March 29, 2008

Dialectics and Shalom - K.I.

I would like to comment on Amelie's ideas. Re: dialectics. What I am seeing with the real shalom is in fact essentially a practice of dialectics-- that of upholding contradictions and resolving it. It gives detailed consideration on the actual contradictions at work, understanding primary and secondary contradictions. What had happened along the Jewish history and struggle was a redefinition of world view in the diaspora brought about by the class struggle. The Rabbi's are what I call the "armchair intellectuals" that against those intellectuals which where rooted among the masses (organic). The classic example was Jesus. He had a dialectical understanding of theory and practice. He combined it forming into praxis which was radical (Greek word "means roots"). He had a qualitative understanding of reality compared to those entrapped in the four walls of the temple or synagogue. It is understandable he has the most incisive critique of political conditions in his time and even clear cut about doing organizing, following a strategic line of surrounding the cities from the countrysides. This took form in organizing the basic masses composed of fisherfolks, peasants and even those in the enlightened gentry. At any rate, what I am pointing at is that the struggle in fact was ideological in nature. There was a blurring of a world view becuase those who are previleged where the ones that interpreted the views from below. It would be fine for me when these privileged people had the opportunity to see the glimpse of what the struggle was from below. Thus it has always been a struggle in the academe to go back to the roots. Many of whom try to wrestle with language and meaning, many whom have opted to devote time and effort understanding Hebrew or Aramaic. However to me this is still a lopsided effort becuase what is acutally is remissed is the understanding of the circumstance and how this world view came about. Of course in Marxism, it goes beyond Socratic or Hegelian dialectics. Dialectics in fact is seen from a material condition, class relations (production relations) and relations of production. Re: present day conflict Israel and Palestinians, we have to see now the whole, not only the conflict between the two entity but the geopolitical considerations. For me, resolving Zionist claim is actually addressing the issue of imperialism. What emboldens Israel to act the way it is doing now is because it in fact backed up by big business interests. The struggle then is to situate self determination, national sovereignty to the issues of US imperialism. Yes of course we can do some cosmetic arrangement by giving some pieces and portions of land to diffuse armed and civil unrest or if you will have that "second temple erected". However this approach can still be futile if not consciously complementing the strategic issue of US hegemony in the middle east. What I am advocating for long and lasting peace to materialize, in fact, is to address the issue of imperialism. Since the time of Jesus these countries had become pawns to secure markets and dumping ground of finished products to sustain ancient and even contemporary empires. Addressing the root causes of conflict can be a step building peace in the middle east. But it will not stop there. Material basis of these conflict has to be addressed. This encompassing socio-cultural, eco-political considerations.

I forgot to share to important theologians who share another world view on Palestinian experience, using another lens when reading the old testament. - Arn

Rev. Dr. Naim Ateek and Mitri Raheb


Posted by Kalovski at 20:05:33 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |

March 27, 2008

Reflection and Comment on Jeremy Milgrom ""Let Your Love for Me Vanquish Your Hatred for Him" Non-violence and Modern Judaism

Jeremy described well the contradiction in the bible that has something to do with duality, violence and nonviolent passages. He gave a contextual view of how these passages came to appear in the book. He also described the centrality of the theocentric understanding of people and how they justify their being and means in resolving contradictions.

I agree with him when he mentioned therabbinicalization of the five books, the tendency of shifting away to discerning text to more interpretation of codes. This shift may in fact well explain the crux of conflict. For herein lies the a dichotomy of theory and practice, that of merely engaging in interpretation rather than doing. The rabbinization of interpreting the text have nontheless bourgeoisifies interpretation, that means doing interpretation from a previleged point of view. This has been the struggle of Jesus trying to deconstruct "what is" to "what out to be".

Shalom for instance means wholeness, encompassing all. To some to means only a portion of the sum, a superficial type perhaps. This again reminds me of the idea of dialectics -- unity of opposites. The Jewish view of repairing presupposes that it used to be whole. Putting back to balance to the very core presupposes dialectics. It means achieivng that unity amid opposites at work. In Hindu, that balance can be harmony.

One thing that he mentioned which is worth mentioning here is also the connection of the concept of justice and peace. I agree with him when he sited that peace is based on justice. In agrarian economies having peace means acutally resolving land ownership, access and control. I agree with him that peace resolution must be accompanied with material renumerations. In the age old conflict between Palestinians and Jews, the issues of national sovereignty, dignity and self determination means giving back the land ownership and rights to the Palestinian people.
Posted by Kalovski at 04:18:59 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |

March 21, 2008

Kalovski Itim Online Podcasting is now up and running - K.I.

I am overhauling my website. My website centralizes all the sites that I have opened through time over the internet, from audio podcasting, youtube vblogging, facebook social networking as well as oneline photo features. It is amazing that convergence is happening from audio to video as well as social networking for free in the internet. Like social networking, tools are also available online. Realtime feedback softwares  makes it possible too to know easily feedbacks from the public by having applications in your mobile handset tools. Doing news reporting and features are so exciting more than before. It can be done from individually. Information is just a seconds away from outer fingertips. In line to propagate the power of podcasting I have opened a free podcast site hoping to encourage others. I have featured Edith Burgos, her interview over the FM radio in Berkeley as as well as a coverage I have done last year on the extrajudicial killings in the Philippines which the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee did a hearing in Washington D.C.



Posted by Kalovski at 13:04:35 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |

March 13, 2008

Gloria has to be ousted or replaced before peace-talks can take place and proceed - K.I.

It has been a month now and KMP’s Deputy Secretary General for international affairs is still in jail after his arrest in Negros Occidental during a peasant conference. Randy Echanis works closely with church organizations when in comes to peasant programs. Randy was a representative of the peasants when the National Democratic Front and a members of the NDFP Reciprocal Working Committee (RWC) on Social and Economic Reforms (SER). He participated in the meeting in Oslo crafting issues that has to be addressed by the government to resolve the armed conflict in the Philippines. Randy's arrest is a flagrant violation of the Joint Agreement on Safety and Immunity Guarantees (JASIG) entered into by the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP) and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP). However, the Gloria and her cabal are traitorous enough. They are continually arresting peasant leaders and put them in jail. I agree that there is no point of doing negotiation with a government that violates agreements,disrespect third party government's who have persevered in brokering for peace resolution. It is important to highlight the comment of comrade Jose Maria Sison that for peacetalks to proceed Gloria must be out of the picture. In the  first place she  was catapulted in power, her rigging the national elections years, yet she had escaped impeachment due to her tacit hold of government resouces using bribes to stay in power. Her government is so politically isolated that before she realizes it she'll be in jail. She and her cabal had masterminded diversionary events such as bombings. in capital districts in the Philippines. The latest she is to answer is her selling the country's national patrimony and sovereignty by  entering into unconstitutional agreements between China, Vietnam to explore the rich national resources in the south. For now, it is the outmost responsibility of Filipinos to call for her ouster so peace talks can proceed and resolve the decades of armed conflict in the country.


Posted by Kalovski at 22:47:41 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |

March 10, 2008

Reflections on Mahatma Gandhi's Constructive Program and Joan Bondurant's book, Conquest of Violence: The Gandhian Philosophy of Conflict.

When I commented last week I was interested how dialectics played in Gandhi’s work I did not realize that Joan Bondurant had all the while had been curious in looking at this angle. Gandhi embraces Hegelian dialectics in that he espoused an evolutionary approach in seeking truth. Joan had quite seen how Gandhi disposes to know truth using a Feuerbachian method, in that what defines truth is how this is  reflected in the objective reality, that is man’s condition ( uplift all ). However Joan from the very start had also imputed her bias with regards to her analysis of the state and how Ghandi sees it. Based on working within the system, she had described Gandhi’s approach as way to approach changes as  “creative means”, . She had posited that going beyond creative means in consonance with Gandhi's "constructive programme"  serves the other purpose of destroying democratic institutions, serve only to create more chaos and problem. Gandhi looking at his programs for me espouses what I call non-class view of society. While he recognized the importance of nationalizing heavy industries and also contending the need of developing  local village economy, he had espoused a non-class view of ownership and access of resources in that advocated voluntary giving of lands by landowners to peasants, which to me is an exercise of naïveté based on historical facts. Joan succinctly said that  Gandhi’s Satyagraha is viewpoint (world outlook) as well as stand point or ( way of life). She substantiates it that  satyagraha end is truth and that truth the only way to grasp it is through practice making it a way of life.

In general while I agree with the dialectical method used by Gandhi of grasping truth by practice, on the other hand I do not agree when "creativity" as a means to appropriate actions with regards to state function only to further prop up the existing set-up through reforms. Reforms of course is sync to advocates of liberal democracy like Joan who for one time worked for the office of strategic services, the very office precursor when intelligence was not yet centralized under the state department during the second worldwar.

see: Feuerbach philosophy

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March 07, 2008

Our Current International Work and Internationalist Tasks

Reiterating the party's position on international work. There is a need to further wage an intensive ideological campaign and work among our fraternal friends here in the US. This paper is an initial framework to guide political and mass work  of comrades in order to clarify theoritical issues confronting us bearing in mind that the bourgeoisie as well as petty bourgeoisies are in the offensive, waging an ideological and arm twisting theoritical attacks on the international proletarian movement in an intensive and intensified scale. - K.I.

By the International Department
Central Committee
Communist Party of the Philippines

May 2, 2005

The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) is leading the Filipino proletariat and people in two stages of the Philippine revolution. The current stage is that of the new democratic revolution through protracted people’s war. The next stage, which is the socialist revolution, can commence upon the basic completion of the new-democratic revolution through the nationwide seizure of political power.

