Watch Moon’s Shadow Race Across North America During 8 April 2024 Solar Eclipse

Courtesy of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s GOES-East satellite we are pleased to provide our readers with a GIF animation of the Moon’s shadow racing across North America during the 8 April 2024 Solar Eclipse.

This animation is composed of 48 satellite images taken over an 8-hour period, capturing the entire sequence of the eclipse event from the western coast of Mexico until the shadow disappears into the North Atlantic.  You can download a copy of it here (115 mb .gif file):  https://iwpchi.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/g16_fd_geocolor_48fr_20240408-1820.gif

CREDIT:  Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere (CIRA) and NOAA

Women’s History Month: Honoring Slavery Abolitionist and Feminist Poet and Novelist, Amelia Alderson Opie

Amelia Alderson Opie, portrait by her husband John Opie, 1798.  Public domain.

We are very pleased to be able to contribute to the celebration of Women’s History Month by offering our readers a facsimile reproduction of 19th century British anti-slavery activist, feminist poet and novelist Amelia Alderson Opie‘s 1826 children’s book “The Black Man’s Lament: Or, How To Make Sugar“.

Amelia Alderson was born on 12 November 1769 in the midst of one of the greatest revolutionary eras in world history.  An only daughter of a Norwich physician and a mother who taught her to respect people of all walks of life and social classes; by 1804 she had become a successful writer and had published a novel in which her anti-slavery sentiments were expressed.   She was fortunate to have lived at a time when courageous women were asserting their rights more and more forcefully, and some men were beginning to accept intelligent women into their intellectual gatherings; she became friends with many of the most brilliant thinkers, writers and actors of her age, including the legendary actress and “undisputed Queen of Drury Lane” Sarah Siddons, Siddons’ brother and fellow brilliant actor John Philip Kemble, author and radical political scientist William Godwin and his wife, pioneering feminist writer and philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft.  Both Alderson and Wollstonecraft were associated with the Blue Stockings Society, an early association organized by leading women of the mid-1700s that admitted men into their company to discuss literature and the arts (discussion of politics was deprecated at their gatherings).  This salon attracted such luminaries of that time as salon hostess Elizabeth Montagu,  and the genius linguist, poet, writer, translator and astronomer (among a few of her accomplishments) Elizabeth Carter.

In 1798 Alderson married the portrait painter John Opie, whose brilliant work brought him commissions to paint many of the most illustrious men and women of their time and enabled them to participate in the highest levels of philosophical discussions of the era.

Another of Alderson Opie’s close friends, Joseph John Gurney, fellow abolitionist and staunch anti-slavery leader of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) convinced her to join them in 1825.  Working with fellow anti-slavery activist and archaeology enthusiast Anna Gurney, Opie co-founded a branch of the Ladies Anti-Slavery Society in Norwich, England.  In 1840, Opie was one of the few female participants included in the group portrait of that year’s meeting of the World Anti-Slavery Convention, held in London.

Amelia Alderson Opie portrayed in the front ranks of women attending the  World Anti-Slavery Convention held in London in June of 1840 (outlined in red, center right).  To her immediate right is Anne Isabella Noel Byron (Lady Byron, Lord Byron’s wife); to her left is abolitionist Mary Anne Rawson.  Co-founder of the British anti-slavery movement Thomas Clarkson is addressing the meeting; his daughter-in-law Mary Clarkson is seated to his right. Seated almost directly in front of Opie is the charge d’affaires of revolutionary Haiti in London and Paris, Jean-Baptiste Symphor Linstant de Pradine.  Source: National Picture Gallery, London.

In 1833, Opie’s Norwich Ladies Anti-Slavery Society presented a petition to Parliament calling for the abolition of slavery which contained some “187,000 female signatures”;  According to a report in pioneering American abolitionist Benjamin Lundy‘s “Genius of Universal Emancipation” (Vol. 12, Whole Number 287, September, 1833), it took four men to lay this enormous petition on the table in the House of Commons.  “At the head of it stood the name of the celebrated Amelia Opie…”

Opie’s husband had died in 1807; she lived an active life until her death on 2 December 1853 at Norwich, having spent her later years visiting and receiving her many friends between London and Norwich and corresponding with writers from around the world.

—IWPCHI

 

 

 

 

 

 

Full Text of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s Address to the 2023 BRICS Summit

We have been warning our readers about the start of World War III between US/NATO  – and their Nazi-dominated puppet government in Ukraine – and Russia and Socialist China since it escalated into open warfare in February 2022.

Today, the President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin, in an address to the 2023 BRICS Summit in Johannesburg, South Africa, made it absolutely clear that the savage economic, political and military warfare the US has been waging against Russia via it’s puppets in Kiev is about to be responded to in kind, in a manner designed to eventually – permanently – dislodge the US dollar as the world’s primary reserve currency.  This is economic warfare at its most dangerous, and portends a major escalation of WWIII from a mere border clash to, ultimately, nuclear war between Russia and the US.  We republish his speech here so that workers around the world can read it in its entirety; we expect the bourgeois press to do all it can to misquote, exaggerate, falsify and censor it; this is why we are publishing the complete text as it was published in English on the official website of the President of the Russian Federation.

We do not in any way support the capitalist Russian government politically or militarily in any way; in fact, in the current war between Russia and US/NATO-backed Ukraine, we call for workers socialist revolutions to overthrow ALL of the governments involved, from Washington to Moscow. But this address, in my opinion, is world-historic in that it raises the economic stakes so high as to preclude any kind of de-escalation of WWIII that was initiated solely by the US capitalist class and their government;  there is no way that the madmen and madwomen running the US are going to allow their insane drive for complete domination of the world’s economy be derailed by ANYONE, and especially not Vladimir Putin.  This massive, purely defensive escalation of economic warfare between Russia and the US places them in a position which, historically, has ALWAYS been resolved through savage wars between the principal adversaries and their allies.

Whether or not the rest of the BRICS nations are willing to follow Russia’s lead in attempting to dislodge the US dollar permanently as the world’s #1 reserve currency – declaring open economic warfare against the US in the process is not in their best political or economic interest in the short run – Putin today announced that as precisely what Russia intends to do as one of the two leading nuclear-armed superpowers in the BRICS coalition. In this speech, President Putin points out the tremendous economic progress the BRICS countries have already achieved against the leading industrialized nations of the Group of 7 (G7):

  “The figures speak for themselves. Over the last decade, mutual investments among the BRICS countries have increased six-fold. Their overall investments in global economy have doubled, and their total exports have reached 20 percent of the world exports […] I would also like to point out that the share of the BRICS countries, with their population totalling more than three billion people, now accounts for nearly 26 percent of the global GDP; our five countries are ahead of the G7 in terms of purchasing power parity (the forecast for 2023 is 31.5 percent against 30 percent) […]  The objective and irreversible process of the de-dollarization of our economic ties is gaining pace. We are working to fine-tune effective mechanisms for mutual settlements and monetary and financial control. As a result, the share of US dollar in export and import operations within BRICS is declining: last year it stood at only 28.7 percent […]  during this summit we will discuss in detail the entire range of issues related to the transition to national currencies in all areas of economic cooperation between our five nations. The BRICS New Development Bank, which has already become a credible alternative to existing Western development institutions, has a great role to play in these efforts.”

Pres. Putin also outlines two major new trade routes Russia intends to establish to facilitate trade between Russia and its BRICS partners around the world – both of which the US will do all it can do to disrupt.  For those of you who pretend that Climate Change is a fraud, one of these trade routes will be “the Northern Sea Route […]  Russia has already adopted and launched a large-scale, multi-year plan to develop its infrastructure. We intend to build fuel terminals, hub ports to ensure connections with road and rail transport. The icebreaking fleet is being expanded, first of all by commissioning nuclear-powered vessels that have no analogues in the world. 

“As for the North‑South Transport Corridor, it will connect Russian ports on the Arctic seas and the Baltic Sea with offshore terminals in the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean, thereby providing opportunities to increase cargo transportation between Eurasian and African countries. Besides, this will certainly give impetus to developing new industrial, trade and logistics facilities along the route.”  [SOURCE: http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/72085]

Revolutionary socialists have always declared that “there is literally no future for the working class under the capitalist system”.  Right now the workers of the major industrialized nations in the northern hemisphere are being driven down the road to a nuclear WWIII at a pace that is absolutely stunning – and, equally stunning:  there has been practically NO WORKING CLASS OPPOSITION to the drive to World War Three as there was in the US and Europe in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s and 1980s every time that the US threatened to launch it against, in turn, the bureaucratized socialist workers states of the USSR, China, the DPRK (North Korea), Cuba and Vietnam.  Unless the working class stands up and starts fighting to oppose this insane drive towards WWIII, IT WILL HAPPEN!  The capitalist greed-heads running the governments of the world care NOTHING about human beings; not even their own families!  All they care about is MONEY, period!  They apparently believe that they will survive a nuclear holocaust in their underground bunkers, and after slaughtering hundreds of millions of their citizens, they will emerge victorious from their rat-holes and be welcomed by the survivors of the nuclear bloodbath – and resume their duties as government leaders as if nothing happened!  They are completely insane – and unless the working class takes these weapons of mass destruction out of their hands permanently, it is only a matter of time before they stagger their way into blowing up the entire northern hemisphere, killing all of us!  Join us to put an end to this madness NOW!

Dump ALL pro-capitalist parties and build revolutionary Trotskyist parties!  For workers socialist revolution throughout the capitalist world!

—- IWPCHI

************************************************

SOURCE: http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/72085

[N.B.:  This address of Vladimir Putin to the BRICS summit meeting in South Africa had to be given via video from Moscow, because the US – which refuses to allow its own government or military to be subject to rulings of the International Criminal Court – has conspired to get that court to issue an indictment and an International Arrest Warrant against Putin for alleged “crimes against humanity” in Ukraine, making it impossible for him to travel to South Africa personally, in spite of South African President Cyril Ramaphosa’s assurances that his government would not honor the arrest warrant if Putin attended the summit.  The US has proven again and again that it will wantonly violate international laws and norms of conduct in order to attack its enemies; this US-concocted threat against the Russian head of state is just another manifestation of the US’ intention to provoke open war – WWIII – between the US, its puppet NATO allies, and Russia.  —- IWPCHI]

Video Address to the Participants in the BRICS Business Forum

Vladimir Putin made a video address to guests and participants in the BRICS Business Forum, which is traditionally held ahead of the BRICS summit.

August 22, 2023

19:10

The 15^th BRICS summit is taking place on August 22–24 in Johannesburg (South Africa). The theme of the session is “BRICS and Africa: Partnership for Mutually Accelerated Growth, Sustainable Development and Inclusive Multilateralism.” The leaders of the Group of Five will discuss current international and regional challenges, as well as achievements and goals of the BRICS strategic partnership in the political, economic, cultural and humanitarian areas. Special attention will be paid to issues of BRICS institutional development, including expansion of the association and creation of payment infrastructure resistant to external risks.

