Stalin was right
Volume 1, no. 1 $ 5.00
By Daniel Paquet
Naturally, it is high time to assess modestly the disruption of the political-economical system that prevailed in Soviet Union, following the death of Joseph Stalin (1953). How did react the ordinary fellow? Was it not a proof that it is impossible to build socialism, whenever and wherever on Earth; while the so-called ‘truths’ spread by Western mass-media pretend the opposite?
Well, for example, just take the measures adopted by the Soviet power, promoted by the Communists, with a comparison to the Nazi party (in Germany) solving, so to speak, the national ‘problems’, like heralded Adolf Hitler in his notorious book, Mein Kampf.
In opposition, Marx and Engels published well before the Manifesto of the Communist Party.
“Karl Marx is born in Prussia on May 5th, 1818. Later in life, Karl Marx declared that he wasn’t a Marxist. (Actually, in regard with the political action of “gauchistes” (basing their theories on the so called teachings of Marx, and spontaneity; he condemned them and refuted their political and ideological belonging to Marxism, - Ed.).
Marx studied law before becoming a journalist, (at Rheinishes Zeitung), and the strong, negative [sic!] reaction to his radical views) forced him to move (escape himself and his family) to Paris, then London. (Actually, he was expelled from Prussia and condemned to live temporarily to Paris, then London, constantly pursued by the Prussian police. Along with his friend and colleague Friedrich Engels, Marx published (on behalf of the German craftsmen in exile to Western Europe, The Manifesto of the Communist Party, in 1848). (…)
Though most communist states failed, Marx’s warnings about the wide gap between the haves and the have-nots … echoed in the Occupy Wall Street movement. This whole essay demonstrates that Marx and Engels paved the way through class struggles and the dictatorship of the proletariat. (Hopwood, Kate, Karl Marx is born in Prussia, The Globe and Mail, Thursday, May 5, 2016, page A2).
“The ‘Manifesto’ being our joint production, I consider myself bound to state that the fundamental proposition, which forms its nucleus, belongs to Marx. That proposition is: that in every historical epoch, the prevailing mode of economic production and exchange, and the social organization necessarily following from it, form the basis upon which is built up, and from which alone can be explained, the political and intellectual history of mankind (since the dissolution of primitive tribal society, holding land in common ownership) has been a history of class struggles, contest between exploiting and exploited, ruling and oppressed classes; that the history of those class struggles forms a series of evolutions in which, now–a-days, a stage has been reached where the exploited and oppressed class – the proletariat – cannot attain its emancipation from the sway of the exploiting and ruling class – the bourgeoisie – without, at the same time, and once and for all, emancipating society at large from all exploitation, oppression, class distinctions and class struggles.” (Marx, Karl/ Engels, Frederick, Manifesto of the Communist Party, Preface to the English Edition of 1888, Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1970; Reprinted in the U.S.A., 2012, pp. 10-11).
“The Manifesto does full justice to the revolutionary part played by capitalism in the past. The first capitalist nation was Italy. The close of the feudal middle Ages and the opening of the modern capitalist era are marked by a colossal figure: an Italian, Dante, both the last poet of the middle Ages and the first poet of modern times. Today, as in 1300, a new historical era is approaching. Will Italy give us the new Dante, who will mark the hour of birth of this new, proletarian era?” (Manifesto, Preface to the Italian Edition of 1893, page 22).
“By bourgeoisie is meant the class of modern Capitalists, owners of the means of social production and employers of wage-labour.
By proletariat, the class of modern wage-labourers who, having no means of production of their own, are reduced to selling their labour-power to live. [Note by Engels to the English Edition of 1888.]” (Manifesto, Bourgeois and Proletarians, Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1970; Reprinted in the U.S.A., 2012, page 25).
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. (Manifesto, page 26). (…)
Modern industry has established the world market, for which the discovery of America paved the way. This market has given an immense development to commerce, to navigation, to communication by land. This development has, in its turn, reacted on the extension of industry; and in proportion as industry, commerce, navigation, railways, extended in the same proportion the bourgeoisie developed, increased its capital, and pushed into the background every class handed down from the Middle Ages. (Manifesto, page 27) (…)
The executive of the modern State is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.” (Manifesto, pages 26-28).
Then, this short essay is divided in two parts:
a) Marxism before the Great October Russian Revolution;
b) Marxism-Leninism after the 1917 Socialist Revolution.
Consequently, the first part insists on the theoretical heritage handed down by Marx, Engels and Lenin; while the second section deals mostly with the construction of real socialism-communism in Soviet Union, under Joseph Stalin and the Bolsheviks guidance. It will contain an appreciation of historical and general factors that took place in Russia. The struggle between Marxist-Leninist ideology and Nazism (which is the most horrible upsurge of capitalists) war being their ultimate form in the arena of politics. Was it not the Prussian General, von Clausewitz, who said that war is politics by other means? Further, imperialism is, according to Lenin the highest stage of capitalism.
The keen reader should dwell on Lenin’s Development of capitalism in Russia; he will discover that Russia was already a capitalist country before the 1905 first revolution: (magnificent rehearsal) of the October 1917 Socialist Revolution.
So far, in 1848, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels predicted a new type of society which would supersede capitalism. They wrote: “All objections waged against the Communistic mode of producing and appropriating material products, have, in the same way, been waged against the Communistic modes of producing and appropriating intellectual products. Just as, to the bourgeois, the disappearance of class property is the disappearance of production itself, so the disappearance of class culture is to him identical with the disappearance of all culture.” (Manifesto, page 45).
“The U.S.S.R. was far from the perfect society or the perfect life, as yet –but it was moving faster in its improvement than any previous community in history. The speed of progress was due particularly to the way in which Lenin’s advice –that ‘every cook should be able to manage the State’ - was being acted upon”. (Rothstein, Andrew, A History of the U.S.S.R., First published in Britain in 1950; Reprinted in the U.S.A. in 2013 by Red Star Publishers, page 391).
Previously, Marx and Engels raised another question, about the management of the economical sphere of society: “What else does the history of ideas prove, than that intellectual production (ex. management) 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. (…)
The dissolution of the old ideas keeps even pace with the dissolution [or would-be revolution, -Ed.] of the old conditions of existence.” (Manifesto, page 48).
Nowadays, after the 90s capitalist anti-Soviet and anti-Communist frenzy and obsession, the bourgeoisie’s mass media are back to usual business: the quest for surplus-value, for instance: “the possibility that the world has its peak gold certainly sounds as if it should send prices of the metal soaring, much as fears of peak oil drove big gains in petroleum prices a few years back. However, there’s a crucial difference between the two concepts.
“Imaginea Energy CEO Suzanne West says Imaginea was still making money at $30 a barrel, albeit thanks to having but favorable price hedges in place.