At the core of the people’s democratic state system, based on the worker-peasant alliance, is the dictatorship of the proletariat. This has for its main component the people’s army under the direction and control of the working class through its revolutionary party. The transition from capitalism to socialism can be achieved only through the dictatorship of the proletariat for a whole historical epoch.

In carrying out the Philippine revolution, the CPP, the proletariat and entire people perform simultaneously tasks that are distinguishably national revolutionary and internationalist in character. The performance and fulfillment of both tasks advance the world people’s struggle against imperialism and the world proletarian revolution for socialism and communism.

The revolutionary struggle of Filipino communists, the proletarians and semi proletarians in the Philippines, is part and parcel of the revolutionary struggle of the world proletariat and people and contributes to the advance of the global anti-imperialist movement and the world proletarian-socialist revolution. Our victories are the victories of the world proletariat and people. So are their victories our victories.

Before and after the reestablishment of the CPP in 1968, the Filipino proletarian revolutionaries and the masses that they lead have undertaken militant propaganda and mass actions in support of all and each one of the revolutionary struggles against imperialism and reaction. In certain instances, the CPP has provided some limited number of cadres and technical assistance to help other parties. But the most significant support that the CPP and the Filipino have so far extended to other people’s revolutionary movements is the advance of the Philippine revolution.

The CPP has received significant moral and material support from parties that uphold the principles of proletarian class struggle and revolution, class dictatorship of the proletariat and proletarian internationalism. The support includes cadre training and some material and technical assistance. But no amount of foreign assistance can ever be comparable to the sweat and blood of the Filipino revolutionaries and masses. Foreign assistance could even be harmful and counterproductive if it comes under wrong conditionalities, if it is inappropriate or if it is indigestible.

In strategic terms, material support that we have received from abroad has hardly amounted to one per cent of the total resources that we have raised self-reliantly through fighting and mass work. In fact, our biggest though unwitting foreign supplier of weapons is the Pentagon. We capture the US-supplied weapons in the course of our tactical offensives against the military, police and paramilitary forces of the enemy.

Sense of History

We Filipino communists have an acute sense of history. We are always conscious of the need to draw principles, lessons and inspiration from revolutionary theory and practice as developed by Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Mao and other revolutionary thinkers and leaders and by the great revolutionary masses of the proletariat and semiproletariat.

On the basis of the revolutionary experience of the Filipino people and the Philippine trade union movement, Crisanto Evangelista and other comrades founded the CPP for the first time in 1930. They were inspired by the Great October Socialist Revolution and the Third International. But they had no explicit directive from the Third International for the founding even as American and Chinese cadres of the Third International had since the 1920s encouraged and facilitated the participation of worker and peasant delegates in conferences in Moscow, Canton and Shanghai.

Under the guidance of the antifascist Popular Front policy of the Third International, cadres of the Communist Party of the USA made representations to the US-Commonwealth government of Quezon in 1936-37 for the release of communist leaders from prison and exile. They also advised the formation of the Communist and Socialist Merger Party (CSMP) in 1938 that combined the communist and socialist parties and their respective worker and peasant mass followings.

The Right opportunist influence of Earl Browder penetrated the CPP not because of the Third International but because of the influence of the CPUSA on the CSMP general secretary Dr. Vicente Lava, who was a former CPUSA member. The Browderite line of “peace and democracy” undermined the revolutionary resolve of the Communist-Socialist Merger Party (CSMP) after the dissolution of the Third International in 1943.

The CSMP had a limited knowledge of the struggle against Titoite revisionism in the Communist Information Bureau from 1948 onwards. It was preoccupied with domestic issues, the growing attacks on the revolutionary forces and people and eventually the outbreak of civil war. The second Lava brother to become general secretary, Jose Lava, sought to carry out the “Left” opportunist line of quick military victory in two years’ time, without painstaking mass work and solid mass organizing. Within the same two years, from 1950 to 1952, this line resulted in the destruction of the main units of the people’s army based in camps in the unpopulated Sierra Madre.

The third Lava brother to become the general secretary, Dr. Jesus Lava, adopted a Right opportunist line under the weight of defeat and pessimism. Subsequently, he increasingly came under the influence of Khruschovite revisionism. The CSMP continuously weakened as a result of the 1955 policy seeking to liquidate the people’s army and the 1957 single-file policy seeking to liquidate the CSMP. Before 1960, the CSMP was practically dead, with the general secretary merely hiding himself in Manila and with no party branch and revolutionary mass movement left.

Dr. Jesus Lava took interest in forming an “executive committee” to revive the CSMP in 1962 only after becoming encouraged by a student demonstration of 5000 students that literally broke up the 1961 anticommunist congressional hearings against “subversive” writings in university publications in 1961. He invited Comrade Amado Guerrero to represent the youth in the committee in 1962, after he came from a few months of open language study and clandestine revolutionary studies in Indonesia.

The young proletarian revolutionary cadres led by Comrade Amado Guerrero had studied Marxism-Leninism independently of the CSMP. They studied Philippine history and current circumstances and the secretly available writings of Filipino communists since Crisanto Evangelista. They gained access to Marxist-Leninist literature and to the Soviet and Chinese literature through Indonesia. They studied the Moscow Declaration of 1957 and Moscow Statement of 1960 and the developing ideological debate and other contradictions between the CPSU and the Communist Party of China (CPC).

In 1967, the contradictions between the proletarian revolutionaries and the Lava revisionist clique came to a head principally over questions of Party history and strategy and tactics and secondarily over questions in the Sino-Soviet ideological debate. The proletarian revolutionaries had gained the majority of young and senior Party cadres and members.

They published their Marxist-Leninist position in Beijing Review on May 1, 1967. The Lava faction published their revisionist position in the Prague-based pro-Soviet Information Bulletin.

Comrade Amado Guerrero and other proletarian revolutionaries reestablished the CPP under the guidance of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought in 1968. The congress of reestablishment was grounded on a thoroughgoing critique of the ideological, political and organizational errors of the Lava brothers from 1942 onwards and the phenomenon of modern revisionism centred in the CPSU. Our Party declared its adherence to the principle of proletarian internationalism and regarded its revolutionary struggle and victories as contribution to the world anti-imperialist struggle and the world proletarian revolution.

We criticized and repudiated the revisionist notion that the proletariat had already accomplished its historic mission in the Soviet Union. We denounced as bourgeois populism the Kruschovite ideas of “party of the whole people” and “state of the whole people” and as bourgeois pacifism and reformism the slogans of “peaceful transition”, “peaceful economic competition” and “peaceful coexistence” (harped on as the general line as opposed to proletarian internationalism in international relations).

When Brezhnev was in power from 1964 to 1982, our Party exposed him for extending the work of Khrushchov in bourgeoisifying the politics, economy, culture, defense and international relations of the Soviet Union. From 1966 onwards, we upheld and supported Mao’s theory and practice of continuing revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat in order to combat revisionism, prevent capitalist restoration and consolidate socialism through the great proletarian cultural revolution.

Our Party holds the view that the revisionist line gained ascendance in the CPSU under Khrushchov and Brezhnev and paved the way for Gorbachov to destroy every semblance of socialism under his regime. Likewise in China, Right opportunism and revisionism gained ascendance as to allow the Right opportunists and revisionists to sabotage the cultural revolution and pave the way for the reversal of the proletarian revolutionary line of Mao and for the restoration of capitalism soon after his death.

More than any other factor, it is the ideological and political degeneration of the ruling party and state bureaucracy that has destroyed socialism. We must recognize this fact and study how for a number of decades socialism could be built against tremendous odds and how for another number of decades the gradual peaceful restoration of capitalism could occur through the ideological and political degeneration of the party and state bureaucracy. We need to use the Marxist-Leninist principles explicated by Lenin, Stalin and Mao to examine the growth of revisionism and the consequent destruction of socialism.

Current International Situation and Work

To understand fully how the world anti-imperialist and socialist movements have suffered serious setbacks and have come to a period of temporary defeat, we have to study how monopoly capitalism, modern revisionism and neocolonialism have coincided to unleash oppression and exploitation on the proletariat and people.

The US-led imperialist ideological, political, economic, military and cultural offensives against the proletariat and the people, the rapidly worsening crisis conditions of the world capitalist system and the rapacity of neoliberal globalization, the escalation of imperialist war production, the spread of state terrorism and wars of aggression drive us to fight US imperialism, its allies and puppets.

But to bring about long lasting revolutionary confidence and steady and ever growing anti-imperialist and socialist movements, we need communist and workers’ parties capable not only of waging the struggle against imperialism and reaction for democracy and socialism but also of addressing the question of combating modern revisionism and preempting it or preventing it from rising again to undermine and destroy socialism.

We as communist and workers’ parties must first do well our homework in Marxist-Leninist study and revolutionary struggle for us to be able to contribute something significant to the international communist movement. At any rate, meetings with other parties are occasions for learning from other parties rather than teaching them what to think and what to do. Communist and workers’ parties can go into bilateral and multilateral meetings in order to exchange experiences, views and ideas, engage in theoretical discussions and agree on various forms of cooperation.

Bilateral meetings have advantages over multilateral meetings amidst the current wide divergences in the ideological and political positions among communist and workers’ parties. Bilateral meetings can be held more often or on a timely basis and can devote more time to in-depth discussions and study. It is easier to make inquiries, give opinions and suggestions and to arrive at a common understanding and common positions through bilateral meetings than through multilateral meetings where normally the parties are expected to present and defend previously established positions.