* * *

Video Address to the Participants in the BRICS Business Forum

President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Esteemed President Ramaphosa, ladies and gentlemen, friends,

I am pleased to greet representatives of government institutions and business, specialists and industry experts who have gathered for this meeting of the BRICS Business Forum.

I would like to note that holding such business forums on a regular basis, along with the systemic work of the BRICS Business Council, which brings together top businessmen and heads of major companies of the five countries, plays an immense practical role in promoting mutual trade and investments, enhancing cooperation ties and expanding direct dialogue among the business communities – and thus effectively contributes to accelerated socio-economic growth of our states and achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals.

It is important that this Forum focuses on such pressing issues as the post-pandemic economic recovery of the BRICS states, improvement of citizens’ well-being, industrial modernization, development of effective transport and logistics chains, and stimulation of equitable technology transfers.

These challenging and complex tasks need to be tackled against the backdrop of the increasing volatility in stock, currency, energy and food markets, coupled with substantial inflationary pressure stemming from, inter alia, the irresponsible large-scale money creation by a number of countries seeking to mitigate the effects of the pandemic, which has led to the accumulation of private and public debt.

The global economic situation is also seriously affected by the illegitimate sanctions practice and illegal freezing of assets of sovereign states, which essentially amounts to the trampling upon all the basic norms and rules of free trade and economic life – norms and rules that not so long ago seemed immutable.

Shortage of resources, growing inequality, rising unemployment, and aggravation of other chronic problems in the global economy are the direct consequences of this. Prices for food, basic agricultural products and crops are forced up, making the most vulnerable, poor countries suffer the most.

Importantly, under these circumstances, the BRICS states have stepped up their interaction, and our joint work to ensure economic growth and sustainable development brings concrete, tangible results. More and more new infrastructure and investment projects are being launched, mutual trade is growing, industry contacts are expanding.

The main thing is that our cooperation is based on the principles of equality, partner support, and respect for each other’s interests. And that is what lies at the core of our Association’s forward-looking strategic course – the course that reflects the aspirations of most of the world’s community, the so-called global majority.

The figures speak for themselves. Over the last decade, mutual investments among the BRICS countries have increased six-fold. Their overall investments in global economy have doubled, and their total exports have reached 20 percent of the world exports.

As for Russia, the trade volume with our BRICS partners has increased by 40.5 percent, reaching a record of over 230 billion US dollars. In the first half of this year it grew by 35.6 percent compared with the same period in 2022 and constituted 134.7 billion US dollars.

I would also like to point out that the share of the BRICS countries, with their population totalling more than three billion people, now accounts for nearly 26 percent of the global GDP; our five countries are ahead of the G7 in terms of purchasing power parity (the forecast for 2023 is 31.5 percent against 30 percent).

The objective and irreversible process of the de-dollarization of our economic ties is gaining pace. We are working to fine-tune effective mechanisms for mutual settlements and monetary and financial control. As a result, the share of US dollar in export and import operations within BRICS is declining: last year it stood at only 28.7 percent.

Incidentally, during this summit we will discuss in detail the entire range of issues related to the transition to national currencies in all areas of economic cooperation between our five nations. The BRICS New Development Bank, which has already become a credible alternative to existing Western development institutions, has a great role to play in these efforts.

It is only natural that enhancing connectivity and creating new sustainable traffic arteries have become a shared priority in cooperation between our five countries. In this context, the BRICS Business Council’s initiative to work out modern intermodal logistics solutions and develop railway transport corridors is of particular importance.

For its part, Russia actively works to redirect its traffic and logistics flows to reliable foreign partners, including in the BRICS states. Our flagship projects include the Northern Sea Route and the new International North‑South Transport Corridor. These two major transport arteries aim to provide the shortest and most cost-effective trade routes to link major industrial, agricultural and energy hubs with consumer markets.

With regard to the Northern Sea Route, I would like to emphasize that Russia has already adopted and launched a large-scale, multi-year plan to develop its infrastructure. We intend to build fuel terminals, hub ports to ensure connections with road and rail transport. The icebreaking fleet is being expanded, first of all by commissioning nuclear-powered vessels that have no analogues in the world.

As for the North‑South Transport Corridor, it will connect Russian ports on the Arctic seas and the Baltic Sea with offshore terminals in the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean, thereby providing opportunities to increase cargo transportation between Eurasian and African countries. Besides, this will certainly give impetus to developing new industrial, trade and logistics facilities along the route.

Russia stands for greater cooperation within BRICS as regards reliable and uninterrupted supplies of energy and food resources to the world markets. We are consistently increasing supplies of fuel, agricultural products and fertilizers to countries in the Global South, making a significant contribution to strengthening global food and energy security, addressing acute humanitarian issues and fighting hunger and poverty in countries in need.

All these issues, in particular, were discussed in depth at the recent Russia–Africa Summit. For example, last year trade in agricultural products between Russia and African states grew by 10 percent and amounted to 6.7 billion US dollars. And in January-June this year, it increased by another record 60 percent. Our country is and will remain a responsible supplier of food to the African continent.

Russian grain exports to Africa amounted to 11.5 million tonnes in 2022 and almost 10 million tonnes in the first six months of 2023. This is despite the unlawful sanctions imposed on us that seriously hinder the export of Russian food products and complicate transport logistics, insurance and bank payments.

Russia is being deliberately obstructed in the supply of grain and fertilizers abroad and at the same time we are hypocritically blamed for the current crisis situation on the world market. This has been clearly seen in the implementation of the so-called ”grain deal“ concluded with the participation of the UN Secretariat and initially aimed at ensuring global food security, reducing the threat of hunger and providing aid to the poorest countries.

We have repeatedly drawn attention to the fact that in a year under the deal, a total of 32.8 million tonnes of cargo has been exported from Ukraine, of which over 70 percent have reached high- and upper-middle-income countries, including the European Union. And only about three percent have gone to the least developed countries – that is, less than one million tonnes.

None of the terms of the so-called deal concerning the lifting of sanctions imposed on Russian exports of grain and fertilizers to world markets have been fulfilled. Obligations to Russia in this regard have been simply ignored. Even our free transfer of mineral fertilizers blocked in European ports has been obstructed. In fact, this is a purely humanitarian campaign that should not in principle be subject to any sanctions.

With these facts in mind, since July 18, we have refused to further extend the so-called deal. And we will be ready to get back to it, but only if all obligations to the Russian side are actually fulfilled.

I have repeatedly said that our country has the capacity to replace Ukrainian grain, both commercially and as free aid to needy countries, especially since our harvest is again expected to be perfect this year. As a first step, we have decided to gratuitously provide six African countries with 25‑50 thousand tonnes of grain each with free delivery of these cargoes. Negotiations with partners are being completed.

Among the priority areas of interaction we also see further coordination of approaches of the BRICS members on the subject of supporting small and medium-sized enterprises. This is an important part of the overall economic agenda of the Group of Five, which implies assistance to the widest circles of citizens engaged in business activity as regards administrative and tax regulation, digitalization, e-commerce, and participation in the value chains.

I would note that thanks to the state support programmes, the entrepreneurs from the BRICS countries successfully adapt to the constantly changing situation in the global markets. They find new partners and new sales channels, attract additional funding and use more actively modern technologies.

It is equally important to continue developing cooperation within BRICS in terms of decarbonizing the economy, reducing human impact on nature and adapting to the changing climate. Russia is ready to work jointly to promote more balanced approaches to the climate change in the international arena.

Our country is consistently implementing the National Low-Carbon Development Strategy. We plan to reach carbon neutrality of the Russian economy not later than 2060, including through the introduction of technological innovations, modernization of infrastructure for access to affordable and clean energy, conservation of ecosystems on land and sea. We understand that the implementation of the climate goals can be facilitated by a variety of technologies, including those that have been in use for a long time already, such as nuclear generation, hydropower and gas motor fuel.

To sum it up, I would like to reiterate that the multifaceted partnership and cooperation within the BRICS not only makes a significant contribution to ensuring the sustainable growth of our states but also generally promotes global economic recovery and successful achievement of global development goals and targets set by the United Nations – to fight poverty, expand people’s access to quality healthcare, eradicate hunger and improve food security.

Therefore, I am confident that the BRICS Business Forum and Business Council will continue their creative work aimed at expanding contacts between the business circles of the Group of Five countries and jointly implementing new mutually beneficial projects.

In conclusion, I would like to invite representatives of your countries’ business circles to attend the Eastern Economic Forum in Russia that will take place on September 10–13 in the city of Vladivostok, where, by tradition, the discussions will focus on issues that are also of interest to the business communities of the BRICS countries.

Thank you for your attention.

Publication date: August 22, 2023, 19:10

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Crucial Readings From the COMINTERN Archives: Lenin Exposes the Fraud of “Bourgeois Democracy” and Its Fake-Left Defenders

We are very pleased to present to our readers the following speech given by the great revolutionary leader Vladimir Lenin to the First Congress of the Communist International, held in revolutionary Moscow in 1919.

Of course, the bribed historians in the employ of the capitalist class have spent the past century publishing lies about what the COMINTERN under Lenin was and what it represented; and have never ceased to publish slanders of the most monstrous kind about it.  In fact, the COMINTERN was created by the greatest  leaders of the working class up to their time in order to study, collate and publicize the hard-earned lessons learned by every failed and successful workers and peasants revolution – lessons written in the blood of the workers and peasants – so as to educate future worker and peasant leaders about the kinds of bloody treachery they could expect from their exploiters in the course of the various stages of their revolutionary struggles, and to thereby help future revolutions proceed with a minimum of sacrifice of the worker and peasant masses.

In this speech, the greatest theoretician of the Third International, Lenin, explains in layman’s terms the utter fraud of bourgeois “democracy” and the abject betrayal of every workers “leader” who worships it and who inculcates in the minds of workers and peasants a love of this totally fake form of democracy while at the same time attacking the establishment of a revolutionary “dictatorship of the proletariat” which is ESSENTIAL to the survival of any revolutionary socialist workers government that has successfully, temporarily overthrown a capitalist ruling class.  

This speech represents, politically, one of the political high-water-marks of the workers movement historically and as such should be required reading for every class-conscious worker and peasant on this planet; and it is a primary example of why truth-telling Lenin is so reviled by every shameless, bribed apologist for the exploitative, racist and misogynist mass-murdering capitalist class in the world.  Enjoy!

This speech can be found in the excellently-translated “THE COMMUNIST INTERNATIONAL, 1919-1943: DOCUMENTS SELECTED AND EDITED BY JANE DEGRAS; VOLUME I: 1919-1922

— IWPCHI

THESES ON BOURGEOIS DEMOCRACY AND PROLETARIAN
DICTATORSHIP ADOPTED BY THE FIRST COMINTERN CONGRESS

4 March 1919 Protokoll, i, p. 115

[These theses, written by Lenin, were adopted by the congress without discussion. In introducing them, as in his other speeches at the congress, Lenin expressed the belief, shared by the other delegates, that the capitalist world was rapidly approaching its end, and that the working class everywhere was moving towards revolution (he likened the shop stewards movement in England to the Soviets).  Unless the proletariat seized power, the problems created by the imperialist war and its aftermath could not be solved. The chief danger lay in the attempt of the reformist socialist parties to hold the workers back, and win them for a policy of bourgeois reconstruction and Wilsonian reforms, by appealing to their loyalty to the old socialist organizations, and their attachment to democratic procedures.

