May 5, 2018 - No. 17

Urgent Need to Renew the Democratic Process

Prime Minister's Contempt for
Democratic Principle

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Trudeau Government Tables Bill C-76 to Amend the Electoral Law

Theft of Canada's Resources in Northern BC
Who Benefits from LNG Canada's Natural Gas Extraction,
Liquefaction and Shipping Project

- K.C. Adams -
BC Government Pay-the-Rich Scheme

For Your Information
Engineering, Procurement and Construction Contract
for Kitimat LNG Facility


Bicentenary of the Birth of Karl Marx
The Name and Work of Karl Marx Live On in the Hearts and
Minds of Millions Who Aspire to Build the New

Biography of Karl Marx
- Frederick Engels -
Exhibit of Works of Art and Other Items of Interest
Video: Marx Memorial Library and Workers' School
in London, England


Supplement
May Day Around the World

Workers the World Over Raise Their Fighting Demands



Urgent Need to Renew the Democratic Process

Prime Minister's Contempt for Democratic Principle

The political system in Canada is in serious crisis. Time and time again, in all spheres of life, people have expressed deep discontent with a system that permits decisions to be taken over which they exercise no control. The system called a representative democracy is mired in a deep credibility and legitimacy crisis because of this. The absence of the appearance of governance with the consent of the people is palpable. Reforms that do not address this fundamental problem only lead to a worsening of the crisis. Recent electoral reform legislation and remarks by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau serve to underscore this situation.

On April 30, the Trudeau government tabled Bill C-76 in the House of Commons to amend the electoral law. In no way do these amendments address the big problem facing the polity of elections that bring political parties to power which make decisions and enact all kinds of legislation that go against the interests of the people and their society.

Adding to the credibility crisis plaguing the system of representative democracy is the fact that what are promoted as "election issues" by globe-trotting political marketing strategists are comprised of the demands of supranational interests. Along with image-makers for party leaders, these strategists work to win by hook or by crook. Party platforms and the persona of the leader are developed on the basis of poll questions, focus groups and other endeavours engineered to serve private interests. Random individuals and groups are asked to express preferences which are then aggregated to reach the dubious conclusion that they constitute what "the people want." This is then pronounced to be the majority opinion of the polity. It is ludicrous.

All told, the electoral process as it currently exists in Canada serves to shut down public discussion and quash any political movement of the people for empowerment. The fundamental democratic principles that people have the right to elect and be elected and that electoral legitimacy requires an informed electorate are thrown out the window. What they stand for is not to be discussed. In fact, today, scandal-mongering has become a preferred method to deprive people of an outlook which favours them. Vicious fighting for power leads one faction of the ruling class to lead a charge which tarnishes the reputations of adversaries. The aim is to make them respond to the allegations in a manner which embroils the polity in the scandal-mongering. The pot calls the kettle black and the voter is left without an opportunity to cast an informed vote after participating in discussion about the best way forward for the society.

Making the credibility crisis worse, on February 1, 2017, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau declared he would not implement his promised electoral reform to make the way votes are counted more representative. Despite how loudly he had touted his promise as a mandate from the people during the last election and despite the fact that making the system more representative is the last thing any of those who seek power and strive to retain it want to do, the Prime Minister managed to present his change of mind as a matter of high ideals. Prime Minister Trudeau rejected the system of representation recommended by the all-party Special Committee on Electoral Reform saying:

"If we were to make a change or risk a change that would augment individual voices -- that would augment extremist voices and activist voices that don't get to sit within a party that figures out what's best for the whole future of the country, like the three existing parties do -- I think we would be entering a period of instability and uncertainty. And we'd be putting at risk the very thing that makes us luckier than anyone on the planet."

When questioned, he added: "If you have a party that represents fringe voices, or the periphery of our perspectives and they hold 10, 15, 20 seats in the House, they end up holding the balance of power. The strength of our democracy is, we have to pull people together into big parties that have all the diversity of Canada, and who learn to get along. You don't learn to amplify small voices, you learn to listen to all voices. And that's why we have a system that works so well."

It is hard to comprehend how this unabashed declaration in defence of privilege and the status quo can be reconciled with democratic principles. What he says and does to the voices he deems to be fringe or extremist when they arise within his own "big tent" is left unspoken. Even a cursory review of the history of political parties in this country shows that they all became "big tents" in response to the movement for people's empowerment to make sure power remained in the hands of the few. The role of the parties which form a cartel system, why they are in crisis and the conception of national interest they uphold speak volumes on the need for political renewal.

The Prime Minister's statement diverts attention from the profound crisis in which the system of representative democracy is mired because it works to bring parties acting on behalf of private supranational interests to power. Declarations that these parties represent the national interest and that anyone who opposes this self-serving definition of the national interest poses a threat to national security are advanced to serve this process. Those who are declared to be acting against this national interest must be the fringe voices, extremist voices, activist voices, which the Prime Minister so arrogantly seeks to outlaw.

The Marxist-Leninist Party of Canada (MLPC) has long held the position that the aim of the democratic electoral process should be to empower Canadians directly, not to form a party government. The process requires renewal so as to eliminate the exercise of privilege over it, especially by privileged leaders and political parties and their access to power. The Prime Minister is using his privileged position to utter impudent statements which make a mockery of a modern conception of freedom of speech as a right. His conception of fringe, extremist and activist voices causing instability also confounds what constitutes legitimate political discourse that contributes to political and social progress with threats to the national interest, national security and national unity.

It is imperative that Canadians discuss the conception of national interest the ruling class is promoting. It is a conception which is increasingly embroiling Canada in the U.S. striving for world hegemony against rival powers. It is up to the Canadian people to define these matters, not those who benefit from the integration of Canada's economy with the U.S. war machine.

The MLPC is confident that once Canadians become familiar with the proposed changes to the electoral law, they will see for themselves that these changes do not in fact make the law more democratic nor modern in terms of reforms that are required to fulfill the right of Canadians to elect and be elected and to an informed vote. The more the people are excluded, the more they still strive for empowerment and solve the problems they face to become the decision-makers themselves.

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Trudeau Government Tables Bill C-76
to Amend the Electoral Law

On April 30 the Liberal government tabled Bill C-76, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act and other Acts and to make certain consequential amendments. The legislation has been short-named the Elections Modernization Act. It is a 352-page document in its bi-lingual edition and contains 398 clauses, mostly pertaining to the Canada Elections Act.[1] It is a complex piece of legislation imposed on an already complex and incoherent electoral law which is increasingly difficult for anyone to navigate except members of the legal profession specializing in the field, and even they have difficulty. The members of the House of Commons who must now vote on the legislation, including Liberals, are certain to find themselves casting a totally uninformed vote.

Much of the legislation is based on recommendations in the Chief Electoral Officer's report following the 2015 general election, entitled "An Electoral Framework for the 21st Century." The recommendations that were accepted by the Committee on Procedure and House Affairs (PROC), which is mandated to review the report, relate primarily to making it easier for electors to cast their ballots; eliminating loopholes and confusion in the law related to financial regulation; eliminating obstacles to Elections Canada staffing its offices and the polls; and streamlining or reducing the regulatory burden on candidates and political parties. For instance, candidates who do not reach $10,000 in either contributions or expenses will no longer have to hire an accountant to audit their returns.