In bilateral meetings, it is easier not only to arrive at agreements on ideological and political position and on practical cooperation but also to define the specific responsibilities and tasks in various forms of cooperation. It takes more time and effort to organize multilateral meetings. When these are held, the parties are constrained by time and can only arrive at a general level of understanding and general lines of cooperation. There can only one or a few resolutions that can be thoroughly deliberated and subjected to consensus.

Multilateral meetings can be fruitful only when they are preceded by a series of bilateral meetings, they present occasions for bilateral meetings and they result in the establishment of bilateral relations to deepen common understanding and cooperation. Our revolutionary homework guided by Marxism-Leninism in our respective countries and our respective bilateral relations with other communist and workers’ parties are the building blocks of multilateral relations and the international communist movement.

Principles Governing the Relations of Parties

The established principles that govern the relations of communist and workers’ parties are those of proletarian internationalism, equality and independence, mutual respect, non-interference, and mutual support and cooperation for mutual benefit. Even before its dissolution in 1943, the Third International had ruled that the Executive Committee should desist from interfering in the organizational details of any party and in local issues about which the party in a country knows better than any foreign party.

At its dissolution, the Third International declared the impossibility of coordinating the national sections under world war conditions and the political maturity and independent capabilities already achieved by the parties in dealing with the complexities of their respective national conditions. After World War II, upon the rise of several ruling communist and workers’ parties and similar but nonruling parties in more countries, the principles of equality, independence and non-interference came to be ever more asserted, especially in the Moscow Declaration of 1957.

The independence that Tito of Yugoslavia asserted was unacceptable because it was based on bourgeois nationalism and was a mantle for covering a whole range of revisionist ideas and policies opposing land reform and centralized socialist planning. The vigorous efforts of the CPSU to maintain itself as the “leading centre” of the international communist movement through multilateral meetings stopped neither the revisionist degeneration of the CPSU nor the assertion of independence by the CPC and other Asian parties and their prevailing preference for bilateral rather than multilateral meetings. The CPC and other parties were concerned about the CPSU using multilateral meetings to impose its will on other parties and using the method of majority vote rather than consensus.

We must learn from the past. If we wish to develop systematic, periodic or regularized multilateral meetings of communist and workers’ parties, we must adhere to the aforementioned principles governing the relations of parties. In considering and agreeing on resolutions, we must apply the methods of democratic deliberation and consensus. Thus, due respect is accorded to the equality and independence of the parties. Party delegations are given ample opportunity to further consult their principals and sign the resolution with or without qualifications or reservations.

To enhance the life and effectiveness of any system of multilateral meetings, agreements must be made only on those issues or points where such agreements can be reached through consensus. Disagreements should be laid aside to maintain the level of unity, common understanding and practical cooperation possible. Such disagreements may be resolved in the future either by a rising level of common understanding or upon a change in the situation or both.

It would be impossible to maintain the system of multilateral meetings if a single party or a few parties presume to be the leading centre or acquire by election or appointment the power to lead the other parties. The principle of democratic centralism does not apply among equal and independent parties. The methods of persuasive discussion and consensus are available to them for reaching agreement on issues and courses of action.

In the last more than fifteen years, our Party has participated in a number of multilateral meetings of communist and workers’ parties, which include the Brussels International Communist Seminar, the International Conference of Marxist-Leninist Parties and Organizations, the Calcutta International Seminar on the Continuing Validity of Marxism, the International Seminar on People’s War and the Kathmandu International Seminar on Socialism. It has also contributed papers to other multilateral meetings in Moscow, Quito and elsewhere, which it could not attend because of lack of funds.

The CPP is willing to participate in any multilateral meeting in which the aforementioned governing principles on the relations of parties are followed and resolutions are processed sufficiently through democratic deliberation and consensus. The multilateral meetings may vary according to the ideological range or focus of the participants, such as Marxist, Marxist-Leninist, Mao Zedong Thought or Maoist or scientific socialist, according to the topics, such as people’s war, defense of socialism or neoliberal globalization or whatever aspect of imperialism or according to territorial scope, such as international, Asia or Southeast Asia.

Our Party recognizes that the variety of multilateral meetings of communist and workers’ parties is due to differences in ideology, politics, topical interest or territorial scope. We are optimistic that from such variety and differences of multilateral meetings, from rising levels of common understanding and practical cooperation against the common enemy and, most importantly, from the forthcoming revolutionary victories shall arise parties that would have the capability of convening all or most of the communist and workers’ parties of the world because of the respect, experience and authority that they have gained.

Communist and workers’ parties must create and lead through party fractions or groups mass organizations of various types (unions and cooperatives for workers, associations of peasants, women, youth, journalists, lawyers, health professionals, scientists, engineers, cultural workers, peace activists and so on). They can link themselves effectively to the millions of people only through such mass organizations and their sectoral and multisectoral alliances.

Since the disappearance or diminution of mass organizations based in the Soviet bloc countries, like the World Federation of Trade Unions, World Federation of Democratic Youth, International Union of Students, Women’s International Democratic Federation, International Organization of Journalists, World Peace Council and the like, the so-called nongovernmental organizations funded by imperialist governments, UN agencies and private foundations or charities of the monopoly capitalists, bourgeois parties and religious institutions have increasingly taken the initiative in holding international multilateral meetings in order to push the reformist slogan of “civil society” among mass organizations.

The communist and workers’ parties should encourage the mass organizations to form their respective national and international organizations, and hold meetings to carry forward the line of anti-imperialist solidarity, prevail over reformism and revisionism and build the international united front. While progressive or revolutionary forces of the people take the lead and initiative, they should avoid the pitfalls of sectarianism and try to build and broaden the united front at every turn.

Our Party holds the view that the communist and workers’ parties should not be among the participants in international formations of mass organizations or people’s organizations for several reasons. The participation of parties is likely to arouse ideological debates on top of the democratic dialogue over social and political issues and to turn off mass organizations that belong or do not belong to other parties. Parties that are legal would also have an advantage over parties that are necessarily clandestine and illegal.

At any rate, it is a long-established tradition and correct practice for communist and workers’ parties to allow mass organizations on their own to join national and international formations. It is fine enough that mass organizations created and led by parties have the freedom to attract and mingle with the mass organizations that may or may not belong to other parties. Against imperialism and reaction, a united front of various forces and tendencies is practicable within and among patriotic and progressive classes or sectors.

The CPP in Relation to Foreign Countries and Governments

In the process of waging the new democratic revolution through people’s war, our Party builds the people’s democratic government (organs of democratic power) and looks forward to seizing political power nationwide. We accumulate points under international law and the laws of war for the international diplomatic recognition of the status of belligerency of the people’s democratic government through the victories of the people’s war and the GRP-NDFP peace negotiations.

International recognition of the status of belligerency is important for enabling friendly governments to have relations with the people’s democratic government, without being effectively held liable for interfering in Philippine affairs. In this connection, the CPP aims to develop relations with the ruling parties in governments that are anti-imperialist, socialist or both.

The people’s democratic government has been established through the local organs of political power in the Philippines and recognized implicitly by the reactionary big comprador-landlord government. It can sign various kinds of contracts with other governments, without the latter becoming liable for interference or “exporting revolution” to the Philippines.

However, there is yet to be a government willing to establish diplomatic relations with the people’s democratic government led by our Party. We are still far from that situation where a foreign government could have diplomatic and trade relations with the revolutionary government exclusively or with both the revolutionary government and the reactionary government, as in the case of the opposing Confederate and Union governments in the American Civil War or in the case of the Chinese civil wars before and after World War II.

Our Party is acutely aware of the radically changed character of the Communist Party of China (CPC) since the second half of the 1970s and the radically changed situation in the world since the years 1989 to 1991, when the bipolar world of the Cold War came to an end, with the implosion of the Soviet Union and the US becoming the sole superpower amidst imperialist depredations, the all-round degradation and retrogression of countries formerly ruled by revisionist regimes and the further impoverishment and oppression of the people in the overwhelming majority of countries under neocolonial rule.

Our Party’s current situation differs sharply from that which obtained when our Party had close relations with the CPC during the cultural revolution and with the Vietnamese party during its war of national liberation against US aggression and when subsequently the CPP maintained a permanent Central Committee delegation in Beijing, China. Our permanent delegation had close relations with similar permanent delegations of Southeast Asian parties and met delegations from other countries and continents. The Dengists liquidated the delegations and aimed to liquidate all the revolutionary armed struggles in Southeast Asia in exchange for China’s accommodation by the US into the world capitalist system.

Our Party stands resolutely and militantly against US imperialism and other imperialist powers and such multilateral agencies as the IMF, World Bank and the WTO in the evil scheme of neocolonialism (subverting national independence through economic and financial leverage). In contrast, the CPC has pushed for the integration of China into the world capitalist system, changed the class character of the Chinese state, economy and culture and welcomed the neocolonial scheme. China’s long-running line of peace, stability and economic development for Asia has somehow caused the liquidation of armed revolutionary movements in nearly all Southeast Asian countries.

Our revolutionary forces and people resolutely oppose the US-led campaign for “neoliberal” globalization, while China and the CPC have welcomed it and relished membership in the WTO. We are watching closely how far China supports the US in trying under the pretext of the “war on terror” to suppress the Philippine revolution. So far, the Chinese authorities have kept silent on the US labelling the Filipino revolutionary forces as “terrorist.”

