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The Policy of Marxism-Leninism

Critique of the Communist Party of Britain by Punkerslut


Image: Body of Lenin, From Wikipedia

Start Date: February 19, 2007
Finish Date: February 19, 2007

     The following is a letter sent to the Communist Party of Britain in mid to late February of '07. To date, no response has been received.

--Punkerslut,
April 3, 2007

Greetings,

     I had the opportunity to read some of the literature on your site, and as a collectivist, I thought I would comment. First, it seemed a bit unusual that your regard yourselves as a Marxist-Leninist organization and at the same time, you believe in Democracy. At one point, your organization states, "Firstly, steps must be taken to ensure the widest possible democratic involvement of all sections of the working population at every step in the implementation of the AEPS." [part 5 of "Britain's Road to Socialism"] But Lenin's idea of Democracy: "...the democratic republic, the Constituent Assembly, general elections, etc., are, in practice, the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, and for the emancipation of labor from the yoke of capital there is no other way but to replace this dictatorship with the dictatorship of the proletariat." [From: "'Democracy' and Dictatorship."] It was under Leninist policy to abolish suffrage, to ameliorate all policies of socialization in favor of capitalism, and to sign over the majority of Russian territory to an Imperialist, bourgeoisie government. To imagine that anyone would further those aims, which were the primary components of Leninism, and to argue for Democracy is just a mere contradiction. In Lenin's opinion, government was nothing but an absolutely necessary tool of viciousness and oppression; persecution must be constant, but its target must be ever-changing.

     On the contrary, it certainly appears that the right to vote is not undervalued in your theory and arguments. This is unlike the Bolshevik and traditional, Statist-Communist theory, but nonetheless, it still involves a state, a government, a ruling body that uses coercion and force to achieve its end. I am a Communist, in that I believe the Proletariat ought to have full, uncompromised control of the means of productions -- we should enjoy its full productions and the right to manage our economy as we desire. However, I think that the Socialist Revolution will only come about by means of organizing a revolutionary federation of labor unions, preferably organized along Anarcho-Syndicalist means.

     If workers themselves possessed the ability of effective, massive work stoppages, organized strikes, and well-propagated boycotts, then control over the economy would slowly slip through the fingers of the so-called "invisible hand" of Capitalism. This would definitively create a system where the people who labor to create society's wealth would hold the ultimate power. Such a method of revolution is hardly considered by the Communist revolutionary. The hierarchies created by Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and Castro had completely abolished the rights of the workers to organize, to strike, or to boycott. The article on your website states that socialism will only come about "in the course of which the working class and its allies - by uniting and concentrating their forces - take state power out of the hands of the capitalist class." [Part 5] That happened in Cuba, China, the Soviet Union, Vietnam, and a slew of other nations. All of those nations abolished suffrage, created an oppressive censorship, and kept a constant reign of terror. It's not that the interests of the workers were never considered, that these movements were bankrupt of thoughtful and articulate individuals, or that Collectivism is inherently flawed.

     In all of these tragic movements, authority was given precedence over liberty -- and, it was always stressed that the workers should gain POLITICAL control, not SOCIAL and ECONOMIC control. Government, the means of force and oppression, should be our tool. It will never work. The only means to create a true Socialist world lie directly within the hands of the workers and nowhere else. You can see the failure in many of today's unions, I'm certain. Many of the union charters disallow no-confidence votes or withdrawing delegates; also many of the union leaders are working with their sworn enemies, like many of our politicians. They sign their people away into slavery for their material benefit. Few unions organize around the principle of Collectivism, and even fewer are motivated by the class war. New ideas are certainly in need, because capturing political power for the proletariat has done nothing but introduced new slaveries or extremely generous compromises with the enemy. The working class need power of the social and economic forces, as a means of effective, civil disobedience against capitalism and the state. Electioneering and party campaigning have never brought the freedoms our people appreciate today.

Andy Carloff,
Punkerslut


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