Capital hand in hand with Labor! As true in 1899 as it is today.

“Capital hand in hand with labor!  “If there is anything the matter with Trusts the Republican Party can be relied upon to fix it.” — Hanna.” by Horace Taylor. 13 November 1899. Illustration shows Marcus Alonzo Hanna as a vulture with large dollar sign on its breast pinning a man representing “labor” to a rock.  Source: Library of Congress

 

We are pleased to present to you our dear readers this political cartoon from 1899 extolling the warm relationship of capital and labor as partners with identical interests.  Our “friends” at the AFL-CIO headquarters  will undoubtedly be upset to see their “partners” the capitalists portrayed in such a harsh light.  It gets harder and harder every day for them to sell their lie that workers and their exploiters are natural allies; we are so happy to make their work just that much more difficult.

The cartoon was created by Horace Taylor on 13 November 1899 and shows John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Trust political fixer Mark Hanna of the Republican Party “shaking hands” in partnership with a worker.  The Library of Congress lists this artwork as part of their collection, but for some strange reason they do not offer a color reproduction (or any downloadable high-resolution image) of this honest depiction of the true relationship between capital and labor.  We hope you enjoy it as much as we have!

Workers of the world, Unite!

Capitalism must die so that the working class may live!

— IWPCHI

 

Defend North Korea! N. Korean Bureaucratic Workers State Carries Out Another Successful Nuclear Test

On 9 September, seismic sensors around the world detected what appeared to be an earthquake of magnitude 5.0 on the Korean peninsula in North Korea.  It was determined to have been not an earthquake but a nuclear explosion – an underground nuclear test carried out by the North Korean bureaucratic workers state as part of their ongoing efforts to develop an effective nuclear deterrent to oppose US imperialist plans to destabilize and overthrow the North Korean workers state.

As Trotskyists we have always defended those countries in which the capitalist class and their economic system have been overthrown and replaced with a planned socialist economy.  While we oppose the Stalinist, Maoist and Il Sungist bureaucracies that have usurped political power from the working class in all these states and call for workers political revolution to depose the bureaucracies and to establish true workers democracies, we defend unconditionally all these workers states against imperialist attack.  In a war between North Korea and its puppet client state S. Korea, we would call for the defeat of the US.  This is why we say: Defend North Korea!  US/UN/NATO hands off the Korean Peninsula!

Predictably, this latest successful nuclear test carried out by the Pyongyang government – the largest so far, and apparently evidence that the North Koreans may have successfully developed a small nuclear warhead that can be deployed on North Korea’s ballistic missiles – has caused the US capitalist class, its anti-communist government and its owned-and-operated propaganda outlets to scream bloody murder.  The US capitalist class is still furious that, despite their unleashing of mass-murder during the Korean War – in which as many as 3 million Koreans were murdered – the US was forced to accept the partitioning of the Korean peninsula and the establishment of a bastion of socialism in the new nation of North Korea.  The US capitalist class seeks to reverse the historic victory of the North Korean working class over US imperialism by imposing brutal economic sanctions against this tiny country that has never threatened the US in any way – except by denying the US capitalist call the “right” to brutally exploit and squeeze profits from the North Korean working class.  We say: End the sanctions against North Korea now!

The rabidly hostile US government propaganda being spread by all US mass media outlets against the North Koreans’ obvious right to defend their country reveals the depth of US government control of the supposedly “free press” in the USA.  The North Koreans are not delusional when they claim that their development of a nuclear arsenal is vitally necessary in order to protect their working class from annihilation at the hands of the most blood-drenched capitalist regime in world history: the USA.  The US committed mass-murder on the Korean peninsula during the Korean War, deliberately slaughtering millions of peasants and civilians.  US military war criminals bragged about their having bombed Korea so thoroughly that not one building over 2 stories tall was left standing from the Chinese border to the border of the artificially created South Korean US puppet state.  The only way for North Korea to effectively defend their nation-state from the serial mass-murderers in Washington, D.C. is to develop a nuclear deterrent.  We salute the North Korean bureaucratized workers state on their historic achievement of the development of their nuclear arsenal.

The Korean War never actually ended – it ended in an armistice – and the US has continuously launched provocations against the North Koreans through endless military “war games” carried out right on the border of North Korea.  Some of the recent US threats carried out in these military exercises included flying numerous B-52s in simulated nulear bombing runs aimed directly at the North Korean border which veered away from their bombing runs just before entering North Korean airspace!  Just imagine what the US’ reaction would be if Russia or China carried out such activities in the coastal waters of Alaska!  This constant state of threats to blow away North Korea in a  full-scale invasion underscores not just the North Koreans right to defend themselves by any means necessary but the absolute necessity of their developing the only kind of military deterrent the US seems to understand: a nuclear arsenal.

The “lesser evil” Democratic Party – like the Republican Party, wholly owned and operated by the US capitalist class – goes literally ballistic every time North Korea tests a new weapons system.  Having created a situation in which North Korea must spend a huge proportion of their national wealth on military weapons, the US and its equally repulsive allies excoriates North Korea for imposing “starvation conditions” on their own population!  Then, to turn the screws even tighter, the Democratic Party administration of war criminal Barack Obama – and the obviously already “elected” Hillary Clinton – hypocritically utilize the North Koreans’ wholly justified imposed necessity for military spending as “justification” for the imposition of even more stringent economc sanctions against North Korea!  Meanwhile the Maoists in Beijing, whose fake “Communist Party” bureaucracy is slowly restoring capitalism in China – refuses to tell the US to back off or lose their assets in China.  China must defend North Korea at all costs!  The US attacks against North Korea are ultimately aimed at the overthrow of the Chinese bureaucratized workers state – in fact that is the primary target of the US in its imperialist “pivot to Asia”!