The US dual policy of engagement and containment vis a vis China continues to put principal stress on engagement. In history, the US has repeatedly reconsidered its friends as its enemies and taken actions against them, including brazen bullying, subversion, intervention and aggression, depending on what bigger advantages the US wishes to obtain. The US has never concealed its long-term objective of removing the CPC from power and wiping out any semblance of socialism. It also wants to prevail over the issues of Taiwan, arms procurements, finance, trade and so on.

Our Party keeps itself informed of developments in the worsening crisis of the US and world capitalist system. We consider the resurgence of anti-imperialist and socialist movements among the proletariat and the people to be important and necessary for the Philippine and world revolution. Thus, we have contributed our efforts to building the broadest possible anti-imperialist front based on the organized strength of the revolutionary masses, with the objective of taking advantage of the conflicts among the imperialist powers.

In our Party’s experience, the communist and workers’ parties that had been most warm and eager to have comradely relations are those truly motivated by the principles of proletarian revolution, proletarian class dictatorship and proletarian internationalism. These are the parties that have given moral and material support to people’s revolutionary struggles.

Our Party has always put stress on self-reliance. The foreign assistance that it has received since 1971 is hardly one per cent of total resources raised locally through fighting, taxation and production. Of course, such accounting does not include the priceless sacrifices of our revolutionary martyrs and heroes. We seek unconditional foreign assistance but we do not depend on it. Without it, we can still wage the revolutionary struggle. When we have it, we must be able to handle and absorb it properly.

Relations between the communist party of an avowed socialist country, no matter how powerful, do not necessarily make its Philippine counterpart revolutionary or help the Philippine revolution in any way. Take for example, the relations of the CPSU and the Lavaite revisionist group since the late 1960s. Both collaborated with the Marcos fascist dictatorship against our Party and the Filipino people. The Soviet Union even went to the extent of awarding Marcos with the medal of anti-fascist hero right on the eve of his overthrow by the people.

We oppose Philistinism and do not cozy up to any foreign party just because it is big, powerful or rich. The Lava revisionist group and the CPSU deserved each other, when the latter regarded the former as the sole vanguard party in the Philippines and the former regarded the latter as the vanguard party of the world revolution.

On anti-imperialist grounds, our Party pursues relations of anti-imperialist political solidarity with communist and noncommunist parties and organizations. For such purpose, we do not require relations on the ideological basis of Marxism-Leninism. Political relations of anti-imperialist solidarity are aimed at promoting the mass movement or preparing the diplomatic relations of the people’s democratic government. Our experience in conducting united front relations with noncommunist parties in the Philippines is significant. We have such experience too, on the international plane.

But in our experience in the period of 1986 to 1988, when we tried to establish political relations of anti-imperialist solidarity with parties that called themselves communist, the CPSU and some other parties demanded that we reverse our Marxist-Leninist position against modern revisionism and Soviet social imperialism, that we end the armed struggle and that we merge with the revisionist clique that had collaborated with the Marcos fascist regime. Our Party does not compromise any of its principles in seeking party-to-party relations. It always makes sure that its international policy does not confuse its rank and file and that it maintains its independence from other parties.

For purposes of promoting and developing anti-imperialist solidarity, the CPP does not have to be up front all the time. The National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) can relate with any party or organization abroad. It is also authorized by all revolutionary forces in the Philippines and the people’s democratic government to develop friendly relations with foreign governments, governmental agencies and ruling parties. The various patriotic and progressive organizations in the Philippines are also encouraged to seek partners abroad in people-to-people projects of cooperation.

In due time, the people’s democratic government in the Philippines will gain diplomatic recognition as a result of the arduous revolutionary struggle of the Filipino people and such revolutionary forces as the CPP, the NPA and the NDFP. We strive to raise higher the level of the people’s war, raise higher the flag of Red political power before the eyes of the world and contribute to the rise of the anti-imperialist and socialist movements and governments.

At present, US imperialism looks so powerful and acts so arrogantly and so brutally. But it has overreached and overextended itself. It is increasingly strained between trying to control the oil sources and supply routes in the Middle East and Central Asia on the one hand and paying direct attention to East Asia on the other hand. As the US sinks deeper and longer in a quagmire in Iraq or in the whole of the Middle East, the proletariat and people of China, North Korea, Philippines and other Asian countries will have better opportunities for advancing the struggle for national independence against the US imperialists and their puppets.

US strategic planners calculate that the US can use a broad spectrum of economic, financial, military and diplomatic instruments to isolate, weaken and eliminate any potential rival or recalcitrant state and dominate the whole world in the 21st century. They also calculate that they can decide the time and circumstances to use their high-tech weaponry for pre-emptive strikes and full-scale aggression. But US imperialism has also exposed its weaknesses in an all-round way to the people of the world as well as to countries that are wary of its extremely rapacious and aggressive character.

The ever worsening crisis of the US and world capitalist system has led to the escalation of imperialist plunder, state terrorism and wars of aggression that inflict terrible sufferings on the proletariat and the people of the world. But the same crisis generates the people’s resistance and the clamor for national liberation, democracy and socialism in the various countries and continents of the world.

Conclusion: Evaluation

It will take time to build the ideological, political and organizational unity of communist and workers’ parties at a level comparable to that in the 1930s or that in 1950s. Let us remember that the 1960 Moscow meeting of 81 communist and workers’ parties was precisely the prelude to great divisions in the international communist movement. There is no golden era to hold up as an ideal and to which we can return so easily by simply holding multilateral meetings.

Certainly, unity of the international communist movement on the ground of Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism is always a desirable and necessary goal. But to proceed with the project, we need to recognize how much destruction modern revisionism and reformism have wrought in stages over a long period on the great cause and achievements of socialism. These involved the undermining and breaching of socialism, misrepresentation of revisionists as communists and capitalist restoration as socialist reforms, and finally the uncamouflaged full-scale capitalist restoration in the years of 1989 to 1991.

In the present period, bilateral and multilateral meetings among communist and workers’ parties are feasible and must be held to raise the level of common understanding about the history and current circumstances of the international communist movement, analyze the current situation and agree on what the communist and workers’ parties can do individually and collectively for the resurgence of the revolutionary mass movement of the proletariat and the people against imperialism and for socialism.

Through such meetings, we can raise the level of common ideological and political understanding and through successes in the revolutionary struggles against imperialism and for socialism we can build the basis for resolving and overcoming the current differences among the communist and workers’ parties. The important thing now is for all of us to follow the principles of proletarian internationalism, equality, independence, noninterference, mutual support and cooperation in the relations of communist and workers’ parties.

We must integrate Marxism-Leninism with the concrete conditions of our respective countries, lead the proletariat and people in revolutionary struggles against imperialism and reaction and thwart revisionism and reformism.

With experience, strength and ideas drawn from revolutionary struggles in our respective countries, we as communist and workers’ parties have much to share when we meet among ourselves, such as we do now in this seminar. We can exchange experiences and analyses, raise the level of common understanding in ideology and strategy and agree on the coordination of struggles and on the various forms of cooperation. With successes in doing so, we move steadily towards a unity of unprecedented significance, effectiveness and proportions. ###


Posted by Kalovski at 18:32:40 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |

March 05, 2008

Some reflections of Henry David Thoreau's book on Civil Disobedience - K.I.

Henry David Thoreau puts forward the discussion of the state as well as his conception about the discussion or debate over individual right and majority right. Thoreau is a proponent of less government function of civil society in that he say "The government is best which governs least" [p.5] He further says "government is best which governs not at all.". He sees the state as separate entity that of the people, thus does not see the state as a product of class struggle and contradiction being an apparatus dominated and controlled by those classes who owns the means in production. His thinking is closer to Mikhail Bakunin who thinks that "Marxists maintain that only a dictatorship -- their dictatorship, of course -- can create the will of the people, while our answer to this is: No dictatorship can have any other aim but that of self-perpetuation, and it can beget only slavery in the people tolerating it; freedom can be created only by freedom, that is, by a universal rebellion on the part of the people and free organization of the toiling masses from the bottom up." Both presupposes run counter to the primacy of material condition that determines cognitive function or that concept of tabula rasa which points to the fact that people being are born out of the environment they are in. The inner argument by Thoreau is hinged more on the supposition posed by Kant and had given new face when he expounded on the point of individual right. He then poses a question is the individual right correct amid majority rights? His reference is conscience. However my question is where do conscience comes from? Would conscience pop up out of no where from mere abstraction or cognition? Or conscience is a reflection of ones interest and to be specific, class interest which is a mere reflection on one's relation in the means of production. Definitely the conscience of a capitalist (the one that has the capital is to buy more labor and squeeze people's labor over time to gain more profit.) is different from those who sell their labor. The point is this, conscience do not pop out of nowhere. It has a material basis and that even individual consciousness and conscience is reflective to ones relation to the means (work). Now, I see the preposition of Thoreau problematic when now seen how he approaches on handling the issues of state. Is state separate from the people? Or the state is also a mere reflection of class domination. This fine line had been a debate from the time on after the Bolshevik revolution in Russia and in the Second International. Lenin argued that thestate cannot operate in a vacuum. The state is as I have said before in class discussion is a representation of one class. In particular in an epoch of capitalism it is dominated and controlled by a few monopoly capitalist who exercises power over the majority, the workers and middle classes. So being, I argue that the state as a non-neutral ground can be changed by the dictatorship of the majority. Pundits of laizzes-faire and capitalist argue that present dictatorship of monopoly capitalist is the rule of the majority (democracy) whi is only ruled by a few in actuality and that socialism, the dictatorship of the majority is never democratic! They have carried further of painting socialism as a political concept when it fact it is by nature an economic concept! Since we are in the discourse of non-violence I would like to pose is the question is state a non-violent entity in its nature and character based on the historical circumstance it emerged? Or it is a machinery to regulate class contradiction in a given epoch? In general I agree with the supposition to have disobey the state through concerted action like not paying taxes or denying dominant classes in power to exploit labor of lower classes by getting their money, I think the strategic issue would still be, what is the alternative? I think this is apt for now.