“Ultimately, even if oil goes back up for some miraculous reason, it will not be competitive.” she says. “There will be other choices, cleaner choices, cheaper choices. The world is moving toward affordable energy for all of the people – so people in Africa can have heat and light at a low cost. We’ve got to do it fast and we’ve got to do is disruptively,” she says.(…)
Another idea is employing drones in the field. Cutting down on crews driving trucks to wells, as the industry has done since John D. Rockefeller’s time, would reduce emissions and harmful impact on roads and trails, while also allowing the company to gather much more data remotely. (…)
“It’s not helpful to live in the world of ‘or’, where you’re either a crazy tree-hugger or a greedy capitalist.”
Unlike oil, gold isn’t consumed. Rather than being burned as fuel, gold’s job is simply to sit there and look pretty. It’s extremely adept at doing just that. The metal has been valued as a store of wealth precisely because it refuses to rot, corrode or tarnish.
As a result, all the gold that has ever been mined throughout history still exists. (…)
The Crédit Suisse team estimates that annual supply from mines hits a high of 3,186 tons in 2015. They predict it will fade below 3,000 tons by 2018 [and] would still be running well ahead of levels before the great commodity boom. Prior to 2009, the world’s mines were producing less than 2,500 tons a year, according to Crédit Suisse estimates. (…)
One belief that unites many gold enthusiasts is a conviction that the global economy is on the verge of chaos. (…)
‘If you hold cash, you lose money. In such a world, gold’s function as a store and unit of value is obvious’, says Barrick executive chairman John Thornton. He adds: ‘If central banks are recklessly printing money, inflation should be running rampant through the global economy as the flood of new cash bids prices higher.” (McGugan, Ian, Peak gold? Testing a rally’s strength, The Globe and Mail, Report on Business, Toronto, Saturday, April 30, 2016, page B7).
In addition, the very idea behind economy (to who belongs the means of production and the means of distribution, -Ed.), private ownership, leaves a very tiny room to nation-wide debate (especially for the vast majority, the working-class people, -Ed.). ‘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 (dictatorship of bourgeoisie or dictatorship of proletariat, -Ed.). If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is completed, by the force of circumstances, to organize itself as class (cf. well-known economist, Adam Smith, - Ed..), if by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class and at such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, ‘the same must be said of the laws of economic development, the laws of political economy – whether in the period of capitalism or in the period of socialism. Here, too, the laws of economic development, as in the case of natural science, are objective laws, reflecting processes of economic development which take place independently of the will of man… Man may utilize them in the interests of society, impart a different direction to the destructive action of some of the laws, restrict their sphere of action, and allow fuller scope to other laws that are forcing their way to the forefront; but he cannot destroy them or create new economic laws.” (Stalin, J. V., Economic Problems of Socialism in the U.S.S.R., Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1973; Reprinted in the U.S.A., 2012, page 3).
Scott Barlow, Globe Investor’s in house market strategist (Inside the Market online) wrote: “I am definitely not suggesting that oil is insignificant as a determinant of the loony’s value, just that relationship to the Canadian dollar is part of a chain of events that begins with the U.S. Federal Reserve’s monetary policy intentions. (…)
When the Fed sounds ‘hawkish’ – inclined toward raising interest rates – U.S. bond yields climb and the U.S. dollar strengthens against most major currencies (in anticipation of foreign money inflows) to benefit from higher bond yields), Importantly, when the greenback is strong , oil prices generally fall.
Where the value of the loony is concerned, I think relative bond yields matter more than the price of oil. Admittedly, the factors driving all of these market prices – bonds, currencies, and commodities – are interrelated, which makes causation difficult to assess [and] global investors’ frantic attempt to figure out how many U.S. rate hikes will occur in 2016. (Barlow, Scott, A lot more than oil driving the loonie, The Globe and Mail, Tuesday, May 3, 2016, Report on Business, page B11).
“One of the distinguishing features of political economy is that its laws, unlike those of natural science (cf. Adolf Hitler’s Nature, below), are impermanent, that they, or at least the majority of them, operate for a definite historical period, after which they give place to new laws.’ (Stalin, Economic Problems…, page 3).
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.” (Marx-Engels, Manifesto, page 51).
And the “electors has the right at any time to recall their deputies to the Soviets, and to proceed new elections.” (Rothstein, Andrew, page 107).
By the way, in relation with the world in transformation, the Philosopher says: “Just as there is an infinite succession of animaleulae is one fermenting speck of matter, so there is the same infinite succession of animaeulae in the speck called Earth. Who knows what animal species preceded us? Who knows what will follow our present ones?
“Everything changes and passes away, only the whole remains unchanged. The world is ceaselessly beginning and ending; at every moment it is at its beginning and its end. There has never been any other world, and never will be.” (Diderot, Denis, D’Alembert’s Dream, Penguin Books, Middlesex, 1966, page 174).
We are actually entering in the realm of materialism and dialectics.
In The Capital, Karl Marx investigated the secret of ‘commodity’; the basis of capitalism with is price of other ones such as gold in relation with reproduction and circulation of money, for instance.
“Year after year you will find that the value and mass of production increase, that the productive power of the national labour increase, and that the amount of money to circulate this increasing production continuously changes. What is true at the end of the year, and for different years compared with each other, is true for every average day of the year. The amount or magnitude of national production changes continuously. It is not a constant but a variable magnitude, and apart from changes in population it must be so, because of the continuous change in the accumulation of capital and the productive powers of labour. It is perfectly true that if a rise in the general rate of wages should take place to-day, that rise, whatever its ulterior effects might be, would, by itself, not immediately change the amount of production. It would, in the first instance, proceed from the existing state of things. But if before the rise of wages the national production was variable, and not fixed, it will continue to be variable and not fixed after the rise of wages.” (Marx, Karl, Wages…, page 2).
“It is perfectly true that, considered as a whole; the working class spends, and must spend, its income upon necessaries. A general rise in the rate of wages would, therefore, produce a rise in the demand for, and consequently in the market prices of, necessaries. The capitalists who produce these necessaries would be compensated for the risen wages by the rising of their commodities. But how with the other capitalist, who do not produce necessaries? And you must not fancy them a small body. If you consider that two-thirds of the national produce are consumed by one-fifth of the population – a [then] member of the House of Commons (in England) stated… to be one-seventh of the population – you will understand what an immense proportion of the national produce must be produced in the shape of luxuries, or be exchanged for luxuries themselves must be wasted upon flunkeys, horses, cats, and so forth, a waste we know from experience to become always much limited with the rising prices of necessaries.” (Marx, Karl, Wages, Price and Profit, Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1975; Reprinted by Red Star Publishers, New York, 2014, pages 6-7).
In some countries, the State sells precious assets to alleviate its profits and deprives the people of social benefits that have been gained in the past and to enrich a handful of modern ‘princes’ who currently spends $can 15 billion – worth on military weapons. ‘Saudi Arabia, the world’s mightiest oil power, is throwing in the towel.