The main emphasis of the congress was not on the struggle against capitalism, but on the struggle against the right wing in the labour movement. Speaking three years later, at the June 1922 meeting of the Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI), Zinoviev said: ‘We were splitters when the Comintern began its work. At that time we could not act otherwise. We had to split the old socialist parties, rescue the best revolutionary elements of the working class, form a rallying point for communist parties in every country. . . . The split was historically necessary; it was a great step forward, a means of winning the masses.’]

1. The growth of the revolutionary movement of the proletariat in all countries
has provoked the bourgeoisie and their agents in the workers’ organizations to
convulsive efforts to find theoretical arguments in defence of the rule of the
exploiters. Among these, particular emphasis is placed on the rejection of
dictatorship and the defence of democracy. The falseness and hypocrisy of this
argument, repeated in a thousand forms in the capitalist press and at the February 1919 Berne conference of the yellow international, is however clear to anyone who is unwilling to commit treachery to the principles of socialism.

2. In the first place, the argument uses abstract concepts of ‘democracy’ and
‘dictatorship’, without specifying what class is in question. Putting the question in this way, outside or above the class standpoint, as though it were valid as a
standpoint of the entire people, is downright mockery of the basic theory of
socialism, namely the theory of the class struggle, which is still recognized in words, it is true, by the socialists who have gone over to the camp of the bourgeoisie, but judging by their deeds is forgotten. For in no civilized capitalist country is there ‘democracy in the abstract’, there is only bourgeois democracy, and the question is one not of ‘dictatorship in the abstract’, but of the dictatorship of the oppressed class, that is, of the proletariat, over the oppressors and exploiters, that is, the bourgeoisie, in order to overcome the resistance put up by the exploiters in the effort to maintain their rule.

3. History teaches us that an oppressed class has never and can never come to
power without passing through a period of dictatorship, that is, without the conquest of political power and the forcible suppression of the most desperate and frenzied resistance, that shrinks from no crime, which is always put up by the exploiters. The bourgeoisie, whose rule is now defended by socialists who express hostility to ‘dictatorship in general’ and stand up body and soul for ‘democracy in general’, won their power in the civilized countries by a series of revolts, civil wars, the forcible suppression of monarchical rule, of the feudal lords and slave-owners, and of their attempts at restoration. Thousands and millions of times, in their books and pamphlets, their congress resolutions and speeches, socialists in every country have explained to the people the class character of these bourgeois revolutions. That is why the present defence of ‘bourgeois democracy’ in speeches about ‘democracy’, and the present outcry against the proletarian dictatorship in the clamour about ‘dictatorship’, is an outright betrayal of socialism, objectively a going over to the camp of the bourgeoisie, a denial of the right of the proletariat to its political revolution, a defence of bourgeois reformism, and this precisely at the historical moment when bourgeois reformism has gone to pieces throughout the world and
when the war has created a revolutionary situation.

4. By recognizing the class character of bourgeois democracy, of bourgeois
parliamentarianism, all socialists have articulated the ideas expressed with the
greatest scientific precision by Marx and Engels when they said that even the most democratic bourgeois republic is nothing but the instrument by which the
bourgeoisie oppress the working class, by which a handful of capitalists keeps the working masses under. There is not a single revolutionary or a single Marxist among those who now raise such an outcry against dictatorship and advocate democracy who has not loudly and solemnly sworn to the workers that he acknowledges this basic truth of socialism; but now, when ferment and movement have started among the revolutionary proletariat, aimed at breaking this machine of oppression and fighting for the dictatorship of the proletariat, these traitors to socialism present the case as though the bourgeoisie had made a gift of ‘pure democracy’ to the workers, as though the bourgeoisie renounced resistance and were ready to submit to a workers’ majority, as though in
the democratic republic there were no State apparatus for the oppression of labour by capital.

5. The Paris Commune, which everyone who wanted to be considered a socialist
extolled in words, for they knew that the working masses had a great and genuine sympathy with it, proved particularly clearly the historical conditioning and limited value of bourgeois parliamentarianism and bourgeois democracy, which are highly progressive institutions in comparison with the Middle Ages, but which in the epoch of proletarian revolution inevitably require to be changed from the ground up. It was Marx himself, who placed the highest value on the historical significance of the Commune, who in his analysis of it demonstrated the exploiting character of bourgeois democracy and bourgeois parliamentarianism, under which the oppressed class is given the right, once in several years, to decide which deputy of the possessing classes shall represent and betray the people in Parliament. It is now, when the Soviet movement which is seizing the entire world is carrying forward before all eyes the cause of the Commune, that the traitors to socialism forget the practical experience and the concrete lessons of the Paris Commune and repeat the old bourgeois rubbish about ‘democracy in general’. The Commune was not a parliamentary institution.

6. The significance of the Commune consists further in this, that it made an
attempt to destroy and utterly root out the bourgeois State machine, the apparatus of officials, court, army, and police, and to replace it by the self-governing mass organization of workers without any separation of legislative and executive powers. All bourgeois democratic republics of our time, including the German, which the traitors to socialism, making a mockery of truth, call proletarian, retain this bourgeois State apparatus. That proves once more, and clearly and unmistakably, that the outcry in defence of ‘democracy’ is nothing but defence of the bourgeoisie and their privileges of exploitation.

7. ‘Freedom of assembly’ can be used as an example of the demand for ‘pure
democracy’. Every class-conscious worker who has not broken with his class grasps immediately that it would be monstrous to promise the exploiters freedom of assembly in times and situations in which they are resisting their overthrow and defending their privileges. Neither in England in 1649, nor in France in 1793, did the revolutionary bourgeoisie guarantee freedom of assembly to the royalists and nobility when these summoned alien troops to the country and ‘assembled’ to organize an attempt at restoration. If the bourgeoisie of today, who have long since become reactionary, demand that the proletariat shall guarantee in advance that ‘freedom of assembly’ shall be assured to the exploiters regardless of the resistance the capitalists put up to their expropriation, the workers will only laugh at such bourgeois hypocrisy.

On the other hand the workers know very well that even in the most democratic
bourgeois republic ‘freedom of assembly’ is an empty phrase, for the rich have the best public and private buildings at their disposal, have also enough leisure for meetings, and enjoy the protection of the bourgeois apparatus of power. The
proletariat of town and country, as well as the small peasants, that is the
overwhelming majority of the population, have neither the first nor the second nor the third. So long as this is true, ‘equality’, that is, ‘pure democracy’, is a deception.  To win real equality, to make a reality of democracy for the workers, the exploiters must first be deprived of all public and private mansions, the workers must be given leisure and their freedom of assembly defended by armed workers and not by the offspring of the nobility or officers from capitalist circles in command of an intimidated rank and file.  Only after such changes is it possible to speak of ‘freedom of assembly’, of equality, without mocking the workers, the labouring people, the poor. But nobody can bring these changes about except the vanguard of the working people, the proletariat, by overthrowing the exploiters, the bourgeoisie.

8. ‘Freedom of the press’ is another leading watchword of ‘pure democracy’. But
the workers know, and the socialists of all countries have admitted it a million times, that this freedom is deceptive so long as the best printing works and the biggest paper supplies are in capitalist hands, and so long as capital retains its power over the press, a power which throughout the world is expressed more clearly, sharply, and cynically, the more developed the democracy and the republican regime, as for example in America. To win real equality and real democracy for the working masses, for the workers and peasants, the capitalists must first be deprived of the possibility of getting writers in their service, of buying up publishing houses and bribing newspapers. And for that it is necessary to throw off the yoke of capital, to overthrow the exploiters and to crush their resistance. The capitalists have always given the name of freedom to the freedom of the rich to make profits and the freedom of the poor to die of hunger. The capitalists give the name of freedom of the press to the freedom of the rich to bribe the press, the freedom to use wealth to create and distort so-called public opinion. The defenders of ‘pure democracy’ reveal themselves once more as defenders of the dirty and corrupt system of the rule of the rich over the means of mass education, as deceivers of the people who with fine sounding but thoroughly false phrases divert them from the concrete historical task
of liberating the press from capital. Real freedom and equality will be found in the system the communists establish, in which there will be no opportunity to get rich at the expense of others, no objective possibility of subjecting the press, directly or indirectly, to the power of money, where nothing will prevent the workers (or any large group of workers) from having and employing equal rights to use the presses and paper belonging to society.

9. The history of the 19th and 20th centuries showed us, even before the war,
what this much-praised ‘pure democracy’ really means under capitalism. Marxists have always maintained that the more developed, the more ‘pure’ democracy is, the more openly, sharply, and ruthlessly does the class struggle proceed, the more clearly does the oppression of capital and the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie come to light. The Dreyfus affair in republican France, the bloody collisions between striking workers and the mercenaries armed by the capitalists in the free and democratic republic of America, these and a thousand similar facts disclose the truth which the bourgeoisie try in vain to conceal, namely that in reality terror and a bourgeois dictatorship rule the most democratic republic, and come openly to the surface whenever it seems to the exploiters that the power of capital is endangered.

10. The imperialist war of 1914-18 exposed the true character of bourgeois
democracy, once and for all, even to the backward workers, even in the freest
republics, as the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. To enrich a group of German and English millionaires and milliardaires, dozens of millions of men were killed and the military dictatorship of the bourgeoisie established in the freest republics. This military dictatorship still exists in the Entente countries even after the defeat of Germany. It was the war, more than anything else, that opened the eyes of working people, tore the false tinsel from bourgeois democracy, and revealed to the people the whole pit of speculation and greed for profits during the war and in connexion with the war. The bourgeoisie waged this war in the name of freedom and equality; in the name of freedom and equality the war contractors enormously increased their wealth. No efforts of the yellow Berne international will succeed in concealing from the masses the exploiting character of bourgeois freedom, bourgeois equality, and bourgeois democracy, now finally exposed.

11. In Europe where capitalism has been most highly developed,
that is, in Germany, the first months of full republican freedom which followed the downfall of imperialist Germany, showed the German worker and the entire world the real class-content of the bourgeois democratic republic. The murder of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg is an event of world-historical significance not only because the best people and leaders of the truly proletarian communist
international perished tragically, but also because it finally showed up the class
character of the leading European State, of, it can be said without exaggeration, the leading State in the world. If prisoners, that is, people who have been taken under protection by the State power, can be murdered with impunity by officers and capitalists under a government of social-patriots, the democratic republic in which this can happen is a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. Those who express indignation over the murder of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg but
do not understand this truth only demonstrate their obtuseness or their hypocrisy. In one of the freest and most advanced republics of the world, in the German republic, there is freedom to kill the imprisoned leaders of the proletariat and to go unpunished. And it cannot be otherwise so long as capitalism remains, for the development of democracy does not blunt but sharpens the class struggle, which has now, as a result of the war and its consequences, reached boiling-point.  All over the civilized world bolsheviks are being deported, persecuted, imprisoned; in Switzerland, one of the freest bourgeois republics, and in America, there are pogroms against the bolsheviks. From the standpoint of ‘democracy in general’, or ‘pure democracy’, it is simply ludicrous that progressive, civilized, democratic countries, armed to the teeth, should fear the presence of a few dozen people from backward, hungry, ruined Russia, described as savages and criminals in millions of copies of bourgeois newspapers. It is obvious that a social system which can give rise to such glaring contradictions is in reality a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.

