Saturday, July 07, 2012

The Latest From The “Occupy Oakland” Website-This Is Class War-We Say No More-Take The Offensive- Defend The Oakland Commune!- A Five Point Program For Discussion

Click on the headline to link to Occupy Oakland website for the latest from the Bay Area vanguard battleground in the struggle for social justice.
******
An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend The Occupation Movement And All The Occupiers! Drop All Charges Against All Occupy Protesters Everywhere!

*******
Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It, It’s Ours! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
*******
A Five-Point Program As Talking Points

*Jobs For All Now!-“30 For 40”- A historic demand of the labor movement going back to the 1930s Great Depression the last time that unemployment, under-employment, and those who have just plain quit looking for work was this high in the American labor force. Thirty hours work for forty hours pay is a formula to spread the available work around. This is no mere propaganda point but shows the way forward toward a more equitable distribution of available work.

The basic scheme, as was the case with the early days of the longshoremen’s and maritime unions, is that the work would be divided up through local representative workers’ councils that would act, in one of its capacities, as a giant hiring hall where the jobs would be parceled out. This would be a simpler task now than when it was when first proposed in the 1930s with the vast increase in modern technology that could fairly accurately, via computers, target jobs that need filling and equitably divide up current work.

Without the key capitalist necessity of keeping up the rate of profit the social surplus created by that work could be used to redistribute the available work at the same agreed upon rate rather than go into the capitalists’ pockets. The only catch, a big catch one must admit, is that no capitalist, and no capitalist system, is going to do any such thing as to implement “30 for 40” so that it will, in the end, be necessary to fight for and win a workers government to implement this demand.

Organize the unorganized is a demand that cries out for solution today now that the organized sectors of the labor movement, both public and private, in America are at historic lows, just over ten percent of the workforce. Part of the task is to reorganize some of the old industries like the automobile industry, now mainly unorganized as new plants come on line and others are abandoned, which used to provide a massive amount of decent jobs with decent benefits but which now have fallen to globalization and the “race to the bottom” bad times. The other sector that desperately need to be organized is to ratchet up the efforts to organize the service industries, hospitals, hotels, hi-tech, restaurants and the like, that have become a dominant aspect of the American economy.

Organize the South-this low wage area, this consciously low-wage area, where many industries land before heading off-shore to even lower wage places cries out for organizing, especially among black and Hispanic workers who form the bulk of this industrial workforce. A corollary to organizing the South is obviously to organize internationally to keep the “race to the bottom” from continually occurring short of being resolved in favor of an international commonwealth of workers’ governments. Nobody said it was going to be easy.

Organize Wal-Mart- millions of workers, thousands of trucks, hundreds of distribution centers. A victory here would be the springboard to a revitalized organized labor movement just as auto and steel lead the industrial union movements of the 1930s. To give an idea of how hard this task might be though someone once argued that it would be easier to organize a workers’ revolution that organize this giant. Well, that’s a thought.

Defend the right of public and private workers to unionize. Simple-No more Wisconsins, no more attacks on collective bargaining the hallmark of a union contract. No reliance on labor boards, arbitration, courts or bourgeois recall elections either. Unions must keep their independent from government interference. Period.

* Defend the independence of the working classes! No union dues for Democratic (or the stray Republican) candidates. In 2008 labor, organized labor, spent around 450 million dollars trying to elect Barack Obama and other Democrats (mainly). The results speak for themselves. For those bogus efforts the labor skates should have been sent packing long ago. The idea then was (and is, as we come up to the 2012 presidential election cycle) that the Democrats (mainly) were “friends of labor.” The past period of cuts-backs, cut-in-the- back give backs should put paid to that notion. Although anyone who is politically savvy at all knows that is not true, not true for the labor skates at the top of the movement.

The hard reality is that the labor skates, not used to any form of class struggle or any kind of struggle, know no other way than class-collaboration, arbitration, courts, and every other way to avoid the appearance of strife, strife in defense of the bosses’ profits. The most egregious recent example- the return of the Verizon workers to work after two weeks last summer (2011) when they had the company on the run and the subsequent announcement by the company of record profits. That sellout strategy may have worked for the bureaucrats, or rather their “fathers” for a time back in the 1950s “golden age” of labor, but now we are in a very hard and open class war. The rank and file must demand an end to using their precious dues payments period for bourgeois candidates all of whom have turned out to be sworn enemies of labor from Obama on down.

This does not mean not using union dues for political purposes though. On the contrary we need to use them now more than ever in the class battles ahead. Spent the dough on organizing the unorganized, organizing the South, organizing Wal-Mart, and other pro-labor causes. Think, for example, of the dough spent on the successful November, 2011 anti-union recall referendum in Ohio. That type of activity is where labor’s money and other resources should go. And not on recall elections, like in Wisconsin, as substitutes for class struggle

*End the endless wars!- As the so-called draw-down of American and Allied troops in Iraq reaches it final stages, the draw down of non-mercenary forces anyway, we must recognize that we anti-warriors failed, and failed rather spectacularly, to affect that withdrawal after a promising start to our opposition in late 2002 and early 2003 (and a little in 2006). As the endless American-led wars (even if behind the scenes, as in Libya and other proxy wars) continue we had better straighten out our anti-war, anti-imperialist front quickly if we are to have any effect on the troop withdrawal from Afghanistan. Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops (And Mercenaries) From Afghanistan! Hands Off Pakistan!

U.S. Hands Off Iran!- American (and world) imperialists are ratcheting up their propaganda war (right now) and increased economic sanctions that are a prelude to war well before the dust has settled on the now unsettled situation in Iraq and well before they have even sniffed at an Afghan withdrawal of any import. We will hold our noses, as we did with the Saddam leadership in Iraq and on other occasions, and call for the defense of Iran against the American imperial monster. A victory for the Americans (and their junior partner, Israel) in Iran is not in the interests of the international working class. Especially here in the “belly of the beast” we are duty-bound to call not just for non-intervention but for defense of Iran. We will, believe me we will, deal with the mullahs, the Revolutionary Guards, and the Islamic fundamentalist in Iran in our own way in our own time.

U.S. Hands Off The World!- With the number of “hot spots” that the American imperialists, or one or another of their junior allies, have their hands on in this wicked old world this generic slogan would seem to fill the bill.

Down With The War Budget! Not One Penny, Not One Person For The Wars! Honor World War I German Social-Democratic Party MP, Karl Liebknecht, who did just that. The litmus test for every political candidate must be first opposition to the war budgets (let’s see, right now winding up Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran preparations, China preparations, etc. you get my drift). Then that big leap. The whole damn imperialist military budget. Again, no one said it would be simple. Revolution may be easier that depriving the imperialists of their military money. Well….okay.

*Fight for a social agenda for working people!. Free Quality Healthcare For All! This would be a no-brainer in any rationally based society. The health and welfare of any society’s citizenry is the simple glue that holds that society together. It is no accident that one of the prime concerns of workers states like Cuba, whatever their other political problems, has been to place health care and education front and center and to provide to the best of their capacity for free, quality healthcare and education for all. Even the hide-bound social-democratic-run capitalist governments of Europe have, until recently anyway, placed the “welfare state” protections central to their programs.

Free, quality higher education for all! Nationalize the colleges and universities under student-teacher-campus worker control! One Hundred, Two Hundred, Many Harvards!

This would again be a no-brainer in any rationally based society. The struggle to increase the educational level of a society’s citizenry is another part of the simple glue that holds that society together. Today higher education is being placed out of reach for many working-class and minority families. Hell, it is getting tough for the middle class as well.

Moreover the whole higher educational system is increasing skewed toward those who have better formal preparation and family lives leaving many deserving students in the wilderness. Take the resources of the private institutions and spread them around, throw in hundreds of billions from the government (take from the military budget and the bank bail-out money), get rid of the top heavy and useless college administration apparatuses, mix it up, and let students, teachers, and campus workers run the thing through councils on a democratic basis.

Forgive student debt! The latest reports indicate that college student debt is something like a trillion dollars, give or take a few billion but who is counting. The price of tuition and expenses has gone up dramatically while services have not kept pace. What has happened is that the future highly educated workforce that a modern society, and certainly a socialist society, desperately needs is going to be cast in some form of indentured servitude to the banks or other lending agencies for much of their young working lives. Let the banks take a “hit” for a change!

Stop housing foreclosures now! Hey, everybody, everywhere in the world not just in America should have a safe, clean roof over their heads. Hell, even a single family home that is part of the “American dream,” if that is what they want. We didn’t make the housing crisis in America (or elsewhere, like in Ireland, where the bubble has also burst). The banks did. Their predatory lending practices and slip-shot application processes were out of control. Let them take the “hit” here as well.

*We created the wealth, let’s take it back. Karl Marx was right way back in the 19th century on his labor theory of value, the workers do produce the social surplus appropriated by the capitalists. Capitalism tends to beat down, beat down hard in all kinds of ways the mass of society for the benefit of the few. Most importantly capitalism, a system that at one time was historically progressive in the fight against feudalism and other ancient forms of production, has turned into its opposite and now is a fetter on production. The current multiple crises spawned by this system show there is no way forward, except that unless we push them out, push them out fast, they will muddle through, again.

Take the struggle for our daily bread off the historic agenda. Socialism is the only serious answer to the human crisis we face economically, socially, culturally and politically. This socialist system is the only one calculated to take one of the great tragedies of life, the struggle for daily survival in a world that we did not create, and replace it with more co-operative human endeavors.

Build a workers party that fights for a workers government to unite all the oppressed. None of the nice things mentioned above can be accomplished without as serious struggle for political power. We need to struggle for an independent working-class-centered political party that we can call our own and where our leaders act as “tribunes of the people” not hacks. The creation of that workers party, however, will get us nowhere unless it fights for a workers government to begin the transition to the next level of human progress on a world-wide scale.

********
As Isaac Deutscher said in his speech “On Socialist Man” (1966):

“We do not maintain that socialism is going to solve all predicaments of the human race. We are struggling in the first instance with the predicaments that are of man’s making and that man can resolve. May I remind you that Trotsky, for instance, speaks of three basic tragedies—hunger, sex and death—besetting man. Hunger is the enemy that Marxism and the modern labour movement have taken on.... Yes, socialist man will still be pursued by sex and death; but we are convinced that he will be better equipped than we are to cope even with these.”
**********
Emblazon on our red banner-Labor and the oppressed must rule!

From #Un-Occupied Boston (#Un-Tomemonos Boston)-This Is Class War-We Say No More-Defend Our Unions! - Defend The Working Class! Take The Offensive! - A Five Point Program For Discussion

Click on the headline to link to updates from the Occupy Boston website. Occupy Boston started at 6:00 PM, September 30, 2011. I will occasionally post important updates in this space if they appear on that site.
************
An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend The Occupation Movement And All The Occupiers! Drop All Charges Against All Occupy Protesters Everywhere!

*******
Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It Back! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
*******
A Five-Point Program As Talking Points

*Jobs For All Now!-“30 For 40”- A historic demand of the labor movement going back to the 1930s Great Depression the last time that unemployment, under-employment, and those who have just plain quit looking for work was this high in the American labor force. Thirty hours work for forty hours pay is a formula to spread the available work around. This is no mere propaganda point but shows the way forward toward a more equitable distribution of available work.

The basic scheme, as was the case with the early days of the longshoremen’s and maritime unions, is that the work would be divided up through local representative workers’ councils that would act, in one of its capacities, as a giant hiring hall where the jobs would be parceled out. This would be a simpler task now than when it was when first proposed in the 1930s with the vast increase in modern technology that could fairly accurately, via computers, target jobs that need filling and equitably divide up current work.

Without the key capitalist necessity of keeping up the rate of profit the social surplus created by that work could be used to redistribute the available work at the same agreed upon rate rather than go into the capitalists’ pockets. The only catch, a big catch one must admit, is that no capitalist, and no capitalist system, is going to do any such thing as to implement “30 for 40” so that it will, in the end, be necessary to fight for and win a workers government to implement this demand.

