|

MARXIST THEORY
& DISCUSSION
EDITION #28

THIS ISSUE:

CELEBRATING
MARX'S 200th! PAGES 5 - 20

QUÉBEC SOLIDAIRE: RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTEST— WHAT SHOULD SOCIALISTS

UNITING THE INDEPENDENTISTS THE PEACE MOVEMENT AND THE DO ABOUT THE INTERNET?
RATHER THAN THE LEFT CHALLENGE OF "R2P"

PAGE 21 PAGE 27 PAGE 37

 ABOUT

Marx and Engels speaking with London dock workers. (1895) [Public Domain]

E D I T I O N T W E N T Y- E I G H T | S P R I N G / S U M M E R 2 0 1 8
The Spark! is the theoretical and discussion journal of the COMMUNIST PARTY OF CANADA.
The views expressed in signed pieces are those of the authors.

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2
 CONTENTS

ARTICLES
KARL MARX (1818-1883) 5
Danny Goldstick
Marx was born on May 5th, 1818; this year celebrates the
200th anniversary of his birth. Editor Danny Goldstick reflects
on what Marx gave us.

ON THE 200TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE

BIRTH OF KARL MARX 7
Liz Rowley
From the speech given on May 5th, 2018 in Edmonton.
Karl Marx's titanic stature in human history derives from
his monumental contributions to science, and to scientific
socialism, and the theory and organization of the revoultionary
working class movement, as well as the organization of the
Communist League, and the International Working Men's
Association.

KARL MARX REMEMBERED 15

Paul Lafargue
Married to Laura Marx in 1868, Cuban-born French and Creole
socialist Paul Lafargue reminisces about his father-in-law.
Originally written in 1890.

QUÉBEC SOLIDAIRE: UNITING THE

INDEPENDENTISTS RATHER THAN THE LEFT 21
Pierre Fontaine Tourists snap photos of the house Marx was born in. (2018) [Creative Commons]

Communist Party of Quebec leader Pierre Fontaine analyzes

the current political landscape in the wake of left party Québec
solidaire's merger with Parti québecois breakaway Option
nationale.
RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTEST — THE PEACE
MOVEMENT AND THE CHALLENGE OF "R2P" 27
Dave McKee
As the dangers of mass destruction through war grow, the
challenge to the peace and anti-imperialist movements involves
exposing the real, imperialist reasons behind interventions
cloaked in the humanitarian language of "responsibility to
protect".
WHAT SHOULD SOCIALISTS DO ABOUT THE
INTERNET? 37
Daniel Joseph
Socialists need to seriously contend with the economic and
structural role the internet is playing today in our politics and
struggles, both here in Canada and around the world.
WHY WE HAIL GREAT OCTOBER 43
Jeanne McGuire
From the speech given on November 18th, 2017 at a banquet
in Toronto celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Russian
Revolution.

BOOK REVIEWS

BOOKS ABOUT THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION 49

Roger Perkins
The explosive events of October 1917 still resonate strongly, if
not always consciously, in the political practices of the present
day. An excerpt of reviewer Roger Perkins' survey of some
contemporary literature about the Great October Socialist
Revolution in celebration of its hundredth anniversary, omitted
Detail from a poster celebrating the third anniversary of the October Revolution. (1920)
[Public Domain]
from our previous issue due to a printer's error.

3
 GALLERY

Last known photograph of Karl Marx, taken by E. Dutertre in Algiers, on 28 April, 1882. [Public Domain]

4
 EDITORIAL
KARL MARX
(1818-1883)
Danny Goldstick
M
arx was born on May 5, 1818. This year
his anniversary is being celebrated
around the world, on account of what
he gave us. It wasn’t his “far-sighted vision”,
although he had that. He was far from the
first to envisage a sharing society free from
capitalist domination. And it was not his turn to
the working class to achieve such an outcome.
Numbers of communist workers had figured
that out before Marx did. He was able to learn
from them.
There was dialectical thought before
Marx, and there was materialism before Marx.
And others before him had identified class
struggles in society, present and historical.
In a letter of March 5, 1852 to Joseph
Weydemeyer, Marx wrote,
“Now as for myself, I do not claim to have
discovered either the existence of classes
in modern society or the struggle between
them. Long before me, bourgeois historians
had described the historical development
of this struggle between the classes, as
had bourgeois economists their economic
anatomy. My own contribution was 1. to
show that the existence of classes is merely
bound up with certain historical phases in the
development of production; 2. that the class
struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship
of the proletariat; 3. that this dictatorship
itself constitutes no more than a transition
to the abolition of all classes and to a classless
society.”
(Karl Marx and Frederick Engels Collected
Danny Goldstick is the editor of The Spark!
5
Works, Volume 39, pages 62-65)
Mass classes of the oppressed prior
to the Industrial Revolution were scattered
geographically and ignorant. By Marx’s day,
however, the class of toilers was coming to be,
“disciplined, united, organised by the very
mechanism of the process of capitalist
production itself.”
(Capital I, chapter 32, Marx and Engels
Collected Works, Volume 35, page 750)
Workers’ daily experience on the job in modern
industry prepares them with a collectivity and
discipline so as to act together effectively upon
coming to see the need. And modern capitalism
is a teacher as well by unavoidably producing
recurrent crises capable of shaking people out
of their normal conservative caution. That’s
what makes the workers’ eventual takeover
inevitable.
As Marx’s brilliant co-worker Frederick
Engels put it in 1880,
“Hitherto, the owner of the instruments
of labour had himself appropriated the
product, because, as a rule, it was his own
product and the assistance of others was the
exception. Now the owner of the instruments
of labour always appropriated to himself
the product, although it was no longer his
product but exclusively the product of the
labour of others. Thus, the products now
produced socially were not appropriated
by those who had actually set in motion the
means of production and actually produced
 KARL MARX (1818-1883)

the commodities, but by the capitalists. The your job instills that in you is of course going
means of production, and production itself, to be a matter of degree. Miners’ capability for
had become in essence socialised. But they solidarity is famous, for example. Miners know
were subjected to a form of appropriation
they depend on each other every day for their
which presupposes the private production
of individuals, under which, therefore, lives. But different workers’ work can be less
every one owns his own product and brings or be more collectivizing. All workers, though,
it to market. [...] have an interest in acting together to resist the
“This contradiction, which gives to the boss class.
new mode of production its capitalistic Recurrently and unevenly, capitalism
character, contains the germ of the whole
smartens people up and forces them into
of the social antagonisms of to-day. The
greater the mastery obtained by the new action. Other class systems in history have had
mode of production over all important fields their day, and the eventual end of the capitalist
of production and in all manufacturing system is certain also, although the historical
countries, the more it reduced individual path to that result in different countries will
production to an insignificant residuum, necessarily depend on many particular causes
the more clearly was brought out the
hard to foresee. But we can know that our efforts
incompatibility of socialised production
with capitalistic appropriation.” too are an indispensable part of this process.
(Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, III, Marx
and Engels Collected Works, Volume 24, page Happy birthday, comrade Karl! n
310)
Of course, the crises capitalism produces
vary widely in severity. They hit much harder
in the Third World than in imperialist countries
like Canada. And not all workers get the
collectivity and discipline instilled in them on
the job that industrial workers do. How much

W H Y M A R X WR OT E CA P ITA L
(From a letter of Karl Marx to Sigfrid Meyer, dated April 30, 1867:)

“Why... did I not answer you? Because I was the whole time at death’s door. I thus
had to make use of every moment when I was capable of work to complete my book,
to which I have sacrificed my health, happiness and family. I hope this explanation
suffices. I laugh at the so-called ‘practical’ men and their wisdom. If one wanted to
be an ox, one could, of course, turn one’s back on the sufferings of humanity and
look after one’s own hide. But I would really have thought myself unpractical if I had
croaked without finally completing my book, at least in manuscript.”

(See Karl Marx and Frederick Engels Collected Works, Volume 42, page 366.)

6
 FEATURE

People pose in front of bronze statue of Karl Marx created by Chinese artist Wu Weishan to mark the 200th anniversary of Marx's birth in his hometown of Trier. (5 May, 2018)
[Wolfgang Rattay | Reuters]

ON THE 200TH ANNIVERSARY

OF THE BIRTH OF
KARL MARX
Liz Rowley

[Based on a speech given in Edmonton on May 5, 2018]

L
et us begin this evening, by raising our contributions to science, and to scientific
glasses to Karl Marx, who was born on May socialism, and the theory and organization of
5th, 1818 – 200 years ago today. the revolutionary working class movement, the
As Frederick Engels said at his funeral, organization of the Communist League, and
a short lifetime later: “His name and his work the International Working Men’s Association –
will endure through the ages.” So it has, and so political organizations of the working class that
it will. could lead this revolutionary and world-wide
Karl Marx’s titanic stature in human struggle for socialism and for communism.
history derives from his monumental As Engels said at Marx’s funeral,

Liz Rowley is the leader of the COMMUNIST PARTY OF “Just as Darwin discovered the law of
CANADA. evolution in organic nature, so Marx

7
 ON THE 200TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE BIRTH OF KARL MARX

discovered the law of evolution in human
history; he discovered the simple fact
[...] that mankind must first of all eat and
drink, have shelter and clothing, before
it can pursue politics, science, religion,
art, etc; and that therefore the production
of the immediate material means of life
and consequently the degree of economic
development attained by a given people or
during a given epoch, form the foundation
upon which the forms of government, the
legal conceptions, the art and even the
religious ideas of the people concerned
have been evolved, and in the light of
which these things must there be explained,
instead of vice versa as had hitherto been
the case."
"Marx also discovered the special law of
motion governing the present-day capitalist
method of production and the bourgeois
society that this method of production has
created”,
Engels continued.
“The discovery of surplus value suddenly
threw light on the problem [...] which all
previous investigators, both bourgeois
economists and socialist critics, had been
groping (for) in the dark."*
“Happy the man to whom it is granted to
make even one such discovery. But in every
single field which Marx investigated – and
he investigated very many fields, none of
them superficially – in every field, even in
that of mathematics, he made independent
discoveries.
This was the man of science. But
this was not even half the man. Science
was for Marx a historically dynamic,
revolutionary force. However great the joy
with which he welcomed a new discovery
in some theoretical science whose practical
application perhaps it was as yet quite
impossible to envisage, he experienced a
quite other kind of joy when the discovery
involved immediate revolutionary changes
in industry and in the general course of
history. [...] For Marx was before all else a
revolutionary. His real mission in life was
to contribute in one way or another to the
overthrow of capitalist society and of the
forms of government which it had brought
into being, to contribute to the liberation
of the present-day proletariat which he
was the first to make conscious of its own
position and its needs, of the conditions
under which it could win its freedom.
Fighting was his element. And he fought
with a passion, a tenacity, and a success
such as few could rival.”

“Two such discoveries would be enough for

one life-time,” said Engels.

* This is a reference to Marx’s scientific insight that rent, interest and profit can all be considered together as the
proceeds of exploiting workers’ labour, though divided among different capitalists. In a letter to Engels written on
August 24, 1867, after sending the corrected proofs of Capital to the publisher, Marx wrote,

“The best points in my book are:

1. the two-fold character of labour according to whether it is expressed in use-value or exchange-value […]
2. the treatment of surplus-value regardless of its particular forms as profit, interest, ground rent, etc. […]
The treatment of the particular forms in classical political economy, where they are for ever being jumbled up
together with the general form, is an olla potrida [a hotchpotch].”

(Karl Marx and Frederick Engels Collected Works, Volume 42, page 407.)

8
 ON THE 200TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE BIRTH OF KARL MARX

M
arx started life as the son of German
Jews, his father a lawyer and his mother
of Dutch background. According to his
daughter, Eleanor, his favourite authors were
Racine and Voltaire, Shakespeare and Homer.
He was born in the small German town of Trier
and received his university education in Bonn
and Berlin, moving from law to philosophy
and receiving his PhD degree in 1841. Already
critical-minded, he began to write for various
liberal newspapers. At the age of 24 he was
offered the editorship of one of these – the
Rheinische Zeitung in Cologne. His incisive
criticism of governmental reaction in its pages
infuriated the official censors, until in 1843
the Rheinische Zeitung was closed down by the
government.
Marx’s observation two years later,
“Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted
the world; the point however is to change it,”
is universally recognized as a call to action Lithograph of Marx as a student in 1834. [Public Domain]
– as a call to link revolutionary theory to
revolutionary organization and action.
After a seven-year engagement, Marx Pierre Proudhon’s Philosophy of Poverty, and
married Jenny von Westphalen in 1843, and he joined a conspiratorial hole-in-the-wall
they moved to Paris, keeping just ahead of the organization which became the Communist
forces of the law. They had several children, League. He transformed this organization into
two of whom died at a young age, leaving three a revolutionary vanguard in the short space of
daughters. All of his daughters were named three years.
Jenny after their mother, and with the exception Marx paid the rent from writing articles
of the eldest daughter, who was known as Jenny, for various progressive journals, which was
the other two daughters were known by their generally insufficient, leaving the family in
second names or the affectionate nicknames poverty throughout this period of their lives.
given to them in the family. Marx’s third Marx’s closest friend and collaborator Frederick
daughter, Eleanor Marx was a Marxist writer Engels came to support the family financially,
and agitator in her own right. especially after his father’s death, when he was
It was after his marriage in 1843 that able to take his share out of the family textile
Marx began to write pro-communist theoretical business and retire from employment there.
works, the first of which was The Holy Family, Engels also left generous bequests to Marx’s
which he wrote with Engels. This was a satirical surviving children in his will.
critique of post-Hegelian idealism and his In January 1848 Marx and Engels
former mentor Bruno Bauer in particular. published the Communist Manifesto, which was
Shortly after, he moved (under duress) to the theoretical and political program of the
Brussels, where in 1847 he wrote the lectures Communist League, just prior to the 1848-
later published as Wage Labour and Capital and 49 wave of revolutions across Europe. The
also The Poverty of Philosophy, in response to Manifesto was written in German, but in the