12. In such a state of affairs the dictatorship of the proletariat is not merely
wholly justified, as a means of overwhelming the exploiters and overcoming their
resistance, but quite essential for the mass of workers as their only protection against the bourgeois dictatorship which led to the war and is getting ready for new wars.  The chief thing which the socialists do not understand, a failure which reflects their intellectual shortsightedness, their dependence on bourgeois prejudices, their political treachery to the proletariat, is that when, in capitalist society, the class struggle on which it rests becomes more acute, there is nothing between dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and dictatorship of the proletariat. The dream of another, third way is the reactionary lament of the petty bourgeoisie. Proof of this can be found in the experience of more than a hundred years of bourgeois democracy and the workers’ movement in all advanced countries, and particularly the experience of the last five years. The same proof is furnished by economic theory, by the entire content of Marxism, which analyses the economic necessity of bourgeois dictatorship in every commodity economy, a dictatorship which can be abolished by none other than the class which through the development of capitalism itself develops and grows, becomes more organized and powerful, that is, by the class of proletarians.

13. The second theoretical and political mistake of the socialists is their failure to
understand that the forms of democracy have inevitably changed in the centuries
since it first appeared in the Ancient World, as one ruling class gave way to another.  In the republics of Ancient Greece, in the medieval cities, in advanced capitalist States, democracy has different forms and varying scope. It would be the greatest nonsense to assume that the most profound revolution in mankind’s history, the first transference of power from the hands of the exploiting minority to the hands of the exploited majority, could take place within the framework of the old bourgeois parliamentary democracy, without the greatest changes, without the creation of new forms of democracy, new institutions, new conditions for their use, etc.

14. The dictatorship of the proletariat is like the dictatorship of other classes in
that, like any dictatorship, it originates in the necessity of suppressing by force the resistance of the class which is losing its political power. The fundamental
difference between the proletarian dictatorship and the dictatorship of other classes, that of the large landowners in the Middle Ages and that of the bourgeoisie in all civilized capitalist countries, consists in this, that while the dictatorship of the large landowners and the bourgeoisie forcibly suppresses the resistance of the overwhelming majority of the population, namely the working masses, the dictatorship of the proletariat is the forcible suppression of the resistance of the exploiters, that is, of the minority of the population, the large landowners and capitalists.  From this it follows further that the dictatorship of the proletariat must inevitably involve not only a change in the forms and institutions of democracy, but change of a kind which results in an extension of actual democratic usages, on a scale never before known in the world, to the working classes whom capitalism enslaved.  And in fact the forms taken by the dictatorship of the proletariat, which have already been worked out, that is, the Soviet power in Russia, the workers’ councils in Germany, the shop stewards’ committees, and other analogues of Soviet institutions in other countries, all these make a reality of democratic rights and privileges for the working classes, that is, for the overwhelming majority of the population; they mean that it becomes really possible to use these rights and privileges in a way and on a
scale that was never even approximately possible in the best democratic bourgeois republic.

The essence of Soviet power lies in this, that the permanent and sole foundation
of the entire State power, of the entire State apparatus, is the mass organization of those very classes which were oppressed by the capitalists, that is, the workers and semi-proletarians (peasants who do not exploit labour and who are always forced to sell at least part of their labour). The masses, who even in the most democratic bourgeois republics, where in law they had equal rights, but in fact were prevented by a thousand ways and tricks from taking part in political life and making use of democratic rights and liberties, are now drawn into continuous, unhampered, and decisive participation in the democratic administration of the State.

15. The equality of citizens, regardless of sex, religious belief, race, nationality,
which bourgeois democracy always promised everywhere but in fact never carried out, and could not carry out because of the rule of capitalism, has been made a complete reality at one stroke by the Soviet regime, or the proletarian dictatorship, for only the power of the workers, who are not interested in private property in the means of production and in the struggle for their distribution and redistribution, is able to do this.

16. The old democracy, that is, bourgeois democracy and parliamentarianism,
was so organized that it was the working classes who were most alien to the
administrative machine. The Soviet power, the proletarian dictatorship, on the other hand, is so organized that it brings the working masses close to the administrative machine. The merging of legislative and executive power in the Soviet organization of the State serves the same purpose, as does the substitution of the production unit, the workshop or factory, for the territorial constituency.

17. The army was an instrument of oppression not only under the monarchy; it is
still that in all bourgeois republics, even the most democratic. Only the Soviet
power, as the only established State organization of the very classes oppressed by
the capitalists, is in a position to abolish the dependence of the military on the
bourgeois command and really fuse the proletariat with the military, to arm the
proletariat and disarm the bourgeoisie, without which the victory of socialism is
impossible.

18. The Soviet organization of the State is designed to give the proletariat, as the
class which was most concentrated and educated by capitalism, the leading role in the State. The experience of all revolutions and all movements of enslaved classes, the experience of the world socialist movement, teaches us that only the proletariat is in a position to unite the scattered and backward strata of the working and exploited population and carry them along.

19. Only the Soviet organization of the State is able to destroy, at one stroke and
completely, the old, that is, the bourgeois apparatus of bureaucracy and judiciary, which under capitalism, even in the most democratic republics, remained and had to remain, being in fact for the workers and the working masses the greatest obstacle to making democracy effective. The Paris Commune took the first world historical step in this direction, the Soviet regime the second.

20. The abolition of State power is the goal of all socialists, including and above
all Marx. Unless this goal is reached true democracy, that is, equality and freedom, is not attainable. But only Soviet and proletarian democracy leads in fact to this goal, for it begins at once to prepare for the complete withering away of any kind of State by drawing the mass organizations of the working people into constant and unrestricted participation in State administration.

21. The complete bankruptcy of the socialists who met in Berne, the complete
absence of understanding which they showed of the new, that is, proletarian
democracy, can be seen very clearly from the following. On 10 February 1919
Branting declared the international conference of the yellow international in Berne closed. On 11 February 1919 its members in Berlin published an appeal of the ‘Independents’ to the proletariat in Freiheit. In this appeal the bourgeois character of Scheidemann’s government was admitted. It was reproached for wanting to abolish the workers’ councils, which were called ‘bearers and defenders’ of the revolution, and the proposal was made to legalize the councils, to give them statutory rights, to give them the right to veto the decisions of the National Assembly and refer the question at issue to a national referendum.
Such a proposal reflects the complete intellectual bankruptcy of the theoreticians
who defend democracy and have not understood its bourgeois character. The
ridiculous attempt to unite the system of councils, that is, the proletarian
dictatorship, with the National Assembly, that is, the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, finally exposes the mental poverty of the yellow socialists and social-democrats, and their reactionary petty-bourgeois policy, as well as their cowardly concessions to the irresistibly growing forces of the new proletarian democracy.

22. The majority of the yellow international in Berne, who condemned
Bolshevism but did not dare, for fear of the working masses, to vote formally for a resolution on these lines, acted correctly from the class standpoint. This majority is completely at one with the Russian Mensheviks and Social-Revolutionaries and with the Scheidemanns in Germany. The Russian Mensheviks and Social-Revolutionaries, who complain of persecution by the Bolsheviks, try to conceal the fact that this persecution was provoked by their participation in the civil war on the side of the bourgeoisie against the proletariat. In precisely the same way the Scheidemanns and their party in Germany took part in the civil war on the side of the bourgeoisie against the workers.  It is therefore quite natural that the majority of those attending the Yellow International in Berne should come out in favour of condemning the Bolsheviks. But that did not represent a defence of ‘pure democracy’; it was the self-defence of people who feel that in the civil war they are on the side of the bourgeoisie against the proletariat.  For these reasons the decision of the majority of the Yellow International must be described as correct from the class point of view. But the proletariat should not fear the truth, but look it straight in the face and draw the political conclusions which follow.  On the basis of these theses and having heard the reports of the delegates from various countries, the Congress of the Communist International declares that the chief tasks of the communist parties in countries where Soviet power is not yet established are:

1. To explain to the broad masses of the working class the historical meaning of
the political and practical necessity of a new proletarian democracy which must
replace bourgeois democracy and parliamentarianism.

2. To extend and build up workers’ councils in all branches of industry, in the
army and navy, and also among agricultural workers and small peasants.

3. To win an assured, conscious communist majority in the councils

For A Revolutionary Reorientation of “First World” Leninist/Trotskyist Parties Towards Winning the Leadership of the Revolutionary Struggles of Our Worker and Peasant Sisters and Brothers in the “Third World”

Seeing that I relocated to Los Angeles last November, partially in fruitless pursuit of a musical project with unlimited potential (N.B.: like Little Richard I have two primary motivations in my life; unlike Little Richard they are music and revolutionary socialist politics) and having already largely abandoned that vanity project once again in favor of revolutionary socialist activities, having finally reached revolutionary conclusions about the criticality of doing so politically, as a last resort I wanted to see how severe the summers are in LA before I decided to at least semi-permanently transfer operations out here.  Now having experienced most of the summer of 2023 and having found it to be much less oppressive than Chicago summers (though I DO miss those awesome, frequent thunderstorms!) I hereby declare the Independent Workers Party of Chicago to be “The Independent Workers Party of Los Angeles” for the foreseeable future.

The primary reason for moving revolutionary socialist operations from the relatively politically dead US Midwest to the west coast are:

1)  Closer proximity to the ongoing revolutionary movements in Mexico and Central and South America.  It is folly to focus our efforts on convincing the hardened slaves of the US working class to overthrow their brutal government that is murdering their class brothers & sisters all over the world 24/7/365.  The workers in the USA as they exist today are nothing but slaves as comfortable in their capitalist exploitation as slaves as were the vast majority of actual slaves in the USA before the Civil War – the same kinds of abject slaves who ratted out every potential slave rebellion leader from Nat Turner to Frederick Douglass.  The class consciousness of the vast majority of US worker-wage-and-debt-slaves is so low that to focus the majority of our efforts on reforming these imbeciles is a near-total waste of time.

On the other hand, the lack of support given by erstwhile revolutionary socialist parties in the USA to the highly class-conscious workers and peasants of Mexican and Central and South American revolutionary movements (as the tepid support given historically by the now senile Spartacist League from whence our party emerged and whom we can no longer give even tacit support to failed to do in spite of their superficially correct revolutionary Trotskyist programmatic declarations during the ’70s and ’80s) has left the heroic but almost entirely failed revolutionary movements of Mexico, Central America and South America of the past 50 years in the hands of counterrevolutionary Stalinist and Maoist leadership, depriving the workers and peasants of these countries of any Leninist/Trotskyist leadership worthy of the name.