Organize the unorganized is a demand that cries out for solution today now that the organized sectors of the labor movement, both public and private, in America are at historic lows, just over ten percent of the workforce. Part of the task is to reorganize some of the old industries like the automobile industry, now mainly unorganized as new plants come on line and others are abandoned, which used to provide a massive amount of decent jobs with decent benefits but which now have fallen to globalization and the “race to the bottom” bad times. The other sector that desperately need to be organized is to ratchet up the efforts to organize the service industries, hospitals, hotels, hi-tech, restaurants and the like, that have become a dominant aspect of the American economy.

Organize the South-this low wage area, this consciously low-wage area, where many industries land before heading off-shore to even lower wage places cries out for organizing, especially among black and Hispanic workers who form the bulk of this industrial workforce. A corollary to organizing the South is obviously to organize internationally to keep the “race to the bottom” from continually occurring short of being resolved in favor of an international commonwealth of workers’ governments. Nobody said it was going to be easy.

Organize Wal-Mart- millions of workers, thousands of trucks, hundreds of distribution centers. A victory here would be the springboard to a revitalized organized labor movement just as auto and steel lead the industrial union movements of the 1930s. To give an idea of how hard this task might be though someone once argued that it would be easier to organize a workers’ revolution that organize this giant. Well, that’s a thought.

Defend the right of public and private workers to unionize. Simple-No more Wisconsins, no more attacks on collective bargaining the hallmark of a union contract. No reliance on labor boards, arbitration, courts or bourgeois recall elections either. Unions must keep their independent from government interference. Period.

* Defend the independence of the working classes! No union dues for Democratic (or the stray Republican) candidates. In 2008 labor, organized labor, spent around 450 million dollars trying to elect Barack Obama and other Democrats (mainly). The results speak for themselves. For those bogus efforts the labor skates should have been sent packing long ago. The idea then was (and is, as we come up to the 2012 presidential election cycle) that the Democrats (mainly) were “friends of labor.” The past period of cuts-backs, cut-in-the- back give backs should put paid to that notion. Although anyone who is politically savvy at all knows that is not true, not true for the labor skates at the top of the movement.

The hard reality is that the labor skates, not used to any form of class struggle or any kind of struggle, know no other way than class-collaboration, arbitration, courts, and every other way to avoid the appearance of strife, strife in defense of the bosses’ profits. The most egregious recent example- the return of the Verizon workers to work after two weeks last summer (2011) when they had the company on the run and the subsequent announcement by the company of record profits. That sellout strategy may have worked for the bureaucrats, or rather their “fathers” for a time back in the 1950s “golden age” of labor, but now we are in a very hard and open class war. The rank and file must demand an end to using their precious dues payments period for bourgeois candidates all of whom have turned out to be sworn enemies of labor from Obama on down.

This does not mean not using union dues for political purposes though. On the contrary we need to use them now more than ever in the class battles ahead. Spent the dough on organizing the unorganized, organizing the South, organizing Wal-Mart, and other pro-labor causes. Think, for example, of the dough spent on the successful November, 2011 anti-union recall referendum in Ohio. That type of activity is where labor’s money and other resources should go. And not on recall elections, like in Wisconsin, as substitutes for class struggle

*End the endless wars!- As the so-called draw-down of American and Allied troops in Iraq reaches it final stages, the draw down of non-mercenary forces anyway, we must recognize that we anti-warriors failed, and failed rather spectacularly, to affect that withdrawal after a promising start to our opposition in late 2002 and early 2003 (and a little in 2006). As the endless American-led wars (even if behind the scenes, as in Libya and other proxy wars) continue we had better straighten out our anti-war, anti-imperialist front quickly if we are to have any effect on the troop withdrawal from Afghanistan. Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops (And Mercenaries) From Afghanistan! Hands Off Pakistan!

U.S. Hands Off Iran!- American (and world) imperialists are ratcheting up their propaganda war (right now) and increased economic sanctions that are a prelude to war well before the dust has settled on the now unsettled situation in Iraq and well before they have even sniffed at an Afghan withdrawal of any import. We will hold our noses, as we did with the Saddam leadership in Iraq and on other occasions, and call for the defense of Iran against the American imperial monster. A victory for the Americans (and their junior partner, Israel) in Iran is not in the interests of the international working class. Especially here in the “belly of the beast” we are duty-bound to call not just for non-intervention but for defense of Iran. We will, believe me we will, deal with the mullahs, the Revolutionary Guards, and the Islamic fundamentalist in Iran in our own way in our own time.

U.S. Hands Off The World!- With the number of “hot spots” that the American imperialists, or one or another of their junior allies, have their hands on in this wicked old world this generic slogan would seem to fill the bill.

Down With The War Budget! Not One Penny, Not One Person For The Wars! Honor World War I German Social-Democratic Party MP, Karl Liebknecht, who did just that. The litmus test for every political candidate must be first opposition to the war budgets (let’s see, right now winding up Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran preparations, China preparations, etc. you get my drift). Then that big leap. The whole damn imperialist military budget. Again, no one said it would be simple. Revolution may be easier that depriving the imperialists of their military money. Well….okay.

*Fight for a social agenda for working people!. Free Quality Healthcare For All! This would be a no-brainer in any rationally based society. The health and welfare of any society’s citizenry is the simple glue that holds that society together. It is no accident that one of the prime concerns of workers states like Cuba, whatever their other political problems, has been to place health care and education front and center and to provide to the best of their capacity for free, quality healthcare and education for all. Even the hide-bound social-democratic-run capitalist governments of Europe have, until recently anyway, placed the “welfare state” protections central to their programs.

Free, quality higher education for all! Nationalize the colleges and universities under student-teacher-campus worker control! One Hundred, Two Hundred, Many Harvards!

This would again be a no-brainer in any rationally based society. The struggle to increase the educational level of a society’s citizenry is another part of the simple glue that holds that society together. Today higher education is being placed out of reach for many working-class and minority families. Hell, it is getting tough for the middle class as well.
Moreover the whole higher educational system is increasing skewed toward those who have better formal preparation and family lives leaving many deserving students in the wilderness. Take the resources of the private institutions and spread them around, throw in hundreds of billions from the government (take from the military budget and the bank bail-out money), get rid of the top heavy and useless college administration apparatuses, mix it up, and let students, teachers, and campus workers run the thing through councils on a democratic basis.

Forgive student debt! The latest reports indicate that college student debt is something like a trillion dollars, give or take a few billion but who is counting. The price of tuition and expenses has gone up dramatically while services have not kept pace. What has happened is that the future highly educated workforce that a modern society, and certainly a socialist society, desperately needs is going to be cast in some form of indentured servitude to the banks or other lending agencies for much of their young working lives. Let the banks take a “hit” for a change!

Stop housing foreclosures now! Hey, everybody, everywhere in the world not just in America should have a safe, clean roof over their heads. Hell, even a single family home that is part of the “American dream,” if that is what they want. We didn’t make the housing crisis in America (or elsewhere, like in Ireland, where the bubble has also burst). The banks did. Their predatory lending practices and slip-shot application processes were out of control. Let them take the “hit” here as well.

*We created the wealth, let’s take it back. Karl Marx was right way back in the 19th century on his labor theory of value, the workers do produce the social surplus appropriated by the capitalists. Capitalism tends to beat down, beat down hard in all kinds of ways the mass of society for the benefit of the few. Most importantly capitalism, a system that at one time was historically progressive in the fight against feudalism and other ancient forms of production, has turned into its opposite and now is a fetter on production. The current multiple crises spawned by this system show there is no way forward, except that unless we push them out, push them out fast, they will muddle through, again.

Take the struggle for our daily bread off the historic agenda. Socialism is the only serious answer to the human crisis we face economically, socially, culturally and politically. This socialist system is the only one calculated to take one of the great tragedies of life, the struggle for daily survival in a world that we did not create, and replace it with more co-operative human endeavors.

Build a workers party that fights for a workers government to unite all the oppressed. None of the nice things mentioned above can be accomplished without as serious struggle for political power. We need to struggle for an independent working-class-centered political party that we can call our own and where our leaders act as “tribunes of the people” not hacks. The creation of that workers party, however, will get us nowhere unless it fights for a workers government to begin the transition to the next level of human progress on a world-wide scale.
************
As Isaac Deutscher said in his speech “On Socialist Man” (1966):

“We do not maintain that socialism is going to solve all predicaments of the human race. We are struggling in the first instance with the predicaments that are of man’s making and that man can resolve. May I remind you that Trotsky, for instance, speaks of three basic tragedies—hunger, sex and death—besetting man. Hunger is the enemy that Marxism and the modern labour movement have taken on.... Yes, socialist man will still be pursued by sex and death; but we are convinced that he will be better equipped than we are to cope even with these.”

Emblazon on our red banner-Labor and the oppressed must rule!

From The Pen Of Peter Paul Markin-Out In The Be-Bop 1950s Night- Billie’s Fifteen Minutes of Fame

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Bill Haley and The Comets performing Rock Around The Clock to aid a little flavor to this entry.

Over the past several years I, seemingly, have endlessly gone back to my early musical roots in reviewing many classic (ouch!, ouch for times long gone and well-remembered) rock series that have gone under the general title The Rock ‘n’ Roll Era. And while time and ear have eroded the sparkle of some of the lesser tunes from that period it still seems obvious that those years, say 1955-58, really did form the musical jail break-out for my generation, the generation of ’68, who had just started to tune into music. Their mad forget the cold war red scare music, not their parents’ Benny Goodman, Bing Crosby, Patti Page, Peggy Lee music from World War II times. Ugh!

And we, we small time punk in the old-fashioned sense of that word, we hardly wet behind the ears elementary school kids, and that is all we were for those who are now claiming otherwise, listened our ears off. Those were strange times indeed in that be-bop 1950s night when stuff happened, kid’s stuff, but still stuff like a friend of mine, not Billie who I will talk about later, who claimed in 1956, with a straight face to the girls, that he was Elvis’ long lost son. Did the girls do the math on that one? Or, maybe, they, like us more brazen boys were hoping, hoping and praying that it was true despite the numbers, so they too could be washed by that flamed-out rock and roll night.

Well, this I know, boy and girl alike tuned in on our transistor radios (small battery- operated radios that we could put in our pockets, and hide from snooping parental ears at will) to listen to music that from about day one, at least in my household, was not considered “refined” enough for young, young pious you’ll never get to heaven listening to that devil music and you had better say about eight zillion Hail Marys to get right Catholic, ears. Ya right, Ma, like Patti Page or Bob (not Bing, not the Bing of Brother, Can You Spare A Dime? anyway) Crosby and The Bobcats were supposed to satisfy our jail- break cravings.

In many ways 1956 was the key year, at least to my recollection. And here is why. Elvis may have been burning up the stages, making all the teenage girls down South sweat, making slightly older women sweat and throw undergarments too, and making every guy over about eight years old start growing sideburns before then but that was the year that I actually saw him on television and started be-bopping off his records. Whoa! And the same with Bill Haley and the Comets, even though in the rock pantheon they were old, almost has-been guys, by then. And listened to Chuck Berry too, although it took us a long time down in the all-white Adamsville “projects” to find out he was a “negro” (read: black). And for the purposes of this particular sketch, James Brown, ah, sweet, please, please, please James Brown (and the Flames, of course) with that different black, black as the night, beat that my mother (and others too) would not even let in the house, and maybe not even in our whole white working class neighborhood. Yes, we knew James was black even if we were mystified by Chuck. But remember that transistor radio I mentioned earlier and remember when rock rocked.

Of course all of this remembrance is just so much lead up to a Billie story. You know Billie, Billie from “the projects” hills. William James Bradley to be exact. I told you about him once when I was reviewing a 30th anniversary of rock film concert segment by Bo Diddley. I told the story of how he, and we, learned firsthand down at the base, the nasty face of white racism in this society. No even music, and maybe particularly not even music, was excepted then from that dead of night racial divide, North or South if you really want to know. Yes, that Billie, who also happened to be my best friend, or maybe almost best friend we never did get it straight, in elementary school. Billie was crazy for the music, crazy to impress the tender young girls that he was very aware of, much more aware of than I was and earlier, with his knowledge, his love, and his respect for the music (which is where the innocent Bo Diddley imitation thing just mentioned came from although that story was later than the story I want to tell you now).

