The Corona Virus pandemic is raging around the world. In America, it is almost completely out of control. It is estimated that over five million Americans have been infected, with the death rate at over 170,000. The number of dead is expected to double within the next several months. As well, the stock market is expected to crash any day now, as the country enters a second Great Depression. The ”economic stimulus package”, in the form of six hundred dollar weekly payments to families, has just expired. Within a month, landlords will be issuing legal eviction notices. It is estimated that an additional forty million people will soon become homeless. The presidential elections are on the horizon, and Trump and his henchmen see the havoc caused by the virus as an opportunity!
The Democratic candidate for president has chosen a woman as his ”running mate”, as the candidate for Vice President. She is a member of a minority, a ”woman of colour”, in that she is considered to be ”black and brown”. This is considered to be a politically correct way to say that her father was from Jamaica and her mother was from India. Or as the press politely phrases it, she is ”Black and East Indian”.
For the benefit of those who are just now becoming politically active, I will mention that the American Indigenous people were formerly referred to as ”Indians”, a term which is objected to by both Indigenous people and people from India. That is the reason the press refers to people from India as East Indian. Apparently it is now politically correct to refer to ”Afro Americans” as Black. Bear in mind that these expressions are not mine.
Be that as it may, Trump and his advisors have wasted no time in slandering this woman. They claim that she is not ”qualified” to run for the office, as she ”was not born in America”. They offer no shred of evidence to support this charge.
This is not too surprising, as Trump is just as much a racist as he is a liar. And of course Trump lies constantly. Even when his lips are not moving, he lies, in the form of tweets. The only thing he hates more than minorities are female minorities, especially those who do not ”know their place”. As far as Trump is concerned, every woman has her place, and that place is prone. That is the reason he surrounds himself with attractive young women, those who do not object to being ”groped”, which is a polite term for sexual assault.
Perhaps it is ironic to think that Trump had no ambition to become president. He ran for president on an impulse, that which entertainers refer to as a ”publicity stunt”. Bear in mind that Trump is, first and foremost, an entertainer. Also bear in mind that most people did not expect him to win. Yet win he did, and perhaps no one was more surprised than Donald Trump. As a result of this, he has since found that he enjoys the power, and has no intention of relinquishing that power. As his popularity is currently ”nose diving” in the polls, that creates a little problem. But as Trump is a resourceful man, he has developed a plan to ”win” the upcoming election.
The medical experts are all agreed that we should exercise ”social distancing”, to stay at least six feet apart, and avoid gatherings. The trouble is that in order to vote, it is frequently necessary to wait in line. That simply cannot be done, while exercising social distancing. The only alternative is to vote by mail.
The crisis caused by the virus, the illness and death of countless Americans, is seen by Trump as nothing less than an opportunity! As most people will be forced to vote by mail, he is making arrangements to ensure that a proper vote will never take place! The votes which are cast by mail will never be counted by the deadline! Trump can then declare that the election was fraudulent! Trump plans to remain in power, and not just for another four years, but indefinitely!
As part of his plan to sabotage the election, he has recently placed one of his loyal henchmen in charge of the post office. The new manager of the post office just discontinued numerous sorting machines. Various public blue post office boxes have been placed in storage. Employees are required to close the post offices on a regular basis, cutting the hours of service. Now the budget of the postal service is cut to the point that ”snail mail” is no longer a joke. People are already complaining about the time it takes to receive their mail. At the time of the election, when there is anticipated to be an avalanche of additional mail, in the form of ballots, the newly appointed head of the postal service will make sure that few of them reach their destination, at least not before the deadline. That will give Trump a chance to proclaim that the election was a fraud, null and void, and he will continue to ”serve” as president. Mission accomplished.
Perhaps someone should tell Trump that the American people are not about to put up with this. Then again, it would not do any good. Besides, he is about to learn this the hard way. The American people are heroic, with a proud history of revolution. Very soon, they are about to stage another revolution, the Second American Revolution. The upcoming presidential election, which Trump plans to declare fraudulent, could well prove to be the spark which triggers the revolution.