From here on, the Trotskyist movement of the US and Europe must first and foremost seek to recruit revolutionary workers and youth of North America, and Europe, teach them the languages of Mexico, Central and South America, Africa and Oceania and prepare them politically to intervene in the revolutionary struggles of these weakest links in the capitalist chain in the world.   In doing this we will finally put into practice what we have theoretically understood since the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 and re-confirmed in the Chinese Revolution of 1949: that in order to overthrow the primary capitalist nation-states of the world we must cripple them economically and politically by attacking their global interests at their weakest links in their chain of domination – NOT at their strongest links!  It is at the weakest links that the communist movement will have the greatest chances for success; and thereby we will rip out the capitalist system from its exposed belly upwards.

Of course, this does not mean that we should totally or even partially abandon our efforts to build strong revolutionary Leninst/Trotskyist vanguard parties in the so-called “First World” nation-states.  We must learn to walk and chew gum at the same time, so to speak.  But by providing our “Third World” sisters and brothers already risking their lives every day in armed revolutionary struggles in their “Third World” countries; by sending the most self-sacrificing youth of the “First World” to fight and die and help lead our sisters and brothers to victory in these revolutionary struggles – especially now, as the US and its NATO allies threaten to plunge the Northern Hemisphere into a WWIII nuclear holocaust – is the order of the day.  JOIN US!

IWPCHI

US Puppet Government of South Korea Continues to Attempt to Provoke War With the DPRK

We’re republishing a brief report from the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), the main press agency of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK aka “North Korea”) regarding one of the continuous acts of military provocation that are being launched against the DPRK constantly by the puppet state of South Korea, with the permission of its colonial ruler the United States Government.

The bourgeois press of the US never stops publishing anti-DPRK propaganda attacking the beleaguered and heroic socialist country for its purely defensive military measures.  Recently, the world was treated to another barrage of inane anti-DPRK propaganda over the DPRK’s ballistic missile tests, part of their purely defensive nuclear weapons arsenal.  But what the U.S. and world public are not kept abreast of is the never-ending series of war provocations that have been threatening the people of the DPRK with nuclear annihilation multiple times a year.  We recently republished another KCNA article from the DPRK’s Research Report of the Society for the Study of International Affairs in which the long and sordid history of joint US/S. Korean military provocations that have been inflicted upon the people of the North since 1953.  This incessant, petulant bullying of the tiny DPRK by the imperialist mass murderers of the USA is n outrage, and shows just how weak the United States really believes the capitalist system is, that it feels compelled to terrorize a small nation simply because they chose to embrace socialism rather than capitalism – and then successfully defended their nation against a massive, unprovoked slaughter of 3 million North Koreans by the USA in the Korean War.

If a foreign government subjected any territory of the USA to the kind of brazen military provocation the S. Korean puppet government subjected the DPRK to on October 13th, the US Government would have gone berserk and retaliated with a massive military response.  The fact that the DPRK refrained from responding in the way the US undoubtedly would have provides strong evidence refuting the lies of the bourgeois press that say the DPRK is “run by a madman”;  instead this latest provocation again displays the rational and level-headed leadership of the DPRK.

This preface is going to be 5 times longer than the article already, so let’s just get to the report of the latest cowardly bullying of the DPRK by the military forces of the USA puppet government in Seoul, S. Korea.

Defend the DPRK!  US Hands off  the DPRK!  USA Out of the Korean Peninsula!

—— IWPCHI

************************************************

Spokesman for KPA General Staff Issues Statement

Pyongyang, October 14 (KCNA) — A spokesman for the General Staff of the Korean People’s Army (KPA) issued the following statement on Oct. 14:

According to a report on enemy movements in the front, the south Korean army conducted an artillery fire for about 10 hours near the forward defence area of the KPA Fifth Corps on Oct. 13.  [Emphasis added by IWPCHI]

Taking a serious note of this provocative action by the south Korean military in the frontline area, we took strong military countermeasures.

The KPA sends a stern warning to the south Korean military inciting military tension in the frontline area with reckless action. -0-

http://www.kcna.kp (Juche111.10.14.)

[SOURCE:  http://kcna.kp/en/article/q/59b4eb9b3cc6925359ade3537d043ec827563447d30b725313e36cefcc623456.kcmsf]

DPRK Celebrates 75th Anniversary of Revolutionary Socialist Schools For Children of Revolutionary Martyrs

This is a really beautiful article from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK aka “North Korea”) about the revolutionary socialist schools the DPRK has set up to educate the children of revolutionary martyrs in the revolutionary ethics and dedication to the fight for socialism of their heroic ancestors. Long Live the DPRK!

Source: http://kcna.kp/en/article/q/ea3f9ae90383a5237ec3f2501099fb24.kcmsf

Respected Comrade Kim Jong Un‘s Speech at Commemoration of 75th Anniversary of Revolutionary Schools

Pyongyang, October 14 (KCNA) — The respected Comrade Kim Jong Un made a speech “Let Mangyongdae Revolutionary School and Kang Pan Sok Revolutionary School Become ‘Pedigree Farms’ for Bringing Up the Hardcore That Will Guarantee the Eternal Youthful Vigour of the Cause of Juche” at the commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the founding of Mangyongdae Revolutionary School and Kang Pan Sok Revolutionary School on October 12, Juche 111 (2022).

 

 

 

 

Following is the full text of the speech:

Dear students of the revolutionary schools,

Esteemed comrade teachers of the revolutionary schools,

Comrade graduates of the revolutionary schools who are visiting their dear “native homes” on this significant anniversary of their founding,

All the officials and staff members of the revolutionary schools,

Dear comrades,

I congratulate you who are greeting the 75th anniversary of the founding of Mangyongdae Revolutionary School and Kang Pan Sok Revolutionary School amid the blessing of our Party and all the people across the country.

I also offer hearty congratulations and greetings of encouragement to all the graduates of the schools who, deeply mindful of the firm resolve they made during their days at the schools, are making devoted efforts for the Party and the people at the posts of national defence and various fields of socialist construction at this very moment.

Availing myself of this opportunity, I pay noble tribute to the revolutionary martyrs who dedicated their precious lives to the Party, the country, the happiness of the people and the bright future of posterity, and I extend my sincere feeling to their bereaved families who are invariably devoting their pure conscience on the road of loyalty and patriotism the martyrs could not follow to the end.

Students of the revolutionary schools,

Comrade graduates of the revolutionary schools,

I can hardly repress my joy at being with you, all those faces I have always longed so much to see, here at this significant gathering at the campus of the revolutionary school in historic Mangyongdae.

The 75 years of Mangyongdae Revolutionary School and Kang Pan Sok Revolutionary School is a history in which our Party has remained infinitely faithful to the moral obligation to revolutionary martyrs and it has devoted sincerity to training reserve revolutionaries, staking its fate on the inheritance of the revolutionary cause.

The course of the development of the revolutionary schools was started on October 12, 1947 when their inauguration ceremony was held in the presence of the great leader Comrade Kim Il Sung, and actually it can be said that the course is equivalent to the history of our Republic and our regular revolutionary armed forces.

Our Juche revolution established the revolutionary schools for training its pillars before founding the state and the army. Then it put forward the indomitable revolutionaries produced there as its backbone and made them lead the development of the state and the army.

While developing into “pedigree farms” for training competent revolutionaries under the care of the Party since they were established by the leader, our revolutionary schools have made a tremendous contribution, following the sacred, protracted road of steadfastly carrying on, from one generation to the next, the lineage of the Juche revolution that was pioneered on Mt Paektu.

They have brought up a large number of faithful patriots who gave, and are giving, a strong impetus to the growth of our state and army while dedicating their all to the revolution and the people with their trust in their leader alone even in bad times. These people consist in the impregnable wall that stands around the Party. This is an imperishable exploit our revolutionary schools have performed.

Having such great homes of revolution that add eternal youthful vigour to the cause of Juche, which is making progress on the strength of the faith and indomitable spirit of true revolutionaries, is a source of great pride of our Party and people, and they constitute the assets for lasting prosperity of our state.

To train the sons and daughters of revolutionary martyrs as stout revolutionaries who will be the kernel of the hardcore of the revolutionary ranks and lead the advance and development at any field or post they are assigned to work–this is the idea our Party has consistently and invariably maintained in educating the sons and daughters of revolutionary martyrs.

As the sons and daughters of revolutionary martyrs, together with all the other people throughout the country and in the lead of them, have supported the leadership of the Party faithfully and single-heartedly, our cause has won victory after victory while keeping its red colour as it is in the face of upheavals of history.

The first-generation graduates who, wearing the uniform symbolic of the blood of the anti-Japanese forerunners, had attended the inaugural ceremony of the revolutionary school and heard the speech of the leader, made a contribution, with their own blood, to safeguarding the Supreme Headquarters and winning the great victory in the fierce Fatherland Liberation War, and played a pivotal and hardcore role admirably at important positions of the Party and the state and at other revolutionary posts during the years of socialist construction.

All the achievements the graduates of the revolutionary schools have made at the cost of their sincere efforts and blood and sweat, have, without exception, served as the solid cornerstone and fertile soil for the progress of our state and well-being of our people.

Many people among the graduates of the revolutionary schools were utterly faithful to the Party and dedicated their all unsparingly to the victory of the revolutionary cause of Juche. Typical of them are Yon Hyong Muk, Pak Song Bong, Sim Chang Wan and Kim Yong Chun.

Hyon Chol Hae was also a graduate of Mangyongdae Revolutionary School.

Among the graduates of the revolutionary school, three became the head of government of our Republic, three marshals of the Korean People’s Army, and scores of them Heroes including triple and double ones. This fact eloquently shows how great trust the Party and the leader have put in the sons and daughters of revolutionary martyrs and how great efforts they have made to train them as pillars of our state.

Our Party, regarding ideology and spirit as the greatest asset for a revolutionary, leads the revolution in such a way that the intentions and feats of parents would be exalted through their children’s lives and struggle. Thanks to this cause of inheritance which is unique to the Workers’ Party of Korea, the Juche revolution is achieving victory after victory through generations.

Thanks to the responsible efforts of our Party that is realizing its firm determination to inherit for all eternity the lineage of Mangyongdae by dint of its correct idea of training the reserves of revolutionaries and of its leadership, Mangyongdae Revolutionary School and Kang Pan Sok Revolutionary School will remain faithful for ever to their revolutionary character and mission as the essential artery of inheritance and the schools of the WPK.

Comrades,

There are still many large mountains of difficulties to scale on the road ahead of our revolution which has recorded only victory century after century and generation after generation.

We are carrying on an uncharted revolution which we must surely accomplish. As we have to hew out its way only by our own effort, the difficulties and challenges we are facing are as enormous as ever.

