October, the German revolution, and us

On FaceBook, Addy wrote:

Not many people care to realize that for lenin and trotsky. The most important priority was the German revolution!

So much so that they couldn't believe the Russian revolution would survive without a successful German (W European) revolution. We should bear this in mind and share their amazement and trepidation - what did it mean for one of the most contradictory countries on earth, weighed down by unbelievable backwardness, to carry out the most advanced social turnover in history and survive, alone, facing a world full of high-tech slave-drivers and assassins.
No one expected this to happen, not Marx, not Engels, and definitely not Lenin or Trotsky.
Nothing was where it should have been. Every day brought unheard of novelty, undreamt of glories and unprecedented horrors.
The survival of October, and the fact that it took imperialism seven whole decades to bring the bureaucracy to capitulation, means more for our revolutionary work than we know. As do the even less "textbook" socialist revolutions after ww2.
a) socialist revolution is on the agenda in our epoch, whether we like it or not;
b) it happens even under counter-revolutionary (ie non-Marxist, non-proletarian, non-Bolshevik, non-internationalist) leaderships (eg Ho, Tito, Mao, Castro);
c) once it happens, you have to stop the world turning on its axis to undo it, and use up as much energy to keep the world standing still as you did stopping it in the first place;
d) the working masses mobilize and fight for what they see as right...
sooo...
what are we waiting for?
The answer is - ourselves!
The problem isn't imperialism, economic development, brainwashing mass media, treacherous leaderships... we don't have to wait to find out that they are NOT an unsurmountable obstacle to our revolution
The problem is our own leadership and our own perspectives and actions.
In other words, if we don't do now what we know needs to be done, nothing will ever happen.


I'm tempted to say that the week after the next revolution, everybody will be wondering why it took so long...

Time to take it all back

A thread on a discussion list I'm in has been dealing with issues of ignorance and education in relation to a film on education called "Waiting for Superman" and the state of public awareness in the US revealed in the elections.

One of us summed it up by writing:

"…the country is sick."

I then made the following contribution on the general context of problems like this:

There's an enormous amount of surplus wealth around, and we produce it. It's just that we don't get any of it. Our work creates the surplus that is bloating the already bloated. And the less we get to keep, either as individuals, families or communities (the public), the more they get to squander.

Just think about how we get skinned all day every day. 

Our work produces ALL value. 

The following deductions are then made:

1) Profit (at least 10%)

2) Landlord "tax" (rent) (at least 10%)

3) Direct taxes (federal, state, local)

4) Indirect taxes (consumer, VAT, purchase, whatever)

5) Redistribution charges (money for bourgeois drones like advertising agencies, accountants and lawyers)

What's left is ours but it's often just stolen back from us in exchange for useless and harmful commodities (junk food, entertainment, drugs inc alcohol and tobacco, etc etc).

That's just the positive stealing.

Now add in the *negative* factors constricting our wealth:

1) Military expenditure;

2) Preventable and curable diseases;

3) Deliberate creation of ignorance and lack of skills;

4) Chaotic lunging between gluts and dearths of food and other goods;

5) Deliberate crippling of knowledge and culture, of ideas and creativity, due to secrecy, patents, copyright, restricted access;

6) Deliberate crippling of human interaction due to national borders, travel restrictions and cost;

7) Destruction of productive facilities in war;

8) Destruction of human beings in war.

NONE of the deductions listed affect the part of surplus used for new and re-investment. Any other beneficial use of surplus can be carried out by democratic decision at various levels within the process of wealth production, not outside it after the event. (Democratic here means made by elected representatives at the appropriate level, all on average income and subject to instant recall by their constituencies.)

ALL of the factors strangling human productive potential can be removed either overnight - like business secrecy, copyright and patent walls, and war - or be remedied in the decade or two required to adapt material facilities and productive processes to new requirements - military organizations and manufacturing, institutions of health, education, culture, and research.

This is all very clear. It's very simple, too.

But it's not easy, because the forces arrayed against understanding, reason and human prosperity are huge, brutal and ruthless.

However, their strength is parasitical, sucked from us and our work. If we stop them from sucking our blood, they shrivel.

If not, we shrivel.

They have been depriving us of what is ours for far too long. It's time for us to take it back.