We call for workers political revolution in North Korea because we understand that, as with the Stalinists who proved to be the gravediggers of the USSR when they sold out the world’s first union of socialist republics, the bizarre nationalist  Il Sungist hereditary socialist bureaucracy is incapable of defending the North Korean workers state indefinitely.  Once the Stalinists gave up the revolutionary Marxist principle of internationalism in favor of building “socialism in one country” the USSR was doomed to suffer the restoration of capitalism.  In order for socialism to be truly successful and to develop into actual communism, capitalism must first be overthrown throughout the world.  The Stalinists and Maoists as well as the Il Sungists have abandoned revolutionary Marxist internationalism in favor of seeking an unattainable “peaceful coexistence” with the capitalist world.  Having done that, all they can do is to slowly surrender the historic gains of their workers revolutions to the imperialists in exchange for “peace”.  This piecemeal selling off of state assets to the capitalists leads to the development of a capitalist class inside the workers states, and to the wholesale corruption and bribery of state officaldom.  Unless the working classes of the workers states overthrow the bureaucracies in these bureaucratized workers states in a pro-socialist workers political revolution and return to the road of Lenin and Trotsky, capitalism will be restored in all of these workers states.  That – as with the collapse of the Soviet Union – would be a tremendous defeat for the workers of the world.  We call for Trotskyist workers political revolution in North Korea and all the workers states!

In order to give the North Koreans the opportunity to have their side of the story told, we republish the “official” announcement of the North Korean government press regarding their latest nuclear test as well as another Korean Central News Agency report issued on Sept. 9th.

Defend North Korea!  US/UN/NATO hands off North Korea! Drop the Sanctions against North Korea now!

— IWPCHI

*********

[Source for both articles:  http://www.kcna.kp]

DPRK Succeeds in Nuclear Warhead Explosion Test

Pyongyang, September 9 (KCNA) — The Nuclear Weapons Institute of the DPRK made public the following statement Friday:
Scientists and technicians of the DPRK carried out a nuclear explosion test for the judgment of the power of a nuclear warhead newly studied and manufactured by them at the northern nuclear test ground under the plan of the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK) for building strategic nuclear force.
The Central Committee of the WPK sent warm congratulations to nuclear scientists and technicians of the northern nuclear test ground on the successful nuclear warhead explosion test.
The nuclear test finally examined and confirmed the structure and specific features of movement of nuclear warhead that has been standardized to be able to be mounted on strategic ballistic rockets of the Hwasong artillery units of the Strategic Force of the Korean People’s Army as well as its performance and power.
It was confirmed through the results of analysis of the test that the measured values including explosion might and the nuclear material usage coefficient conformed with the calculated values and that there was no radioactive materials leakage during the test and, therefore, no adverse impact on the ecological environment of the surroundings.
The standardization of the nuclear warhead will enable the DPRK to produce at will and as many as it wants a variety of smaller, lighter and diversified nuclear warheads of higher strike power with a firm hold on the technology for producing and using various fissile materials. This has definitely put on a higher level the DPRK’s technology of mounting nuclear warheads on ballistic rockets.
The nuclear warhead explosion test is a demonstration of the toughest will of the WPK and the Korean people to get themselves always ready to retaliate against the enemies if they make provocation as it is part of practical countermeasures to the racket of threat and sanctions against the DPRK kicked up by the U.S.-led hostile forces who have gone desperate in their moves to find fault with the sovereign state’s exercise of the right to self-defence while categorically denying the DPRK’s strategic position as a full-fledged nuclear weapons state.
The DPRK will take further measures to bolster the state nuclear force in quality and quantity for safeguarding its dignity and right to existence and genuine peace from the U.S. increasing threat of a nuclear war. -0-

***********

Foreign Ministry Spokesman Blasts Anti-DPRK Invective of U.S. Official

Pyongyang, September 9 (KCNA) — A spokesman for the Institute for American Studies of the Foreign Ministry of the DPRK gave the following answer to the question raised by KCNA Friday in connection with the fact that the deputy security advisor of the National Security Council of the White House again made remarks slandering the DPRK:
The deputy security adviser at a press conference in Vientiane spouted vituperations that they will have to be more awakened to implement sanctions against north Korea, adding that if north Korea abandons nuclear and ballistic missile programme, the U.S. may think over.
It is the shining fruition of the self-reliance and self-development that the DPRK ranked itself with dignity among the military powers, being possessed of perfect nuclear attack capabilities despite the toughest sanctions of the U.S.-led hostile forces.
The U.S. intensified hostile policy and hideous nuclear threat and blackmail only resulted in making the DPRK bolster its nuclear attack capabilities in a phased way.
The U.S. desperate moves for unilaterally putting sanctions and stifling the DPRK are a hideous crime against humanity aimed at subversion of a social system of a sovereignty country as they violate the right to development and existence of the country.
The U.S.-touted UN Security Council’s “resolutions on sanctions” against the DPRK assume the nature of reprisal banned by international law and, therefore, they are nothing but criminal documents devoid of impartiality, lawfulness and morality.
The U.S. is calling for tightening sanctions and pressure on the DPRK while trying to deploy THAAD in south Korea but it is nothing but a sigh of losers taken aback by the tremendous military capabilities of the DPRK.
The DPRK’s line of simultaneously developing the two fronts is a strategic line to be constantly held fast to as long as the imperialists’ nuclear threat and arbitrary practices go on, and if one thinks the DPRK can change its road, it is a pipedream.
The U.S. should never underestimate the tremendous mental power and inexhaustible might of the DPRK. The U.S. will be made to clearly see how the DPRK rises imposingly out of chains of sanctions, blockade and pressure. -0-

