Rai 01-06

Why has the World been Awash with Socialism-Phobia for so Long and Wide-spread?

https://youtu.be/qbBWKnUk6ec

Mark Wain on May 16, 2022

A comprehensible but false explanation and answer were and still are that capitalism as a social-economic system can be neither transformable into any new one nor replaceable by any other ones such as socialism, based on so-called empirical evidences. It’s insuperable, tout court. This kind of “reasoning” is both logically wrong and historically untrue (or falling into the trap known as historical nihilism). Revolutions, big or small always have ebbs and flows, rise and fall, success and failure as well as restoration and anti-restoration stages. Class struggles have their own law and pattern regularities.

V. I. Lenin, in “Achievements and Difficulties of the Soviet Government,”

Written: Early Spring, 1919 pointed out:

 Never in history has there been a revolution in which it was possible to lay down one’s arms and rest on one’s laurels after the victory. Whoever thinks that such revolutions are possible is not only no revolutionary, but the worst enemy of the working class. There has never been a revolution, even a second-rate one, even a bourgeois revolution in which the only issue was the transfer of power from one propertied minority to another. We know of examples! The French revolution, against which the old powers hurled themselves at the beginning of the nineteenth century in order to crush it, we call great precisely because it succeeded in rousing the vast masses of the people in defense of its gains and they resisted the whole world; this was one of its greatest merits.

Revolutions are subjected to the most serious tests in the fire of battle. If you are oppressed and exploited and think of throwing off the power of the exploiters, if you are determined to carry this to its logical conclusion, you must understand that you will have to contend against the onslaught of the exploiters of the whole world. If you are ready to offer resistance and to make further sacrifices in order to hold out in the struggle, you are a revolutionary; if not, you will be crushed.

This is how the question is presented by the history of all revolutions.

Visit: https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1919/mar/x01.htm

He also indicated that the deeper the revolution is, the more difficult it will be to restore the old system, and even if restoration occurs, the more achievements will be preserved. The deeper the revolution digs the old foundations, the more difficult it will be to restore the old system; and that our "guarantee against restoration" is to carry the revolution to the end, not to compromise with the reactionaries.

Chairman Mao said: “Whether the ideological and political line is correct or not is everything. “When Oliver Cromwell, Maximilien Robespierre and Napoleon Bonaparte adhered to a correct ideological and political line against the restoration of feudalism, and they could solidify the bourgeoisie governance. On the other hand, when the enemies of bourgeoisie concealed in the revolutionary ranks resolved to engage in seeking their own self-interests without considerations of the interests of the masses, their wrong lines, once in force, would defeat the revolutions through counterrevolutionary restorations of the feudal dynasties. Line struggle is the most important one of the class struggles. For a detailed discussion and presentation, see the important contribution – “Essays in Commemoration of Mao’s Centennial: Mao Zedong Thought lives”, Vol. one, edited by Jose Maria Sison and Stefen Engel, 1995, Center for Social Studies and New Road Publications, the Netherlands.

Those who imagine that revolutions were won by sheer chances or riots are way out of truth, just as those who think that any revolution that failed once must be abandoned forever. The English bourgeoisie revolutions starting in 1640 were won finally in 1684 through two civil wars, one restoration and one coup d'état over a long period of forty-eight years; the French bourgeoisie revolutions (1789 - 1875) took 86 years, i.e., even longer time than the English bourgeoises to get the job done, during which the French bourgeoises fought seven anti-French military alliances, experienced twice of feudal force restorations, and four revolutions.

The socialist revolutions in Russia, China and Vietnam have failed due to the new-revisionist counterrevolutionary restorations of capitalism in those three countries. The only remaining revolutionary regimes are the DPRK in the Korean Peninsula and República de Cuba. Initial failure doesn’t mean no follow-ups. On the contrary, renewed socialist revolutions across the world are imminent, to wit, the Four Catastrophes are challenging the world’s capitalist social system to either self-destroy or be replaced through revolutions by socialism - the only savior - and there is no middle of the road to tide this last private-ownership-system over.

The four capital-restorative traitors (Nikita Khrushchev, Leonid Brezhnev, Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin) in the former Soviet Union (1917 – 1953; and the fake Soviet Union 1953 - 1991) and the eight capital-restorative traitors (Hua, Ye, Wang, li, Deng, jiang, Hu and Xi) in the former People’s Republic of China (1949 -1976; and the fake P.R.C. 1976 - now) made tremendous contributions to their newly adopted mother-land, i.e., the Western capitalist camp; without their collective class-betrayal despised by the working class all over the world, the Western capitalism would have long been buried by history. 

The over-all situation that the capitalists, including both the Western and Eastern camps, face has deteriorated to such an extent that none of them can find a way out. Between and among them capitalist wars may still carry the weight to settle irreconcilable conflicts, but by no means for sure owing to the threats and uncertainties of the Four Catastrophes unless capitalists are willing to risk common ruin among all.  Endless wars, battles, conflicts and clashes no doubt will beget deepened calamities and wide-spread uprisings and in posse revolutions.

Being the capital-hegemon-in-chief, the Western camp gets the upper hand of the Eastern. Its demagogy is par excellence, including its formal and fake democracy propaganda, which has conquered the world by sheer lies until now. The Four Catastrophes have served as a mirror of the times of conflagration as well as people’s struggles against capitalist dictatorship.

The Western democracy is so much over-rated that gullible people began for a very longtime to deny in the West a soupçon of corruption could find any foundation of existence anywhere. Without corruptions, the capitalist system had become the sole unprecedented paradisial system – and they gave a look as much as to say to the hapless Easterners - “Mind your own business! “

The truth is that the Western capitals both in the U.S. and the NATO nations have legitimatized corruptions into so-called laws without truly democratic participations of the people. All these so-called laws are rules against people’s long-term and basic interests. This has been made clear by the simple fact that people don’t have the initiative in their hands and all their rightfully possessed power on paper has been usurped by capital. The case lies in a nutshell, the principle of “by the people, of the people and for the people” have long been replaced by that of “by the capital, of the capital and for the capital.”

Let’s take the obligation of tax as an example.

Working people have been penalized by paying taxes twice – on the first occasion of their own incomes and meantime on the second of their capitalist lords’.

The bourgeoisie end up as the winners who pay no taxes because all their incomes, profits, repayment of debts and tax obligations are furnished by the surplus labor of the working people. According to Marxist theory, surplus value refers to the surplus labor value generated by laborers and exploited by capitalists, and these exploited labor values eventually become the profits/income/debt-repayment/tax payment of capitalists, that is, the surplus labor value created by laborers and accroached by the bourgeoisie for free. Surplus value should belong to the proletariat and their society and not to capitalists – the economic exploiters and political oppressors.

A related follow-up question is whether or not seizing the state-power by the working class is necessary in establishing a socialist nation. The question is not only crucially important for the socialists, but also for the capitalists and their stooges to engage effectively in attacks against the good names and reputations of their pivotal enemies such as Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao. As they had their ways, socialism-phobia could not be stopped.

It turns out that the first wave of the socialist revolutions in the first half of the last century led by Lenin, Stalin and Mao were successfully won because they had taken seizing state-power to heart and succeeded in overcoming enormous difficulties. This fact can also manifest itself that no external capitalist forces could defeat them if the working class seize power. The West has boiled with rage to such an extent that it has defamed Stalin and Mao, the two great leaders of the working people.

Those who betrayed their own socialist countries through breaching the socialist fortresses from within are internal enemies. The answer to deal with the question then boils down to find the correct countermeasure that will defeat also their internal enemies such as Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Gorbachev, Yeltsin and so on. Such their West master, such servants.

As I described on February 22, 2022 in Rai 01-01 of Episode 01 Opening Summary of Capriccio Rai Channel  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6yFi8b3ZpQ  that after seizing power successfully any socialist regime should no longer be led by the revolutionary party which should have retired after having rendered meritorious service to the revolution but by the revolutionary committee headquarters. People’s sovereignty must be higher and more important than state and territorial sovereignties. Consequently, the revolutionary committee headquarters becomes the people’s only leading political organization, will be able to deter any possible internal political betrayal.

Insofar as the current development of the Russia-Ukraine war that is decisive to the world’s fate, among many possible actors to which very few people have paid attention is the left-wing forces. They don’t even think of the progressives. Working people across the borders of the belligerents will show their war-weariness by spawning the anger propelling a groundswell of support of antiwar position so wide-spread as to surpass their seemingly unavoidable destiny of common ruins under the capitalist dictatorship. The working people of the belligerent that faces up to defeat should by every conceivable means rebel against their old capitalist regime and resolutely overthrow and replace it via a new Maoist socialist revolution. Chairman Mao instructed us: “It is justified to rebel against the reactionaries” and “Either revolution stops war, or war causes revolution.” We are obliged to the previously illustrious historical experiences of the Commune of Paris (1871) and the Shanghai People's Commune established in January 1967 during the January Storm. Let those patients with socialism-phobia and their ruling classes tremble at the 21th century revolutions!

From a social democratic point of view, former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said, "Putin shouldn't have invaded Ukraine. But it's not just Putin who is guilty. The U.S. and the EU are also guilty," (See: https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/brazils-lula-says-zelenskiy-as-responsible-putin-ukraine-war-2022-05-04/ ) to which I’d like to add that the Russia and Ukraine’s war and/or any other capitalist wars, for that matter, must be judged by whether or not it will advantage the socialist revolution cause. World War I was of great advantage to the Russian Revolution of 1917; World War II to the victories of the Chinese New Democratic Revolution, establishment of the People’s Republic of China and the First Revolutionary Storm in the Third World, which defeated the international imperialism of the world. If the Russia-Ukraine war will produce ensuing socialist revolution in either country or both, then the war will be considered well worthwhile.

Just as I was about to conclude this article, a white supremist young man massacred ten people in Buffalo, N.Y. He posted a so-called Great Replacement Conspiracy Theory manifesto online before killing was started. The theory warns white people were in danger of being replaced by people of color.

Capitals have used the race card for a very longtime to accomplish what they couldn’t otherwise. Racism easily smears truth and assists capitals in its divide-and-rule strategy. The so-called left vs. right, blue state vs. red state, Dems vs. G.O.P. and so on and so forth keep falsifying truth of the matter and as a result mislead the working class to believe that capital is no longer their main enemy to fight against. The sideshows such as racism, prejudice, habitual differences, sexism, heterosexism, homophobia, chauvinism, … have replaced the class enmity against capital.

What capital laughed in its sleeve at was that it ordered the Dems to open border and to bring in immigrants whose low-skill labor would push down the low-skill labors’ wage level hence boost in profit. This open-door policy obviously did not hurt the middle-class-oriented electorates mostly residing in the blue states. The poor white workers, their sponsors and the Great Replacement Theory on the other hand objected to it for obvious reason. Had those immigrants have high-skill labor, the thrust would have come from the middle-class workers, instead of the low-skill labor force.

Thus, the lesson learned herein is to fight capital not its hired guns or polemic hacks. The working-class attention should avoid being diverted away from the capitalist-workers’ class struggle by “democracy” and the electoral farce.