What Will Happen to Me Under Socialism?

A Practical Exploration of Socialist Principles

Abstract

History, as its study through the lens of dialectical materialism shows, is not a matter of individuals but of the great masses of humanity, of the masses of oppressed and exploited classes unifying together in struggle to overcome contradictory social arrangements and build new ones. Individuals exist only as small parts of the great whole of the unity of opposites that is humanity, the sum of contradicting classes struggling against each other exploited against exploiter to move towards a system without contradictions of exploitation and oppression between classes, beyond classes at all, beyond class society- towards communism! Still, it is only natural that one- especially one steeped in the individualist cultural superstructure of the current capitalist political-economic system of society, with all its Nietzschean and liberal cultisms of the individual- asks: just what is my place in the grand drama of history, in the rising up of the proletariat to claim social power? What is my place in the struggle to build socialism, and what will be my place in the society it creates? Of course, the answer to this question is different depending on who asks it, but for all who ask it it is worth answering in the interest of showing them the noble truth of our cause. Herein, therefore, I attempt to answer just what socialist revolution and the ultimate triumph of the proletariat means for individuals of several different social backgrounds.

The Proletariat

Let us consider material dialectics, the driving forces of the universe, as they exist in the form of class struggle as the driving force of history. A dialectic begins with an object or a system, in this case a society as defined by its economic system/mode of production and corresponding sociopolitical order, in which are contained multiple elements between which there are contradictions, in this case the elements being classes and the contradictions being the inter-class contradictions of capitalism, chiefly exploitation of proletariat by bourgeoisie and exploitation of colonized people by imperialist finance capital. The object or system is what we call a unity of opposites, defined by its elements and the contradictions between them. The elements of the unity of opposites mutually modify each other, the contradictions between them continually escalate, and thus the one unity of opposites divides into two conflicting elements in a struggle of opposites. The rebelling element triumphs over that which was formerly in power, and thus a new object or system, itself a new unity of new opposites, is created{1}. In more concrete terms with regard to class society: a society has contradictions of exploitation between classes, as the exploitation continues the contradictions escalate until the exploited classes rise up and create a new economic system and social order to redefine the society with fewer contradictions. But here is an important point: in the process of struggle between opposites, the opposites mutually modify each other and are transformed. I.e., with regard to class struggle, when a class rises up against its exploiters to create a new social order, the ensuing revolutionary struggle fundamentally modifies the rebelling class as they become the ruling class of the new order. In rising up against feudalism, the rebelling tradesmen and merchants left the ranks of the dying-out feudal peasantry and became the young bourgeoisie, ruling class of the new capitalist system. The old unity of opposites and its parts were transformed into their opposites- old exploited class into new rulers, old rulers into a subjugated and vanishing group- into a new system in which the new rulers subjugated and assimilated the old ones (in such events as the so-called Reign of Terror following the French Revolution) and a new exploited class emerged. And in rebelling against capitalism, the proletariat is transformed: from the subjugated proletariat under capitalism to the ruling democratic majority of liberated workers: the socialist proletariat, the proletariat under socialism. And a new unity of opposites is born: in place of the dialectical struggle to violently resolve the contradiction of exploitation and the other antagonistic contradictions of capitalism, now we have a dialectical struggle to end less severe, generally benign contradictions between classes through the promotion of proletarian democracy and proletarianization under the Democratic Dictatorship of the Proletariat so the whole of humanity can unite in a single unit and inaugurate a social order without any class contradictions: full-stage communism.

Stalin spoke of this. He said, “… our working class [under socialism in the USSR], far from being bereft of the instruments and means of production, on the contrary, possess them… And since it possesses them, and the capitalist class has been eliminated, all possibility of the working class being exploited is precluded. This being the case, can our working class be called the proletariat? Clearly, it cannot.” Now, we disagree with some of this: we Maoists say the proletariat under socialism is still the proletariat, as it is still in a dialectical relationship with what is left of bourgeois society (in order to eliminate it and usher in classless communism), which contrary to what Stalin says does still exist under socialism in a weakened and dethroned form. Stalin did not know this, he mistakenly and idealistically assumed that once socialism had been established all remnants of the bourgeois order would be gone- this incorrect position is why the CPSU did not understand the need for Cultural Revolution under socialism, as we now do (one of the reasons revisionism was able to take hold in the USSR- the bourgeois ideology behind it was never destroyed by Cultural Revolution). He is right, however, that the proletariat is transformed by its coming to power through socialist revolution. Under capitalism, the proletariat is defined by its being exploited and oppressed by the bourgeoisie. Under socialism, the socialist proletariat is defined by:

• Ruling itself democratically
• Suppressing and liquidating the remnants of the bourgeois social order; resolving those inter-class contradictions that remain under socialist political-economy and democratic proletarian rule and thus continuing to move history forward toward communism by…
• Proletarianizing non-proletarians into itself in order to move towards the abolition of class and the equal and free political-economic existence of all humanity

(Note here that in either system, the classes are largely defined by their contradictions with each other- a unity of opposites.) The nature of socialist revolution, then, is that it is the way in which the proletariat becomes the socialist proletariat, democratic ruling majority class of socialism. And this is done through the precise scientific strategies of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. Learning these, then, and applying them and understanding how their application liberates the proletariat, is how we answer the question of just what will change in the life of the proletarian majority under socialism.

Through People’s War, guided by the strategic and ideological leadership of a militarized vanguard Party organized out of their ranks and by the Great Leaders and Guiding Thought of the struggle in their country{2}, the proletariat claims its status as ruling class. The productive proletarian workers, the majority class- factory line workers, clerks, service and retail workers, agricultural labourers (those not living as semifeudal peasants), teachers, warehouse workers, programmers, mechanical and automotive workers, and all the rest who do productive labour for society and are exploited and own no capital under capitalism- must take control of the properties they work and the value they produce by force, taking control of their local economy with the aid and leadership of the Party and Army by uniting into worker-democratic (or soviet democratic, or whatever term one prefers) committees/soviets/councils of workers to democratically control the use of their labour-power and the distribution of the value they produce for their common good. And these committees/soviets/councils, and the mass organizations of the struggle, must be united in a United Front behind the Communist Party and its Army in a unified movement to create a workers’ state in which all these committees/soviets/councils participate. This state once formed, with the ideological leadership of a Communist Party formed from the most advanced segments of the proletariat and under the democratic control of the whole proletariat through local worker-democracy, shall provide democratic-centralist central advice and planning to the management of the economy by the workers and to the defence of the socialist system by the People’s Army, ensuring the stability of socialism in the country. It shall replace old bourgeois institutions like finance-capitalist banks with new proletarian ones, managing the economy for the common good of the workers instead of for private profit. In this way, the new, fair and democratic social order of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat and the socialist mode of production is established.