Once again, I will mention, for the sake of those working people who are only now becoming politically active – and I hope there are a great many of you!- that there was a time, commonly referred to as the ”stone age”, in which classes did not exist. It was not the ”golden age” of humanity, as people did not live in a ”Garden of Eden”. On the contrary, life tended to be short and brutal. So there is no need to become nostalgic over that which existed long before we were born. The ”good old days” it was not.
Those days ended with the beginning of civilization. The first classes appeared, in the form of slaves and slave owners. As can be well imagined, there was conflict between the classes. That which was in the best interest of one class, say the slave owners, was in the worst interest of the slaves, and of course the opposite is true. In short, as soon as classes came into existence, class conflict appeared. In fact, we cannot have classes without class conflict. In due time, slavery by and large gave way to the feudal system, which was not a vast improvement.
Then a strange thing happened. Around or about the years 1720 to 1740, in Great Britain, there appeared an industrial revolution. It quickly spread to other countries, and in fact it is still spreading. This industrial revolution created two new classes. The burghers of the ”middle ages” became transformed into the class of capitalists, or ”bourgeois”, derived from the word burgher. These newly minted capitalists in turn needed workers to run their machines, and these workers became hourly employees, ”proletarians”. In short, the industrial revolution gave birth to two new classes, bourgeois and proletarian. As usual, the two classes immediately came into conflict. That class conflict has in no way abated. On the contrary, it is now raging at a fever pitch.
At first, no one could understand this new creation, that of capitalism. It took the genius of Karl Marx to explain it, in his book Capital. Then in 1848, he and his friend and collaborator, Friedrich Engels, wrote the Communist Manifesto. Remarkably enough, it is as true today as when it was first written.
The introduction of the Communist Manifesto expresses the terror of all bourgeois:
”A spectre is haunting Europe – the spectre of Communism.”
The only difference now is that this ”spectre” has spread around the world, including America. To this day the bourgeois live in mortal dread of Communism. As Communism is the worst enemy of capitalism, there is a reason for this. It goes on to say that:
”The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones.”
That is quite clear. Now that the revolution is on the horizon, it is important to bear in mind that Trump is not the problem. The problem is that the bourgeoisie, the monopoly capitalists, the imperialists, are in charge. Trump is merely a member of that class, and as Lenin stated it, ”imperialists are completely reactionary”. We can expect nothing progressive from them. It is therefore up to the working class, the proletariat, to overthrow the bourgeoisie and crush them, under the Dictatorship Of the Proletariat.
The Communist Manifesto lets us know what to expect during a revolution. It goes on to say:
”Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses however, this distinct feature: it has simplified class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other – Bourgeoisie and Proletariat.”
That is certainly true now, more so than ever before. The peasants, in the form of the family farmer, have been all but wiped out, at least in North America. That leaves the middle class, the petty bourgeois, and they are being squeezed ever tighter by the monopoly capitalists, the bourgeoisie, or the imperialists, as that is the correct technical term. The remainder of the middle class is ”living on borrowed time”. As the stock market crashes and the country enters another Great Depression, as ever more millions find themselves homeless as well as unemployed, so too ever more small businesses will face bankruptcy. The owners of those businesses will find themselves joining the ranks of the working class, as proletarians.
This was forecast by Marx and Engels in the Communist Manifesto:
”The lower strata of the middle class -the small tradespeople, shopkeepers and retired tradesmen generally, the handicraftsmen and peasants, – all these sink gradually into the proletariat, partly because their diminutive capital does not suffice for the scale on which Modern Industry is carried on, and is swamped in the competition with the large capitalists, partly because their specialized skill is rendered worthless by new methods of production. Thus the proletariat is recruited from all classes of the population….These also supply the proletariat with fresh elements of enlightenment and progress. Finally, in times when the class struggle nears the decisive hour, the progress of dissolution going on within the ruling class, in fact within the whole range of old society, assumes such a violent, glaring character, that a small section of the ruling class cuts itself adrift, and joins the revolutionary class, the class that holds the future in its hands. Just as, therefore, at an earlier period, a section of the nobility went over to the bourgeoisie, so now a portion of the bourgeoisie goes over to the proletariat, and in particular a portion of the bourgeois ideologists, who have raised themselves to the level of comprehending theoretically the historical movement as a whole.”