Posted by Kalovski at 21:12:41 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |

Further developing church solidarity and networking - K.I.


Posting this email sent to me by Betty. Larry has been emailing me daily about their trip in the Philippines. This is a great contribution from church people developing the broadest solidarity among churches in the US and through out the world. A report back forum is scheduled for the diaspora to learn from the experiences of friends who just visited the Philippines - K.I.

March 4, 2008

Presbyterian delegation returns from the Philippines Group expresses solidarity with embattled UCCP

by Roger Scott Powers/ Special to Presbyterian News Service

CHICAGO — Eight Presbyterians have returned from the Philippines after a 9-day visit, February 19-27, hosted by the United Church of Christ in the Philippines (UCCP), a partner of the Presbyterian Church (USA).

The delegation, which also included a member of the United Church of Christ, was jointly sponsored by the Philippine Solidarity Project and the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship. The delegation found the Philippines to be a country of widespread poverty and enormous inequality ruled by wealthy elites and riddled with corruption. As its economic crisis worsens, peoples’ movements are rising up to call for change, but they are being met with government repression.

“The UCCP joins the struggle because most of its members are peasant workers,” explained one UCCP pastor. “The church needs to be with its flock.”

The UCCP is a church that has taken the side of the poor and supports peoples’ struggles for justice and peace. As a result, its leaders have been targeted by political violence.

In the past six years, twenty UCCP pastors and church leaders have been killed for working with the poor and advocating for human rights. The most recent was the Rev. Filomino Catambis, who was killed on Jan. 23 of this year.

Others have received death threats or been detained and tortured.

The delegation heard testimonies from victims of human rights violations and their families, including workers at Hacienda Luisita, a sugar cane plantation owned by the family of former President Corazon Aquino, where striking workers were massacred on Nov. 16, 2004. Seven were killed and more than one hundred wounded.

“Your coming here and hearing their stories means more than you can imagine,” said one UCCP leader.

The delegation also visited UCCP Pastor Berlin Guerrero in the Cavite Provincial Jail, where he has been held on trumped up charges for the past nine months without trial.

Members of the delegation pledged to increase international pressure to help secure his release.

The timing of the delegation coincided with the 22nd anniversary of the People Power revolution that ended the brutal dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos. But as bad as things were under the Marcos regime, the economic and human rights situation is considered to be even worse under current President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. Manila newspapers were filled with news of a government corruption scandal and calls from civil society groups for President Arroyo to resign.

Asked how Presbyterians in the U.S. could be most helpful to the UCCP, five suggestions were offered:

Tell the stories of the victims of empire to churches and communities in the U.S. Pray and stand strongly with the UCCP as we exercise our prophetic ministry in the Philippines. Lobby your country and government for fairer and more humane policies toward the Philippines.

Join in the movement toward global peace and against U.S. interventionist wars.

Organize regular and frequent immersion trips to the Philippines for pastors and leaders of the PC(USA).

Members of the delegation included Matthew Lang, Shelley Milosevich, and the Rev. Richard Williams from Chicago Presbytery; the Rev. Larry Emery, Ann Kohl, and Stuart Robinson, from Sacramento Presbytery; Joel Hanisek, Presbyterian Representative to the United Nations; Irene Pak, intern with the PC(USA) Office of Racial Justice & Advocacy; and the Rev. Roger Powers, co-moderator of the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship.

The next PC(USA) delegation to the Philippines is tentatively scheduled for August 2008. For more information, visit the Peace Fellowship Web site or contact the group by email.

The Rev. Roger Scott Powers is associate pastor of First & Franklin St. Presbyterian Church in Baltimore and co-moderator of the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship. o subscribe or unsubscribe, please send an email to pcusanews-subscribe-request@halak.pcusa.org or pcusanews-unsubscribe-request@halak.pcusa.org To contact the owner of the list, please send an email to pcusanews-request@halak.pcusa.org


Posted by Kalovski at 21:06:39 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |

Importance waging a dual tactic and massline in doing organizing among the masses - K.I.

The political and economic crisis in the US is getting worst. To start with concrete conditions viz developments in the political front had led many comrades to respond quickly and address these developments but still oscillate of finding clear cut reading of the mode of production and led a flip-flopping of tactical approaches, one on the immigration issue and two, on the ongoing campaign on the national elections here in the US. I would say as a preface, that our comrades here in the US time and again oscillate from left to right opportunism and becomes talist with it comes to politics. I would like to lay down the basis and description of the crisis of imperialism here in the belly of the beast and the importance of waging a dual tactic in handling political struggles in the opne mass movement.

Crisis of imperialism and resistance of the world's peoples

To describe the current crisis of the world capitalist system, it is necessary to start with the US' main responsibility for such a crisis. The US has been chiefly responsible for pushing the policies of "neoliberal" globalization and the global war of terror. These policies are aimed at solving, but have instead resulted in, aggravating and deepening the crisis of monopoly capitalism.

Since the end of the 1970s, the US has adopted the policy of "neoliberal" globalization supposedly to overcome the problem of stagflation which is the simultaneous occurrence of stagnation and inflation and the aggravation of one by any attempt to counter the other. This problem is blamed on government social spending and rising wage levels. Thus, the declared bias of neoliberalism is to oppose Keynesian state intervention by way of public investments and to give free rein to the "free market," with minimal intervention by the Federal Bank through the regulation of interest rates and money supply.

The main thrust of neoliberalism is to use the state to press down social spending and wage levels and deliver to the monopoly bourgeoisie huge tax cuts, military contracts, public assets, unlimited credit, investment insurance and subsidies and to provide it them political and military backing in its their drive to expand and secure sources of raw materials, markets, fields of investments and all kinds of monopoly advantages.

Under the "neoliberal" slogan of "free market" globalization, the imperialist countries headed by the US have pressed the underdeveloped countries to denationalize their economies. The monopoly bourgeoisie have thus accelerated the concentration and centralization of capital in their hands through the extraction of superprofits and debt service, the liberalization of capital flows and trade, the privatization of state assets and social services, and deregulation to the detriment of the working people, women, children and the environment.

In order to press down wage levels within their national borders, the US and other imperialist countries have eroded workers' rights and have deployed runaway shops abroad for the manufacture or semimanufacture of consumer goods and the outsourcing of labor-intensive services. They have tended to keep within their national borders the capital-intensive and highly profitable industries. But the accelerated exploitation of the working class and the oppressed peoples and nations has had the effect of stunting the growth of the global market and thus worsening the crisis of overproduction.

The real global economy has become depressed through several rounds of economic and financial crisis. This has been most flagrant for a long time in most countries of the world, and has especially become the general run of underdeveloped countries. But even the US, its imperialist allies and some third world countries like China would have long appeared as being in a state of depression if not for the massive use of local and foreign borrowing to evoke economic growth even if lopsided. The depression has been concealed by ever rising levels of global debt that cover budgetary and trade deficits to maintain the flow of trade and investments in favor of the imperialist countries and a few third world countries, and keep up abstract rates of growth above the real economy.

The US has been the most abusive in using local and foreign borrowing in order to cover budget and trade deficits, conjure the illusion of growth and maintain itself as the biggest market for consumer goods in the world. The US national debt has leaped from the 2001 level of US$5.7 trillion to the current level of US$9.1 trillion. The rapidly growing budget deficit has been brought about by huge tax cuts, military-industrial contracts and war expenditures in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The US trade deficit has reached the annual level of US$800 billion. This has been aggravated by import accommodations to its industrial capitalist allies and by taking advantage of cheap labor in China, India and Southeast Asia. The US dollar is used wantonly to finance consumer imports, in effect making the US the world's biggest debtor. At their own level, American consumers have been pushed into heavy borrowing for consumption in the face of stagnation and the decline of US industry and employment.

At the time of the high-tech bubble from 1995 to 2000, American workers lost regular jobs but made up for this with part-time jobs in the economy's expanding service sector. Quite a number of them also borrowed money to engage in stock speculation and allowed investment firms to use workers' pension funds for the same purpose. After the bursting of the high-tech bubble in 2001 until 2005, the US monopoly bourgeoisie promoted the housing bubble by offering low-interest subprime mortgage rates with little or practically no collateral and misleading the mass of homeowners to borrow money for consumption spending against the inflated value of their mortgaged homes.

US banks have repackaged the mortgaged loans and sold them to foreign banks as components of so-called structured investment vehicles, thus globalizing the scale of potential financial crisis due to mortgage defaults.

The US consumer market is contracting due to the crisis of overproduction, the financial crisis generated by excessive US national debt, the rapid decline of the US dollar, the mortgage meltdown and the rise of energy cost. It is expected to cause a starkly severe recession in the US and other imperialist countries next year. The contraction of the US consumer market is causing drastic reductions of orders from China, India, Southeast Asia and other countries producing low value-added semimanufactures for imperialist countries.

The underdeveloped countries are not at all benefited by the decreasing value of the US dollar because they have no substantial alternative source of foreign exchange income. Having been tied to the US dollar, their own currencies are even more vulnerable to depreciation. Their US dollar reserve holdings, if any, are in the first place mainly borrowings for the importation of consumer goods and for balancing current accounts. They are being eroded rapidly.