Once the democratic control of the economy by the proletarian majority is cemented under a firmly established proletarian state across the whole country, either after a New Power phase (more on that in a later section) or directly through the PPW depending on the country’s situation, the proletariat’s social role becomes to maintain and advance socialist society towards the communist future. The proletariat must absorb the rest of the country gradually into itself, continuing to struggle against remaining bourgeois factions and destroy the remnants of bourgeois institutions. As long as there remains a part of the world under capitalism and bourgeois rule, the role of the D. of the P. and its proletarian semi-state in a socialist country is to continue struggling to root out and resolve through struggle all the social contradictions of bourgeois influence and to continue advancing society at home and abroad toward communism through the assertion of the will and interests of the proletarian majority and the leadership of their Party. United in the democratically decided and scientific ideological line of the Communist Party, the proletarian social order must produce its own ranks of intellectuals, thinkers, artists, etc. and create a new socialist culture that reinforces the values and institutions of socialist society, while following the Party to politically destroy the vestiges of the old bourgeois culture that degrades them. This ongoing process of Cultural Revolution- together with ongoing liquidation of old bourgeois interests, unification of other class groups into the whole of the socialist proletariat by providing jobs and reeducation, and continued support for proletarian revolution in other countries- is the path of continuing class struggle that the socialist proletariat in a country under lower-stage communism, i.e. socialism, forges towards the day when the whole world is united as one under the red banner of the proletariat, class divisions and thus classes (as classes are defined by their contradictions with other classes- again, a unity of opposites) cease to exist and so states are no longer necessary to express class will, and true freedom under full-stage communism is the victorious order of civilization.

Ultimately, what defines socialism is the liberation of the proletariat- the honest, hardworking majority of people- from the parasitic and contradictory social order of capitalism under which they are victimized and exploited, and the liberation of humanity through its unification under and into the social order of the triumphant socialist proletariat. It is the proletarian, the average working person, who carries the banner of history’s forward march through revolution; it is the proletarian who shall inherit the world.

The Big Bourgeoisie

Let us not beat around the bush, the big or “true” bourgeoisie- the stockbrokers, monopolists, CEOs, venture capitalists, moguls, big bankers, the owners and controllers of the great sums of finance capital by which the vast majority of the world proletariat are exploited and which grow by the theft of their labour’s produced surplus value- are our enemies. They have terrorized the proletarian majority since they first became the ruling class as feudalism in each country was gradually replaced by (or, in the cases of semi-feudal colonized countries were capitalism was introduced not by local bourgeoisie but by foreign imperialist ones, coopted as a servant to) capitalism and the dictatorship of capital and the bourgeois class that owns it, and when the turn of the proletariat comes to seize control of society and institute its own system- a democratic one- for the management of labour, labour-power, and labour’s produced value there shall be no apologies for how the deposed who had once been the big bourgeoisie will be necessarily terrorized in their turn.

This being said, we are not sadists and do not have some absurd and abstract desire to hurt our enemies. We communists, we ideological leaders of the proletarian majority class who chart its path toward seizing democratic control of its own existence, hate the bourgeoisie only because we love the proletariat whom they exploit. We do not hate for its own sake. No apologies will be made and no hesitations felt in raining down Red Terror upon the big bourgeoisie of each country when control over state power and economic means of production is seized by the proletariat in that country, but once socialism is established our goal becomes the rehabilitation of the former big bourgeoise, their ideological and social education into individuals who can join socialist society as fellow workers for the common good. In this way, by uniting all together as liberated proletarians under socialism, we ultimately reach a point where all are of the proletarian class and thus classes, without contradictions against other classes to define them in a unity of opposites, no longer exist- a point where class society has ended and humanity across the world can be called a single unified whole working together for its own common good. This is true, full-stage communism.

The place of the big bourgeoisie under socialism, then, may be likened to the place of the criminally insane: they are to be controlled and most probably confined by the judicial authorities of the new proletarian democratic state of the socialist system, led by the communist vanguard party of the country, and by that state they shall be taught to labour as ordinary proletarians so they may eventually join socialist society as ordinary proletarians and work together with the rest of us in contributing to and managing the democratic economy of socialism†. This surely sounds harsh, and we will not deny that it will be a harsh process- this is after all the practice bourgeois media referred to derisively in past socialist countries as “labour camps”- but it is in reality profoundly humane, and is necessary entirely because it is in service of the good of the whole of humanity, of the resolution of all contradictions between classes (via final victory of the proletarian majority class over the parasitic minority class that exploits it, the big bourgeoisie) and the unification of humanity into a common whole without the painful divisions of contradictions between classes.

An important final point is the place which will be afforded to the children of the big bourgeoisie in socialist society. Class is a matter of relationship to economic production, not of blood. This is what sets the factual science of Marxism apart from the fearmongering delusion of racism or antisemitism. Therefore, the child of our class-enemy is not our class-enemy. We have no enmity toward them. Come the socialist future political-economy, we hope to see them educated along with the children of the proletariat and all other children in the schools of the new socialist society to grow into productive and selfless Marxist-Leninist-Maoists. Of course it is likely they will have absorbed certain anti-masses attitudes from their parents and these must be decisively educated out of them, but that task is no more troubling or difficult than any other form of education of children on ethics and decency.

Other Class Groups

The proletariat and bourgeoisie are the principal classes in capitalism, and capitalism is defined principally by the contradiction of the latter’s exploiting the former. However, there exist other class groups in and around the dialectical relationship between these main two: the semifeudal peasantry in (semi)colonized countries, the petit bourgeoisie, etc. Each of these groups has a distinct role in the process of the revolution and the social order and political-economic system it will create.