Labor Day 2016: “Workers Must Establish and Maintain Their Own Press If They Expect to be Properly Represented”

The following selection from the labor press of the AFL back in 1904 will show that there once was a time when even the class-collaborationist and hidebound AFL of Samuel Gompers understood – in direct contradiction to the fundamental belief of today’s AFL-CIO “leadership” – that the interests of labor and capital were fundamentally opposed to each other.  “Let the unions understand that they may expect nothing of value from their natural enemies – and in the final analysis the whole question is sifted down to and rests upon and is controlled by the economic interests of the employing class as opposed to those interests of the working class.” So spoke the AFL back in 1904!

This article, which makes an eloquent plea for the necessity of the establishment of an independent labor press if the cause of the working class was to be fairly represented in the mass media, was written 112 years ago – and for the most part could have been written yesterday.  The need for such a press is just as important today as it was then, although in 1904 there were dozens of labor papers in existence scattered throughout the US.  In 2016, apart from the revolutionary socialist press that fights for the cause of the working class – but is almost completely ignored by the mass of slavish US workers – there is no labor press at all.  This is because the pro-capitalist AFL-CIO, whose affiliated locals once recognized the need for and published dozens of such papers, is now led by such a gang of housebroken puppets of the capitalist class that this crying need of the working class goes totally unanswered.   ———— IWPCHI

From the ‘Ohio Valley Worker’ – the ‘Official Paper of the Federated Trades Council of Louisville, Trades and Labor Council of New Albany, Central Labor Union of Jeffersonville.’ [Kentucky and Indiana, USA] – Volume I, Number 33, 10 September 1904

INDEPENDENT LABOR PRESS A NECESSITY

Labor Given the Knife by the Great Molders of Public Opinion.

The Workers Must Establish and Maintain Their Own Press If They Expect to be Properly Represented.

No argument is needed to convince the intelligent observer of passing events of the growing need of a labor press that has no entangling alliances with any of the agencies which have undertaken the task of emasculating the labor unions or destroying them entirely. The most superficial reader of the daily press is quick to notice the manner in which the news agencies of the world are continuously and forever giving Labor the worst of it in every conceivable manner. The Associated Press, the chief news-gathering agency in America, is made up of one or more daily papers in the various cities of the country, and the stuff put upon the wires and known as the Associated Press dispatches is usually gleaned from the matter prepared for these local papers. Very often a proof of the matter set up for the daily papers is supplied the [sic – IWPCHI] Associated Press correspondent, and often, without any corrections or changes whatever, the matter is telegraphed all over the country and appears in all papers receiving the press report as Associated Press dispatches.

The foregoing recital is made for the purpose of showing that, while the Associated Press if damned for false stories, especially in nearly all cases where there is a strike or other controversy between Capital and Labor, in reality the blame rests upon the daily papers, whose reporters, acting under instructions, have juggled the facts so as to make it appear that Labor is wrong and that the employers are persecuted saints. To be sure, the daily paper merely serves its master in this. It looks to the “business interests,” the banks, corporations, manufacturers, and large employers of labor generally for its support. And, obeying the impulse to defend the class-interest of the element to which it belongs, the daily paper uses all its powers to thwart organized labor, confuse the union membership, and help the employers to a victory that means no improvement in the condition of the workers.

The facts above stated are so patent, and are being more and more recognized by wage-earners, as the days come and go, that we deem an extended mention thereof to be superficial were it not for the moral the story contains.

Under the circumstances what is Labor to do? Must it docilely submit to the fate of inaction? Shall it cower and cringe before the public gaze because it has been lied about and vilified – and whipped back to the factory, shop or mill through the misrepresentation of men in control of the daily press, whose economic interests are opposed to those of the workers? No! There is a better solution of the problem. The thing to do is to build up a LABOR press – owned by Labor and controlled by Labor. Through your own press, fellow-workers, you may become powerful, but not otherwise. With a medium that is under your ownership and control your organization may become a power not now more than dreamed of. To establish and make secure such a Labor press is the duty of the hour. You must have your own medium to give utterance to your demands, crystallize the sentiment that may be created in your favor, and finally do battle for you in every conflict in which you may be engaged.

THE WORKER is the only paper within several hundred miles of Louisville that is organized and established on the right basis. It is the only one that is democratically owned by the forces of Labor, and therefore is the only medium through which the favors of those friendly to Labor ever reach the point for which they are intended. It is the only genuine Labor paper.