But see we were projects kids, and that meant, and meant seriously, no dough kids. No dough to make one look, a little anyway, like one of the hot male teen rock stars such as Elvis or Jerry Lee Lewis. Now this “projects” idea started out okay, I guess, the idea being that returning veterans from World War II, at least some vets like my father, needed a leg up in order to provide for their families. And low-rent public housing was the answer. Even if that answer was four-family unit apartment buildings really fit for one family, one growing three boy family anyway, and no space, no space at all for private, quiet dreams. Of course by 1955, ‘56 during the “golden age” of working- class getting ahead (or at least to many it must seem so now) there was a certain separation between those who had moved on to the great suburban ranch house dream land and those who were seemingly fated to end up as “the projects” fixtures, and who developed along the way a very identifiable projects ethos, a dog-eat-dog ethos if you want to know the truth. It ain’t pretty down at the base, down at the place where the thugs, drifters, grifters, and midnight sifters feed off the rough-edged working poor.

That didn’t stop Billie, or me for that matter, from having our like everybody else dreams, quiet spaced or not. In fact, Billie had during his long time there probably developed the finest honed-edge of “projects” ethos of anyone I knew, but that came later. For now, for the rock minute I want to speak of, Billie was distractedly, no beyond distraction as you will see, trying to make his big break through as a rock performer. See Billie knew, probably knew in his soul, but anyway from some fan magazine that he was forever reading that old Elvis and Jerry Lee (and many of the rockers of the day, black and white alike) were dirt poor just like us. Rough dirt poor too. Farm land, country, rural, shack, white trash, dirt poor which we with our “high style” city ways could barely comprehend.

And there was Elvis, for one, up in big lights. With all the cars, and not junkie old fin-tailed Plymouths or chromed Fords but Cadillacs, and half the girls in the world, and all of them “hot” (although we did not use that word then), or so it seemed. Billie was hooked and hooked hard on that rock star performer fantasy. It consumed his young passions. And for what purpose? If you answered to impress the girls, “the projects” girls right in front of him, hey, now you are starting to get it. And this is what this little story is about.

This was late 1956, maybe early 1957, anyway it was winter, a cold hard winter in the projects, meaning all extra dough was needed for heat, or some serious stuff like that. But see here old Billie and I (as his assistant, or manager, it was never clear which but I was to be riding his star, no question) had no time for cold, for snow or for the no dough to get those things because what was inflaming our minds was that a teen caravan was coming to town in a few weeks. No, not to the projects. Christ no, but downtown at the Adamsville High School auditorium. And what this teen caravan thing was (even though we were not officially teens and would not be so for a while) was a talent show, a big time talent show, like a junior American Bandstand television show, looking for guys and girls who could be the next teen heartthrobs. There were a lot of them in those days, those kinds of backwater talent shows and maybe now too.

This news is where two Billie things came into play so you get an idea of the kind of guy he was back then. First, one night, one dark, snowy night Billie had the bright idea than he and I should go around town and take down all the teen caravan announcement advertisements from the telephone poles and other spots where they were posted. We did, and I need say no more on the matter. Oh, except that a couple of days later, and for a week or so after that, there was a big full-page ad in the local newspaper and ads on the local radio. That’s one Billie big idea gone awry thing and the other, well, let me back up.

When Billie got wind of the contest he went into one of his rants, a don’t mess with Billie or his idea of the moment rant, and usually it was better if you didn’t, and that rant was directed first to no one else but his mother. He needed dough to get an outfit worthy of a “prince of rock” so that he could stand out for the judges. Moreover the song he was going to do was Bill Haley and The Comet’s Rock Around The Clock. I will say he knew that song cold, and the way I could tell was that at school one day he sang it and the girls went crazy. And some of the guys too. Hell, girls started following old Billie around. He was in heaven (honest, I, on the other hand, was indifferent to them, or their charms just then). So the thought that he might win the contest was driving him mad (that same energy would be used later with less purpose but that story is for another day)

Hell, denim jeans, sneakers, and some old hand-down ragamuffin shirt from an older brother ain’t going to get anyone noticed, except maybe to be laughed at. Now, like I said, we were no dough projects boys. And in 1956 that meant serious problems, serious problems even without a damn cold winter. See, like I said before, the projects were for those who were on the down escalator in the golden age of post-World War II affluence. In short, as much as he begged, bothered and bewildered his mother there was no dough, no dough at all for the kind of sparkly suit (or at least jacket) that Billie was desperate for. Hell, he even badgered his dad, old Billie, Senior, and if you badgered old Billie then you had better be ready for some hard knocks and learn how to pick yourself up off the ground, sometimes more than once. Except this time, this time something hit Old Billie, something more than that bottle of booze or six, hard stinky-smelling booze, that he used to keep his courage and television-watching up. He told Mrs. Billie (real name, Iris) that he would spring for the cloth if she would make the suit. Whoopee! We are saved and even Billie, my Billie, had a kind word for his father on this one.

I won’t bore you with the details of Mrs. Billie’s (there you have me calling her that, I always called her Mrs. Bradley, or ma’am) efforts on behalf of Billie’s career. Of course the material for the suit came from the Bargain Center located downtown near the bus terminal. You don’t know the Bargain Center? Sure you do, except it had a different name where you lived maybe and it has names like Wal-Mart and K-Mart, etc. now. Haven’t you been paying attention? Where do you think the material came from? Brooks Brothers? Please. Now this Bargain Center was the early low- rent place where I, and about half the project kids, got our first day of school and Easter outfits (the mandatory twice yearly periods for new outfits in those days). You know the white shirts with odd-colored pin-stripes, a size or two too large, the black chinos with cuffs, christ with cuffs like some hayseed, and other items that nobody wanted some place else and got a second life at the “Bargie.” At least you didn’t have to worry about hand-me-downs because most of the time the stuff didn’t wear that long.

I will say that Mrs. B. did pretty good with what she had to work with and that when the coat was ready it looked good, even if it was finally done only an hour before the show. Christ, Billie almost flipped me out with his ranting that day. And I had seen some bad scenes before. In any case it was ready. Billie went to change clothes upstairs and when he came down everybody, even me, hell, even Old Billie was ooh-ing and ah-ing. Now Billie, to be truthful, didn’t look anything like Bill Haley. I think he actually looked more like Jerry Lee. Kind of thin and wiry, lanky maybe, with brown hair and blue eyes and a pretty good chin and face. I would say now a face that girls would go for; although I am not sure they would all swoon over him, except maybe the giggly ones.

So off we go on the never on time bus, a bus worthy of its own stories, to downtown and the high school auditorium, even my mother and father who thought Billie was the cat’s meow when I brought him around. Billie’s father, Old Billie of the small dreams, took a pass on going. He had a Friday night boxing match that he couldn’t miss and the couch beckoned (an argument could be made that Old Billie was a man before his time in the couch potato department). However all was forgiven him this night for his big idea, and his savior dough. We got to the school auditorium okay and Billie left us for stardom as we got in our rooting section seats. A few minutes later Billie ran up to us to tell us that he was fifth on the list so don’t go anywhere, like out for a cigarette or something.

We sat through the first four acts, a couple of guys doing Elvis stuff (so-so) and a couple of girls (or rather trios of girls) who did some serious be-bop stuff and had great harmonies. Billie, I sensed, was going to have his work cut out for him this night. Finally Billie came out, prompted the four-piece backup band to his song, and he started for the mike. He started out pretty good, in good voice and a couple of nice juke moves, but then about half way through; as he was wiggling and swiggling through his Rock Around The Clock all of a sudden one of the arms of his jacket fell off and landed in the front row. Billie didn’t miss a beat. This guy was a showman.

Then the other jacket arm fell off and also went into the first row. Except this time a couple of swoony girls, girls from our school were tussling, seriously tussling, each other for it. See, they thought it was part of Billie’s act. And what they didn’t know as Billie finished up was that Mrs. Billie (I will be kind to her and not call her what Billie called her) in her rush to finish up didn’t sew the arms onto the body of the jacket securely so they were just held together by some temporary stitches.

Well, needless to say Billie didn’t win (one of those girl trios did, and rightly so, although I didn’t tell Billie that). But next day, and many next days after that, Billie had more girls hanging off his arms than he could shake a stick at. And you know maybe Billie was on to something after all because I started to notice those used-to-been scrawny, spindly-legged, pigeon-toed giggling girls, their new found bumps and curves, and their previously unremarkable winsome girlish charms, especially when Billie would give me his “castoffs.” So maybe his losing was for the best. My for the best.

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- When Roy “The Boy” Ranged Over The 1960s Teenage Night- A CD Review (Of Sorts)

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Roy Orbison performing his classic Sweet Dreams, Baby with an all-star backup.

CD Review

In Dreams: The Greatest Hits: Roy Orbison, Roy Orbison, Virgin Records, 1987

Strictly speaking I am only doing this review, In Dreams: The Greatest Hits: Roy Orbison, as a favor to my old-time friend Peter Paul Markin. When he found out that I was crazy for Roy “The Boy” as a kid, and had some stories to tell, some teenage stories, he begged me (so he could beg off on whoever asked HIM to do the damn thing) to do a guest commentary. Of course being Pee-Pee (his old time North Adamsville junior high school moniker bestowed on his by his corner- boy friend, Frankie Larkin) he had to bring up the nine hundred and ninety-nine things (in exact chronological order) that he had done for me in the past. So, if only to avoid having to hear about the one thousand and one things he didn’t do for me, I consented.

My first refusal of Pee-Pee’s request was based on the simple fact that everybody, at least everybody who loves, uh, classic rock and roll already knows, already has genetically embedded in their brains, a half dozen of Roy’s songs. And already knows that he was the king hell king of a certain teen angst kind of rock and roll song in the early 1960s that spoke to our romantic longings, our fears of rejection, our fear of acceptance, our desire to keep away from wrong gees (male or female) and our fervent desire not to be “has beens” before we even got to first base on being a “has.” Those factors, plus the fact that Roy is safely ensconced in the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame, and what more can a mere mortal add to the conversation.

Except, except like Pee-Pee coaxed (nice word, huh) out of me there are stories, youth stories, related to various Roy’s songs. So let me sketch out one of them concerning his classic Sweet Dreams, Baby. Naturally it centers on the eternal boy-girl thing (what else is teen-hood, early teen-hood here, for anyway). The early stages of the boy-girl thing when Roy’s lyrics and style meant something, some swoon anyway. (Later, in the super-heated Stones/Doors/Byrds/Hendrix drug-induced late 1960s night, he would draw no play in these quarters).

For those who don’t know, or who want to know, I grew up in Olde Saco, Maine the old- time big time mill town, a town filled to the brim with solid working- class families trying to eke out an existence in those dying mills. These were, mainly, French-Canadian working families, my people (despite my surname I am F-C on my mother’s side). These were (and still are) hard working, hard loving, hard drinking people who nevertheless brought a deeply religious feeling (Gallic Roman Catholic) with them as they migrated in successive waves down from old no place for them Canada. For teen purposes, for boy early teen purposes, for boy early teen F-C Olde Saco purposes this meant keeping a very tight rein on their daughters, very tight indeed.

And the tightest rein the old Atlantic section of Olde Saco neighborhood where I grew up was held by Meme LaCroix over her daughter. Lorraine. Now at this time, this early 1960s time, Lorraine was really nothing but a stick (a stick being a girl, a junior high school girl, who had, well, no womanly shape. Funny, one time when Pee-Pee and I were comparing notes he told me that “stick” term was what they used to use in his old Irish North Adamsville neighborhood. I thought we F-Cs were only ones to use the term. Go figure.). But stick or no stick, Lorraine LaCroix had about three tons of personality, a great smile, great naturally ruby lips, and for those who had the right antennae the look of a stick who would make a few heads turn before she was through. But all that came later.

