his essay “Pride.”

In the essay he wrote the impression he had got from what he, on his way home, heard people admiring his factory’s honour of having been visited by General Secretary Kim Jong Il of the Workers’ Party of Korea.

The essay carried in the factory’s gazette was highly commented upon because it vividly represented the feeling of the workers of the factory.

When the factory was improved beyond recognition by the workers’ own efforts, and when it overfulfilled its yearly production plan, the worker writer wrote poems reflecting his feelings and contributed them to the factory’s gazette and other national papers and magazines.

Others also want to express their love for and pride in the factory.

Kim Hyok Nam and Ri Jong Sim, who fell in love and made a happy family while conducting artistic promotion activities from their youthful days, are a couple of “singers” loved by the factory.

Their duets My Factory and My Friends and We Are a Couple of Workers sung during a break of work, have become the favourite songs of all workers of the factory.

The factory has many other people who have developed their artistic talents while working.


“Cheer up!”

“Cheer up!” “Cheer up!”

During a break of work and on holidays enthusiastic sounds of cheering can be heard on the football, volleyball and table-tennis grounds in the compound of the factory.

The factory frequently organizes football, volleyball and table-tennis matches, and yut and Korean chess games between workteams and workshops.

Not long ago its workers’ football team won a match with that of the Pyongyang Automatic Appliances Factory 2-0.

It is a claim of its workers that they should “take the lead not only in production, but also in sports games.”

Their enthusiasm for sports is represented in high production results.

Engaged in the 150-day drive, the factory has so far overfulfilled its production plans every month.

Pae Kyong Sop, the captain of its volleyball team, said as follows:

“I was not a member of the volleyball team in my school days. Though I was interested in sports, I never participated in games. After beginning to work at the factory I came to take part in production competitions and sports games held every month. In the course of this I learned volleyball techniques, and have now become the captain of the team. The sports games really invigorate us and stimulate our production enthusiasm.”


Pang Nam Gil

Karl Marx's Letter to Abraham Lincoln on Behalf of International Workingmen's Association

Sir:

We congratulate the American people upon your re-election by a large majority. If resistance to the Slave Power was the reserved watchword of your first election, the triumphant war cry of your re-election is Death to Slavery.

From the commencement of the titanic American strife the workingmen of Europe felt instinctively that the star-spangled banner carried the destiny of their class. The contest for the territories which opened the dire epopee, was it not to decide whether the virgin soil of immense tracts should be wedded to the labor of the emigrant or prostituted by the tramp of the slave driver?

When an oligarchy of 300,000 slaveholders dared to inscribe, for the first time in the annals of the world, "slavery" on the banner of Armed Revolt, when on the very spots where hardly a century ago the idea of one great Democratic Republic had first sprung up, whence the first Declaration of the Rights of Man was issued, and the first impulse given to the European revolution of the eighteenth century; when on those very spots counterrevolution, with systematic thoroughness, gloried in rescinding "the ideas entertained at the time of the formation of the old constitution", and maintained slavery to be "a beneficent institution", indeed, the old solution of the great problem of "the relation of capital to labor", and cynically proclaimed property in man "the cornerstone of the new edifice" — then the working classes of Europe understood at once, even before the fanatic partisanship of the upper classes for the Confederate gentry had given its dismal warning, that the slaveholders' rebellion was to sound the tocsin for a general holy crusade of property against labor, and that for the men of labor, with their hopes for the future, even their past conquests were at stake in that tremendous conflict on the other side of the Atlantic. Everywhere they bore therefore patiently the hardships imposed upon them by the cotton crisis, opposed enthusiastically the proslavery intervention of their betters — and, from most parts of Europe, contributed their quota of blood to the good cause.

While the workingmen, the true political powers of the North, allowed slavery to defile their own republic, while before the Negro, mastered and sold without his concurrence, they boasted it the highest prerogative of the white-skinned laborer to sell himself and choose his own master, they were unable to attain the true freedom of labor, or to support their European brethren in their struggle for emancipation; but this barrier to progress has been swept off by the red sea of civil war.

The workingmen of Europe feel sure that, as the American War of Independence initiated a new era of ascendancy for the middle class, so the American Antislavery War will do for the working classes. They consider it an earnest of the epoch to come that it fell to the lot of Abraham Lincoln, the single-minded son of the working class, to lead his country through the matchless struggle for the rescue of an enchained race and the reconstruction of a social world. [B]

Signed on behalf of the International Workingmen's Association, the Central Council:

Longmaid, Worley, Whitlock, Fox, Blackmore, Hartwell, Pidgeon, Lucraft, Weston, Dell, Nieass, Shaw, Lake, Buckley, Osbourne, Howell, Carter, Wheeler, Stainsby, Morgan, Grossmith, Dick, Denoual, Jourdain, Morrissot, Leroux, Bordage, Bocquet, Talandier, Dupont, L.Wolff, Aldovrandi, Lama, Solustri, Nusperli, Eccarius, Wolff, Lessner, Pfander, Lochner, Kaub, Bolleter, Rybczinski, Hansen, Schantzenbach, Smales, Cornelius, Petersen, Otto, Bagnagatti, Setacci;

George Odger, President of the Council; P.V. Lubez, Corresponding Secretary for France; Karl Marx, Corresponding Secretary for Germany; G.P. Fontana, Corresponding Secretary for Italy; J.E. Holtorp, Corresponding Secretary for Poland; H.F. Jung, Corresponding Secretary for Switzerland; William R. Cremer, Honorary General Secretary.

Socialism v. Capitalism: Class at Workers World National Office

Marat/Sade: A Relevant Debate

Peter Weiss' classic verse play, which I first read as a teen, is all the more relevant today. The play is a debate between Jean-Paul Marat, the agitational journalist of the French Revolution, and Marquis de Sade the pornographer locked away in a mental institution.

The subject of the debate is whether Charlotte Corday was justified in murdering the leader of the French Revolution in the hopes of causing an end to the bloodshed of the infamous "reign of terror."

The debate is thus:

Marquis de Sade: Revolutions are bloody, violent, and oppressive. They are based on idealistic notions of a perfect world. Ultimately all we can do in this "dog-eat-dog" world is weaken the oppressive apparatus of the state, and try to survive.

Jean-Paul Marat: The "dog-eat-dog" world has no chance of improving unless the people take up arms to change it. People dying is sometimes necessary for history to march forward. Until there is a perfect world, the duty of people is to constantly be at war.

Essentially, as society crumbles, should we rise up and try and build a better world, or just try and survive as long as we can?

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