Mohammed bin Salman, the deputy Crown Prince, has vowed to change the lethargic, oil-obsessed kingdom to an economic revolution [sic!]. Its plan – ‘Vision for 2030’ – would do away with oil as the country’s lifeblood and bring in a diversified private sector economy. It calls for the initial public offering of Saudi Aramco, potentially valuing the world’s biggest oil company at more that $2-trillion (U.S.). (Reguly, Eric, A Saudi warning on oil prices, The Globe and Mail, Report on Business, Toronto, Saturday, 30 April, 2016, Section B, pages 1,14).
“The better question for the global oil industry, especially the high-cost producers like Canada, is what the Prince’s plan says about long-term oil prices. (Reguly, pages 1, 14) (…)
The Saudis fear the United States is losing interest in the Middle East in general and Saudi Arabia in particular, allowing an ascendant Iran to emerge as the dominant power in the region. (…)
The most compelling near-term bearish argument is that U.S. shale oil will come surging back if the price rises another 10 bucks or so. (…)
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) calculates that Saudi Arabia’s fiscal break-even in 2016 demands and oil-price of $67.70 price a barrel – well above the current price.” – (Reguly, page 14).
On the other hand, for the U.S.A. as such, they could diminish their presence in the region for two concrete reasons:
a) The Iranians control the Strait of Hormuz – the choke point between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman though which most of Saudi Arabia’s seaborne oil exports pass. The Saudis may fear that the day will come when oil tankers can’t get through the strait, so wiser not to base your entire economic future on a single product that needs to be floated out of the country.’
b) The foreign policy of capitalist Russia is in total opposition to the one of former socialist Soviet Union. If the first regime was anti-imperialist, inaugurated in 1917; it soon became imperialist under Eltsin and the internal capitalist class…. alongside with world imperialism. In Syria, for example: “Dr. Al Kassem, a Syrian-born Canadian surgeon, said he believes the hospital (named Al-Marjeh primary health-care centre) was targeted either by Russian or Syrian government forces, as none of the rebel factions or the Islamic State has proven itself incapable of carrying out air strikes. (…)
Since Russia joined the war last year with air strikes against Mr. al-Assad’s enemies, battlefield momentum has shifted in the government’s favour.” (Friesen, Joe, Canadian-funded clinic destroyed, The Globe and Mail, Toronto, Saturday April 30, 2016 page A3).
Here is a second display of proof about the dramatic event. “Syria’s divided city of Aleppo plunged back into the kind of all-out war not seen in months on Thursday, witnesses and health workers said as they reeled from government air strikes that demolished a hospital in the insurgent-held side and from retaliatory mortar assaults by rebels on the government-held side. (…)
The deadly destruction in Aleppo punctuated a drastic escalation in fighting over the past week that has shattered a partial truce in a war that has consumed Syria for more than five years.
Once Syria’s commercial centre, Aleppo has been an intermittent combat zone for much of the war, split into insurgent and government halves. It had enjoyed somewhat of a respite because of the partial ceasefire – until now [and] Russia’s military denied it was responsible.
In the case of Saudi Arabia, the deputy Crown Prince estimates that ‘Saudi Aramco might raise $100 billion, enough to buy the country some time to make the transition to a private sector market economy, but only some time.” (Reguly, page B14).
Since we are still dealing with ‘commodity’, “a commodity has a value, because it is a crystallization of social labour. The greatness of its value, of its relative value, depends of its value, of is relative value, depends upon the greater or less amount of that social substance mass of labour necessary for its production; that is to say, on the relative mass of labour necessary for its production. The relative values of commodities are, therefore, determined by the respective quantities or amounts of labour, worked up, realized, fixed in them. The correlative quantities of commodities which can be produced in the same time of labour are equal. Or the value of one commodity is to the value of another commodity as the quantity of labour is fixed in the one is to the quantity of labour fixed in the other. “(Marx, Karl, Wages, Price and Profit, page 26).
- Lenin: “Without a revolutionary theory there can be non revolutionary movement.” (What is to be done, page 21).
“The vehicle of science is not the proletariat, but the bourgeois intelligentsia (Karl Kautsky’s italics): it was in the minds of individual members of this stratum that modern Socialism originated, and it was they who communicated it to the more intellectually developed proletarians who, in their ties introduce it into the proletariat class struggle where conditions allow that to be done. Thus, socialist consciousness is something introduced into the proletarian class struggle from without (von Aussen Hineingetragenes) and not something that arose within it spontaneously (urwüchsig)” (Lenin, What is to be done, page 36).
The Economists (a political movement in Russia) and the present-day terrorists have one common root, namely, the worship of spontaneity (cf. the leadership of the Québec Student Movement, through ASSE); (…) and great is the difference between those who stress the ‘drab every day struggle’ and those who call for the most self-sacrificing struggle of individuals. But this is no paradox. The Economists and terrorists merely bow to different poles of spontaneity: the Economists bow to the spontaneity of the ‘pure’ working-class movement, while the terrorists bow to the spontaneity of the passionate indignation of intellectuals, who lack the ability or opportunity to link up the revolutionary struggle with the working-class movement, to form an integral whole. It is difficult indeed for those who have lost their belief, or who have never believed that this is possible, to find some outlet for their indignation and revolutionary energy other than terror. (Lenin, What is to be done, page 70; and Hitler, Adolf, Mein Kampf, Houghton Mifflin, Boston-New York, 1999, 694 pages).
In the early days of the Russian revolution, “a well-known Bolshevik, Uritsky, was shot at Petrograd (called after Leningrad), and on the following day, when a Left- Socialist Revolutionary terrorist, Dora Kaplan, penetrated into the courtyard of a big Moscow factory where Lenin had addressed a mass meeting of the workers and shot him, wounding him seriously.” (Rothstein, Andrew, page 103).
In 1924, a low-profile German soldier, Adolf Hitler, wrote: “I had a hard time putting forward my opinion that we must not dodge this struggle (against the Marxist ‘deceivers’ of the people), was inevitably a movement whose explicit aim was the winning of those masses which had hitherto stood exclusively in the service of the international Marxist Jewish stock exchange parties”, but prepare for it, and for this reason acquire the armament which alone offers protection against violence. Terror is not broken by the mind, but by terror.” (Hitler, Adolf, Mein Kampf, 1920, page 358).
But the working class remains the vanguard fighter for democracy. Nevertheless, “class consciousness can be brought to the worker only from without, that is, only from outside of the economic struggle, from outside of the sphere of relations between workers and employers.” (Lenin, What is to be done, Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1973; Reprinted by Red Star Publishers, U.S.A., 2014, page 73).
In addition, about the political stand of the working class, “We must also note that Engels is most definite in calling universal suffrage an instrument of bourgeois rule. Universal suffrage … is “the gauge of the maturity of the working class. It cannot and never will be anything more in the present-day state. “(Lenin, V.I. The State and Revolution, Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1970; Reprinted by Red Star Publishers, U.S.A. 2014, page 10).