Everyone who reads the Louisville daily papers will recall that within the past couple of years they vied with each other in their efforts to get up a union labor department. Regularly each week a column or two was devoted to the news of the unions. Where are these departments now? When they have not entirely disappeared they have dwindled to virtually nothing. This is a manifestation of the studied purpose of the Employers’ Association and all its friends to give no recognition to organized labor except to oppose and belittle this great movement. A representative of one of the daily papers, in a semi-confidential manner, gave the writer the tip several months ago that from that time on there would be less labor union news in the city daily papers than has been customary to give. Events have proven that he knew whereof he spoke. Labor is to be ignored – or, if given any consideration at all, it is to be given the knife.

Again, let the unions understand that they may expect nothing of value from their natural enemies – and in the final analysis the whole question is sifted down to and rests upon and is controlled by the economic interests of the employing class as opposed to those interests of the working class. We do not blame the employers for defending their interests, but the workers MUST awaken to a proper defense of THEIR interests, and this can be done only by and through the press which they own and control, and not through the press that almost without exception gives Labor the hot end of it in every great issue and on every great question.

Set up and support your own press and keep it true to its purpose. Therein lies your only safeguard, fellow-unionists.

[Emphasis given in capitalized words in original – IWPCHI]

Labor Day, 2016: Once Upon A Time, The US Had “Labor Newspapers”… Lots of Them

On this “Labor Day” weekend we are reminded of the terrible state of the union movement in the USA.  Under the pro-capitalist leadership of the AFL-CIO since the anti-communist witch-hunts led by Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy back in the ’50s drove the commies out of the unions, the percentage of the US working class holding union cards has steadily dwindled.

Union membership rose vertically in 1930s under anti-capitalist Communist and Trotskyist leadership; collapsed when “Reds” were driven out of unions in late 1940s.  Wealth distribution towards top of income pyramid shows distinct inverse relationship to percentage of workers in higher-paid union jobs. Anticommunist, pro-capitalist AFL-CIO “leadership” has overseen 65 years of almost unbroken failure to organize the unorganized.  Time to dump these bums and build a revolutionary Trotskyist class-struggle leadership in the unions!

Today’s AFL-CIO “leadership” regales the membership with the lie that “the interests of labor and capital are one and the same”.  Look at point one in the following AFL-CIO handout:

Pro-capitalist AFL-CIO spreads lies about “unity of interests” of capital and labor. Is it any wonder that union membership has fallen off a cliff with these “labor lieutenants of capital” at the helm?  Every word of this document is pure bullshit, sowing illusions that workers can get a fair deal under the capitalist system.

It wasn’t always this way.  In the late 19th and the early years of the 20th century US workers and their union leaders understood that the interests of capital and labor were directly COUNTERPOSED and IRRECONCILABLE.  Union leadership in those days was full of anarchists, socialists and (after 1917) Communists inspired by the Bolshevik Russian Revolution.  Though the top AFL-CIO leaders like Sam Gompers were hidebound pro-capitalist quislings, many of the local unions had more left-leaning leaders who taught that the working class could expect nothing but a knife in the back from the capitalist class – and their media outlets, which in the early days of the union movement before radio and television meant just one thing: the newspapers.  And so, in order for the truth about the union movement to be broadcast to the masses, the socialist parties and later on the AFL-CIO itself began publishing newspapers telling the workers’ side of the story.  From union and socialist and anarchist strongholds like the lumber and mining unions in the Pacific Northwest to the shores of the Atlantic, union newspapers were created.  Where once the US produced perhaps dozens of daily socialist, anarchist and trade-unionist newspapers none are in existence today.   Outside of the important revolutionary socialist papers that struggle to obtain the support of the slavish, pro-capitalist US working class of today (and can only publish weekly or biweekly or monthly as a result) the US has not a single pro-union daily newspaper!  What is wrong with this country and its working class?   Here is a selection of papers we ran across today as we checked out the archives at  Newspapers.com:

The Knights of Labor, Richmond, Virginia, 1886: “That is the Most Perfect Government in Which An Injury To One Is the Concern Of All.”

The Knights of Labor were originally organized as a secret society at a time when union organizing was punished as a “conspiracy” of labor against the “rightful rulers” of the USA.  Having just emerged from secrecy in 1886 during the rapid rise of the “Eight-Hour Day” movement, the K of L were driven back underground in the wake of the vicious anti-union attacks led by the US capitalist class and their press in revenge for the Haymarket Massacre in Chicago that took place in May of 1886.

Mt. Vernon, Illinois “Progressive Farmer” of the Farmer’s Mutual Benefit Association (FMBA), 1895

Farmers across the US were forced to band together in the wake of economic crises of the late 1800s that resulted from land speculation and droughts that ruined the rural economy and kept farmers at the mercy of bankers, grain speculators and railroads. (Some things never change!) The Farmers Mutual Benefit Association, though not a trade union, was formed and published newspapers across the Midwest.

 

Elwood, Indiana “Daily Labor Record”, 1896

Even small towns like Elwood, Indiana had their own labor papers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

 

Louisville, Kentucky and New Albany and Jeffersonville Indiana’s “Ohio Valley Worker”, 1904: “The Official Paper of the Federated Trades Council of Louisville, Trades and Labor Council of New Albany, Central Labor Union of Jeffersonville.”