1. The Peasantry and New Power

In the present phase, i.e. the imperialist phase, of the capitalist epoch there are three main societal contradictions, whose prominence and level of effect on society goes as follows: 1. The contradiction of imperialist pillaging between the imperialist countries, or more precisely their imperialist bourgeoisie and finance capital, and the people of the colonized countries. 2. The contradiction of exploitation between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat within each country. 3. The contradictions between the bourgeois states and ruling classes of opposing imperialist powers{3}. Although the fundamental characteristic of capitalism is the exploitation of the proletariat by the bourgeoisie and their capital, in the imperialist stage of capitalism the drive of capital to pursue further and further opportunities to buy up more and more labour-power has led to the contradiction of exploitation of proles and peasants in semifeudal, colonized and semicolonized countries by the imperialist bourgeoisie and finance capital of imperialist countries eclipsing the contradiction of capitalist exploitation within each country in its social importance and becoming the central problem of the present political-economic order{4}. Because of this, in countries that are colonized or semicolonized, especially those that are semifeudal, there is a need to resolve the contradiction between the foreign imperialist bourgeoisie and the people of the country and get foreign finance capital and its influence out of the country before it is possible to eliminate the country’s own big bourgeoisie and create socialism there- after all, it hardly would have been possible to build socialism in China if it had still had significant amounts of economic power held by capital that was on another continent and thus impossible for the Chinese revolutionaries to attack and liquidate. This is the function of the concept of New Power or New Democratic revolution outlined by Mao{5}.

In a New Power revolution, the contradiction between the people of the country and the conniving force of imperialist finance capital is resolved within a country through a dialectical revolution of all the classes oppressed by imperialism against all those who benefit from it (meaning the foreign imperialist bourgeoisie within the country and also the local comprador and bureaucrat bourgeoisie who collude with them for the sake of their own capital, as well as their comprador state). The objective of the New Power revolution and the establishment of the New Power or New Democratic stage in the country’s history is the creation of a Joint Class Dictatorship (a social and political/governmental order of joint-class rule- compare to the singular class dictatorships of the bourgeoisie under conventional capitalism or the proletariat under socialism) which throws the imperialists out of the country, develops the economy out of the semifeudal stage which imperialism encourages in its (semi)colonies, and thus prepares the country for a time when the proletarian majority can take power through a D. of the P., destroy all remnants of capitalism and the bourgeois social order, and unite the rest of the country into themselves in the creation of a free proletarian society. It is important to understand the difference between the New Power revolution in a colonized country and the bourgeois revolutions which overthrew feudalism and established capitalism and bourgeois rule in other countries. Like a bourgeois revolution, the New Power revolution involves the unity of the developing proletariat with other class groups, including those that can be their exploiters and enemies: it unites the peasantry, the developing proletariat, and the non-imperialist local bourgeoisie (whom we call national bourgeoisie) against the common enemy of imperialist finance capital and its enablers. But New Power and the Joint Class Dictatorship must be democratically led by the proletariat via the leadership of a communist party. Like the D. of the P. that succeeds it, the JCD and the movement to establish it through People’s War are organized as a People’s Army and a United Front built concentrically around a proletarian communist Party and the central-democratic government it leads. New Power is, fundamentally, a proletarian-ruled stage in the societal and political-economic development of a country.

The Joint Dictatorship is a social order which continues to allow a limited form of capitalist development, but only under the monitoring and subject to the decisions of a majority-proletarian democratic government led by a communist party whose purpose is to bring about the establishment of a socialist society and whose members are the most ideologically advanced members of the proletarian class. A limited form of capitalism must exist under New Power, but only under stern restriction from local bodies of proletarian-majority governance (e.g. workers’ councils or soviets) and the communist-led state and only temporarily in order to develop to a point where the transition to a wholly proletarian social order and state, the D. of the P., can be made. The investment and growth of capital is strictly monitored and restricted and done only to industrially and economically develop the country’s society to a point where the last vestiges of feudalism are eliminated, the peasantry become proletarians, and the influence of foreign finance capital is done away with. At this point, capital is liquidated and the national bourgeoisie must submit peacefully to giving up their ownership of productive property and beginning the process of becoming proletarians. The transition is then made to socialism, under the rule of a Democratic D. of the P. made up of local councils of proletarian workers (these having previously been formed through PPW and strengthened under New Democracy, and the former peasantry having been united into the proletariat through them as feudalism faded away) that control local industry democratically and participate in a country-wide proletarian semi-state led by the communist party.

Again, the vital characteristics of the limited capitalist development allowed under New Power are that it is restricted and controlled by proletarian-led authorities for the collective good and that it is a temporary measure which is moved past as soon as possible. This is what distinguishes the temporary stage of New Power, moved through on the road toward socialism, from various revisionist attempts to cloak capitalism as socialism. It is wholly different from the Khrushchevite revisionist concept of the “Dictatorship of the Whole People,” promoted by the CPSU in its revisionist era, because unlike that concept it centrally emphasizes and is fundamentally and essentially characterized by the proletarian majority occupying the dominant and leading position in the social order and the government. It is wholly different from a political-economic system which waves the red flag of socialism but still allows the growth and investment of capital merely for the purpose of profit, i.e. a political-economic system like the current one of Dengist China, because it is characterized essentially and fundamentally by the involvement of capital in the economy being allowed only for the purpose of developing the whole country past feudalism, not for the private gain of the bourgeoisie as individuals. Any attempt at reconciling a nominally pro-communist government with an economy in which capital and the bourgeoisie takes a role, if it does not have these fundamental characteristics, is simply a farce disguising what is fundamentally just capitalism and a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.

Once socialism is reached through dialectical progress under New Power, the countries that were formerly colonized may follow the same trajectory as other countries that have moved into the socialist epoch without New Power. So what, then, will happen to these other class groups under socialism?

[For readers in the US, which I believe are the majority, I should clarify: our country is not colonized but imperialist under capitalism and so a New Power stage will not be necessary here.]

2. The Petit-Bourgeoisie

The petit-bourgeoisie under capitalism are, in a basic sense, a “middle” between the proletarian exploited majority and the bourgeois exploiting minority. This is not, however, the notion of the so-called “middle class” so beloved of bourgeois liberal politicians, which is a load of liberal nonsense meant to disguise the fundamental fact of class antagonism. No, the petit-bourgeoisie are, like all class designations in the scientific system of analysis that is Marxism, defined not by wealth but by relationship to the social system of production. The petit-bourgeoisie are those who both do productive labour, as a proletarian does, and own small amounts of capital and private control over means of production. This group includes the owners of small businesses (who generally also work on the property their business owns), workers who also own some stock, landlords who also work productive jobs, et cetera. As such, while exploiting the proletariat on a small scale, the petit-bourgeoisie share many class interests with the proletariat and are under capitalism similarly contradicted against the class interests of the big bourgeoisie. Furthermore, as the contradictions between proletariat and bourgeoisie sharpen and the control of capital and resources is more and more centralized under the monopolistic imperialist bourgeoisie in each country, this middle ground begins to erode away and many petit-bourgeoisie are dispossessed and become proletarians.