“To organize the whole national economy on the lines of the postal service, so that the technicians, foremen, bookkeepers, as well as all officials, shall receive salaries no higher than ‘workman’s wage’, “all under the control and leadership of the armed proletariat – this is our immediate aim. It is such a state, standing on such an economic foundation, that we need, this is what will bring about the abolition of parliamentarism and the preservation of representative institutions. This is what will rid the labouring classes of the prostitution of these institutions by the bourgeoisie.” (Lenin, The State and Revolution, page 42).
“… Much of the world is locked in a deflationary vise, which is why negative interest rates have become a feature in Europe and Japan. “Modest economic recoveries in the euro area and Japan are being underpinned by expansionary monetary policy, low oil prices and past exchange rate depreciations. A number of factors continue to dampen growth and inflation. In the euro area, growth is being restrained by ongoing deleveraging, weak investor confidence and tight lending conditions. These factors are being partly offset by an increase in fiscal spending to support the large inflow of refugees. Meanwhile, in Japan, lacklustre wage growth is restraining consumption” (Bank of Canada, Global Economy, Monetary Policy Report, Ottawa, April 2016, page 4).
If greater demand is needed to spur gold higher, much of the buying pressure will have to come from Asia. The world Gold Council, the marketing arm of the gold industry, says China became the No. 1 market for the precious metal in 2013. Together, China and India account for about 45 per cent of global demand. (McGugan, Ian, The Globe and Mail , Report of Business, Saturday, April 30, 2016, Toronto, page B7).
In years past, a weaker outlook for the U.S. dollar has typically spelled good news for gold, because a cheaper currency makes the precious metal – which is priced in U.S. dollars – more affordable for non-U.S. investors. (…)
Historically, there is a strong relationship between gold prices and ‘real’ interest rates (that is, rates after inflation has been subcontracted from the nominal rate quoted in the newspaper).
Over the past several decades, when real rates have sunk – either because of rising inflation or falling nominal rates – gold has tended to climb.
This makes sense: Investors who may be tempted to take a flyer on gold have to look at the returns they can generate on competing investments (…)
However, investors should keep in mind the fickle nature of commodity market.” (Capitalism, - Ed.)
It is rather more understandable why millions of workers around the world in general, and U.S.S.R. in particular, fought for a new type of State, and for an unprecedented system, (except the Paris Commune in 1871.
Warren Buffett said… “that Berkshire Hathaway Inc. is poised to do well no matter who wins the White House in November”, and the billionaire investor defended the performance and tactics of the conglomerate’s several large investments.
Berkshire owns close to 90 businesses in energy, insurance, manufacturing, railway, retail and other sectors, and invests more than $100-billion (U.S.) in stocks.
Mr. Buffett suggested that 40,000 people may have shown up for his ‘Woodstock for capitalists,’ close to last year’s record, though the meeting was streamed online for the first time.
Buffett also renewed is defense of Brazilian private equity firm 3G Capital which with Berkshire has a controlling stake in food company Kraft Heinz Co.
Berkshire is seen as a friendlier owner, but Mr. Buffett said 3G’s cuts have been ‘extremely intelligent,’ and did not appear a threat to Kraft Heinz’s ability to produce packaged goods.
Mr. Buffett also emphasized his worry that derivatives could cause major risks for most of the world’s largest banks if markets were disrupted.” (Stempel,, Jonathan; Hunnicutt,Trevor, Berkshire ‘fine’ withTrump of Clinton, The Globe and Mail, Monday, May 2, 2016, page B7).
Question, what was the ‘Commune de Paris’?
“The Commune is the form ‘at last discovered ‘by the proletarian revolution, under which the economic emancipation of labour can take place.(…)
We shall see further on that the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917, in different circumstances and under different conditions, continue the work of the Commune and confirm the historical analysis given by Marx, that product of his genius.” (Lenin, The State and Revolution, page 47).
“Yet Marx even spoke of the ‘future nature of the state of communist society, ‘i.e. as though he recognized the need for the state even under Communism”. (Lenin, The State and Revolution, page 71).
A closer examination , shows that Marx’s and Engels’s views on the state and its withering away were completely identical, and that Marx’s expression quoted above refers precisely to this state in the process of withering away.
Clearly, there can be no question of defining the exact moment of the future ‘withering away’ –the more so since it will obviously be a lengthy process. The apparent difference between Marx and Engels is due to the fact that they dealt with different subjects and pursued different aims. …
The first fact that has been established with complete exactitude by the whole theory of development, by science as a whole – a fact that was forgotten by the utopians, and is forgotten by the present-day opportunists who are afraid of the socialist revolution – is that, historically, there must undoubtedly, be a special stage or a special phase of transition from capitalism to Communism. [Marx said also:] “Between capitalist and communist society lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. There corresponds to this also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat. (Lenin, The State and Revolution, page 73).
Communism and its onslaught on capitalism and its fascist offspring
Often, we hear this popular prejudice that communism is similar to Nazism, since its ‘ideas’ are still living in our western society. Let us be more realistic; adopt a scientific point of view; and evaluate the role of State and finally the two different approachs. First, the one of Adolf Hitler:
“Then we may be convinced that the higher insight of posterity will not only understand actions of today, but will also confirm their correctness and exalt them.
From this, we National Socialists derive the standard for the evaluation of a state. It will be relative from the standpoint of the individual nationality, absolute from that of humanity as such. This means, in other words:
The quality of a state cannot be evaluated according to the cultural level or the power of this state in the frame of the outside world, but solely and exclusively by the degree of this institution’s virtue for the nationality involved in each special case.
A state can be designated as exemplary it if is not compatible with the living conditions of this nationality that it is intended to represent; but if in practice it keeps this nationality alive by its own very existence – quite regardless of the importance of this state formation within the framework of the outside world.
For the function of the state is not too create abilities, but only to open the road for those forces which are present. Thus, conversely, a state can be designated as bad if, despite a high cultivated level, it dooms the bearer of this culture in his racial composition.” (Hitler, Adolf, Mein Kampf, pages 394-395).
On the other hand, “… during the transition from capitalism to Communism suppression is still necessary, but it is now the suppression of the exploiting minority, by the exploited majority. (…)
And it is compatible with the extension of democracy to such an over whelming majority, of the population that the need for a special machine of suppression will begin to disappear. The exploiters are naturally unable to suppress the people without a highly complex machine for performing this task. (Lenin, The State and Revolution, page 77).
Hence, the first phase of Communism cannot yet produce justice and equality: differences, and unjust differences in wealth will still exist, but the exploitation of man by man will have become impossible, because it will be impossible to seize the means of production, the factories, machines, land, etc., as private property.” (Lenin, The State and Revolution, page 79).
[Marx says here:] “after labour has become not only a means of life but life’s prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-round development of the individual, and all the springs of cooperative wealth flow more abundantly- only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banner: ‘From each according to this ability, to each according to his needs’” (Lenin, The State and Revolution, page 81).