Perhaps in response to the spread of popular daily papers being published all over the Midwest in the wake of major union organizing efforts at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, the AFL began to publish their own papers, with a far more leftist slant than their leadership in Washington, D.C. would have approved of. This one features a poem dedicated to Socialist Party leader Eugene V. Debs.

 

Greensboro, North Carolina “Labor News”, 1908: “Organ of the State Federation of Labor.  Endorsed by Greensboro Trades Council.  Motto: Organization, Education And Elevation.”

The less-than-inspiring motto of this AFL paper demonstrates a more conservative political philosophy and an appetite for seeking the approval of pro-capitalist “public opinion”.

 

Everett, Washington “Washington Socialist”, 1914: “Workers Of The World, Unite!  You Have Nothing To Lose But Your Chains.  You Have A World To Win.”

A revolutionary Socialist Party newspaper of 1914 pulls no punches about where it stands. Anti-war articles rail against WWI: “[We] deplore the fact that the wage class of Europe have allowed themselves to be lured to the battlefield to be slaughtered for the benefit of the master class…the proletariat have no country, but are and should be citizens of the world, and that they have therefore but ONE enemy, the capitalist class…”

Decatur, Illinois “Labor World”, 1915:  “The Paper That Won’t Be Muzzled… Endorsed By The Trades And Labor Assembly”

WWI saw the US working class, which had initially completely opposed any involvement in the “War to end all wars”, being driven by the jingoist press into joining in the effort to defeat “the Hun”.  The Socialist movement, led in many midwestern cities by German workers, was attacked for its principled anti-war stance for being “pro-German”.  This placed the editors of newspapers on the defensive throughout the period of build-up to the entry of the US into the war until the anti-communist Palmer Raids shut down many of these papers in the wake of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917.

 

Everett, Washington “Northwest Worker”, 1917:  “Official Organ of the Socialist Party of Snohomish and Stevens Counties… Spokesman for the Only Useful Class in Society – The Working Class”

By 1917, the US had been transformed by 3 years of incessant warmongering from the capitalist press from a nation utterly opposed to entry into WWI to a nation eager to plunge into the worst bloodbath in world history to that time.  Working-class papers that had held to their anti-war principles were severely attacked in print and in public.  The Socialist Party openly hails the bourgeois-democratic revolution that had taken place in Russia in February of 1917, toppling the hated Czar from his throne.

 

Cincinnati, Ohio “Labor Advocate”, 1917: “A Paper Without A Muzzle For All Who Toil… Property and Official Organ of the Building Trades Council of Cincinnati and Vicinity… Independent… Non-Partisan”

Pro-capitalist AFL newspaper pushes pro-war propaganda, using a front-page cartoon of a German soldier butchering a (probably Belgian) woman with a babe in her arms. The dear American Mother urges her sons to take up the sword to defend the innocent woman from “the Hun”. Touting in its masthead the slogans “Independent” and “Non-Partisan” it urges its readers to take a very partisan stance in the mass slaughter of WWI.

 

Duluth and Superior, Minnesota “Labor World”, 1918:  “For Social Justice, Economic Reform, And Political Progress”

The motto says it all: this AFL paper is pro-capitalist and reformist, seeking labor “peace” and mere “political progress”, not revolution. The blurb in the upper-left corner of the masthead, addressed to potential business advertisers, states that the people who read this paper are not of the “working class” but of the “consuming class”.

 

Wilmington, North Carolina “Union Labor Record”, 1918:  “The Medium of Organized Labor and Guardian of the Workingman’s Interest.  Endorsed by the North Carolina State Federation of Labor.”

By the end of 1918, the US working class – outside of a few strongholds of internationalist socialism — has been stampeded into supporting the US drive to enter WWI.  This southern AFL paper decries war profiteering while trumpeting a “united war work drive”.

 

Everett, Washington “Labor Journal”, 1922: “Official Paper Everett Central Labor Council… Published In The Interest Of Organized Labor”

Another pro-capitalist AFL paper, featuring the uplifting, inspiring saying (in the face of a mass lockout of workers by the railroad barons): “In the struggle between poverty and talent, poverty generally triumphs.”

The AFL-CIO unions today publish not newspapers but newsletters for their membership only, featuring self-aggrandizing pabulum about how great the local piecards are… and of course the death notices… and large displays of US flags everywhere – along with attacks on the Republicans and lists of “friends of Labor” Democrats to vote for in the upcoming elections.  No wonder the AFL-CIO is going down the tubes with this pathetic, pro-capitalist leadership!  If we want to see the union membership rise again like it did in the 1930s, we need to kick out the pro-capitalist labor fakers and replace them with a revolutionary Trotskyist class-struggle leadership that fights not just for “a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work” but for workers socialist revolution in the USA and around the world!  There will not be any dancing in the streets after WWIII, sisters and brothers.

Workers of the World, Unite!  Capitalism Must Die So The Working Class May Live!

—IWPCHI

Leon Trotsky Gives the Best Explanation Ever of Dialectical Materialism

We present to our readers what is probably the best, most concise and easy to follow explanation of what exactly is the essence of Marxist dialectics – the philosophy of dialectical materialism.  Suffice it to say that any worker who tries to comprehend political science without the benefit of the materialist Marxist dialectic will find herself in a world of confusion – like the bourgeois philosophers, economists and political scientists themselves.