For these reasons, as the D. of the P. is built up (either through Protracted People’s War in an imperialist country, or after a New Power stage established through PPW in a colonized country), the revolutionary movement should seek common ground with the petit-bourgeoisie and try to unite them into the proletarian struggle. On the level of the United Front, propaganda efforts must be made toward the petit-bourgeoisie to remind them of their commonalities with the proletariat and convince them of the truth that they will be freed from the economic and social turmoil of trying to survive as a small capitalist under the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie by giving up their capital and joining the proletariat in struggle against the big bourgeoisie and the cultural and social institutions of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.

Our appeal to the petit-bourgeoisie, to the shop-owners, small stockholders, et cetera, then, is this. Recognize these facts:

1. Under capitalism, the competition of your small businesses with the larger and more powerful capital of the big bourgeoisie will bring turmoil and instability into your life as they become more powerful and you less, as you steadily lose business to the corporations and multinational trusts. The more capitalism intensifies, the less you will be able to compete, and you will soon find yourself a proletarian who, under capitalism, will be exploited and abused by one of the aforementioned big sums of capital.
2. If you unite with the proletariat in the course of the struggle to build socialism, under socialism you will no longer face this instability but instead work steady labour in a job under your own democratic control, in exchange for which you shall have democratic control of what you produce and a stable and fair condition of life.

And on the basis of these facts, determine yourself to support the proletarian struggle. Be sympathetic to and aid the poor proletarians in your community. And, come the start of socialist construction in your community, give up the resources you own to control of a socialist democratic council of workers and join that council and the United Front as a socialist proletarian, part of the emerging unified socialist society and the democratic social order and political-economic system of rule by the working majority and socialist economics, the Dictatorship of the Proletariat!

3. The Lumpenproletariat

The lumpenproletariat are a broadly and somewhat vaguely defined group. In the broadest sense, the lumpenproletariat are those who exist without a direct role in the capitalist mode of production, the capitalist system for creating and managing goods and services, either as exploited or exploiters. This group includes the homeless, the unemployed, professional artists, and prisoners. While not directly exploited in the way the proletariat are, the lumpenproletariat do often have a difficult existence under capitalism and the bourgeois social order. The capitalist mode of production is a ruthless thing, with room to support only those whom capital finds useful in its endless quest for perpetual growth. Millions are left foraging for scraps on the edges of this system, through no fault of their own, simply because there was not room for them. Some, without any support from society, are driven to crime, while others are criminalized just for existing in public without homes. This is the lot of some of the most destitute lumpenproletarians. Others choose deliberately to try and survive outside the system, as it leaves no room for that which they want to do with their lives. These people of course have a rather more privileged lot than those who are lumpenproletarian not by their own choice, but even so they face difficulty and alienation under capitalism. Over all, life under capitalism is for the lumpenproletariat a barrage of poverty, uncertainty, and alienation which makes living difficult and daunting.

The socialist mode of production and its accompanying state system and social order, the D. of the P., is rather different from the capitalist one. A socialist economy operates in pursuit of a nobler goal: not the accumulation of capital, but the common and shared benefit of the whole proletariat, and the unification of the rest of the people into the proletariat to share in this benefit as well. A proletarian state of the Leninist type, in managing a socialist economy, seeks to unite all the people of a country- except the irredeemable members of the big bourgeoisie- together as proletarian labourers under the common banner of worker democracy and freedom from exploitation. There will be no unemployed under socialism, for the socialist state shall strive to find a spot in the patchwork of society where the unemployed can find productive and rewarding work and join in with the proletariat, and prisoners under socialism shall be educated by the prison system to become productive labourers who join the proletariat and are given full democratic control over their own labour via worker-democracy. With the liquidation of the bourgeoisie’s private control of housing, the local bodies of worker-democratic government shall easily be able to match empty dwellings to people in need (for remember, in many places the resources to solve homelessness already exist- it is simply a question of establishing a system (a socialist system!) that dares put them to use). Where capitalism leaves these people alienated and uncertain, socialism seeks to welcome them into the fold of the proletariat.

And the socialist mode of production and proletarian social order have room, too, for the artist and the artisan. In fact, the professional creative has a vital role in the socialist system and in its ultimate and lasting victory on the road to full higher-stage global communism: their role in the process of Cultural Revolution. In the Cultural Revolution it is the task of the proletarian majority and its leading party to destroy the remaining dangerous institutions of bourgeois culture, but furthermore and just as importantly to replace them with strong and new cultural institutions and ideals that will not undermine but enforce socialism and democratic proletarian rule. It is here where it is vital, as Comrade Gramsci once pointed out, that the proletariat have its own creators of culture (“intellectuals” in his lexicon) to rival those of the (formerly) hegemonic bourgeois social order. Lumpenproletarian artists, once they have accepted the scarlet banner of the proletarian cause and united under it and the leadership of the proletarian vanguard party, shall join the proletarian class and quite rightly take up this task as a very special kind of productive proletarian labourer in the new socialist system of political economy. The proletarian social order will require and thus will be willing to support artistic workers who, under the direction of the party, can create bold and unique new approaches to culture. The party and government will, of course, have to support these efforts- and as such, one can imagine the life of the artistic element under socialism will be far more stable than under the chaotic rule of capitalist market forces.

Let it be known, then, that those who are presently (i.e. under the capitalist system) lumpenproletarians have a place in the proletarian social order and will be welcomed into the fold of the proletarian class as revolution takes hold. There are, however, some in the broader “left” who mistakenly hold the view that it is not the proletariat but the lumpenproletariat who should hold the banner of the revolutionary dawn of the next historical epoch, and from whom the leadership of that revolution should arise- and those people are wrong. This line is a brainchild of Huey Newton, founder of intercommunalism (a foolish and un-Marxist distortion of communist ideology), who said, “The proletarian will become the lumpen proletarian. It is this future change — the increase of the lumpen proletariat and the decrease of the proletariat — which makes us say that the lumpen proletariat is the majority and carries the revolutionary banner.{6}” This notion has had some wider appeal, even catching on with certain self-described “Maoists” like the RIBPP. But it is mistaken, and counterrevolutionary. First of all, the notion of a lumpenproletarian majority was mistaken when Newton articulated it and remains false now. It is, in fact, patently absurd. One cannot even really conceive of a world where the majority under capitalism are lumpenproletairan, as the entire definition of the lumpenproletariat is that they exist outside of the dominant production relations of the capitalist system- and how can a system be said to be dominant if the majority of people exist outside it? It cannot. No scenario where such circumstances exist is conceivable.