“In its first phase, on first stage, Communism cannot as yet be fully ripe economically and entirely free from traditions or traces of capitalism.
… Of course, bourgeois right in regard to the distribution of articles of consumption inevitably presupposes the existence of the bourgeois state, for right is nothing without an apparatus capable of enforcing the observance of the standards of right.
It follows that under Communism there remains for a time not only bourgeois right, but even the bourgeois state without the bourgeoisie! (…)
(Lenin, The State and Revolution, page 84).
“Democracy is of enormous importance to the working class in its struggle against the capitalists for its emancipation… it is only one of the stages on the road from feudalism to capitalism, and from capitalism to Communism.
Democracy means equality. The great significance of the proletariat’s struggle for equality and the equality as a slogan will be clear if we correctly interpret it as meaning the abolition of classes… Democracy is a form of the state, one of its varieties. (Lenin, The State and Revolution, page 85).
As for the new state in Russia, “the Soviet Government, however, sprang directly from the working class, [and] three fundamental measures of economic importance, striking at capitalist power, were taken:
The first was a maximum eight-hour day, with elaborate subsidiary regulations including the prohibition of night work for women and youths under sixteen. The limitation of working hours for young people between sixteen and eighteen to seven hours. The prohibition of underground or overtime work for women or boys under eighteen, the stringent limitations of overtime and the provision of a minimum weekly rest period.
The second was the decree … on workmen’s control over “the production, purchase, sale of products and raw materials, their storage and also over the financial side of the enterprise… It is important to realize that ‘’control’ here means supervision rather than direct management.”
The third one established the Supreme Council of People’s Economy, which had as an original purpose “to co-ordinate the activity of every brand of economy – trade, food, agriculture and finance as well as industry – but in fact, at this very early stage of the mastery of economy by the workers, such a program was beyond the capacity of anyone body. In practice, the Supreme Economic Council (S.E.C.) became in the course, of its first year’s work the government department dealing with industry.” (Stalin, J.V., Economic Problems of Socialism in the U.S.S.R.; and Rothstein, pages 61-63).
Furthermore, “it was essential to use capitalist experts and technicians, not being afraid of paying them high salaries in order to learn from them the technique of industrial management.” (Rothstein, page 71).
A discussion took place as to decide “whether the trade unions in Soviet society were to be voluntary mass organizations, enlisting the active interest and efforts of the workers in planned Socialist construction by methods primarily of persuasion (as Lenin, Stalin and the majority of the Central Committee considered”. (Rothstein, page 149).
A contrario, “the National Socialist trade union is no organ of class struggle, but an organ for representing occupational interests. The National Socialist state knows no ‘classes’, but politically speaking only citizens with absolutely equal rights and accordingly equal general duties, and, alongside of these, state subjects who in the political sense are absolutely without rights.
The trade union in the National Socialist sense does not have the function of grouping certain people within a national body and thus gradually transforming them into a class, to take up the fight against other similarly organized formations. We can absolutely not impute this function to the trade union as such; it became so only in the moment when the trade union became the instrument of Marxist struggle. No trade union is characterized by class struggle; Marxism has made it an instrument for the Marxist class struggle.
Marxism created the economic weapon which the international world Jew uses for shattering the economic base of the free, independent national states, for the destruction of their national industry and their national commerce, and, accordingly, the enslavement of free peoples in the service of supra-state world finance Jewry.
In the face of this, the National Socialist trade union must, by organizationally embracing certain groups of participants in the national economic process, increase the security of the national economy itself and intensify its strength by the creative elimination of all those abuses which in their ultimate consequences have a destructive effect on the national body, injure the vital force of the national community, and hence also of the state, and last but not least redound to the work and ruin of the economy itself.
Hence, for the National Socialist union, the strike is not a means for shattering and shaking national production, but for enhancing it and making it run smoothly by combating all those abuses which, due to their unsocial character, interfere with the efficiency of the economy and hence the existence of the totality. (…)
For the National Socialist union, therefore, the strike is an instrument which may and actually must be applied only so long as a National socialist folkish state does not exist. This state, to be sure, must, in place of the mass struggle of the two great groups –employers and workers – (which in its consequences always injures the national community as a whole by diminishing production) assume the legal care and the legal protection of all. (…)
Then employers and workers will not rage against one another in struggles over pay and wage scales, damaging the economic existence of both, but solve these problems jointly in a higher instance, which must above all constantly envision the welfare of the people as a whole and of the state, in gleaming letters.
Here, too, as everywhere, the iron principle must prevail; that first comes the fatherland and then the party. (…)
A National Socialist union side by side with other unions is senseless. For it, too, must feel itself permeated by its philosophical task and the result at obligation to be emphasized by the exclusive necessity of its own ego. (…)
There were two ways of arriving at such a development:
Firstly, we could found a trade union and then gradually take up the struggle against the international Marxist unions;
Or secondly we could penetrate the Marxist unions and try to fill them with the new spirit, in other words, transform them into instruments of the new ideology.” (Hitler, Adolf, Mein Kampf, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston-New York, 1999, pp. 596 and following.).
Finally, the young Soviet Union was doomed to be sacrificed in its attempts to service to all evils, including a new war that opposed the first working people’s political and economical power to foreign intervention. “In mid-April (1919) the Central Committee of the Communist Party issued the appeal: ‘Everything to the eastern front’, which it saw as the chief peril, tens of thousands of communists and active trade unionists were taken from civil occupations and sent to the front to stiffen and build up new armies, of which the core were textile workers taken from the new idle factories of Central Russia.” (Rothstein, page 113)
Canadian peoples do not feel and know how difficult were the then conditions in Soviet Union while its best ‘children’ had to leave their peaceful occupations to be killed or maimed by so numerous wars. Can we figure out that a large part of the working class was absent from industries and fields without their gifts and dedication? A law is good enough, but the diffusion of communist ideology is actually even stronger and genuinely warrants a better future in the case of the young Soviet power. The Communists and other progressive defended their revolution giving socialism and a future to the younger generations. In a nutshell, they devotedly shed their blood. By April 1922, Stalin was appointed as General Secretary of the Communist Party, on Lenin’s suggestion ([after the XIth Congress]; Rothstein, page 157).
Actually, “within Soviet Russia itself the new People’s Commissariat for Nationalities, headed by Stalin, began actively applying the principles of the Declaration of Rights. In January 1918, it issued a manifesto to the Soviets of the eastern regions of the Republic, calling for the establishments of autonomous self-governing units wherever distinct nationalities were living.
They were to have the full and unfettered right to use their own language in their schools, in the courts, and the publication of newspapers in their own language was guaranteed. (…)
Thus the poorest classes in the colonial territories of the former Russian Empire – the overwhelming majority of their people – found in the policy of the Soviet Government a link between their interest and those of the workmen and peasantry of Russia”. (Rothstein, page 57).