What really made Mlle LaCroix stand out, and had a few boys, including this writer, lined up at the door, was her collection of rock and roll records, including everything that Roy Orbison had recorded at that time. And her willingness to invite said boys, including this writer, into her living room after school to listen to this stuff. In case you don’t get the import, the economic import, of that last statement, I, for one, did not have a record player, or records, at that time. I used a transistor radio, or went to Jimmy Jake’s Diner and played the jukebox there. In case you don’t get the social import of it, recall that Madame LaCroix held a very tight rein on Lorraine. For example Lorraine could not go on dates, go to dances, or any night activity. Somehow she thought that daytime at the LaCroix resident was alright. Oh, I didn’t tell you, Madame LaCroix worked (worked at the Olde Saco Valley Textile Mill in the same department as my father at the time) so that Lorraine was home alone. So you can see that the good Madame was a little off on her protecting teen daughter wisdom.

One afternoon (actually more than one afternoon but this one time will stand in for the rest which were very similar) she invited me over. I rang the doorbell, she answered, looking very attractive even for a stick (those natural ruby red lips had half the guys in school wondering, dream wondering), and we went into the living room. She started playing some Elvis, maybe Jailhouse Rock, and a little Jerry Lee (I was crazy for his High School Confidential, and could hardly wait to get to be old enough to go to Olde Saco High based just on that record).

After a while, and after a couple of Cokes, she changed the record to Roy’s Sweet Dreams, Baby, and started swaying to the tune. She then closed her eyes and called me over. And right then and there in the middle of the room gave me one of the most passionate kisses that I have ever received. Fifty years later (keep this to yourself) I can still feel the warmth of that kiss, and the bath soap fragrance I could smell coming from her body when we came up for air. Yes, Lorraine LaCroix had lips made for kissing. For the rest of the afternoons we hung around together that song was the signal that I was to kiss her (actually she kissed me but let’s not quibble).

And that little sketch is exactly my point. No great master thesis, simply this. Roy “The Boy” Orbison’s music was what got us through that early teen angst rough spot looking to find out what the boy-girl world was all about. Innocent, innocent as hell, as we were then. Enough said.

Independent 2nd New Hampshire Congressional District Candidate Daniel Keating Stands In Solidarity With The Shea Family Anti-Foreclosure Actions

Click on the headline to link to the Keating For Congress Committee Keating Facebook page.


From: The Keating For Congress Committee

In re: Press Release- Shea Family Solidarity Statement

Date: July 6, 2012

The Keating For Congress Committee today has announced that 2nd New Hampshire Congressional District Independent candidate and Socialist Alternative activist Daniel Keating has endorsed, and proudly stands in solidarity with, the efforts of the Shea Family of North Weymouth, Massachusetts, their friend s and neighbors, Occupy Quincy and Occupy Weymouth activists, and others to fight the pending foreclosure auction of their home scheduled for July 17th.

Mr. Keating, as a social activist in New Hampshire for the past several years, has in his travels around the 2nd District heard of many, too many cases, similar to the Shea case. Mr. Keating is painfully aware of the countless examples of those who have been subject to snap foreclosures, of those “under water,” of those who have been taken advantage of by the banks and mortgage companies, large and small, and their outrageous predatory interest rates. And also of those hard-working working people who have deprived themselves and their families of other necessities in order to pay the mortgage, and of those who cannot even dream of owning a home in this toxic housing environment.

Danny Keating says enough. It is time to fight back, to organize against the dead of night and hide behind closed doors banks and their fiendish agents- one house at a time, if necessary. The efforts of his fellow Socialist Alterative activists in Occupy Homes in Minneapolis where there have been several successful anti-foreclosure actions and the upcoming Shea case can serve as models for many hard-pressed working people to fight to keep their homes, and their dignity. Danny, if elected to Congress, on Day One will use his offices to force a stop to the foreclosures in the district, to work for a nation-wide moratorium, and to hold the banks and other lenders accountable under a very close microscope for the monstrous deceitful actions of past several years, both before and after the housing market bubble burst.

With over two million foreclosures reported nationally over the past period, an almost equal number now in the court system pipeline and many home-owners “under water” the seemingly endless nightmare of the housing crisis will be with us for many years. However, unlike some natural disaster which we have no control over, this crisis was man-made.

The now familiar popular refrain of the last year of protests, “Banks got bailed out, we got sold out,” has caught the gist of the problem. Not only did the “too big to fail” banks and corporations get bailed out (with perks intact) after looting the economy at their pleasure but their government merely “slapped their hands” with a puny 25 billion dollar settlement for the trillions of dollars of financial, economic, and emotional damage they have done to working people. This has added insult to injury while the Wall Street elite laugh about their good fortune over cocktails in their high-rise executive suites.

So while today we need to fight, desperately need to fight, foreclosures one house at a time over the long haul we need to establish financial institutions controlled by working people not by CEOs, their boards, and their governmental agents, a vast program of governmental assistance to those in economic distress not just with their home troubles but with decent jobs and quality education as well. Most of all we need a workers ‘party that fights for our interests. Those are just some of the things that Danny Keating wants to fight, fight like the devil for. Elect Danny Keating To Congress. Victory To The Shea Family! Stop All Home Foreclosures Now!

For more information about the Keating campaign, Socialist Alternative, or requests for interviews call: 603-233-2999 or email: danny.keating.for.congress@gmail.com

Friday, July 06, 2012

From The Pens Of Karl Marx And Friedrich Engels-The Struggle For The Communist League-Engels To Marx (1848)

Click on the headline to link to the Marx-Engels Internet Archives for an online copy of the article mentioned in the headline.

Markin comment:

This foundation article by Marx or Engels goes along with the propaganda points in the fight for our communist future mentioned in other posts in this space.

Marx/Engels Internet Archive-The Communist League

A congress of the League of the Just opened in London on June 2, 1847. Engels was in attendance as delegate for the League's Paris communities. (Marx couldn't attend for financial reasons.)

Engels had a significant impact throughout the congress -- which, as it turned out, was really the "inaugural Congress" of what became known as the Communist League. This organization stands as the first international proletarian organization. With the influence of Marx and Engels anti-utopian socialism, the League's motto changed from "All Men are Brothers" to "Working Men of All Countries, Unite!"

Engels: "In the summer of 1847, the first league congress took place in London, at which W. Wolff represented the Brussels and I the Paris communities. At this congress the reorganization of the League was carried through first of all. ...the League now consisted of communities, circles, leading circles, a central committee and a congress, and henceforth called itself the 'Communist League'."

The Rules were drawn up with the participation of Marx and Engels, examined at the First Congress of the Communist League, and approved at the League's Second Congress in December 1847.

Article 1 of the Rules of the Communist League: "The aim of the league is the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, the rule of the proletariat, the abolition of the old bourgeois society which rests on the antagonism of classes, and the foundation of a new society without classes and without private property."

The first draft of the Communist League Programme was styled as a catechism -- in the form of questions and answers. Essentially, the draft was authored by Engels. The original manuscript is in Engels's hand.

The League's official paper was to be the Kommunistische Zeitschrift, but the only issue produced was in September 1847 by a resolution of the League's First Congress. It was First Congress prepared by the Central Authority of the Communist League based in London. Karl Schapper was its editor.

The Second Congress of the Communist League was held at the end of November 1847 at London's Red Lion Hotel. Marx attended as delegate of the Brussels Circle. He went to London in the company of Victor Tedesco, member of the Communist League and also a delegate to the Second Congress. Engels again represented the Paris communities. Schapper was elected chairman of the congress, and Engels its secretary.

Friedrich Lessner: "I was working in London then and was a member of the communist Workers' Educational Society at 191 Drury Lane. There, at the end of November and the beginning of December 1847, members of the Central Committee of the Communist League held a congress. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels came there from Brussels to present their views on modern communism and to speak about the Communists' attitude to the political and workers' movement. The meetings, which, naturally, were held in the evenings, were attended by delegates only... Soon we learned that after long debates, the congress had unanimously backed the principles of Marx and Engels..."

The Rules were officially adopted December 8, 1847.

Engels: "All contradiction and doubt were finally set at rest, the new basic principles were unanimously adopted, and Marx and I were commissioned to draw up the Manifesto." This would, of course, become the Communist Manifesto.
***************
Engels To Marx[191]
In Brussels

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Source: MECW Volume 38, p. 152;
Written: 14 January 1848;
First published: abridged in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, 1913 and in full in MEGA, 1929


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Paris, 14 January 1848
Dear Marx,

If I haven’t written to you it was because I have as yet still not been able to get hold of that accursed Louis Blanc. Decidedly, he is showing bad will. But I'm determined to catch him every day I go to him or lie in wait for him at the café. Père Flocon, on the other hand, is proving more amenable. He is delighted at the way the Brüsseler-Zeitung and The Northern Star defended the Réforme against the National. Not even the blâme against L. Blanc and Ledru-Rollin have succeeded in flustering him, any more than my announcement that we have now decided in London to come out openly as communists. He, of course, made some capital assertions you are tending towards despotism, you will kill the revolution in France, we have eleven million small peasants who at the same time are the most fanatical property owners, etc., etc., although he also abused the peasants, — after all, he said, our principles are too similar for us not to march together; as for us, we will give you all the support in our power, etc., etc.

I was enormously tickled by the Mosi [Moses Hess] business, although annoyed that it should have come to light. Apart from you, no one in Brussels knew of it save Gigot and Lupus — and Born, whom I told about it in Paris once when I was in my cups. Well, no matter. Moses brandishing his pistols, parading his horns before the whole of Brussels, and before Bornstedt into the bargain!!, must have been exquisite. Ferdinand Wolff’s inventiveness over the minutes made me split my sides with laughter — and Moses believes that! If, by the by, the jackass should persist in his preposterous lie about rape, I can provide him with enough earlier, concurrent, and later details to send him reeling. For only last July here in Paris this Balaam’s she-ass made me, in due form, a declaration of love mingled with resignation, and confided to me the most intimate nocturnal secrets of her ménage! Her rage with me is unrequited love, pure and simple. For that matter, Moses came only second in my thoughts at Valenciennes, my first desire being to revenge myself for all the dirty tricks they had played on Mary.

The strong wine proves to be no more than a 1/3 bottle of Bordeaux. It is only to be regretted that the horned Siegfried did not have his unhappy lot publicly minuted by the Workers’ Society.[158] He is perfectly at liberty, by the way, to avenge himself on all my present, past and future mistresses, and for that purpose I commend to him 1) the Flemish giantess who lives at my former lodgings, 87 chaussée d'Ixelles on the first floor, and whose name is Mademoiselle Joséphine, and 2) a Frenchwoman, Mademoiselle Félicie who, on Sunday, the 23rd of this month, will be arriving in Brussels by the first train from Cologne on her way to Paris. It would be bad luck if he were to succeed with neither. Kindly pass on this information to him in order that he may appreciate my honourable intentions. I will give him fair play.

It is nearly all up with Heine. I visited him a fortnight ago and he was in bed, having had a nervous fit. Yesterday he was up but extremely ill. He can hardly manage three steps now; supporting himself against the wall, he crawls from armchair to bed and vice versa. On top of that, the noise in his house, cabinet-making, hammering, etc., is driving him mad. Intellectually he is also somewhat spent. Heinzen desired to see him but was not admitted.

I was also at Herwegh’s yesterday. Along with the rest of his family he has influenza and is much visited by old women. He told me that L. Blanc’s 2nd volume [Histoire de la révolution française] has been quite eclipsed by the enormous success of Michelet’s 2nd volume [Histoire de la révolution française]. I have not yet read either because shortage of money has prevented me from subscribing to the reading room. By the way, Michelet’s success can only be attributed to his suspension[192] and his civic spirit.

Things are going wretchedly with the [Communist] League here. Never have I encountered such sluggishness and petty jealousy as there is among these fellows. Weitlingianism and Proudhonism are truly the exact expression of these jackasses’ way of life and hence nothing can be done. Some are genuine Straubingers,[86] ageing boors, others aspiring petty bourgeois. A class which lives, Irish-fashion, by depressing the wages of the French, is utterly useless. — I am now making one last attempt, if that doesn’t succeed, I shall give up this kind of propaganda. I hope that the London papers [i. e. documents of the Second Congress of the Communist League] will arrive soon and help to liven things up somewhat again; then I shall strike while the iron is hot. Not yet having seen any results from the Congress, the fellows are naturally growing completely supine. I am in contact with several new workers introduced to me by Stumpf and Neubeck but as yet there is no knowing what can be made of them.