What is the use of studying Marxism and Marxist dialectics?  It is quite simply a matter of life and death for the working class.  For example:  revolutionary Marxist/Leninist/Trotskyists understand that capitalist society is a class society and is divided primarily into two classed: the capitalist class of exploiters and the working class of the exploited.  The class interests of these two classes are irreconcilably counterposed to each other.  There can be no “peace” between these two classes since the capitalists must ruthlessly exploit the workers in order to maintain their massive wealth, and the capitalist class state maintains an enormous repressive apparatus of cops, courts, jails and the military to crush the workers every time the workers try to fight for their rights.

When a political party rejects the Marxist dialectical method of reasoning, it loses its compass and can no longer find its way in the world; it can no longer serve as a revolutionary leadership for the working class.  A tragic example of this can be found in the Colombian Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia—Ejército del Pueblo (FARC–EP),  (FARC for short).  This formerly formally “Marxist” political party has just concluded a “peace” agreement with the murderous Colombian capitalist class.  They have told their members that “peace” between the exploiters and exploited is possible under capitalism and they have declared to the world that they have achieved a “peace” agreement with the same politicians and government that has murdered tens of thousands of workers and peasants in the past century.  In fact the ex-Marxist renegades of FARC who, up until a few years ago, felt it was absolutely necessary to organize a revolutionary army in order to defend themselves from the Colombian capitalist class death squads and military forces has now become so disoriented since they have abandoned the Marxist dialectical method of reasoning that they are ordering their members to SURRENDER THEIR WEAPONS TO THE U.N. as part of this “peace” swindle!  Needless to say, the Colombian capitalist class has absolutely no intention of giving up THEIR weapons – or the weapons in the possession of their death squads either!   The last time FARC tried to obtain a “peace” agreement with the Colombian capitalist class and run candidates in “free and democratic elections, dozens of their leaders and at least 4 to 6 THOUSAND of their sympathisers and party members were murdered by the Colombian military and death squads organized and financed by the capitalists and big landlords! FARC has learned nothing from this tragic failure of their party leadership, and in 2016, having abandoned revolutionary Marxism (and by extension the Marxist dialectical method of reasoning that would have prevented them from making the same hideous mistake twice in just thirty years), they have betrayed the Colombian workers and peasants once again.  THAT is what happens to fake “Marxists” – and, more tragically, to the workers who follow them – when they abandon the Marxist method of dialectical materialism! (We have repeatedly tried to warn FARC away from concluding a “peace” agreement with the capitalists and away from agreeing to disarm, to no avail.)

There is really no need for an introduction or explanation of this material except to say that it is part of the series of Trotsky’s letters and essays that make up the book “In Defense of Marxism” which was published (and continues to be published) by Pathfinder Press;  our version comes from the Marxist Internet Archive and was proofread and checked with our edition of “In Defense of Marxism” (3d edition), Pathfinder Press, 1981.  We have edited it slightly; where excisions have been made we place the following: […].

— IWPCHI

Leon Trotsky: The ABC of Materialist Dialectics

[…]

The dialectic is neither fiction nor mysticism, but a science of the forms of our thinking insofar as it is not limited to the daily problems of life but attempts to arrive at an understanding of more complicated and drawn-out processes. The dialectic and formal logic bear a relationship similar to that between higher and lower mathematics.

I will here attempt to sketch the substance of the problem in a very concise form. The Aristotelian logic of the simple syllogism starts from the proposition that “A” is equal to “A.” This postulate is accepted as an axiom for a multitude of practical human actions and elementary generalizations. But in reality “A” is not equal to “A.” This is easy to prove if we observe these two letters under a lens – they are quite different from each other. But, one can object, the question is not of the size or the form of the letters, since they are only symbols for equal quantities, for instance, a pound of sugar. The objection is beside the point; in reality a pound of sugar is never equal to a pound of sugar – a more delicate scale always discloses a difference. Again one can object: but a pound of sugar is equal to itself. Neither is this true – all bodies change uninterruptedly in size, weight, color, etc. They are never equal to themselves. A sophist will respond that a pound of sugar is equal to itself “at any given moment.” Aside from the extremely dubious practical value of this “axiom,” it does not withstand theoretical criticism either. How should we really conceive the word “moment”? If it is an infinitesimal interval of time, then a pound of sugar is subjected during the course of that “moment” to inevitable changes. Or is the “moment” a purely mathematical abstraction, that is, a zero of time? But everything exists in time; and existence itself is an uninterrupted process of transformation; time is consequently a fundamental element of existence. Thus the axiom “A” is equal to “A” signifies that a thing is equal to itself if it does not change, that is, if it does not exist.