“The whole experience of the [civil] war, - Stalin was writing two years later (October 10th, 1920) - had shown that ‘unless Central Russia and her border regions mutually support each other, the success of the revolution and the liberation of Russia from the clutches of imperialism will be impossible’. Russia needed raw materials, fuel and foodstuffs in order to hold out: the border regions needed the political, military and organizational support of more advanced Russia if they were not to fall under foreign bondage. In fact, it was quite later (February 1921) – which ‘the Russian workers could not have defeated Kolchak and Denikin… without the elimination of national enmity and national oppression at home. (Rothstein, page 130). (…)
In April, the industrial workers of Baku –whose traditions of revolutionary mass struggle dated back to the 19th century – rose in revolt against the Nationalist Government, which was simultaneously attacked by the Red Army. On April 27th Azerbaijan was proclaimed a Soviet Republic. The same happened in Armenia, but after an insurrection lasting many weeks, in November, 1920.” (Rothstein, page 141).
In Germany, the National Socialist expressed a rather expected and morbid outlook: “All the human culture, all the results of art, science, and technology that we see before us today, are almost exclusively the creative product of the Aryan. “In fact, ‘a member or descendant of a prehistoric people who spoke Indo-European; the latter is the largest family of languages in the world assumed to have descended from an unrecorded common ancestor and comprising most of the languages of Europe and many languages of India and SW Asia. These languages are conventionally divided into two classifications, as for on centrum ‘whose ‘sub-families are Hellenic, Italic, Celtic, and Germanic. (Mein Kampf, page 645).” The list to be accurate and further comprehensive shall include ‘Yiddish’: a ‘Germanic language derived from the Middle High German spoken in the Rhineland in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, now spoken primarily by Jews in Poland, Lithuania, the Ukraine and Rumania, and by Jewish immigrants from those regions in other parts of the world. It contains elements of Hebrew and the Slavic languages, and is written in slightly modified Hebrew characters.” (The New International Webster’s Comprehensive Dictionary of the English Language, Encyclopedic Edition, 1996, Trident Press International, 1996, Naples/Florida, page 1459).
For Hitler, “The Aryan is not the greatest in his mental qualities as such, but in the extent of his willingness to put all his abilities in the service of the community. In him the instinct of self-preservation has reached his own ego to the life of the community and, if the hour demands, even sacrifices it.
Not in his intellectual gifts lies the source of the Aryan’s capacity for creating and building cultures.” (Mein Kampf, page 297).
“The mightiest counterpart to the Aryan is represented by the Jew (who appeared to be the target of a failing economy in the Western World where the far right was looking for its so familiar scapegoat: (Mein Kampf, page 300).
But Maestro (!) Hitler was in his full swing: “In judging the Jewish people’s attitude on the question of human culture, the most essential characteristic we must always bear in mind is that there has never been a Jewish art and accordingly there is none today either.”
It is not true, for example, “for six years now, the Museum of Jewish Montreal has been sharing the history and experience of the city’s Jewish community in myriad ways: through online content including interactive maps and virtual tours, and an oral history initiative with the Jewish Public Library. Popular walking tours, including a food tour called Beyond the Bagel, of the once heavily Jewish neighbourhoods of Mile End and the Plateau, have drawn locals and tourists. (…)
A 2015 exhibit focused on Moroccan-born Samy Elmaghribi, a legendary figure in the Arab music world; born Salomon Amzallag (1922-2008), he had a deep love for Jewish liturgical music and served as a cantor in a Montreal synagogue. (…)
Online ‘is a really great way to start a variety of projects - but it came to be more and more important for us to have a place to do programming year-round.’ said founder and executive director, Zev Moses.
The museum now has an actual physical home – on the Main in the Plateau, in the heart of the city’s historic Jewish core, ‘in an eight-storey building erected in 1912 by manufacturer Abraham M. Vineberg. It housed garment factories for many years, when the needle trade was an integral component of the neighbourhood’s bustling Jewish community.(…)
[Now the staff] is having a welcoming gathering place for visitors, a food and event space – and a venue to welcome partners form the Jewish community and beyond. (…)
… It will permit the museum to better preserve and celebrate the history of Jewish Montreal and to serve as a community cultural venue to explore its present. (…)
The first exhibition would provide a bird’s-eye view of what it was like to work in the garment industry; in its heyday, it involved virtually 75 per cent of the Jewish community in some way.’
Even if you didn’t work in the business you knew someone who did.
‘If we do it well, people will walk into a space that feels like a shmatte factory 80 or 90 years ago.” (Schwartz, Susan, Museum of Jewish Montreal takes shape, Montreal Gazette, Saturday, April 30, 2016, page F3).
Nazis were naturally wrong proclaiming “that above all the two of all the arts, architecture and music, owe nothing original to the Jews. (…)
No, the Jew possesses no culture – creating force of any sort, since the idealism, without which there is no true higher development of man, is not present in him and never was present.” (Mein Kampf, page 383)
[Accordingly to Hitler,] “The first Jews came to ancient Germany in the course of the advance of the Romans, and as always [sic!] they came as merchants. In the storms of the migrations, however, they seem to have disappeared again, and thus the time of the first Germanic state formation may be viewed as the beginning of a new and this time lasting Jewsfication of Central and Northern Europe. A development set in which has always been the same or similar whenever the Jews encountered Aryan peoples.” (Mein Kampf, page 308).
[Today’s Jew’s procedure is as follows for so many capitalists:]
“He approaches the worker, simulates pity with his fate, or even indignation at his lot of misery and poverty, thus gaining his confidence. He takes pains to study all the various real or imaginary hardships of his life - and to arouse his longing for a change in such an existence. With infinite shrewdness he fans the need for social justice somehow slumbering in every Aryan man, into hatred against those who have been better favored by fortune, and thus given the struggle for the elimination of social evils a very definite philosophical stamp. He established the Marxist doctrine. (Mein Kampf, page 319) (…)
In keeping with the ultimate aims of the Jewish struggle, which are not exhausted in the mere economic conquest of the world, but also demand its political subjugation, the Jew divides the organization of his Marxist world doctrine into two halves which, apparently separate from one another, in truth form an inseparable whole: the political and the trade-union movement. (This is a sheer and gross non-sense! –Ed.).
The trade-union movement does the recruiting. In the hard struggle for existence which the worker must carry on, thanks to the power and short-sigthness of many employers, it offers him aid and protection, and thus the possibility of winning better living conditions.“ (Mein Kampf, page 321).
“Actually the Jew by means of the trade union, which could be a blessing for the nation, shatters the foundations on the national economy. (Mein Kampf, page 323). (…)
And in politics he begins to replace the idea of democracy by the dictatorship of the proletariat.”
Stalin answered: “the dictatorship of the proletariat arises not on the basis of the bourgeois order, but in the process of the breaking up of the order, after the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, in the process of the expropriation of the landlords and capitalists, in the process of the socialization of the principal instruments and means of production, in the process of violent proletarian revolution, the dictatorship of the proletariat is a revolutionary power based on the use of force against the bourgeoisie.