This is of exceptional importance because the working class, the proletariat, is not aware of itself as a class. This class awareness can only come from an outside source, and that outside source is of course the bourgeois intellectuals, or ”ideologists”, as Marx refers to them. Only such people, former members of either the middle class, the petty bourgeois, or the upper class, the bourgeoisie, can raise the consciousness of the working class, the proletariat, to the level of that of Marxists. The members of the working class who are true Marxists are few and far between.
No doubt the ”decisive hour” is fast approaching, as the class struggle is assuming a ”violent, glaring character”. The current ”ruling class”, in this case the bourgeoisie, is already starting to splinter. It is safe to say that cracks are beginning to appear in their ”united front”. It is the bourgeoisie that owns the press, and the journalists are allowed to report only that which their employers want them to report. At the ”news conferences” with Trump, they are allowed to ask only general questions. Certain questions are strictly forbidden. Yet at a recent news conference, a journalist asked Trump the question which was previously forbidden: ”Do you regret all the lying you have done to the American people?” Trump was so shocked that the journalist had to repeat the question. Then of course Trump refused to provide an answer.
That question is an indication that the bourgeoisie is beginning to quarrel among themselves. The people who own the news outlet, for whom that journalist worked, allowed him to ask that question. Those people are members of the bourgeoisie, and they have taken a stand, against the other members of their class.
It is clear that ”a small section of the ruling class”, in this case the bourgeoisie, has separated itself, or ”cut itself adrift” from the rest of the class, and has now ”joined the revolutionary class”, in this case the proletariat, the ”class that holds the future in its hands”. Without doubt, the ”class struggle nears the decisive hour”, and as that is the case, we should know what to expect. No doubt, not all members of the working class, the proletariat, will become revolutionary. In fact, we can expect some of them to oppose the revolution.
The Communist Manifesto goes on to let us know what to expect:
” the dangerous class, the ‘lumpen proletariat’, the social scum, that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of the old society, may, here and there, be swept into the movement by a proletarian revolution; its conditions of life, however, prepare it far more for the part of a bribed tool of reactionary intrigue.”
As we have no shortage of ”lumpen proletariat”, those who have been ”thrown off” by the old society, if only through no fault of their own, we know what to expect. No doubt the bourgeoisie will attempt to use them to their advantage, as a ”bribed tool of reaction”, to try to crush the revolution. We can only hope the proletarian revolution is strong enough to sweep them up into the movement.
This brings us to Section II, Proletarians and Communists:
”In what relation do the Communists stand to the proletarians as a whole?
”The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to the other working class parties.
”They have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat as a whole.
”They do not set up any sectarian principles of their own, by which to shape and mold the proletariat movement.
”The Communists are distinguished from the other working class parties by this only 1: In the national struggles of the proletarians of the different countries, they point out and bring to the front the common interest of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality. 2. In the various stages of development which the struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie has to pass through, they always and everywhere represent the interest of the movement as a whole.
”The Communists, therefore, are on the one hand, practically, the most advanced and resolute section of the working class parties of each country, that section which pushes forward all others; on the other hand, theoretically, they have over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the line of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement.
”The immediate aim of the Communists is the same as that of all other proletarian parties: formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the proletariat.”
From this it is clear that the Communists are intellectuals, aware of the existence of classes and the role the working class must play in overthrowing the capitalists, the bourgeoisie, and setting up the Dictatorship Of the Proletariat. They refer to themselves as ”conscious people”, as they are well aware of the class struggle, of the fact that the working class spontaneously rises up against the bourgeoisie. This is to say that the working class, the proletariat, gets into motion, by the millions, without knowing what it is doing! The social scientists refer to this as a ”spontaneous uprising”, while I refer to it as an Act of God.
