Marx: Theses on Feuerbach

The Classics, Part 1

Marx: Theses on Feuerbach

Any one of the eleven short Theses on Feuerbach (download linked below) would be adequate on its own as a topic for discussion in a study circle. The most famous of them is the last one:

“Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.”

This shows Marx in 1845 as being firmly in the camp of those humanists for whom the active, free-willing Subject is the centre and the starting point of all philosophy and all politics. It puts Marx in the opposite camp from those “materialists” who regard the human as derivative of, and secondary to, the purely physical. Marx never shifted from this strong and logical position. Marx poses the Subject in a dialectical relation with the Objective universe, but the Subject is the one with the initiative. The Subject makes things happen. The Subject can change the world – and that’s the point.

This is different from the idealism that ignores the material world, and it is equally different from the materialism that prioritises the mechanical over the mental. Thus, Marx settles the controversy over “dialectical materialism” right here, at the beginning of Marxism.

Ludwig Feuerbach’s intervention into the philosophical debates of the early 1840s created a sensation in the intellectual crucible that included Marx and Engels as well as the “Young Hegelians”, with whom Marx and Engels were in the process of falling out.

Reading the eleven “Theses” reveals that Marx immediately recognised Feuerbach as a materialist, but also that he at once rejected Feuerbach’s particular and limited kind of anti-religious and anti-subjective materialism.

Thesis number two says that truth is a practical question. This is something that is repeated later on in the “classics” of Marxism. This again reinforces the assertion that the world or universe is a human world or universe. “It is men who change circumstances” says Marx in the third Thesis, and “human activity or self-change can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionary practice.”

The subsequent Theses develop this understand through to Thesis 10 which says: “The standpoint of the old materialism is civil society; the standpoint of the new is human society or social humanity.”

This is a good reminder that for Marx in particular, the term “civil society” only means “bourgeois society”, and that therefore for Marxists, “civil society” is something to be overcome and transcended, and not something to be put on a pedestal and worshipped.

Image: Karl Marx being arrested in Brussels, 1840s.

Please download and read this very short text:

Theses on Feuerbach, 1845, Marx (789 words)

Further reading:

Karl Marx, The German Ideology, 1845-1847, Part 1, B, Illusion of the Epoch (5775 words)

Condition of the Working Class in England, Labour Movements, 1845, Engels (10644 words)

What is a Classic?

The Classics, Part 0, Introduction

“Classics Illustrated” comic

What is a Classic?

There is no last word on what the Marxist “Classics” are, or might be. There will be no attempt here to lay down a definitive, prescriptive “canon”. Instead, what we will be doing is creating a skeleton or framework around which individuals might wish to build up or to flesh out their own ideas of what “The Classics” consist of.

We will go from Marx and Engels in the mid-1840s to Lenin, Luxemburg and Gramsci, towards the mid-1920s. We will use some material that already appears in our other courses, together with works that have not yet been used in any of these courses, but which are “classics” nonetheless.

The one “classic” we will not include is Karl Marx’s “Capital”. The CU has a separate ten-week course on Capital, Volume, and another ten-week course covering Volumes 2 and 3. But we will include part of Marx’s “Wages, Price and Profit”, and part of his “Introduction to a Critique of Political Economy”, both of which are classics in their own right but which also give more than a taste of the great “Capital”.

Lenin in his “The State and Revolution” (a classic, and itself a review of the classics) wrote that in his opinion “The Poverty of Philosophy”, written and published in 1847, is “the first mature work of Marxism”.

But we will begin in Brussels, Belgium, in early 1845, shortly after Marx and Engels had (in Paris, in August 1844) teamed up. As we know, they stuck together until death parted them. We will begin with the short piece of work by Karl Marx that is known as the “Theses on Feuerbach”, named as such by Frederick Engels, and published by Engels in 1888, five years after the death of Karl Marx.

Massacre at Cassinga. War no more.

Course on Anti-Imperialism, War and Peace, Part 10a

Massacre at Cassinga

Piero Gleijeses has written a lot. The second and last item in this final part of the “Anti-Imperialism, War and Peace” course is an article of his (download linked below) containing this memorable passage:

“While Castro’s troops advanced toward Namibia, Cubans, Angolans, South Africans, and Americans were sparring at the negotiating table. For the South Africans and Americans the burning question was: Would the Cuban troops stop at the border? It was to answer this question that President Ronald Reagan’s Assistant Secretary for Africa, Chester Crocker, sought Risquet. "My question is the following," he told him: "Does Cuba intend to halt the advance of its troops at the border between Namibia and Angola?" Risquet replied, "I have no answer to give you. I can’t give you a Meprobamato [a well-known Cuban tranquillizer] – not to you or to the South Africans. ... I have not said whether or not our troops will stop. ... Listen to me, I am not threatening. If I told you that they will not stop, it would be a threat. If I told you that they will stop, I would be giving you a Meprobamato, a Tylenol, and I want neither to threaten you nor to reassure you ... What I have said is that the only way to guarantee [that our troops stop at the border] would be to reach an agreement [on the independence of Namibia]." [15] On August 25, Crocker cabled Secretary of State George Shultz: "Reading the Cubans is yet another art form. They are prepared for both war and peace ... We witness considerable tactical finesse and genuinely creative moves at the table. This occurs against the backdrop of Castro’s grandiose bluster and his army’s unprecedented projection of power on the ground." [16]”

War is a terrible thing. War is never a choice for the revolutionaries. We are not pacifists but we do not choose war and we do not choose to be banned or clandestine. We are for peace and for full participation in all democratic forums.

The Cassinga massacre is now more than thirty years in the past. For some of us it was once an event in our present life, very shocking for us because we had though that such horrors were in our own past at the time. For others now living, the Cassinga massacre is now so much in the past that it may be a struggle to see what a huge significance this terrible event had in its time.

War no more

Perhaps this reflection, and by extension this entire course, is a way of saying that it falls upon all of us, young and old, to strive politically so that such things do not happen again, and will not require again the militarisation of our struggle, here in Southern Africa.

This is the last in the series.

Please download and read this text:

The Massacre of Cassinga [and after] Piero Gleijeses (2243 words)

Further reading:

Thirty years after Angola and 49 after Granma, Fidel Castro (4108 words)

Liberation Struggle

Course on Anti-Imperialism, War and Peace, Part 10

Jorge Risquet Valdés Saldaña

Liberation Struggle

In political education, our method is to remove ourselves in place and time. We go to the “classics” and to authors of the intermediate period, and we study other places, in the past or in the present.

All of these provide us with examples. The examples provide us with a theoretical and practical “sandpit” that gives us a “codification” or in other words a basis upon which we may have a dialogue.

Dialogue is where political education happens. Anything that can provide an occasion for political dialogue is good for education.

Our own history can be used, but what do we find? When looking for history of our liberation struggle, and the history of the armed struggle in particular, we find very little. The materials about the culminating struggle in Angola assembled below will have to suffice for now. They can also serve as a small contribution towards recognising the Cuban and Soviet comrades who fought faithfully and often fell for us, until victory came.

Vladimir Shubin has written and published two books in English: “ANC: A View from Moscow” and “The Hot 'Cold War’: The USSR in Southern Africa”. These books are presently available from bookshops in South Africa, or they can be ordered via the Internet.

The Soviet record of events does not correspond in every respect with the Cuban record, and this contrast would force the readers or students to make judgements of their own, as to what was really the critical path that led to the final political result, which was victory in Angola, Namibia and South Africa. Let us hope to find a suitable Soviet or Russian article in electronic form before this course gets run again.

Fidel Castro has written a lot. Linked below, as our main item, is the speech he made on 2 December 2005, on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the first Cuban expeditionary force to Angola, which became what Chester Crocker called an “unprecedented projection of power”.

Jorge Risquet Valdés Saldaña, fighter, negotiator, and currently member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba, has written (in Spanish) “El Segundo frente del Che en el Congo” (ISBN 959-210-412-3, Casa Editorial Abril, 2006) – the history of the Patrice Lumumba Battalion, in which Risquet served. The picture above is of the same Jorge Risquet, a great and brave hero, also famous for his friendliness and joie-de-vivre.

Please download and read the text via the following link:

Thirty years after Angola and 49 after Granma, Fidel Castro (4108 words)

Further reading:

The Massacre of Cassinga [and after] Piero Gleijeses (2243 words)

Democracy is Ours

Course on Anti-Imperialism, War and Peace, Part 9

Eduardo Mondlane, 1920-1969

Democracy is Ours

This part is the penultimate (second last) in the present series on Anti-Imperialism, Peace, and Socialism. This part is designed to invite comrades to reflect upon the place of the anti-Imperialist struggle within the entirety of world history.

That is why Issa Shivji’s address on The Struggle for Democracy and Culture (linked below) is used. It explicitly and correctly claims, on behalf of the national-liberation and anti-colonial struggle, that this struggle carries, for the time being, the banner of progress for the whole world.

For a long time past, and into the future, until such time as the struggle for socialism itself becomes once again the principal one, the National Democratic Revolutions taken together constitute the main vehicle for human progress, bearing and rescuing all that is noble and fine in humanity.

The bourgeoisie is a thieving class and it will steal the clothes of the revolutionaries without any hesitation if it sees the smallest, or the most temporary, advantage in doing so. The Imperialist bourgeoisie wishes to reverse the appearance of its shameful past and of its hopeless future. It wishes to claim the moral superiority that the liberation movement has, and steal it.

Frantz Fanon, 1925-1961

Issa Shivji, the revolutionary Dar-es-Salaam intellectual, shows very clearly how the monstrous fraud is attempted. The constant droning about “good governance” is the extreme of hypocrisy, coming as it does from the worst oppressors in history, the force that has taken oppression to the ends of the earth – Imperialism. Read Shivji. He tells it well. But also note the hypocritical machinations of our present South African anti-communists, including but not limited to, the DA. If you did not know better, you could start to believe from what you read that it was liberal whites who liberated South Africa from the old regime.

Issa Shivji

The struggle for democracy is ours, not theirs. The struggle for freedom is ours. We are the humanists now. We, the liberationists, are the principal creators of human history and we have been for many decades past. The 20th Century was the liberation century and the first anti-Imperial century. That was when we overtook the others in politics, in morality, and in philosophy - but we were only starting.

In the 21st Century we will finish the job, and finish with Imperialism altogether.

Please download and read the text via the following link:

The Struggle for Democracy and Culture, 2003, Shivji (5035 words)

Further reading:

Citizen and Subject, Chapter 8, 1996, Mamdani (7236 words)

Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Course on Anti-Imperialism, War and Peace, Part 8c

Hiroshima and Nagasaki

To underline the ruthlessness of the Imperialist enemy, we can quote as follows:

“the US decision to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki ... was meant to kick-start the Cold War [against the Soviet Union, Washington's war-time ally] rather than end the Second World War”.

This statement is taken from Norm Dixon’s article “Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Worst terror attacks in history” published in Green Left Weekly, August 3, 2005 (download linked below).

The two worst-ever terrorist attacks in history, by far, were perpetrated by the USA, for the most cynical and mendacious reasons.

Images of what resulted in Hiroshima and Nagasaki are abundantly available on the Internet but the ones that show people, whether alive or dead, are too terrible to use here.

To this day the USA does not face up to what it has done by these two vile acts.

This course is on Anti-Imperialism, War and Peace. We cannot leave this thing out. We have to note that the US power that did these unspeakable things is still active in the world, and is still, as it was then, active in the cause of its own dominance over the rest of us. The list of its crimes continues to grow longer every day.

Please download and read the text via the following link:

Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Worst Ever Terror Attacks, Dixon (813 words)

Further reading:

Neo-Colonialism, Last of Imperialism, 1965, Nkrumah (10643 words)

First They Came For The Communists, Niemoeller (1873 words)

Beyond Vietnam, Time to Break Silence, 1967, King (6687 words)

First They Came for the Communists

Course on Anti-Imperialism, War and Peace, Part 8b

Pastor Martin Niemöller, 1892-1984

First They Came for the Communists

First they came for the Communists, but I was not a Communist, so I said nothing.

Then they came for the Social Democrats, but I was not a Social Democrat, so I did nothing.

Then came the trade unionists, but I was not a trade unionist.

And then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew, so I did little.

Then when they came for me, there was no one left to stand up for me.

Pastor Niemöller

The third linked document in this part opens up the double question of who backs the communists, and if the communists are not backed, then what happens to the others?

This is the question of self-defence for the political movement, the importance of the communists, and of the non-communists.

Pastor Niemöller’s story is extraordinary, and unexpected. This German anti-Nazi Pastor survived Dachau.

For revolutionaries it is very moving to record the solidarity of people such as Pastor Niemöller.

The revolutionaries must trust the people. They have no choice.

Please download and read the text via the following link:

First They Came For The Communists, Niemoeller (1873 words)

Further reading:

Neo-Colonialism, Last of Imperialism, 1965, Nkrumah (10643 words)

Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Worst Ever Terror Attacks, Dixon (813 words)

Beyond Vietnam, Time to Break Silence, 1967, King (6687 words)

Neo-Colonialism, Last Stage of Imperialism

Course on Anti-Imperialism, War and Peace, Part 8a

Kwame Nkrumah, 1909-1972

Neo-Colonialism, Last Stage of Imperialism

The second linked document is included here because of Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah’s correct and insistent concern with the continuing threat to Africa (now materialising again militarily as “Africom”) posed by Imperialism in its last stage of neo-colonialism.

Nkrumah believed that Africa must unite, for the sole reason that if it did not unite, then it would not have sufficient strength to resist the Imperialists - and so it has turned out.

Nkrumah defined neo-colonialism as follows:

“The essence of neo-colonialism is that the State which is subject to it is, in theory, independent and has all the outward trappings of international sovereignty. In reality its economic system and thus its political policy is directed from outside.”

He goes on to add:

“Neo-colonialism is also the worst form of imperialism. For those who practise it, it means power without responsibility and for those who suffer from it, it means exploitation without redress. In the days of old-fashioned colonialism, the imperial power had at least to explain and justify at home the actions it was taking abroad.”

And in his Conclusion Nkrumah says:

“In the earlier chapters of this book I have set out the argument for African unity and have explained how this unity would destroy neo-colonialism in Africa. In later chapters I have explained how strong is the world position of those who profit from neo-colonialism. Nevertheless, African unity is something which is within the grasp of the African people. The foreign firms who exploit our resources long ago saw the strength to be gained from acting on a Pan-African scale. By means of interlocking directorships, cross-shareholdings and other devices, groups of apparently different companies have formed, in fact, one enormous capitalist monopoly. The only effective way to challenge this economic empire and to recover possession of our heritage, is for us also to act on a Pan¬-African basis, through a Union Government.”

Please download and read the text via the following link:

Neo-Colonialism, Last Stage of Imperialism, 1965, Nkrumah (10643 words)

Further reading:

First They Came For The Communists, Niemoeller (1873 words)

Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Worst Ever Terror Attacks, Dixon (813 words)

Beyond Vietnam, Time to Break Silence, 1967, King (6687 words)

Anti-Imperialism

Course on Anti-Imperialism, War and Peace, Part 8

Martin Luther King, 1929 – 1968

Anti-Imperialism

Exactly how the anti-Imperialist struggle will resolve itself in South Africa, Southern Africa, and Africa in general, is something unpredictable at the tactical level. The question of the armed defence of revolutionary change cannot be ruled out, and we have examined this question.

This part of the present series, referenced to the “Beyond Vietnam” speech (linked below) of the late Rev Martin Luther King Junior, is designed to point to the subjective political factor in the anti-Imperialist struggle.

Nowadays it has become commonplace to refer to “international solidarity” as not only a specific, but more so a universal idea. But this concept that we have largely stripped of its particularity, generalising it as a formula, does actually have a tremendous history whose meaning is not fully conveyed by a stock phrase called “international solidarity”.

The anti-Imperialist struggle and the democratic struggle can and should be one. It is not a matter of charity of the rich to the poor. It is also not solely a matter of good-hearted and exceptional individuals (but there have indeed been such individuals - MLK was one of them - and there will be again).

What Martin Luther King describes, and justifies, is: “why I believe that the path from Dexter Avenue Baptist Church - the church in Montgomery, Alabama, where I began my pastorate - leads clearly to this sanctuary tonight.”

In other words, MLK at the meeting of the “Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam”, in 1967, was preaching the intrinsic, organic unity of the struggle of the common people everywhere. It is not an artificial altruism but it is a unity of purpose, in concerted action against the single enemy that manifests itself everywhere and oppresses us all: monopoly-capitalist Imperialism.

And further than his literal message, there is also the extraordinary power and style of MLK’s oration. We forget this factor of art too easily. Lenin spoke of “insurrection as an art”. It is an art that goes beyond the military, and encompasses all of our activities. Therefore when reading such a piece as MLK’s “Beyond Vietnam” speech, one should regard it as a source of learning of the art of advocacy, which is part of the art of leadership, essential to the art of insurrection.

The question of international solidarity has raised itself very sharply in South Africa recently (August 2011).

Should South Africa be planning “regime change” in Botswana? Of course, not. It is not for South Africa to substitute itself for the Batswana as the agent of history in that country.

Should South Africa be dictating terms to Swaziland, in consideration for extending a loan in advance of moneys that will accrue to Swaziland in the future? No, of course not, and for the same reasons as apply to Botswana.

Our task is to provide assistance, including political education, hospitality, and a joint critique of that Imperialism which is always prepared to fish in troubled waters, and whose signature is always aggression and war.

“Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful, struggle for a new world. This is the calling of the sons of God...” – Martin Luther King.

Picture: Rev. Martin Luther King, Junior, at the White House, Washington DC, USA

Please download and read the text via the following link:

Beyond Vietnam, Time to Break Silence, 1967, King (6687 words)

Further reading:

Neo-Colonialism, Last of Imperialism, 1965, Nkrumah (10643 words)

First They Came For The Communists, Niemoeller (1873 words)

Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Worst Ever Terror Attacks, Dixon (813 words)

Strategy and Tactics

Anti-Imperialism, War and Peace, Part 7a

Strategy and Tactics

The ANC’s famous 1969 Strategy and Tactics document adopted in the Morogoro, Tanzania Conference involving O R Tambo, Joe Slovo, Chris Hani and others, is downloadable from the link given below.

The classic Strategy and Tactics document can speak for itself. It is straightforward enough.

Do post any queries or comments you may have, to the list. If you do so, then other comrades will no doubt assist with their inputs. This is how political education is supposed to take place – in dialogue.

Picture: Morogoro, Tanzania

Please download and read the text via the following link:

Strategy and Tactics, Morogoro, 1969, ANC (5882 words)

Further reading:

1,000 Days of Popular Unity Rule in Chile, 1977, Teitelboim (5157 words)

The Armed People

Course on Anti-Imperialism, War and Peace, Part 7

The Armed People

The practical alternative to the State that appeared in Paris in the beginning of 1871 was not only the right of recall and the whole people collectively in power and in perpetual session. It was also the reappearance of the Armed People in a new kind of societal framework. So-called Primitive Communism is an Armed People. Here, in the Paris Commune, was an Armed People in advanced productive circumstances.

The security forces - army and police - that had existed before the Paris Commune had been paid to support the bourgeois State and to guarantee the State’s survival by suppressing, whenever necessary, the working class. These forces were disbanded and not replaced. With hardly any exceptions, all “separations of powers” were abolished in the Paris Commune, leaving only one power: The Armed People.

In Chile, in the time of the Popular Unity government that fell on 11 September 1973, instead of an Armed People, a virtue was made of disarmament, and a “Peaceful Path” was worshipped as the new political Golden Calf.

Volodia Teitelboim, in the first document linked below, gives a brief description, as one of those who was involved, of Chile’s Popular Unity government and its disastrous end at the hands of traitor fascists who used the national army to overthrow it. It was a shocking reminder of the purpose of the “special bodies of armed men”.

Teitelboim calls for “A Reappraisal of the Issue of the Army,” meaning a return to the view of the Paris Commune, which is mentioned in the first line. This document of Teitelboim’s is sufficient as the basis for a very good and necessary discussion.

The second linked document is the ANC’s original Strategy and Tactics document of 1969. This document unashamedly embraces armed struggle, and not any starry “Peaceful Path”.

Like the Chilean Popular Unity government, ours is a multiclass government underpinned by a class alliance for common goals. It is a unity-in-action, otherwise called a popular front.

Why have we in South Africa survived after 16 years, while the Chileans did not survive after only 1,000 days?

The answer could be that we are not pacifists. Or, the answer could be that our crisis has not arrived yet. Or, that we have passed at least one crisis (e.g. in mid-2008, resolved by the recall of President Mbeki and the resignation of various ministers including Terror Lekota and Mluleki George), which may not yet be the last.

South Africans were in this case in advance of the historic crisis that manifested in Chile. Four years prior to the Pinochet coup in Chile overthrew the Popular Unity government led by Salvador Allende, the Morogoro Conference of the ANC had laid down the necessity for the armed defence of the revolution. We look at this in the next instalment.

Picture: There are very few photographs of freedom fighters in formation or in action to be found on the Internet, whether of MK or any of any other liberation army; but there are many photographs of freedom fighters in captivity. Full justice has not yet been done. The picture is of a statue of Dedan Kimathi under the blue sky of Kenya. AMANDLA!

Please download and read the text via the following link:

1,000 Days of Popular Unity Rule in Chile, 1977, Teitelboim (5157 words)

Further reading:

Strategy and Tactics, Morogoro, 1969, ANC (5882 words)

How to Master Secret Work

Course on Anti-Imperialism, War and Peace, Part 6b

How to Master Secret Work

The third linked item is the 1980 clandestine SACP publication “How to Master Secret Work”. It makes a point that we need here, which is that there is no virtue in being illegal.

The communists do not volunteer to be illegal.

The nature of secret work is really that it is a systematic struggle against banning and persecution. As much as it is secret, yet its purpose is the re-expansion of communication and the re-legalisation of the Party. Its purpose is the public political rebirth of the organisation.

Within less than ten years of the publication of this document, the SACP was unbanned and declared fully legal again, as it has remained ever since, up to today.

The SACP had been banned and was underground (“clandestine”) from 1950 to 1990, a total of forty years. All that time the Party struggled to reverse the situation of banning and illegality. It announced its existence with the publication of the African Communist from 1959. “How to Master Secret Work” was published in the underground newspaper, Umsebenzi.

The great majority of secret work is about communicating, and through communication, deliberately reversing the Party’s excommunication from society.

There is no imaginable situation where the political vanguard will deliberately choose to be clandestine and make a virtue of its excommunication from the masses. There is no virtue in secrecy.

Unfortunately we have none of the lively illustrations from this historic document, only the text.

Please download and read this text:

How to Master Secret Work, 1980, SACP (13929 words)

Further reading:

Political and Military in Revolutionary War, 1967, Le Duan (864 words)

On the Time for Armed Struggle, 1974, Pomeroy (6800 words)