The state is a machine in the hands of the ruling class for suppressing the resistance of its class enemies. In this respect the dictatorship of the proletariat does not differ essentially from the dictatorship of any other class, for the proletarian state is a machine for the suppression of the bourgeoisie. But there is one substantial difference. This difference consists in the fact that all hitherto existing class states have been dictatorship of an exploiting minority over the exploited majority, whereas the dictatorship of the proletariat is the dictatorship of the exploited majority over the exploiting minority. (Stalin, Foundations…, page 42-43) (…)
The dictatorship of the proletariat cannot be ‘complete democracy’, democracy for all, for the rich as well as for the poor; the dictatorship of the proletariat must be a state that is democratic in a new way (for [my italics –J. St.] the proletarians and the non-propertied in general) and dictatorial in a new way (against [my italics – J. St.] the bourgeoisie)”. (Stalin, Foundations of Leninism, Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1975; Reprinted in the U.S.A., 2016, page 43).
“The dictatorship of the proletariat cannot arise as the result of the peaceful development of bourgeois society and of bourgeois democracy; it can arise only as the result of the smashing of the bourgeois state machine, the bourgeois army, the bourgeois bureaucratic apparatus, and the bourgeois police. (Stalin, Foundations …., page 44).
Hitler had other calumnies to spread around his most knowledgeable person; and against the Jewish people, just to make a change: “in the organized mass of Marxism he (the Jew) has found the weapon which lets him dispense with democracy and in its stead allows him to subjugate and govern the peoples with a dictatorial and brutal fist.” (Mein Kampf, page 325-326).”
“Once we pass the development of our cultural life in the last twenty-five years in review from this standpoint, we shall be horrified to see how far we are already engaged in this regression. Everywhere we encounter seeds which represent the beginnings of parasitic growths which must sooner or later be the ruin of our culture (viz. Cubism is fairly opposite to, -Ed.). In them, too, we can recognize the symptoms of decay of a slowly rotting world. Woe to the peoples who can no longer master this disease! It should have been obligated to resist this cultural disgrace. But from pure fear of the clamor raised by the apostles of Bolshevistic art who friendly attracted anyone who didn’t want to recognize the crown of creation in them and pilloried him as a backward philistine, they renounced all serious resistance and reconciled themselves to what seemed after all inevitable”. (Mein Kampf, page 262).
Our economic file is not ready yet to be close, since culture means financial support and grants from governments and indirect wages from the working people; and the progressive intelligentsia. “Upon the progressive improvement of the Social Powers of Labour, such as are derived from production on a grand scale, concentration of capital and combination of labour, subdivision of labour, machinery, improved method appliances of chemical and other natural agencies, shortening of time and spare by means of communication and transport, and very other contrivance by which science processes natural agencies into the services of labour, and by which the social or co-operative character of labour is developed, the greater the productive power of labour, the less labour is bestowed upon a given amount of produce; hence the smaller the value of this produce. The smaller the productive powers of labour, the more labour is bestowed upon the same amount of produce; hence the greater its value, as a general law we may, therefore, set a down that: - the values of commodities are directly as the times of labour employed in their production, and are inversely as the productive powers of the labour employed. (Marx, Karl, Wages…., page 29-30). What the working man sells is not directly his Labour but his Labour Power, the temporary disposal of which he makes over to the capitalist.” (Marx, Karl, Wages, pages 33).
“Like that of every other commodity, its value is determined by the quantity of labour necessary to produce it. The labouring process of a man exists only in his living individuality. A certain mass of necessaries must be consumed by a man to grow up and maintain his life. (…)
The cry for an equality of wages rests, therefore, upon a mistake, is an insane wish never to be fulfilled. It is an offspring of that false and superficial radicalism that accepts promises and tries to evade conclusions. Upon the basis of the wages system the value of laboring power is settled like that of every other commodity. (…)
To clamour for equal or even equitable retribution on the basis of the wages system is the same as to clamour for freedom on the basis of the slavery system (…)
The value of labouring power is determined by the value of the necessaries required to produce, develop, maintain, and perpetuate the labouring power.” (Marx, Karl, Wages…, page 35)
“I (Stalin, -Ed.) have already said that between Marx and Engels on the one hand, and Lenin, on the other, there lies a whole period of domination of the opportunism of the Second International.” (Stalin, Foundations…, pages 12-13).
The old methods of fighting were proving obviously inadequate and dramatically ineffective in the face of the omnipotence of the German Capital.
“It became necessary to overhaul the entire method of work, and to drive out all philistinism, narrow mindedness, political scheming renegacy, social-chauvinism and social-pacifism. It became necessary to examine the entire arsenal of the Second International, to throw out all that was rusty and antiquated to forge new weapons without this preliminary work it was useless embarking upon war against capitalism.
Without this work the proletariat ran the risk of finding itself inadequately armed or even completely unarmed, in the future revolutionary battles. The honour of bringing about this general overhauling and general cleansing of the Augean stables of the Second International fell to Leninism.” (Stalin, Foundations.., page 12-13).
At last, Lenin alongside with prominent communist comrades founded the Third International Association of Communist parties, the Komintern. “The third International picked up the fruits of the labour of the Second International, discarded its opportunists, social-chauvinist, bourgeois and petty-bourgeois dross, and has begun to implement the dictatorship of the proletariat.
The international alliance of the parties which are leading the most revolutionary movement in the world, the movement of the proletariat for the overthrow of the yoke of capital, now rests on an unprecedently firm basis, in the shape of several Soviet republics, which are giving embodiment to the dictatorship of the proletariat and to its victory over capitalism on an international scale. (Lenin, On the International Working Class and Communist Movement, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, page 289)
In 1953, Joseph Stalin died under strange circumstances which are not still elucidated in our today’s year 2016. Nikita Khrushchev is alleged to have played a very doubtful and decisive role with his associates and to reintroduce capitalism in Soviet Union; and “side by side with the proletariat, there are always broad strata of the petty bourgeois, which aligned themselves with this regression. Capitalism arose and is constantly arising out of small scale production.” (Lenin, On the International working-class, page 98).
We can observe such a phenomenon as opportunism in the ranks of the Communist International: “Opportunism [was] represented by elements of the ‘labour aristocracy’, by the old bureaucracy in the trade unions, co-operative societies, etc., by the intellectual petty-bourgeois strata, etc. Unless the ranks are purged of this trend, unless the ranks are purged of this trend, unless there is a break with it, unless all its prominent representatives are expelled, the rallying of the revolutionary proletariat will be impossible. (Lenin, Letter to the German and French Workers, pp. 367-368).