At first glance it could seem that these “subtleties” are useless. In reality they are of decisive significance. The axiom “A” is equal to “A” appears on one hand to be the point of departure for all our knowledge, on the other hand the point of departure for all the errors in our knowledge. To make use of the axiom “A” is equal to “A” with impunity is possible only within certain limits. When quantitative changes in “A” are negligible for the task at hand then we can presume that “A” is equal to “A.” This is, for example, the manner in which a buyer and a seller consider a pound of sugar. We consider the temperature of the sun likewise. Until recently we considered the buying power of the dollar in the same way. But quantitative changes beyond certain limits become converted into qualitative. A pound of sugar subjected to the action of water or kerosene ceases to be a pound of sugar. A dollar in the embrace of a president ceases to be a dollar. To determine at the right moment the critical point where quantity changes into quality is one of the most important and difficult tasks in all the spheres of knowledge including sociology.

Every worker knows that it is impossible to make two completely equal objects. In the elaboration of bearing-brass into cone bearings, a certain deviation is allowed for the cones which should not, however, go beyond certain limits (this is called tolerance). By observing the norms of tolerance, the cones are considered as being equal. (“A” is equal to “A.”) When the tolerance is exceeded the quantity goes over into quality; in other words, the cone bearings become inferior or completely worthless.

Our scientific thinking is only a part of our general practice including techniques. For concepts there also exists “tolerance” which is established not by formal logic issuing from the axiom “A” is equal to “A,” but by dialectical logic issuing from the axiom that everything is always changing. “Common sense” is characterized by the fact that it systematically exceeds dialectical “tolerance.”

Vulgar thought operates with such concepts as capitalism, morals, freedom, workers’ state, etc. as fixed abstractions, presuming that capitalism is equal to capitalism, morals are equal to morals, etc. Dialectical thinking analyzes all things and phenomena in their continuous change, while determining in the material conditions of those changes that critical limit beyond which “A” ceases to be “A”, a workers’ state ceases to be a workers’ state.

The fundamental flaw of vulgar thought lies in the fact that it wishes to content itself with motionless imprints of a reality which consists of eternal motion. Dialectical thinking gives to concepts, by means of closer approximations, corrections, concretizations, a richness of content and flexibility; I would even say a succulence which to a certain extent brings them close to living phenomena. Not capitalism in general, but a given capitalism at a given stage of development. Not a workers’ state in general, but a given workers’ state in a backward country in an imperialist encirclement, etc.

Dialectical thinking is related to vulgar thinking in the same way that a motion picture is related to a still photograph. The motion picture does not outlaw the still photograph but combines a series of them according to the laws of motion. Dialectics does not deny the syllogism, but teaches us to combine syllogisms in such a way as to bring our understanding closer to the eternally changing reality. Hegel in his Logic established a series of laws: change of quantity into quality, development through contradictions, conflict of content and form, interruption of continuity, change of possibility into inevitability, etc., which are just as important for theoretical thought as is the simple syllogism for more elementary tasks.

Hegel wrote before Darwin and before Marx. Thanks to the powerful impulse given to thought by the French Revolution, Hegel anticipated the general movement of science. But because it was only an anticipation, although by a genius, it received from Hegel an idealistic character. Hegel operated with ideological shadows as the ultimate reality. Marx demonstrated that the movement of these ideological shadows reflected nothing but the movement of material bodies.

We call our dialectic, materialist, since its roots are neither in heaven nor in the depths of our “free will,” but in objective reality, in nature. Consciousness grew out of the unconscious, psychology out of physiology, the organic world out of the inorganic, the solar system out of nebulae. On all the rungs of this ladder of development, the quantitative changes were transformed into qualitative. Our thought, including dialectical thought, is only one of the forms of the expression of changing matter. There is place within this system for neither God, nor Devil, nor immortal soul, nor eternal norms of laws and morals. The dialectic of thinking, having grown out of the dialectic of nature, possesses consequently a thoroughly materialist character.

Darwinism, which explained the evolution of species through quantitative transformations passing into qualitative, was the highest triumph of the dialectic in the whole field of organic matter. Another great triumph was the discovery of the table of atomic weights of chemical elements and further the transformation of one element into another.

With these transformations (species, elements, etc.) is closely linked the question of classification, equally important in the natural as in the social sciences. Linmeus’ system (18th century), utilizing as its starting point the immutability of species, was limited to the description and classification of plants according to their external characteristics. The infantile period of botany is analogous to the infantile period of logic, since the forms of our thought develop like everything that lives. Only decisive repudiation of the idea of fixed species, only the study of the history of the evolution of plants and their anatomy prepared the basis for a really scientific classification.

Marx, who in distinction from Darwin was a conscious dialectician, discovered a basis for the scientific classification of human societies in the development of their productive forces and the structure of the relations of ownership which constitute the anatomy of society. Marxism substituted for the vulgar descriptive classification of societies and states, which even up to now still flourishes in the universities, a materialistic dialectical classification. Only through using the method of Marx is it possible correctly to determine both the concept of a workers’ state and the moment of its downfall.

All this, as we see, contains nothing “metaphysical” or “scholastic,” as conceited ignorance affirms. Dialectic logic expresses the laws of motion in contemporary scientific thought. The struggle against materialist dialectics on the contrary expresses a distant past, conservatism of the petty bourgeoisie, the self-conceit of university routinists and … a spark of hope for an after-life.

=== FINITO===

 

 

U.S.A. Has Always Been a Phony ‘Democracy’: Ferdinand Lundberg’s “Sixty Families” (1937)

We are pleased to be able to offer our readers the long out-of-print and legendary expose of the oligarchical nature of the US capitalist ruling class: Ferdinand Lundberg’s “Sixty Families”, published during the Great Depression in 1937.