We have achieved remarkable successes in the new century of the Juche era, and these have raised the position and national power of our state to an unprecedented level. We have also accumulated invaluable experience in the course of surmounting successive national trials and pushing strenuously ahead with socialist construction on the strength of unbending willpower, might of revolutionary unity and extraordinary fighting efficiency.

We can certainly win victory by our own efforts. Even if we face worse hardships or any crisis in future, we should staunchly maintain self-respect and self-confidence and faithfully implement the development strategy of our style. By doing so, we can make an uninterrupted advance of socialism.

To achieve the greatest national brilliance through courageous and adroit struggle even in the worst situation, we should, above all else, turn all the fronts and posts into impregnable revolutionary positions. To this end we need competent commanding personnel and dependable hardcore force who can perform their tasks flawlessly.

It can be said that the development of our Party, state and army at present and their future depend on how the sons and daughters of revolutionary martyrs who passed or are passing through the stage of their growth into the pillars of the Juche revolution at the revolutionary schools, would work and prepare themselves.

This is why our Party, attaching particularly great significance to the event to commemorate the 75th founding anniversary of the revolutionary schools, has arranged a grand gathering of their students and graduates here at Mangyongdae today so as to remind them once again of the demands and expectation of the country and the people.

If the sons and daughters of revolutionary martyrs brace themselves up to lead the struggle to make incessant innovations and advance at their posts and units, and thus contribute to attaining high goals for achieving the comprehensive development of socialist construction and rouse the masses by their noble examples, it will bring about a stride forward in overcoming today’s trials and advancing the revolution.

With the 75th anniversary of the founding of Mangyongdae Revolutionary School and Kang Pan Sok Revolutionary School as a watershed, we should bring about a new turn in education and edification of the sons and daughters of revolutionary martyrs.

This is the requirement of the revolution, and our Party’s and people’s high expectations of the revolutionary schools at present.

Mangyongdae Revolutionary School and Kang Pan Sok Revolutionary School are “pedigree farms” for bringing up excellent talents who will contribute to carrying out the sacred cause of making the main pillars and roots of the Juche revolution eternally strong and turning the whole revolutionary ranks into an elite force by dint of their great spiritual strength.

Bringing up hardcore reserve who will stoutly carry forward the lineage of the Juche revolution and pillars who will play a pivotal role in implementing the revolutionary cause of Juche–this is the fundamental task facing Mangyongdae Revolutionary School and Kang Pan Sok Revolutionary School.

Only when the revolutionary schools train their students to have the greatest spiritual strength by inheriting the forerunners’ fighting spirit and indomitable soul as part of their ideological and mental qualities, can the red flag of revolution never discolour and our revolutionary position be fortified into a pure integral whole which is invulnerable to any heterogeneous ideas.

The overall work of the schools should be oriented to preparing the sons and daughters of revolutionary martyrs to be reliable successors who stoutly carry forward the baton of the Juche revolution and hardcore elements who commit themselves solely to the ideas of our Party.

As I have always stressed, the revolutionary character is not inherited of its own accord.

Sons and daughters do not grow up to be revolutionaries simply because their fathers are revolutionaries, and such cases are not difficult to find in the history of the world revolutionary movement as well as that of our country.

Every element of a revolutionary’s ideological and mental qualities that range from loyalty and obligation to the leader to a true heart for the people, unshakeable faith, unyielding fortitude and humane sincerity is cultivated only through revolutionary education and studies, constant self-cultivation and practice.

The revolutionary schools should pay top priority to, and focus on, politico-ideological education.

The lineage of revolution championed by our Party is none other than ideological bloodline; to train the students of the revolutionary schools as reserve hardcore who will firmly carry forward the traditions of the forerunners’ ideology, faith and loyalty–this remains, today and tomorrow as it did yesterday, invariably essential to the education of the sons and daughters of revolutionary martyrs.

The sons and daughters of revolutionary martyrs should be exceptional in faithfulness to the Party and in their revolutionary spirit, not in origin, academic career or background, and live honourably before the collective and society by devoting themselves to the people and performing feats in the struggle.

The ideological education should be focused on making boundless loyalty to the Party the foremost “family” and school tradition of Mangyongdae Revolutionary School and Kang Pan Sok Revolutionary School, the native homes of the sons and daughters of revolutionary martyrs, and ensuring that the students’ hearts beat for ever with the blood of faith which will never be contaminated.

Our revolution, as it was in the past, is defended and is advancing steadfastly on the strength of the invariable faith of absolutely trusting and following the Party.

Before we impart scientific and technical knowledge to the students of the revolutionary schools, we should inculcate in their mind as firm faith a pure sense of moral obligation which will remain unchangeable in any adversity and a resolute determination and will to live up to the trust of the Party.

We should continue to direct great efforts to implanting in their hearts the revolutionary spirit of forerunners, the soul of revolutionaries.

Only those vanguards who embody the revolutionary spirit of fighting the enemy unto death as the inherent creed of their struggle, not chanting it by their words or songs, and those who are exemplary in all aspects including that of political awareness with which to accept and implement the ideas and policies of the Party and that of attitude with which to support the policies of the state and do their full duty, deserve the honour of being called the graduates from the revolutionary schools.

We should encourage the students to absorb as their own nourishment the history of the struggle of the anti-Japanese revolutionary forerunners and the heroic generation who won a great victory in the war, and should implant in them the ennobling spirit of the preceding generations who were boundlessly loyal to the Party and the revolution.

It is necessary to tell them in detail about the spiritual world of their fathers who glorified their lives as faithful people on the road of supporting the cause of the Party and about what they thought and how faithful they were at every moment of their struggle and life.

As I stand face to face today with you, sons and daughters of revolutionary martyrs, at the campus in Mangyongdae on this significant occasion, I am reminded again of the first-generation graduates of Mangyongdae Revolutionary School who were boundlessly loyal to the cause of the Party.

Our Party demands that great efforts be made for and proper guidance be given to the spiritual development of the sons and daughters of revolutionary martyrs so that they can all inherit the noble spirit and revolutionary traits of the loyal people of the preceding generations.

Setting it as a major target to train all the students as faithful persons like the school’s first-generation graduates, the revolutionary schools should conduct the education in loyalty and revolutionary traditions in a theoretical, substantial and intensive manner.

Revolution is unthinkable separated from patriotism.

The aim of the revolution we are making while braving trials is, in the final analysis, to achieve the prosperity of the country at the earliest possible date.

The revolutionary schools should educate their students to be mindful of the fact that patriotism is synonymous with the revolution, always keep the flag of our Republic in their minds and be firmly determined to devote their all to the great dignity and eternal prosperity of the country.

The revolutionary schools should conduct education for enhancing the class consciousness of their students in an assiduous and substantial way and without any let-up. In this way they can ensure that the students are always aware of their class origin and filled with the resolve to become fierce fighters in safeguarding our class position which was defended at the cost of the blood of the forerunners.

The revolutionary schools should further intensify education in collectivism so as to ensure that all the students, regarding the slogan “One for all and all for one!” as the standard and iron principle of their struggle and life, give full play to the communist trait of putting the interests of the collective before their own, whatever they do, and willingly devoting themselves for the good of their comrades.

They should pay close attention to preparing the students to be genuine persons who are deeply steeped in noble moral ethics.

As their students are away from their kindred at an early age, they should, on behalf of their parents, teach them even the details of etiquette they have to observe in their daily life, as well as social and public moral code.

They should be not only models for all other schools across the country in terms of education and edification, but also best schools which other educational units can learn from. In particular, they should hold it as their most important task to train reserves of military talents who will contribute to making our People’s Army a sophisticated, high-tech army.

Ten years have passed since the enforcement of the universal 12-year compulsory education system in pursuance of a policy of the Party and the state, but the general secondary education has not yet reached a satisfactory level. The revolutionary schools should become a trailblazer and set an example in putting it on the track of assured rejuvenation and leap forward.

Now that the educational conditions and environment of Mangyongdae Revolutionary School have been wonderfully renovated, it should direct efforts to improving teaching methods and quality of education.

It is important to proactively use IT and intelligent educational equipment and extensively introduce advanced teaching experiences and latest scientific and technological data of the world, so as to work out our own unique methodology of training talented people.

The revolutionary school should develop prodigy training aimed at producing a larger number of students with outstanding talents and practical abilities and reserves of military talents who are fully capable of shouldering the future of our army.

Kang Pan Sok Revolutionary School, too, should positively explore and apply innovative and effective educational methods according to the categories of education and, in particular, focus efforts on bringing the teaching of economics-related subjects closer to the developing reality, thereby training excellent reserves of women cadres who can play a major role in building the state.

It is important to intensify military education of the students of Mangyongdae Revolutionary School and Kang Pan Sok Revolutionary School.

Military education at Mangyongdae Revolutionary School should be conducted in an aggressive and dynamic way with the main stress on intensifying basic education for training the students into officers who are well versed in different services and arms.

Kang Pan Sok Revolutionary School should further enhance the quality of military education so as to improve the students’ ability to command and manage sub-units and should make exacting demands on them so that their day-to-day life can be the course of gaining experience to this end.

Mangyongdae Revolutionary School and Kang Pan Sok Revolutionary School should work out artillery and other military education programmes in a practical way and raise the intensity of military training so as to bring up their students into competent reserve officers who can contribute substantially to consolidating the revolutionary armed forces.

The students of Mangyongdae Revolutionary School are given lessons on horse riding in addition to many live firing drills and swimming practice. An important purpose in this is to bring them up into real fighters.

If the students of Mangyongdae Revolutionary School master horsemanship, marksmanship and swimming ability during their school days, it will greatly help them to prepare themselves to be versatile combatants and field commanding officers who can execute their combat tasks satisfactorily while overcoming possible warfare situations on their own initiative.

Mangyongdae Revolutionary School should make more effective use of various simulators.

It should effectively organize and guide its students’ visits to the front-line areas and participation in the military service in KPA sub-units so that these periods can serve as opportunities for them to have a good understanding of the realities of combat units and gain a valuable experience of military service.

Training students in the vibrant reality is one of major educational methods.

It is important to temper them in the thick of the reality and thus train them as steel-hard, genuine revolutionary talents rather than bring them up to be self-indulgent children.

Recently we have mobilized the students of Mangyongdae Revolutionary School for the housing construction project in the Taephyong area. This aims at helping them to understand the justness of the Party policy, foster patriotic spirit, develop strong will and spirit of overcoming difficulties and learn how to work in the reality. Then they can prepare themselves to be the pillars who will shoulder the future of the country.

By availing themselves of various occasions such as military parade, military training, grand socialist construction and the work in support of rural communities, the revolutionary schools should purposefully organize and tenaciously undertake the work for instilling in them an iron will and spiritual strength with which to advance forward without hesitation in the face of ordeals and difficulties.

Visits to the revolutionary battle sites in the Mt Paektu area should also be a process in which they cherish in their hearts the indomitable fighting spirit of the anti-Japanese guerrillas through firsthand experience, rather than books, while marching across virgin snow with leggings on, building a campfire and cooking rice with their own hands.