Tell Bornstedt: 1) In the matter of his subscriptions [to the Deutsche-Brüsseler-Zeitung], his attitude towards the workers here should not be so rigorously commercial, otherwise he'll lose them all; 2) the agent procured for him by Moses is a feeble Jeremiah and very conceited, but the only one who still will and can attend to the thing, so he had better not rub him up the wrong way; the fellow has, moreover, gone to great pains, but he can’t put in money — which, for that matter, he has done already. Out of the money coming in to him he has to cover the expenses correspondence, etc. involves for him; 3) if he is sending separate issues, he should never send more than 10-15 at most of [...] one issue, and these as opportunity offers. The parcels go through Duchâtel’s ministry, whence they have to be fetched at considerable expenditure in time and where the ministry exacts a fearsome postal charge in order to ruin this traffic. A parcel of this kind costs 6-8 francs, and what can one do if that’s what they ask? Esselens in Liège wanted to appoint a courier to deliver it. Write to Liège and tell them this will be arranged. 4) The issues that were still here have been sent by third party to South Germany. Should occasion offer, Bornstedt should send us a few more issues to be used as propaganda in cafés, etc., etc. 5) Within the next few days Bornstedt will be receiving an article [Engels, The Movements of 1847] and the thing about the Prussian finances. But you must again cast an eye over the part about the committees of 1843 [193] and alter it where necessary, since my memory of the subject was very hazy at the time of writing.

If the Mosi business eventually leads to your attacking him in the Brüsseler-Zeitung, I shall be delighted. How the fellow can still remain in Brussels, I fail to understand. Here’s another opportunity to send him into exile at Verviers. The matter of the Réforme will be attended to.

Your
E.

[On the back of the letter]

Monsieur Philipp Gigot
8.-Rue Bodenbroeck, Bruxelles

From The Pens Of Karl Marx And Friedrich Engels-The Struggle For The Communist League-Rules of the Communist League (1847)

Click on the headline to link to the Marx-Engels Internet Archives for an online copy of the article mentioned in the headline.

Markin comment:

This foundation article by Marx or Engels goes along with the propaganda points in the fight for our communist future mentioned in other posts in this space.

Marx/Engels Internet Archive-The Communist League

A congress of the League of the Just opened in London on June 2, 1847. Engels was in attendance as delegate for the League's Paris communities. (Marx couldn't attend for financial reasons.)

Engels had a significant impact throughout the congress -- which, as it turned out, was really the "inaugural Congress" of what became known as the Communist League. This organization stands as the first international proletarian organization. With the influence of Marx and Engels anti-utopian socialism, the League's motto changed from "All Men are Brothers" to "Working Men of All Countries, Unite!"

Engels: "In the summer of 1847, the first league congress took place in London, at which W. Wolff represented the Brussels and I the Paris communities. At this congress the reorganization of the League was carried through first of all. ...the League now consisted of communities, circles, leading circles, a central committee and a congress, and henceforth called itself the 'Communist League'."

The Rules were drawn up with the participation of Marx and Engels, examined at the First Congress of the Communist League, and approved at the League's Second Congress in December 1847.

Article 1 of the Rules of the Communist League: "The aim of the league is the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, the rule of the proletariat, the abolition of the old bourgeois society which rests on the antagonism of classes, and the foundation of a new society without classes and without private property."

The first draft of the Communist League Programme was styled as a catechism -- in the form of questions and answers. Essentially, the draft was authored by Engels. The original manuscript is in Engels's hand.

The League's official paper was to be the Kommunistische Zeitschrift, but the only issue produced was in September 1847 by a resolution of the League's First Congress. It was First Congress prepared by the Central Authority of the Communist League based in London. Karl Schapper was its editor.

The Second Congress of the Communist League was held at the end of November 1847 at London's Red Lion Hotel. Marx attended as delegate of the Brussels Circle. He went to London in the company of Victor Tedesco, member of the Communist League and also a delegate to the Second Congress. Engels again represented the Paris communities. Schapper was elected chairman of the congress, and Engels its secretary.

Friedrich Lessner: "I was working in London then and was a member of the communist Workers' Educational Society at 191 Drury Lane. There, at the end of November and the beginning of December 1847, members of the Central Committee of the Communist League held a congress. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels came there from Brussels to present their views on modern communism and to speak about the Communists' attitude to the political and workers' movement. The meetings, which, naturally, were held in the evenings, were attended by delegates only... Soon we learned that after long debates, the congress had unanimously backed the principles of Marx and Engels..."

The Rules were officially adopted December 8, 1847.

Engels: "All contradiction and doubt were finally set at rest, the new basic principles were unanimously adopted, and Marx and I were commissioned to draw up the Manifesto." This would, of course, become the Communist Manifesto.

**************
Rules of the Communist League [375]
Working Men of All Countries, Unite!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Written: December 1847;
Source: MECW Volume 6, p. 633;
First published: Wermuth und Stieber, Die Communisten-Verschwörungen des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts, Erster Theil, Berlin, 1853;


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

SECTION I
THE LEAGUE
Art. 1. The aim of the League is the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, the rule of the proletariat, the abolition of the old bourgeois society which rests on the antagonism of classes, and the foundation of a new society without classes and without private property.

Art. 2. The conditions of membership are:

A) A way of life and activity which corresponds to this aim;

B) Revolutionary energy and zeal in propaganda;

C) Acknowledgment of communism;

D) Abstention from participation in any anti-communist political or national association and notification of participation in any kind of association to the superior authority.

E) Subordination to the decisions of the League;

F) Observance of secrecy concerning the existence of all League affairs;

G) Unanimous admission into a community.

Whosoever no longer complies with these conditions is expelled (see Section VIII).

Art. 3. All members are equal and brothers and as such owe each other assistance in every situation.

Art. 4. The members bear League names.

Art. 5. The League is organised in communities, circles, leading circles, Central Authority and congresses.

SECTION II
THE COMMUNITY
Art. 6. The community consists of at least three and at most twenty members.

Art. 7. Every community elects a chairman and deputy chairman. The chairman presides over the meeting, the deputy chairman holds the funds and represents the chairman in case of absence.

Art. 8. The admission of new members is effected by the chairman and the proposing member with previous agreement of the community.

Art. 9. Communities of various kinds do not know each other and do not conduct any correspondence with each other.

Art. 10. Communities bear distinctive names.

Art. 11. Every member who changes his place of residence must first inform his chairman.

SECTION III
THE CIRCLE
Art. 12. The circle comprises at least two and at most ten communities.

Art. 13. The chairmen and deputy chairmen of the communities form the circle authority. The latter elects a president from its midst. It is in correspondence with its communities and the leading circle.

Art. 14. The circle authority is the executive organ for all the communities of the circle.

Art. 15. Isolated communities must either join an already existing circle or form a new circle with other isolated communities.

SECTION IV
THE LEADING CIRCLE
Art. 16. The various circles of a country or province are subordinated to a leading circle.

Art. 17. The division of the circles of the League into provinces and the appointment of the leading circle is effected by the Congress on the proposal of the Central Authority.

Art. 18. The leading circle is the executive authority for all the circles of its province. It is in correspondence with these circles and with the Central Authority.

Art. 19. Newly formed circles join the nearest leading circle.

Art. 20. The leading circles are provisionally responsible to the Central Authority and in the final instance to the Congress.

SECTION V
THE CENTRAL AUTHORITY
Art. 21. The Central Authority is the executive organ of the whole League and as such is responsible to the Congress.

Art. 22. It consists of at least five members and is elected by the circle authority of the place in which the Congress has located its seat.

Art. 23. The Central Authority is in correspondence with the leading circles. Once every three months it gives a report on the state of the whole League.

SECTION VI
COMMON REGULATIONS
Art. 24. The communities, and circle authorities and also the Central Authority meet at least once every fortnight.

Art. 25. The members of the circle authority and of the Central Authority are elected for one year, can be re-elected and recalled by their electors at any time.

Art. 26. The elections take place in the month of September.

Art. 27. The circle authorities have to guide the discussions of the communities in accordance with the purpose of the League.
If the Central Authority deems the discussion of certain questions to be of general and immediate interest it must call on the entire League to discuss them.

Art. 28. Individual members of the League must maintain correspondence with their circle authority at least once every three months, individual communities at least once a month.
Every circle must report on its district to the leading circle at least once every two months, every leading circle to the Central Authority at least once every three months.

Art. 29. Every League authority is obliged to take the measures in accordance with the Rules necessary for the security and efficient work of the League under its responsibility and to notify the superior authority at once of these measures.

SECTION VII
THE CONGRESS
Art. 30. The Congress is the legislative authority of the whole League. All proposals for changes in the Rules are sent to the Central Authority through the leading circles and submitted by it to the Congress.

Art. 31. Every circle sends one delegate.

Art. 32. Every individual circle with less than 30 members sends one delegate, with less than 60 two, less than 90 three, etc. The circles can have themselves represented by League members who do not belong to their localities.
In this case, however, they must send to their delegate a detailed mandate.

Ait. 33. The Congress meets in the month of August of every year. In urgent cases the Central Authority calls an extraordinary congress.

Art. 34. The Congress decides every time the place where the Central Authority is to have its seat for the coming year and the place where the Congress is next to meet.

Art. 35. The Central Authority sits in the Congress, but has no deciding vote.

Art. 36. After every sitting the Congress issues in addition to its circular a manifesto in the name of the Party.

SECTION VIII
OFFENCES AGAINST THE LEAGUE
Art. 37. Whoever violates the conditions of membership (Art. 2) is according to the circumstances removed from the League or expelled.
Expulsion precludes re-admission.

Art. 38. Only the Congress decides on expulsions.

Art. 39. Individual members can be removed by the circle or the isolated community, with immediate notification of the superior authority. Here also the Congress decides in the last instance.

Art. 40. Re-admission of removed members is effected by the Central Authority on the proposal of the circle.

Art. 41. The circle authority passes judgment on offences against the League and also sees to the execution of the verdict.

Art. 42. Removed and expelled members, like suspect individuals in general, are to be watched in the interest of the League, and prevented from doing harm. Intrigues of such individuals are at once to be reported to the community concerned.

SECTION IX
LEAGUE FUNDS
Art. 43. The Congress fixes for every country the minimum contribution to be paid by every member.

Art. 44. Half of this contribution goes to the Central Authority, the other half remains in the funds of the circle or community.

Art. 45. The funds of the Central Authority are used:

1. to cover the costs of correspondence and administration;

2. to print and distribute propaganda leaflets;

3. to send out emissaries of the Central Authority for particular purposes.

Art. 46. The funds of the local authorities are used:

1. to cover the costs of correspondence;-

2. to print and distribute propaganda leaflets;

3. to send out occasional emissaries.

Art. 47. Communities and circles which have not paid their contributions for six months are notified by the Central Authority of their removal from the League.

Art. 48. Circle authorities have to render account of their expenditure and income to their communities at least every three months. The Central Authority renders account to the Congress on the administration of League funds and the state of the League finances. Any embezzlement of League funds is subject to the severest punishment.

Art. 49. Extraordinary and Congress costs are met from extraordinary contributions.

SECTION X
ADMISSION
Art. 50. The chairman of the community reads to the applicant Art. 1 to 49, explains them, emphasises particularly in a short speech the obligations which the new member assumes, and then puts to him the question: “Do you now wish to enter this League?” If he replies “Yes”, the chairman takes his word of honour to the effect that he will fulfil the obligations of a League member, declares him a member of the League, and introduces him to the community at the next meeting.

London, December 8, 1847
In the name of the Second Congress of the autumn of 1847

The Secretary
Signed Engels
The President
Signed Karl Schapper

From The Pens Of Karl Marx And Friedrich Engels-The Struggle For The Communist League-The Principles of Communism (1847)

Click on the headline to link to the Marx-Engels Internet Archives for an online copy of the article mentioned in the headline.

Markin comment:

This foundation article by Marx or Engels goes along with the propaganda points in the fight for our communist future mentioned in other posts in this space.

Marx/Engels Internet Archive-The Communist League

A congress of the League of the Just opened in London on June 2, 1847. Engels was in attendance as delegate for the League's Paris communities. (Marx couldn't attend for financial reasons.)