Lundberg’s very well-researched book revealed how few people actually control the political and economic life of the United States, in complete contradiction to the widespread belief – held principally by the poorly self-educated and therefore pathetically slavish U.S. working class – that the US is an egalitarian, democratic meritocracy, just as the “Founding Fathers” designed it to be.

Of course, the “Founding Fathers” of the USA never designed their government to be anything even remotely resembling a true democracy: they created a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie in which over 70% of the population was disenfranchised because they were either female, black, Native American or simply because they owned no – or not enough – property.

We obtained this copy of the book from the Internet Archive, where it is, as we write, being made available to the world for free.  If anyone wishes to object to our republishing it we suggest that they take up their complaint with the Archive.

We will be publishing each chapter of the book separately and not necessarily in chronological order.  We are reading it ourselves for the first time and will try to bring you the juiciest chapters first.

Enjoy!

[Update, 2 September 2016:  We apologise for the inconvenience – we should have uploaded the Index and the Reference Notes for the book earlier.  That oversight has been corrected. – IWPCHI]

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Lundberg – America’s Sixty Families (1937) – Title page, Acknowledgments, Foreword and Contents

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Lundberg – America’s Sixty Families (1937) – Chapter I – Golden Dynasties and Their Treasures

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Lundberg – America’s Sixty Families (1937) – Chapter II – The Sixty Families

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Lundberg – America’s Sixty Families (1937) – Chapter III – The Politics of Pecuniary Aggrandizement: 1896-1912

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Lundberg-americas-sixty-families-1937-chapter-iv-the-politics-of-pecuniary-aggrandizement-1912-1920

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Lundberg_America’s Sixty Families (1937) – Chapter XII – The ‘New Deal’ – And After

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Lundberg – America’s Sixty Families (1937) – Bibliography

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Lundberg – America’s Sixty Families (1937) – Reference Notes

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Lundberg – America’s Sixty Families (1937) – Index

 

 

 

CIA NAZI WAR CRIMINALS FILES: WWII UKRAINIAN FASCIST YURY LOPATINSKY

We are pleased to be able to continue our publication of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency’s released Nazi War Crimes documents; today we present our readers with the Office of Strategic Services/CIA dossier on one Yury Lopatinski.

His code name may be “Caparison-3” (either that or that is the code name of the source who provided the data on him to the OSS).  He was involved in the CIA’s “Operation Belladonna” which was run by the OSS and later the CIA using top ranking members of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church like Father Ivan Hrinioch, and which was intimately known by the leaders of the Roman Catholic Church in the Vatican.

LOPATINSKY, YURY_0001 LOPATINSKY, YURY_0002 LOPATINSKY, YURY_0003 LOPATINSKY, YURY_0004 LOPATINSKY, YURY_0005 LOPATINSKY, YURY_0006 LOPATINSKY, YURY_0007 LOPATINSKY, YURY_0008 LOPATINSKY, YURY_0009 LOPATINSKY, YURY_0010 LOPATINSKY, YURY_0011 LOPATINSKY, YURY_0012 LOPATINSKY, YURY_0013 LOPATINSKY, YURY_0014 LOPATINSKY, YURY_0015 LOPATINSKY, YURY_0016 LOPATINSKY, YURY_0017 LOPATINSKY, YURY_0018 LOPATINSKY, YURY_0019 LOPATINSKY, YURY_0020 LOPATINSKY, YURY_0021 LOPATINSKY, YURY_0022 LOPATINSKY, YURY_0023 LOPATINSKY, YURY_0024 LOPATINSKY, YURY_0025 LOPATINSKY, YURY_0026 LOPATINSKY, YURY_0027 LOPATINSKY, YURY_0028 LOPATINSKY, YURY_0029 LOPATINSKY, YURY_0030 LOPATINSKY, YURY_0031 LOPATINSKY, YURY_0032

 

9 August 2016: 71st Anniversary of US War Crime in Nagasaki

The images of the US war crimes of Hiroshima and Nagasaki usually focus on everything except the most important thing: the horrific effects of the nuclear bomb on human beings.  We see pictures of the bomb being built, the smiling fools proudly handling nuclear material that is so radioactive it is killing them while they pose for photos; the planes used, the happy crews of the planes… everything but the actual victims of the bombs.  These photos are graphic depictions of the horror of nuclear war in human terms.  This is what the human race will suffer through if we do not overthrow the capitalist system worldwide before the capitalist classes of the world go at it once again in their unending mad quest for profits.  World War Three does not have to happen: it is up to the workers of the world to prevent it from happening.  We have a choice between building an egalitarian socialist world or of sticking with a capitalist system that has already plunged the planet into two world wars.  The fate of the entire human race depends on what this generation of the 21st century decides to do.

14-year old girl at Ohmura Navy Hospital, Nagasaki, Japan, 11 August 1945.  Horribly burned by Nagasaki A-bomb, her skin hangs off her body in strips.  [Source: Getty Images]

Man receives treatment at Kozen Elementary School in Nagasaki_Getty Images_171480363

August, 1945, Nagasaki_small boy receives treatment for burns_Getty Images_171480368

Bones and ashes of victims_Nagasaki_Getty Images_171480389

— IWPCHI