Why do Marxist-Leninists support some non-socialist governments?
Many opponents of Marxism-Leninism, the revolutionary science, lampoon MLs for our support for non-socialist governments, such as those of Syria, Iran and Zimbabwe. They try to paint us as ‘red fascists’ who kneejerk support any government opposed to the US. Many comrades new to the left are confused as to why we support these governments, and that can lead to promising young comrades being sucked in by Trotskyites and Anarchists, and taken off the path of truly revolutionary socialism. This is of course, a big problem and a great shame, and so we have written this piece to serve as a resource to explain this complicated issue.
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General Election 2017 – what does it mean?
It was widely believed at the beginning of the election that the Tories would win a landslide, as Labour trailed 22 points behind in polls, and 80% of Labour MPs opposed Corbyn’s leadership, openly declaring him to be unelectable, along with their colleagues in the Tory party and the bourgeois media.
Even during the election campaign the majority of Labour candidates refused to acknowledge or support Corbyn, and many openly opposed his manifesto.
But Corbyn surprised his critics, fighting a dynamic and engaging campaign, winning the support of youth in particular with more new voters enrolling than in the Brexit referendum.
Despite this Labour lost the election but increased its number of seats. The Tories failed to win an absolute majority and were forced to conclude a grubby pact with the DUP, who even they find socially reactionary, though politically they are cast from the same mould.
Corbyn has secured his leadership of the Labour party for now. Despite all the talk of Corbyn being a rabid left-winger he has fought on a moderate social-democratic platform akin to many across Europe, and he certainly has not threatened the economic workings of the crisis-ridden capitalist system, which is the root cause of the austerity agenda he claims to fight.
Meanwhile Momentum continues to attract all the fake socialists who continue to believe in pie-in-the-sky solutions to capitalism. The truth is, without overthrowing capitalism there are nothing but hard times ahead for the British working class and workers of all countries.
The communists support every struggle of the working class to fight for improvements in their conditions, but this support seeks at the same time to convince workers of the need for proletarian revolution, not to lull them into the false but reassuring belief that their needs can be met within capitalism. No amount of tweaking at the edges of economic or foreign policy is going to make this parasitic and dying system serve the interests of the working class or cure the chaos in which we now find ourselves.
The programme of the Labour party is, at best, a prayer that the ills of capitalism can be solved within the capitalist system. Our position is that, with the best will in the world, they can’t. Workers’ salvation lies not with Saint Jeremy or Stern Theresa, but with the workers themselves.
Unpalatable as this truth may be, ultimately we will not be able to vote our way out of the crisis. Either the crisis will lead the working class deeper into poverty and war, or workers will organise themselves to defeat the crisis by overthrowing capitalism and building a socialist society that is capable of meeting their needs.
Bin men in Birmingham on strike
Red Youth activists joined bin men on picket lines across Birmingham today as Unite members walked out over pay and Labour Council cuts to services. Perry Barr tip, Lifford Lane, Tyseley and Digbeth were all out on strike, with only a handful of scabs crossing pickets. We reproduce below links from local media and todays article from the Birmingham Worker.
Video: http://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-news/birmingham-bin-lorries-queuing-depot-13262436
BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-40456211
The Birmingham Worker:
“Defend the bin men!
Oppose Labour council cuts
Academies: One Step Further to Losing Our Education
It is important in the face of the government’s malicious project to downsize the NHS to the point of forced privatisation, that we don’t forget the other major attack currently being launched against the working class of this country – the academisation of our education system. The ruling class’ plan for “all schools to become academies”, as was announced in the 2016 Budget, and then clumsily retracted, is not a plan that is going to disappear for long; it is inevitable under capitalism. State education costs far too much for the government to manage, and it is much more profitable for them to hand over the responsibility to school ‘sponsors’. However, simply doing so in the public eye would never work, so they have hidden behind words like ‘academisation’ to disguise what is really going on here: privatisation.
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Grenfell was mass-murder
The horrific fire at Grenfell Tower, which has killed so many working-class people, demonstrates the terrible reality of housing in Britain today.
In the richest borough, with house prices over 38 times more than the average annual salary, people ultimately died because flammable cladding cost the borough and construction companies a mere £5,000 less. The unnecessary cladding, which would have saved residents minor amounts on their fuel bills, had the effect of prettifying the tower for the surrounding neighbourhood of luxury properties, and raising the value of nearby council-owned land.
Kensington and Chelsea Council spent £8.6m on the ‘refurbishment’ of the tower, while ignoring, or rather hiring companies to ignore, the needs of residents. The Grenfell Action Group has comprehensively documented problems and complaints made to the council over the years, including power surges and faulty wiring.
Grenfell is part of the social cleansing of London, which has already seen thousands of families conned or evicted from their homes in London to make way for the property developers, who build investment opportunities for the super-wealthy. Around 1,400 homes in the borough remain empty year-round, at a combined value of £664m, with house prices in Kensington and Chelsea tripling in the past two decades.