Engels had a significant impact throughout the congress -- which, as it turned out, was really the "inaugural Congress" of what became known as the Communist League. This organization stands as the first international proletarian organization. With the influence of Marx and Engels anti-utopian socialism, the League's motto changed from "All Men are Brothers" to "Working Men of All Countries, Unite!"

Engels: "In the summer of 1847, the first league congress took place in London, at which W. Wolff represented the Brussels and I the Paris communities. At this congress the reorganization of the League was carried through first of all. ...the League now consisted of communities, circles, leading circles, a central committee and a congress, and henceforth called itself the 'Communist League'."

The Rules were drawn up with the participation of Marx and Engels, examined at the First Congress of the Communist League, and approved at the League's Second Congress in December 1847.

Article 1 of the Rules of the Communist League: "The aim of the league is the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, the rule of the proletariat, the abolition of the old bourgeois society which rests on the antagonism of classes, and the foundation of a new society without classes and without private property."

The first draft of the Communist League Programme was styled as a catechism -- in the form of questions and answers. Essentially, the draft was authored by Engels. The original manuscript is in Engels's hand.

The League's official paper was to be the Kommunistische Zeitschrift, but the only issue produced was in September 1847 by a resolution of the League's First Congress. It was First Congress prepared by the Central Authority of the Communist League based in London. Karl Schapper was its editor.

The Second Congress of the Communist League was held at the end of November 1847 at London's Red Lion Hotel. Marx attended as delegate of the Brussels Circle. He went to London in the company of Victor Tedesco, member of the Communist League and also a delegate to the Second Congress. Engels again represented the Paris communities. Schapper was elected chairman of the congress, and Engels its secretary.

Friedrich Lessner: "I was working in London then and was a member of the communist Workers' Educational Society at 191 Drury Lane. There, at the end of November and the beginning of December 1847, members of the Central Committee of the Communist League held a congress. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels came there from Brussels to present their views on modern communism and to speak about the Communists' attitude to the political and workers' movement. The meetings, which, naturally, were held in the evenings, were attended by delegates only... Soon we learned that after long debates, the congress had unanimously backed the principles of Marx and Engels..."

The Rules were officially adopted December 8, 1847.

Engels: "All contradiction and doubt were finally set at rest, the new basic principles were unanimously adopted, and Marx and I were commissioned to draw up the Manifesto." This would, of course, become the Communist Manifesto.
*************
The Principles of Communism

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Written: October-November 1847;
Source: Selected Works, Volume One, p. 81-97, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1969;
First Published: 1914, Eduard Bernstein in the German Social Democratic Party’s Vorwärts!;
Translated: Paul Sweezy;
Transcribed: Zodiac, MEA 1993; marxists.org 1999;
HTML Markup: Brian Baggins;
Proofed: and corrected by Andy Blunden, February 2005.

Document Introduction.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

— 1 —
What is Communism?
Communism is the doctrine of the conditions of the liberation of the proletariat.




— 2 —
What is the proletariat?
The proletariat is that class in society which lives entirely from the sale of its labor and does not draw profit from any kind of capital; whose weal and woe, whose life and death, whose sole existence depends on the demand for labor – hence, on the changing state of business, on the vagaries of unbridled competition. The proletariat, or the class of proletarians, is, in a word, the working class of the 19th century.[1]




— 3 —
Proletarians, then, have not always existed?
No. There have always been poor and working classes; and the working class have mostly been poor. But there have not always been workers and poor people living under conditions as they are today; in other words, there have not always been proletarians, any more than there has always been free unbridled competitions.




— 4 —
How did the proletariat originate?
The Proletariat originated in the industrial revolution, which took place in England in the last half of the last (18th) century, and which has since then been repeated in all the civilized countries of the world.

This industrial revolution was precipitated by the discovery of the steam engine, various spinning machines, the mechanical loom, and a whole series of other mechanical devices. These machines, which were very expensive and hence could be bought only by big capitalists, altered the whole mode of production and displaced the former workers, because the machines turned out cheaper and better commodities than the workers could produce with their inefficient spinning wheels and handlooms. The machines delivered industry wholly into the hands of the big capitalists and rendered entirely worthless the meagre property of the workers (tools, looms, etc.). The result was that the capitalists soon had everything in their hands and nothing remained to the workers. This marked the introduction of the factory system into the textile industry.

Once the impulse to the introduction of machinery and the factory system had been given, this system spread quickly to all other branches of industry, especially cloth- and book-printing, pottery, and the metal industries.

Labor was more and more divided among the individual workers so that the worker who previously had done a complete piece of work now did only a part of that piece. This division of labor made it possible to produce things faster and cheaper. It reduced the activity of the individual worker to simple, endlessly repeated mechanical motions which could be performed not only as well but much better by a machine. In this way, all these industries fell, one after another, under the dominance of steam, machinery, and the factory system, just as spinning and weaving had already done.

But at the same time, they also fell into the hands of big capitalists, and their workers were deprived of whatever independence remained to them. Gradually, not only genuine manufacture but also handicrafts came within the province of the factory system as big capitalists increasingly displaced the small master craftsmen by setting up huge workshops, which saved many expenses and permitted an elaborate division of labor.

This is how it has come about that in civilized countries at the present time nearly all kinds of labor are performed in factories – and, in nearly all branches of work, handicrafts and manufacture have been superseded. This process has, to an ever greater degree, ruined the old middle class, especially the small handicraftsmen; it has entirely transformed the condition of the workers; and two new classes have been created which are gradually swallowing up all the others. These are:

(i) The class of big capitalists, who, in all civilized countries, are already in almost exclusive possession of all the means of subsistance and of the instruments (machines, factories) and materials necessary for the production of the means of subsistence. This is the bourgeois class, or the bourgeoisie.

(ii) The class of the wholly propertyless, who are obliged to sell their labor to the bourgeoisie in order to get, in exchange, the means of subsistence for their support. This is called the class of proletarians, or the proletariat.




— 5 —
Under what conditions does this sale of the
labor of the proletarians to the bourgeoisie take place?
Labor is a commodity, like any other, and its price is therefore determined by exactly the same laws that apply to other commodities. In a regime of big industry or of free competition – as we shall see, the two come to the same thing – the price of a commodity is, on the average, always equal to its cost of production. Hence, the price of labor is also equal to the cost of production of labor.

But, the costs of production of labor consist of precisely the quantity of means of subsistence necessary to enable the worker to continue working, and to prevent the working class from dying out. The worker will therefore get no more for his labor than is necessary for this purpose; the price of labor, or the wage, will, in other words, be the lowest, the minimum, required for the maintenance of life.

However, since business is sometimes better and sometimes worse, it follows that the worker sometimes gets more and sometimes gets less for his commodities. But, again, just as the industrialist, on the average of good times and bad, gets no more and no less for his commodities than what they cost, similarly on the average the worker gets no more and no less than his minimum.

This economic law of wages operates the more strictly the greater the degree to which big industry has taken possession of all branches of production.




— 6 —
What working classes were there before the industrial revolution?
The working classes have always, according to the different stages of development of society, lived in different circumstances and had different relations to the owning and ruling classes.

In antiquity, the workers were the slaves of the owners, just as they still are in many backward countries and even in the southern part of the United States.

In the Middle Ages, they were the serfs of the land-owning nobility, as they still are in Hungary, Poland, and Russia. In the Middle Ages, and indeed right up to the industrial revolution, there were also journeymen in the cities who worked in the service of petty bourgeois masters. Gradually, as manufacture developed, these journeymen became manufacturing workers who were even then employed by larger capitalists.




— 7 —
In what way do proletarians differ from slaves?
The slave is sold once and for all; the proletarian must sell himself daily and hourly.

The individual slave, property of one master, is assured an existence, however miserable it may be, because of the master’s interest. The individual proletarian, property as it were of the entire bourgeois class which buys his labor only when someone has need of it, has no secure existence. This existence is assured only to the class as a whole.

The slave is outside competition; the proletarian is in it and experiences all its vagaries.

The slave counts as a thing, not as a member of society. Thus, the slave can have a better existence than the proletarian, while the proletarian belongs to a higher stage of social development and, himself, stands on a higher social level than the slave.

The slave frees himself when, of all the relations of private property, he abolishes only the relation of slavery and thereby becomes a proletarian; the proletarian can free himself only by abolishing private property in general.




— 8 —
In what way do proletarians differ from serfs?
The serf possesses and uses an instrument of production, a piece of land, in exchange for which he gives up a part of his product or part of the services of his labor.

The proletarian works with the instruments of production of another, for the account of this other, in exchange for a part of the product.

The serf gives up, the proletarian receives. The serf has an assured existence, the proletarian has not. The serf is outside competition, the proletarian is in it.

The serf liberates himself in one of three ways: either he runs away to the city and there becomes a handicraftsman; or, instead of products and services, he gives money to his lord and thereby becomes a free tenant; or he overthrows his feudal lord and himself becomes a property owner. In short, by one route or another, he gets into the owning class and enters into competition. The proletarian liberates himself by abolishing competition, private property, and all class differences.




— 9 —
In what way do proletarians differ from handicraftsmen?
In contrast to the proletarian, the so-called handicraftsman, as he still existed almost everywhere in the past (eighteenth) century and still exists here and there at present, is a proletarian at most temporarily. His goal is to acquire capital himself wherewith to exploit other workers. He can often achieve this goal where guilds still exist or where freedom from guild restrictions has not yet led to the introduction of factory-style methods into the crafts nor yet to fierce competition But as soon as the factory system has been introduced into the crafts and competition flourishes fully, this perspective dwindles away and the handicraftsman becomes more and more a proletarian. The handicraftsman therefore frees himself by becoming either bourgeois or entering the middle class in general, or becoming a proletarian because of competition (as is now more often the case). In which case he can free himself by joining the proletarian movement, i.e., the more or less communist movement. [2]




— 10 —
In what way do proletarians differ from manufacturing workers?
The manufacturing worker of the 16th to the 18th centuries still had, with but few exception, an instrument of production in his own possession – his loom, the family spinning wheel, a little plot of land which he cultivated in his spare time. The proletarian has none of these things.

The manufacturing worker almost always lives in the countryside and in a more or less patriarchal relation to his landlord or employer; the proletarian lives, for the most part, in the city and his relation to his employer is purely a cash relation.

The manufacturing worker is torn out of his patriarchal relation by big industry, loses whatever property he still has, and in this way becomes a proletarian.




— 11 —
What were the immediate consequences of the industrial revolution and of the division of society into bourgeoisie and proletariat?
First, the lower and lower prices of industrial products brought about by machine labor totally destroyed, in all countries of the world, the old system of manufacture or industry based upon hand labor.

In this way, all semi-barbarian countries, which had hitherto been more or less strangers to historical development, and whose industry had been based on manufacture, were violently forced out of their isolation. They bought the cheaper commodities of the English and allowed their own manufacturing workers to be ruined. Countries which had known no progress for thousands of years – for example, India – were thoroughly revolutionized, and even China is now on the way to a revolution.

We have come to the point where a new machine invented in England deprives millions of Chinese workers of their livelihood within a year’s time.

In this way, big industry has brought all the people of the Earth into contact with each other, has merged all local markets into one world market, has spread civilization and progress everywhere and has thus ensured that whatever happens in civilized countries will have repercussions in all other countries.

It follows that if the workers in England or France now liberate themselves, this must set off revolution in all other countries – revolutions which, sooner or later, must accomplish the liberation of their respective working class.

Second, wherever big industries displaced manufacture, the bourgeoisie developed in wealth and power to the utmost and made itself the first class of the country. The result was that wherever this happened, the bourgeoisie took political power into its own hands and displaced the hitherto ruling classes, the aristocracy, the guildmasters, and their representative, the absolute monarchy.

The bourgeoisie annihilated the power of the aristocracy, the nobility, by abolishing the entailment of estates – in other words, by making landed property subject to purchase and sale, and by doing away with the special privileges of the nobility. It destroyed the power of the guildmasters by abolishing guilds and handicraft privileges. In their place, it put competition – that is, a state of society in which everyone has the right to enter into any branch of industry, the only obstacle being a lack of the necessary capital.