Several substantial recommendations presented by the Chief Electoral Officer were not accepted, such as one calling for free electoral broadcasting time to be increased and allocated equally to all registered political parties, rather than on the current basis of allocating the lion's share to the party in power and the parties in opposition.

A pre-writ spending period has been introduced, starting six months before the start of the campaign, for the election called according to the fixed date law. A spending limit of $1.5 million for political parties will be in effect for the pre-writ period, while third parties will be subject to a $1 million limit, which will apply not only to advertising but a broader scope of activities, such as conducting surveys.

Other parts of the legislation reverse some of the provisions enacted by the Harper Conservatives' Fair Election Act in 2014. The Harper amendments to the electoral law were broadly condemned particularly because they made it more difficult for electors to identify themselves a the polls. It also limited the powers of the Chief Electoral Officer to conduct education campaigns, especially related to encouraging people to vote. The legislation was seen as an act of vengeance by the Harperites against Elections Canada and the Commissioner of Elections because they had pursued charges against the Conservative Party of Canada in an election financing scheme that became known as the “in and out scandal.”

In addition, while not highlighted at the time it was adopted, the Fair Election Act introduced a per-day increase in election spending limits for political parties and candidates when the election campaign period went beyond the minimum 36 days. Furthermore, the Harper government's fixed-date election law had not set a maximum length for the election campaign period. When Harper called the 2015 election, the timing resulted in a 78 day election campaign and a huge increase in the amount of money that could be legally spent. These features of both the Fair Elections Act and the fixed-date election legislation stand as a lesson in the way that massive pieces of legislation can result in self-serving amendments being enacted without them even being noticed.

Bill C-76 will set the election campaign period at a maximum of 50 days and the spending limit will be static, regardless of the length of the campaign. Voter identification requirements will revert to what they were, with electors being entitled to use the Elections Canada voter identification cards mailed to all registered electors as one piece of identification. The powers of the Chief Electoral Officer seem to be restored to their pre-Harper status; the Commissioner of Elections is being moved back from the Office of the Public Prosecutor to Elections Canada and he will be empowered to lay charges without clearance by the Public Prosecutor.

A significant part of Bill C-76 addresses the claim that Canada's electoral and political process is in danger of foreign attack, both in the form of "fake news" and cyber-attacks. New definitions and revamped definitions are included in the law to elaborate what is considered "undue influence by foreigners" and what entities will be treated as "foreign." For instance, a foreign-based corporation does not fall within the definition so long as it has operations in Canada. Third parties (any organization or individual other than a registered candidate or political party) that spend more than $500 will come under stringent new regulations that are meant to prohibit foreign funds from being used for electoral purposes.

Allegedly in response to growing concern about micro-targeting of electors following the Cambridge Analytica revelations, political parties will be required to publicize their privacy policies (on their websites) and appoint an official responsible for this area in order to be registered by Elections Canada. Much has been said in the media about how this does not change much because there is no enforcement mechanism in place. Meanwhile the whole problem of political parties micro-targetting electors is not touched. Ignoring this problem, Bill C-76 will actually maintain and even enhance the ability of political parties to carry on with their voter surveillance and micro-targeting practices. This includes the fact that Bill C-76 does not reverse the Fair Election Act change that entitles political parties and candidates to receive the lists of electors who have voted, not only in the course of polling day, but after the election as well. While these lists, known as "bingo cards," have been justified as a way for political parties and candidates to find out who has not voted so they can "get out the vote," the only reason to receive information on who has voted after the election has occurred is so that it can be entered into the parties' proprietary elector data-bases which are used to track who has and hasn't voted from election to election and combines this with other data on how they voted.  Measures that are being taken to make it easier for electors to cast their ballots, such as digital rather than paper electors' lists, are being introduced in a manner that facilitates the access of political parties to real-time information about who has voted.

On the day Bill C-76 was tabled, members of the Privy Council, where the Ministry of Democratic Institutions is housed, held a technical briefing with the media, followed by a press conference with Acting Minister of Democratic Institutions Scott Brison. One of the questions raised was the last-minute character of the legislation.[2] Minister Brison side-lined the question and instead referred to the fact that PROC had done an extensive review of the Chief Electoral Officer's recommendations, suggesting that everyone is in the know. He said that 85 per cent of the Chief Electoral Officer's recommendations are being implemented, without commenting on the ones that have been rejected.

It is a fact that between October 4, 2016 and June 15, 2017 PROC held 21 meetings to review the Chief Electoral Officer's recommendations and it issued three reports on those which it supported. Of significance, however, is that 19 of the 21 meetings were held in camera. Elections Canada staff worked with the ten members of PROC to brief them on the changes. For Members of Parliament, the legislation did not see the light of day until April 30. There is a very low level of awareness among members of the House of Commons, let alone the general population, about what the legislation contains except in general terms as presented by Liberal backgrounders. Even those presenting the legislation didn't know what was in it! This was amply proven when a reporter asked why Bill C-76 failed to respond to the Chief Electoral Officer's recommendation that political parties should be required to provide documentation for their election expenses before receiving their sizable reimbursements. Bill C-76 does include this recommendation, but neither the press, nor members of the Privy Council at the technical briefing, nor Minister Brison knew this.

In its coming issues, TML Weekly will review the various aspects of Bill C-76 and how it will affect the electoral and political process. The Liberal Party of Canada has shown complete disregard for the importance of the electoral law. By introducing the legislation at such a late date, it hopes to create a situation where it can attack those who oppose the legislation on the grounds they are delaying its speedy passage and that the people should just trust the Liberals. Liberal hypocrisy knows no bounds.

Notes

1. Direct and consequential amendments are made to the Parliament of Canada Act, the Public Service Employment Act, the Access to Information Act, the Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Act, the Financial Administration Act, and the Director of Public Prosecutions Act.

2. Then-Chief Electoral Officer Marc Mayrand submitted his statutorily required report to Parliament on September 26, 2016 and appeared before the PROC on October 4, 2016 where he urged the members to review his recommendations and enact those approved speedily so that Elections Canada would have ample time to prepare for the implementation. This was particularly important given that it was not known at that time that the Liberal Party would not make good on its promise to eliminate the first-past-the-post method of counting votes. Since Mayrand's resignation from his office, a position that remains unfilled, Acting Chief Electoral Officer Stéphane Perrault has appeared before PROC on several occasions, repeating Elections Canada's need for swift enactment, most recently on April 24. Elections Canada now finds itself in a situation where it is proceeding with preparations for the 2019 election as though the passage of Bill C-76 is a fact, although the bill has not even received second reading.

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Theft of Canada's Resources in Northern BC

Who Benefits from LNG Canada's Natural Gas Extraction, Liquefaction and Shipping Project


Gitxsan people and supporters block Highway 16, near Hazelton, December 2014 opposing the granting of environmental permits for liquefied natural gas (LNG) infrastructure in northern BC -- including two pipelines that would transit their territory and an LNG plant that threatens Skeena River salmon stocks.

