May 5, 2018 - No. 17
Urgent Need to
Renew the
Democratic Process
Prime Minister's
Contempt for
Democratic Principle
- Anna Di Carlo -
PDF
• 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
- Anna Di Carlo -
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.
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.
Theft of Canada's Resources in Northern BC
Who Benefits from LNG Canada's Natural Gas Extraction,
Liquefaction and Shipping Project
- K.C. Adams -
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.
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.
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.
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.
Biography of Marx
- Frederick Engels -
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.
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.
Video: Marx Memorial Library and
Workers' School in London, England
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