The Communists are equally well aware that the members of the working class, the proletariat, are not aware of themselves as a class. The conditions of life of a proletarian do not lead to this awareness. It is therefore the duty of Marxists, most of whom are current or former members of the ”propertied classes”, to bring this awareness to the workers, to raise the working class, or at least to raise the most advanced workers, to the level of awareness of Marxists.
It is also clear that the one and only way to ”overthrow the bourgeois supremacy”, to achieve the ”conquest of political power by the proletariat”, is through revolution. As for those who doubt that, feel free to consider all the wars the American government has been involved in, including the present wars. At the same time, consider the virus which is devastating the country, the homeless and unemployed, soon to be augmented by millions of more Americans. Feel free to compare that to the homes and lifestyles of the billionaires, the bourgeoisie. Bear in mind that Trump is merely one member of the bourgeoisie, and he represents their interests. The rest of his class are about as anxious to part with their wealth and power, as he is.
The Communist Manifesto goes on to say ”the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property….In one word, you reproach us with intending to do away with your property. Precisely so; that is just what we intend.”
No wonder the capitalists so passionately hate the Communists! This hatred of the Communists is matched in intensity only by their love of their property!
That brings us to one of the strongest accusations against us:
”The Communists are further reproached with desiring to abolish countries and nationality.
”The working men have no country. We cannot take from them what they have not got. Since the proletariat must first of all acquire political supremacy, must rise to the leading class of the nation, must constitute itself the class, it is so far, itself national, though not in the bourgeois sense of the word.
”National differences and antagonisms between peoples are daily more and more vanishing, owing to the development of the bourgeoisie, to freedom of commerce, to the world market, to uniformity in the mode of production and to the conditions of life corresponding thereto.
”The supremacy of the proletariat will cause them to vanish still faster. United action, of the leading civilized countries at least, is one of the first conditions for the emancipation of the proletariat.
”In proportion as the exploitation of one individual by another will also be put an end to, the exploitation of one nation by another will also be put an end to. In proportion as the antagonism between the classes within the nation vanishes, the hostility of one nation to another will come to an end.”
The fact of the matter is that the bourgeoisie love war. If nothing else, war is most profitable, or as they put it, ”good for business”. As a result of war, the factories run at full capacity and the war material thus produced tends to be quickly destroyed, resulting in an ever greater demand. This greater demand gives rise to an increase in price, according to the well known capitalist ”law of supply and demand”.
Of course, it remains for the working class to fight the wars of the bourgeoisie, to kill workers of other countries. They would have us believe that this is an act of patriotism, true ”defence of the motherland”. It is only the Communists, the true leaders of the working class, who call for the war to be turned into a civil war, to turn the rifles against the bourgeoisie. The war must be turned into a revolutionary war.
There are other accusations against the Communists, which the Communist Manifesto documents:
”The charges against Communism made from a religious, a philosophical, and generally, from an ideological stand point, are not deserving of serious examination.
”Does it require deep intuition to comprehend that mans ideas, views and conceptions, in one word, mans consciousness, changes with every change in the conditions of his material existence, in his social relations and his social life?
”What else does the history of ideas prove, than that intellectual production changes its character in proportion as material production is changed? The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class.
”When people speak of the ideas that revolutionize society, they do but express that fact that within the old society the elements of a new one have been created, and that the dissolution of the old ideas keep even pace with the dissolution of the old conditions of existence.”
The industrial revolution has given rise to socialized production, so that it is only natural that we should think in terms of socialism. The ”old ideas”, that of the ”blessings of capitalism”, must be dissolved, along with the ”old conditions of existence”, which is wage slavery, for the proletariat. This is another way of saying that the bourgeoisie must be overthrown and crushed under the Dictatorship Of the Proletariat.
The Communist Manifesto makes this quite clear in the following passages:
”The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organized as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible.
”Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionizing the mode of production.
”These measures will, of course, be different in different countries.
”Nevertheless, in most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable.
- Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
- A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
- Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
- Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
- Centralization of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
- Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
- Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state; the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
- Equal liability of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
- Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; global abolition of all the distinctions between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.
- Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, etc.