Furthermore, this line misunderstands the nature of capitalism and the nature of its overthrow. Capitalism as an object is fundamentally defined, as any economic system is, by its mode of production- by the unity of opposites of the relationship between the exploiting capitalists and capital and the exploited proletariat and semifeudal peasantry. This is the fundamental nature of reality, described by the theory of dialectical materialism and its Law of Contradiction: objects and their development over time into new objects are defined by the contradictions within and between them and by the dialectical conflicts that transpire between contradicting aspects, e.g. bourgeoisie and proletariat, and alter reality through struggle by resolving these contradictions- thus developing new objects from the ashes of the old{7}. A clear understanding of this principle, which anyone seeking to understand Marxism (which in the modern era must mean Marxism-Leninism-Maoism) must have, shows that it is unavoidably the proletariat, and their rise to the position of dominant class in society, that will end capitalism.

Because the contradiction of exploitation between proletariat and bourgeoisie/capital is the fundamental one from which all others in capitalism (even the one of imperialist exploitation between imperialist bourgeoisie and colonized countries, although that one has grown to eclipse the other and therefore must be got out of the way before the other is dealt with) arise, it is fundamentally the resolution of that contradiction that must end capitalism, and the resolution of that contradiction means the triumph of the proletariat in dialectical struggle- i.e. the establishment of a system by which the proletariat, the majority class, rules over society democratically. However, the final victory of the onward march of history through class struggle is of course the achievement of communism, of the higher stage of communism in which no classes exist at all and all are united for the greater good of humanity. Therefore it is the goal of the proletariat, in building the Democratic Dictatorship of the Proletariat, not to destroy or subjugate other social groups but to proletarianize them, to turn them into fellow productive labourers so that they may join the D. of the P. until every country is united under the single red banner of the proletariat and class ceases to exist. And, because the lumpenproletariat share the proletariat’s antagonistic relationship with capital and the bourgeoisie, they are comrades in arms in the process of moving towards this and will easily be welcomed into the proletarian fold, supported and liberated in the proletarian socialist society, as the D. of the P. is built in their country.

4. The Labour Aristocracy

The labour aristocracy are not a distinct class under capitalism but rather a substratum of the proletariat. Understanding who they are, as well as their role in capitalism and in socialist revolution, is still, however, important and necessary for students of communism. The labour aristocracy (so called because they are the upper echelon of the labouring class), as understood by Lenin and by communists since his time, are those members of the proletarian class afforded various privileges: an uncommonly high level of wage/salary, sometimes even above the amount of surplus value they produce (with the extra being drawn from the exploitation of less fortunate employees of their capitalist bosses), and often a higher degree of control over their own labour and in some cases a role in assisting managing the labour of other proletarians and facilitating its exploitation by capital. They are a set of “bourgeoisified proletarians” who are produced in imperialist countries by the conditions of imperialism{8}. These include non-owning managers and many doctors or lawyers who do not own their own firms or offices (those who do are petit-bourgeois). The labour aristocracy are definitionally proletarian, they do productive labour upon property owned by capital and its bourgeois masters and own no capital themselves. In spite of this, because they are under capitalism afforded a level of luxury that matches or even exceeds that their fellow proletarians can only gain by establishing socialism through the construction of a D. of the P., their class interests often align with those of the bourgeoisie and it is often in their personal interests to maintain capitalism.

The labour aristocracy are not, however, enemies of the communists or our cause. They are after all proletarians, and we as communists seek to be the liberators of the proletariat. Even so, it is often their tendency to take the side of the bourgeoisie against other proletarians, and their distinct characteristics necessitate a unique appeal from the proletarian cause in order to draw them into our movement and away from this counterrevolutionary tendency. The communist appeal to the labour aristocracy depends upon what we shall call class-solidarity or class-empathy. We must appeal to the labour-aristocrats to see that others, others similar to themselves and deserving of the same rights and privileges, are suffering under the present social order and that for the sake of their own human empathy they must commit to the liberation of these people, who are the vast majority of the population, through the obliteration of the present social order and the construction of the new proletarian one, the socialist D. of the P. Our appeal to the labour aristocrat then, is this:

You doctor, you lawyer, you manager and white-collar worker, your life is comfortable and your hard work is well-rewarded. But others not so different from you, no less deserving, have not these luxuries. Does not the bus driver, the schoolteacher, the frycook or the garbage-collector know their craft as well as you know yours? And are not their roles vital, just as yours is? Is not the supply of transport, of education, of sustenance, of cleanliness just as vital to healthy living as that of medicine or legal advocacy? And are there not those, too, that live in still greater luxury than you do but have done nothing to earn it but to profit from the product of other people’s labour because they are the owners of capital and property? Is this not a great injustice that should offend anyone’s sense of empathy, of justice, of solidarity with those like themselves, those of their fellow-class? We ask that you commit yourself to the resolution of this contradiction of exploitation between the exploited who deserve the world and the world-rulers who do not, that you join us in the fight against the systems and institutions that maintain it and the campaign to build an economic system and social order without it. We ask this of you because we know you are decent, we know you see the suffering in the world that is brought on by destructive value-extraction and by imperialist war, and we trust that although you may not feel it yourself your sense of class-empathy will carry you through. Your role in this cause is vital, for without revolutionary doctors the casualties of the People’s War will be far worse and without revolutionary lawyers our party cadre will be easily silenced by the bourgeois state’s legal system (let it be known that the NUPL, an organization of lawyers, is an important part of the NDF, the revolutionary United Front in the Philippines). And we can promise you that, when our revolutionary People’s War triumphs and the D. of the P. and socialism reign in your country, you and all the rest of the working masses will be free of exploitation and free to participate democratically in the management of your own labour.

A note should be made here to strike down a certain noxious falsehood. There is a popular notion, promoted by anti-communists to make communists look foolish, that our goal under socialism and/or communism is to make every job pay just the same. This is absurd. No communist supports this, nor will one find any basis for it in the work of the Six Great Teachers or any other philosophers of communism. What we want is a society where people have free control over the whole of the useful value that their labour-power and its enactment through labour produces for society, however much that may be. Our objecting to the uncommon luxuries enjoyed by the labour-aristocracy does not mean we do not object to the fact that a doctor is paid more than a cashier, nor do we believe that they should be paid the same. Rather, we believe that society can and must move towards an order where all are paid in 1:1 proportion to the surplus use-value they produce without a capitalist middle-man profiting by taking this surplus value through the unfair buying up of labour power and its products to be sold for private gain, and we believe it is in the interests of all workers to work towards this cause.