The introduction of free competition is thus public declaration that from now on the members of society are unequal only to the extent that their capitals are unequal, that capital is the decisive power, and that therefore the capitalists, the bourgeoisie, have become the first class in society.

Free competition is necessary for the establishment of big industry, because it is the only condition of society in which big industry can make its way.

Having destroyed the social power of the nobility and the guildmasters, the bourgeois also destroyed their political power. Having raised itself to the actual position of first class in society, it proclaims itself to be also the dominant political class. This it does through the introduction of the representative system which rests on bourgeois equality before the law and the recognition of free competition, and in European countries takes the form of constitutional monarchy. In these constitutional monarchies, only those who possess a certain capital are voters – that is to say, only members of the bourgeoisie. These bourgeois voters choose the deputies, and these bourgeois deputies, by using their right to refuse to vote taxes, choose a bourgeois government.

Third, everywhere the proletariat develops in step with the bourgeoisie. In proportion, as the bourgeoisie grows in wealth, the proletariat grows in numbers. For, since the proletarians can be employed only by capital, and since capital extends only through employing labor, it follows that the growth of the proletariat proceeds at precisely the same pace as the growth of capital.

Simultaneously, this process draws members of the bourgeoisie and proletarians together into the great cities where industry can be carried on most profitably, and by thus throwing great masses in one spot it gives to the proletarians a consciousness of their own strength.

Moreover, the further this process advances, the more new labor-saving machines are invented, the greater is the pressure exercised by big industry on wages, which, as we have seen, sink to their minimum and therewith render the condition of the proletariat increasingly unbearable. The growing dissatisfaction of the proletariat thus joins with its rising power to prepare a proletarian social revolution.




— 12 —
What were the further consequences of the industrial revolution?
Big industry created in the steam engine, and other machines, the means of endlessly expanding industrial production, speeding it up, and cutting its costs. With production thus facilitated, the free competition, which is necessarily bound up with big industry, assumed the most extreme forms; a multitude of capitalists invaded industry, and, in a short while, more was produced than was needed.

As a consequence, finished commodities could not be sold, and a so-called commercial crisis broke out. Factories had to be closed, their owners went bankrupt, and the workers were without bread. Deepest misery reigned everywhere.

After a time, the superfluous products were sold, the factories began to operate again, wages rose, and gradually business got better than ever.

But it was not long before too many commodities were again produced and a new crisis broke out, only to follow the same course as its predecessor.

Ever since the beginning of this (19th) century, the condition of industry has constantly fluctuated between periods of prosperity and periods of crisis; nearly every five to seven years, a fresh crisis has intervened, always with the greatest hardship for workers, and always accompanied by general revolutionary stirrings and the direct peril to the whole existing order of things.




— 13 —
What follows from these periodic commercial crises?
First:

That, though big industry in its earliest stage created free competition, it has now outgrown free competition;

that, for big industry, competition and generally the individualistic organization of production have become a fetter which it must and will shatter;

that, so long as big industry remains on its present footing, it can be maintained only at the cost of general chaos every seven years, each time threatening the whole of civilization and not only plunging the proletarians into misery but also ruining large sections of the bourgeoisie;

hence, either that big industry must itself be given up, which is an absolute impossibility, or that it makes unavoidably necessary an entirely new organization of society in which production is no longer directed by mutually competing individual industrialists but rather by the whole society operating according to a definite plan and taking account of the needs of all.

Second: That big industry, and the limitless expansion of production which it makes possible, bring within the range of feasibility a social order in which so much is produced that every member of society will be in a position to exercise and develop all his powers and faculties in complete freedom.

It thus appears that the very qualities of big industry which, in our present-day society, produce misery and crises are those which, in a different form of society, will abolish this misery and these catastrophic depressions.

We see with the greatest clarity:

(i) That all these evils are from now on to be ascribed solely to a social order which no longer corresponds to the requirements of the real situation; and

(ii) That it is possible, through a new social order, to do away with these evils altogether.




— 14 —
What will this new social order have to be like?
Above all, it will have to take the control of industry and of all branches of production out of the hands of mutually competing individuals, and instead institute a system in which all these branches of production are operated by society as a whole – that is, for the common account, according to a common plan, and with the participation of all members of society.

It will, in other words, abolish competition and replace it with association.

Moreover, since the management of industry by individuals necessarily implies private property, and since competition is in reality merely the manner and form in which the control of industry by private property owners expresses itself, it follows that private property cannot be separated from competition and the individual management of industry. Private property must, therefore, be abolished and in its place must come the common utilization of all instruments of production and the distribution of all products according to common agreement – in a word, what is called the communal ownership of goods.

In fact, the abolition of private property is, doubtless, the shortest and most significant way to characterize the revolution in the whole social order which has been made necessary by the development of industry – and for this reason it is rightly advanced by communists as their main demand.




— 15 —
Was not the abolition of private property possible at an earlier time?
No. Every change in the social order, every revolution in property relations, is the necessary consequence of the creation of new forces of production which no longer fit into the old property relations.

Private property has not always existed.

When, towards the end of the Middle Ages, there arose a new mode of production which could not be carried on under the then existing feudal and guild forms of property, this manufacture, which had outgrown the old property relations, created a new property form, private property. And for manufacture and the earliest stage of development of big industry, private property was the only possible property form; the social order based on it was the only possible social order.

So long as it is not possible to produce so much that there is enough for all, with more left over for expanding the social capital and extending the forces of production – so long as this is not possible, there must always be a ruling class directing the use of society’s productive forces, and a poor, oppressed class. How these classes are constituted depends on the stage of development.

The agrarian Middle Ages give us the baron and the serf; the cities of the later Middle Ages show us the guildmaster and the journeyman and the day laborer; the 17th century has its manufacturing workers; the 19th has big factory owners and proletarians.

It is clear that, up to now, the forces of production have never been developed to the point where enough could be developed for all, and that private property has become a fetter and a barrier in relation to the further development of the forces of production.

Now, however, the development of big industry has ushered in a new period. Capital and the forces of production have been expanded to an unprecedented extent, and the means are at hand to multiply them without limit in the near future. Moreover, the forces of production have been concentrated in the hands of a few bourgeois, while the great mass of the people are more and more falling into the proletariat, their situation becoming more wretched and intolerable in proportion to the increase of wealth of the bourgeoisie. And finally, these mighty and easily extended forces of production have so far outgrown private property and the bourgeoisie, that they threaten at any moment to unleash the most violent disturbances of the social order. Now, under these conditions, the abolition of private property has become not only possible but absolutely necessary.




— 16 —
Will the peaceful abolition of private property be possible?
It would be desirable if this could happen, and the communists would certainly be the last to oppose it. Communists know only too well that all conspiracies are not only useless, but even harmful. They know all too well that revolutions are not made intentionally and arbitrarily, but that, everywhere and always, they have been the necessary consequence of conditions which were wholly independent of the will and direction of individual parties and entire classes.

But they also see that the development of the proletariat in nearly all civilized countries has been violently suppressed, and that in this way the opponents of communism have been working toward a revolution with all their strength. If the oppressed proletariat is finally driven to revolution, then we communists will defend the interests of the proletarians with deeds as we now defend them with words.




— 17 —
Will it be possible for private property to be abolished at one stroke?
No, no more than existing forces of production can at one stroke be multiplied to the extent necessary for the creation of a communal society.

In all probability, the proletarian revolution will transform existing society gradually and will be able to abolish private property only when the means of production are available in sufficient quantity.




— 18 —
What will be the course of this revolution?
Above all, it will establish a democratic constitution, and through this, the direct or indirect dominance of the proletariat. Direct in England, where the proletarians are already a majority of the people. Indirect in France and Germany, where the majority of the people consists not only of proletarians, but also of small peasants and petty bourgeois who are in the process of falling into the proletariat, who are more and more dependent in all their political interests on the proletariat, and who must, therefore, soon adapt to the demands of the proletariat. Perhaps this will cost a second struggle, but the outcome can only be the victory of the proletariat.

Democracy would be wholly valueless to the proletariat if it were not immediately used as a means for putting through measures directed against private property and ensuring the livelihood of the proletariat. The main measures, emerging as the necessary result of existing relations, are the following:

(i) Limitation of private property through progressive taxation, heavy inheritance taxes, abolition of inheritance through collateral lines (brothers, nephews, etc.) forced loans, etc.

(ii) Gradual expropriation of landowners, industrialists, railroad magnates and shipowners, partly through competition by state industry, partly directly through compensation in the form of bonds.

(iii) Confiscation of the possessions of all emigrants and rebels against the majority of the people.

(iv) Organization of labor or employment of proletarians on publicly owned land, in factories and workshops, with competition among the workers being abolished and with the factory owners, in so far as they still exist, being obliged to pay the same high wages as those paid by the state.

(v) An equal obligation on all members of society to work until such time as private property has been completely abolished. Formation of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.

(vi) Centralization of money and credit in the hands of the state through a national bank with state capital, and the suppression of all private banks and bankers.

(vii) Increase in the number of national factories, workshops, railroads, ships; bringing new lands into cultivation and improvement of land already under cultivation – all in proportion to the growth of the capital and labor force at the disposal of the nation.

(viii) Education of all children, from the moment they can leave their mother’s care, in national establishments at national cost. Education and production together.

(ix) Construction, on public lands, of great palaces as communal dwellings for associated groups of citizens engaged in both industry and agriculture and combining in their way of life the advantages of urban and rural conditions while avoiding the one-sidedness and drawbacks of each.

(x) Destruction of all unhealthy and jerry-built dwellings in urban districts.

(xi) Equal inheritance rights for children born in and out of wedlock.

(xii) Concentration of all means of transportation in the hands of the nation.

It is impossible, of course, to carry out all these measures at once. But one will always bring others in its wake. Once the first radical attack on private property has been launched, the proletariat will find itself forced to go ever further, to concentrate increasingly in the hands of the state all capital, all agriculture, all transport, all trade. All the foregoing measures are directed to this end; and they will become practicable and feasible, capable of producing their centralizing effects to precisely the degree that the proletariat, through its labor, multiplies the country’s productive forces.

Finally, when all capital, all production, all exchange have been brought together in the hands of the nation, private property will disappear of its own accord, money will become superfluous, and production will so expand and man so change that society will be able to slough off whatever of its old economic habits may remain.




— 19 —
Will it be possible for this revolution to take place in one country alone?
No. By creating the world market, big industry has already brought all the peoples of the Earth, and especially the civilized peoples, into such close relation with one another that none is independent of what happens to the others.

Further, it has co-ordinated the social development of the civilized countries to such an extent that, in all of them, bourgeoisie and proletariat have become the decisive classes, and the struggle between them the great struggle of the day. It follows that the communist revolution will not merely be a national phenomenon but must take place simultaneously in all civilized countries – that is to say, at least in England, America, France, and Germany.

It will develop in each of these countries more or less rapidly, according as one country or the other has a more developed industry, greater wealth, a more significant mass of productive forces. Hence, it will go slowest and will meet most obstacles in Germany, most rapidly and with the fewest difficulties in England. It will have a powerful impact on the other countries of the world, and will radically alter the course of development which they have followed up to now, while greatly stepping up its pace.

It is a universal revolution and will, accordingly, have a universal range.




— 20 —
What will be the consequences of the
ultimate disappearance of private property?
Society will take all forces of production and means of commerce, as well as the exchange and distribution of products, out of the hands of private capitalists and will manage them in accordance with a plan based on the availability of resources and the needs of the whole society. In this way, most important of all, the evil consequences which are now associated with the conduct of big industry will be abolished.

There will be no more crises; the expanded production, which for the present order of society is overproduction and hence a prevailing cause of misery, will then be insufficient and in need of being expanded much further. Instead of generating misery, overproduction will reach beyond the elementary requirements of society to assure the satisfaction of the needs of all; it will create new needs and, at the same time, the means of satisfying them. It will become the condition of, and the stimulus to, new progress, which will no longer throw the whole social order into confusion, as progress has always done in the past. Big industry, freed from the pressure of private property, will undergo such an expansion that what we now see will seem as petty in comparison as manufacture seems when put beside the big industry of our own day. This development of industry will make available to society a sufficient mass of products to satisfy the needs of everyone.