9
 ON THE 200TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE BIRTH OF KARL MARX
Marx and Engels in the printing house of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, 1848. [E. Capiro | Public Domain]
170 years since then, it has been translated
into just about every language in the world.
The Manifesto famously declares, in clear and
uncompromising words:
“In place of the old bourgeois society,
with its classes and class antagonisms, we
shall have an association, in which the free
development of each is the condition for
the free development of all."
"Let the ruling classes tremble at a
Communist revolution. The proletarians
have nothing to lose but their chains.
They have a world to win. Workers of all
countries, unite.”
Marx was just 30 years old when the Manifesto
was written.
With Europe in flames, Marx then went
back to Cologne and edited the New Rheinische
Zeitung (Neue Rheinische Zeitung – subtitled
Organ of the Democracy). This newspaper was
10
a revolutionary-democratic opponent of the
monarchical government but not a socialist or
communist publication, though on the day it
was shut down in 1849 its final issue was printed
in red ink with an appeal to the workers of
Cologne.
As the liberal and democratic revolutions
were defeated across Europe, Marx moved to
London, where he lived in exile for the rest
of his life, spending much of his time writing
and communicating with the revolutionary
working class movements across Europe and
in the U.S.A.
The Communist League survived
until 1852, when the Berlin government, now
firmly back in power, hunted down its Central
leadership, then located in Cologne, arresting
and trying them in the Cologne Communist
Trials. Seven of their leaders were imprisoned
in a fortress with sentences of three and up to
seven years. The League was then dissolved
by its remaining members, terrorized by the
police.
 ON THE 200TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE BIRTH OF KARL MARX
Marx’s theoretical and popular writings,
pamphlets, meetings, and agitation in
revolutionary circles in Cologne, Paris, Brussels
and London did not sit well with the bourgeois
governments and ruling classes of Europe
that he regularly identified as the source of
war, reaction, and social misery, and the main
obstacle to social progress and working class
advance. This was topped off, as far as Europe’s
ruling class was concerned with the formation
of the International Working Men’s Association
in 1864, as a new wave of working class struggle
began to unfold.
Members of the French section of the
I.W.A. – the First International – were active
in the Paris Commune rising of 1871. This was
the first time in history that the working class
held power anywhere – if only for a brief two
months – before being destroyed and vilified
by Europe’s ruling classes. The I.W.A.’s strong
defence of the Commune – The Civil War in
France, written by Marx – for the first time
brought it and him to wide public attention.
But the I.W.A. was reluctantly wound up in
1873, as the class struggle waned once more.
While studying at the British Museum,
Marx wrote many leaflets and pamphlets
attacking, for instance, Lord Palmerston’s
government in the U.K. Palmerston posed as
a defender of the people internationally, but in
fact consistently backed the interests of British
capitalism.
It was in the British Museum library
also that Marx developed his theory of surplus
value first set out in his book, Contribution to the
Critique of Political Economy, published in 1859.
In 1867 Marx published Volume I of Capital (Das
Kapital) in German in the city of Hamburg.
The next two volumes were published after his
death by his close friend Frederick Engels and
have been translated into every major language
around the world since.
The collected writings of Marx and
Engels, comprising 50 volumes in English,
were published, starting in 1975, by a three-
way collaboration, including International
11
“The [Communist] Manifesto was written
in German, but in the 170 years since
then, it has been translated into just
about every language in the world.”
Publishers of New York.
The Rules of the International Working
Men’s Association of 1864 set out the main
tasks and objectives of today’s International
Communist Movement,
“Considering:
u That the emancipation of the working
classes must be conquered by the working
classes themselves; that the struggle for
the emancipation of the working classes
means not a struggle for class privileges
and monopolies, but for equal rights and
duties, and the abolition of all class rule;
u That the economical subjection of the
man of labour to the monopolizer of the
means of labour, that is, the sources of life,
lies at the bottom of servitude in all of its
forms of social misery, mental degradation
and political dependence;
u That all efforts aiming at that great
end have hitherto failed from the want of
solidarity between the manifold divisions
of labour in each country, and from the
absence of a fraternal bond of union
between the working classes of different
countries;
u That the emancipation of labour is
neither a local nor a national but a social
problem, embracing all countries in which
modern society exists, and depending for its
solution on the concurrence, practical and
theoretical of the most advanced countries;
u That the present revival of the working
classes in the most industrious countries
of Europe, while it raises a new hope, gives
solemn warning against a relapse into the
old errors, and calls for the immediate
combination of the still disconnected
movements;
“For these reasons the International
Working Men’s Association has been
founded.”
 ON THE 200TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE BIRTH OF KARL MARX
“Marx’s laws of capitalist development
are being exposed in horrendous full
colour and detail, as US imperialism
dictates how the world’s peoples,
nations and states will live or
when and how they will die.”
T
wo hundred years after Marx’s birth, and
one hundred and thirty-five years after his
death, the international working class has
passed through many trials, many struggles,
the most significant of which was the victory
of the Great October Socialist Revolution
in November 1917 under the leadership of
Lenin and the Bolshevik Party. The Russian
Revolution sent shock waves through the
capitalist world, shaking the capitalist system
to its core. To the international working class
movement, the red revolution sparked a
grassfire of hope, energy and solidarity, and led
to the creation of revolutionary Communist
Parties around the world. Revolution was in
the air, and had to be stamped out in Russia,
according to Winston Churchill, who famously
called for governments to “smash the Bolshevik
eggs in the nest and not wait until Bolshevik
chickens are hatched all over the world”. The
Canadian government accused Lenin of being
a German agent, while the Catholic Church
pronounced him to be a devil.
Working people around the world
rallied in “Hands Off Russia” campaigns that
in many countries, including Canada, involved
the trade unions and workers’ organizations of
the time. In Alberta, this included the Alberta
Federation of Labour which in February 1919
unanimously passed a resolution in support of
the Russian Revolution, which read, in part:
“Resolved that that this convention of the
Alberta Federation of Labour places itself on
record as being in full accord and sympathy
12
with the aims and purposes of the Russian
and German socialist revolutions, and
"Be It Further Resolved that this convention
gives the incoming executive officers full
power to call a province-wide general
strike should the allied powers persist
in their attempt to overthrow the Soviet
administration in Russia or Germany or
in any country in which a Soviet form of
government is or may be established.”
Heady stuff indeed! When Marx died
in 1883 there had been another massive
outpouring of grief and tributes from all over
the world. One of the biggest events was held in
New York at the Cooper Union Meeting, where
thousands were turned away because the hall
couldn’t hold all those who came to offer their
respects and hear the tributes.
Since the overthrow of socialism in the
USSR and a large part of the socialist system of
states, imperialism has crowed – once again –
that socialism is dead, that Marxism is dead –
that capitalism is eternal – that we have reached
the end of history.
The people of Cuba would disagree –
now in the 60th year of their socialist revolution
– just 90 miles away from US imperialism –
from the Empire.
The people of China would also
disagree – now in the 70th year of their socialist
revolution – with a quarter of the world’s
population, a rapidly expanding economy,
and holding more than $1.17 trillion of US
government debt.
The people of Vietnam would disagree,
43 years after militarily defeating the U.S. –
the most powerful imperialist country in the
world.
The people of the DPRK of North
Korea would also disagree, as they reject US
imperialism’s threats to “totally destroy” the
Korean Peninsula – threats made by Trump at
the UN last winter as his campaign for “regime
change” went full-tilt.
The people of Syria, Yemen, Iran,
Palestine, Libya, Venezuela, Brazil, and many
 ON THE 200TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE BIRTH OF KARL MARX

other countries seeking their own path of social

and economic development, independence,
and sovereignty, including some who choose
the socialist path, would also not agree. These
countries and peoples too are threatened with
regime change, or are already facing the US
war machine and US aggression.
And what about Canada? Working
people across Canada are also facing a foreign
policy of active involvement in US / NATO and
EU dirty wars. We are being told that military
spending will increase by 70% this decade,
along with more financial commitments to
NATO – imperialism’s global army. Workers
are facing real levels of unemployment that
are startling, and real wages that have fallen or
stagnated while prices and corporate profits
have skyrocketed. This is the reality in the
advanced capitalist countries today. This is
what is underneath workers’ growing anger
with capitalist governments, corporations, and Karl Marx, his wife Jenny Marx-Von Westphalen, daughter Jenny, and friend
Friedrich Engels. "Happy Holidays" (1982) [Ha Qiongwen | Public Domain]
institutions. Their anger is well-founded, and
has found outlets in the Occupy movement, in
Idle No More, in the Women’s march, in the their countries. In Europe, far-right and fascist
Quebec student strike, in the illegal US teachers’ parties are electing MPs and governments,
strikes, and in the rising of the Indigenous while right-wing populism and reaction –
peoples. It’s found a voice in widespread linked to far-right and fascist forces – are
support for Bernie Sanders in the U.S., and gaining ground in Canada and the U.S.
for Jeremy Corbyn in the U.K., people who For millions, including millions in the
call themselves socialists though they are not advanced capitalist countries, capitalism isn’t
scientific socialists, they are not Marxists, and working. Working people are desperately
they do not call for overthrowing the capitalist searching for an alternative, expressed in the
state and instituting social ownership of the idea that “another world is possible”. We can
economy. Yet they reflect the growing interest add – “and urgent.”
in socialism around the globe, and the growing Nuclear war and irreversible climate
demand for fundamental social change. change are new phenomena since Marx’s
In fact, Marx’s laws of capitalist time, which have objectively speeded up the
development are being exposed in horrendous necessity of revolutionary transformation.
full colour and detail, as US imperialism What is missing is the mass influence of the
dictates how the world’s peoples, nations and revolutionary movement and the consciousness
states will live or when and how they will die. on the part of the working class of its historic
The conditions of the working class, even in mission to overthrow capitalism, and to
the most developed capitalist countries, have establish working class power: socialism.
deteriorated to the point that force and war are This revolutionary movement has not
increasingly the tools capitalist governments died out as a result of the great loss of the USSR
reach for to maintain the rule of capital in and the other socialist states of the twentieth

13
 ON THE 200TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE BIRTH OF KARL MARX

century, but it has been ferociously attacked,

vilified, distorted and undermined by the
actions of imperialism globally and in each

W
country. The history of socialism has been hen Marx died, Engels said at his
distorted and perverted, the role of the world’s graveside, “Marx was the best hated
Communist and progressive movements has and most calumniated man of his
been distorted and perverted, as imperialism time.”
desperately seeks to extend its life, and The revolutionary Wilhelm Liebknecht
continuously expand its rate of profit. responded:
As Marx noted, there are waves in the
class struggle which count as setbacks and “True. He was the most hated, but he was
advances for the working class and its allies also the most loved. Most hated by the
through history. The current defensive position oppressors and exploiters of the people; best
of the working class is historically temporary loved by the oppressed and exploited, as far
because capitalism cannot survive its built-in as they are conscious of their situation.”
contradictions. It has produced its own grave-
diggers: the working class; it has outlived its Our job today is make the oppressed and
usefulness and is rotting. But it will not fall of exploited conscious of their situation, and
its own accord. It requires the active conscious armed with scientific socialism, to win socialism
revolutionary action of the working class to in Canada and around the globe.
finally topple it and to create a new society in Workers of the world unite! You have
which exploitation and oppression are assigned nothing to lose but your chains!
to the garbage bin of history. We have a world to win! n
The good news? Capitalism is already
pregnant with socialism!

Detail from the left panel of the "History of Mexico" mural by Diego Rivera on a stairway of the Palacio Nacional (National Palace) in México City. (2012) [Public Domain]

14
 ARTICLE

Frederick Engels & Karl Marx; front: Marx daughters Laura, Eleanor and Jenny, before June 1864. Reproduced from a daguerreotype. [Public Domain]

KARL MARX REMEMBERED

Paul Lafargue

(Karl Marx and his wife Jenny had three children who lived to reach adulthood – daughters Jenny,
Laura and Eleanor. Paul Lafargue (1842-1911), who came to London in 1865 after being banned from
all French universities for student activism, married Laura Marx there in 1868 and, back in France
after 1882, was one of the founders of French Socialism (which was much later to split into the
Communist and Socialist parties). Lafargue served a term in the French Chamber of Deputies and
a couple of brief terms in jail as a political prisoner. His writings include The Right To Be Lazy (La
droit à la paresse, completed in prison in 1883), on the importance of reduced hours of work. The
nineteenth century had a Romantic image of what a “genius” should be like, but probably Lafargue
did not have to exaggerate very much to make his account of Marx fit. What we print here is
excerpted from his longer essay on Marx, written in 1890, as republished in Reminiscences of Marx
and Engels (Moscow, no date), pages 71-74.)

I
met Karl Marx for the first time in February
1865. The First International had been
founded on September 28, 1864 at a meeting
Paul Lafargue was born in Cuba to French and Creole
parents and married Marx's second daughter, Laura.
in Saint Martin’s Hall, London, and I went to
London from Paris to give Marx news of the
development of the young organization there.
M. Tolain, now a senator in the bourgeois
republic, gave me a letter of introduction.

15
 KARL MARX REMEMBERED
“[Marx] knew Heine and Goethe by
heart and often quoted them in his
conversations; he was an assiduous
reader of poets in all European
languages. Every year he read
Aschylus in the Greek original.”
I was then 24 years old. As long as I live
I shall remember the impression that first visit
made on me. Marx was not well at the time.
He was working on the first book of Capital,
which was not published until two years later,
in 1867. He feared he would not be able to finish
his work and was therefore glad of visits from
young people. “I must train men to continue
communist propaganda after me,” he used to
say.
Karl Marx was one of the rare men who
could be leaders in science and public life at the
same time: these two aspects were so closely
united in him that one can understand him
only by taking into account both the scholar
and the socialist fighter.
Marx held the view that science must be
pursued for itself, irrespective of the eventual
results of research, but at the same time that a
scientist could only debase himself by giving
up active participation in public life or shutting
himself up in his study or laboratory like a
maggot in cheese and holding aloof from the
life and political struggle of his contemporaries.
“Science must not be a selfish pleasure,” he used
to say. “Those who have the good fortune to be
able to devote themselves to scientific pursuits
must be the first to place their knowledge at
the service of humanity.” One of his favourite
sayings was: “Work for humanity.”
Although Marx sympathized profoundly
with the sufferings of the working classes, it
was not sentimental considerations but the
study of history and political economy that led
him to communist views. He maintained that
any unbiased man, free from the influence
of private interests and not blinded by class
16
prejudices, must necessarily come to the same
conclusions.
Yet while studying the economic and
political development of human society
without any preconceived opinion, Marx wrote
with no other intention than to propagate the
results of his research and with a determined
will to provide a scientific basis for the socialist
movement, which had so far been lost in the
clouds of utopianism. He gave publicity to
his views only to promote the triumph of the
working class, whose historic mission is to
establish communism as soon as it has achieved
political and economic leadership of society.
[...]
Marx did not confine his activity to the
country he was born in. “I am a citizen of the
world,” he used to say; “I am active wherever I
am.” And in fact, no matter what country events
and political persecution drove him to – France,
Belgium, England – he took a prominent
part in the revolutionary movements which
developed there.
However, it was not the untiring an
incomparable socialist agitator but rather the
scientist that I first saw in his study in Maitland
Park Road. That study was the centre to which
Party comrades came from all parts of the
civilized world to find out the opinion of the
master of socialist thought. One must know
that historic room before one can penetrate
into the intimacy of Marx’s spiritual life.
It was on the first floor, flooded by light
from a broad window that looked out on to the
park. Opposite the window and on either side of
the fireplace the walls were lined with bookcases
filled with books and stacked up to the ceiling
with newspapers and manuscripts. Opposite
the fireplace on one side of the window were
two tables piled up with papers, books and
newspapers; in the middle of the room, well
in the light, stood a small, plain desk (three
foot by two) and a wooden armchair; between
the armchair and the bookcase, opposite the
window, was a leather sofa on which Marx used
to lie down for a rest from time to time. On the
 KARL MARX REMEMBERED

mantelpiece were more books, cigars, matches,

tobacco boxes, paperweights and photographs
of Marx’s daughters and wife, Wilhelm Wolff
and Frederick Engels.
Marx was a heavy smoker. “Capital,” he
said to me once, “will not even pay for the cigars
I smoked writing it.” But he was still heavier on
matches. He so often forgot his pipe or cigar
that he emptied an incredible number of boxes
of matches in a short time to relight them.
He never allowed anybody to put
his books or papers in order – or rather in
disorder. The disorder in which they lay was
only apparent, everything was really in its
intended place so that it was easy for him to lay
his hand on the book or notebook he needed.
Even during conversations he often paused to
show in the book a quotation or figure he had
just mentioned. He and his study were one: the
books and papers in it were as much under his
control as his own limbs. Paul Lafargue in 1871. [Public Domain]
Marx had no use for formal symmetry
in the arrangement of his books: volumes of
different sizes and pamphlets stood next to quality of paper or type; he would turn down
one another. He arranged them according to the corners of the pages, make pencil marks
their contents, not their size. Books were tools in the margin and underline whole lines. He
for his mind, not articles of luxury. “They are never wrote on books, but sometimes he could
my slaves and they must serve me as I will,” he not refrain from an exclamation or question
used to say. He paid no heed to size or binding, mark when the author went too far. His system

M A R X ON P OP ULA R IT Y

“For popularity Marx entertained a sovereign contempt. What he especially praised

in Robert Owen [early nineteenth-century utopian socialist] was that whenever any
of his ideas became popular he would come forward with a new demand making him
unpopular.”

Wilhelm Liebknecht, quoted in David McLellan (ed.), Karl Marx, Interviews and Recollections (London,
1981), page 50.

17
 KARL MARX REMEMBERED

of underlining made it easy for him to find

any passage he needed in any book. He had
the habit of going through his notebooks
and reading the passages underlined in the
books after intervals of many years in order
to keep them fresh in his memory. He had an
extraordinarily reliable memory which he had
cultivated from his youth according to Hegel’s
advice by learning by heart verse in a foreign
language he did not know.
He knew Heine and Goethe by heart
and often quoted them in his conversations;
he was an assiduous reader of poets in all
European languages. Every year he read
Aschylus in the Greek original. He considered
him and Shakespeare as the greatest dramatic
geniuses humanity ever gave birth to. His
respect for Shakespeare was boundless: he
made a detailed study of his works and knew
even the least important of his characters.
His whole family had a real cult for the great Jenny Laura Marx. (n.d.) [Public Domain]

English dramatist; his three daughters knew

many of his works by heart. When after 1848
he wanted to perfect his knowledge of English,
which he could already read, he sought out and
classified all Shakespeare’s original expressions.
He did the same with part of the polemical
works of William Cobbett, of whom he had a
high opinion. Dante and Robert Burns ranked
among his favourite poets and he would listen
with great pleasure to his daughters reciting or
singing the Scottish poet’s satires or ballads. n

TEST IMONY

Engels, in London, writing to Marx’s daughter Laura Lafargue, in France, Feb. 25, 1888:

"You will have heard that [Theodor] Reuss has sued [William] Morris for calling him a
[German] spy in the Commonweal. [...] I don’t think Reuss will venture going into the
witness box, perjury is only allowed to regular British police constables."

— Karl Marx and Frederick Engels Collected Works, Volume 48, pages 159-160.

18
 EXCERPT

KARL MARX: “CONFESSIONS” (MID-1860S)

Marx’s daughter Laura had got a “Confessions Book” with a fun questionnaire for family and friends
to fill out on its different pages. Some of her father’s answers here seem less serious than others. For
instance, by the third-last answer Karl Marx was obviously starting to get bored with the exercise. In
spite of his (to us) outrageous third answer, in practice Marx’s wife Jenny and their daughters Jenny,
Laura and Eleanor were far from pushovers. Eleanor Marx was to be a major agitational speaker
spearheading the more militant and political “new unionism” of the 1890s in Britain.

Your favourite virtue Simplicity.

Your favourite virtue in man Strength.
Your favourite virtue in woman Weakness.
Your chief characteristic Singleness of purpose.
Your idea of happiness To fight.
Your idea of misery Submission.
The vice you excuse most Gullibility.
The vice you detest most Servility.
Your aversion Martin Tupper [popular Victorian versifier:
"Nature's own nobleman, honest and frank,
is a man with his heart in his hand", etc.].
Favourite occupation Book-worming.
Favourite poet Shakespeare, Aeschylus, Goethe.
Favourite prose-writer Diderot.
Favourite hero Spartacus, Kepler.
Favourite heroine Gretchen [character in Goethe's Faust].
Favourite flower Daphne.
Favourite colour Red.
Favourite name Laura, Jenny.
Favourite dish Fish.
Favourite maxim "Nihil humani a me alienum puto"
["I don't regard anything human as alien to
me"].
Favourite motto "De ombibus dubitandum"
["Exercise doubt about everything"].

(Reprinted from Reminiscences of Marx and Engels, Moscow, no date.)

19
 GALLERY

An oil painting of Frederick Engels and Karl Marx at the National Museum of China. (n.d.) [Public Domain]

20
 ARTICLE

Québec solidaire remains a left-wing and progressive organization, but the merger with Option nationale opens the door to a possible nationalist degeneration. [Québec Solidaire]

QUÉBEC SOLIDAIRE:
UNITING INDEPENDENTISTS
RATHER THAN THE LEFT
Pierre Fontaine

[Since 2006 the Quebec political scene has included a strongly left party, Québec solidaire, with significant
though unofficial ties to organized labour. QS was formed by combining the Union des forces progressistes
– Union of Progressive Forces – and Option citoyenne – Citizens’ Option. The UFP itself had been formed in
2002 by a federated coming-together of the Rassemblement pour l’alternative progressiste – Union for the
Progressive Alternative – the Parti de la démocratie socialiste – Party of Socialist Democracy (up to then the
Quebec wing of the NDP) – and the Parti communiste du Québec. Québec solidaire now has three members in
the Quebec National Assembly, all from Montreal.

[QS has stood up strongly for the interests of working people, for women, for peace, for indigenous rights, for
immigrants, and for most progressive causes, including opposition to imperialist “globalization”. It has been
pro-independence, but has allowed members to dissent on that issue, and even to run as QS candidates for
the National Assembly. It has called for the convening of a constituent assembly to decide Quebec’s future,
but up to now has said that whether or not to secede from Canada would be up to that Assembly to determine.
Now it has decided to merge with Option nationale, a breakaway from the Parti québecois sharply critical of
the PQ for not making independence an urgent enough issue.]

21
 QUÉBEC SOLIDAIRE: UNITING THE INDEPENDENTISTS RATHER THAN THE LEF T
I
n early December 2017, Québec solidaire
and Option nationale at their respective
conventions both adopted the terms of
an agreement in principle leading to their
merger into a single organization. While
"Québec solidaire" will remain the name of the
merged organization, it is nevertheless Option
nationale that has won the most with respect to
the contentious elements of the two programs.
Moreover, as soon as the agreement in
principle was made public by the QS and ON
leaders in March 2017, l’Aut’Journal, organ of
the left of the PQ, declared with satisfaction that
the Option nationale leadership had "succeeded
in significantly altering the direction of Québec
solidaire".
Although there was internal debate
in both organizations, the understanding, in
reality, was to take it or leave it as it stood. Since
their respective conventions calling to approve
it took place within a few months of the next
provincial election, the pressure was extremely
heavy on the delegates to adopt the agreement.
Leaders, particularly at QS, even intervened
directly to exert pressure against any dissent
that had arisen in the pre-convention period.
One of the most important consequences
is that QS accepts that the constituent assembly
it proposes is now "closed", that is, the result is
predetermined to be in favor of an independent
state, although a few months earlier, its own
congress had expressly rejected such a proposal
and confirmed the creation of an "open"
constituent assembly as a fundamental part of
its program.
As stated in the report of the last plenum
of the CPC Central Committee, on the occasion
of this merger with ON, QS seems to be making
a significant qualitative change in its political
line by making Québec's independence an
Pierre Fontaine is the leader of the PARTI COMMUNISTE
DU QUÉBEC, a distinct entity within the COMMUNIST
PARTY OF CANADA.
22
objective in its own right, even the party’s main
purpose.
NATIONALISM AND REFORMISM
That QS is in favour of Quebec independence
is neither new nor surprising. This was already
the case with the UFP previously. QS explains
the reasons for this position as follows in its
program:
"Québec's aspiration to be seen as something
other than a province like the others has
been constantly opposed by the federal
government and the rest of Canada. Over
the years, through constitutional battles,
certain administrative agreements have
indeed been concluded in limited areas.
However, any further reform in depth
of Canadian federalism has proved to be
totally impossible.”
In its program, the Communist Party (PCC-
PCQ, Communist Party of Canada-Communist
Party of Québec) makes the exact same
statement:
“The current constitution [of Canada]
perpetuates the injustices and inequities
of the old BNA Act. 'Provincial rights' were
substituted for genuine national rights” [...]
“At the heart of the crisis of confederation
is the refusal to recognize the right of every
nation to self-determination up to and
including the right to separation; that is,
the right to choose the form of sovereignty
which the majority of the people of that
nation desire.” […] “The sharpest expression
of the constitutional crisis relates to
Québec’s national status and the failure of
the Canadian state to recognize Québec’s
right to national self-determination, up to
and including secession.”
From this observation, QS deduces that,
“Canadian federalism is fundamentally
 QUÉ BEC SOLIDAIRE: UNITING THE INDEPENDENTISTS RATHER THAN THE LEF T
Option nationale leader Sol Zanetti (centre) with Québec solidaire co-spokespersons Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois (left) and Manon Massé (right). (2017)
unreformable. It is impossible for Quebec
to obtain all the powers it aspires to, not to
mention those that would be necessary for
the profound changes proposed by Québec
Solidaire [...]"
and that consequently,
“[...] the entirety of its project for society
can be realized only if Quebec has all of
the full range of political, economic and
cultural powers.”
Nevertheless, once independence has been
acquired, QS considers that,
“for geographical as well as historical
reasons, (Québec) should maintain and
develop its special ties with Canada, the
Acadian nation, the French-speaking
Canadian minorities and the indigenous
nations of North America.”
The PCC-PCQ, on the other hand, proposes for
our part the development of a new constitution
based on an equal and voluntary partnership
23
[Jacques Boissinot | The Canadian Press]
between Quebec and English-speaking
Canada, guaranteeing the full participation
of Aboriginal peoples and protecting their
ancestral national rights, including the right to
self-goverment, etc. The PCC-PCQ proposes
to make Canada a Confederal Republic of the
different nations.
So we could sum up the two points
of view as follows: while QS proposes
independence first, then to negotiate an equal
relationship with Canada and other nations, the
PCC-PCQ proposes changing the constitution
of the whole country to establish from the
start an egalitarian relationship amongst the
nations, Québec, Canada and the other nations.
Finally, while the approaches to achieve
this are a little different, there is, on the
other hand, no real difference in terms of the
desired result with respect to the constitutional
relationship to be established between nations,
which, in the end, could in both cases resemble
a kind of sovereignty-association. Moreover,
at the time of Sam Walsh’s leadership in 1967,
the PCQ had adopted the position that Quebec
 QUÉBEC SOLIDAIRE: UNITING THE INDEPENDENTISTS RATHER THAN THE LEF T

TA X ES: WHO PAYS?

Personal income tax as share of federal revenue – 1970s: 30%, Ç 2013: 50%.

Corporate income tax as share of federal revenue – 1970s: 20%, È 2013: 13.6%.

(Globe and Mail Report on Business Magazine, March 2018)

should have a constitution and become a
national state to form a pact with Canada
on an equal footing. (Samuel Walsh, "This
Tendency to Confuse Notions of Sovereignty
and Separation," Combat, April 11, 1969, vol. 4,
page 2).
Nor is the difference that QS and PCC-
PCQ would make a different diagnosis of the
possibility of reforming Canadian federalism,
since in both cases their proposals imply a
radical break with it. (As the latest events in
Catalonia demonstrate, the support of the
working class across the country for the right
to self-determination will be crucial in either
case.)
The difference in substance is that QS
and the PCC-PCQ do not represent quite the
same interests: what is of concern to QS is above
all the nation, and therefore it limits its action
exclusively to Québec, while what is of concern
to the PCC-PCQ is the entire multinational
working class across Canada.
Of course, QS is progressive and adopts
trade-union and popular demands. But, it does
not really propose to abolish capitalism. Rather,
it proposes to control it, to limit neo-liberal
excesses, to "go beyond" it, as it claims, and to
do this exclusively in Québec. Its approach is
essentially reformist and nationalist.
The PCC-PCQ goes much further.
It proposes the overthrow of the Canadian
bourgeoisie and the seizure of power by the
Canadian working class, the establishment of
socialism. It aims to unify the working class
of the country beyond national divisions, so
that it will be able to accomplish its historic
mission. Its approach is revolutionary and
internationalist.
INITIALLY, SOVEREIGNTY IN THE SERVICE
OF THE CLASS STRUGGLE
Despite this essential difference, the PCC-
PCQ has worked very hard for several decades
to establish a united front with progressive
reformist organizations to fight against
capitalism. In particular, for almost twenty
years now, the PCC-PCQ has put a lot into the
creation of the Union of Progressive Forces
(UFP) and then QS.
Particularly after the defeat of the
sovereigntists in the 1995 referendum, the
reformist left was eager to equip itself with
its own political vehicle to free itself from the
grip of the Parti québecois, to regain its own
voice and to assert its progressive positions of
social solidarity which, for decades under the
banner of the PQ, had been downplayed so as
to preserve the unity of the sovereigntist camp.
Various symposia to this effect seeking to bring
together the progressive sovereigntists were
organized at the end of the 90s.
The PCC-PCQ was involved in this
process but proposed instead to bring together
the forces of the left despite differences of
views on the national question. First the UFP

24
 QUÉBEC SOLIDAIRE: UNITING THE INDEPENDENTISTS RATHER THAN THE LEF T
and then QS were born precisely from the will
of the political left of Quebec to emancipate
itself finally from the guardianship of the PQ,
particularly, though, by uniting various forces
of the left despite their own differences about
the resolution of the national question.
The UFP was created on the basis of the
component groups’ electoral platforms, which
themselves were based on the demands of
the workers' and popular movements against
the neoliberal policies of the government.
The PCC-PCQ itself ran in elections with an
election platform to the same effect. As for the
national question, although putting forward the
independence of Québec, the UFP admitted,
first, that there was no consensus in its ranks
and, secondly, that it conceived it solely as a
useful tool for the realization of its program of
progressive social reforms, and not as an end in
itself. The same thing continued with QS as we
saw earlier.
NOW, PRIORITY TO THE NATION
This was the main criticism that Option
nationale addressed to QS. In a document of
one of its political commissions, ON declared
that,
"the struggle for independence should
not be confused with the promotion of a
particular divisive project for society".
Finally, by affirming the pragmatic approach of
Option nationale, with respect to the economic
model that QS advocates, it concluded that,
"our positions are less controversial and
we privilege the change of political regime
rather than the change of economic and
social system."
In other words, ON proposed, more or less,
that the social status quo be maintained in
order to ensure, first and foremost, the unity of
the independentists.
But the debate over what should take
25
precedence, the class struggle or the national
struggle, has continued despite everything
from the very beginning within QS (and even
before that within the UFP). The rapid and
significant development of QS in particular,
which went from a few dozen members in the
UFP at first, to a few hundred then and several
thousand today with QS, inevitably ensured
the opportunity to continually put this debate
back on the table.
The elements within the QS leadership
that put the national struggle first, which they
believe transcends all other struggles, at least
for now, were all too happy to take advantage of
this opportunity. This explains why the debate
was continually brought back to conventions
on the pretext of making an alliance with the
other independentist forces, particularly with
the PQ. Up to the last convention, delegates
rejected this perspective on several occasions.
But, on the eve of the next election, the merger
with ON was the best pretext for a major coup
to definitively impose the nationalist view as
predominant. If ON was able to impose its
views so easily during the negotiations with
QS, it was because it could actually find a lot of
support within the QS leadership.
The more nationalist tendency within
QS, which often idealizes the 1976 first
election of the Parti québecois to government,
would like to replace the PQ at the head of
the independence movement, because it
considers it to have become insufficiently or
falsely independentist, and, in a pinch, also
too close to capitalist interests. Now QS freely
declares it wants to unite the (progressive) pro-
independence forces rather than the forces of
the left.
Michel David of le Devoir, insightfully
wrote:
“It would be illusory to think that tripartite
negotiations can be relaunched before
the October 1, 2018 election. The brutal
rejection of the electoral alliance with the
PQ by the last Congress of QS has caused
too much bitterness and, in any case, both
 QUÉBEC SOLIDAIRE: UNITING THE INDEPENDENTISTS RATHER THAN THE LEF T

will be preoccupied with their electoral
preparations. The acceptance of the
principle of the 'closed' constituent assembly
nevertheless removes the main obstacle to
'convergence', which the reconfiguration of
the political chessboard in the aftermath of
the election could greatly favor.”
This was confirmed by Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois
in an interview with l’Aut’Journal:
“[...] if the convention decides in favor of a
constituent assembly with an independence
mandate, as stipulated in the agreement
with Option nationale, it will bring us closer
to the 'Roadmap' and we can return to the
table of the OUI-Québec (Organizations
United for Independence) with a renewed
and clear position.”
The merger with ON is therefore an important
qualitative change for QS. Although QS had
for some time put forward more and more
strongly its position in favor of independence,
by proposing a so-called "open" constituent
assembly, it allowed non-independentist forces
to support it and even join its ranks on the basis
of its left program. By closing the mandate of
the constituent assembly, it has just slammed
the door in their faces.
More than a step back, it is a negation
of the conditions of its birth. It is no longer
a question of uniting the left, but the
independentists, a mission assumed by the PQ.
On the other hand, it must be recalled that ON
was not really a party of the left, something it
itself denied, but a breakaway from the PQ on
the basis of a more radical independentism.
The national struggle by its nature
leads objectively to a collaboration, indeed an
alliance, between those that the class struggle
puts in antagonistic opposition. In fact, the
latter contradiction between the working class
and the capitalist class is the most fundamental
of our world today.
Of course, QS remains a left-wing and
progressive organization. But the merger with
ON opens the door to a possible nationalist
degeneration. The future will tell.
The PCC-PCQ recommended that
delegates at the QS convention reject the
agreement in principle and instead return to
the bargaining table. There would have been
no merger, but it would still have been possible
to propose an electoral agreement to ON on
the basis of a progressive joint program clearly
highlighting measures to support the various
social struggles against austerity, degradation
of the environment, exploitation and
oppression of all kinds rather than using the
pretext of a merger to allow the QS leadership
to do an about-face not only on its founding
principles, but on the mandate that it had
made a commitment to respect in the course
of various conventions. n

P R I VATI ZI N G T HE " NAT IONA L DE B T "

Back in the mid-1990s Canada had a heavily indebted federal government and
relatively unencumbered citizens. Now we have a relatively unencumbered federal
government and heavily indebted citizens. See what economic policy can achieve?

— Ian McGuigan, Globe and Mail Report on Business, September 26, 2016

26
 ARTICLE

Hands Off Syria rally in Toronto. (March 2018) [Toronto Association for Peace and Solidarity]

RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTEST
THE PEACE MOVEMENT AND THE CHALLENGE
OF "R2P"
Dave McKee

O
ver the past decade, a frequent topic of
debate in progressive circles has been
the persistent weakness of the peace
movement across Canada. With perhaps
only two notable exceptions – the brief but
impressive mobilizations against the US-led
invasion of Iraq in early 2003, and consistent
activity in support of the Palestinian people’s
struggle against aggression from Israel – the
peace and anti-war movement in this country
Dave McKee is former of President of the Canadian Peace
Congress, and is currently chair of the COMMUNIST
PARTY's Peace and Disarmament Commission.
has been unable to mount a coherent and
meaningful opposition to imperialist wars and
aggressions over the last 20 years. This includes
many examples in which Canada has actively
participated: Yugoslavia in 1999, Afghanistan
beginning in 2001, Haiti in 2004, Libya in 2011,
Syria from 2012 to the present, Ukraine and
Eastern Europe from 2014 to the present, and
Venezuela from 2014 to the present.
There are a number of reasons for this
problem, but a key factor is an ideological
weapon that emerged in the twenty-first
century: the doctrine of the Responsibility to
Protect, or R2P.

27
 RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTEST — THE PEACE MOVEMENT AND THE CHALLENGES OF "R2P"

interests”, to participate in operations beyond

alliance territory; and
u a reiterated and strengthened
commitment to expansion in Europe.

While these policy statements did not

fundamentally change the nature and character
of NATO as an aggressive, imperialist military
alliance, it is important to note that they
represented a dramatic and deliberate shift in
how the organization projected its role in the
world.
To understand why the NATO states
would commit to this sweeping reorientation,
it is useful to review the key events of the
time. In the early 1990's, most of the capitalist
world was struggling with a severe and lengthy
economic crisis that had begun around 1987
and continued into the mid-1990s. In Canada,
this developed into a long period of economic
The Trudeau Liberals plan on increasing annual military expenditures by $14 billion to recession that was exacerbated by corporate
over $32 billion a year within ten years. (2017) [Sean Kilpatrick | The Canadian Press]
trade deals with the United States. In general,
capitalist globalization (related, in part, to
The specific formulation, “Responsibility developments in technology) was on the rise
to Protect,” first appeared in early 2001 but and this resulted in huge changes to economies
many of its features were developed and tested around the world – the comprehensive
in the context of NATO’s 1999 aggression economic restructuring meant that, in some
against Yugoslavia. These same features can national economies, entire sectors were
be roughly encapsulated in NATO's 1999 decimated and some new sectors emerged and
New Strategic Concept document, which was grew. These developments sparked extensive
formally adopted in April of that year and discourse between corporate boardrooms and
included the following key policy formulations: imperialist governments about how to reorient
in order to safeguard their existing interests, as
u a shift in focus away from “collective well as how to identify and exploit new global
defense” of member states in the North Atlantic opportunities.
arena, toward explicit sanction of NATO Alongside the economic crisis, perhaps
out-of-area action on a range of security and the central development at this time was
politico-economic concerns; the sudden demise of the Soviet Union and
u a specific articulation of NATO actions socialist community of states, and the massive
as independent from the UN Security Council geopolitical changes that followed. Huge areas
deliberations, sanction and oversight; of the world were now viewed as “opened up”
the discarding of NATO's 1991 statement that to Western capitalism (whose members were
"none of its weapons will ever be used except in fighting amongst themselves for positions
self-defense;" of competitive advantage – for control of
u a commitment by NATO members, resources and markets at the expense of their
in their effort to defend “common security imperialist competitors).

28
 RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTEST — THE PEACE MOVEMENT AND THE CHALLENGES OF "R2P"
At the same time, of course, the “end” of
the Cold War meant the sudden loss of NATO's
pretext for existing, and it embarked on a long
search for a new identity and role.
In Canada, a key moment in this
ongoing discussion about changing foreign
policy in the “post-Soviet” era is represented
by the 1999 Symposium of the Conference of
Defence Associations (CDA). The CDA is an old
and extremely influential Canadian advocacy
group, whose membership is made up of over
50 military organizations. It is large, well-
funded and well-connected. Part of its funding
comes from the Department of National
Defence, so it is clear that when CDA speaks the
government listens.
The 1999 symposium was focused on
changing strategic assessments within the
context of the massive geopolitical changes
mentioned above. Specifically, the symposium
identified the following strategic issues:
u the pressing need for reorientation
in Canadian foreign policy (military and
economic) in light of the demise of the Soviet
Union;
u the rise of China as a political and
economic world power, a rise characterized
as “the most serious challenge to Western
interests in the Pacific”;
u the importance of retaining and
developing NATO as a counter-balance to
changing geopolitics that challenge Western
interests;
u the destabilization of the central Asian
states as a strategic and economic opportunity,
and specific opportunities for Canada in the
vast energy reserves of the Caspian Sea Basin
and central Asian region;
u the necessity for Canada to integrate
military and economic issues within foreign
policy discussions, in order to exert global
influence and reap economic benefit;
u the government of Iraq – characterized as
a “rogue state” – as a specific barrier to securing
Western interests in the central Asian region.
29
“By the time of NATO's 1999 war against
Yugoslavia, notions of moral outrage
and humanitarian duty were so deeply
embedded in the public discourse that
opposition to the aggression was
practically neutralized in many areas.”
Virtually all of the above concerns
were under discussion at the same time by
other Western states. These preoccupations
are reflective of two of the key concerns of
imperialism: the territorial division and
re-division of the world amongst the most
powerful states, and the military force required
to achieve, enforce and maintain such a
division.
As imperialist states discussed –
individually and collectively, in moments of
collusion and moments of competition – how
to confront the twin challenges of the economic
crisis and the geopolitical shifts, Yugoslavia
emerged as the immediate practical arena in
which new policy directions were tested and
clarified. This engagement was continued,
in rapid succession, through the aggressions
against Afghanistan, Iraq and others.
The loss of the socialist community
of states provided imperialism with a
conundrum. On the one hand, two important
opportunities emerged. First, a massive region
of the world was now deemed to be “opened
up” to capitalism – resources, markets and
trade routes were available for control and
plunder. Second, the absence of the Soviet
Union at the international table meant that the
main obstruction to imperialist – especially US
– expansion was removed.
On the other hand, however, the end
of the Cold War also meant that the “spectre
of communism” was lost as an justification for
huge military expenditures. The peoples of
the NATO countries moved quickly, especially
in the context of economic crisis, to demand
a “peace dividend” – large reductions in
military budgets and reinvestment in social
 RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTEST — THE PEACE MOVEMENT AND THE CHALLENGES OF "R2P"
programs and infrastructure. Without the
endorsement, or at least passivity, of public
opinion, imperialist states would have difficulty
in securing the resources necessary for the
implementation and consolidation of their
new plans.
Imperialism desperately needed to
find a new pretext for continued militarism,
aggression and war. Part of the answer to this
search was provided by the “war on terror”. But
another part came in the form of the doctrine
of “Responsibility to Protect,” and this involved
a comprehensive rewriting of the foundations
of international law.
The roots of R2P lay in the broad notion
of “humanitarian intervention” (or “HI”). HI
emerged as a theme in international relations in
the early nineteenth century, in the context of
competition among the major European powers
for influence and control over the territories of
the declining Ottoman Empire. Its use during
this period was characterized by depictions of
Ottoman repression of minorities, coupled with
extensive agitation for military intervention
to prevent atrocities. To be effective, HI had
to be invoked in a sophisticated manner that
could grasp hold of public opinion. Part of this
involved highlighting the supposed virtue of
the imperialist nation while demonizing the
character of the target state, and positing a
war of “humanitarian intervention” as a moral
duty.
One of the most vocal advocates of HI,
John Stuart Mill, promoted the issue in skillful
– if quite hypocritical – terms:
"To go to war for an idea, if the war is
aggressive, not defensive, is as criminal as
to go to war for territory or revenue; for it
is as little justifiable to force our ideas on
other people, as to compel them to submit
to our will in any other respect. But there
assuredly are cases in which it is allowable
to go to war, without having been ourselves
attacked, or threatened with attack; and
it is very important that nations should
make up their minds in time, as to what
these cases are... To suppose that the same
30
international customs, and the same rules of
international morality, can obtain between
one civilized nation and another, and
between civilized nations and barbarians,
is a grave error...[Barbarians] have no rights
as a nation, except a right to such treatment
as may, at the earliest possible period, fit
them for becoming one. The only moral
laws for the relation between a civilized and
a barbarous government, are the universal
rules of morality between man and man."
(“A Few Words on Non-Intervention”, 1859)
Mill's remarks are notable in that they
reflect the ongoing dilemma of proponents
of humanitarian intervention: how to justify
intervention in the face of the long-accepted
legal principal of state sovereignty.
Throughout the nineteenth century,
as humanitarian intervention was repeatedly
used by each imperialist state to justify their
drive to re-divide the world, it became deeply
embedded in the dominant ideology and had
various cultural reflections. One of the most
famous imperialist writers of this era was
the English poet, Rudyard Kipling. His 1899
poem, “The White Man's Burden”, celebrated
the seizure of the Philippines by the United
States, from Spain. The poem portrayed such
colonization as a noble enterprise that carried
out the moral responsibility of European
and American imperialists (“whites”) to reign
over the other peoples of the world. Kipling
offered the poem to US President Theodore
Roosevelt, suggesting it could help solidify
American public support for the “rescue” of
the Philippines from Spanish oppression.
Of course, US seizure of the Philippines
did not yield Kipling's imagined goals of social,
economic and cultural development. Instead,
it resulted in the Filipino-American War,
in which an estimated 1.4 million Filipinos
died, followed by decades of occupation
and repression. Far from its noble pretext of
humanitarianism, the American invasion of
the Philippines was clearly motivated by, and
enormously important to, the drive by US
imperialism to establish and expand its control
 RESPONSI BILITY TO PROTEST — THE PEACE MOVEMENT AND THE CHALLENGES OF "R2P"
Demonstration in Quebec City against Canadian military involvement in Afghanistan and the deployment of additional troops to Kandahar. (2007)
over foreign resources and markets.
In the course of the twentieth century,
imperialism continued to use “humanitarian
intervention” as a pretext for expansion but
was often held in check, to varying degrees, by
a range of factors. These included:
1. Public opinion: Despite comprehensive
and sustained ideological assaults, campaigns
against imperialist policies emerged early on
and continued to grow. The American Anti-
Imperialist League, for example, was formed
in 1898 with the purpose of opposing US
seizure of the Philippines. Within a year, it had
organized over 100 local committees across the
country and had a membership of over 25,000.
The League was able to sustain its work against
imperialist foreign policies for two decades
and is one example among several similar
movements, in countries all over the world.
2. Institutionalization of state sovereignty
in international law: While it is legally rooted
in the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, the concept
31
[Edgar Zessinthal | Creative Commons]
the territorial integrity of states was confirmed
and codified by the League of Nations and, to a
greater extent, the United Nations. Article 2.4 of
the UN Charter, for example, compels member
states to “refrain in their international relations
from the threat or use of force against the
territorial integrity or political independence
of any state.” Humanitarian intervention
routinely violated this article.
3. The Soviet Union: As suggested earlier,
this was perhaps the single most significant
obstacle to imperialist expansion. The October
Revolution served as a powerful magnet for
workers and progressives, and it inspired
the birth of many powerful anti-imperialist
movements all over the world. Furthermore,
as the Soviet Union developed, it emerged
as a powerful political-diplomatic force that
was capable, to some extent, of containing
imperialism.
By the late twentieth century, in the
wake of the end of the Cold War and in the
context of deep economic crisis, imperialism
 RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTEST — THE PEACE MOVEMENT AND THE CHALLENGES OF "R2P"

was presented with both the need and the
opportunity to reorient.
Nearly 100 years after Kipling wrote
“The White Man's Burden”, the NATO states
revisited the idea of humanitarian intervention
and began updating it. As in the nineteenth
century, the competitive imperialist drive
to re-divide the world was justified through
the moral imperative of humanitarian
intervention. However, the obstacle of the
sovereignty of states remained. As Edward
S. Herman has noted, imperialism sought to
permanently overcome this problem:
"...this morality surge occurred at a moment
in history when the Soviet constraint was
ended and the United States and its close
allies were celebrating their triumph,
when the socialist option had lost vitality,
and when the West was thus freer to
intervene. This required over-riding the
several hundred year old Westphalian
core principle of international relations
– that national sovereignty should be
respected – which if adhered to would
protect smaller and weaker countries from
Great Power cross-border attacks. This
rule was embodied in the UN Charter,
and could be said to be the fundamental
feature of that document, described by
international law scholar Michael Mandel
as ”the world’s constitution.” Over-riding
this rule and Charter fundamental would
clear the ground for R2P and HI, but it
would also clear the ground for classic and
straightforward aggression in pursuit of
geopolitical interests, for which R2P and HI
might supply a useful cover."
(“Responsibility to Protect” (R2P): An
Instrument of Aggression, 2013)
Accomplishing such a sweeping change would
require a specific expression of the idea of

TH E D I S TOR T ION OF R USSIA

(From The American Conservative)

"[...] Both ordinary Russians and those who are journalists or teachers kept coming
around to the same issue: why does the United States hate Russia so much and
why does the American press seemingly have nothing good to say about them?
They were questions I could not answer in any coherent way. I answered somewhat
defensively that Russia under Vladimir Putin had become more authoritarian, that
the media had lost much of its freedom and that the old Yeltsin style gross systematic
corruption has reportedly been replaced by a newer, more subtle cronyism version
of something similar. And I mentioned both Crimea and Ukraine as sometimes
mishandled in the government’s undeniable agitprop while also conceding that the
Russian case was legitimate on many levels. I expressed my own view that the crisis
had been engineered by Washington in the first place, seeking to bring about regime
change in Kiev.”
– posted by Philip Giraldi, January 6, 2016
http://www.theamericanconservative.com

32
 RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTEST — THE PEACE MOVEMENT AND THE CHALLENGES OF "R2P"
humanitarian intervention. In particular, the
new formulation would have to:
1. be carefully rooted in the existing
institutions of international law, to cloak it with
sufficient legitimacy that the undermining
of the principle of state sovereignty would
appear to be an acceptable consequence of the
“evolution” of international law;
2. change the notion of sovereignty to
focus more on the responsibilities of a sovereign
state, rather than its rights, in order to facilitate
the depiction of target states as failing their
responsibilities and thereby forfeiting their
rights;
3. develop mechanisms for quickly
confirming the perpetration of atrocities
and assign responsibility for such acts to the
government of the target state;
4. situate the mechanism for intervention
(the military force) outside of the United
Nations, in such a way that the mechanism is
both independent from, and deemed essential
to, the UN.
In addition to these specific features, the
new HI framework would benefit from being
presented as having emerged from a concrete,
successful application in an existing situation.
The specific points of departure were
the Bosnian civil war and the Rwandan tragedy
in 1994. Both of these crises were presented
as internal ethnic conflicts that resulted in
mass atrocities, which threatened to continue
and expand, and to which the international
community had a moral duty to respond. The
role of foreign interference in the development
of these conflicts was obscured and, in fact, the
lack of foreign intervention was identified as
a failure of the international community to
prevent atrocities.
This promotional campaign was
hugely effective – by the time of NATO's
1999 war against Yugoslavia, notions of moral
outrage and humanitarian duty were so
deeply embedded in the public discourse that
33
opposition to the aggression was practically
neutralized in many areas. In some countries,
whole sections of the peace movement not only
failed to mobilize against NATO, but actually
encouraged and justified its intervention. In
truth, anti-imperialist campaigns did respond,
but they were generally weak and ineffective.
Certainly, however, the peace and progressive
forces within the countries of the imperialist
camp were consumed by deep confusion and
bitter divisions that resulted from the states'
misinformation campaigns. Notably, these
difficulties persist to the present day, and they
continue to be obstacles to developing effective
anti-war campaigns.
Perhaps most interestingly, the bulk of
the debate over NATO's 1999 actions focused
on the completeness or veracity of the stated
pretext for intervention: preventing mass
atrocities from being committed in Kosovo.
Whether it was supported or challenged,
the pretext for war had become the central
and singular question. Debate over the real
motivation for war – imperialist expansion –
was kept to a minimum.
Cathy Fischer of the Regina Peace
Council described this:
"Protecting the rights of Albanians in
Kosovo was the excuse for intervention.
Before NATO began bombing, president
Milosevic of Yugoslavia was given the option
of signing the Rambouillet Agreement.
This agreement meant NATO troops would
occupy the whole of Yugoslavia, not just
Kosovo, and it provided for privatization
of their many state enterprises, including
takeover by foreign companies. Milosevic
refused to sign, and with this came the call
for immediate ‘humanitarian intervention’
– the bombing of Yugoslavia. U.S.-NATO
planes spent 78 days, from March 24 to
June 10, dropping 20,000 bombs on the
people...
Along with military targets, the
bombing destroyed utilities, roads, bridges,
hospitals, clinics, schools, TV stations and
the Chinese embassy. There was no spring
planting, countless wells were poisoned,
 RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTEST — THE PEACE MOVEMENT AND THE CHALLENGES OF "R2P"

and the results would be used to justify the

rapid institutionalization of R2P by the United
Nations. Second, it concretely identified NATO
as the vehicle for implementing the “moral
duty” of the international community and
deeply embedded NATO into the role and
work of the UN. Responsibility to Protect is the
diplomatic and ideological tool, providing the
moral cover necessary for the implementation
of the New Strategic Concept.
Shortly after its application in
Yugoslavia, the doctrine of Responsibility
to Protect began to be codified. In 2000, the
Canadian government – who had participated
enthusiastically in the bombing campaign
in 1999 – sponsored the founding of the
International Commission on Intervention
and State Sovereignty (ICISS). This body was
responsible for crafting a legal justification for
imperialism's new framework of humanitarian
Belgrade burns during NATO's "humanitarian intervention". (24 March, 1999) intervention. In its report, it concretely
[Public Domain]
addressed some of the key requirements,
identified above, for accomplishing a sweeping
factories were destroyed putting thousands change in international law:
of people out of work. Many of the shells
used were coated with depleted uranium, Rooting Responsibility to Protect in the
spreading deadly radioactive dust. Almost existing, but evolving, institutions: Great care
a million refugees fled the bombing. All
was taken by the members of ICISS to situate
this ‘humanitarian intervention’ because
Yugoslavia had a domestically controlled R2P within the context of the UN Declaration
economy, a strong publicly-owned sector, a of Human Rights and a range of UN covenants,
good and free health care system and its own conventions, treaties and other mechanisms.
defence industry. Its population resisted the At the same time, the incompleteness, or
cuts to its social programs demanded by the immaturity, of the institutions of international
International Monetary Fund. It refused to
law was underscored. The commission's report
allow U.S. military bases on its soil, and did
not want to join NATO. So the country was notes, for example, that “even though in
bombed to smithereens." some cases imperfectly implemented, these
(“Today’s Trojan Horse: Humanitarian agreements and mechanisms have significantly
Intervention and the Responsibility to changed expectations at all levels about what
“Protect”) is and what is not acceptable conduct by states
and other actors,” and goes on to suggest that
The 1999 aggression against Yugoslavia “the universal jurisdiction of these instruments
was the first application of the ideas of [of international law] is starting to be taken
“Responsibility to Protect”, as well as NATO's very seriously.”
New Strategic Concept. This is important for Changing the notion of sovereignty: One of
two key reasons. First, the aggression provided the most formidable and enduring obstacles
a testing ground for the new policy orientation, to the pretext of humanitarian intervention is

34
 RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTEST — THE PEACE MOVEMENT AND THE CHALLENGES OF "R2P"
the Westphalian concept of sovereignty. The
ICISS approached this cleverly, and depicted
sovereignty not as a state's right to territorial
integrity, but rather as a state's responsibility
to protect its people. The key “obligations of
sovereignty” were then specifically equated to
the components of humanitarian and human
rights law. The ICISS then asserted that a state's
failure or inability to guarantee these obligations
meant the forfeiture of its sovereignty: “Where
a population is suffering serious harm, as a result
of internal war, insurgency, repression or state
failure, and the state in question is unwilling
or unable to halt or avert it, the principle of
non-intervention yields to the international
responsibility to protect.”
Developing mechanisms for confirming
atrocities: In order to generate the combination
of a sense of urgency and a sufficient level of
public confidence, the proponents of R2P
needed a reliable mechanism for investigating
alleged atrocities and ensure that blame was
clearly ascribed to the target state. The ICISS
report identifies specific bodies whose structure
is ad hoc, thereby liberated from ongoing
scrutiny, and whose performance in the
service of imperialist expansion was reliable
and worthy of emulation. The report singles
out, for example, the International Criminal
Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), the
International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda
(ICTR), the International Criminal Court
(ICC), as well as numerous Non-Government
Organizations whose work and structure lie
completely beyond the influence of the United
Nations. Interestingly, the applicability to this
work of the UN's own mechanisms – which
are much more transparent, democratic and
accountable – is downplayed.
Situate the mechanism for intervention
outside of the UN: Clearly, the question of how
to guarantee legal sanction to the international
activities of a military organization is a delicate
one. In its report on this matter, the ICISS
35
“As the dangers of mass destruction
through war grow, the peoples of the
world face an increasingly stark and
urgent choice. The challenge to the
peace and anti-imperialist movements
involves exposing the real, imperialist
reasons behind interventions.”
identified “multinational coalition operations”
as the appropriate vehicle for military action.
Furthermore, the commission notes that
“given...the shrinking military budgets of most
countries in the post-Cold War era, there are
real constraints on how much spare capacity
exists to take on additional burdens.” It then
hints at the key role for NATO in the UN's work
on global security: “UN peacekeeping may have
peaked in 1993 at 78,000 troops. But today, if
both NATO and UN missions are included,
the number of soldiers in international peace
operations has soared by about 40 per cent to
108,000.”
Largely on the basis of the ICISS
report, the R2P doctrine became an
“international norm”, by which the institutions
of international law would be interpreted and
implemented. However, it was not introduced
and implemented through anything close to
international consensus – on the contrary, it
was repeatedly denounced by a majority of
the governments of the world. In 1999 the 113
member states of the Non-Aligned Movement
rejected the “so-called ‘right of humanitarian
intervention’ which has no legal basis in the
UN Charter or in the general principles of
international law.” A year later, the Group of 77
issued a declaration to the same effect.
Responsibility to Protect is certainly
not the only pretext for justifying imperialist
aggression, but it is one that has proven to be
enormously effective, in a short period of time.
It has been used – sometimes on its own and
sometimes in conjunction with other pretexts
– to justify imperialist aggressions against
 RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTEST — THE PEACE MOVEMENT AND THE CHALLENGES OF "R2P"

Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Haiti, Mali and
Syria, as well as the current provocations against
Iran, Ukraine and the Democratic People’s
Republic of Korea. Part of its strength is that it
appeals to, and plays upon, basic humanitarian
concerns that people of all nations share. We
do not like to see our fellow human beings
suffer through tragedies like war, repression
and poverty, and we feel the need to assist in
some way. Many people view humanitarian
intervention as a concrete vehicle for providing
that assistance, and so they become supportive
of R2P. Melding imperialist foreign policy onto
the moral fabric of imperialist societies, it is
the modern “White Man's Burden”.
The logical outcome of such a situation
is a lack of strong opposition to imperialist
expansion and aggression. At times, sectors
of the progressive movements are actually
co-opted and help to justify the pretext for
aggression. At other times, there is less active
support but the ideological softening of public
discourse results in neutralization of the anti-
imperialist message. In both cases, however,
opposition is confused and fragmented and
the imperialist powers enjoy a high degree of
freedom to pursue their interventions, and
this, in turn, further emboldens them.
As the dangers of mass destruction
through war grow, the peoples of the world
face an increasingly stark and urgent choice.
The challenge to the peace and anti-imperialist
movements involves exposing the real,
imperialist reasons behind interventions. It
requires a clear assessment of the main dangers
to peace at any particular moment, and the
projection of concrete bases of unity for building
mass opposition. It challenges us to strengthen,
and perhaps update, our understanding of
sovereignty, and be able to justify that principle
in the face of disinformation that is cloaked in
“humanitarian” language.
The extent to which we can dismantle
a social morality that justifies imperialist
aggression depends, to no small degree,
on our ability to propagate a solidaristic
and internationalist morality. We need to
undermine the “Responsibility to Protect” and
replace it with a “Responsibility to Protest.”
We can find optimism in the fact that
among the most deeply held humanitarian
convictions of the peoples of the world is the
desire for peace. They will continue to demand
it, whatever the circumstances, and they will
achieve it. Our survival depends on it! n

N E TA N YA HU ON J UST IC E
“It doesn’t matter if justice is on your side. You have to depict your position as just.”

(Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as quoted in Max Blumenthal, Goliath: Life and Loathing
in Greater Israel, Nation Books, New York, 2013, page 29)

36
 ARTICLE
Socialists need to seriously contend with the economic and structural role the internet is playing today in our politics and struggles. [The Spark!]
WHAT SHOULD SOCIALISTS
DO ABOUT THE INTERNET?
Daniel Joseph
I
n October 2016, Breitbart News Network, a
far-right political website headed by eventual
for-one-year White House Chief Strategist,
Steve Bannon — with close (and publically
verified - see Bernstein, [2017]) ties to the white
supremacist “alt right” movement — opened
an online store to sell branded merchandise.
On this store, Breitbart was to sell t-shirts with
an assortment of racist dog-whistles and anti-
immigration rhetoric celebrating the soon-to-
be President Elect’s border wall (Daro, 2016).
Daniel Joseph is a political economist and freelance
writer researching digital distribution platforms,
games, and labour.
37
The functioning of this store was made possible
with tools provided to them by Shopify, a
Canadian e-commerce company based in
Ottawa. Shopify provides the interface, the
point-of- sale system, inventory management,
and other tools for, typically, small-to-medium-
sized businesses whose primary activity
is conducted online. Essentially, Shopify
functions as an intermediary or middleman
for the circulation of capital (which Marx [1893]
discusses in detail in Capital, Volume II).
On February 2, 2017 it came to light
that behind the scenes at Shopify, numerous
employees were “quietly urging” management
to end their business relationship with
 WHAT SHOULD SOCIALISTS DO ABOUT THE INTERNET?
“Our local media monopolies like
Rogers and Shaw own the physical
infrastructure that allows us to
access the internet, but in the end
most of us rely on Facebook, Google,
Microsoft, Netflix and dozens of other
US-based platform owners to filter,
organize, secure, and regulate our
communication.”
Breitbart (Daro, 2016). Six days later, Shopify’s
CEO, Tobias Lütke, published a defence of
Shopify’s official stance to continue supplying
ecommerce tools for Breitbart. Lütke stated:
“products are speech and we are pro-free-
speech. This means protecting the right of
organizations to use our platform even if they
are unpopular or if we disagree with their
premise,” (Lütke, 2017).
Shopify, a company whose products
usually keep them out of the spotlight,
found itself at the centre of a public conflict:
employees and critics pointed out that by
providing tools for Breitbart, they were
implicitly endorsing the hate that Breitbart
used to peddle its clickbait articles like t-shirts.
Yet according to Lütke’s professed fidelity to an
unsophisticated liberalism, a private company
had no right to restrict the speech — in this
case, the buying and selling of products — of
others. This public relations crisis surrounding
Spotify and Breitbart is just one example of the
increasing conflicts that are made apparent by
the growth and increasing monopolistic status
of companies that have based their business
model on and around the internet.
While this conflict was quickly forgotten
in the churn of the news cycle and the eventual
election of Donald Trump, I think it illustrates
that socialists need to seriously contend with
the economic and structural role the internet is
playing today in our politics and struggles, both
here in Canada and around the world. There are
two good reasons for this. The first is that we use
the internet to communicate, build solidarity,
38
and organize. It’s a powerful infrastructure
that enables all kinds of communication in
tangible ways. This is especially apparent
when considering the growth of progressive
movements around the world, including ours,
in the last 10 years. Because we rely on them
it is incumbent upon us to understand the
history and workings of the technologies we
use to build our movement.
The second reason we should
understand the internet is that it’s at the centre
of today’s version of monopoly capitalism.
While resource extraction, commodity
production, and agriculture undergird the
majority of global capitalism’s ongoing
operation and reproduction, the advanced
capitalist countries have simultaneously put
the internet at the centre of their economies,
rhetorically and literally. It’s not that the
biggest companies by revenue will necessarily
be companies whose business exists only on the
internet. In Canada, for example, the biggest
companies remain in the hands of our banks
and mining corporations. Instead, it’s that
every company, in pursuit of what Marx called
“relative surplus value” can’t be competitive
without relying heavily on the communication
tools provided by internet-based platform
owners (such as Facebook, Shopify, Alphabet
[formerly Google], etc). The internet is where
capitalists go to try to transcend space and time,
because if they find the right tool, they will find
themselves at the cutting edge faster than their
global competitors. If they play their cards
right, they will leverage that, gain advantage
and possibly even restructure the market.
In academia, one book that addresses
this process, Nick Srnicek’s Platform Capitalism
(2017), is an important (if limited) look at
the growing importance of platforms in the
global economy, written from an explicitly
Marxist perspective. In it Srnicek describes
how businesses on the internet function just
like any others: “we can learn a lot about major
tech companies by taking them to be economic
actors within a capitalist mode of production.”
 WHAT SHOULD SOCIALISTS DO ABOUT THE INTERNET?

CANA DA'S TO P M E D I A , I NT E R NET & T ELEC OM C OMPA NIES

BY M A R KE T SHA R E ( 2016)
14

Bell (26.8%)

Rogers (16.5%)
26.8
0.2
Telus (15.5%)
0.3
0.7 Shaw (7.7%)

0.8 Quebecor (4.7%)

0.9
Google (3.3%)
1
1 CBC (2.2%)
1.1
Facebook (1.7%)
1.4
1.7 SaskTel (1.4%)
2.2
MTS (1.1%)

Cogeco (1.0%)
3.3
PostMedia (1.0%)

Torstar (0.9%)

4.7 Eastlink (0.8%)

Globe & Mail (0.3%)

16.5
Groupe Capitale Media (0.3%)
7.7 Power Corp (0.2%)

Other (14.0%)

15.5

(Source: Canadian Media Concentration Research Project)

The argument of the book rests on the
economic history of capitalism that is laid out
by Robert Brenner (2006) in The Economics of
Global Turbulence, which itself was a critique
of some of the core arguments in Sweezy
and Baran’s (1956) Monopoly Capital. Brenner’s
argument is that competition from East Asia,
Russia, and Brazil exacerbated the decline in
profits for manufacturing in the core capitalist
countries. As a result, less and less capital was
finding its way into manufacturing, and found
itself in need of productive use. So, something
we are now very familiar with, it found its way
into finance. Part of this move towards finance
resulted in the dot com-crash of the late
1990s, as well as the housing bubble of the last
decade. It also found its way into companies
specializing in business on the internet, many
of them promising low fixed capital costs, room
for expansion, and high margins.
Srnicek argues that this money-capital,
sitting in bank accounts in desperate need of
investment is what explains the massive growth
of internet-based companies like Alphabet,
Microsoft, and Facebook — all successful
companies making money from a variety of
sources. It also explains the recent growth of
other companies, what Srnicek calls “lean
platforms”, like Uber or Airbnb: companies that
specialize in making themselves the mandatory
go-between for the so-called “sharing economy”.
From these platforms, Srnicek argues that

39
 WHAT SHOULD SOCIALISTS DO ABOUT THE INTERNET?

WAS TE UNDER CA P ITA LISM

Globe and Mail Report on Business, April 25, 2018:

Alphabet Inc. [parent company of Google] and Apple spent more acquiring patents
and litigating them than they did on research and development in 2011.

there are roughly four tendencies for the
future of platform capitalism: the expansion of
extraction (the intensification of data mining,
which is productively sold to advertisers and
marketing companies for a profit), a company
positioning itself as a gatekeeper (gaining
control over vital exchange points for capital
and labour), convergence of markets (the
tendency for companies in previously different
markets to find themselves in competition), and
the enclosure of ecosystems (putting users into
walled, fully controlled “gardens”, like Apple’s
iOS).
It is in this vortex of capital that we
currently find ourselves. All the time it feels
like platforms and corporations like Facebook,
Google, or Apple are what the internet “is”,
instead of the network being what provides
their infrastructure. There’s also the ever-
present and depressing daily pressure on the
working class, on our friends and family, to sell
off their lives to companies like Uber or Airbnb
to cover the crisis of rising fixed living costs like
rent.
Srnicek suggests that one possible
solution goes beyond state regulation of these
technologies: “Rather than just regulating
corporate platforms, efforts should be made
to create public platforms — platforms
owned and controlled by the people” (p.
128). I certainly think that’s a noble goal, and
it could be something those advocating for
socialism should incorporate into our analysis
and policies. Platforms — the places where
goods and services are exchanged and where
all kinds of communication takes place — can
and will be genuinely useful and important
technologies for the development of socialism.
At the same time, we should also recognize
that existing platforms are there to extract
data from us and exercise control over us.
Platforms shape how we consume, and they
function as a propaganda distribution system,
while also doubling as a surveillance system
for the repressive bourgeois state. It would be a
huge misstep to argue that the internet and the
technologies it enables are neutral in the class
struggle.
If I have an immediate pointed criticism
of Srnicek’s case for emancipatory platforms,
it’s that there’s no historical discussion of
past struggles concerning communication
technologies. Communication has been, and
continues to be, an important consideration for
any revolutionary program for a better world,
especially in the multitude of struggles of the
twentieth century. There’s a history of Marxist
political economy that took imperialism very
seriously, and centred on the struggles of people
under the thumb of imperialism who attempted
to use communications technologies against it.
They didn’t hedge their bets by imagining a
utopian society: instead they had to start with
the state of communication technology at the
moment of struggle, and to do what they could
at that specific historical juncture.

40
 WHAT SHOULD SOCIALISTS DO ABOUT THE INTERNET?
For example, take what Herbert Schiller
and Dallas Smythe wrote in a report titled Chile:
An End to Cultural Colonialism while consulting
with Armand Mattleart and Salvadore Allende’s
Popular Unity coalition in Chile in 1972:
“It seems clear that this gap [between the
nationalization of basic infrastructure and
the relative free market treatment of the
culture industries] will be a site of a coming
struggle – a battle for control of the mass
media, a battle which the left in Chile is
a long way from resolving in a strategy
for winning. First they must decide what
policies a proto-socialist mass media
structure would follow. The problem is
incredibly more complex than, say, how to
nationalize copper. Among the reasons it is
difficult to analyze is that in concentrating
its attention on man as affected by his
production relations, Marxists have
relatively neglected man as affected by his
consciousness, his leisure relationships,
his cultural relations. It is in analyzing
this problem and solving it that Chile has
the opportunity to make an historically
new contribution to the development of
socialism.” (p. 61)
Clearly, the success of the fascist coup that came
soon after illustrated that this aspect of the
struggle was by no means solved conclusively.
It could very well have been fatal.
Applying Schiller and Smythe’s
concerns about the complexities of proto-
socialist communications systems in a time
of struggle and revolution to the internet
increases the complexity drastically. The
relative decline of broadcasting, the rise of
platform owners and software as service
companies, the proliferation of intermediaries
and our dependence on social media mean
that the question extends way beyond the (still
very important) questioning of who owns this
or that radio tower, TV station, or newspaper
chain. Instead, we have to think about what
companies, such as Shopify, maintain and
profit by maintaining the infrastructure
of the internet. Complicating matters for
41
“We need answers because in the
meantime those advocating for a
socialist future are sadly tied to
media platforms with no meaningful
democratic accountability, despite being
considered by liberals as the guardians
of a democratic discourse.”
Canadians, very few of these organizations
are based in Canada. Our local media
monopolies like Rogers and Shaw own the
physical infrastructure that allows us to access
the internet, but in the end most of us rely
on Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Netflix and
dozens of other US-based platform owners
to filter, organize, secure, and regulate our
communication. I don’t have an answer to
these problems. The only way we will get to
them, however is by our analysis taking them
into account. It’s important to not put the cart
before the horse. Start with things as they are,
and then go from there. If this is the case, it’s
doubtful that any of the existing platforms
could in practice be nationalized, much less
used to build socialism. Whatever comes
next will have to be built anew, conditions
permitting.
We need answers because in the
meantime those advocating for a socialist
future are sadly tied to media platforms with
no meaningful democratic accountability,
despite being considered by liberals as the
guardians of a democratic discourse. For
example, there was Facebook’s January 2018
change to its news feed towards personal
items, which was, by their account, designed to
encourage what they describe as “meaningful
interactions”. In other words, the one platform
that is most relied on for news is shifting its
focus away from news. Facebook justified this
choice partly on psychological research they
had conducted about what kind of posts they
thought people wanted to interact with. The
place where the majority of people get their
news was fundamentally changed, with no
 WHAT SHOULD SOCIALISTS DO ABOUT THE INTERNET?

democratic input, entirely on the basis of what
Facebook thought would increase their bottom
line.
Hanging over the corporation, and
much discussed, was also the moral panic
surrounding state-sponsored Russian “fake
news” proliferating through Facebook, and
presumably swinging undecided voters
towards Donald Trump. No doubt by shifting
focus towards social interaction with no news
content, Facebook can safely tell their lobbyists
to assuage the hypocritical liberal Russophobia
and paranoid concerns of their political
benefactors. Justin Trudeau’s meeting with
Sheryl Sandburg, Facebook’s Chief Operating
Officer, was clearly related to such public
relations concerns about possible government
regulation of advertising and news distribution.
At the same time, we know from past efforts that
Facebook’s tackling the “fake news” problem is
likely to target both reactionary right-wing news
outlets, and also, though, critical, progressive
and explicitly socialist outlets. Not long ago,
Facebook sounded like Shopify’s Tobais Lutke,
professing a maximalist liberal conception of
the neutrality of platforms towards content in
“the marketplace of ideas”. Now Facebook has
stated that they do, in fact, have an opinion
about what qualifies as “real” journalism.
Anybody who understands the history of how
media monopolies function and what their
actual goal is (to collect and sell audiences to
advertisers and collect subscriptions) knows
that the kind of journalism they will protect
will be that which stands up for, and protects
the bourgeois state and order of things.
It’s up to us as socialists to keep
challenging this narrative, and keep a critical
eye on the internet in general. n

R E FE R ENC ES
Baran, P. A., & Sweezy, P. (1966). Monopoly Capital: An Essay on the American Economic and Social Order (1st Modern
reader paperback ed edition). New York: Monthly Review Press.

Bernstein, J. (n.d.). Here’s How Breitbart And Milo Smuggled Nazi and White Nationalist Ideas Into The Mainstream.
Retrieved October 14, 2017, from https://www.buzzfeed.com/josephbernstein/heres-how-breitbart-and-milo-
smuggled-white-nationalism

Brenner, R. (2006). The Economics of Global Turbulence (1st edition). London ; New York: Verso.

Daro, I. N. (2017, February 2). Shopify Employees Want The Company To Stop Doing Business With Breitbart. Retrieved
September 5, 2017, from https://www.buzzfeed.com/ishmaeldaro/shopify-breitbart-store

Farnsworth, M. (2018, February 9). Watch the interview: Facebook’s heads of News Feed and news partnerships.
Retrieved February 13, 2018, from https://www.recode.net/2018/2/9/16996696/how-to-watch-livestream-
facebook-head-of-news-feed-partnerships-campbell-brown-adam-mosseri

Marx, K. (1893). Capital: A Critique of Political Economy. (F. Engels, Ed.) (Vol. 2). Moscow: Progress Publishers.

Schiller, H., & Smythe, D. (1972). Chile: An End to Cultural Colonialism. Society, 9(5), 35–39. https://doi.org/10.1007/
BF02697609

42
 SPEECH

Soldiers carrying a banner that reads “Communism” march toward the Kremlin Wall in Moscow in 1917. [Public Domain]

WHY WE HAIL GREAT

OCTOBER
Jeanne McGuire

(Speech given on November 18, 2017 at a banquet in Toronto celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution.)

N
o one here this evening has any doubt that
the October Revolution was a watershed,
that the history of the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries was fractured at that
moment. From then on there was before the
Revolution and there was after the Revolution.
And what was so GREAT about this October
Revolution?
Well, certainly its values were great
– as it put forward a prospect for humanity
Jeanne McGuire is a progressive educator and past
president of the Congress of Canadian Women, living in
Toronto.
that called for the equality of all peoples, all
nations, for an end to inequality based on race,
ethnicity, religion or sex.
It was great in its aspirations as it enacted
laws designed to bring an end to – the inequality
of women, to poverty, to exploitation, to war.
What other government of the day conceived
of such a society?
It was great in that it was a revolution
like no other. Previous revolutions had only
replaced one class of property owners with
another class based on a different kind of
property – owners of land with owners of

43
 WHY WE HAIL GREAT OCTOBER

to which you belong was more important than

the country in which you resided when those
other socialists were waving national flags and
paying the price for their collaboration by
wrapping the dead of war in that same flag.
Peace and Internationalism, right from the
start, and while peace was not always an option
– during the civil war, the invasions by foreign
troops, the invasion by the forces of fascism,
and then the Cold War - the internationalism
endured.
It’s a wonder that it happened at all
and you have to admire the audacity of those
who took the step – over the edge, into the
unknown, totally uncharted territory with few
navigational tools. If it had failed, we would
have called them fools for even thinking they
could pull it off.
And the Revolution was the easy part
–that it survived was truly remarkable. And
Lenin speaking in Red Square in celebration of the first anniversary of the Revolution. it survived not just a few months as was the
(1918) [Public Domain]
case of the Paris Commune – it survived the
chaos and confusion of the first heady months,
capital. And in those previous revolutions the it survived the onslaught of Civil War and the
old and the new ruling classes were able to invasion of foreign armies – Canadians and
come to an accommodation, a modus vivendi – Greeks, Americans and British, Estonian and
they mingled, they merged and they married. Chinese, Italians and Japanese, Australians and
In this revolution the old ruling class could not Punjabis fighting for Britain, Romanians and
be accommodated and could find no modus Czechs, all came in force to reinstate the old
vivendi. They and their entire international order.
class fought back, fought ferociously, fought And it was great in its achievements and
like cornered rats to retain their power, their accomplishments. In a country with over 125
profits and their privilege. And they fought million people, less than 15% of whom were
it from the day the Soviet Union was born to urbanized, they improved the living standards,
the day it died – unceasingly, unrelentingly. provided health care and housing, built schools
Indeed, they are still fighting it – the ghost of and universities, gave workers holidays and
that monumental event. women maternity leave. They funded sports
It was a revolution like no other in that, and culture. They industrialized. They defeated
not only did it sever the power of property fascism.
and challenge the very basis of capitalism, it Internationally they supported the anti-
challenged the very basis of what was called colonial aspirations of millions of people, many
socialism at that time, what today we would call of whom found inspiration in the victory of the
social democracy, for it was revolution built by revolution. People in India, China, Vietnam,
a movement for peace when all those other Cuba, Angola, South Africa and Palestine
socialists had answered the master’s bugle. And benefited from their voice in the United
it was a revolution which asserted that the class Nations, from their economic support, their

44
 WHY WE HAIL GREAT OCTOBER
assistance in struggle. Many were educated in
the universities of the new Soviet Union at no
cost to themselves. Today the coffee shops of
North America boast when they serve coffee
that is Fair Trade. The Fair Trade movement has
nothing on the trade deals made by the Soviet
Union that were often more than advantageous
to those struggling ex-colonies.
We in the developed capitalist world
also gained by virtue of the success of that
revolution. It fueled our demands for the things
they had achieved – free education, health
care, pensions, maternity leave, daycares,
workers’ compensation, abortion rights and
paid holidays. The existence of these gains
in the ever-to-be-feared socialist alternative
facilitated our victories.
So let us celebrate their achievements
and acknowledge the debt of gratitude that so
many in the world owe to that revolution.
And let us admit that there were errors.
And if we are ready to admit that there were
errors, let us also admit that most of us don’t
really know what those errors were. Did they
do too much or too little? Did they go too fast
or too slow? Did they take steps too soon or too
late? Were they too repressive or not repressive
enough?
To inherit a country with little industry,
a huge population with enormous needs, with
a recent rapid increase in urbanization adding
a layer of difficulty to a country steeped in a
feudal tradition, backward, Church-ridden and
hidebound, presented monumental challenges.
Governing in such a situation with no allies
or support would not be difficult, it would be
nearly impossible.
In Afghanistan, some of the first
steps taken by the Democratic Republic
of Afghanistan were agricultural reforms
including the distribution of state and royal
lands and the granting of women’s rights. It was
these measures which stirred the resentment
amongst warlords and religious zealots that the
U.S. then funded to overthrow this progressive
new government. Too much, too soon, too fast?
45
“In a country with over 125 million people,
less than 15% of whom were urbanized,
they improved the living standards,
provided health care and housing, built
schools and universities, gave workers
holidays and women maternity leave.
They funded sports and culture. They
industrialized. They defeated facsism.”
And if they hadn’t – what would the critics of
Communism have said then? Not enough, too
late, too slow.
It is easy to criticize and offer advice –
you should have done this, you shouldn’t have
done that – but none of us have had to make
a decision with the kind of consequences that
followed from the ones they made.
So let us look at some specifics that
most people think were problems. A common
one is the forced collectivization of the
land. Harsh measures indeed. The primitive
accumulation of capital to fund the process
of industrialization; capitalism did it with the
enclosure acts and evictions and it was done
over decades, even centuries. In the Soviet
Union the industrialization was done in less
than 1/10 of the time. Michael Hudson, who
writes on economics, suggests that the same
accumulation of capital could have been
achieved by giving the land to the peasants
and then using price controls to extract the
surplus – in the manner of Cargill and other
grain companies, as he put it. But that would
have created a huge peasantry and I’m sure you
all know that poor peasants do not dream of
becoming workers. They dream of becoming
rich peasants. As Zhou En Lai is reported to have
said to Nikita Khrushchev when Khrushchev
made the comment that the difference between
the Soviet Union and China was exemplified
by the fact that he, Khrushchev came from
the peasantry and Zhou En Lai came from a
privileged segment of Chinese society, Zhou
En Lai replied, “That’s true, but there is this
similarity. Each of us is a traitor to his class.”
 WHY WE HAIL GREAT OCTOBER
“For the Revolution that allowed our
class, the working class, their first
chance to run a victory lap, and for
those that had the audacity to dare, the
capacity to win and the tenacity to
survive, let us give them our applause!”
Turning peasants into workers is difficult no
matter who does it – but becoming workers in
the sweat shops of London or Dhaka, the mines
of Silesia or Bolivia, or homeless in the streets
of Bangkok or Madrid was a far less salubrious
transformation than the one that took place in
the Soviet Union.
Another criticism is the lavish privileges
of the upper echelons of the party and state.
And those are the words the critics always use
– lavish and privilege and upper echelons. And
yes – those petty privileges may have grated
and irritated. But to call them lavish is laughable
compared to the really lavish privileges of the
upper echelons of capitalism. No one in the
Soviet Union bought themselves multi-million
dollar estates, considered owning a private jet in
case they wanted dinner in Rome this weekend,
bought a sports team to amuse themselves, was
paid in the millions of dollars. How lavish is it
when eight people own as much of the world’s
wealth as the bottom 50% - about three and a half
billion people? If what those privileged Soviets
had was so lavish, try offering it as an incentive
the next time the Blue Jays want a new pitcher
– I doubt it would provide much attraction.
The fact that it was seen as unseemly testifies to
an underlying commitment to equality within
the society. Capitalism doesn’t just tolerate
homelessness, poverty, massive inequality– it
glorifies gigantic wage differentials as rewarding
achievement, defends the removal of social
security provisions as tax savings, insists that
precarious work contracts are a necessary
flexibility.
The harsh treatment of opposition is
another criticism. And yes it probably happened
and happened more often than is acceptable.
46
But if you are in fact surrounded, not just by
opposition but enemies – and the revolution
was surrounded by enemies– it might be hard
to distinguish between opposition hostile
to socialism and opposition supportive of
socialism.
It might also be hard to resist the
temptation to extend the areas of decisions
from those that are the proper concern of
policy makers into those that are not – cultural,
social and personal behavioral issues. And
just because every mention of Shostakovich
seems to require a reference to Stalin and the
fact that the Toronto Symphony Orchestra
dropped six players from their roster in 1951
for being communist sympathizers isn’t even
remembered, that doesn’t make it acceptable.
The invasions of Hungary and
Czechoslovakia are also cited as examples
of unacceptable developments in the Soviet
Union. We are critical, suspicious of the
reasons given, refer to the invasions as errors
or mistakes. Canada led in bombing Libya,
participated in the invasion of Afghanistan,
sends advisors to Iraq – do the supporters of
capitalism call that an error or a mistake? No,
they rename the 401 the Highway of Heroes. The
U.S. killed more than one million Vietnamese
– do the supporters of US imperialism call
that an error or a mistake – no, they build a
monument to those that did the killing. We
debate the legitimacy of the actions of the
Soviet Union. For the most part capitalism
claims all its actions from Hiroshima to Syria
as not just legitimate, but glorious examples of
their essential goodness.
And we know that, just because the
other side does it, that doesn’t make it right for
us to do it. We also know that, like everything
else, the magnitude of the destruction matters.
And we know that on a scale of horrors our
errors are miniscule compared to the entire
history of capitalist plunder and brutality from
its very inception through the long ugliness
of colonialism to the ravages of modern
imperialism.
 WHY WE HAIL GREAT OCTOBER
The writer Andre Vtlchek, whose father
was a professor, a member of the Communist
Party of Czechoslovakia and a supporter of
Alexander Dubcek, points out that when his
father tore up his membership card to protest
the invasion, nothing happened to him. Andre
says that perhaps he didn’t get the promotions
he would have otherwise received but he
continued to teach and nothing happened to
him. Compare that, he says, to what happened
to those professors who supported Allende
when the generals decided he had to go, or, I
might add, to the Hollywood Ten, to the TSO
six, to Paul Robeson, to Pete Seeger.
We are sometimes more critical of our
errors than we are of the policy and practices
of capitalism. We hold ourselves to a higher
standard – to the defence of people’s rights,
the expansion of human rights and freedoms,
and the implementation of working class
control over the means of production. We hold
ourselves to a higher standard and it is to our
credit that we do.
47
October Revoluion 50th anniversary celebrations in Moscow. (1967) [Public Domain]
And while we have the right to make
judgements, perhaps an obligation to make
judgements, we need as well to be conscious of
the basis of our judgments. I’m sure that the
overwhelming majority of humanity at the time
looked at the Soviet Union and saw a society
that provided so many of the things that they
did not have and wanted. But in the developed
West, and only after World War II, many of us
accepted that the world was divided between
communism and democracy. And of course it
was not – it was divided between communism
and capitalism. And we so often ignored that,
when democracy would destroy capitalism,
capitalism destroyed democracy – in Guyana,
in Chile, in Indonesia where up to three million
people (many of them Communists) were
killed to prevent the Communists winning
the election, in Vietnam where General
Eisenhower admitted that the Communists
would win any election so an election could
not be held. And many of us came to agree
that individual freedoms were more significant
 WHY WE HAIL OCTOBER

than collective rights to employment, medical
care, pensions and workers’ rights. And while
we in the capitalist West did have those rights
(mostly – there were lots of exceptions) those in
the capitalist south did not – or had them only
precariously. For Palestine is capitalist, and so
is Pakistan, Riyadh is in a capitalist country and
so is Attawapiskat, Haiti is capitalist and so is
Honduras, Germany under Hitler, Spain under
Franco, Chile under Pinochet, Iran under the
Shah, Indonesia under Suharto, South Africa
under Apartheid were all capitalist countries.
And now so is Libya. And now so is Russia. And
look at it now. 50% of its wealth held by 1% of its
population according to a recent report, – like
capitalism everywhere, a few are enriched and
many are impoverished.
So the October Revolution was our first
real victory, the first one that survived – this one
for 74 years. An astounding achievement! We’ve
had a few more victories since then and each
of them was made possible, or at least easier,
by the first – China, Cuba, Vietnam, Angola
and Mozambique. But we’ve had even more
defeats. Twice we lost in Germany; we were
defeated in Spain; in Indonesia we didn’t lose,
we were exterminated; in Guyana where the
British overthrew the democratically elected
Cheddi Jagan; in Chile where the socialists won
the election and were unable to enjoy their
victory; in Grenada where American medical
students were the excuse to invade.
And, as we celebrate this revolution,
the October Revolution, the Great October
Revolution, let us remember that it was our
class, the working class that won that day. And
it was our class, the working class that made
whatever errors were made. That is was our
class, the working class, that held out its hand
to the exploited and oppressed, which stood up
for equality and justice. For the Revolution that
allowed our class, the working class, their first
chance to run a victory lap, and for those that
had the audacity to dare, the capacity to win
and the tenacity to survive, let us give them our
applause! n

W E A LTH Y P OLIT ICA L DONOR S

"Just don’t let anyone tell you that the wishes of big, wealthy donors are not
acknowledged and respected by governing parties. They are. A specific government
policy does not always have a direct line to a particular supporter.
The advantage that a backer gets for his support may come in the form of
something a government does not do, as much as it does from a policy change it
institutes."
(Gary Mason in The Globe and Mail, October 29, 2016)

So much for small-time corporate influence on government. Moving up a step from

small-time, billionaire David Thompson, owner of The Globe and Mail, may or may not
make donations to the Conservative Party. But his newspaper’s general presentation
of the news, as well as its editorials, have always been predominantly pro-business,
and usually pro-Conservative Party. Don’t tell us lawmakers wouldn’t hesitate to
enact anything contrary to Thompson's interests – even if they wanted to.

IOU

48
 BOOK REVIEWS

Detail from painting depicting the storming of the Winter Palace, 1917. [Public Domain]

BOOKS ABOUT THE RUSSIAN

REVOLUTION
Roger Perkins

We apologize to our readers. Through a printer's error, the text of Roger Perkins' review article in The Spark! #27
left out the following paragraphs between pages 71 and 74.

"Books About the Russian Revolution" in its entirety is available online at: https://bit.ly/2w8yGJ4

A
nother work very highly recommended if
it were not so expensive is the two volume
LENIN’S ELECTORAL STRATEGY by August H.
Nimtz (Palgrave MacMillan 2014 and 2016). But,
most unfortunately, with a price of over one
hundred dollars for each volume the average
activist or local library will not be able to afford
this book. Although not specifically writing
Roger Perkins is a long-time activist and student of
global class struggle, living in Surrey, British Columbia.
for the centennial, Nimtz convincingly refutes
the standard charges made against Lenin by
“democratic” socialists, anarchists, and the
plethora of anticommunist centenary books –
Lenin was antidemocratic and totalitarian. To
the ears of a ruling class that has lost power,
these charges ring true. They no longer have
the “democratic” right to exploit and enslave
workers and peasants:;They no longer have
the “democratic” right to launch wars of

49
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51
 BOOKS ABOUT THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
aggression in search of maximum profits and
they no longer have the “democratic” right to
arrest and imprison – even kill – those who
oppose them. They have lost these “rights”.
But for millions the Russian Revolution was
the most democratic event ever. "All power
to the Soviets" was a vastly superior form of
democracy. A great contribution by Lenin
was to take democracy to a higher level – the
new democracy of socialist revolution. As
for today, just how “democratic” are money-
controlled parliaments, rigged elections with
voting machines designed to be compromised
by the capitalists who manufactured them,
gerrymandered electoral constituencies based
on geographical areas only, restricted ballot
and TV access, and purged voter lists? Socialist
democracy and capitalist “democracy” are
vastly different entities, not just quantitatively
but especially qualitatively.
We now come to the traditional
English language left publishing houses.
The severely debilitated, but still afloat,
communist International Publishers (USA)
and the attenuated Trotskyist Pathfinder
Press (USA) survive from their backlists. New
October or Lenin books are absent. Lawrence
and Wishart, the publishing house of the now
defunct Communist Party of Great Britain,
totters on with a left lean that seldom ventures
beyond Labour Party “moderates” and social
democracy. Its contribution to the centenary
is Menshevik, not Bolshevik. TWO YEARS OF
WANDERING: A MENSHEVIK LEADER IN LENIN’S RUSSIA
by Fedor Illich Dan (2016) – translated for the
first time into English. Unlike Martov, Trotsky
or Plekhanov, who occasionally pulled back
from the extremes of Menshevism, Dan was
unrelenting. After 1917 and the ensuing Civil
War, his anti-Leninist views gaining little
traction, he left Soviet Russia and moved to the
United States, where he died in 1947. Ironically,
during World War II Dan gave verbal support
to the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany, not
through any newly-acquired sympathy for the
Soviet Union, but in the belief that the Russian
52
motherland must be defended against foreign
invasion.
Monthly Review Press (USA) has been
publishing Marxist books for over sixty years
and still going strong. RECONSTRUCTING LENIN: AN
INTRODUCTORY BIOGRAPHY (2015) by Tamas Krausz
argues for Lenin’s continuing relevance today.
The Chicago-based Haymarket
Books, established in 2001, has now become
the largest radical publisher in the United
States. It publishes a broad spectrum of
quite useful titles alongside, of course, its
featured Trotskyist core. Haymarket is the
publishing outlet for the suspect International
Socialist Organization (ISO), whose variety
of Trotskyism is nasty indeed. The ISO has
been justly criticized as “State Department
Socialists” because they serve as cheerleaders
for “human rights” imperialism. Whether they
are “useful idiots” or outright paid agents, the
result is the same – try to convince the left to
back the imperialist removal of the “dictator of
the day”- Iraq, Libya, Ukraine and now Syria.
They even criticized Obama from the right for
showing insufficient determination to remove
Bashar Al Assad. Imperialism is not really
all that bad unless it happens to be “Russian
Imperialism” or “Chinese Imperialism”. The
ISO runs interference for all US sponsored so-
called “colour revolutions” and “human rights”
campaigns. So one must be leery of some titles
published by Haymarket. As for October, one
can find more than a few centenary volumes.
But it is Trotsky and not Lenin that is featured.
The expected reprint of Trotsky’s extremely
flawed HISTORY OF THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION is in
hardcover. LESSONS OF OCTOBER by Trotsky is now
available again. But the 440 page TROTSKY ON
LENIN is dishonest. This is a reprint of the post-
1917 YOUNG LENIN and LENIN, NOTES FOR A BIOGRAPHER,
together in one volume and given the new
title TROTSKY ON LENIN. An honest TROTSKY ON
LENIN would include his writings and speeches
before 1917, which would reveal that Trotsky
was hostile to Lenin from day one. But, of
course, Haymarket will not print these because
 BOOKS ABOUT THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION

Trotsky must be made to appear as a comrade-
in-arms of Lenin. 100 YEARS SINCE THE RUSSIAN
REVOLUTION includes Trotsky’s 1932 speech in
defence of the Russian Revolution followed
by Ahmed Shawki’s (ISO) praise of Trotsky
and the attempt to fit him into our times.
EYEWITNESSES TO THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION edited by
Todd Chretien (ISO) includes contributions
by Trotsky, Luxemburg, Lenin, John Reed,
Louise Bryant and others. OCTOBER SONG edited
by Paul Le Blanc is “history from below”
animated by the lives, ideas and experiences
of workers, peasants, intellectuals, artists and
revolutionaries of diverse persuasions.
YEAR ONE OF THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION is
written by the always-moving-on anarchist-
turned-Bolshevik Marxist-till-death, Victor
Serge. Today he is known more as a novelist
than a political activist. YEAR ONE OF THE
RUSSIAN REVOLUTION is a good read and does
have something to say that merits attention.
To conclude with Haymarket, other good
books do get reprinted. THE BOLSHEVIKS CAME TO
POWER: THE REVOLUTION OF 1917 IN PETROGRAD (1976)
BY Alexander Rabinowitch; RED PETROGRAD:
REVOLUTION IN THE FACTORIES 1917- 1918) originally
1983 Cambridge Univ. Press by S.A.Smith and
surprisingly REMINISCENCES OF LENIN by Nadezhda
Krupskaya (wife of Lenin). The fact that there
is no stand-alone collection of Lenin’s writings
on October is telling by its absence.
Leftword Books in India has two books.
They have RED OCTOBER: THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
AND THE COMMUNIST HORIZON (1917), edited by
Vijay Prasad. The book provides us with the
assurance that a workers and peasants state
can exist. And they have also published RANK-
AND-FILE BOLSHEVIK: A MEMOIR (1917) by Cecilia
Bobrovskaya. The author (1873 – 1962) was an
early Bolshevik activist, and a member of the
Society of Old Bolsheviks. She worked tirelessly
helping build the Party for both the 1905 and
1917 Revolutions. This reprint consists of two
texts by Bobrovskaya: her own memoirs and
her short biography of Lenin. Bobrovskaya
describes what it took to make the Revolution
– not one push in 1917 but tens of thousands of
pushes provided by people like herself, one of
the many rank-and-file Bolsheviks. n

CO N CE N TR AT ION OF CA P ITA L
(From The Globe and Mail Report on Business, September 2, 2017:)

A recent report in the Economist on “superstar” companies noted that the share of
nominal gross domestic product generated by the Fortune 100 – the top American
companies – reached 46 per cent in 2013, up from 33 per cent in 1994. Their share
is probably higher today.
Over the same period, the share of revenues of those companies among the
Fortune 500 rose to 63 per cent from 57 per cent. The management consultancy
McKinsey calculated that the top 10 per cent of global companies generate 80 per
cent of all profits.

53
 EXCERPT

N AF TA & J OB S
(By Jeff Rubin, former chief economist at CIBC World Markets:)

Since Canada’s most important trade deal, the North American free-trade agreement
(NAFTA) came into effect in 1994, the economy has lost more than 400,000 jobs in
the goods industries, mainly from the manufacturing sector.
Of the more than five million net jobs created in the NAFTA era, all have been
in the service sector, where real wages have not grown in almost two decades. Not
only are wage rates lower in service-employment – about a quarter lower than those
found in the goods sector of the economy – but, perhaps even more significantly,
work hours are often much fewer. The sectoral shift in employment from goods
industries to service industries has been accompanied by a shift from full-time to
part-time employment.
That tandem has robbed the vast majority of Canadian households from
any real income gains in recent decades, with virtually all the economic gains from
globalization accruing to the top 20 percent of the population.

(Globe and Mail Report on Business, March 14, 2018)

"Noon in front of the factory", woodcut. (1927) [Gerd Arntz | Public Domain]

54
GALLERY

Sculptor Lev Kerbel works on a clay model for a monument to Karl Marx. [Public Domain]

55
 From a spark a fire will flare up.

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