”When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared, and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character. Political power, properly so called, is merely the organized power of one class for oppressing another. If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organize itself as a class, if, by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms, and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class.
”In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.”
It is clear that the approaching revolution will give rise to the Dictatorship Of the Proletariat, in which the current ruling class, the bourgeoisie, will be crushed. The measures which Marx outlined will lead to the abolition of class antagonisms, and of ”classes generally”, so that all classes will eventually disappear.
All of this was written in 1848, and at that time he referred to the ”proletariat organized as the ruling class”. It was only in 1871, after the experience of the Paris Commune, that he began to refer to the Dictatorship Of the Proletariat.
In 1871, the workers of Paris revolted and took over the city. They shared the little they had and set up the first workers state. They referred to this as the Paris Commune. The bourgeoisie wasted no time in crushing the rebellion. This experience, brief as it was, provided Marx with valuable information. In fact, it was so valuable that he added it as an amendment to the Communist Manifesto. The workers, once they seized control of the city, failed to crush the capitalists, the bourgeoisie, or at least not with sufficient enthusiasm. At that point, Marx stressed the point that the working class, or ”the proletariat organized as the ruling class”, was not being stated strongly enough. It is necessary, after the proletariat seizes political power, to crush the capitalists, the bourgeoisie, with a certain enthusiasm. In this, the workers of the Paris Commune were negligent, and was one of the reasons that the Commune was crushed. As Marx put it, the working class must absolutely crush the bourgeoisie, through a dictatorship, the Dictatorship Of the Proletariat.
I use capital letters as a means of stressing the importance of that method of rule, and as a means of drawing a clear distinction between the true Marxists, and those who merely claim to be Communists. The ”phoney Marxists”, technically referred to as social chauvinists, are in fact loyal servants of the bourgeoisie, and are careful to make no mention of the Dictatorship Of the Proletariat.
With that in mind, there is an urgent need for a true party to lead the working class, which can only be a Communist Party, and I can suggest that the name of the party be Communist Party, Dictatorship Of the Proletariat, or CP,DOP.
Such a party can only be formed by ”conscious people”, Communists, those who are aware of the revolutionary theories of Marx and Lenin. It is very likely that most of them will be former members of the ”upper classes”, of necessity. The bourgeoisie make a point of keeping the working class ”in the dark”.
To further learn from the experience of previous revolutions, we can examine the Russian revolution. In early 1917, after the Russian people had risen up and overthrown the Czar, the Russian bourgeoisie came to undisputed power. A ”bourgeois democratic republic” was established, referred to as the Kerensky regime. This regime was generous with promises, such as land to the peasants, an end to the war, a Constituent Assembly, improved working conditions for workers, etc. Of course it was all a pack of lies, and Lenin was determined to carry the revolution through to its logical socialist conclusion. With that in mind, he wrote State and Revolution. This was based heavily on The Communist Manifesto, especially the stress Marx placed on the mistakes made by the workers of the Paris Commune. In particular:
”But the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes.”
The existing state machine, set up by the small minority, the capitalists, the bourgeoisie, for the purpose of crushing the vast majority, the working class, the proletariat, must be smashed. In its place, a new state apparatus must be established, for the purpose of crushing the desperate and determined resistance of the bourgeoisie. This new state apparatus is referred to as the Dictatorship Of the Proletariat.
Under the leadership of Lenin, on November 7, 1917, the Russian socialist revolution took place. The working class of Russia took the advice of Marx. The bourgeoisie were overthrown and crushed under the Dictatorship Of the Proletariat.
As it is clear that the next American revolution is fast approaching, it is vital that workers prepare for the Dictatorship Of the Proletariat. With that in mind, I can only encourage a careful reading of the Communist Manifesto and State and Revolution. The various agents of the bourgeoisie, within the working class, will do their best to divert the revolutionary movement onto a harmless path of social reform. If they succeed, nothing will change.
With that in mind, in the immortal words of Marx and Lenin:
Workers of the World, Unite!
Prepare For the Dictatorship Of the Proletariat!
Victory Or Death!
Gerald McIsaac Science Project 