The attempt of the Bush regime to stimulate the US economy through increased military production and accelerated borrowing has been a big failure. Military production, characterized by high-cost high technology has limited capacity for generating jobs. At the same time, the American public can no longer accept the high cost of war production and the wars of aggression in terms of American lives and money in the quagmires of Iraq and Afghanistan. The war budget of the US in both countries has reached the level of more than US$600 million and the accumulated costs of war in Iraq alone have reached US$1 trillion, if both the operational and related costs are included.

Further gargantuan US borrowing is knocking hard against the limits. The rising levels of the US national debt, debt service and budget and trade deficits have seriously undermined global confidence in the US dollar and is causing its depreciation. It is estimated that the US has to increase interest rates and draw down international credit by at least US$2 trillion in order to stem the global loss of confidence in the US dollar.

Even as the American public is becoming increasingly averse to the wars of aggression in Iraq and Afghanistan, such giant corporations as those in the military-industrial complex and in the oil business persist in pushing the US to remain at war and in maneuvering for the building of permanent US military bases in the Middle East and Central Asia.

US persistence in Iraq and Afghanistan and the waste of its human and material resources there have far-reaching adverse consequences to the US in its own homeground and abroad. These are exacerbating contradictions within US society and with its imperialist allies. The oppressed peoples and nations recognize the overextension and weaknesses of the US and are encouraged to fight for national and social liberation.

In the US and other imperialist countries, the monopoly bourgeoisie are using all kinds of strategic and tactical maneuvers to deflect attention from the root causes of exploitation and oppression and to push down the working class, immigrants, the youth and women. They play up and generate chauvinism, racism and fascism in order to divide the working class and to pit the people in the imperialist countries against those in other countries. They use the mass media and various forms of entertainment to conjure the illusion of democracy and deflect public attention from the most important social issues.

But the working class and the people in the imperialist countries are fighting back against the monopoly bourgeoisie. There have been widespread strikes by workers, protest rallies and marches by migrants and militant street actions by the youth in various imperialist countries. These are still sporadic, however, even as at certain times in certain countries outbursts of public outrage are robust and widespread. They manifest favorable conditions for the steady development of proletarian and other progressive forces. The imperialist powers are still able to shift the burden of the crisis mainly to the oppressed peoples and nations in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

The imperialist powers are still united in exploiting and oppressing the proletariat and peoples of the world, especially the third world. They have an abundance of mechanisms to harmonize their interests against their common adversaries. Such mechanisms include the IMF, the World Bank, the WTO, the UN and its Security Council, regional and bilateral trade agreements, the NATO and other regional as well as bilateral military treaties and alliances.

The US has kept its position as the sole power due to its financial, technological and military power, which remains unsurpassed by any of its allies. Despite increasing weakness, the US dollar still maintains its position as the currency of the world. But there are now certain breaches in its dominance as some oil-producing countries and other big holders of US currency and debts have started to reduce their dollar transactions.

The contradictions among the imperialist powers are steadily building up. The increased number of imperialist powers and aspirants for imperialist status has made the world too small for their competition and rivalry. The US is taking advantage of its position as the sole superpower and has been most aggressive and provocative in pursuing its ultranational interests, increasingly at the expense of its own allies. At the same time, the US is exposing its own overextension and weaknesses, which embolden other imperialists to undertake initiatives at variance with those of the US.

Among its imperialist allies, the US is resented for its dominance over the world financial system, major sources of oil and other natural resources, fields of investments and markets. France, Germany, Russia and China have shown serious differences with the US in major issues and in positions regarding particular regions of the world. They have differences with the US over the US invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan and over the current US monopoly of the spoils of war.

The imperialist countries have differences over the issues of Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Iran and other countries in the Middle East. Together with the border states in Central Asia, Russia and China have formed the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) to counter US incursions in Central Asia. The imperialist powers have differing positions regarding various issues involving East Asia, South Asia, Africa and Latin America. The relative balance of power among the imperialists is increasingly showing strain and instability. While the US is preoccupied with Iraq, other imperialist powers are strengthening their economic and political positions elsewhere.

The main contradiction in the world is still that between the imperialist powers and the oppressed peoples and nations. This is most acutely manifested by the unbridled exploitation and oppression by the imperialists with the assistance of their dependent and puppet states and also manifested by the people's resistance through revolutionary armed struggle and other forms of struggle.

The wealthiest 20% of the world's population are in the imperialist countries, and the poorest 20% are in the third world countries. The income of the former was 30 times larger than that of the latter in 1960. Then it became 74 times larger in 1995. Today, the overwhelming majority of the people live on less than two dollars a day and are concentrated in the third world. In 1973, the third world debt was only US$130 billion. In 1982, it jumped to US$612 billion. In 2006, it further leaped to US$3.2 trillion. Imperialist plunder has caused the rapid impoverishment and indebtedness of the peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America.

Revolutionary armed struggle, especially in the form of protracted people's war, is the most important weapon in achieving national liberation and democracy against imperialism. It responds to the central question of seizing political power and breaking away decisively from the clutches of imperialism and feudalism. There are peoples persevering in armed revolution as in Colombia, the Philippines, India, Tamil Eelam and Turkey. In Nepal, the armed revolutionaries have declared the end of their people's war and wish to take power through a sequence of parliamentary struggle and popular insurrection. If frustrated, they are expected to resume people's war.

It is due to the demands of the people for national independence and democracy that certain governments act in an anti-imperialist way. The Iraqi government under Saddam Hussein tried to play off some imperialist powers against the US until the latter decided to unleash a war of aggression. The government of Venezuela under Hugo Chavez dares to challenge US imperialism in order to gain the support of the people and carry out reforms. The governments of China, Cuba and the People's Democratic Republic of Korea have consistently invoked national independence and the socialist aspirations of the people in order to contend with US imperialism.

The crisis conditions of the world capitalist system are favorable for waging revolution, especially in Asia, Africa and Latin America, where the main contradiction in the world are presently in sharpest focus. Armed revolution will become the main current of the world as a result of the intensification of the main contradiction in connection with the intensification of contradictions within imperialist countries and among imperialist powers. Crises do not automatically spell the advance or victory of revolution. They are objective conditions, which the subjective revolutionary forces and the people must exploit in order to strengthen themselves and defeat their enemy.

Importance of a proactive position in the national elections here in the US.

Comrade Larry Holmes have discussed well how to approach the national elections here in the US that proletarian leadership has to build mass movement soonest in responding to the surge of people’s participation in the bourgeois national elections. Specific to Obama campaign, Holmes says he had never anticipated critical mass developed. While he posits to have a mass movement that well consolidate the expected masses that will be frustrated, this again is a typical example of subjectivism creping in the movement. Has they not quite well understood of the dialectical relationship of doing integrative organizing and mass base building? While an election is a contest of bourgeoisie over the division of the political and economic pie, it is also a reflection how intense the contradiction is among them. It is no question that the bourgeoisie is trying to find a new face to represent them. There is no question Obama can be that. However, it is of most importance to remain with the masses and not be talist. It is of prime importance to elevate the consciousness of the masses. Changing the driver of a car that is dilapidated will mean nothing if the car is not changed. While I agree as a tactical issue the importance of changing some parts of the machinefor the car to run or in real politik to complement our work to develop critical mass from below through working within the given political interstices to legislate laws to further give breathing and working space, in the long run the system has to be changed. It is of prime importance to set a dual tactic as a matter of approach. While developing a mass movement on the basis of consolidation doing expansion, it is also important to be within the people. This insures that we are moving deep and wide among the masses. This insures we do not become commandist or tailist in leading the people. We insure doing massline among the people




Posted by Kalovski at 20:10:41 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |

March 03, 2008

Stand For Socialism Against Modern Revisionism

It is of dire need to put forward our analysis. Our struggle is waged on different fronts of which the ideological front is the most important field. Wiithout a correct revollutionary theory, working to change the world is impossible. The proletarian revolutionary movement had summed up their experience for the past decade. They have harvested lessons learned and had elevated them in a qualitative sense in the ideological, political and organizational fields. I ask everybody visiting this blog to read the party's write-up and analysis so we can engage in fruitful debate and discussion with comrades and fraternal organizations and individuals. - K.I.

Armando Liwanag,
Chairman, Central Committee, Communist Party of the Philippines

January 15, 1992

Revisionism is the systematic revision of and deviation from Marxism, the basic revolutionary principles of the proletariat laid down by Marx and Engels and further developed by the series of thinkers and leaders in socialist revolution and construction. The revisionists call themselves Marxists, even claim to make an updated and creative application of it but they do so essentially to sugarcoat the bourgeois antiproletarian and anti-Marxist ideas that they propagate.

The classical revisionists who dominated the Second International in 1912 were in social-democratic parties that acted as tails to bourgeois regimes and supported the war budgets of the capitalist countries in Europe. They denied the revolutionary essence of Marxism and the necessity of proletarian dictatorship, engaged in bourgeois reformism and social pacifism and supported colonialism and modern imperialism. Lenin stood firmly against the classical revisionists, defended Marxism and led the Bolsheviks in establishing the first socialist state in 1917.
The modern revisionists were in the ruling communist parties in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. They systematically revised the basic principles of Marxism-Leninism by denying the continuing existence of exploiting classes and class struggle and the proletarian character of the party and the state in socialist society. And they proceeded to destroy the proletarian party and the socialist state from within. They masqueraded as communists even as they gave up Marxist-Leninist principles. They attacked Stalin in order to replace the principles of Lenin with the discredited fallacies of his social democratic opponents and claimed to make a "creative application" of Marxism-Leninism.

The total collapse of the revisionist ruling parties and regimes in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, has made it so much easier than before for Marxist-Leninists to sum up the emergence and development of socialism and the peaceful evolution of socialism into capitalism through modern revisionism. It is necessary to trace the entire historical trajectory and draw the correct lessons in the face of the ceaseless efforts of the detractors of Marxism-Leninism to sow ideological and political confusion within the ranks of the revolutionary movement.

Among the most common lines of attack are the following: "genuine" socialism never came into existence; if socialism ever existed, it was afflicted with or distorted by the "curse" of "Stalinism", which could never be exorcised by his anti-Stalin successors and therefore Stalin was responsible even for the anti-Stalin regimes after his death; and socialism existed up to 1989 or 1991 and was never overpowered by modern revisionism before then or that modern revisionism never existed and it was an irremediably "flawed" socialism that fell in 1989-1991.
There are, of course, continuities as well as discontinuities from the Stalin to the post-Stalin periods. But social science demands that a leader be held responsible mainly for the period of his leadership. The main responsibility of Gorbachov for his own period of leadership should not be shifted to Stalin just as that of Marcos, for example, cannot be shifted to Quezon.

It is necessary to trace the continuities between the Stalin and the post-Stalin regimes. And it is also necessary to recognize the discontinuities, especially because the post-Stalin regimes were anti-Stalin in character. In the face of the efforts of the imperialists, the revisionists and the unremoulded petty bourgeois to explain everything in anti-Stalin terms and to condemn the essential principles and the entire lot of Marxism-Leninism, there is a strong reason and necessity to recognize the sharp differences between the Stalin and post-Stalin regimes. The phenomenon of modern revisionism deserves attention, if we are to explain the blatant restoration of capitalism and bourgeois dictatorship in 1989-91.

After his death, the positive achievements of Stalin (such as the socialist construction, the defense of the Soviet Union, the high rate of growth of the Soviet economy, the social guarantees, etc.) continued for a considerable while. So were his errors continued and exaggerated by his successors up to the point of discontinuing socialism. We refer to the denial of the existence and the resurgence of the exploiting classes and class struggle in Soviet society; and the unhindered propagation of the petty-bourgeois mode of thinking and the growth of the bureaucratism of the monopoly bureaucrat bourgeoisie in command of the great mass of petty-bourgeois bureaucrats.

From the Khrushchov period through the long Brezhnev period to the Gorbachov period, the dominant revisionist idea was that the working class had achieved its historic tasks and that it was time for the Soviet leaders and experts in the state and ruling party to depart from the proletarian stand. The ghost of Stalin was blamed for bureaucratism and other ills. But in fact, the modern revisionists promoted these on their own account and in the interest of a growing bureaucratic bourgeoisie. The general run of new intelligentsia and bureaucrats was petty bourgeois-minded and provided the social base for the monopoly bureaucrat bourgeoisie.

In the face of the collapse of the revisionist ruling parties and regimes, there is in fact cause for the Party to celebrate the vindication of its Marxist-Leninist, antirevisionist line. The correctness of this line is confirmed by the total bankruptcy and collapse of the revisionist ruling parties, especially the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the chief disseminator of modern revisionism on a world scale since 1956. It is clearly proven that the modern revisionist line means the disguised restoration of capitalism over a long period of time and ultimately leads to the undisguised restoration of capitalism and bourgeois dictatorship. The supraclass sloganeering of the petty bourgeoisie has been the sugarcoating for the antiproletarian ideas of the big bourgeoisie in the Soviet state and party.

In the Philippines, the political group that is most embarrassed, discredited and orphaned by the collapse of the revisionist ruling parties and regimes is that of the Lavas and their successors. It is certainly not the Communist Party of the Philippines, reestablished in 1968. But the imperialists, the bourgeois mass media and certain other quarters wish to confuse the situation and try to mock at and shame the Party for the disintegration of the revisionist ruling parties and regimes. They are barking at the wrong tree.

There are elements who have been hoodwinked by such catchphrases of Gorbachovite propaganda as "socialist renewal", "perestroika", "glasnost" and "new thinking" and who have refused to recognize the facts and the truth about the Gorbachovite swindle even after 1989, the year that modern revisionism started to give way to the open and blatant restoration of capitalism and bourgeois dictatorship. There are a handful of elements within the Party who continue to follow the already proven anticommunist, antisocialist and pseudodemocratic example of Gorbachov and who question and attack the vanguard role of the working class through the Party, democratic centralism, the essentials of the revolutionary movement, and the socialist future of the Philippine revolutionary movement. Their line is aimed at nothing less than the negation of the basic principles of the Party and therefore the liquidation of the Party.

I. The Party's Marxist-Leninist Stand Against Modern Revisionism

The proletarian revolutionary cadres of the Party who have continuously adhered to the Marxist-Leninist stand against modern revisionism and have closely followed the developments in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe since the early 1960s are not surprised by the flagrant antisocialist and antidemocratic outcome of modern revisionism.

The Party should never forget that its founding proletarian revolutionary cadres had been able to work with the remnants of the old merger Party of the Communist and Socialist parties since early 1963 only for so long as there was common agreement that the resumption of the anti-imperialist and antifeudal mass struggle meant the resumption of the new-democratic revolution through revolutionary armed struggle and that the old merger party would adhere to the revolutionary essence of Marxism-Leninism and reject the Khrushchovite revisionist line of bourgeois populism and pacifism and the subsequent Khrushchovism without Khrushchov of the Brezhnev regime.

So, in April 1967 when the Lava revisionist renegades violated the common agreement and ignored the Executive Committee that had been formed in 1963, it became necessary to lay the ground for the reestablishment of the Party as a proletarian revolutionary party. Everyone can refer to the diametrically opposed proclamations of the proletarian revolutionaries and the Lava revisionist renegades which were disseminated in the Philippines and published respectively in Peking (Beijing) Review and the Prague Information Bulletin within the first week of May 1967.

The reestablishment of the Party on the theoretical foundation of Marxism-Leninism on December 26, 1968 necessarily meant the criticism and repudiation of all the subjectivist and opportunist errors of the Lava revisionist group and the modern revisionism practised and propagated by this group domestically and by one Soviet ruling clique after another internationally.

The criticism and repudiation of modern revisionism are a fundamental component of the reestablishment and rebuilding of the Party and are inscribed in the basic document of rectification, "Rectify Errors and Rebuild the Party" and the Program and Constitution of the Party. These documents have remained valid and effective. No leading organ of the CPP has ever had the power and the reason to reverse or reject the criticism and repudiation of modern revisionism by the Congress of Reestablishment in 1968.

In the late 1970s, the Party decided to expand the international relations of the revolutionary movement in addition to the Party's relations with Marxist-Leninist parties and organizations abroad. The international representative of the National Democratic Front began to explore possibilities for the NDF to act like the Palestinian Liberation Organization, African National Congress and other national liberation movements in expanding friendly and diplomatic relations with all forces abroad that are willing to extend moral and material support to the Philippine revolutionary struggle on any major issue and to whatever extent. This line in external relations was in consonance with the Marxist-Leninist stand of the Party and the international united front against imperialism.

In 1982, a definite proposal to the Central Committee came up that the NDF or any of its member organizations vigorously seek friendly relations with the ruling parties in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe as well as with parties and movements closely associated with the CPSU. However, this proposal was laid aside in favor of the counterproposal made by the international liaison department (ILD) of the Party Central Committee that the Party rather than the NDF explore and seek "fraternal" relations with the ruling parties of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and other related parties.

This counterproposal disregarded the fact that the Lava revisionist group had already preempted our Party from the possibility of "fraternal" relations with the revisionist ruling parties. More significantly, the counterproposal did not take into serious consideration the Marxist-Leninist stand of the Party against modern revisionism.

Notwithstanding the ill-informed and unprincipled basis for seeking "fraternal" relations with the revisionist ruling parties and the absence of any congress withdrawing the correct antirevisionist line, the staff organ in charge of international relations proceeded in 1984 to draft and circulate a policy paper, "The Present World Situation and the CPP's General International Line and Policies" describing the CPSU as a Marxist-Leninist party, the Soviet Union as the most developed socialist country and as proletarian internationalist rather than social-imperialist, as having supported third world liberation movements and as having attained military parity with the United States. This policy paper was presented to the 1985 Central Committee Plenum and the latter decided to conduct further studies on it.

In 1986, the Executive Committee of the Central Committee commissioned a study of the Soviet Union and East European countries. The study was superficial. It was done to support the predetermined conclusion that these countries were socialist because their economies were still dominated by state-owned enterprises and these enterprises were still growing and because the state still provided social guarantees to the people. The study overlooked the fact that the ruling party in command of the economy was no longer genuinely proletarian and that state-owned enterprises since the time of Khrushchov had already become milking cows of corrupt bureaucrats and private entrepreneurs who colluded under various pretexts to redirect the products to the free market.

By this time, the attempt to deviate from the antirevisionist line of the Party was clearly linked to the erroneous idea that total victory in the Philippine revolution could be hastened by "regularizing" the few thousands of NPA fighters with importations of heavy weapons and other logistical requisites from abroad, by skipping stages in the development of people's war and in building the people's army and by arousing the forces for armed urban insurrection in anticipation of some sudden "turn in the situation" to mount a general uprising.

There was the notion that the further development of the people's army and the people's war depended on the importation of heavy weapons and getting logistical support from abroad and that the failure to import these would mean the stagnation or retrogression of the revolutionary forces because there is no other way by which the NPA could overcome the enemy's "blockhouse" warfare and control of the highways except through the use of sophisticated heavy weapons (antitank and laser-guided missiles) which necessarily have to be imported from abroad.

In the second half of 1986, with the approval of the Party's central leadership, a drive was started to seek the establishment of "fraternal" relations with the CPSU and other revisionist ruling parties as well as nonruling ones close to the CPSU. A considerable amount of resources was allotted to and expended on the project.

In late 1986, some Brezhnevites within the CPSU and some other quarters made the suggestion that the Communist Party of the Philippines merge with the Lava revisionist group in order to gain "fraternal" relations with the CPSU. But such a suggestion was tactfully rejected with the countersuggestion that the CPSU and other revisionist ruling parties could keep their fraternal relations with the Lava group while the CPP could have friendly relations with them. We stood pat on the Leninist line of proletarian party-building

Up to 1987 the failure to establish relations with the revisionist ruling parties was interpreted by some elements as the result of the refusal on the part of our Party to repudiate its antirevisionist line. These elements had to be reminded in easily understood practical terms that if the antirevisionist line of the Party had been withdrawn and the revisionist ruling parties would continue to rebuff our offer of "fraternal" or friendly relations with them, then the proposed opportunism would be utterly damaging to the Party.

By 1987, the Party became aware that the Gorbachov regime was already laying the ground for the emasculation of the revisionist ruling parties in favor of an openly bourgeois state machinery in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe by allowing his advisors, officials of the Academy of Social Sciences and the official as well as independent Soviet mass media to promote pro-imperialist, anticommunist and antisocialist ideas under the guise of social democracy and "liberal" communism. On the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the October Revolution, Gorbachov himself delivered a speech abandoning the anti-imperialist struggle and describing imperialism as having shed off its violent character in an integral world in which the Soviet Union and the United States and other countries can cooperate in the common interest of humanity's survival.

In 1987, the chairman of the Party's Central Committee made an extensive interview on the question of establishing relations with the ruling parties of the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and elsewhere. This was made in response to the demand from some quarters within the Party that the Party repudiate its line against revisionism and apologize to the CPSU for having criticized the Soviet Union on the question of Cambodia and Afghanistan. The interview clarified that the Party can establish friendly relations with the ruling parties even while the latter maintained their "fraternal" relations with the Lava group.

In June 1988, the "World Situation and Our Line" was issued to replace "The Present World Situation and the CPP's General International Line and Policies". The correct and positive side of the new document reiterated the principles of national integrity, independence, equality noninterference and mutual support and mutual benefit to guide the Party's international relations; and upheld the basic principles of socialism, anti-imperialism and proletarian internationalism and peaceful coexistence as a diplomatic policy. Furthermore, it noted and warned against the unhealthy trends of cynicism, anticommunism, nationalism, consumerism, superstition, criminality and the like already running rampant in the countries ruled by the revisionist parties.

The negative side included accepting at face value and endorsing the catchphrases of Gorbachov; describing the revisionist regimes as socialist under a "lowered" definition; and diplomatic avoidance of the antirevisionist terms of the Party.

In the course of trying to establish friendly relations with the revisionist ruling parties in 1987 and onward, Party representatives were able to discern that Gorbachov and his revisionist followers were reorganizing these parties towards their eventual weakening and dissolution. Despite Gorbachov's avowed line of allowing the other East European ruling parties to decide matters for themselves, Soviet agents pushed these parties to reorganize themselves by replacing Brezhnevite holdovers at various levels with Gorbachovites and subsequently paralyzed the Party organizations. However, it would be in 1989 that it became clear without any doubt that all the revisionist ruling parties and regimes were on the path of self-disintegration, blatant restoration of capitalism and bourgeois dictatorship under the slogans of "multiparty democracy" and "economic reforms".

It is correct for the Party to seek friendly relations with any foreign party or movement on the basis of anti-imperialism. But it is wrong to go into any "fraternal" relations involving the repudiation of the Party's Marxist-Leninist stand against modern revisionism.

In this regard, we must be self-critical for wavering or temporarily veering away from the Party's antirevisionist line and engaging in a futile expedition. The motivation was to seek greater material and moral support for the Filipino people's revolutionary struggle. Although such motivation is good, it can only mitigate but cannot completely excuse the departure from the correct line. The error is a major one but it can be rectified through education far more easily than other errors unless ideological confusion over the developments in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe is allowed to continue. Most comrades assigned to do international work were merely following the wrong line from above.
The worst damage caused by the unconsummated and belated flirtation with the revisionist ruling parties in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe is not so much the waste of effort and resources but the circulation of incorrect ideas, such as that these parties were still socialist and that the availability or nonavailability of material assistance from them, especially heavy weapons, would spell the advance or stagnation and retrogression of the Philippine revolutionary movement. It should be pointed out that the Lava group had the best of relations with these parties since the sixties but this domestic revisionist group never amounted to anything more than being an inconsequential toady of Soviet foreign policy and the Marcos regime.

At this point, the central leadership and entirety of the Party must renew their resolve to adhere to Marxism-Leninism and to the antirevisionist line. We are in a period which requires profound and farsighted conviction in the new democratic revolution as well as the socialist revolution. This is a period comparable to that when the classical revisionist parties disintegrated and it seemed as if socialism had become a futile dream and the world seemed to be merely a helpless object of imperialist oppression and exploitation. But that period was exactly the eve of socialist revolution.

II. The Legacy of Lenin and Stalin

The red flag of the Soviet Union has been brought down. The czarist flag of Russia now flies over the Kremlin. It may only be a matter of time that the body of the great Lenin is removed from its mausoleum in the Red Square, unless Russia's new bourgeoisie continue to regard it as a lucrative tourist attraction for visitors with hard foreign currency.

The Soviet modern revisionists, from Khrushchov to Gorbachov, had invoked the name of Lenin to attack Stalin. But in fact, the total negation of Stalin was but the spearhead of the total negation of Lenin and Leninism, socialism, the Soviet Union and the entire course of Bolshevik and Soviet history. The bourgeoisie in the former Soviet Union was not satisfied with anything less than the open restoration of capitalism and the imposition of the class dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.

It is necessary to refresh ourselves on the legacy of Lenin and Stalin in the face of concerted attempts by the imperialists, the modern revisionists, the barefaced restorationists of capitalism and the anticommunist bourgeois intelligentsia to slander and discredit it.
The greatness of Lenin lies in having further developed the three components of the theory of Marxism: philosophy, political economy and scientific socialism. Lenin is the great master of Marxism in the era of modern imperialism and proletarian revolution.
He delved further into dialectical materialism, pointed to the unity of opposites as the most fundamental law of material reality and transformation and contended most extensively and profoundly with the so-called "third force" subjectivist philosophy (empirio-criticism).
He analyzed modern imperialism and put forward the theory of uneven development, which elucidated the possibility of socialist revolution at the weakest point of the world capitalist system. He elaborated on the Marxist theory of state and revolution. He stood firmly for proletarian class struggle and proletarian dictatorship against the classical revisionists and actually led the first successful socialist revolution.
The ideas of Lenin were tested in debates within the Second International and within the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP). The proletarian revolutionary line that he and his Bolshevik comrades espoused proved to be correct and victorious in contention with various bourgeois ideas and formations that competed for hegemony in the struggle against czarist autocracy.

We speak of the socialist revolution as beginning on November 7, 1917 because it was on that day that the people under the leadership of the proletariat through the Bolshevik party seized political power from the bourgeoisie. It was at that point that the proletarian dictatorship was established. For this, Lenin is considered the great founder of Soviet socialism. Proletarian dictatorship is the first requisite for building socialism. Without this power, socialist revolution cannot be undertaken. By this power, Lenin was able to decree the nationalization of the land and capital assets of the exploiting classes and take over the commanding heights of the economy.

Proletarian class dictatorship is but another expression for the state power necessary for smashing and replacing the state power or class dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, for carrying out the all-rounded socialist revolution and for preventing the counterrevolutionaries from regaining control over society.

Proletarian dictatorship is at the same time proletarian democracy and democracy for the entire people, especially the toiling masses of workers and peasants. Without the exercise of proletarian dictatorship against their class enemies, the proletariat and the people cannot enjoy democracy among themselves. Proletarian dictatorship is the fruit of the highest form of democratic action _ the revolutionary process that topples the bourgeois dictatorship. It is the guarantor of democracy among the people against domestic and external class enemies, the local exploiting classes and the imperialists.

The Bolsheviks were victorious because they resolutely established and defended the proletarian class dictatorship. They had learned their lessons well from the failure of the Paris Commune of 1871 and from the reformism and treason of the social democratic parties in the Second International.

Wielding proletarian dictatorship, the Bolsheviks disbanded in January 1918 the Constituent Assembly that had been elected after the October Revolution but was dominated by the Socialist Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks, because that assembly refused to ratify the Declaration of the Rights of the Toiling and Exploited People. The Bolsheviks subsequently banned the bourgeois parties because these parties engaged in counterrevolutionary violence and civil war and collaborated with the foreign interventionists.

In his lifetime, Lenin led the Soviet proletariat and people and the soviets of workers, peasants and soldiers to victory in the civil war and the war against the interventionist powers from 1918 to 1921. He consolidated the Soviet Union as a federal union of socialist republics and built the congresses of soviets and the nationalities. As a proletarian internationalist, he established the Third International and set forth the anti-imperialist line for the world proletariat and all oppressed nations and peoples.

In 1922 he proclaimed the New Economic Policy as a transitory measure for reviving the economy from the devastation of war in the quickest possible way and remedying the pr