In 1922, Lenin wrote an open letter criticizing Stalin “for being ‘too rude’ – a quality which, Lenin said, was not desirable in a general secretary, although in all other respects he suited the position. But the letter also spoke of the ‘non-bolshevism’ of Trotsky, and criticized his overwhelming ambition and self-confidence; together with equally searching criticism of other leaders. (…)
In fact, Stalin had offered his resignation repeatedly (on receipt of the letter and the following year), and each time had been unanimously confirmed in his post by the Central Committee – including many of those now Trotskyites. (…)
[By 1925], industrial output was now not only substantially greater in volume than before the war, but accounted for 45 per cent of the total output of the country. In 1913 it had been 42 per cent. Not only was Russia coming closer to the point at which she would primarily be an industrial country, but the Socialist quality of her economy was making progress. (Rothstein, pages 179-180). (…)
But [in 1930]… industry was already turning out 53 percent of the gross output of the country, and three-fifth of industrial output of the country, were in the industries producing means of production –coal, iron, steel, machinery, chemical, oil – which the plans promised to make available for industries producing goods before many years more over. (Rothstein, pages 195-196). In 1935, a new method of industrial organization set itself on. “Thus the Stakhanov movement presupposed the complete re-equipment of Soviet industry with up-to-date machinery. It also presupposed the existence of a large and influential group of skilled workers who had mastered the new machines. But most of all it required, both in them and in the less skilled workers whom they drew into the reorganization of their job, a sense of ownership, of responsibility, of absence of any private exploiter. (Rothstein, page 237-238).
In 1942, the most difficult year of the war, March saw the first performance of the Seventh Leningrad Symphony of Shostakovich and the first performance of Schiller’s William Tell by a Ukrainian theater which had found refuge in Kazakhstan. In April there was a three days’ Shakespeare commemoration festival in Moscow, and a Darwin exhibition, organized by the Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R., at the Kirghizian capital Frunze.” (Rothstein, page 341).
“For the Soviet Union, Potsdam meant the destruction of the forces which had twice in thirty years spread vast devastation in its territories.” (Rothstein, page 383).
”The essential features and requirements of the basic law of socialism might be formulated roughly in this way: the securing of the maximum satisfaction of the constantly rising material and cultural requirements of the whole of society through the continuous expansion and perfection. (Stalin, Economic…, page 36).
Western powers (generally strong capitalist countries, - Ed.) understood it and torpedoed the endeavours of Soviet Union through ‘different manners like arms race, to divert the ‘investments’ in this socialist country from light and personal consumption industries. They ‘starved’ the Soviet people so to speak.
They attempt to perform now in the same manner within the People’s Republic of China.
“The surge in trading on China’s commodity exchanges is the latest example of speculative frenzy in an economy awash with credit. From the rise of shadow banking, to real estate bubbles and Augusts’ stock market crash, regulators have struggled to contain the excesses resulting from Beijing’s habit of supporting growth through debt-fuelled stimulus. The rush into metals markets follows record credit expansion of more than Rmb6tn in the first quarter, engineered by officials to prevent a sharp slowdown in the world’s second-largest economy.
Such episodes are a growing concern for international investors. As China’s role in the global financial system grows, so too does its ability to trigger turbulence in global markets. However, it is easy to criticize Beijing for resorting once again to credit creation to pump up growth. It is less easy to come up with an attractive alternative for policymakers.
The risks of China’s vast debt pile are apparent. A total debt load equivalent to some 240 per cent of gross domestic product – far higher than most emerging markets - is clearly unsustainable in the long term, especially since a significant proportion is held by loss making state-owned enterprises in sectors suffering from chronic overcapacity. Even more worrying is the speed of which debt has accumulated – with credit creation accelerating even as economic growth has slowed.(…)
Beijing’s actions since January have cast doubt on its commitment to difficult economic reforms, but they have also helped to stabilize the exchange rate and led to a welcome pick- up in industrial profits.
Moreover, the risk of a full-blown financial crisis seems limited. China’s overall debt is less alarming in the context of the country’s largely closed capital account, its high savings rate – which means that households finance lending to corporate – and the economy’s growth potential. (…)
Rebalancing China’s economy is a Herculean task and it is almost inevitable that stimulus policies will continue for the foreseeable future as authorities try to manage the process. What is important is to ensure that this is more profitably employed.” (Editorial, the growing effects of China’s failure to reform, Financial Times, Thursday 28 April, 2016, page 8).
In the heartland of imperialism, U.S.A., it is business as usual. No ‘ sky is the limit’; it is rather down-to-earth: “The central bank held rates at 0.25 per cent to 0.5 yesterday, as expected, noting a slowdown in U.S. economic growth and more sluggish household spending.
The Federal Open Market Committee struck out a reference in its last statement to international risks to the US economy due to an improvement in financial market sentiment and lessened concerns over Chinese policy. (…)
In its statement the Fed noted the weaker growth, but also pointed out that the labour market had continue to improve “. (Fleming, Sam, Fed concerns ease over state of global economy, Financial Times, Washington, Thursday 28 April, 2016, front page).
And U.S.A. is still in the middle somewhere of cold war tracks in terms of research and development of new war toys for the General Staff. “The Pentagon’s multibillion dollar investments in high–tech weapons have put it at the centre of a debate about the use of A1 and robots in warfare ‘’potentially more dangerous than nukes, says Elon Musk, founder of Testa.” Mr. Work (deputy secretary of defense) is leading the Pentagon’s push into fields such as A1 and robotics, which the US military hopes will maintain its technological edge over China and Russia for another generation. “We need to up our strategic game in an era of great power competition”, he said.
At a national security forum last December Mr. Work voiced US concerns over the speed of developments in A1 by Beijing and Moscow, saying the Russian army was ‘preparing to fight on a roboticised battlefield”.
The US’s investments include a range of unmanned aircraft; ships and submarines that will have an increased level of autonomy. The Pentagon is also looking at supercomputers that can seek intelligence and watch potential adversaries.” (Dyer, Geoff, US rules out ‘terminator’ troops with pledge to keep robots off the front line, Financial Times, Washington, Thursday 28 April 2016, front page).
While the U.S. imperialism is gearing up for more military spending, “Greece is fast running of cash to pay salaries and pensions in May because of lagging the receipts (…)
Bail out negotiations have stalled over a request by the EU and the International Monetary Fund, Greece’s main lenders, that Athens legislate 3 bn Euros in ‘contingency budget cuts that could be triggered if the programme veers off-course and fails to produce projected surpluses.”
“Greece can agree about with creditors on further unpopular austerity measures it again forces a default on debt payments, after its plan for an EU summit over its euro bn bailout was rejected”. “Euclid Tsakalotos, the Greek finance minister, has told negotiators getting additional cuts through the Greek parliament is politically impossible and has asked stead for lenders to accept across-the-board budget cuts in case targets are missed. EU and IMF negotiators have rejected that proposal, however, insisting the additional reforms be targeted carefully to ensure they do not damage ‘economic growth’. If the final response does not come from the Parliament, it might come from the street under the leadership of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE). They still live up with the heritage of the 1917 October Revolution in Russia, with all of them -in and out- of the former Soviet Union who sing with Elena Vaenga: “Les nuits de Moscou”.
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