Due attention should be paid to education and edification for bringing up the students into well-rounded revolutionary talents.

Good ability for writing and presentation is one of the essential qualifications of a leading member of the revolution.

The revolutionary schools should encourage the students to develop a habit of writing diaries and frequently organize meetings such as book sessions and presentations of their compositions so that they can have the ability to fully express their thoughts both in writing and in speeches from childhood.

They should direct great efforts to ensuring that the students acquire rich cultural and emotional attainments with which to move the hearts of the masses and handle the atmosphere of the collective by singing, dancing and playing sports with them.

Students of the revolutionary schools,

Our Party and people hold very big and great expectations for each of you.

I am most pleased when I see the dignified appearance of you who are growing vigorously while singing your alma maters energetically and, through your bright eyes, I visualize the rosy future of our state and the admirable images of you who will play an active role as the pillars of the Party and the revolution.

You should bear in mind that even if the Party would assign you important posts in the future, you would be unable to keep them if you were poorly prepared, and should make positive efforts to prepare yourselves as military and political activists who could contribute a large share to the Party and the people with both literary and military accomplishments.

You should not idle away each of the invaluable school days, but study hard and take part in organizational life intentionally and in good faith to develop the revolutionary spirit and senses of organization and discipline.

I am well aware that the teachers of Mangyongdae Revolutionary School and Kang Pan Sok Revolutionary School make devoted efforts unknown to others while taking good care of the sons and daughters of revolutionary martyrs like their real parents and relatives would do by taking upon themselves the most difficult task of education and edification.

Comrade teachers of the revolutionary schools,

A radical improvement in education in the new era is in essence that in teachers’ qualifications.

You assume a very important responsibility and role in training the students of the revolutionary schools to be the genuine successors and reserve hardcore and backbone who will take up the baton of the Juche revolution.

While always racking your brains with a deep sense of responsibility that you are shouldering the work for the everlasting prosperity of our Party and country, an important affair of the revolution, you should devote all your inexhaustible passion, fighting spirit and clear conscience to the education and edification of students.

Without deviating even for a moment from the consciousness that you work at the revolutionary schools to which the Party attaches so much importance, you should make proactive efforts for revolutionary training and enhancement of your qualifications by setting yourselves high goals and disciplining yourselves.

The teachers of the revolutionary schools who train devoted revolutionaries and “intrepid tigers” should have a greater revolutionary spirit, make patriotic fervour part of their mental qualities, be perfect in terms of human features and possess the highest level of qualifications and capabilities as educators.

You should look after the students with parental affection.

You should pour kindred affection on students by taking care of them like the meticulous yet strict parents and the brothers and sisters who lead them with sincere feeling, so that they can grow to be human beings who are perfect in every aspect.

You should scrupulously admonish and criticize the students who commit faults with the mind of parents who bring up their beloved children sternly so that they can correct them promptly, and make increasingly exacting demand on them to strictly observe the established order and rules. In this way they can acquire in their childhood a habit of doing only what the Party tells them to do.

In order to effect a decisive turn in all work at the revolutionary schools, it is needed, first of all, to bring about an innovation in the working attitude and spirit of the Party organizations and leading officials of the schools.

The Party organizations of the schools should concentrate their Party political work on thoroughly establishing the Party’s unified command system at the schools and training all the students to be powerful revolutionary talents.

They should intensify Party guidance in order to further stoke up the flames of the Three-Revolution Red Flag Movement and make the youth league and children’s union organizations briskly conduct the movements to win the title of Honoured Red Flag Class and the July 15 Honour Student Prize.

They should establish iron discipline at the schools and intensify struggle and edification so as to prevent the infiltration of even the slightest elements alien to the Party, the revolution and socialism, which the Party condemns the most.

There should never be any small room for weed or noxious plant to take root in the revolutionary schools, flower gardens which our Party cultivates with so much effort.

It is necessary to further strengthen education and guidance for preparing the educators to be truly professional revolutionaries who are steadfast politically and ideologically and well-behaved and who possess full qualifications and abilities, and to pay close attention also to providing all the teachers with good working and living conditions so that they can devote themselves to the implementation of the Party’s policy on the education of the sons and daughters of revolutionary martyrs.

The leading officials of the revolutionary schools should always work as expected by the Party and dedicate their all to the good of the students, deeply mindful of their heavy responsibility for thoroughly applying the Party’s ideas and policies on the rearing of the sons and daughters of revolutionary martyrs and for making the Party’s warm affection and care reach the students.

Commanding personnel of the KPA should devotedly set themselves to the work of strengthening Mangyongdae Revolutionary School and Kang Pan Sok Revolutionary School with the standpoint of being the masters of the work.

Strengthening the revolutionary schools can be regarded as the first process in training cadres of the KPA.

These days, the Party emphasizes it as an important matter to build up the ranks of military and political cadres of the KPA. The commanding personnel of the KPA should fully display their sincerity to ensure that substantial achievements are made in the work of the revolutionary schools with the mind of cultivating the “pedigree farms” with much effort while sowing seeds and applying manure.

The General Political Bureau, the Ministry of National Defence and the General Staff should intensify political, policy-oriented and practical guidance over the educational work of Mangyongdae Revolutionary School and Kang Pan Sok Revolutionary School, provide them with educational conditions and their students with living conditions in a responsible manner and solve in time the problems arising in operating, maintaining and managing on a regular basis the educational facilities and equipment the Party provided with much effort and sprucing up the educational environment.

They should not only take measures for the teachers of the revolutionary schools to learn from good experience of other educational institutions, improve their qualifications as educators and broaden their visions but also establish a proper supply service system and lay perfect logistic foundations for the schools.

I stress the need for Party organizations at all levels to pay close attention also to the work with the students and graduates of the revolutionary schools and bereaved families of martyrs.

It is Party organizations’ natural duty and an important affair they must never leave out to organize and conduct diverse types of edifying work with the students of the revolutionary schools when they visit their homes during vacation, attach importance to the graduates of the schools and take care of their work and family circumstances as well as their political life while inquiring into details of them.

They should value graduates of Mangyongdae Revolutionary School and Kang Pan Sok Revolutionary School the Party has strived to train, properly conduct the work of appointing them as cadres and educate and help them to fulfill their duties.

They should keep abreast of the situations of all the bereaved families whose children attend the revolutionary schools and regularly inquire about and positively solve in time the problems arising in their work and life so as to lead them to be loyal to the Party and the revolution without any slight idle thought or deviation and have a good influence on their children as well.

Comrade graduates of the revolutionary schools present here,

While working in different regions and sectors of the country as hardcore forces of our revolutionary and class positions, you should make more strenuous efforts, always being conscious of the Party’s trust and the people’s expectant look.

I believe that your reawakening to your duty and important responsibility as the sons and daughters of revolutionary martyrs at your dear alma mater today will ignite and trigger a new change and progress in your work and activities in the future.

You should brace yourselves with strong determination and make tenacious efforts to live up to the trust and expectations of the Party that has trained and put you forward as laudable revolutionaries and hardcore, to remain honourable before your parents who dedicated all their life to the revolution to leave traces of devotion and perform feats which will shine forever in the history of the country, to be absolutely loyal to the cause of the Party and to do more valuable things bringing substantial benefits to the people as you pledged yourselves leaving the schools.

Those who voluntarily and strictly review their struggle and life each day, asking themselves if they live as befits the children of Mangyongdae and work as befits a graduate of the revolutionary school, and display extraordinary revolutionary consciousness, fighting spirit and abilities to conceive and execute, are sure to make substantial achievements in their work to bring delight and courage to the Party.

As the hardcore and backbone of the Party and sons and daughters of the revolution, you should only think of the country and the people and never seek self-interest or fame.

The sons and daughters of revolutionary martyrs should not seek any official post or comfort, but find pride and pleasure in sincerely and perfectly fulfilling all the time their duties the Party and the revolution assigns them.

As it has always done so far, our Party will continue to protect all the graduates of Mangyongdae Revolutionary School and Kang Pan Sok Revolutionary School to the last while actively leading and putting them forward so that they infinitely devote themselves to the struggle for the victorious advance of the revolutionary cause of Juche without forgetting their origin.

Comrades,

At the present moment I further harden my resolution to dedicate my all, together with you, to the sacred struggle to accomplish our great cause and make our state and people the envy of the whole world.

To share the same bloodline, intention and feeling with you is the inexhaustible motive power that invigorates me with strength, wisdom and pride in making the revolution.

Fully convinced that the sons and daughters of revolutionary martyrs, who are the best fulcrum of our Party and symbolize the main pillars and roots of our revolution, will faithfully live up to the great expectations of the Party and the people and lead the revolutionary ranks in powerfully advancing the cause of socialism of our own style, I warmly congratulate you once again on the 75th anniversary of the founding of Mangyongdae Revolutionary School and Kang Pan Sok Revolutionary School.

Eternal glory and victory to our revolution steadily carrying forward the sacred lineage of Mangyongdae! -0-

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New Translation of French Revolutionary Leader Jean-Paul Marat’s Defense of Women Against Unjust “Adultery” Laws

  We are pleased to publish yet another excellent essay by the great French Revolutionary leader Jean-Paul Marat – this time, his stalwart defense of women against Europe’s unjust “morality laws” that allowed men to commit adultery with impunity while punishing women with tremendous severity for the same “crime against public morals”.

  Marat – viciously attacked by bourgeois ideologists from the time of his death to the present day for being a “madman” “out for blood” of the criminal French aristocracy, was in fact a serious scientist, doctor of medicine and a staunch defender of the oppressed.  This essay was part of his “Plan de législation criminelle” [“Plan of criminal legislation”] produced for a competition organized in 1778 by the Berne [Switzerland] Economic Society to produce improved legal systems consonant with the new enlightenment philosophies of the era.  It is truly amazing how far-seeing his proposed reforms were, years before the US Constitution and Bill of Rights were even under consideration:

  “Everything that disturbs the social order must be punished. But what does this order consist of?  Equal rights, reciprocal benefits, mutual help, that is what its foundations must be: freedom, justice, peace, harmony, happiness, that is what its fruits must be. However, when I open the annals of the peoples, tyranny on the one hand, servitude on the other, are the only objects which, in any form, present themselves to my mind …..

  “Cast your eyes upon most of the peoples of the earth. What do you see there? Only vile slaves and imperious ministers. Are not the laws there the decrees of those who command? If only they respected their own work. But they silence the laws when they want to; they violate them with impunity; then, to cover themselves from all [reproach], they draw around them a sacred enclosure which one dares not approach.

  “In less arbitrary states, if those who command are not above the law, they always evade it without difficulty, and to escape punishment, they often have only to aggravate their crimes.

  “Even in countries where subjects in despair have broken the yoke under which they groaned, how many odious distinctions still exist, how many glaring abuses! The laws bend for the strong, it is only for the weak that they are inflexible; and such is the deplorable fate of the unfortunate that to the cruel feeling of the outrages done to them they must add the despair of never seeing the end of it.