No inquest or inquiry into Grenfell will provide justice for the dead, or security for the survivors. While some companies, CEOs, and public officials may receive fines and jail time, and some survivors have been housed in new luxury flats, the reality is that the working class in Britain will never have safe, affordable, and secure housing while the capitalist system remains.
“When one individual inflicts bodily injury upon another such that death results, we call the deed manslaughter; when the assailant knew in advance that the injury would be fatal, we call his deed murder. But when society places hundreds of proletarians in such a position that they inevitably meet a too early and an unnatural death, one which is quite as much a death by violence as that by the sword or bullet; when it deprives thousands of the necessaries of life, places them under conditions in which they cannot live – forces them, through the strong arm of the law, to remain in such conditions until that death ensues which is the inevitable consequence – knows that these thousands of victims must perish, and yet permits these conditions to remain, its deed is murder just as surely as the deed of the single individual…”
- Condition of the Working Class in England, Engels, 1845
Right-Wing Communism in Britain
Much ado has been made in the revisionist camp about the necessity of supporting Labour, which means, in their view, to completely abandon all revolutionary communist slogans and positions, including minor details such as the dictatorship of the proletariat.
To them the most revolutionary act is to tell the working class that Corbyn and Labour are there to solve all our problems, and that all we need to do is to vote Labour on 8 June. To justify this they frantically dredge up quotes from Marx about the situation in 19th century Britain (before the bourgeois state apparatus had been fully developed and deployed in Britain), and very select quotes from Lenin’s “Left-Wing” Communism: an Infantile Disorder.
Unfortunately all this proves is that they are the most doctrinaire of class traitors. To paraphrase Lenin: “We want to support Corbyn in the same way as the rope supports a hanged man—that the impending establishment of a government of the Corbynites will prove that we are right, will bring the masses over to our side, and will hasten the political death of Labour.”
Let’s look at the context of that chapter. “Left-Wing” Communism in Great Britain was written in 1920, 4 years before the very first Labour government. It was written before a communist party was established in Britain. In their conferences in 1923 and 1924 the Labour Party would vote against CPGB affiliation, and bar communists from Labour Party membership and support.
Communists attend May Day, Labour Party shocked
John McDonnell is receiving a roasting this year for speaking at Trafalgar Square to our May Day Rally – as Corbyn did last year for speaking to a gathering in Clerkenwell green before the march set off from atop a double-decker bus!
It never fails to amaze us that the attacks from the capitalists are so weak – and yet the pusillanimous social democrats reel under their blows, unable to fight them off!
Deep in their ill-fated election campaign, Labour struggle to dissociate themselves from any pretence of radicalism, by editing out our flags from their photos and videos, yet they are criticised for appearing in the same street with us anyway – even tainted with the alleged communist penchant for ‘air-brushing history.’
Precisely because there is not a radical bone in their body, these servants of imperialism are unable to deal with these pathetic criticisms. And yet the Labour Party false-promises to solve workers problems within capitalism are so deeply unpalatable to the imperialists, mired in financial crisis, that they will spare no efforts to scupper Corbyn and McDonnell’s electoral hopes.
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CPGB-ML address May 1st demonstrations held by the JVP in Sri Lanka
At the invitation of the Peoples Liberation Front – Sri Lanka (JVP), the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist) sent comrade Sammi Ibrahem to give a message of solidarity to the May 1st demonstrations in Jaffna and Colombo.
The CPGB-ML has a good working relationship with the JVP in Britain. It is the opinion of the CPGB-ML that all workers who reside in Britain constitute a part of the British working class, regardless of how long they have been in the country or how long they intend to remain. Whilst working in Britain it is incumbent upon revolutionaries and those who call themselves communist to be active in the revolutionary movement of the country they are resident in. For that reason, members of the JVP fulfil their internationalist duty as supporters and members of the CPGB-ML. They set an example to many others who for sectarian reasons continue to back the revisionists and their support for the imperialist Labour Party.
As the rot sets in ever deeper for the revisionists, it will come to pass that all sincere communists who reside in Britain, regardless of the affiliations which their organisations back home may have with aging revisionist groups here, will be faced with the choice of either undertaking no communist work, or working with the CPGB-ML. As the Trotskyites liquidate their organisations to infiltrate Labour, and the revisionists quietly fulfil the logic of their own discredited programmes of self-annihilation, only the CPGB-ML has an independent programme for the growth and development of a truly Marxist-Leninist organisation in Britain.
In Sri Lanka comrade Sammi addressed JVP rallies in both Jaffna and Colombo, along with international communist guests from PAME & the Communist Parties of Greece and Cuba. We reproduce below Sammi’s greeting to the May 1st rally in Colombo along with a few photographs of the inspiring work of the JVP this May Day 2017.
Message of Greetings from CPGB-ML to JVP May 1st Rally
“Dear comrades,
I bring greetings from the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist) – Happy 1st May!
Our Party is extremely proud to have good relations with the JVP – Peoples Liberation Front, and we can see from the banners today that the struggle against imperialism and for socialism is being waged by the comrades of the Peoples Liberation Front. Comrades, workers in Britain have a lot to learn from your example. Red Salute to the JVP!