LNG Canada's natural gas extraction, liquefaction and shipping project in BC is criminal imperialist theft of what belongs to the people by right, not development in the national interest as the ruling elite contend.

The construction of fixed assets, supply of material, financing, management and operation of LNG Canada's $40 billion project in northern BC are controlled outside the country. It would appear that only the natural gas and the majority of the workforce are Canadian while global financial/industrial cartels control the entire operation and expropriation of value as profit from all phases of the project.

LNG Canada is an international cartel led by Royal Dutch Shell (50%) with part ownership by PetroChina, KOGAS (south Korea) and Mitsubishi (Japan). Canadians, whose land contains the natural gas, are involved in the project as workers, while governments in the service of the rich supply state funds and infrastructure through various pay-the-rich schemes and concessions. The new value workers produce from the project that will stay within Canada is mostly limited to wages and benefits, their reproduced-value. Other new value workers produce while transforming natural gas into a use-value will be expropriated as profit by the owners of LNG Canada and will go into their coffers far from northern BC.

The pay-the-rich measures and concessions for the project that the BC and federal governments have offered more than offset any tax LNG Canada would pay for seizing Canada's natural gas. This means little, if any, of the new value workers produce will be available for extended reproduction of the BC economy within a nation-building project. Also, the social reproduced-value consumed in the project, which is transferred from educated workers, including their health care, and reproduced through their work-time on the project, will not be properly exchanged with the public producers of that value but rather expropriated as profit by the owners of the project.

LNG Canada owns and controls the project, which entails extracting natural gas from fields in northeastern BC and shipping it to markets outside Canada via BC's west coast. The project includes the following:

LNG Canada itself, or through contracts, will extract natural gas from the northeast BC gas fields using the method known as fracking.

TransCanada Corporation has been contracted to build and run the Coastal GasLink pipeline, stretching 670 kilometres from the Dawson Creek area of BC to the proposed LNG Canada plant and loading facility at the coastal port of Kitimat, BC. TransCanada Corporation is a global financial/industrial cartel currently building the much-opposed Keystone XL oil pipeline from the Alberta oil fields to refineries in the United States.[1]


Natural gas pipelines in BC and proposed LNG export facilities. (click image to enlarge)

The Coastal GasLink pipeline will terminate at the proposed $14 billion LNG Canada natural gas liquefaction plant in Kitimat. The liquefied natural gas will be stored and moved to special LNG ships for transport to markets in Asia. A joint U.S./Japan construction cartel has been contracted to build the $14 billion LNG plant and associated facilities in Kitimat.

LNG Canada will buy or contract LNG ships to transport the LNG to Asia. All LNG ships, valued at several hundreds of millions of dollars each, are built in Asia, mainly in Japan, south Korea and China.

Who Benefits?

The value workers create in producing the fixed assets for the entire LNG Canada project is enormous. However, most of the heavy machinery and material used in the project, such as the LNG plant modules and LNG ships, are produced abroad with no value accruing within Canada. Foreign cartels control the entire project. Canadians do not gain the expertise in manufacturing heavy equipment and fixed assets, which is a historical problem in Canada that has worsened with annexation of the economy into the U.S. dominated system of states.

Once the fixed assets of the project are in use their value is transferred little by little into the natural gas as it moves from the ground to final sale. The fixed assets include the gas extraction rigs and associated equipment, the pipeline to Kitimat, the LNG plant, shipping facilities and LNG carriers. Foreign financial/industrial cartels control almost all these assets and expropriate much of the new value workers create during their production and operation. This poses a significant problem as the project provides little or no new value for the Canadian economy's extended reproduction beyond the claims of Canadian workers for their individual reproduced-value, their wages and benefits. Once the project or natural gas fields have completed their life-cycle, little if anything is left behind to show for it in nation-building, either locally in the north or elsewhere in Canada.

This problem is compounded with government pay-the-rich schemes that take value from elsewhere in the economy and give it to the owners of the LNG project. This value handed to the project owners comes from publicly funded infrastructure, electricity below the price of production, social reproduced-value from educated and healthy workers, and other subsidies from the public treasury. The negative aspects of this imperialist development are compounded by allowing private global cartels the right to seize the natural resource with only the smallest of compensation to the public treasury.

Needless to say such a massive development to exploit the country's natural resource could be undertaken as a total or almost complete public enterprise with all fixed assets built in Canada and all new value circulated and retained within Canada for the well-being of the people and the extended reproduction of the economy. This would create an important nation-building project where the benefits would be significant, lasting beyond the exhaustion of the natural resource, generating investment and development in manufacturing, social programs and public services for all.

The ruling elite call LNG Canada's project "development in the national interest." Who benefits from this LNG project shows that the government's notion of what constitutes the "national interest" is very self-serving. Facilitating the outright theft of our resources in opposition to nation-building and the public interest can never be in the national interest. It is ridiculous to suggest such a thing and shows that those in power are not fit to govern.

Note

1. Other proposed BC natural gas pipelines under the control of the imperialists are listed here.

(With files from Business in Vancouver, CBC and CCPA)

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BC Government Pay-the-Rich Scheme

Both the federal and BC governments demand little or no compensation for the extraction and seizure of Canada's natural gas. Modest fees are paid to secure access to property in the gas fields and for the amounts that are taken. Corporate taxes for the global cartels are negligible as they are deft at moving around within their vast corporate structure the new value they expropriate as profit, making it mostly disappear.

In addition to cheap access and seizure of the natural resource, the BC government has added direct pay-the-rich measures and concessions for LNG Canada. BC Premier John Horgan announced the province is offering LNG Canada a break on carbon taxes as well as an exemption on the provincial sales tax related to construction material and other investments needed to build the project. He also said the previous government's special liquefied natural gas (LNG) tax on exports would be eliminated and the rate for BC Hydro electricity would be lowered to the industrial rate, which is below the price of production and well below the value of any natural gas energy the project would require if it were not using BC Hydro electricity. This change is significant because the loss of revenue to BC Hydro has to be made up elsewhere, either in higher electricity rates to residential and small business customers or through borrowing.

The BC government's pay-the-rich scheme and embrace of LNG Canada's project explains in part why it reversed its earlier opposition, before the NDP became the governing party, to BC Hydro's massive Site C hydroelectric project on the Peace River in northern BC. Site C will supply at least some of the electricity needed for future LNG projects in BC.

The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) studied the savings to the approved Woodfibre LNG private project in Squamish BC from receiving the industrial rate for electricity, which is lower than BC Hydro's price of production. The amount saved is yet another pay-the-rich public subsidy to private enterprise. BC Hydro electricity will be used in the electric drives to power LNG plants instead of using natural gas. BC Hydro electricity at market rate is cheaper than using natural gas, and with the standard industrial rate, even cheaper. The difference for Woodfibre LNG between paying a market rate based on the price of production of electricity and paying the lower industrial rate is estimated at $34 million per year. LNG Canada's $40 billion complete project -- from extraction through liquefaction to shipping -- dwarfs the Woodfibre project, so the annual subsidy for using BC Hydro electricity will be much higher.