  “Let there be no mistake, this disorder is forced. We are born in subjection or in independence, in opulence or in misery, in obscurity or in elevation, and in spite of the mobility of human things, there is only a very small number of individuals who leave the state in which they were placed at their birth; still they leave it most often only by intrigue, baseness, deceit or happy chance…”

  “To be just[,] the laws of society must never go against those of nature, the first of all laws.

  That even is not enough, if they do not tend to the general good…..

  “The only legitimate foundation of society is the happiness of those who compose it. Men have only come together as a body for their common interest; they have only made laws to fix their respective rights, and they have established a government only to ensure the enjoyment of these rights. If they renounced their own vengeance, it was in order to hand it over to the public arm; if they renounced natural liberty, it was in order to acquire civil liberty; if they renounced the primitive community of goods, it was in order to possess some part of it for themselves.

  “The generation that made the social pact is succeeded by the generation that confirms it. But when no measures have been taken to prevent the increase of private fortunes, one part of the subjects always becomes richer at the expense of the other. There is in the State a crowd of indigent subjects who will leave their posterity in misery.

  “On a land everywhere covered with the possessions of others and of which they cannot appropriate anything, they are thus reduced to perish from hunger. Now, holding on to society only by its disadvantages are they obliged to respect its laws? No, without doubt; if society abandons them they return to the state of nature, and when they claim by force rights that they were only able to alienate in order to secure greater advantages, any authority that opposes them is tyrannical…

“If it is necessary that, to maintain itself the society forces them to respect the established order, above all it must protect them from temptations of need. It owes them therefore a guaranteed subsistence, help in their illnesses and care in their old age, for they can only renounce their natural rights as long as society provides them a fate preferable to the state of nature.

“It is therefore only after having fulfilled its obligations to all its members in this way, that it has the right to punish those who violate its laws.”

**********************************

It is interesting to speculate as to how much Marat’s future wife Simone Évrard or other uncredited female philosophes may have influenced his section relating to the unequal enforcement of laws against infidelity and adultery, so passionately does Marat write in defense of the abuse of women at the hands of their male seducers, their husbands and the courts.  He puts forward a total denunciation of the hypocrisy of the legal systems which held women attempting to defend themselves against charges of infidelity up to public ridicule, condemned them to severe penalties, and once it had completely degraded them, left many unjustly convicted and even completely innocent women no recourse but to take up prostitution in order to support themselves and their children:

  “Who does not see that the law against licentiousness must equally bind the two sexes, and that the punishment given to offenders must be proportionate to the crime? This is not the case, however, and everywhere the legislator seems to have forgotten justice, to enter into the views of a corrupt century.

  […]

  “We have subjected them to the most austere obligations; it was necessary, they say; the debauchery of women would cause a terrible disorder in society. As if the debauchery of men did not cause any! […] As if the impunity of men was not the greatest of disorders! Let us leave these silly maxims of a corrupt century: the prejudice which favors them is shameful, but the laws which authorize them are atrocious. Cursed be forever their iniquitous empire, if they exempt a sex from being just, if they give him the right to corrupt virtue without support and if they ensure the odious privilege of tyrannizing weakness! Let us dare to protest here against their partiality: after having served crime for so long, let them finally protect innocence.”

[…]

  “Without doubt debauchery must be punished in both sexes, since it disturbs the order of society; but the punishment must be equal. Equal, I said, I am mistaken: rarely the woman is guilty (1), and rarely the man is innocent… The overflowing of the sexes always begins with the man, and no woman ever gives herself up until she has been seduced; a seducer is thus more guilty than the unfortunate woman whom he dishonors…..

  “Let us even say that in women libertinage comes almost always from hard necessity, while in the men it comes always from a vicious inclination. For every prostitute created by laziness or the love of jewelry, hunger creates a thousand; and who does not know that they all begin by being seduced?  Considering the extreme inequality of fortunes among us, the many, at the mercy of the few, find their subsistence only in servitude…”

******************************************************

From Marat’s “Plan de legislation criminelle” (1778):

  “Section V. CRIMES AGAINST MORALS.

 “Who does not see that the law against licentiousness must equally bind the two sexes, and that the punishment given to offenders must be proportionate to the crime? This is not the case, however, and everywhere the legislator seems to have forgotten justice, to enter into the views of a corrupt century.

  “It is a general observation that women are more disposed to tenderness than men: they feel the need to love earlier, and they feel it more keenly. To this inclination of nature, which, in society, would lead to great disorders if it remained unchecked, one tries from childhood to oppose [with] modesty.

  “But as everything is contradictory in our political institutions, the girls always receive in the world an education opposite to the one they have received in the paternal house. What do we not do to make them forget the lessons of wisdom? As soon as they are old enough to understand us we take it upon ourselves to exercise their imagination; we turn all their thoughts towards voluptuousness; and by a thousand enticements we seek to make their senses speak. Will their young hearts open to love?

  “Too often we have the cowardice to abuse their weakness; or if they escape our artifices, it is only by the vigilance of their mothers.

  “Has the time to form a sweet bond come at last?

  “The man has all the advantage, he chooses; the woman can only refuse; and how many foolish parents sacrifice the happiness of their daughter to ambition? Guided by a blind tenderness they tear her away from a man she esteems and cherishes, to force her to give herself to a man whom she despises and hates. Are they united? Forced to renounce from now on the object of her heart, she becomes incapable of loving another, and sees for herself only an unhappy future.

  “Happier than most, has she escaped the constraint? Her happiness is of short duration: the caresses are soon followed by marital coldness; instead of a lover, she has a master who arrogates to himself a tyrannical empire, neglects his duties, breaks his chain, and no longer believes himself bound to anything.

  “Informed of his infidelities, does she wish to complain? He does not listen to her reproaches and flees so as not to see her tears flow. Tired of complaining in vain about the inconstant one who lacks faith in her, if she imitates his example, he cries out for vengeance, he severely punishes her without mercy.

  “Who would believe her? Far from coming to the aid of a weak oppressed person the laws join a cruel oppressor; and for a fault that he commits with impunity she always loses her reputation, often her freedom, sometimes even her life. This is how, in all places, the legislator has exercised the most horrible tyranny (1) against the sex that needs protection the most.

  “Was it necessary that to so many outrages are added the barbarity of prejudice! At their feet as long as they seem to feel nothing for us we despise them as soon as they show themselves too sensitive; and to the eternal shame of our century how many are denounced for the same weaknesses which we take pride in!

(1) This tyranny is so revolting that the judges themselves seem to make a game of it: such a one, having just signed the condemnation of an adulteress, begins to write a love letter to the woman he is trying to corrupt. (Note by Marat.)

  “Next to the picture of a deceived woman let us place that of a seduced girl. That by dint of hypocritical care a man touches the heart of a young person, and that by dint of false oaths he leads her to surrender, what bitter sorrows a moment of credulity will soon cost her! she will weep for it all her life, and her tears will never erase her disgrace…

  “At least if she found some resource in public pity; but far from taking the defense of a girl indignantly seduced the world takes pleasure in publishing her frailty; and while they boo her, the coward who has deceived her does not perceive any difference in the reception he receives.  If he is rich, he continues to be proud, and he will not find it less attractive to seduce other girls, who still have their innocence.

  “After having spent a long time crying over his fault will he at last be allowed to return to the world? but this weak consolation is refused to her; she is shunned, and if she is without fortune, forced to hide, often the only thing left for her to live on is to give herself to prostitution…

  “At the sight of so many traps stretched under the feet of youth, of so many baits offered to innocence, of so much violence done to weakness, what just soul would not excuse the faults of a fragile sex that we have subjected to the harshest duties; and at the sight of the awful fate of so many victims of our perfidy, what sensitive soul would not be touched with pity!

  “But it is not pity, it is indignation that I would like to excite in hearts. What! Duplicity, deceit, hypocrisy, lies, perjury will not be blamable in men; and in women, sensitivity, credulity weakness will be forever degenerating! Instead of being their supporters, we will only know how to deceive them, and, after having been their vile corrupters, we will still be allowed to be their cowardly tyrants…

  “We have subjected them to the most austere obligations; it was necessary, they say; the debauchery of women would cause a terrible disorder in society. As if the debauchery of men did not cause any! As if men were not always half with them! As if the impunity of men was not the greatest of disorders! Let us leave these silly maxims of a corrupt century: the prejudice which favors them is shameful, but the laws which authorize them are atrocious. Cursed be forever their iniquitous empire, if they exempt a sex from being just, if they give him the right to corrupt virtue without support and if they ensure the odious privilege of tyrannizing weakness! Let us dare to protest here against their partiality: after having served crime for so long, let them finally protect innocence.

  “Without doubt debauchery must be punished in both sexes, since it disturbs the order of society; but the punishment must be equal. Equal, I said, I am mistaken: rarely the woman is guilty [I am speaking of a woman who has not yet gone astray.  (Note from Marat.)] , and rarely the man is innocent… The overflowing of the sexes always begins with the man, and no woman ever gives herself up until she has been seduced; a seducer is thus more guilty than the unfortunate woman whom he dishonors…..

  “Let us even say that in women libertinage comes almost always from hard necessity, while in the men it comes always from a vicious inclination. For every prostitute created by laziness or the love of jewelry, hunger creates a thousand; and who does not know that they all begin by being seduced?

  “Considering the extreme inequality of fortunes among us, the many, at the mercy of the few, find their subsistence only in servitude…..

  “Libertinism is horrifying, and I do not seek to justify it; however as it is almost always forced among women, the government has no right to punish them, as long as it allows them to lack the necessities of life (1a); even less does he have the right to make them bear alone the punishment for a fault they share.

  “But once they have been removed from misery and instructed in their duties, in the risks they run, and in the means to resist if they devoted themselves to this infamous state, they would become susceptible to justice…..

  “I have insisted for a long time on this article, and it was necessary; because it interests half of the human race; because the public opinion concerning it is monstrous; because the laws relating to it are barbaric, and because their injustice seems to be consecrated by the legislators of all the civilized nations.” (1b)

(1a) Marat develops his thought thus a few pages further: “To proscribe libertinism, it is little to crack down on those who indulge in it, it is necessary to remove the opportunities to indulge in it by withdrawing from indigence the women whom it reduces to putting a price on their virtue: one will thus establish in each large city a hospice where will be brought up the daughters of poor citizens; these children will be instructed in the most necessary things; one will teach them each some useful profession, and they will be provided with the means to establish themselves.”

(1b) Should we be surprised? Where does such a great unanimity of opinion on this matter come from?  From the fact that men alone have made the laws. The way to be impartial in a cause where they were judge and party.  (Note from Marat.)

SOURCE:  “Oeuvres de J P Marat (L’Ami du Peuple)”, (Decembre-Alonnier, Paris, 1869), by Paris Commune leader and martyr Auguste-Jean-Marie Vermorel.

Translation copyright 2022 by IWPCHI, using “Deep L Translator” (www.deepl.com/Translator) and the “Reverso Dictionary” (dictionary.reverso.net/french-english)