The same will be true of agriculture, which also suffers from the pressure of private property and is held back by the division of privately owned land into small parcels. Here, existing improvements and scientific procedures will be put into practice, with a resulting leap forward which will assure to society all the products it needs.

In this way, such an abundance of goods will be able to satisfy the needs of all its members.

The division of society into different, mutually hostile classes will then become unnecessary. Indeed, it will be not only unnecessary but intolerable in the new social order. The existence of classes originated in the division of labor, and the division of labor, as it has been known up to the present, will completely disappear. For mechanical and chemical processes are not enough to bring industrial and agricultural production up to the level we have described; the capacities of the men who make use of these processes must undergo a corresponding development.

Just as the peasants and manufacturing workers of the last century changed their whole way of life and became quite different people when they were drawn into big industry, in the same way, communal control over production by society as a whole, and the resulting new development, will both require an entirely different kind of human material.

People will no longer be, as they are today, subordinated to a single branch of production, bound to it, exploited by it; they will no longer develop one of their faculties at the expense of all others; they will no longer know only one branch, or one branch of a single branch, of production as a whole. Even industry as it is today is finding such people less and less useful.

Industry controlled by society as a whole, and operated according to a plan, presupposes well-rounded human beings, their faculties developed in balanced fashion, able to see the system of production in its entirety.

The form of the division of labor which makes one a peasant, another a cobbler, a third a factory worker, a fourth a stock-market operator, has already been undermined by machinery and will completely disappear. Education will enable young people quickly to familiarize themselves with the whole system of production and to pass from one branch of production to another in response to the needs of society or their own inclinations. It will, therefore, free them from the one-sided character which the present-day division of labor impresses upon every individual. Communist society will, in this way, make it possible for its members to put their comprehensively developed faculties to full use. But, when this happens, classes will necessarily disappear. It follows that society organized on a communist basis is incompatible with the existence of classes on the one hand, and that the very building of such a society provides the means of abolishing class differences on the other.

A corollary of this is that the difference between city and country is destined to disappear. The management of agriculture and industry by the same people rather than by two different classes of people is, if only for purely material reasons, a necessary condition of communist association. The dispersal of the agricultural population on the land, alongside the crowding of the industrial population into the great cities, is a condition which corresponds to an undeveloped state of both agriculture and industry and can already be felt as an obstacle to further development.

The general co-operation of all members of society for the purpose of planned exploitation of the forces of production, the expansion of production to the point where it will satisfy the needs of all, the abolition of a situation in which the needs of some are satisfied at the expense of the needs of others, the complete liquidation of classes and their conflicts, the rounded development of the capacities of all members of society through the elimination of the present division of labor, through industrial education, through engaging in varying activities, through the participation by all in the enjoyments produced by all, through the combination of city and country – these are the main consequences of the abolition of private property.




— 21 —
What will be the influence of communist society on the family?
It will transform the relations between the sexes into a purely private matter which concerns only the persons involved and into which society has no occasion to intervene. It can do this since it does away with private property and educates children on a communal basis, and in this way removes the two bases of traditional marriage – the dependence rooted in private property, of the women on the man, and of the children on the parents.

And here is the answer to the outcry of the highly moral philistines against the “community of women”. Community of women is a condition which belongs entirely to bourgeois society and which today finds its complete expression in prostitution. But prostitution is based on private property and falls with it. Thus, communist society, instead of introducing community of women, in fact abolishes it.




— 22 —
What will be the attitude of communism to existing nationalities?
The nationalities of the peoples associating themselves in accordance with the principle of community will be compelled to mingle with each other as a result of this association and thereby to dissolve themselves, just as the various estate and class distinctions must disappear through the abolition of their basis, private property.[3]




— 23 —
What will be its attitude to existing religions?
All religions so far have been the expression of historical stages of development of individual peoples or groups of peoples. But communism is the stage of historical development which makes all existing religions superfluous and brings about their disappearance[4]




— 24 —
How do communists differ from socialists?
The so-called socialists are divided into three categories.



[ Reactionary Socialists: ]
The first category consists of adherents of a feudal and patriarchal society which has already been destroyed, and is still daily being destroyed, by big industry and world trade and their creation, bourgeois society. This category concludes, from the evils of existing society, that feudal and patriarchal society must be restored because it was free of such evils. In one way or another, all their proposals are directed to this end.

This category of reactionary socialists, for all their seeming partisanship and their scalding tears for the misery of the proletariat, is nevertheless energetically opposed by the communists for the following reasons:

(i) It strives for something which is entirely impossible.

(ii) It seeks to establish the rule of the aristocracy, the guildmasters, the small producers, and their retinue of absolute or feudal monarchs, officials, soldiers, and priests – a society which was, to be sure, free of the evils of present-day society but which brought it at least as many evils without even offering to the oppressed workers the prospect of liberation through a communist revolution.

(iii) As soon as the proletariat becomes revolutionary and communist, these reactionary socialists show their true colors by immediately making common cause with the bourgeoisie against the proletarians.



[ Bourgeois Socialists: ]
The second category consists of adherents of present-day society who have been frightened for its future by the evils to which it necessarily gives rise. What they want, therefore, is to maintain this society while getting rid of the evils which are an inherent part of it.

To this end, some propose mere welfare measures – while others come forward with grandiose systems of reform which, under the pretense of re-organizing society, are in fact intended to preserve the foundations, and hence the life, of existing society.

Communists must unremittingly struggle against these bourgeois socialists because they work for the enemies of communists and protect the society which communists aim to overthrow.



[ Democratic Socialists: ]
Finally, the third category consists of democratic socialists who favor some of the same measures the communists advocate, as described in Question 18, not as part of the transition to communism, however, but as measures which they believe will be sufficient to abolish the misery and evils of present-day society.

These democratic socialists are either proletarians who are not yet sufficiently clear about the conditions of the liberation of their class, or they are representatives of the petty bourgeoisie, a class which, prior to the achievement of democracy and the socialist measures to which it gives rise, has many interests in common with the proletariat.

It follows that, in moments of action, the communists will have to come to an understanding with these democratic socialists, and in general to follow as far as possible a common policy with them – provided that these socialists do not enter into the service of the ruling bourgeoisie and attack the communists.

It is clear that this form of co-operation in action does not exclude the discussion of differences.




— 25 —
What is the attitude of the communists to the
other political parties of our time?
This attitude is different in the different countries.

In England, France, and Belgium, where the bourgeoisie rules, the communists still have a common interest with the various democratic parties, an interest which is all the greater the more closely the socialistic measures they champion approach the aims of the communists – that is, the more clearly and definitely they represent the interests of the proletariat and the more they depend on the proletariat for support. In England, for example, the working-class Chartists are infinitely closer to the communists than the democratic petty bourgeoisie or the so-called Radicals.

In America, where a democratic constitution has already been established, the communists must make the common cause with the party which will turn this constitution against the bourgeoisie and use it in the interests of the proletariat – that is, with the agrarian National Reformers.

In Switzerland, the Radicals, though a very mixed party, are the only group with which the communists can co-operate, and, among these Radicals, the Vaudois and Genevese are the most advanced.

In Germany, finally, the decisive struggle now on the order of the day is that between the bourgeoisie and the absolute monarchy. Since the communists cannot enter upon the decisive struggle between themselves and the bourgeoisie until the bourgeoisie is in power, it follows that it is in the interest of the communists to help the bourgeoisie to power as soon as possible in order the sooner to be able to overthrow it. Against the governments, therefore, the communists must continually support the radical liberal party, taking care to avoid the self-deceptions of the bourgeoisie and not fall for the enticing promises of benefits which a victory for the bourgeoisie would allegedly bring to the proletariat. The sole advantages which the proletariat would derive from a bourgeois victory would consist

(i) in various concessions which would facilitate the unification of the proletariat into a closely knit, battle-worthy, and organized class; and

(ii) in the certainly that, on the very day the absolute monarchies fall, the struggle between bourgeoisie and proletariat will start. From that day on, the policy of the communists will be the same as it now is in the countries where the bourgeoisie is already in power.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Footnotes
The following footnotes are from the Chinese Edition of
Marx/Engels Selected Works
Peking, Foreign Languages Press, 1977.
with editorial additions by marxists.org




Introduction In 1847 Engels wrote two draft programmes for the Communist League in the form of a catechism, one in June and the other in October. The latter, which is known as Principles of Communism, was first published in 1914. The earlier document Draft of the Communist Confession of Faith, was only found in 1968. It was first published in 1969 in Hamburg, together with four other documents pertaining to the first congress of the Communist League, in a booklet entitled Gründungs Dokumente des Bundes der Kommunisten (Juni bis September 1847) (Founding Documents of the Communist League).

At the June 1847 Congress of the League of the Just, which was also the founding conference of the Communist League, it was decided to issue a draft “confession of faith” to be submitted for discussion to the sections of the League. The document which has now come to light is almost certainly this draft. Comparison of the two documents shows that Principles of Communism is a revised edition of this earlier draft. In Principles of Communism, Engels left three questions unanswered, in two cases with the notation “unchanged” (bleibt); this clearly refers to the answers provided in the earlier draft.

The new draft for the programme was worked out by Engels on the instructions of the leading body of the Paris circle of the Communist League. The instructions were decided on after Engles’ sharp criticism at the committee meeting, on October 22, 1847, of the draft programme drawn up by the “true socialist” Moses Hess, which was then rejected.

Still considering Principles of Communism as a preliminary draft, Engels expressed the view, in a letter to Marx dated November 23-24 1847, that it would be best to drop the old catechistic form and draw up a programme in the form of a manifesto.

“Think over the Confession of Faith a bit. I believe we had better drop the catechism form and call the thing: Communist Manifesto. As more or less history has got to be related in it, the form it has been in hitherto is quite unsuitable. I am bringing what I have done here with me; it is in simple narrative form, but miserably worded, in fearful haste. ...”

At the second congress of the Communist League (November 29-December 8, 1847) Marx and Engels defended the fundamental scientific principles of communism and were trusted with drafting a programme in the form of a manifesto of the Communist Party. In writing the manifesto the founders of Marxism made use of the propositions enunciated in Principles of Communism.

Engels uses the term Manufaktur, and its derivatives, which have been translated “manufacture”, “manufacturing”, etc., Engels used this word literally, to indicate production by hand, not factory production for which Engels uses “big industry”. Manufaktur differs from handicraft (guild production in mediaeval towns), in that the latter was carried out by independent artisans. Manufacktur is carried out by homeworkers working for merchant capitalists, or by groups of craftspeople working together in large workshops owned by capitalists. It is therefore a transitional mode of production, between guild (handicraft) and modern (capitalist) forms of production.

(Last paragraph paraphrased from the
Introduction by Pluto Press, London, 1971)

1. In their works written in later periods, Marx and Engels substituted the more accurate concepts of “sale of labour power”, “value of labour power” and “price of labour power” (first introduced by Marx) for “sale of labour”, “value of labour” and “price of labour”, as used here.

2. Engels left half a page blank here in the manuscript. The Draft of the Communist Confession of Faith, has the answer shown for the same question (Number 12).

3. Engels’ put “unchanged” here, referring to the answer in the June draft under No. 21 which is shown.

4. Similarly, this refers to the answer to Question 23 in the June draft.

5. The Chartists were the participants in the political movement of the British workers which lasted from the 1830s to the middle 1850s and had as its slogan the adoption of a People’s Charter, demanding universal franchise and a series of conditions guaranteeing voting rights for all workers. Lenin defined Chartism as the world’s “first broad, truly mass and politically organized proletarian revolutionary movement” (Collected Works, Eng. ed., Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1965, Vol. 29, p. 309.) The decline of the Chartist movement was due to the strengthening of Britain’s industrial and commercial monopoly and the bribing of the upper stratum of the working class (“the labour aristocracy”) by the British bourgeoisie out of its super-profits. Both factors led to the strengthening of opportunist tendencies in this stratum as expressed, in particular, by the refusal of the trade union leaders to support Chartism.

6. Probably a references to the National Reform Association, founded during the 1840s by George H. Evans, with headquarters in New York City, which had for its motto, “Vote Yourself a Farm”.