CCPA writes, "The BC government published a schedule of electricity pricing for LNG at prices lower ($86.55 per MWh in 2023) than the cost of Site C power ($88 to $110 per MWh). If LNG projects go forward as forecast, Site C would effectively be losing tens of millions of dollars per year (in addition to the losses at Woodfibre LNG). Expanded gas fracking and processing operations are also likely to receive subsidized rates.

"Not counted here are related infrastructure costs of new transmission lines, such as the $300 million, 230 kilovolt Dawson Creek-Chetwynd Area Transmission (DCAT) line built in 2016, which was constructed specifically to meet the time-limited needs of the region's natural gas industry. At least two other lengthy and similarly costly new transmission lines are contemplated in the same sparsely populated region, specifically to supply power to the gas industry."[1]

Note

1. from "Revisiting the Economic Case for Site C," CCPA submission to the BC Utilities Commission Inquiry Respecting Site C, August 30, 2017.

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For Your Information

Engineering, Procurement and Construction
Contract for Kitimat LNG Facility

Nikkei Asian Review, a Japanese business publication, reports that an Engineering, Procurement and Construction contract has been awarded for LNG Canada's $14 billion liquefaction plant and shipping facility in Kitimat. The contract is going to a partnership between the construction conglomerates JGC of Japan and Fluor Corporation of the United States.

The Review says a major hurdle in the EPC contract has arisen from the recent U.S. and Canadian tariffs of 45 per cent on fabricated steel from China, South Korea and Spain that is to be used in construction. The large self-contained steel modules needed for LNG plants are not built in Canada but fabricated in Asia and imported. The tariffs on steel could add hundreds of millions of dollars to the price of production of the modules. Rather than have the steel modules built in Canada, LNG Canada has reportedly applied for an exemption to the tariffs from the federal government.

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Bicentenary of the Birth of Karl Marx

The Name and Work of Karl Marx Live On
in the Hearts and Minds of Millions
Who Aspire to Build the New 


May 5, 1818 -- March 14, 1883

On the occasion of the 200th anniversary of the birth of Karl Marx, the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) joins with the communists and advanced forces the world over to celebrate the example and work of this great genius and leader of the international working class movement.

Humankind will always look towards the life and work of this man of genius, teacher and leader of the proletariat, with great revolutionary admiration and gratitude. Our Party remains loyal to the ideas of Karl Marx which, through their constant development and enrichment, have become the treasury of Marxism-Leninism, the unerring theoretical base of the revolutionary practice of any communist party worthy of the name.

Many recognize Marxism as a guide to action. Others claim to be Marxists but are in fact apologists of capitalism and the neo-liberal world order. They see in the global economic crisis and other crises in which the world is mired, nothing but crisis or opportunities to further their own self-serving interests. They do not see, nor do they want to see, the way forward revealed by phenomena that come into being and pass away. They do not see and do not want to see that the class struggle which is sharpening in the midst of the crisis is leading towards the creation of a new historical epoch based on abolishing the exploitation of persons by persons and all its attendant anarchy, oppression, poverty, insecurity and wars.

The Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) bases itself on the Marxist ideas because they reflect the objective laws of social development. They are a guide to the working class in its struggle for emancipation, a great inspiration and a vital spiritual force for the working class to accomplish its aims. Not only do they reflect the laws of social development, they are also a great material force to change the world. As the class struggle becomes more acute and the class and national contradictions sharpen, these ideas continue to be taken up by an ever greater number of people. They are being further developed and enriched in the course of revolutionary practice.

The question of the outcome of the class struggle and the leading role of the working class in revolution constitutes one of the fundamental questions of Marxism and revolutionary strategy. "The main thing in the doctrine of Marx is that it brings out the historic role of the proletariat as the builder of a Socialist society," the great Marxist V.I. Lenin pointed out.[1] He stressed that it is always important to ascertain "which class stands at the hub of one epoch or another, determining its main content, the main direction of its development, the main characteristics of the historical situation in that epoch, etc."

Marx said:

... as to myself, no credit is due to me for discovering the existence of classes in modern society or the struggle between them. Long before me, bourgeois historians had described the historical development of this class struggle and bourgeois economists the economic anatomy of the classes. What I did that was new was to prove: 1) that the existence of classes is only bound up with particular historical phases in the development of production, 2) that the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat, 3) that this dictatorship itself only constitutes the transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless society.[2]

Lenin described the negation of the idea of the leading role of the working class in the revolutionary movement as the most vulgar expression of reformism. Putting the working class at the centre of our epoch, he described the main content of this epoch as the transition of the world from capitalism to socialism and the main character of the revolution as proletarian.

Marx's assertion that capitalism did not just give rise to the bourgeoisie, but also to the working class which is its gravedigger is crucial to opening a path for society to progress. It recognizes that the working class is such an historical material force because it is in its interest to end all exploitation of persons by persons and, in so doing, it puts an end to all backwardness, all darkness and ignorance, and ushers in an entirely new stage in the development of the society, the highest advance of the high road of civilization, bringing into being the new epoch of history.

To this day, the question of developing the leading role of the working class, its leadership over all the affairs which concern the society, is the decisive question which will determine the victory of the cause of all humanity to turn things around in its favour. To merely talk about the class struggle, recognize its existence and describe it, without recognizing where this class struggle leads, presupposes that the bourgeoisie and the working class will continue to exist forever, as two contending classes, with the bourgeoisie as the ruling class, and the working class as the oppressed class. This is precisely what the bourgeoisie wants the working class and all the oppressed to believe. This is why, while they recognize classes and the class struggle they deny the forward march of the society. They merely describe the situation but refuse to analyze. Either they see the situation fatalistically, with no way out and they claim that the struggles of the workers and broad masses of the people lead nowhere, or they present the spontaneous struggles euphorically and applaud them, so long as they do not threaten the status quo. Either way, the result is the same. As far as the bourgeoisie is concerned, it can coexist with those who recognize the class struggle, so long as they do not recognize where it leads and do not organize on the basis of this recognition.

What distinguishes the Marxist-Leninists from all the other social forces in the society is their aims which they hold high under all conditions and circumstances. These aims arise out of the very conditions of the society. They are the conscious expression of where the society is headed. The work of the Party is to imbue the working class with these aims, which it does in a practical way. This makes the working class a conscious fighter for its own emancipation and the emancipation of the society as a whole and all humankind.

CPC(M-L) proceeds from the real motion which is taking place in the society. It neither exaggerates nor belittles an aspect or feature of the present-day situation. It strives to take into account all of the factors which are operating -- ignoring neither the objective nor the subjective side of the movement; neither the role of the conscious factor, the Party and its theory, Contemporary Marxist-Leninist Thought, nor the role of the masses of people as the makers of history.


Hardial Bains, founder and leader of CPC(M-L), pays respects at the grave of Karl Marx in Highgate Cemetery in London, 1983
on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Marx's death.