The Youth

Comrade Lenin said: “Only by radically remoulding the teaching, organisation and training of the youth shall we be able to ensure that the efforts of the younger generation will result in the creation of a society that will be unlike the old society, i.e., in the creation of a communist society{9}.” The youth are the people alive today who will see the future, who may if we are efficient in our task of revolution live to see socialism in full flower in parts of the world, and who therefore are those with the most to gain from socialist revolution. It is therefore, as Lenin proclaimed, vital that part of the effort to build the D. of the P. and socialism, and then to advance to full-stage communism, is to bring the youth into and behind that cause. Therefore, both during the struggle to build socialism and after the socialist D. of the P. exists in a country, the promotion of communist ideas and attitudes amongst students and other youths is vital.

Vital to the question of how to do this: what is the class character of the youth? The prevailing opinion is that the children of the proletariat, while still dependent on their parents and therefore not yet really belonging to any class, share the class interests of their parents. This is only logical: when one is dependent on another then everything that is good for that other is good for oneself and everything that is bad for that other is bad for oneself. Therefore, our goal as communists with regard to youths and students of a proletarian background (both now and under a future socialist state) is to unite them into mass organizations within the proletarian United Front that provide them with communist education and promote the communist programme in the schools and colleges and amongst the young masses. But just what does this mean? It means more than just reading theory! Lenin said: “If the study of communism consisted solely in assimilating what is contained in communist books and pamphlets, we might all too easily obtain communist text-jugglers or braggarts, and this would very often do us harm, because such people, after learning by rote what is set forth in communist books and pamphlets, would prove incapable of combining the various branches of knowledge, and would be unable to act in the way communism really demands{10}.” Mao taught us that knowledge comes from two things related in a roughly cyclical pattern: The undertaking and analysis of practice produces theory, then the study of theory informs practice, then that practice and its analysis produces new theory{11}. The relationship between theory and practice approximates a circle, although practice is principal. Therefore the education of the youth, and communist education in general, should emphasize not merely memorizing theory but understanding how to apply it in the context of one’s own surroundings for the furtherance of proletarian interests. After all, if one does not strive in a real material way to advance the dialectical process of humanity’s historical evolution towards communism, one cannot really be called a communist at all.

The situation is different for the children of class enemies, of the big bourgeoisie and of the petit-bourgeoisie who have not accepted their shared interests with proles and side instead with the big bourgeoisie. As was said above, the children of our class enemies are not themselves our class enemies, because class is not a matter of blood. Nonetheless, the communist movement amongst the youth must by necessity have a different approach to winning over youths of a bourgeois background. Here what must be done is not to encourage them to sympathize with their parents’ class interests but instead to encourage the opposite, to encourage them to question their parents’ authority. Therefore in relation to these youths the communist youth organizations of the United Front, made up primarily and led entirely by proletarian youth, must agitate amongst them on the basis of empathy and solidarity. This is like what must be done amongst the labour aristocracy, but with age-group solidarity instead of class solidarity. We must implore the children of the bourgeoisie to recognize the plight of the larger part of the youth that is doomed under bourgeois rule to a life of exploitation and oppression, and that they can help free these brethren of theirs if they aspire to- instead of succeeding their parents as oppressors- join with the rising young proletariat and join in its seizing of power over its own life and labour-power through People’s War and worker-democratic socialist economic relations.

Through these measures of political agitation, especially under the socialist Democratic Dictatorship of the Proletariat in the base areas of a PPW as it grows and in a whole country once the proletarian semi-state is firmly established, the youth shall be united into the revolutionary proletariat and shall become an unstoppable force of history, driving it forward through cultural, economic, philosophical, and political revolution towards the sure triumph of global communism!

Students and Intellectuals

Academics and intellectuals come from a variety of class backgrounds. Many are petit-bourgeois or labour aristocratic, some come from the middle or even the low proletariat, a few are lumpenproletarian. All of them, but principally the proletarian ones and under the leadership of those, should be seen as a resource for social change that the revolutionary movement must tap. As was mentioned in the subsection on the lumpenproletariat in the section before last, the proletarian social order will have need of revolutionary socialist proletarian intellectuals to promote and teach the new order of socialist proletarian ideology as the old order of bourgeois ideology is destroyed by Cultural Revolution. The organizing of revolutionary organizations within academic and intellectual spaces as part of the building of the United Front, then, is a necessary task leading up to the country-wide triumph of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat and its proletarian semi-state. The PCP wrote, in their General Political Line (§ “Mass Line”), “The intellectuals [must be agitated amongst and organized] so that they may fulfill their role as revolutionary intellectuals serving the proletariat and peasantry within the People’s War. Among them are the secondary school students, university students and professionals, etc. See their specific revindications, that they should defend what is conquered, aiming at a new national, scientific and mass culture, making them conscious that they can only achieve this with the revolution.”

We must therefore have a focus of propaganda upon students, intellectuals, and academics to discourage them away from academic navelgazing and towards

1. Living and promoting knowledge amongst and as part of the ordinary proletariat
2. Understanding, promoting and applying proletarian ideology in this context

Organizing amongst academics and intellectuals must encourage them to live a proletarian life, either doing productive labour for society in addition to their academic work or carrying out their academic work as productive labour for society, and to study, grow, and teach proletarian philosophy amongst each other and amongst the masses through the application of Mass Line methods of leading and organizing via the Three Withs (live With the people, work With the people, struggle With the people). This organizing of intellectuals to make them revolutionary proletarian intellectuals is the place and the duty of intellectuals under and leading up to the triumph of the socialist system.

The Enforcers of the Bourgeois State

On the racist pig cops and the imperialist pig soldiers of the bourgeois states, as on the big bourgeoisie themselves, our line must be crystal clear: they are our enemies and we shall make no apologies for the terror we bring down upon them. As the bourgeois state has always functioned to suppress and terrorize the proletariat and its champions, so the proletarian state and the communists its builders will do unto the big bourgeoisie. Only through the sound military defeat of bourgeois powers, the forceful liquidation of capital, and the subjugation and forceful proletarianization-through-reeducation of the bourgeoisie and their enforcers can the working majority be free.