Comrades, the billionaires who control the world keep the masses in abject poverty. In the oppressed and economically backward countries the conditions for the working classes are especially hard. Value is created by human labour, but that which is produced through the blood and sweat of Sri Lankan workers is stolen by Sri Lankan capitalists and their friends, the imperialists, who channel billions back into their own pockets. Workers can only improve their lot through class struggle. There is nothing so hypocritical than the bourgeois class who assert the equality of rich and poor, the well fed and the hungry. Capitalism drives the workers to sell their labour power to the capitalist, workers have no other choice but wage slavery under capitalist conditions. The workers in Sri Lanka struggle bravely for a dignified life and set a great example to the working class of Britain, but struggle must be for socialism, for a revolutionary change. Leninism teaches that we cannot do this without leadership by genuine socialists, the Sri Lankan workers are fortunate to have the JVP leading them in their struggle.
Any proletarian Party which hopes to take state power and build socialism must understand how to adapt, how to change their method of struggle whilst continuing to advance on the road to Socialism. Sometimes it is necessary to fight with your fists and the Sri Lankan workers have heroic chapters written into their history when they were led in fearless armed struggle. As Marxists we understand that state power means more than capturing the parliamentary power, but when legal methods of struggle are open to revolutionaries, they must exploit them as best they can. The six members of the JVP inside the Sri Lankan parliament have won this opportunity to demonstrate to the masses the corruption of the ruling parties and can make use of the platform of parliament to inspire the people to make socialism their goal. Rather than claim that the JVP has “sold-out” because it stands in the election we sincerely hope that the JVP can build on the success of the 2015 Parliamentary elections whilst building up the struggle of the masses in the cause of socialism!
In Britain our struggle for socialism has been greatly retarded by the influence of Trotskyites and revisionists who work in the service of our ruling class. They are always quick to cry that revolutionaries have “sold out”. In Sri Lanka you are also cursed by the presence of Trotskyists who speak in revolutionary language to hide from the workers their counter-revolutionary aims. Trotskyists are everywhere the same, counter-revolution is in their blood. We must combat all attempts by Trotskyists to split the ranks of the revolutionary workers in Sri Lanka just as we must fight them at home in Britain. We must fight all attempts by enemies to split and damage the JVP whose historic mission it is to bring about the socialist revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Today 100 years after the Great October Socialist Revolution in Russia, the example of the Bolsheviks is as valid as ever, the best weapon we have is the science of Marxism-Leninism, the teachings of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin. This is the best defence against Trotskyists and splitters, and it is the blue print for making socialist revolution.
Long live the 1st of May!
Long live Marxism-Leninism!
Long live proletarian internationalism!”
Red Youth May 1st photos
Mayday 2017 Trade Unions and Anti Imperialist Mayday March from Clerkenwell to Trafalgar Square
Mayday 2017 Trade Unions and Anti Imperialist Mayday March from Clerkenwell to Trafalgar Square
Mayday 2017 Trade Unions and Anti Imperialist Mayday March from Clerkenwell to Trafalgar Square
Mayday 2017 Trade Unions and Anti Imperialist Mayday March from Clerkenwell to Trafalgar Square
Mayday 2017 Trade Unions and Anti Imperialist Mayday March from Clerkenwell to Trafalgar Square
Mayday 2017 Trade Unions and Anti Imperialist Mayday March from Clerkenwell to Trafalgar Square
Red Youth and CPGB-ML put on a good contingent for May 1st in London, our slogans were popular on the march but unpopular with the corporate media and Labour Party career politicians. We called for “Nato out of Syrian soil – we won’t fight in wars for oil”! as we defend the rights of the Syrian people – but John McDonnell was supposedly “furious” about having young communists defending the Syrian people. We also chanted “Class Against Class” – because the class struggle is real and we reject the propaganda that the State and corporate media are neutral, #fakenews!
Fake progressives like the Labour Party and fake Communists like the CPB are ashamed of the hammer and sickle flag, embarrassed by the heroic deeds of the Soviet Union and in awe of the power of social democracy. They slander us and attempt to paint us in a bad light. But like Chairman Mao said, if your enemy attacks you, it is a good thing because it means you must be doing something right! Check the links out below for some of the rubbish the media says in an attempt to denigrate the Labour Party by making out they’re friends with communists(!), they don’t need to use us to denigrate the Labour Party for the Labour Party has committed many foul acts against the people of Britain and the workers of the world! Their crimes speak for themselves.
Footage from the March:
Spectator:
https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2017/05/john-mcdonnell-makes-his-own-labour-attack-ad/
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4463006/John-McDonnell-speaks-Day-demo-London.html
Metro
Sun
Jewish chronicle
Mayday 2017 Trade Unions and Anti Imperialist Mayday March from Clerkenwell to Trafalgar Square
Mayday 2017 Trade Unions and Anti Imperialist Mayday March from Clerkenwell to Trafalgar Square
Mayday 2017 Trade Unions and Anti Imperialist Mayday March from Clerkenwell to Trafalgar Square
Mayday 2017 Trade Unions and Anti Imperialist Mayday March from Clerkenwell to Trafalgar Square