Hardial Bains, the founder and leader of our Party until his untimely death in 1997, pointed out:

"Karl Marx discovered the law of motion of the society and the specific law of motion of the capitalist mode of production. It is because of the operation of these laws that motion has also been created in the sphere of ideas, science and theory. At the time the society split up into the two irreconcilable classes -- the bourgeoisie and the proletariat -- the entire tradition of science and enlightenment went to that class, the proletariat, whose interest it is to end all conditions of exploitation of persons by persons. Because of the mission which befalls it, the proletariat is the only class which is not prejudiced. Science needs such a condition in order to advance.

"It is the discoveries of Karl Marx which provided the class with consciousness, showed it its aim based on the direction of the class struggle, the direction in which the society is headed, and how to get there. But Karl Marx was first and foremost a revolutionist. The science which he gave rise to has both proletarian partisanship and revolutionary character and thus it is of no use to the bourgeoisie. To be a scientist, to be revolutionist, it is necessary to be the continuer of the glorious road on which stands the glorious name of Karl Marx, the road of the victory of the highest ideals of humankind."[3]

CPC(M-L) takes up this work in its complexity and in its profundity in order to ensure that the working class is armed with the spiritual weapon which it finds in Marxism-Leninism, while Marxism-Leninism finds its material weapon in the working class. The merging of the theory of Marxism-Leninism with the working class movement is one of the most important factors in the preparation of the human factor/social consciousness which is a necessary material condition to open society's path to progress.

This consciousness is taken by the Party to all sections of the society. When the Party talks about the independent movement of the working class, far from narrowing down the scope of the working class movement, limiting it to what are called "working class issues," the Party has in mind its program for the working class to constitute the nation and vest sovereignty in the people. It is the movement of the working class for its own emancipation in the course of which it emancipates all of the society. While the bourgeoisie presents the working class as self-centred, with narrow aims, the Marxist-Leninist position is not self-serving; it does not change according to convenience or according to whether the Party is addressing itself to the working class, or to the youth, to women or any other section of society. The working class has no standing or possibility of affecting the affairs of the society in a revolutionary way if it is separate and divorced from the problems of the society and is aloof from the problems of all the exploited and oppressed and stands away from the high road of civilization. The working class cannot march on the high road of civilization just because it is the working class -- it must have its vanguard in the form of a political party which is a trusted and tested general staff which sees in the struggle to open society's path to progress the greatest advance on the high road of civilization. Thus the vanguard does not act by rejecting the high road but marches on it, appropriating what is best and relying on the working class as the material force which history has brought into being for the realization of this task.

Today, the name and work of Karl Marx live on in the hearts and minds of millions who aspire to build the New, a society in which all humans will flourish. Those who wish to organize the working class to take up its leading role in building that society must use Marxism as a guide to action.


Hardial Bains speaking at the Seminar on the Occasion of the 110th Anniversary of the Death of Karl Marx" held at the Marx Memorial Library in London on September 5, 1993.


Hardial Bains at Lenin's desk at the Marx Memorial Library in London, September 1993.

Notes

1. V.I. Lenin, "The Historical Destiny of the Doctrine of Karl Marx," Selected Works, Vol. 1 (Moscow: Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute, 1908), p. 64.

2. Karl Marx, "Letter to J. Weydemeyer, London, March 5, 1852" in Marx and Engels, Selected Works, Vol. 1 (Moscow:  Progress Publishers, 1973), p. 528.

3. Hardial Bains, "The Necessity for the Mass Party Press," Speech at the Scientific Session on the Fifteen Years of the Party Press, September 1, 1985, A Week of Celebrations, MELS, Toronto, 1985.

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Biography of Marx

The following biography of Karl Marx was written by Frederick Engels in June, 1877, six years before Marx passed away on March 14, 1883. First published in the Volkskalender, an almanac which appeared in Brunswick in 1878, it was translated from the original German by the Foreign Languages Publishing House of the Soviet Union in 1955 and published in a pamphlet titled On Marx.

***

Karl Marx, the man who was the first to give socialism, and thereby the whole labour movement of our day, a scientific foundation, was born at Trier in 1818. He studied in Bonn and Berlin, at first taking up law, but he soon devoted himself exclusively to the study of history and philosophy, and in 1842 was on the point of establishing himself as an assistant professor in philosophy when the political movement which had arisen since the death of Frederick William III directed his life into a different channel. With his collaboration, the leaders of the Rhenish liberal bourgeoisie, the Camphausens, Hansemanns, etc., had founded, in Cologne, the Rheinische Zeitung[1] and in the autumn of 1842, Marx, whose criticism of the proceedings of the Rhenish Landtag diet had excited very great attention, was put at the head of the paper. The Rheinische Zeitung naturally appeared under censorship, but the censorship could not cope with it.[2] The Rheinische Zeitung almost always got through the articles which mattered; the censor was first supplied with insignificant fodder for him to strike out, until he either gave way of himself or was compelled to give way by the threat that then the paper would not appear the next day. Ten newspapers with the same courage as the Rheinische Zeitung and whose publishers would have allowed a few hundred thalers extra to be expended on typesetting -- and the censorship would have been made impossible in Germany as early as 1843. But the German newspaper owners were petty-minded, timid philistines and the Rheinische Zeitung carried on the struggle alone. It wore out one censor, after another; finally it came under a double censorship; after the first censorship the Regierungspräsident[3] had once more and finally to censor it. That also was of no avail. In the beginning of 1843, the government declared that it was impossible to keep this newspaper in check and suppressed it without more ado.

Marx, who in the meanwhile had married the sister of von Westphalen, later minister of the reaction, removed to Paris, and there, in conjunction with A. Ruge, published the German-French Annuals, in which he opened the series of his socialist writings with a Criticism of the Hegelian Philosophy of Law. Further, together with F. Engels, The Holy Family: Against Bruno Bauer and Co., a satirical criticism of one of the latest forms blunderingly assumed by the German philosophical idealism of that time.

The study of political economy and of the history of the Great French Revolution still allowed Marx time enough for occasional attacks on the Prussian government; the latter revenged itself in the spring of 1845 by securing from the Guizot ministry -- Herr Alexander von Humboldt is said to have acted as intermediary -- his expulsion from France. Marx shifted his domicile to Brussels and published there in French in 1847: The Poverty of Philosophy, a criticism of Proudhon's Philosophy of Poverty, and in 1848 Discourse on Free Trade. At the same time he made use of the opportunity to found a German workers' society in Brussels and so commenced practical agitation. The latter became still more important for him when he and his political friends in 1847 entered the secret Communist League, which had already been in existence for a number of years. Its whole structure was now radically changed; this association, which previously was more or less conspiratorial, was transformed into a simple organization of Communist propaganda, which was only secret because necessity compelled it to be so, the first organization of the German social-democratic party. The League existed wherever German workers' unions were to be found; in almost all of these unions in England, Belgium, France and Switzerland, and in very many of the unions in Germany the leading members belonged to the League and the share of the League in the incipient German labour movement was very considerable. Moreover, our League was the first which emphasized the international character of the whole labour movement and realized it in practice, which had Englishmen, Belgians, Hungarians, Poles, etc., as members and which organized international labour meetings, especially in London.


An original page of the manuscript of the Communist Manifesto.

The transformation of the League took place at two congresses held in 1847, the second of which resolved on the elaboration and publication of the fundamental principles of the Party in a manifesto to be drawn up by Marx and Engels. Thus arose the Manifesto of the Communist Party, which first appeared in 1848, shortly before the February Revolution, and has since been translated into almost all the European languages.

The Deutsche Brüsseler Zeitung,[4] in which Marx participated and which mercilessly exposed the blessings of the police regime of the fatherland, caused the Prussian government to try to effect Marx's expulsion once more, but in vain. When, however, the February Revolution resulted in popular movements also in Brussels, and a radical change appeared to be imminent in Belgium, the Belgian government arrested Marx without ceremony and deported him. In the meanwhile, the French Provisional Government had sent him through Flocon an invitation to return to Paris, and he accepted this call.

In Paris he came out especially against the swindle, widespread among the Germans there, of wanting to form the German workers in France into armed legions in order to carry the revolution and the republic into Germany. On the one hand, Germany had to make her revolution herself, and, on the other hand, every revolutionary foreign legion formed in France was betrayed in advance by the Lamartines of the Provisional Government to the government which was to be overthrown, as occurred in Belgium and Baden.

After the March Revolution, Marx went to Cologne and founded there the Neue Rheinische Zeitung,[5] which was in existence from June 1, 1848 to May 19, 1849 -- the only paper which represented the standpoint of the proletariat within the democratic movement of the time, as shown in its unreserved championship of the Paris June insurgents of 1848, which cost the paper the defection of almost all its shareholders.

In vain the Kreuzzeitung,[6] pointed to the "Chimborazo[7] impudence" with which the Neue Rheinische Zeitung attacked everything sacred, from the king and vice-regent of the realm down to the gendarme, and that, too, in a Prussian fortress with a garrison of 8,000 at that time. In vain was the rage of the Rhenish liberal philistines, who had suddenly become reactionary. In vain was the paper suspended by martial law in Cologne for a lengthy period in the autumn of 1848. In vain the Reich Ministry of Justice in Frankfurt denounced article after article to the Cologne Public Prosecutor in order that judicial proceedings should be taken. Under the very eyes of the police the paper calmly went on being edited and printed, and its distribution and reputation increased with the vehemence of its attacks on the government and the bourgeoisie. When the Prussian coup d'état took place in November 1848, the Neue Rheinische Zeitung called at the head of each issue upon the people to refuse to pay taxes and to meet violence with violence. In the spring of 1849, both on this account and because of another article, it was made to face a jury, but on both occasions was acquitted. Finally, when the May risings of 1849 in Dresden and the Rhine province had been suppressed, and the Prussian campaign against the Baden-Palatinate rising had been inaugurated by the concentration and mobilization of considerable masses of troops, the government believed itself strong enough to suppress the Neue Rheinische Zeitung by force. The last number -- printed in red ink -- appeared on May 19.

Marx again went to Paris, but only a few weeks after the demonstration of June 13, 1849 he was faced by the French government with the choice of either shifting his residence to Brittany or leaving France. He preferred the latter and moved to London, where he has lived uninterruptedly ever since. An attempt to continue to issue the Neue Rheinische Zeitung in the form of a review (in Hamburg, 1850) had to be given up after a while in view of the ever-increasing violence of the reaction. Immediately after the coup d'etat in France in December 1851, Marx published: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (Boston 1852; second edition, Hamburg 1869, shortly before the war). In 1853 he wrote: Revelations About the Cologne Communist Trial (first printed in Basle, later in Boston, and again recently in Leipzig).

After the condemnation of the members of the Communist League in Cologne, Marx withdrew from political agitation and for ten years devoted himself, on the one hand, to the study of the rich treasures offered by the library of the British Museum in the sphere of political economy, and, on the other hand, to writing for the New York Tribune,[8] which up to the outbreak of the American Civil War published not only contributions signed by him but also numerous leading articles on conditions in Europe and Asia from his pen. His attacks on Lord Palmerston, based on an exhaustive study of British official documents, were reprinted in London in pamphlet form.

As the first fruit of his many years of study of economics, there appeared in 1859 A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Part I (Berlin, Duncker). This work contains the finest coherent exposition of the Marxian theory of Value, including the doctrine of money. During the Italian War Marx, in the German newspaper Das Volk,[9] appearing in London, attacked Bonapartism, which at that time posed as liberal and playing the part of liberator of the oppressed nationalities, and also the Prussian policy of the day, which under the cover of neutrality was seeking to fish in troubled waters. In this connection it was necessary to attack also Herr Karl Vogt, who at that time, on the commission of Prince Napoleon (Plon-Plon) and in the pay of Louis Napoleon, was carrying on agitation for the neutrality, and indeed the sympathy, of Germany. When Vogt heaped upon him the most abominable and deliberately false calumnies, Marx answered with: Herr Vogt (London, 1860), in which Vogt and the other gentlemen of the imperialist sham-democratic gang were exposed, and Vogt himself on the basis of both external and internal evidence was convicted of receiving bribes from the December empire. The confirmation came just ten years later: in the list of the Bonaparte hirelings, found in the Tuileries in 1870 and published by the September government, there was the following entry under the letter V: Vogt-in August 1859 there were remitted to him-Frs. 40,000."

Finally, in 1867 there appeared in Hamburg: Capital, a Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production, Volume I, Marx's chief work, which expounds the foundations of his economic-socialist conceptions and the main features of his criticism of existing society, the capitalist mode of production and its consequences. The second edition of this epoch-making work appeared in 1872; the author is engaged in the elaboration of the second volume.

Meanwhile the labour movement in various countries of Europe had so far regained strength that Marx could entertain the idea of realizing a long-cherished wish: the foundation of a Workers' Association embracing the most advanced countries of Europe and America, which would demonstrate bodily, so to speak, the international character of the socialist movement both to the workers themselves and to the bourgeois and the governments -- for the encouragement and strengthening of the proletariat, for striking fear into the hearts of its enemies. A mass meeting in favour of Poland, which had just then again been crushed by Russia, held on September 28, 1864, in St. Martin's Hall in London, provided the occasion for bringing forward the matter, which was enthusiastically taken up. The International Working Men's Association was founded; a Provisional General Council, with its seat in London, was elected at the meeting, and Marx was the soul of this as of all subsequent General Councils up to the Hague Congress. He drafted almost everyone of the documents issued by the General Council of the International, from the Inaugural Address, 1864, to the Address on the Civil War in France, 1871. To describe Marx's activity in the International is to write the history of this Association, which in any case still lives in the memory of the European workers.

The fall of the Paris Commune put the International in an impossible position. It was thrust into the forefront of European history at a moment when it had everywhere been deprived of all possibility of successful practical action. The events which raised it to the position of the seventh Great Power simultaneously forbade it to mobilize its fighting forces and employ them in action, on pain of inevitable defeat and the setting back of the labour movement for decades. In addition, from various sides elements were pushing themselves forward that sought to exploit the suddenly enhanced fame of the Association for the purpose of gratifying personal vanity or personal ambition, without understanding the real position of the International or without regard for it. A heroic decision had to be taken, and it was again Marx who took it and who carried it through at the Hague Congress.

In a solemn resolution, the International disclaimed all responsibility for the doings of the Bakuninists, who formed the centre of those unreasonable and unsavoury elements. Then, in view of the impossibility of also meeting, in the face of the general reaction, the increased demands which were being imposed upon it, and of maintaining its complete efficacy other than by a series of sacrifices which would have drained the labour movement of its life-blood -- in view of this situation, the International withdrew from the stage for the time being by transferring the General Council to America. The results have proved how correct was this decision -- which was at the time, and has been since, so often censured. On the one hand, it put a stop then and since to all attempts to make useless putsches in the name of the International, while, on the other hand, the continuing close intercourse between the socialist workers' parties of the various countries proved that the consciousness of the identity of interests and of the solidarity of the proletariat of all countries evoked by the Intemational is able to assert itself even without the bond of a formal international association, which for the moment had become a fetter.

After the Hague Congress, Marx at last found peace and leisure again for resuming his theoretical work, and it is to be hoped he will be able before long to have the second volume of Capital ready for the press.

Of the many important discoveries through which Marx has inscribed his name in the annals of science, we can here dwell on only two.

The first is the revolution brought about by him in the whole conception of world history. The whole previous view of history was based on the conception that the ultimate causes of all historical changes are to be looked for in -- the changing ideas of human beings, and that of all historical changes political changes are the most important and dominate the whole of history. But the question was not asked as to whence the ideas come into men's minds and what the driving causes of the political changes are. Only upon the newer school of French, and partly also of English, historians had the conviction forced itself that, since the Middle Ages at least, the driving force in European history was the struggle of the developing bourgeoisie with the feudal aristocracy for social and political domination. Now Marx has proved that the whole of previous history is a history of class struggles, that in all the manifold and complicated political struggles the only thing at issue has been the social and political rule of social classes, the maintenance of domination by older classes and the conquest of domination by newly arising classes. To what, however, do these classes owe their origin and their continued existence? They owe it to the particular material, physically sensible conditions in which society, at a given period produces and exchanges its means of subsistence. The feudal rule of the Middle Ages rested on the self-sufficient economy of small peasant communities, which themselves produced almost all their requirements, in which there was almost no exchange and which received from the arms-bearing nobility protection from without and national or at least political cohesion. When the towns arose and with them separate handicraft industry and trade intercourse, at first internal and later international, the urban bourgeoisie developed, and already during the Middle Ages achieved, in struggle with the nobility, its inclusion in the feudal order as likewise a privileged estate. But with the discovery of the extra-European world, from the middle of the fifteenth century onwards, this bourgeoisie acquired a far more extensive sphere of trade and therewith a new spur for its industry; in the most important branches handicrafts were supplanted by manufacture, now on a factory scale, and this again was supplanted by large-scale industry, become possible owing to the discoveries of the previous century, especially that of the steam engine. Large-scale industry, in its turn, reacted on trade by driving out the old manual labour in backward countries, and creating, the present-day new means of communication: steam engines, railways, electric telegraphy, in the more developed ones. Thus the bourgeoisie came more and more to combine social wealth and social power in its hands while it still for a long period remained excluded from political power, which was in the hands of the nobility and the monarchy supported by the nobility. But at a certain stage -- in France since the Great Revolution -- it also conquered political power, and now in turn became the ruling class over the proletariat and small peasants. From this point of view all the historical phenomena are explicable in the simplest possible way -- with sufficient knowledge of the particular economic condition of society, which it is true is totally lacking in our professional historians, and in the same way the conceptions and ideas of each historical period are most simply to be explained from the economic conditions of life and from the social and political relations of the period, which are in turn determined by these economic conditions. History was for the first time placed on its real basis; the palpable but previously totally overlooked fact that men must first of all eat, drink, have shelter and clothing, therefore must work, before they can fight for domination, pursue politics, religion, philosophy, etc. This palpable fact at last came into its historical rights.

This new conception of history, however was of supreme significance for the socialist outlook. It showed that all previous history moved in class antagonisms and class struggles, that there have always existed ruling and ruled, exploiting and exploited classes, and that the great majority of mankind has always been condemned to arduous labour and little enjoyment. Why is this? Simply because in all earlier stages of development of mankind production was so little developed that the historical development could proceed only in this antagonistic form that historical progress as a whole was assigned to the activity of a small privileged minority, while the great mass remained condemned to producing by their labour their own meagre means of subsistence and also the increasingly rich means of the privileged. But the same investigation of history, which in this way provides a natural and reasonable explanation of the previous class rule otherwise only explicable from the wickedness of man, also leads to the realization that, in consequence of the so tremendously increased productive forces of the present time, even the last pretext has vanished for a division of mankind into rulers and ruled, exploiters and exploited, at least in the most advanced countries that the ruling big bourgeoisie has fulfilled its historic mission, that it is no longer capable of the leadership of society and has even become a hindrance to the development of production, as the trade crises, and especially the last great collapse, and the depressed condition of industry in all countries have proved; that historical leadership has passed to the proletariat, a class which, owing to its whole position in society, can only free itself by abolishing altogether all class rule, all servitude and, all exploitation, and that the social productive forces, which have outgrown the control of the bourgeoisie, are only waiting for the associated proletariat to take possession of them in order to bring about a state of things in which every member of society will be enabled to participate not only in production but also in the distribution and administration of social wealth, and which so increases the social productive forces and their yield by planned operation of the whole of production that the satisfaction of all reasonable needs will be assured to everyone in an ever-increasing measure.

The second important discovery of Marx is the final elucidation of the relation between capital and labour, in other words, the demonstration how, within present society and under the existing capitalist mode of production, the exploitation of the worker by the capitalist takes place. Ever since political economy had put forward the proposition that labour is the source of all wealth and of all value, the question became inevitable: How is this then to be reconciled with the fact that the wage-worker does not receive the whole sum of value created by his labour but has to surrrender a part of it to the capitalist? Both the bourgeois economists and the Socialists exerted themselves to give, a scientifically valid answer to this question, but in vain, until, at last Marx came forward with the solution. This solution is as follows: The present-day capitalist mode of production presupposes the existence of two social classes -- on the one hand, that of the capitalists who are in possession of the means of production and subsistence, and, on the other hand that of the proletarians, who, being excluded from this possession, have only a single commodity for sale, their labour power, and who therefore have to sell this labour power of theirs in order to obtain possession of means of subsistence. The value of a commodity is, however, determined by the socially necessary quantity of labour embodied in its production, and, therefore also in its reproduction; the value of the labour power of an average human being during a day, month or year is determined, therefore, by the quantity of labour embodied in the quantity of means of subsistence necessary for the maintenance of this labour power during a day, month or year. Let us assume that the means of subsistence of a worker for one day requires, six hours of labour for their production, or, what is the same thing, that the labour contained in them represents a quantity of labour of six hours; then the value of labour power for one day will be, expressed in a sum of money which also embodies six hours of labour. Let us assume further that the capitalist who employs our worker pays him this sum in return, pays him, therefore, the full value of his labour power. If now the worker works six hours of the day for the capitalist, he has completely replaced the latter's outlay -- six hours' labour for six hours' labour. But then there would be nothing in it for the capitalist, and the latter therefore looks at the matter quite differently. He says: I have bought the labour power of this worker not for six hours but for a whole day, and accordingly he makes the worker work 8, 10, 12, 14 or more hours, according to circumstances, so that the product of the seventh, eighth and following hours is a product of unpaid labour and wanders, to begin with, into the pocket of the capitalist. Thus the worker in the service of the capitalist not only reproduces the value of his labour power, for which he receives pay, but over and above that he also produces, a surplus value which, appropriated in the first place by the capitalist, is in its further course divided according to definite economic laws among the whole capitalist class and forms the basic stock from which arise ground rent, profit, accumulation of capital, in short, all the wealth consumed or accumulated by the non-labouring classes. But this proved that the acquisition of riches by the present-day capitalists consists just as much in the appropriation of the unpaid labour of others as that of the slave-owner or the feudal lord exploiting serf labour, and that all these forms of exploitation are only to be distinguished by the difference in manner and method by which the unpaid labour is appropriated. This, however, also removed the last justification for all the hypocritical phrases of the possessing classes to the effect that in the present social order right and justice, equality of rights and duties and a general harmony of interests prevail, and present-day bourgeois society, no less than its predecessors, was exposed as a grandiose institution for the exploitation of the huge majority of the people by a small, ever-diminishing minority.

Modern, scientific socialism is based on these two important facts. In the second volume of Capital these and other hardly less important scientific discoveries concerning the capitalist system of society will be further developed, and thereby those aspects also of political economy not touched upon in the first volume will undergo revolutionization. May it be vouchsafed to Marx to be able soon to have it ready for the press.

Notes

1. Rhenish Gazette -- Ed.

2. The first censor of the Rheinische Zeitung was Police Councillor Dolleschall, the same man who once struck out an advertisement in the Kölnische Zeitung (Cologne Gazette) of the translation of Dante's Divine Comedy by Philalethes (later King John of Saxony) with the remark: One must not make a comedy of divine affairs. (Note by Engels.)

3. Regierungspräsident: In Prussia, regional representative of the central executive.-- Ed.

4. German Brussels Gazette: Organ of the German political emigrants in Brussels; published from 1847 to February 1848. In September 1847 Marx and Engels assumed the leadership of the newspaper. -- Ed.

5. New Rhenish Gazette. -- Ed.

6. Kreuzzeitung (Gazette of the Cross): This was the name generally applied to the reactionary monarchist daily, the Neue Preussische Zeitung (New Prussian Gazette), which began to appear in Berlin in 1848. Its head bore a cross. -- Ed.

7. Chimborazo: one of the highest peaks of the Andes Mountains in South America . -- Ed.

8. New York Daily Tribune: A daily democratic newspaper to which Marx contributed in 1851-62. It appeared in New York in 1841-1924. -- Ed.

9. Das Volk (The People): This German newspaper appeared in London from May to August 1859. Marx was one of its close collaborators. -- Ed.

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Exhibit of Works of Art and Other Items of Interest

Portraits, Paintings, Drawings and Photographs


Left: Marx in 1839 (I. Grinstein); centre and right: Marx (N. Zhukov).


German writer Heinrich Heine visits Karl and Jenny Marx in Paris, 1844 (N. Zhukov).


Left: earliest surviving photo of Karl Marx, taken in London in 1861. Right: photograph taken May 19, 1864, during a four-day trip Frederick Engels made to London. Shown with Marx and Engels are Marx's daughters, left to right, Jenny, Eleanor and Laura.


Left: Marx and his wife Jenny von Westphalen, at the seaside resort Margate, England at the end of March 1866. Right: Marx, photographed in Hannover in 1867, shortly after delivering the manuscript of Das Kapital in Hamburg (F. Wunder).


Left: Marx with his daughter Jenny in London, 1869. Jenny wears the Polish 1864 Insurrection Cross, as a sign of mourning for the Fenians executed in November 1867, who had fought against
British rule in Ireland. Right: Photo given by Marx to his friend Louis Kugelmann, summer of 1872.


Marx in London in 1875 (J. Mayall).


Left: Marx, circa 1870s (N. Gereljuk and P. Nararow); right: one of the last photos of Marx, taken in Algiers in 1882. Marx had fallen seriously ill and had travelled to Algeria on the advice of his doctor, where he stayed from February 20 to May 2, 1882.

Depictions of Life and Work


Marx speaks with workers (source unknown).


Marx and Engels among the workers (A. Venetsian).


Marx and Engels working on the Manifesto, circa 1448 (V. Polyakov).


Marx at the printing house of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung
(artist unknown).


Marx arrested in Brussels (N. Zhukov).


"Before the Sunrise" -- Karl Marx and Frederick Engels walking in London at night
(M. Dzhanashvili).


Marx and Engels (artist unknown).


Marx speaks to Communist League (source unknown).


Marx speaks in London (N. Zhukov).


Marx and Engels, circa 1870s (N. Zhukov).


(V. Lapin)


Marx in his studio, 1875 (Detail of painting by Zhang Wun).


Marx on a mural by Diego Rivera on the Palacio Nacional in Mexico City (jd).

Historical Events During Marx's Life


German Revolution, Berlin, March 19, 1848 (artist unknown).


French Revolution, Paris, 1848 (source unknown).


Barricade on rue de Soufflot in Paris during the French Revolution, June 25, 1848 (H. Vernet).


Cavalry patrolling Paris during Napoleon III's coup, December 2, 1851 (artist unknown).


Barricade at intersection of Voltaire and Lenoir during Paris Commune, 1871 (B. Braquehais).


Barricade, Paris, 1871 (P.-A. Richebourg).

Significant Places


Marx's birthplace in Trier, Germany, which today is a museum (B. Werner).


The house with the red door was the Marx family residence from October 1856 to
March 1864 on Grafton Terrace in London.


Marx's grave in Highgate Cemetery in London (Paasikivi).


Marx Memorial Library at Clerkenwell Green in London. This historic building was used by
Marx and later V.I. Lenin, and today features political events by communists and other progressives. It also houses an important archive of historical material of the workers' and communist movement.


Lenin's office, preserved at the Marx Memorial Library, where he worked on Iskra (The Spark) during his exile in London.

Some Published Works


The newspapers Rheinische Zeitung and Neue Rheinische Zeitung, both edited by Marx.



The Poverty of Philosophy, 1847; Manifesto of the Communist Party, 1848;
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, 1857; Capital, 1867.

Monuments Around the World


Berlin, Germany.


Moscow, Russia


Czech Republic at Corvinus University (left) and Karlovy Vary.


Shanghai, China


Karl Marx Theatre, Havana, Cuba

Karl Marx's Hometown Unveils Statue by Chinese Artist


A  statue of Karl Marx is officially unveiled on May 5, 2018 in Karl Marx's hometown of Trier to celebrate the 200th anniversary of his birth. The 2.3-ton bronze statue is 5.5-metres tall. It was created by Chinese artist Wu Weishan, and given to the city as a gift from China.

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Video: Marx Memorial Library and Workers' School in London, England

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