This does not mean, however, that there is no future for even a single cop or soldier of the bourgeois state. There is reason for the brutality and Red Terror of the rising D. of the P.: it is necessary to cement the working majority as the ruling class and thus usher in democratic worker rule of political economy and society. Therefore, excesses that go beyond what is necessary for this cause are not justified, they are purely violent, and so we do not condone them (though we must accept they will occasionally happen in the course of revolution). We speak without shame or compromise of the need to subjugate the oppressors of the proletariat under a proletarian state, but we intend to do this in a way that is, when possible, rehabilitative. This means that those former oppressors who respond well to reeducation, who when imprisoned by the new proletarian state quickly learn the social norms and philosophical standards of the proletarian order, should be allowed to reenter society as proletarians and exist normally within socialism and worker-democracy. And of course, it is possible that some among the cops or imperialist soldiers will come around to communist thought of their own accord and defect away from these forces to start working for the proletariat even before it conquers the part of the country they live in- these people should be welcomed without reservation into the revolutionary proletarian fold, though they should be advised to apply the Marxist attitude of self-criticism with a special focus to the aspects of bourgeois state ideology that remain in their thinking. In this sense, the proletarian order should welcome former bourgeois enforcers if they truly reject the former social order in a self-critical manner and accept proletarian values and ideology.

Some among us, however, are too tempted to make allowances for the enforcers of the bourgeois state simply because they come from proletarian backgrounds. It is popular with some in the broad “left” to make a great weeping and gnashing of teeth over the fact that some of the soldiers of the imperialist state in the US are of a poor background and therefore had no choice but to join the military in order to go to college, and say that they therefore cannot be blamed for their actions. It is true that many soldiers are poor, often from oppressed minority national or ethnic groups, and are coerced into the military on this basis. But to state or imply that these represent the majority of soldiers is disingenuous. As we see in data collected by the Council on Foreign Affairs:

Most recruits of the imperialist military are from households of middling income, with both the especially poor and the especially wealthy under-represented relative to their percentage of the civilian population. So, while the phenomenon of the “poverty-draft” certainly exists, it is quite a bit less prevalent than some would have us think. It is also not as good an excuse as they think it is. As any true adherent of communist ethics and proletarian ideology knows, the concerns of the individual are always secondary to those of the proletarian class (which, after all, encompasses many individuals, indeed the vast majority of individuals) and so one’s individual concern about whatever benefits the military promised in order to coerce their joining is not nearly enough to excuse their crimes against the masses.

In the end, the imperialist military and the racist cops are criminals against the people and must be treated as such: suppressed, imprisoned and forcefully proletarianized under the coming workers’ state.

Oppressed Groups and Nations

There are in class society a number of antagonistic social contradictions, a number of relationships of oppression and systemized injustice which are not directly relationships of class. Socialist revolution intends not merely to resolve the primary contradictions of capitalist class society, but to ultimately resolve all its contradictions, including additionally those of racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, etc. Vital to understanding these contradictions is the knowledge that, while they extend beyond them, they are products of the primary contradictions of exploitative class society. Secondary oppressions are superstructural cultural institutions which are produced by and in turn maintain and reinforce the primary exploitation relations of class society{12}. Therefore ending these relationships of oppression requires ending the capitalistic relations which engender them, and conversely ending the primary exploitation relations of capitalism will in order to “stick” require ending the secondary oppression relations that reinforce and preserve them.

Some examples are in order here. Take sexism: how does it arise out of the contradictions of capitalism? While it is true that sexist bigotries in various forms have existed throughout history, systemized sexism as it exists today is largely a manifestation of the patriarchal institution of marriage and the traditional family unit. As Comrade Engels explored in On the Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State, the institutions of the exclusive nuclear family unit and the legal-financial institution of marriage evolved alongside class society and took their current form in order to preserve the ownership of capital and means of production by a small ruling class that is essential to the capitalist system. As such, being that sexism in its contemporary form is causally associated with the culture of capitalism, as the socialist political-economy produces its own cultural superstructure that is more amenable to non-traditional forms of familial relations and less strict about rigid social norms this sexism shall be destroyed by the cultural institutions of the new society and by the masses that uphold them.

Another example, homophobia: once again, it is rooted in the narrow bourgeois standards for families and married couples. Capitalism works on the cultural standard of heterosexual relationships that produce large numbers of children, ensuring steady numbers of new proletarians being born for capital to begin exploiting as previous generations die{13}. As such, capitalist culture has no room for a gay proletarian who does not contribute to this, and so produces a cultural standard of homophobia. This is also why, when bourgeois cultures accept gay people, it is always either as wealthy socialites (who are not proletarians in need of replacements for capitalism to continue) or as moderately well-off couples who accept the bourgeois standard of marriage and reproduction (or in this case adoption) and thus become almost as useful to capital as heterosexuals. But a poor gay person remains unacceptable, an abomination, and so while homophobia may appear eradicated in certain bourgeois circles it is still propagated virulently amongst the masses by institutions (such as churches) which are themselves controlled by the bourgeoisie! Come the epoch of socialism, a new proletarian culture which eschews bourgeois restrictions in favour of accepting all kinds of relationships between consenting adults shall rise and obliterate the archaic standards of prudish homophobia.

One last example: racism. Again, it must be said that racial prejudices in various forms have existed throughout history under all kinds of contractionary economic systems. But racism in its contemporary form is, functionally, a tool of bourgeois exploitation of the proletariat and of particularly harsh exploitation of black proletarians. Ever since the days of the transatlantic slave trade, capital has found it useful to stigmatize and dehumanize certain racial groupings of workers in order to get away with exploiting them more than would be allowed otherwise. And as long as this remains profitable for capital- which it always will be while capital continues to exist- capitalist culture will find ways to reinforce it and racism will remain. When socialism is achieved, however, we may undertake radical cultural change to move towards all people being equal proletarians working together under the red banner of socialism and the Democratic Dictatorship of the Proletariat.

All of these cultural changes that are part of firmly establishing the D. of the P., the new social order of socialism and proletarian democratic state rule, constitute a part of the all-important Maoist revolutionary task of Cultural Revolution. The cultural revolution is a process that must occur as soon as possible in a socialist country after its socialist revolution, and multiple times if necessary, in which the proletariat work together to destroy the remaining vestiges of the capitalist cultural superstructure. As Mao taught in speeches and lectures, in the process of Cultural Revolution all the proletarians must work together to eliminate the remaining vestiges of capitalist culture and ideology left in society- delineated into the categories of the Four Olds: Old Thoughts, Old Culture, Old Customs, and Old Habits- or else their continuing influence over society may cause aspects of capitalism to creep back in and thus cause socialism to crumble. Furthermore, the process of the Cultural Revolution must also establish a radical new cultural superstructure, a proletarian one that strengthens and reinforces socialism in the country. The Cultural Revolution is a vital part of building socialism- it is now understood that failure to destroy the last vestiges of capitalist culture and replace them with socialist culture, or attempting to do it too late, is a major reason why past socialist societies have decayed back into capitalism. It is uncertain what trajectory Cultural Revolution will need to take in any given country, and we can only find out in the process of undertaking it. To try and predict exactly the process of Cultural Revolution in the US (or rather, in the socialist country that succeeds the US, whatever we name it), or anywhere, would be foolish. But we may safely say that it will do away with all the cultural oppressions and bigotries that sprout from capitalism, for its purpose is to end the whole oppressive cultural system that arises from and reinforces capitalism once and for all!

Another question of non-class oppression is that of national oppression. Although the words nation and country are sometimes used as synonyms, for Marxism a nation is a specific thing which may or may not be a country in its own right. Stalin provides a clear definition, in Marxism and the National Question: “A nation is a historically constituted, stable community of people, formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life, and psychological make-up manifested in a common culture [but not on the basis of race].” So although words like “national” are sometimes misused (including by me) as meaning of or encompassing a country, when the term is used in its most precise meaning, “nation” to a Marxist means a distinct cultural and political-economic group of people defined as separate from those around them, whether or not that nation and their territory actually correspond to a country sovereign or otherwise. From Leninism, the second of modern Marxism’s three developmental stages, we take the fundamental principle with regard to Marxist political thought on national questions (questions regarding the political-economic conditions and trajectories of particular national communities): the right of nations to self-determination{14}. A national community has the right, and Marxists unwaveringly respect this right, to do whatever the majority of its people want: be a country, be part of another country, be capitalist, be socialist, whatever. We must respect this right because trying to force our own will on another nation, even for ostensibly good and communist reasons, can only lead to the creation of antagonistic contradictions between nations and thus undesirable social strife. Therefore the attitude of a communist towards the minority nations in their community is this: to let whatever political position regarding the future of the nation is most popular with that nation’s people take its course without violently standing in its way, although of course to only lend it active material support if it is proletarian-led and will lead to socialism in that nation{15}.

The position of the bourgeoisie, however, is rather less favorable to the rights of the minority nation. The bourgeoisie of every country depend upon the strength of their state to keep the workers socially stifled and easy to exploit, so to allow a national community within those workers to assert itself and reject outright the authority of that state is anathema to the interests of the bourgeois dictatorship. And so any national movement, any social movement of a nation for greater autonomy, is undemocratically and often violently suppressed under capitalism. And so the Spanish state sends pigs and tanks to tame the rebellious Catalans, and so the Morroccan crown terrorizes the defiant Sahrawi, and so the pigs of Canada’s RCMP put down every righteous uprising of the Mohawks and Wet’suwet’en.

National oppression, then, is the norm under capitalism but an abomination to the principles of socialism. It is thus in the interests of every national minority- the Welsh and Scots of the UK, the Tamils of Sri Lanka and India, the Kurds of the middle east, the Catalans and Galicians of Spain, the Basques of France and Spain, etc.- to promote the building of socialism in their country in order to create a social order in which their nation can do whatever its people want, be that remaining in the country or seceding.

Life Under Communism

Of course, we cannot speak of life under socialism without talking of life under full communism, as socialism or lower-stage communism is in its function essentially the precursor to global full communism. It is difficult to speak with any precision on what the communist world will look like. We know that the arrival of communism as a global political-economic system without contradictions between classes is inevitably coming, as we can observe that dialectical class conflicts as the driving force of history propel us out of economic systems with more class contradictions and into ones with fewer, thus the ultimate destination of our political-economic evolution as a species must be one with none{16}. We can say further that this system must be characterized by direct management of economics and politics by the community itself, as the state is an instrument for the assertion of one class’s will over another{17}, and so a system without classes defined by contradictions with each other will have no need for a state as such with armies and other tools of repression (although presumably some form of local government will remain to maintain civilization and facilitate communities’ self-management, likely in the form of the same democratic workers’ councils or soviets which are the primary local economic and political authorities under a socialist state☨). Therefore, the transition from socialism to full-stage communism will be marked by the gradual peaceful dissolution of central socialist states and Parties and the assumption of all social power by local communities themselves. But beyond this, speculating on the nature of communism is a fanciful exercise which does not really belong in a work of scientific Marxist philosophy. All we can say is that the global communist society will be the crowning glory of a species liberated from the oppression and exploitation of class contradictions, and that it is our duty to march towards it through socialism.

FOOTNOTES

† of course those who labour in the prisons of the proletarian state, unlike those who are presently enslaved in the prisons of bourgeois states, shall be fairly compensated and given much of the surplus value they produce. It is worth noting that working prisoners in Soviet gulags, unlike those in American private prison camps, were paid{18}.

☨ “democratic” in this sense is being used in a rather broader and looser sense than we do in reference to a social order ruled by a democratic state. Lenin said: “Democracy is a state which recognizes the subordination of the minority to the majority, i.e., an organization for the systematic use of force by one class against another, by one section of the population against another. [emphasis added]{19}.” Obviously, given that the communist epoch of history lacks classes and thus lacks states (which are tools of classes and their rule), there will not be democracy in this more exacting sense of a democratic state. But there will certainly be a continuation of the self-rule of communities by the majority, democracy in the looser sense, as there was under socialism.

SOURCES

{1}On Contradiction, Mao Tse Tung; Dialectical and Historical Materialism, Joseph Stalin; On the Proper Handling of Contradictions Among the People, Mao Tse Tung

{2} I explained these ideas in my work “Important Ideas of Presidente Gonzalo: A Reader in Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, Principally Maoism”

{3}§ “International Line,” General Political Line, PCP

{4}Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism, VI Lenin; General Political Line, PCP

{5}On New Democracy, Mao Tse Tung; “Interview with Chairman Gonzalo,” El Diario

{6}“Intercommunalism is Not A Marxist Concept,” Comrade Cathal, in Struggle Sessions

{7}On Contradiction, Mao Tse Tung

{8} Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism, VI Lenin

{9} “The Tasks of the Youth Leagues,” Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

{10} “The Tasks of the Youth Leagues,” Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

{11} “On Practice,” Mao Tse Tung

{12} The concept of the cultural superstructure is explored in the preface to A Contribution to the Criticism of Political Economy, Karl Marx

{13} Marxism and Queer Emancipation, Red Star-Switzerland

{14} Marxism and the National Question, J Stalin

{15}On the Kurdish National Question, İbrahim Kaypakkaya

{16}Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, Friedrich Engels

{17}The State and Revolution, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

{18} Liberty Under the Soviets, Roger Baldwin

{19}The State and Revolution, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin