ධනවාදය පිළිබඳ විචාරයේදී අප ස්ථානගත වන්නේ කොතැනදැයි කියලා නිරාකරණය කරගත යුතුයි කියලා මට හිතෙනවා. මර්ධනීය සහ අසාධාරණ බවේ මෙවලමක් ලෙස ධනවාදයේ දෘශ්‍යමානය ප්‍රශ්න කිරීම ඒ කියන්නේ බාහිරත්වය අර්ථකථනය කිරීම, වෙනස් කිරීම තවදුරටත් ධනවාදයට විරෝධයක් ලෙස සැලකිය හැකිද? ධනවාදයට තිබෙන අපගේ විරෝධය යනු ධනවාදී ව්‍යුහයේ ප්‍රකාශමානයට සම්බන්ධ ආත්මීය මැදිහත් වීමක් වෙන්න බැරිද? එනම් අපගේ ආත්මය විනෝද වන්නේ ධනවාදයේ වසඟය මගින් අපට පොරොන්දු වන ආශා වස්තුව  හිමිකර ගැනීමෙන් නොව එය අහිමි කරගැනීම තුළින් අඩුව නැතිනම් අහිමිවීම කරා අපව නැවත නැවතත් සම්මුඛ කිරීමෙන් බව හඳුනාගැනීමෙනි. එම අර්ථයෙන් ආත්මීයත්වයේ තර්කනය යනු මෙම අසමත් භාවයේ පුනරාවර්තනයයි.

මේ ප්‍රශ්නය දර්ශනවාදී සීමාවේ ප්‍රශ්නයක් නිසා විශාල වැදගත් කමක් දරයි. එය විග්‍රහ කර ගැනීමට සමාජ ක්‍රමයන් වල විකාශනයේ සිට වත්මන දක්වා සිදු වූ ක්‍රියාවලිය ඔස්සේ අපි පටන් ගනිමු.

ධනපති ක්‍රමයට වයස අවුරුදු 255 යි

මානව සමාජය ආරම්භයේ සිට විකාශනය වූයේ එක් එක් සමාජ ක්‍රමයක් අභාවයට ගොස් නව සමාජ ක්‍රමයක් වර්ධනීය ලෙස ස්ථාපිත වීම මගිනි. මානව සමාජ පරිණාමය සමාජ ව්‍යුහයක් ලෙස ස්ථාපිත වූයේ ආදිකල්පික ප්‍රජා සමූහ ක්‍රමය ස්ථාපිත වීමත් සමගය. ඒ මීට අවුරුදු 30,000කට පමණ පෙරදීය. එම ආරම්භ වූ ආදිකල්පික ප්‍රජා සමූහ සමාජ ක්‍රමය නිෂේධනය වී වහල් සමාජ ක්‍රමය ස්ථාපිත විය. ආදිකල්පික ප්‍රජා සමූහ ක්‍රමය අවුරුදු 20,000ක් පමණ පැවතුනි. ඉන්පසුව වහල් සමාජ ක්‍රමය නිෂේධනය වී වැඩවසම් ක්‍රමය ස්ථාපිත විය. වහල් සමාජ ක්‍රමය අවුරුදු 4000ක පමණ කාලයක් පැවතුනි. ඉන්පසුව වැඩවසම් සමාජ ක්‍රමය නිෂේධනය වී ධනපති සමාජ ක්‍රමය ස්ථාපිත විය. වැඩවසම් සමාජ ක්‍රමය අවුරුදු 2,000ක් පමණ පැවතුනි. මේ මානව සමාජය ගෙවා දැමූ සමාජ සංස්ථාවන්ය. එහිදී ධනපති ක්‍රමය ආරම්භය ලෙස ගැනෙන්නේ කාර්මික විප්ලවයත් සමග ධනේශ්වර විප්ලව ඇතිවීමේ කාලපරිච්ඡේදයේ සිටය. ඒ 1770 සිට 1820 දක්වා ධනේශ්වර විප්ලව සිදු වූ කාලපරිච්ඡේදයේ සිට 2025 දක්වා සාමාන්‍ය වශයෙන් අවුරුදු 255ක් පමණ ධනේශ්වර සමාජ ක්‍රමය මේ වන විට ගෙවා ඇත.

ධනපති සමාජයේ ආරම්භය – කාර්මික විප්ලවයෙන් පටන්ගෙන, වර්ධනය – ලිබරල්වාදී ප්‍රාග්ධනය සමුච්චය කිරීම මගින් නව වර්ධනයකට ගියේ නව ලිබරල්වාදය ලෙස නව ධනේශ්වර පියවරක් ඉදිරියට තබමිනි. ධනේශ්වර සමාජයේ කාර්මික විප්ලවයෙන් පසුව එහි තවත් පියවරක් ඉදිරියට ගියේ 1995 පසුව ඇති වූ තාක්ෂණික විප්ලවයත් සමගය. තාක්ෂණික විප්ලවය අප ජීවත්වන ගෝලීය ධනවාදී සමාජය ව්‍යුහයට මුදාහැරියේ දනේශ්වර භාණ්ඩ විලාසිතාව පෞද්ගලික භාවිතාවට හුරුකිරීම මගිනි.

ධනේශ්වර සමාජය ආරම්භ වූ ලිබරල්වාදය, නව ලිබරල්වාදය සහ ගෝලීය ධනවාදය යන නාමකරණයන් යටතේ ධනේශ්වර ක්‍රමයේ ආරම්භයත් වර්ධනයත් වගේම එහි නිෂේධනයත් ආරම්භ වී තිබෙන්නේ භෞතිකයේ, ආර්ථිකයේ, දේශපාලනයේ සහ සමාජයේ ඇති වී තිබෙන ව්‍යවසනකාරී තත්වයට මුහුණ දීමට ලෝකවාසී ජනයාට නොහැකි වීම හේතු කොට ගෙනය.  ධනේශ්වර සමාජ පැවත ආ සමාජ ව්‍යුහයද ඒ සමගම නිෂේධනීය වීමේ විශාල අංග ලක්ෂණ ගණනාවක් අප (ජනතාව) ඉදිරියේ දෘශ්‍යමාන වීමට පටන්ගෙන තිබේ. එය දෘශ්‍යමාන වන්නේ භෞතික ව්‍යවසනයන් හරහා වගේම, දිගහැරෙන සිදුවීම් හරහා වගේම, ප්‍රාග්ධනය සමුච්ච කිරීම හරහා සිදුවන පීඩනයට විසදුම් සොයන ජනයාගේ අරගලයන් ලෝකය පුරාම විශාල ලෙස මතු වීම හේතු කොට ගෙනය. එම අරගල ක්‍රියාකාරීත්වය මෑත කාලයේ ධනේශ්වර ක්‍රම විරෝධී අරගලයක් දක්වා වර්ධනය වෙමින් පවතී.

ගෝලීය අර්බුදය

එම සිදුවීම පැති කීහිපයකින් විග්‍රහ කළ හැකිය. ගෝලීය ධනවාදී ක්‍රමය විසින් ගෝලීය භෞතික අර්බුදය හා ගෝලීය ආර්ථික අර්බුද වඩා තීව්‍ර කර තිබේ. වත්මන් ගෝලීය අර්බුදය ප්‍රධාන විෂය හැටියට විග්‍රහ කරනවාට වඩා එහි පැති හතරක් ගැන ස‍දහන් කර හැකිය. ඒ ගෝලීය ආර්ථික අර්බුදය, ගෝලීය සෞඛ්‍ය අර්බුදය, ගෝලීය සොබාදහමේ අර්බුදය, ගෝලීය මානව ප්‍රජාතන්ත්‍රවාදී අර්බුදය වැනි කරුණු සාකච්චා කළ හැකිය. මේ කරුණු වලට අදාලව ගෝලීය සොබාදහමේ අර්බුදයෙන් ඔබ නගන ප්‍රශ්නයට අදහස් දැක්වීමට මම තේරීමක් කරන්නේ අනෙක් කරුණුවලින් ලිපිය දීර්ඝ වන බැවිනි. ඒවාද පසුව සාකච්ඡා කළ හැකිය.

ගෝලීය සොබාදහමේ අර්බුදය තුළින් අපට දෘශ්‍යමාන වන සන්දර්භ දෙකක් ඇත. ඒ ගෝලීය උණුසුම හෝ ගෝලීය දේශගුණ විපර්යාසය. මෙහිදී අප වසන පෘථිවියේ වයස භූ විද්‍යාඥයින් ගණනය කර තිබෙන්නේ වර්ෂ බිලියන 4.5ක් ලෙසය. ඒ වගේම පෘථිවියේ අයිස් යුගය ඇති වූයේ වර්ෂ බිලියන 3කට පෙර  කාලවකවානුවකදී බව භූ විද්‍යාඥයින් තහවුරු කරති. අයිස් යුගය මේ වර්ෂ බිලියන 3 තුළදී වර්ධනයන් හයක් අත්පත් කරගෙන තිබුණි. එය ධනපති සමාජය දක්වා පැවත ආවේ ස්වාභාවික භෞතික සංසිද්ධියක් ලෙසය. ධනපති ක්‍රමය ගලා ආ වසර 255 තුළදී වර්ෂ බිලියන 3කදී ස්වාභාවික වර්ධන හයක් අත් කර ගත් අයිස් යුගය දියවී යාමක් සිදුවන බව විද්‍යඥයන් 1978-79 කාලයේ සොයාගත්තේය. ඒ ගෝලීය උණුසුම නැමති සංසිද්ධිය සොයාගැනීමත් සමගය. 1979 සිට 2025 වන විට උත්තර අර්ධ ගෝලයේ අයිස් ගැලැසියර් දියවී ඇති ප්‍රමාණය 60%කි. දක්ෂිණ අර්ධ ගෝලයේ 18%ක් දිය වී ගොස් ඇත. එවිට මතුවන ප්‍රශ්නය වන්නේ මේ සිදුවීම සිදුවන්නේ පැවතුණ ධනේශ්වර ආර්ථික ක්‍රියාවලිය හරහාද නැත්නම් ආත්මීය සම්බන්ධයක් හරහාද යන්නය.

වායුගෝලයේ කාබන් වැඩිවිම සහ ගෝලීය උෂ්ණත්වය

ඇතිවෙමින් තිබෙන ක්‍රියාව භෞතිකව තේරුම් ගතහොත් කාබන් පරමාණු අති දැවැන්ත ලෙස වැඩි වී ඇත්තේ ධනේශ්වර ආර්ථිකය විසින් ගෙන ගිය ක්‍රියාවලිය හරහාය. ධනේශ්වර ක්‍රමය විසින් නිර්මාණය කළ පෞද්ගලිකත්වය මත පදනම් වුන ප්‍රවාහන ක්‍රියාවලිය ලෝකයේ 2025 වන විට වාහන බිලියන 1.7ක ප්‍රමාණයක් ධාවනයේ යොදෙති. එය පෞද්ගලිකත්වය උද්දීපනය කරන මානසික ආශාවක් විය හැකිය. 2035 වන විට වාහන තවත් බිලියනයකින් වැඩි කිරීමට ගෝලීය ධනේශ්වර සමාගම් සැලසුම් කර ඇත. එවිට සිදුවන්නේ බිලියන 1.7ක් වාහන පොසිල ඉන්ධන දහනය නිසා වායුගෝලයේ ස්ථාපිත වන කාබන් පරමාණු ප්‍රමාණය අති විශාල ලෙස ඉහළ යාම පමණි. වාහන ධාවනය මගින් වායුගෝලයට නිකුත්වන එක් කාබන් පරමාණුවක් වායුගෝලය තුළ වර්ෂ මිලියන ගණක් පැවැත්මක් ඇති බව භෞතික විද්‍යාඥයන් සහතික කරති. ඒ වගේම කාබන් පරමාණු අනුවකට සූර්ය තාප ශක්තිය අවශෝෂණය කර ගැනීමේ හැකියාව පැවතීම තවත් සුවිශේෂී තත්වයකි. එවිට වායුගෝලය තුළට කාබන් පරමාණු වැඩි වූ පසු කාබන් පසුමාණු සූර්ය ශක්තිය ගබඩා කර ගැනීම නිසා වායුගෝලය තුළ උෂ්ණත්වය ඉහළ යයි. ධනපති සමාජය ආරම්භක කාලය වන 1800දී වායුගෝලයේ පැවති විවිධ පරමාණු අංශු මිලියනයක් තුළ කාබන් අංශු පැවතියේ 280 සංඛ්‍යාවකි. 2025 වන විට විවිධ පරමාණු අංශු මිලියනයක් තුළ කාබන් අංශු 480 දක්වා වැඩි වී තිබේ. කාබන් විමෝචනය හරහා වායුගෝලයේ උෂ්ණත්වය වැඩි වන විට අයිස් ග්ලැසියර් දියවීම වගේම දේශගුණ විපර්යාස බහුල වී තිබෙන්නේය. අප අද මුහුණ දෙන වැසි කුණාටු වැඩි වීම, භූ කම්පන වැඩිවීම, නියගය ඇතිවීම, ගිනි කදු පුපුරායාම වැඩි වීම වැනි ස්වාභාවික විපත් වැඩි වීමට හේතු වී තිබේ.

මේ ඇතිවන ව්‍යවසනය ගැන විවිධ දාර්ශනික දෘෂ්ටිකෝණයන්ගෙන් අදහස් ඉදිරිපත් කරන පිරිස් වර්තමානයේද සිටිති. ඒවා අතර ඔබ පවසන ආත්මීය සාධකය මූලික කර ගත් හේතුවක් ලෙස අර්ථ දක්වන ඓතිහාසික දාර්ශනිකයන්ගේ අදහස්වල අඛණ්ඩතාවයක් සහිත අදහස්ද වත්මනයේ දැකගත හැකිය. ආත්මීය සාධකය මුල් කරගත් දාර්ශනික කතිකාව ගැන ආරම්භ කල දාර්ශනිකයන්ගෙන්ම මේ කරුණ ගැන සාකච්ඡාව අපි පටන් ගනිමු.

දෙවියන් හා පෘතුවිය

එහිදි විශ්වය හෝ පෘථිවිය දෙවියන් විසින් බිහිකළ බව ආගමික විඥානවාදය විසින් දාර්ශනික අදහස් වහල් යුගයේ පැවති ආගමික සම්පුදායක් විය. විඥානවාදයේ ගමන් මග ඓතිහාසික විඥානවාදී ස්පරූපයක් අත්කර ගත්තේ විවිධ විඥානවාදී දාර්ශනික ධාරා පහළ වීමත් සමගය. ඉන්පසුව වහල් යුගයේදී ග්‍රීසියේ පුරාණ වාස්තවික විඥානවාදය දේශනා කළ දාර්ශනිකයන් වූයේ සොක්‍රටීස් (ක්‍රි:පූ: 470-399) සහ ප්ලේටෝ (ක්‍රි:පූ: 428-348) යන දාර්ශනිකයන්ය. එම දාර්ශනිකයන්ගෙන් පසු මනෝමූලික විඥානවාදය දේශනා කළ දාර්ශනිකයන් වූයේ ජෝජ් බාක්ලී (1685-1753) , ඩේවිඩ් හියුම් (1711-1776) ය. ඉන්පසුව ජර්මන් විඥානවාදය දේශනා කළ දාර්ශනිකයන් වූයේ ඉමැනුවෙල් කාන්ට් (1724-1804) ජෝජ් හේගල් (1770-1831) යන දාර්ශනිකයන්ය. මොවුන් විශ්වය දෙවියන්වහන්සේගෙන් හෝ ආත්මීයත්වයකින් මෙහෙයවන බව පැවසුවේ තම මනසේ ඇති කර ගත් විශ්වාසයක් මත පදනම්වයි. දෙවියන් විසින් විශ්වය මෙහෙයවන බව හෝ ආත්මයකින් විශ්වය මෙහෙයවන බව  2025 දක්වා ඔවුන් විද්‍යාත්මකව තහවුරු කිරීමක් කර නොමැත. හේගල්ගේ දර්ශනවාදී විග්‍රහයෙන් අපි ආත්මීයත්වය යන කරුණ විමසා බලමු. හේගල්ගේ විශ්වය ගැන මූලික දැක්ම වූයේ ජගත් ආත්මයකින් විශ්වය මෙහෙයවන බවය. එවිට ජගත් ආත්මය යනු දෙවියන්වහන්සේ විසින් විශ්වය මෙහෙයවන බව ඔහු තවත් අයුරකින් පැවසීම පමණක් කර තිබුණි. මෙම කරුණ ගැන මුලින්ම විරෝධය ප්‍රකාශ කළේ ඔහුගේම ගෝලයෙක් ලෙස සිටි ලුඩ්විග් ෆොයාර්බාක් (1804-1872) විසිනි. ජගත් ආත්මය නැමති දාර්ශනික දෘෂ්ටිවාදය 19වැනි සියවසේ සිට නාමකරණය වූයේ විඥානවාදය යන නමිනි. විඥානවාදය විශාල පරාසයක විහිදුනේ ආදිකල්පික ප්‍රජා සමූහ සමාජ ක්‍රමයේ පැවති ඇදිහිලි වල සිට විකාශනය හරහාය. මනසින් ඇති කර ගන්නා අදහසක් මත කරන දේවත්වය හෝ ආත්මීය සාධකය හෝ පැවත ආවේ ආගමික විඥානවාදය සමග මෙම ඇදිහිලි පසු කාලයේ මුසු විය. පසුව ජෝජ් බාක්ලී ගෙන් ආත්මීයත්වය යන කරුණ වගේම ජෝජ් හේගල්ගේ ජගත් ආත්මය යන කරුණ දක්වා පැමිණියේ දේවත්වය හෝ ආත්මය යන කරුණ මුල් කරගෙනය.

දැන් ප්‍රශ්නය මතුවන්නේ දෙවියන් වහන්සේ අප වසන මංදාකිනිය තුළ ඔහු විසින් මවපු පෘථිවිය පමණක් මෙවන් ගෝලීය උණුසුම වැනි විපතකට ඇද දැමුවේ ඇයිද යන ප්‍රශ්නය අපට මතුවේ. එයට පිළිතුර ජගත් ආත්මීය මෙහෙයවීමක් නම් විශ්වය මෙහෙයවන්නා විසින් විනාසයක් තමන් විසින්ම, තම සිතැගි පරිදි නිර්මාණය කර මුදා හැර ඇති බවයි. මෙහෙයවන්නාගේ සිතැගි පරිදි ව්‍යවසනය මෙහෙයවන බව එවිට සක් සුදක් සේ පැහැදිලියි නේද? එවිට පෘථිවිය මත ජීවත්වන ජීවීන්ගේ සහ මානව පැවැත්ම විශ්වය මෙහෙයවන්නාගේ සිතැගි පරිදි ධනේශ්වර සමාජයෙන් අවසන් කිරීමටද සුදානමක් පවත්වාගෙන ආවේ ඇයිද යනුවෙන් තවත් ප්‍රශ්නයක් මතු විය හැකිය. ආත්මීයත්වය විශ්වාස කරන හෝ දෙවියන් වහන්සේ විශ්වාස කර දාර්ශනික පිරිස වත්මනේ ඇතිවීමට යන ව්‍යවසනයට ආත්මීය විසදුමක් තිබේ නම් එය ඉදිරිපත් කළ යුතුය. නමුත් ආත්මීයවාදීන් හෝ විඥානවාදීන් මෙවැනි ව්‍යවසනක් නැත යන්න පවසමින් සිටිනවා වගේම, ව්‍යවසනයක් නැති තැන විසදුමකුත් නැත යන්න පවසමින් සිටිති.

ගෝලිය ව්‍යසනය ගැන නිනව්ව

ආත්මීයත්වය සහ විඥානවාදය විශ්වාස කරන ධාරාවන් කීපයක් මෑත කාලයේදීද ලකාවේ ක්‍රියාත්මක වෙති. ඒ අතර නලීන් ද සිල්වා ප්‍රමුඛ ජාතික චින්තන කණ්ඩායම වගේම පශ්චාත් නූතනවාදීන් හා එයින් කැඩුණ වංගීස සුමණසේකර පුමුඛ බටහිර ඉවුරේ දර්ශන කණ්ඩායම වගේම ජවිපෙ සහ පෙරටුගාමී පක්ෂය වගේම සමන් පුෂ්පකුමාර ප්‍රමුඛ කණ්ඩායම මේ දෘෂ්ටිවාදය නියෝජනය කරන කණ්ඩායම් වෙති. නමුත් මේ ඇතිවන ගෝලීය ව්‍යසනය මොවුන් කිසිම කෙනෙක් සාකච්ඡාවට නොගන්නවා සේම විසදුමක් සාකච්ඡා කිරීම පවා පසෙකට දමා ඇත. ඔවුන් මෑත කාලයේ ප්‍රකාශයට පත් කළ කෘති සියල්ලම පාහේ මම අධ්‍යනය කළ නමුත් ආත්මියත්වය විග්‍රහයෙන් හෝ පැරණි විඥානවාදීන්ගේ විහ්‍රහයෙන්  බිඳක් හෝ ඉදිරියට ගොස් නොතිබුණි. එවිට මට වැටහුනේ ආත්මීයත්වය යනු හුදු වාචික අභිනයකින් ප්‍රශ්න වසා තැබීමට යොදා ගන්නා මෙවලමක් පමණක් බවය.

විශ්වය ගැන භෞතිකවාදී දර්ශනය තුළ මතවාදය ගමන් කරන්නේ ක්‍රිස්තු පූර්ව 500 පමණ කාලයක සිටිය. එම දාර්ශනිකයන් විශ්වය ස්වාභාවික භෞතික ව්‍යුහයක්ය යන්න පවසා තිබුණි. විශ්වයේ ආරම්භය පියවි ඇසට නොපෙනෙන අංශු (පරමාණු) වල සිට අති විශාල ග්‍රහලෝක දක්වා පරිණාමය ඥානනය කිරීමට දාර්ශනික පිවිසුම භෞතිකවාදී දර්ශනයයි. එම ද්‍රව්‍ය බිහිවීම, පැවැත්ම, නිශේධනය යන විවිධත්වයේ ලක්ෂණ වටහා ගැනීමේ චින්තනය පුබුදුවන ලද්දේ භෞතිකවාදී පැවැත්ම විශ්වාස කල දාර්ශනිකයන් විසිනි. මෙම භෞතිකවාදී  දාර්ශනිකයන්  විශ්වයේ මූලික පදනම පරමාණුව බව සොයාගත්තේය. මේ සාකච්ඡාව වර්ධනය වූයේ ඓතිහාසික භෞතිකවාදය නැමති දාර්ශනික සාකච්ඡාව තුළය. එම මතවාදය ඇතිකළ දාර්ශනිකයන් වූයේ පුරාණ භෞතිකවාදීන් (ලෙයුසිපස් ක්‍රි:පූ: 500-430, ඩිමොක්‍රිටස් ක්‍රි:පූ: 460-370, එපිකියුරස් ක්‍රි:පූ: 341-270), පුනරුදයේ භෞතිකවාදීන් හෝ යාන්ත්‍රික භෞතිකවාදීන් (නිකොලස් කොපර්නික්ස් 1473-1543, ගැලීලියෝ ගැලීලි 1564-1642, අයිසෙක් නිව්ටන් 1642-1727), ඉංග්‍රීසි භෞතිකවාදීන් (ප්‍රැන්සිස් බේකන් 1561-1625, තෝමස් හොබ්ස් 1558-1679, ජෝන් ලොක් 1632-1704), ප්‍රංශ භෞතිකවාදීන් (ජුලියන් ඩී ලෙමේට්ට්‍රි 1709-1751, ඩෙනිස් දිද්රෝගේ 1713-1784, පෝලි හෙන්රි හෝල්බාහ් 1729-1789), පරිණාමවාදීන් (ජින් ලමාර්ක් 1744-1829, චාල්ස් ඩාවින් 1809-1882), මානවංශික භෞතිකවාදීන් (ලුඩ්වික් ෆොයර්බාක් 1804-1872, නිකොලායි වෙර්නිෂෙව්ස්කි 1828-1870) සහ මාක්ස්වාදීන් (කාල් මාක්ස් 1818-1883, ප්‍රෙඩ්රික් එංගල්ස් 1820-1895, වී. අයි. ලෙනින් 1870-1924) යන දාර්ශනිකයන් විසිනි.

ස්ටීවන් හොකින් හා භෞතිකවාදී විශ්ව න්‍යාය

මාක්ස්වාදී දාර්ශනික පදනම භෞතිකවාදය බවට පත් වන්නේ මාක්ස්, එංගල්ස් සහ ලෙනින් ඉදිපත් කළ භෞතිකවාදී දාර්ශනික රචනා තුළිනි. එහිදී මොවුන් තිදෙනා සාකච්ඡාවට බදුන් කරන විශ්වයේ ස්වරූපය පරමාණුක විශ්වයක් යන්න භෞතිකවාදී විග්‍රහයකි. එම පරමාණු විශ්වය වත්මනේ ස්ටීවන් හෝකින් (1942-2018) විසින් 1998දී ඉදිරිපත් කළ විදාරණය වන විශ්වය (big bang theory) යන විශ්ව න්‍යාය තුළින්ද, මාක්ස්වාදය විසින් ඉදිරිපත් කළ භෞතිකවාදී විශ්ව න්‍යාය සමග බද්ධ වීම සිදු වී තිබේ. විශ්වයේ ස්වාභාවික භෞතිකය ගොඩනැගෙන්නේ පරමාණු තුළිනි. පරමාණු යනු විවිධත්වයක් සහිත පදාර්ථ සමූහයකි. පරමාණු සමූහය විශ්වය තුළ වලාවන් ලෙස එකතු වී මන්දාකිනි ලෙසත් මන්දාකිනි තුළ සෞරග්‍රහමණ්ඩල නිර්මාණය වී ඉන් අනතුරුව ග්‍රහලෝකවල ජීවය හටගන්නා බව භෞතිකවාදී ස්ටීවන් හෝකින් පැහැදිලි කරයි. අප වසන පෘථිවියද එවැනි ස්වාභාවික භෞතික ක්‍රියාවලියක බිහිවීමකි. ස්වාභාවිකව ගොඩනැගුණු පෘථිවියේ වායුගෝලයේ පරමාණු ව්‍යුහය කෘතිමව වෙනස් වූ පසු ඇතිවන්නේ විනාශයකි. ඒ විනාශයට පෘථිවිය තුළ ජීවත් වන සියලුම ජීවීන් වත්මනේ මුහුණ දෙමින් සිටිති.

පහත රූපය ඒටීවන් හෝකින් විසින් ඉදිපත් කළ විදාරණය වන විශ්වය (big bang theory) නැමති රූප සටහනයි. එහිදී විශ්වය ආරම්භ වන්නේ එකවර මතුවන ආලෝක ප්‍රභවයකිනි. අලෝක ප්‍රභවයෙන් නිකුත්වන ඉලෙක්ට්‍රෝන, ප්‍රෝටෝන සහ නියුට්‍රෝන කාලය අවකාශය තුළ ගමන් කර එක් අවස්ථාකදී එකතුවී පරමාණුවක් සෑදෙයි. එලෙස සෑදෙන පරමාණුව පදාර්ථ වලාවක් ලෙස එකතු වී මන්දාකිනි සෑදෙයි. මන්දාකිනි තුළ පරමාණුක නිහාරිකා බවට පත්වී සූර්යන් ප්‍රමුඛ සෞරග්‍රහමණ්ඩල බිහිවෙයි. සෞරග්‍රහමණ්ඩලය යනු ග්‍රහවස්තු පිහිටීමයි. එම සෞරග්‍රහමන්ඩල වල ජීවය බිහිවීමට අවශ්‍ය සොබාදහම බිහිවන ග්‍රහලෝක වර්ධනය වීමට පටන් ගිනියි. ඉන්පසුව සොබාදහම තුළ ඒක සෛලික ජීවියාගේ සිට වර්ධනය වී ජීවීන්ගේ ක්‍රියාකාරීත්වයක් වර්ධනය වන බව හෝකින් පවසයි. මෙය භෞතිකවාදී විග්‍රහයකි.

පුරාණ භෞතිකවාදය

අප ඉන්නා විශ්වයේ වයස වත්මන වන විට ගණනව කර ඇත්තේ වර්ෂ බිලියන 13.8ක් ලෙසය. එවිට අපගේ සූර්යයාගේ වයස වර්ෂ බිලියන 6ක් ලෙස ගණන් කර ඇත. විශ්වයේ රූප සටහන පහතින් ඇත.

පුරාණ භෞතිකවාදීන් ගේ දාර්ශනික දැක්මෙන් පසුව විඥානවාදයත් එකාබද්ධ කළ දාර්ශනික මතය පාරභෞතිකවාදය ලෙස හදුනාගනී. එහි මූලාරම්භක දාර්ශනිකයා වූයේ ඇරිස්ටෝටල්ය (ක්‍රි:පූ: 384-322). ඔහු මූලික ලෙස පුරාණ භෞතිකවාදීන්ගේ පරමාණුවාදය පිළිගත්තේය. එහිදී සියලු දේවල් ද්‍රව්‍යමය උපතකින් පැන නැගුණ බවත් එය හැඩයක් නැති හා අස්ථීර වූවක් බවත් ඒවා ක්‍රියාත්මක වීමේදී පැවැත්ම හැර වෙන යමක් නොමැති බවත් ඇරිස්ටෝටල් ප්‍රකාශ කළේය. එය නියම සංවේදී දෙයක් බවට පත් වූයේ ද්‍රව්‍යය එකී ස්වරූපයෙන් හදුනාගැනීමයි යන්න ඔහු පැවසීය. එම මතය භෞතිකවාදී දාර්ශනික මතවාදය නියෝජනය කළේය. නමුත් ඔහුගේ මතවාදයේ ඊළග කොටසින් ගැටළු මතු කළේය. ඇරිස්ටෝටල් පරමාණුක ද්‍රව්‍යයේ ක්‍රියාකාරීත්වය චලිතයෙන් වෙන් කළේය. යම් පරමාණුක ද්‍රව්‍යකට චලිතය පිටතින් ඇතුලු කරන බව ඔහු පෙන්වා දුන්නේය. ද්‍රව්‍යය අස්ථිර තත්වයක සිට ස්ථීර තත්වයකට මාරුවීමේදී සහ එක් තත්වයක සිට තවත් තත්වයකට වෙනස් වීමේ ප්‍රභවය වූ චලිතය මෙහෙයවන්නේ දෙවින්වහන්සේ බව ප්‍රකාශ කළේය. ඇරිස්ටොටල්ගේ විශ්වය පිළිබද න්‍යාය භෞතික ප්‍රවනතා සමග විඥානවාදී ප්‍රවනතා ගැබ්වීම නිසා පාරභෞතිකවාදය ලෙස නාමකරණය වූයේ එලෙසිනි. මේ නිසාය ඔහුගෙන් පසුව විවිධ කාලවකවානුවල සාකච්චාවට ලක්වූ විවිධ පාරභෞතිකවාදී ප්‍රවනතා තිබුණි. ඒ අරාබි පාරභෞතිකවාදය (අල් බෘරූනි 973-1050, අව් සෙනා 980-1073, ඉබන් රුෂ්ද් 1126-1198) ඉන්පසුව විඥානවාදී පණ්ඩිතවාදය (තෝමස් ඇක්වයිනාස් 1225-1272) ඉන් පසුව නව පාරභෞතිකවාදය ලෙස (රෙනේ ඩෙකාට් 1596-1650, බෙනඩික් ස්පිනෝසා 1632-1677, ගොට්ප්‍රිඩ් ලිබ්නිස් 1646-1716) යන දාර්ශනිකයන්ව හදුන්වා දිය හැකිය. 

එවිට මතුවන ප්‍රශ්නය වන්නේ විශ්වය දෙවියන්වහන්සේගේ පාලන ක්‍රියාවලියක්ද? නැත්නම් ආත්මීය පාලන ක්‍රියාවලියක්ද? නැත්නම් ස්වාභාවික භෞතික ක්‍රියාවලික්ද? යන්නය. එවිට දෙවියන්ගේ පාලන ක්‍රියාවලියක් හෝ ආත්මීය ක්‍රියාවලියක් නම් එය නොදන්නා සහ සොයාගත නොහැකි ක්‍රියාවලියකි. මේ විශ්වය ස්වාභාවික භෞතික ක්‍රියාවලියක් නම් එය ගැන පරීක්ෂණ මගින්, නිරීක්ෂණ මගින් විද්‍යානුකූලව තහවුරු කර ගත හැකිය. එවිට මානවයාට භෞතිකවාදී දැක්මක් තුළින් එයට විසදුම් සෙවිය හැකිය. භෞතිකවාදී සොයාගැනීම ගැන මෙසේ විස්තර කළ හැකිය.

භූ විද්‍යාඥයන්ගේ මතය

පෘථිවියට වයස වර්ෂ බිලියන 4.5කි. එහිදී වර්ෂ බිලියන 4කට ආසන්න කාලයක් පෘථිවි පෘෂ්ඨය ස්වාභාවිකව සකස් වූ කාල පරිච්ඡේදය ලෙස හදුනාගනියි. ඉන් පසු වසර මිලියන 538ක සිට වර්තමානය දක්වා ජීවීන් ඇති වූ යුගය ලෙස හදුනාගන්නේ පැනරොසොයික් යුගය (Phanerozoic period) නමිනි. එහිදී පැනරොසොයික් යුගය කාලපරිච්ඡේදය ජීවයේ ආරම්භයෙන් පසුව කාලවකවානු තුනක ව්‍යාප්තියක් අත් කර ගත් බව භූ විද්‍යාඥයන් සනාථ කරයි. එනම් පළමු යුගය වන පැලියෝසොයික් යුගය (Paleozoic period), දෙවැනි යුගය වන මෙසෝසොයික් යුගය (Mesozoic period) සහ වත්මන් යුගය ලෙස හදුන්වන පැලියෝජීන් යුගය (Paleogene Period) යනුවෙන් මේ යුග තුන භූ විද්‍යාඥයන් නාමකරණය කරති.

ඒ ජීවීන්ගේ ආරම්භක යුගය වන පැලියෝසොයික් යුගය යනු භූ විද්‍යාත්මක, දේශගුණික සහ පරිණාමීය වෙනස්කම් වලින් ජීවයක් ඇතිවීම ස‍දහා අකාබනික තත්වයේ සිට කාබනික තත්වය දක්වා වගේම ඒක සෛලී ජීවියාගේ සිට බහුත්ව සෛල ජීවීන් දක්වා වර්ධනය හටගත් කාල පරිච්ඡේදයයි. පෘථිවි ඉතිහාසයේ ජීවයේ වේගවත්ම සහ පුළුල් විවිධාංගීකරණය වූ ජීවී විශේෂ බිහිවීම ලෙස හැඳින්වෙන ආත්‍රපෝඩාවන්, මොලුස්කාවන්, මාළු, උභයජීවීන් සහ උරගයින් යන සියල්ලම පැලියෝසොයික් යුගයේදී පරිණාමය විය. පැලියෝසොයික් යුගය අවසන් වූයේ විශාලතම වඳවීමේ සිදුවීම වන පර්මියන්-ට්‍රයැසික් (permian Triassic) නැමති වඳවීමේ ක්‍රියාවලිය සිදුවීමෙනි. මෙම ව්‍යවසනයේ බලපෑම කෙතරම් විනාශකාරී වූයේද යත්, ගොඩබිම තුළ නැවත ජීවයක් ඇති වීමට වසර මිලියන 30ක අන්තර් කාලයක් ගත විය.

ඉන් පසුව වසර මිලියන 251ට පෙර ආරම්භ වූ විශාල ශරීරයන් සහිත ඩයනොසිරයන් ජීවත් වූ යුගය නාමකරණය වන්නේ මෙසෝසොයික් යුගය යනුවෙනි. මෙසෝසොයික් යුගයේ සැලකිය යුතු භූගෝලීය, දේශගුණික සහ පරිණාමීය ක්‍රියාකාරකම්වල කාලයක් විය. මේ යුගය වර්ෂ මිලියන 251 සිට වර්ෂ මිලියන 66 දක්වා පැවතුනි. මේ යුගයද පරිණාමීය වර්ධනයන් අවස්ථා තුනකදී පරිවර්තනයට ලක් වූ බව භූ විද්‍යඥයන්ගේ මතයයි. මෙම ජීවීන් වද වීමට හේතු වූයේ පෘථිවිය සමග ඇති වූ ග්‍රාහක ඝට්ටනයක් මුල් කරගෙනය. එම ග්‍රාහකය දකුණු ඇමරිකාවෙි පෙනිසිවුලාවේ තවමත් ශේෂ වී ඇත. එම ග්‍රාහක ඝට්ටනය පෘථිවි ඉතිහාසයේ විශාලතම ජීවී වඳවීම ලෙස සැලකෙන බැවින් එය “මහා මියයාම” ලෙසද හැඳින්වේ.

මියගිය ජීවින්ගේ පොසිල කොටස්

ඉන් පසුව වර්තමානයේ සිට මිලියන 23කට පෙර නැවත ජීවීන්ගේ ආරම්භය සනිටුහන් වන අතර එය පැලියෝජීන් යුගය යනුවෙන් අප වසන යුගය නාමකකරණය කරයි. වසර මිලියන 66කට පෙර අවසන් වූ මෙසෙසොයික් යුගයේ සිට පැලියෝජීන් යුගය ආරම්භ වීමට වසර මිලියන 43ක අන්තර් කාල පරිච්ඡේදයක් ගෙවී ගොස් ඇත. පැලියෝජීන් යුගයේදී බහුල සත්ව හා ශාක ජීවීන් පෘථිවි පෘෂ්ඨයේ විවිධ ස්ථාන වල ව්‍යාප්ත වී, විවිධාංගීකරණය වී සහ මානවයා දක්වා පරිණාමය වී සමාජ ව්‍යුහයන් බිහි වී ජනපදකරණය ඇති වී 1975න් පසුව නව ලිබරල්වාදය විසින් ගොඩ නැගූ නගර ව්‍යුහය දක්වා වර්ධන වූවා සේම, බලවත් ධනේශ්වර ආධිපත්‍යක් මානව සමාජය තුළ ඇති කර ගන්නට සමත් වූයේය. වත්මනේ නාගරීකරණය වූ මානව ජන ව්‍යුහය සකස්වී ඇත්තේ 70%ක් නරගරවල වෙසෙන අතර 30%ක් ග්‍රාමීයව ජවත් වෙති. එය සංඛ්‍යාත්මකව බැලුවහොත් වත්මනේ බිලියන 8ක ජනතාව ගෙන් බිලියන 6ක ජනතාවක් නගරවල සහ බිලියන 2ක ජනතාවක් ග්‍රාමීයව ජීවත් වෙති. මේ ක්‍රියාවලිය නිසා නගරවල වායුගෝලය දූෂණයට ලක්වීම වේගවත් වී තිබේ. මේ මොහොත වන විටත් චීනයේ බීජින් නගරය දූෂිතම නගර අතර අංක එකට වැටී ඇත. ඒ වගේම ඉන්දියාවේ දිල්ලි සහ මුම්බායි නගර දෙකද එලෙස දූෂිත නගර ලෙස නාමකරණය වූ නගරයි. වත්මනේ ආර්ථික ස්ථායීතාවයක් නොමැතිකම නිසා නාගරික නිවාසවල ජීවත්වන ජනතාව තම නිවාසවලින් එළියට වැටෙන සංඛාත්මක අගය ලෝකය පුරා විශාල වී තිබේ.

ප්‍රශ්නය මතු වී තිබෙන්නේ වර්ෂ මිලියන 538ක් පුරා ජීවී පරිවර්තන කාලපරිච්ඡේදයේ මිය ගිය ජීවීන්ගේ පොසිල කොටස් සැගවුනේ මුහුදු පතුලේය. ශාක භශ්ම ද පොළවේ තැන්පත් වූවාය. මේවා කාර්මික විප්ලවයෙන් ගොඩ ගෙන පොසිල ඉන්ධන කොටස් බොර තෙල් ලෙසද සහ ශාක භශ්ම කොටස් ගල් අගුරු ලෙසද දහනය කිරීමට යොමුවීමත් සමග ඉන් හටගන්නා කාබන් පරමාණු වායුගෝලයේ තැන්පත් විය. මේ මොහහොත වන විට වායුගෝලයේ කාබන් පරමාණු ප්‍රමාණය ධනේශ්වර සමාජය ආරම්භ කරන විට වායුගෝලයේ පැවති ප්‍රමාණයට වඩා 26% වැඩිවීමක් දක්වා වර්ධනය වී ඇත. කාබන් පරමාණු වැඩිවීම ගෝලීය උෂ්ණත්වය ධනේශ්වර සමාජය ආරම්භ වන (1770) විට පැවති මට්ටමට වඩා දැවැන්ත ප්‍රමාණයකින් වර්ධන වී ඇති බව පරීක්ෂණ වලින් තහවුරු කර තිබේ.

මෙහිදී බැලිය යුතු තවත් පැත්තක් ඇත. ඒ සියලුම ජීවීන් ආශ්වාස ප්‍රාශ්වාස කරති. එහිදී ඔක්සිජන් පරමාණුව ආශ්වාසයේදී ගෙන ප්‍රාශ්වාසයේදී කාබන් පිටකරති. සෑම ජීවියකුම පරමාණු නිෂේධනයකට සම්බන්ධ වෙති. අනෙක් පැත්ත ශාක කාබන් අවශෝෂණය කරගෙන ඔක්සිජන් පිටකරති. එවිට ශාක සහ ජීවීන් අතර පැවතුනේ ස්වාභාවික අන්තර් සම්බන්ධයකි. ඒ ස්වාභාවික අන්තර් සම්බන්ධය බිඳ වැටුනේ ධනේශ්වර සමාජ භාවිතයේදී නව ලිබරල්වාදී ක්‍රියාවලිය තුළදීය. ඒ හරහා බීජින් නගරයේ ඔක්සිජන් ප්‍රතිශතය අවම මට්ටමක් දක්වා ගමන් කර ඇත. ඒ නිසා බීජින් නගරයේ වැසියන්ට කැනඩාවෙන් ආනයනය කළ ඔක්සිජන් පැකට් විකිනිමට ඇත. ඒ අනුව බැලුව විට ගෝලීය භෞතිකයේ විනාශය විවිධ පැති දෘශ්‍යමාන වීමට පටන්ගෙන තිබේ. ඒවා භෞතිකවාදීව විමසා බැලුව හොත් ධනේශ්වර සමාජය විසින් ගෙන ගිය ප්‍රතිපත්ති වලින් මේ ව්‍යවසනය ඇති වූ බව විද්‍යානුකූලව තහවුරු වෙයි. එමනිසා මේ ඇතිවන ව්‍යවසනයට මුහුණ දෙන සමාජ කණ්ඩායම් ලෝකය පුරාම විවිධත්වයක් සහිතව අරගලයට පැමිණීම දැක ගත හැකිය. එය ධනේශ්වර ක්‍රමය පෙරලා නව සමාජ ක්‍රමයක් ඇති කර ගැනීමට ජන අරගලය ප්‍රමුඛ කරගෙන දැවැන්ත උද්ඝෝෂණ පැන නැගීම ලෝකය පුරා සුලභ සිදුවීමක් වී තිබේ.

ව්‍යයසනයට විසදුම මාක්ස්වාදී දෘෂ්ටිවාදයයි

මෙය ආත්මීය සාධකයක් හෝ දෙවියන්ගේ සිතැඟි පරිදි මෙහෙවයන ක්‍රියාවක් නම් මානවයාට කිසි දෙයක් කළ නොහැක. එය අප ජීවත්වන පැලියෝජීන් යුගය ආත්මීය සාධකයක් මත මෙහෙයවන්නාට වන්දනාමාන කිරීම හෝ යාඥා කිරීම හෝ භක්තිවන්ත වීම වැනි නිෂ්ක්‍රීය ක්‍රියාමාර්ග තේරා ගත හැකිය. එම ක්‍රියාවන් මගින් මානවයාට විසදුමක් ලැබෙන්නේ නැත. මේ කරුණ භෞතිකවාදීව විග්‍රහ කර ගතහොත් එහි ඇති සංඝගටක සමග වෙනස්කම් රාශීයක් කළ හැකිය. ඒ සදහා එක් කරුණක් පැවසුවහොත්, පුද්ගලික ප්‍රවාහන සේවයෙන් ලෝකයේ ධාවන වන වාහන බිලියන 1.7 වෙනුවට පොදු ප්‍රවාහන සේවය ස්ථාපිත කළ හොත්, පොදු වාහන මිලියන 8ක පමණ ඉතා අඩු ප්‍රමාණයකින් ලෝකයටම පොදු ප්‍රවාහන සේවයක් සැපයිය හැකියි. එවිට ලෝකය පුරා ගෝලීය ධනවාදය විසින් මුදාහරින කාබන් ප්‍රතිශතය 99%ක ප්‍රමාණයකින් පහත හෙලිය හැකිය. එය කළ හැක්කේ භෞතිකවාදය පිළිගත් මාක්ස්වාදීන්ට පමණි. මන්ද එය සමාජවාදී දැක්මක් නිසාය. ඒ වගේම ආත්මීයවාදීන් හෝ විඥානවාදීන් හෝ පාරභෞතිකවාදීන් විසදුමකට එයට එකඟ නැත. භෞතිකයේ ඇතිවන ව්‍යවසනයට මාක්ස්වාදී දෘෂ්ටිවාදය තුළ සමාජීය විසදුම් ඇත. ඒවා සාකච්චා කර වැඩපිළිවෙලක් සකසා සංවිධාන ශක්තිය වර්ධනය කරගෙන විප්ලවකාරී වෙනසක් සඳහා සමාජයට නායකත්වයක් සැපයිය යුතුය. එවිට එය ගොඩනැගිය හැක්කේ සොබාදහම සමග මුසුවූ සමාජ ආර්ථික වැඩපිළිවෙලක් තුළින් පමණි. එය අපි හරිත සමාජවාදය යනුවෙන් නාමකරණය කරමු.

චමිල් ජයනෙත්ති

The post ධනවාදයේ වසගය සහ මාක්ස්වාදී දෘෂ්ඨිවාදය appeared first on Asia Commune.

Author Florian Grams

150 years ago, the world witnessed the emergence of the first-ever workers’ republic.

Not so long ago, the spot where today Sacré-Coeur—the basilica nicknamed the “Alabaster wedding cake”—now stands atop Montmartre in Paris, was once an insalubrious neighbourhood, home to proletarians, day labourers, and sex workers. It was also the birthplace of what Karl Marx saw as a harbinger of things to come: the Paris Commune. One-and-a-half centuries ago, it was here, perched at the top of Montmartre, that its residents stationed artillery they had acquired through community donations to defend themselves against the Prussian army’s siege of Paris. The French government’s attempts to disarm its people had led to acts of resistance in working-class neighbourhoods. The government fled to Versailles, and the remaining workers, intellectuals, and day labourers in the city were tasked with organizing the capital’s defence, its everyday life, and the foundations of an entirely new social structure.

It was here in the spring of 1871 that humanity took an irreversible step forward on the path towards its own emancipation. The events experienced by the Communards of Paris informed both the lyrics of “The Internationale” and the political praxis adopted by the Bolsheviks in Russia. As both corrective and inspiration, these experiences were also instrumentalized in order to legitimize state-socialist domination. In order to glean lessons from the history of the Paris Commune that retain relevance for political action in the twenty-first century, this history must first be understood and then critically evaluated with respect to its contemporary relevance. In this spirit, it is helpful to train a new kind of ear to the experiences voiced by the Communards and try to learn from what they have to say.

The Background of the Commune

The Paris Commune was established on 18 March 1871, but its roots can be traced right back to 1848, when a wave of democratic revolution originating in France washed across the European continent; in Vienna, Warsaw, Rome, and Berlin, people took to the streets in protest.

In France, the democratic revolution was defeated in a matter of months, ending with the bloody suppression of a workers’ revolt protesting against the closure of the national workshops in June 1848. Despite this, the street fighting of this period laid the foundations for the establishment of an autonomous French workers’ movement, which operated independently of the centrist bourgeois political parties—a key prerequisite for the formation of the 72-day-long “Republic of Workers” in 1871.

Following the defeat of the uprising, however, a military dictatorship initially asserted control, before handing the reins to Napoleon III a few months later. As Marx set out in The Civil War in France, the coronation of Napoleon Bonaparte’s nephew thus represented less a triumph of capitalist hegemony than it did the establishment of an authoritarian regime aimed at suppressing a working class that was growing in strength.

East of the Rhine, in a fragmented Germany, monarchic powers were also able to put down revolutionary efforts and defeat the democracy movement. The latter’s demand for German national unity was subsequently co-opted “from above”, redefined and positioned as a project designed to suit the Prussian-led response.

The policies pursued by the Prussian crown were geared towards preserving monarchic power while also seeking to unify Germany. In particular, the incorporation of Southern German states into this process of nation-state formation was bound to spark resistance in France, which had no interest in seeing a unified and strengthened Germany. Following the victory of Prussian-led troops in the so-called “Wars of German Unification”, the conflict between French and German interests once again resumed centre stage, and only continued to intensify. This was a clash between two rival powers who, seeking to preserve and expand their spheres of influence both at home and abroad, had already been firmly set on a collision course with one another. In the summer of 1870, Prussia’s Minister President Otto von Bismarck succeeded in provoking the government in Paris to declare war by publishing a deftly distorted account of a meeting between the French ambassador to Prussia and the Prussian king (the “Ems Dispatch”), and thus ensuring they were the ones deemed responsible for inciting the war.[1]

Shortly thereafter, August saw the first hostilities of the Franco-Prussian War break out, with the French assault on Saarbrucken. A few days later, Prussian troops had crossed the Rhine. The beginning of September was marked by the Battle of Sedan, which resulted in the capture of France’s last combat-ready field army units along with Napoleon III as prisoners of war. This sudden defeat sealed the fate of the Second French Empire, but did not signify the end of the war, with the Prussian troops marching onwards towards Paris with the aim of capturing it.

Following the defeat at the Battle of Sedan, the Third Republic was proclaimed in Paris, despite a complete lack of democratic legitimacy. Although the empire’s political and military failures meant it had been discredited, the Republic did not act to remove the monarchy. According to Marx, the measures taken by the government were evidence that they had “inherited from the empire not only ruins, but also its dread of the working class”.

The ongoing situation in and around Paris also offered little encouragement to those hoping to found a free republic, either. By the beginning of October 1870, Paris was under total siege, beset on all sides by Prussian forces, and attempts to break the siege line with troops from the provinces had also failed. At the end of January 1871, Jules Favre, minister of foreign affairs for the Provisional Government of National Defence, signed an armistice with the newly formed German Empire, which had been officially proclaimed just ten days earlier in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles. The armistice treaty stipulated that only a freshly elected National Assembly would have the power to ratify an eventual peace treaty. The assembly first met on 12 February in Bordeaux—far removed from the nation’s capital, which remained in a state of total siege by German troops—and elected as minister president a proponent of constitutional monarchy in the form of Adolphe Thiers. Favre, who had brokered the armistice, remained in his post as foreign minister.

In Paris, both the choice of location for the National Assembly as well as the make-up of the new government were viewed as betrayals of those who had spent months defending the capital against the siege. After Prussian forces had begun retreating from Paris in early March, and the new French government set about disarming the National Guard troops in Paris, resistance to these actions began to grow, coming to a head on 18 March 1871.

“The People’s Cannons”: 18 March 1871

In order to defend Paris against the German troops, in September 1870 the Thiers-led government had reorganized the National Guard and enlisted unemployed men into its regiments. This led to a change in the military’s demographic character; National Guard soldiers deposed their officers, elected new commanders from within their own ranks, and also established their own governing body, the Central Committee of the National Guard. This laid the foundations for the founding of a people’s army in Paris and effectively established a dual power structure, with the French government on one side and the National Guard on the other.

On the evening of 17 March, the government’s inner circle resolved to seize the National Guard’s artillery as a means of neutralizing the Central Committee’s power and consolidating their own. In service of this plan, the government published a statement which slandered the Central Committee and painted it as a danger to the young French Third Republic. Not wanting to rely solely on the desired effect of this statement, on the morning of the 18th they gave orders for troops to march towards Paris and stage a surprise attack against the National Guards’ positions, securing the artillery installations for the government’s arsenal in the process. Meanwhile, the residential districts began to wake up in the morning and their inhabitants saw what was happening on the streets in front of them. An eyewitness wrote: “As on other major occasions, the women led from the front. Those present on 18 March … did not wait for their husbands. They encircled the mitrailleuses [a cannon-shaped volley gun, somewhat similar to a rudimentary Gatling gun] and cried out to the gunners: “‘This is shameful; what are you doing there?’ The soldiers did not answer.” As time passed, larger groupings of National Guard troops arrived on the scene. Atop Montmartre, General Lecomte ordered the government soldiers to open fire on the men and women. They refused, however, instead mingling with the National Guard troops and arresting the general. At other locations around the city, the National Guard troops and the local populace were able to prevent the canons’ removal. Over the course of the morning, the people of Paris were thus able to repel the attack, securing almost all of the cannons and acquiring thousands of additional firearms.

Having failed to capture the cannons and surprised by the workers’ resolve, Thiers decided to decamp the capital and head to Versailles, accompanied by his government and loyalist army regiments. That they were able to flee the city with ease was due to the fact that the National Guard battalions—anticipating a renewed attack by government forces—had barricaded themselves in their neighbourhood strongholds or otherwise directed their movements to avoid a confrontation.

As the sun set over Paris that evening, power in the French capital essentially resided on the streets. Given this situation, the National Guard’s Central Committee decided to cobble together a provisional government. The majority of the Parisian population first learnt of the shift that had occurred in their city the following morning, when the Central Committee occupied the Hôtel de Ville, raised a red flag, and addressed the city’s residents with their first proclamation:

You charged us with organizing the defence of Paris and of your rights.

We are conscious of having fulfilled this mission: aided by your generous courage and your admirable calm, we have chased out the government that betrayed us.

At this time our mandate has expired, and we yield it, for we don’t claim to be taking the place of those who a revolutionary wind has just overthrown.

So prepare and carry out your communal elections, and as a reward give us the only one we ever wished for: seeing you establish the true republic.

In the meanwhile, in the name of the people we will remain at the Hôtel-de-Ville.

The Social Democracy of the Commune

The provisional government’s first official act was publishing a call for elections to determine the make-up of the Commune Council. The revolution of the previous day had laid the foundations for a French republic that would permanently “mark the end of the era of invasions and civil war”. Additionally, the Central Committee saw itself as the force that had defended Paris and one which would now return control of the city to its residents through the council elections.

The election took place less than ten days later, on 26 March; just two days later, the Paris Commune officially came into being. Given the urgency of organizing an election within such a short timeframe, there was scant discussion about the Commune’s actual political programme in those first few days. For this reason—according to Prosper Lissagaray, himself a Communard—votes were primarily cast based on name recognition. Consequently, the Commune Council ended up comprising a colourful mixture of Jacobins, socialists, anarchists, Romantics, and representatives of the bourgeoise opposition to Napoleon III. This meant that the Commune included powerful factions that took their political inspiration from the concepts of the bourgeoise French Revolution of 1789 right alongside proto-socialists, anarchists, and Marxists. This diversity of political positions was reflective of the century of class struggle that had preceded the founding of the Commune.[2]

Due to the growing animosity emanating from Versailles and the increasingly clear and specific demands made by the workers’ districts, 16 elected representatives stepped down from their posts during the Commune Council’s first meeting alone, as they were unwilling to participate in a committee structure that sought to operate at a level above that of a city council. These withdrawals and the results of the subsequent by-elections of 16 April led to a strengthening of the socialist agenda within the Commune. Nevertheless, the council remained shaped by individuals who adhered to a range of competing ideologies, occasionally leading to conflict. As a result, many of the Commune’s political positions and policies remained somewhat vague.

At the same time, however, the collaborative nature of the collective efforts to defend the newly established order in Paris was one of the Commune’s strengths. Any evaluation of the Commune Council should not overlook the fact that, given that it only existed for just under two months—from 28 March to 25 May—the time that its members had available to realize their political agendas was extremely limited. Beginning on 2 April, government troops set out from Versailles to launch an offensive on the capital, forcing the Commune into a war. Despite the urgency of the situation, the Commune Council was able to enact a number of important decrees aimed at bringing about fundamental social change. The following policies are particularly worthy of mention:

• A waiver on rents for the period October 1870 to April 1871
• A ban on the sale of items of property pledged by citizens during the siege
• The dissolution of the standing army and its replacement by arming the populace
• Free public education
• Wages for civil servants to be made reflective of the average worker’s wage
• The takeover of abandoned factories by worker-controlled co-operatives
• The seizure and redistribution of unoccupied housing
• A ban on punitive fines and the docking of wages and salaries
• A ban on night shifts for apprentice bakers
• The establishment of a fixed price for bread

These measures were primarily a reaction to the living situation in Paris. Beyond meeting these immediate needs, however, they were intended to pave the way for the constitution of a social republic shaped by workers and tradespeople that prioritized their interests.

Above all, the council’s most revolutionary acts were the decrees designed to democratize the city’s organizational structures. These included the limiting of wages for representatives and civil servants and the stipulation that officials could be recalled and re-elected at any time (known as the imperative mandate). Admittedly, given the particular conditions of war and siege that the Commune was operating under, any and all of the measures it enacted could ultimately be little more than “patchwork [actions], or aspirations for the future”.[3] At the same time, they clearly set out how a community can be organized along properly democratic lines, wherein as much of the population as possible is able to participate in the shaping of the conditions under which they live. In this respect, the most important measure enacted by the Paris Commune was the functional nature of its very existence.

The Women of the Commune

The Commune’s political praxis was determined in large part by the numerous political clubs, district committees, and the battalions of the National Guard, all of whom bore strong influence on the activities of the Commune Council—along with the organizations set up by the women of Paris, who played an active role in shaping and defending the Commune and fought for the ability to participate equally in social life.[4]

The memoirs of famous Communard Louise Michel depict daily life in the Commune. Her text is also a paean to the women of the Commune, who she reports were “more capable than the men to say definitively that is has to be this way. Although inside they may feel shaken to their very core, they remain outwardly serene. Shorn of hate, of rage, of sympathy for either themselves or for others, they insist it has to be this way, even if it makes the heart bleed. That’s what the women of the Commune were like.”[5] Michel was thus of the conviction that the enemies of the Commune would have had much less difficulty recapturing Paris had the Commune had as many opponents amongst the city’s women as it did amongst the male population.

Michel’s depiction underscores the crucial role that women played in the shaping of the Commune and the struggle to protect it. One of the reasons for this is that the organization of provisions and fuel—tasks which typically fell to women—were of enormous importance for the maintaining of daily life under the Prussian siege. This resulted in the formation of (female) networks in local communities that became conduits for the politicization of Parisian women. To put it another way: the city’s women were directly affected by the hardships of war, but also beneficiaries of the Commune’s decrees. Their resulting alignment with the overall political project was thus driven less by abstract theoretical considerations and more by their own concrete interests.

The women of Montmartre in particular made a name for themselves, in no small part due to the speeches on women’s rights they prepared and delivered at events hosted by the political clubs. Alongside this, they tended to the practical necessities of daily life and the defence of the Commune, although they were more than willing to express their criticism of it as well. The decision of the National Guard’s high command to ban women from participating in battle, for example—whether as soldiers or as medics—was met with resolute opposition among women. They rightly identified this as an instance of discrimination and a betrayal of the principles of the Commune, and thus something that endangered the project as a whole.[6]

Independently of the positions they took in various internal disputes, the women of the Commune struggled more broadly for the implementation of a form of communal life founded on solidarity and gender equality in Paris as a whole and beyond. In the ranks of the Commune, they discussed, fought for, and died in service of this goal. Their work was most unsettling for the proponents of the old order, who were unrestrained in their attempts to defame female Communards as viragoes or even furies. But a number of male Communards were also made uncomfortable by these self-assured women, as their behaviour disrupted established gender roles within society—which was reflected in the fact that female Communards were denied the right to vote in elections. The increased visibility and actions of women in the Paris Commune signify an important step forward in the struggle for gender emancipation: while the male Communards needed to come to accept women as comrades in a shared struggle, the female Communards had to learn to free themselves from traditional gender-based stereotypes.

Taken as a whole, it is evident that the Paris Commune was a snapshot of the various groups active within the Republican movement in France, in which the socialist workers’ movement was an important group, but not the largest one. The most strongly represented group on the Commune Council consisted of men who saw themselves as a continuation of the radical forces active in the French Revolution. This naturally led to frequent conflicts which, given the urgency of the decisions that had to be made in Paris, exploded with great vehemence. It can thus be seen as a great strength of the Commune that these conflicts never boiled over to the point where Communards lost sight of their shared goal: the establishment of a social and democratic republic.[7] On the basis of this fundamental commonality that bound the various revolutionary forces present in Paris, the sturdiness of traditional political concepts could be tested in the arena of social reality and, if necessary, cast aside or modified; alongside this, new political forms emerged that provided a possible framework for overthrowing capitalism and establishing a society built upon solidarity.

The Fall of the Commune

After the government troops from Versailles had begun their offensive on Paris on 2 April, the Commune was forced to defend itself against daily attacks from fresh units that had been brought to Paris from across France and notably also prisoners of war who had recently been set free by the Germans. Amidst heavy fighting, control of the towns, buildings, and fortifications surrounding Paris changed hands many times. On 21 April, however, the troops from Versailles made their decisive strike on Paris. Following weeks of heavy artillery bombardment, the city’s fortifications lay unoccupied, and the Commune’s enemies were met with little to no resistance as they entered the city. Following this incursion, the remaining Communard forces barricaded themselves in their local neighbourhoods, where they resisted the Versailles troops’ advance as fiercely as they could. Although this approach corresponded with the central priority of the majority of the National Guard—protecting their own neighbourhoods and families from the advancing enemy—it meant that the Commune lacked a co-ordinated form of leadership.

Over the next seven days, the troops from Versailles conquered Paris, overcoming dogged Communard resistance, street by street, barricade by barricade. Whenever they captured a Communard position, the Versailles death squads swung into action, rounding up all surviving resistance fighters and summarily executing them. Communard Prosper Lissagaray described the actions of the victorious army as an abominable slaughter, one which exceeded the scope of the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre in a matter of hours. One week later, on 28 May, the last shot was fired from a Commune-held cannon. “The piece, charged with double shot, with a terrible crash exhaled the last sigh of the Paris Commune. The last barricade of the May days was in the Rue Ramponeau. For a quarter of an hour a single Federal defended it. … At eleven o’clock it was all over.”

On 29 May, Adolphe Thiers declared that order had been restored to Paris. But the end of Communard resistance did not mean an end to the killings; until mid-June, the execution of defeated Communards was a daily occurrence. As this was happening, eyewitness Lissagaray describes, wealthy Parisians took the opportunity to re-assert control of “their” city:

Since the Thursday this kid-glove populace followed the prisoners, acclaiming the gendarmes who conducted the convoys, applauding at the sight of the blood-covered vans. The civilians strove to outdo the military in levity. … Elegant and joyous women, as in a pleasure trip, betook themselves to the corpses, and, to enjoy the sight of the valorous dead, with the ends of sunshades raised their last coverings.

The exact number of those who fell victim to this bloodshed remains unknown, as the bodies of most of those killed were hastily buried or burned. It is clear, however, that during the “Bloody Week” in May, no fewer than 30,000 Communards were killed or murdered.

In reckoning with the French state’s actions concerning the Commune, it is important to also highlight that even after the mass executions had ended, a further 9,000 Communards were sentenced to either imprisonment or exile. In the forts along the French Atlantic Coast, but above all in the penal colony on New Caledonia—known as the “dry guillotine”—Communard resistance fighters died in great numbers, before an amnesty declared in 1880 permitted survivors to return to their homeland.

The amnesty, however, was no rehabilitation; the sentences received by the Communards retained their legal validity, and to this day French authorities have staunchly refused efforts to have them revoked. This means that the Communards retain the status of political criminals. The intent here is clear: to delegitimize the Paris Commune. In this sense, the depiction of the aforementioned events published in an 1881 issue of the German magazine Der Sozialdemokrat to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the Commune’s defeat remains as apt as ever. A sea of blood separating two worlds; on the one side, those who struggled for a different and better world, and on the other, those who sought to preserve the old order.[8]

The Commune’s Ongoing Relevance

While in Paris the battle to defend the Commune was still raging, August Bebel asserted the radical German social democracy movement’s solidarity with the resistance fighters. Speaking in the Reichstag, he declared that during those days, “the entirety of the European proletariat and anyone who still believes in the importance of freedom and independence” had their eyes trained on Paris. Bebel was unstinting in his support of the Paris Commune and expressed his conviction that “the most important events in Europe’s history are still ahead of us; it is a matter of decades before the Paris Commune’s rallying cry of “War on the palaces, peace to the huts, death to poverty and to indolence!” will become that of the entire European proletariat.”[9] The Commune was met with a similarly positive response in many other parts of Europe as well.

But as the social-democratic movement gradually turned its back on its revolutionary roots, its commemoration of the Commune also receded into the background. In contrast, the Communist movement that emerged from the October Revolution in Russia saw the Paris Commune as part of its heritage and made sure to keep its memory alive. Vladimir Lenin is famously said to have danced in the snow on the 73rd day of the Bolshevik government, marking the moment it had succeeded in outliving the Paris Commune. At the same time, however, the October Revolution and what followed signified the emergence of a new and seemingly successful model of socialism on the world stage, one which shifted the focus of Communists from the Commune to “Red October”.

Following the collapse of state socialism in Europe, all prior attempts to overthrow capitalist social relations by means of revolution were left severely discredited. One of the historic lessons that the Communist parties took from the Commune was not to underestimate the issue of power as the Communards had done. Instead, they made the inverse mistake, concentrating exclusively on maintaining power.

If we are to make another attempt at realizing socialism today, the failure of the Soviet model makes it utterly clear that it can only be done with the democratic participation of the people. Democratic structures and means of control will only be able to succeed, however, if the legitimacy of decision-making is tied to processes that are democratic in the most fundamental sense. One example of such that comes to mind is the use of the imperative mandate, as practiced by the Communards in 1871.[10] Thus, any collective attempt to forge a pathway to a society based on solidarity and socialist principles requires thorough engagement with the experiences of the Paris Communards. Their goal, to found a “democratic and social republic”, still awaits its true realization.

[1] See episode two of the Rosalux History podcast, “Von Bismarck zum Treuhandtechno”, September 2020.

[2] For a more in-depth discussion of this, see: Grams, Florian: Die Pariser Kommune – Basiswissen. 3rd ed. Cologne 2021, pp. 45ff.

[3] Haupt, Heinz-Gerhard and Hausen, Karin: Die Pariser Kommune – Erfolg und Scheitern einer Revolution. Frankfurt/M. 1979, p. 172.

[4] See Hartmann, Detlef and Wimmer, Christopher: Die Kommunen vor der Kommune 1870/71. Hamburg 2021, p. 121.

[5] Michel, Louise: Memoiren – Erinnerungen einer Kommunardin. Münster 2017, p. 135f.

[6] See Schrupp, Antje: Nicht Marxistin und auch nicht Anarchistin – Frauen in der Ersten Internationale. Frankfurt/M. 1999, p. 177.

[7] See ‘Erklärung der Minorität des Kommune-Rats vom 15. Mai 1871’, quoted in: Swoboda: Die Pariser Kommune, loc. cit., p. 243.

[8] See ‘Gedenktage des Proletariats: Die blutige Maiwoche’, in Der Sozialdemokrat, Issue 21, 22 May 1881, p.1.

[9] Bebel, August: ‘Die Pariser Kommune – Vorpostengefecht des europäischen Proletariats’. From his speech to the Reichstag in opposition to the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine of 25 May 1871, in: Ausgewählte Reden und Schriften Bd. 1: 1863-1878. Berlin, 1970, p. 150.

[10] See Sohn, Manfred: Der dritte Anlauf – Alle Macht den Räten. Cologne, 2012, p. 110.

Republished From: https://www.rosalux.de/en/news/id/43896/a-short-history-of-the-paris-commune

The post A Short History of the Paris Commune appeared first on Asia Commune.

“අවිනිශ්චිත දීර්ඝ කාලයක් තුළ හා අනවරතයෙන් ඇතිවන්නා වූ අරගල මගින් සියලු සමාජ සම්බන්ධතාවයන් පරිවර්තනය වේ. සමාජය දිගින් දිගටම එහි හැව ඉවත දමයි.“ (ට්‍රොට්ස්කි – නොනවතින විප්ලවය).

ලෙනින්ගේ ස්ථාවරය.

1917 අප්‍රේල් මාසය වනතුරු ලෙනින් මීට වඩා වෙනස් මතයක් දැරුවේය. රුසියාවේ ජාතික ධනේශ්වරයට රුසියානු ධනේශ්වර විප්ලවයේ කර්තව්‍යයන් ඉටු කරගැනීමට නොහැකි බැව් ලෙනින්ද පිළිගත්තේය. එහෙත් එළඹෙන විප්ලවයේ නායකත්වය දරනු ලබන්නේ කෙබඳු සමාජ බලවේගයක් හෝ බලවේගයන් ද යන ප්‍රශ්නය පිළිබඳ ලෙනින් ට්‍රොට්ස්කිට වඩා වෙනස් මතයක් දැරීය. ලෙනින් ගේ මතය අනුව එළඹෙන විප්ලවය ධනේශ්වර විප්ලවයක් වූ අතර එහි නායකත්වය සමාජ ප්‍රජාතන්ත්‍රවාදය (එනම් කම්කරු පන්තියේ දේශපාලන සංවිධානය) හා ගොවිජන පක්ෂයත් අතර ඇතිවන සභාගයක් විසින් දරනු ඇත. මෙයින් අදහස් වූයේ කම්කරු පන්තිය හා ගොවි ජනයාගේ පුරෝගාමිත්වයෙන් ඇතිවන්නා වූ රුසියන් විප්ලවය ධනේශ්වර පන්තිය නොමැතිව හෝ ඔවුනට එරෙහිව ඇති වූවත්, එහි ප්‍රතිඵලය වන්නේ ධනේශ්වර සමාජයක වර්ධනය ඇරඹීම බවයි. මේ අනුව ලෙනින් ඉදිරිපත් කළ සටන් පාඨය වූයේ “කම්කරු පන්ති ආඥාදායකත්වයක් සඳහා“ යන්න නොව “කම්කරුවන්ගේ හා ගොවීන්ගේ ප්‍රජාතන්ත්‍රවාදී ආඥාදායකත්වයක් සඳහා‍“ යන්නයි. ප්‍රජාතන්ත්‍රවාදී ආඥාදායකත්වය යනු ධනේශ්වර රජයකි. ලෙනින් එවකට දැරූ මතය නම් ධනේශ්වර අදියර මඟහැර ඉදිරියට යෑමට එළඹෙන විප්ලවයට නුපුළුවන් බවයි. (සමාජ ප්‍රජාතන්ත්‍රවාදයේ ද්විත්ව උපායන් යන ඉංග්‍රිසි කෘතියේ – එකතු කළ වෙළුම් 9, 42 පිටුව).

මෙම විග්‍රහය පිළි නොගත් පාවුස් නූතන ඉතිහාසය මුළුල්ලේම ගොවි ජනයා තමන්ටම ආවේණික වූ දේශපාලන පක්ෂයක් ගොඩනැගීමට අපොහොසත් වූ බව පෙන්වා දුන්නේය. තවද, සාමාන්‍යයෙන් “ගොවි ජන පක්ෂ“ වශයෙන් හැඳින්වෙන පක්ෂ ඇත්තෙන්ම ධනේශ්වර (ග්‍රාමීය බුද්ධිමතුන්ගේ හා වෙළෙඳුන්ගේ) පක්ෂ බවත්, ඒවා ගොවින්ගේ ඡන්ද ලබාගන්නා නමුත්, ඔවුනගේ සමාජ ආර්ථික උවමනාවන් ඉටු නොකරන බවත් පෙන්වා දුන්නේය. එසේ හෙයින් විප්ලවයට සාර්ථක නායකත්වය දිය හැක්කේ කම්කරු පන්ති පාක්ෂික ආණ්ඩුවකට පමණක් යැයි තර්ක කළේය. එනමුත් එම ආණ්ඩුව ධනේශ්වර ආර්ථික රාමුවක් තුළ හා ධනේශ්වර රාජ්‍ය පදනමක් මත ක්‍රියාකරන බව පාවුස් ගේ මතය විය.

ඇලෙක්සැන්ඩර් පර්වුස්, ඔහුගේ සැබෑ නම ඊශ්‍රායල ලසරෙවිච් ගෙල්ෆාන්ඩ්, රුසියානු විප්ලවවාදියෙකු සහ මාක්ස්වාදී න්‍යායාචාර්යවරයෙකි. ඔහු 19 වැනි සියවසේ අගභාගයේ සහ 20 වැනි සියවසේ මුල් භාගයේ රුසියානු විප්ලවවාදී ව්‍යාපාරයේ වැදගත් කාර්යභාරයක් ඉටු කළේය.

පර්වුස්ගේ කැපී පෙනෙන දායකත්වයක් වූයේ රුසියාව වැනි ඌන සංවර්ධිත ධනේශ්වර ආර්ථිකයන් ඇති රටවල ධනේශ්වර අවධියක් හරහා නොගොස් සමාජවාදී විප්ලවය සාක්ෂාත් කරගත හැකි බවට තර්ක කළ “නොනවතින විප්ලවය” යන සංකල්පය වර්ධනය කිරීමයි. මෙම අදහස පසුව ලෙනින් සහ ට්‍රොට්ස්කි කෙරෙහි බලපෑවේය.

නමුත් ලෙනින්ගේ හා පාවුස්ගේ ස්ථාවරයන්හි තිබූ ප්‍රතිවිරෝධතාවයන් ට්‍රොට්ස්කි වටහා ගත්තේය. ගොවි ජනයා විප්ලවයේ ඉතා වැදගත් කර්තව්‍යයක් ඉටුකරන බව ට්‍රොට්ස්කි පිළිගත් නමුත්, විශේෂයෙන්ම විප්ලව අවස්ථාවකදී ඔවුනට ධනේශ්වරයෙන් හෝ කම්කරු පන්තියෙන් ස්වාධීන වූ දේශපාලන බලවේගයක් වශයෙන් ක්‍රියා කිරීමට නුපුළුවන් බැව්‍ තර්ක කළේය. පැවැත්මෙන් ගොවි ජනයා විසිරී ගොස් සිටින්නා වූ ජන සමූහයක් වූ අතර ඔවුන්ගේ පන්ති වුවමනාවන් එකාකාර නොවීය. තවද, සුළු භාණ්ඩ නිෂ්පාදකයින්ට අනුරූප වූ චරිතාංගයන්ගෙන් යුතු ගොවි ජනයා, මූලධනය හා වැටුප් ශ්‍රමය අතර වැනෙනසුලු ගුණාංගයන් පිළිබිඹු කළහ.‍ ගොවි ජනයාට ස්වාධීන දේශපාලන බලවේගයක් වශයෙන් ක්‍රියා කිරීමට නුපුළුවන් වූයේ මේ නිසාය

මේ නිසා ඊනියා ගොවි ජන පක්ෂ හා සමග කම්කරු පන්ති පක්ෂ ඇතිකරගන්නා වූ සභාගයන්ගේ ප්‍රතිඵලය වන්නේ ධනේශ්වර‍ය හා සභාගයක් ඇතිකර ගැනීමයි. එළඹෙන විප්ලවය කම්කරු පංති නායකත්වයකින් සංයුක්ත වුවහොත් පමණක්, කම්කරු පන්තිය වටා ගොවි ජනයා සංවිධාන කළහොත් පමණක්, එම විප්ලවයේ කර්තව්‍යයන් සම්පූර්ණයෙන් සාර්ථක කර ගැනීමට හැකිවනු ඇත.

පාවුස්ට හා ලෙනින්ට ප්‍රතිවිරුද්ධ අදහස් දැක්වූ ට්‍රොට්ස්කි, එබඳු විප්ලවයක් කම්කරු පංති නායකත්වයකින් යුතුව සිදු වුවහොත්, එනම් කම්කරු පන්තිය ඇත්තෙන්ම රාජ්‍ය බලය අල්ලා ගැනීමට සමත් වුවහොත්, කම්කරු පන්තිය හුදෙක් ධනේශ්වර ප්‍රජාතන්ත්‍රවාදී කර්තව්‍යයන් පමණක් ඉටු කිරීමට සීමා වේ යැයි සිතීම තාත්වික නොවන බැව් පෙන්වීය. රාජ්‍ය බලය අල්ලා ගන්නා කම්කරු පන්තිය, ධනපතියන්ගේ සූරාකෑම තවදුරටත් පවත්වාගෙන යෑමට අවකාශ දෙතැයි සිතීම පවා අසීරු බැව් ට්‍රොට්ස්කි පෙන්වීය. එනම්, කම්කරු පන්තිය විප්ලවයකට නායකත්වය දී, පැරණි රජය පොඩිපට්ටම් කර, නව රජයක් පිහිටුවා ඊට පසු දින හෝ දිනකින්, දෙකකින් පැක්ටරි වලට පෙරළා ගොස් සංවර කම්කරුවන් ලෙස ක්‍රියා කිරීමට එකඟ වේ යැයි සිතීම අසීරුය.

මේ තත්ත්වය තුළ බලය අත්පත් කරගන්නා කම්කරු පන්තිය, ධනේශ්වර ප්‍රජාතන්ත්‍රවාදයේ කර්තව්‍යයන්වල සිට නිෂ්පාදන මාර්ග ජනසතු කිරීම ඇතුළු සමාජවාදී කර්තව්‍යයයන් ඉටු කිරීම කරා නොනැවතී ගමන් කරන බැව් ට්‍රොට්ස්කි පෙන්වා දුන්නේය. අනෙක් අතට කම්කරු පන්තිය බලය අත්පත් කර ගැනීමට අසමත් වුවහොත්, ප්‍රතිවිප්ලවය රජයන අතර‍, කාර්මිකකරණය හා නවීකරණය කිරීමේ කාර්යයන් පරිපූර්ණ ලෙස ඉටු කර ගැනීමට නුපුළුවන් වනු ඇත.

1917 අප්‍රේල් තීසිසයෙන් ලෙනින් සිය අතීත ස්ථාවරය අත්හැර එළඹෙන විප්ලවයේ සටන්පාඨය, කම්කරු පන්ති ආඥාදායකත්වය වශයෙන් පිළි ගත්තේය. එහෙත් පැරණි විග්‍රහය අනුව සිතීමට හා ක්‍රියා කිරීමට පුරුදු පුහුණු වී සිටි පැරණි බොල්ෂෙවික් නායකයින් මෙම අදහසට පහසුවෙන් දිනාගැනීමට ලෙනින් සමත් වූයේ නැත. රුසියානු විප්ලවයෙන් මෙන්ම, මෙතෙක් ඇතිවූ සෑම විප්ලවයකින්ම ට්‍රොට්ස්කි ගේ මේ න්‍යාය සනාථ වී ඇත.

නොනවතින විප්ලවයේ සෙසු නියමයන්.

නොනවතින විප්ලවය පිළිබඳ න්‍යායයේ දෙවන අංශය සමාජවාදී විප්ලවයේ ස්වරූපය පැහැදිලි කිරීමක් වේ. “අවිනිශ්චිත දීර්ඝ කාලයක් තුළ හා අනවරතයෙන් ඇතිවන්නා වූ අරගල මගින් සියලු සමාජ සම්බන්ධතාවයන් පරිවර්තනය වේ. සමාජය දිගින් දිගටම එහි හැව ඉවත දමයි.“ (ට්‍රොට්ස්කි – නොනවතින විප්ලවය). මේ සෑම පරිවර්තනයක්ම ඊට කලින් ඇති වූ පරිවර්තනයන් තුළින් බිහි වේ. මෙය පරිවර්තනය වෙමින් පවත්නා සමාජය තුළ වසන විවිධ කණ්ඩායම් අතර ඇතිවන ගැටුම් තුළින් බිහිවන ක්‍රියාදාමයක් බැවින්, ඒවා දේශපාලන ස්වරූපයක් ගනී. ආර්ථිකයේ, විධික්‍රමයන්ගේ, විද්‍යාවේ, පවුලේ, සදාචාරයේ හා දෛනික ජීවිතයේ ඇතිවන්නා වූ විප්ලවයන් නිසා සමාජයේ සමතුලිතතාවයක් ඇති නොවේ.

කම්කරු විප්ලවය සාර්ථක වන්නේ කම්කරු පන්ති අරගලය අවුරුදු හෝ දශක ගණනාවක් මුළුල්ලේ විහිදුනු දැවැන්ත ක්‍රියාදාමයක් බවට පත්වීමෙනි. මෙම ක්‍රියාදාමයෙහි සියලුම මානුෂික සම්බන්ධතාවයන් සචේතනිකව හා ක්‍රමානුකූලව වෙනස් කරනු ලැබේ.‍ ධනේශ්වර පන්තිය රාජ්‍ය බලය අත්පත් කර ගත් පසු පසුගාමී පන්තියක් බවට පත්වන නමුත්, කම්කරු පන්තිය බලය අත්පත් කර ගැනීම හා සමඟ සිදුවන්නේ සමාජයේ විප්ලවීය පරිවර්තනය ඇරඹීම මිස අවසන් වීම නොවේ. එම ක්‍රියාදාමය අවසන් වන්නේ කම්කරු පන්තිය අන් සියලුම පන්තීන් හා සමග චුත වූ විටය.

නොනවතින විප්ලවයේ තෙවන අංශය නම්, සමාජවාදී විප්ලවයේ අන්තර්ජාතික ස්වරූපයයි. එය වත්මන් ආර්ථිකයේ ස්වරූපය හා මනුෂ්‍ය සමාජයේ ව්‍යුහය තුළින් එළඹෙන්නකි. ප්‍ර‍ජාතන්ත්‍රවාදය වියුක්ත මූලධර්මයක් නොව ලෝක ආර්ථිකයේත්‍, නිෂ්පාදන බලවේගයන්ගේ ජගත් වර්ධනයේත්, පන්ති සටනෙත්, අන්තර්ජාතික පරිණාම පරිමාණයේත් න්‍යායික හා දේශපාලන පිළිබිඹුවකි.

සමාජවාදී විප්ලවය ජාතික රාමුවක් තුළ ඇරඹෙන නමුදු එය හුදු ජාතික රාමුවක් තුළ, එනම් එක රටක සීමාවන් තුළ සම්පූර්ණ කළ නොහැක. කම්කරු පන්ති විප්ලවය ජගත් විප්ලවීය ක්‍රියාදාමයකි. ලෝක පරිමාණයෙහි ධනේශ්වරය තීරණාත්මක ලෙස පරාජය කරන තුරු එක් රටක සීමාවන් තුළ ජයග්‍රහණය වන කම්කරු පන්ති විප්ලවයන් නිරතුරුවම අන්තරායට ලක් වේ.

ලංකාවෙ‍න් නිදසුන්.

ලංකාවේ දේශපාලන ඉතිහාසය නිරීක්ෂණය කිරීමේදී නොනවතින විප්ලවය පිළිබඳ න්‍යායයේ ගැබ් වී ඇති මූලික විග්‍රහයන් සනාථ වන බැව් පැහැදිලිය.

1. ලංකාවේ කම්කරු පන්තිය ජනිත වූයේ ලාංකික ධනේශ්වරයේ නැගීම තුළින් නොව අධිරාජ්‍යවාදී ක්‍රියාදාමය (වතු ආර්ථිකය) තුළිනි. මේ වනවිට ඊනියා නිදහසින් වසර 75 ක් ගතවී ඇති නමුත්, ඉන්දියාවේ ටාටා, බිර්ලා හෝ අදානි, අම්බානි වැනි හෝ එකදු ධනපතියෙක් හෝ ධනපති සමාගමක් මෙතෙක් බිහිවී නැත.

2 දෙවනුව, මෙතෙක් බලය දැරූ එකදු ධනේශ්වර රජයක්වත් මෙරට පරිපූර්ණ ලෙස කාර්මිකකරණය කිරීමට හෝ ජාතික සමගිය ගොඩනැගීමට හෝ කෘෂිකර්මයේ නියම ප්‍රතිසංස්කරණයක් කිරීමට හෝ සමත් වී නැත.‍ එනම් ලංකාවේ ජාතික ධනේශ්වරයට, ධනේශ්වර විප්ලවයේ ප්‍රධාන කර්තව්‍යයන් ඉටු කරගැනීමට නොහැකි බැව් ඔප්පු කර ඇත.

3. තවද, මෙරට (ශ්‍රී ලංකාව) නාමික වශයෙන් නිදහස් වන නමුදු, අධිරාජ්‍යවාදයෙන් ස්වාධීනව ක්‍රියා කිරීමට ලාංකික ධනේශ්වරය සමත් වී නැති බවද පැහැදිලිය. මෙරට පැවැති සෑම ආණ්ඩුවක්ම අධිරාජ්‍යවාදීන්ට ගැති වූහ. අධිරාජ්‍යවාදී ආණ්ඩුවලින් හා ආයතනවලින් විශාල පරිමාණයේ ණය ලබාගැනීම නිසා අධිරාජ්‍යවාදීන්ගේ සිතැඟියාවන්ට අනුව සිය ආර්ථික පිළිවෙත් සකස් කිරීමට මෙම ධනේශ්වර ආණ්ඩු වලට සිදුවී ඇත. නිදසුනක් වශයෙන් වත්මන් රජය විදේශ ණය ප්‍ර‍තිව්‍යුහගත කිරීම සඳහා ජාත්‍යන්තර මූල්‍ය අරමුදලට සම්පූර්ණයෙන් අවනතවීම, දුගී ජනතාවගේ සහනාධාර කප්පාදුව, අත්‍යවශ්‍ය භාණ්ඩ හා සේවාවල මිල අසීමිතව වැඩි කිරීම මගින් ජනතාව මත වක්‍ර‍ බදු වැඩි වැඩියෙන් පැටවීම, රජයේ සංස්ථා විසුරුවා හැරීම හා පුද්ගලික සමාගම් බවට පත් කිරීම ආදිය රාජ්‍ය මර්දනය යොදා ක්‍රියාත්මක කරන අතර විදේශීය හා දේශීය ආයෝජකයන්ට බදු සහන ලබාදීම අධිරාජ්‍යවාදීන්ගේ උවමනාව නිසා ගනු ලැබූ පියවරයන්ය. තවද ලාංකික ආර්ථිකය ලෝක වෙළඳපොළ හා කිට්ටුවෙන් බද්ධ වීමේ ප්‍රතිඵලයක් වශයෙන් ලාංකික ධනේශ්වර‍ය, අධිරාජ්‍යවාදී කනිෂ්ඨ සහචරයෙක් වශයෙන් ක්‍රියා කරති.

4. ප්‍රජාතන්ත්‍රවාදී අයිතීන් සහතික කරනවා හෝ ආරක්ෂා කරනවා වෙනුවට සෑම ධනේශ්වර ආණ්ඩුවක්ම දිරි ගෙන ඇත්තේ ඒවා තව තවත් සීමා කිරීමටයි. 1950 දී වතුකරයේ ඉන්දීය සම්භවයෙන් යුතු කම්කරුවන්ගේ පුරවැසි අයිතිය අහෝසි කිරීම, 1978 ව්‍යවස්ථාවෙන් අතුරු මැතිවරණ අහෝසි කිරීම, 1980 දී අත්‍යාවශ්‍ය සේවා පනත සම්මත කර වැඩ වර්ජන අයිතිය බෙහෙවින් සීමා කිරීම, ත්‍ර‍ස්තවාදය වැළැක්වීමේ විශේෂ විධි විධාන පනත ගෙනඒම, මෑතකදී ගෙන එන ලද මාධ්‍ය නිදහසට එරෙහි පනත සමහර නිදසුන් ය.

5. ආර්ථික හා දේශපාලන ක්ෂේත්‍රයේ පමණක් නොව‍, ධනේශ්වර ප්‍රජාතන්ත්‍රවාදී විප්ලවයේ කර්තව්‍යයන් පරිපූර්ණව ඉටු නොවීම නි‍සා, සමාජ සම්බන්ධතාවයන්හි මෙන්ම, සංස්කෘතික ක්ෂේත්‍රය ‍තුළද පවත්නා පසුගාමී තත්ත්වය අපට නිරීක්ෂණය කළ හැක. විශේෂයෙන් පුද්ගලික නිදහස පිළිබඳව පවත්නා පසුගාමී අදහස් මෙන්ම, බොහෝ ධනපතියන් කම්කරුවන් කෙරෙහි තවමත් දක්වන රදළ ආකල්පයන් මීට නිදසුන්ය. 

සංස්කරණය: විල්ප්‍ර‍ඩ් සිල්වා

(මෙම ලිපිය සංස්කරණය කරනු ලැබූයේ 1980 මුල් භාගයේදී විප්ලවීය මාක්ස්වාදී පක්ෂයේ දේශපාලන අධ්‍යාපන වැඩ සටහන් සඳහා සකස් කරන ලද ලියවිලි ආශ්‍රයෙනි.)

The post නොනවතින විප්ලවයේ න්‍යාය සිහිනයක්ද? (දෙවන කොටස) appeared first on Asia Commune.

International Women’s Day (IWD) has its roots in the early 20th century, marked by various events and movements that aimed to advocate for women’s rights and address gender inequality. Here’s a brief overview of its revolutionary history:

Early 20th Century Labor Movements:

The first National Woman’s Day was observed in the United States on February 28, 1909, organized by the Socialist Party of America in remembrance of the 1908 strike of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union, where women protested against poor working conditions.

Clara Zetkin’s Proposal:

In 1910, during the Second International Conference of Working Women held in Copenhagen, Clara Zetkin, a German Marxist theorist, proposed the idea of an International Women’s Day. Her proposal was met with unanimous approval, and the first International Women’s Day was celebrated the following year, in 1911, in several European countries.

Focus on Suffrage:

Initially, the focus of International Women’s Day was on women’s suffrage and their right to vote. Women used this day to protest and advocate for their political rights.

Russian Revolution:

International Women’s Day gained significant momentum during the Russian Revolution of 1917. On March 8th (February 23rd in the Julian calendar then used in Russia), a large demonstration of women in Petrograd (now St. Petersburg) marked the beginning of the revolution. Women protested against food shortages and poor living conditions, eventually leading to the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II and the establishment of a provisional government.

Official Recognition:

In 1977, the United Nations officially recognized March 8th as International Women’s Day, and it has since become a global day of celebration and activism, focusing on various issues including gender equality, reproductive rights, violence against women, and economic empowerment.

Modern Activism:

Today, International Women’s Day is celebrated worldwide with events, rallies, and campaigns advocating for women’s rights. It serves as a reminder of the progress made towards gender equality and the work that still needs to be done to achieve it.

Overall, International Women’s Day has a rich history rooted in the struggle for women’s rights and continues to be an important platform for raising awareness about gender inequality and promoting women’s empowerment.

The post The revolutionary history of International Women’s day! appeared first on Asia Commune.

Moissaye Olgin was a chronicler of Russian revolutionary literature, introducing U.S. audiences to many novelists and poets. Olgin knew the work of Maxim Gorky as well as anyone, writing a number of works on the great Russian writer. Here he pens an introduction to Gorky on the 40th anniversary of his literary career for the New Masses.

‘The Work of Maxim Gorky’ by Moissaye J. Olgin from New Masses. Vol. 8 No. 4. November, 1932.

He started his literary work when the proletariat of Russia was just beginning to stir; he is celebrating the 40th anniversary of his literary work after fifteen years of proletarian dictatorship in Russia. He stood at the cradle of the socialist movement among the workers of Russia; he stands at the threshold of the second Rive- Year Plan which is to complete in the rough the structure of a socialist society. Throughout all these years he has remained faithful to the working Glass, to the revolution, and to socialism. His unusual artistic power has been devoted to fighting bourgeois society in the name of the oppressed human being, in the name of securing conditions for the growth of a free human personality, in the name of the social revolution.

He came into literature as a challenge. Sympathies for the exploited and downtrodden were not lacking in Russian literature. They were a tradition. Didn’t Chekhov sigh over the fate of the inmates of Ward Number Six? Weren’t his Three Sisters dreaming about a beautiful sun-colored life? Wasn’t Tolstoy the advocate of the night-lodging inmates in the cities, of the Katjushas innocently sentenced to prison, of the peasants groaning under the burden of landlord rule? Did not Uspensky land in an insane asylum as a result of his steeping himself in the life of the Russian village? Didn’t even Turgenev, the apollonic esthete, create immortal pictures saturated with sympathy for the serfs? And how about Korolenko with his Siberian characters, with his “Makar’s Dreams”?

Sympathy for the poor brother, for the victim of social injustice was one of the major notes in the work of the Russian writers. And if Gorky startled the writing brotherhood from the very moment of his appearance it was not due to his subjects; it was due to his manner and spirit.

He was not only telling about the dwellers “down below,” he was the dweller himself. He was the downtrodden personified. He was not looking down at anybody; he was just what he was. And he said to the writing community: “Spare us your sympathy. We can well take care of ourselves.”

He was a challenge because he presented the coming of the new class. He jarred on everybody’s ears because he didn’t fit into the traditional conception of the “poor brother.” He didn’t look poor. He wasn’t even melancholy. He was rudely aggressive. He flaunted his healthy appetite in the faces of the beauty-loving intellectuals. He was not an intellectual in the accepted sense. He was a citizen of the “lower depths.” Those depths were shaking a hairy fist at the whole structure of bourgeois civilization.

Looking backward from the height of forty years it does not seem as if he had said it all correctly at the very outset. He was romantic. He was sometimes unduly sentimental. He wove gypsy legends. He idealized the Russian equivalent of the American hobo. But it wasn’t exactly what he said as how he said it in the face of a sedate intellectual world.

Those Chelkashes and Malvas, Chudras and “creatures that were men” refused to recognize the moral code of bourgeois society. They obeyed powerful instincts. They had sharp teeth and an insatiable greed for things that did not belong to them. They took hold of everything within sight with a magnificent disregard for state and church. They were rebels in a sense. Some Russian critics, in their efforts at profundity, thought they discerned a tendency towards the superman in Gorky’s early writings, and accused him of Nietzscheanism, whereas with him it was only the experience of proletarian youth come to articulation. Even in his earliest works you see the growing proletarian fighter. He is never himself by himself — he is part of a collective humanity which does not include the rich. He does not suffer in individual terms. His figures are highly impressive; they live; they move in an atmosphere of their own; they breathe the essence of life, but at the same time they are representatives of social groups.

What was perhaps most startling in those early challenges was the fact that Gorky showed how you can be poor, hungry and happy, how you can be stealing bread from a baker’s stand and be a splendid specimen of humanity, how you can ignore the very existence of taboos set up by property-owning society and be an intensely attractive creature. In a sense, the first works of Gorky were a mockery at the writing profession. Those hobos were defying anybody to envelope them with the vapor of commiseration.

Even in his early days Gorky was a revolutionist. He belonged to underground revolutionary circles. He shared with the Bolsheviks their convictions regarding the class-struggle and the coming revolution. Lenin himself had just loomed up on the horizon, – a young lion, the great theoretician and strategist of the ; class struggle, destined to lead a victorious social revolution twenty five years later. Lenin wrote, in 1894:

“When the foremost representatives of the working class will have assimilated the ideas of scientific socialism, the idea about the historical role of the Russian worker, when these ideas will have become widespread and there will have been organized among the workers firm organizations which shall transform the present sporadic economic war of the workers into a conscious class struggle, — then the Russian worker, having risen at the head of all the democratic elements, will throw absolutism down and lead the Russian proletariat (alongside with the proletariat of all countries) on the free road of open political struggle to a victorious Communist revolution.”

Gorky soon recognized that his idealized slum dwellers were not his real heroes. Having shocked the intellectuals by his revolutionary onslaught, having placed on the stage the allegorical figure of Danko who, in order to light for his brothers the road “from the dark thickets into sun-lit wide space,” Gorky tore out his own burning heart and lifted it as a torch over the crowd. He hurled himself on the very substance of Russian society, to dissect it limb by limb, to hew, with a firm hand and sure eye, out of the raw material of Russia’s mass life an endless gallery of characters, to record an unceasing variety of incidents tragic and comic, to follow up the appearance of new social configurations and social types, to dig ever deeper into the darkest substratum of mass psychology, to pass from the present to the past, near and remote, and from the past to the present, to people his works with a teeming multiplicity of the most varigated humans who after decades remain as fresh as on the day of their creation.

Gorky’s range is the whole of Russia. Gorky’s interest goes all the way down from Mayakin, the pillar of capitalist society, to the new world citizen just born in the field, to a working mother that was overcome in the middle of the road, — born, be it noted, with the aid of the author doing midwife’s duty. To know Gorky is to know the very fabric of the Russian people of yesterday and today. It is a vast amount of work bearing witness to a gigantic artistic memory, to a powerful pictorial talent, to an ability for creating a living image by a few bold strokes, to an interest in life’s phenomena and to a creative vitality equal to none.

Throughout all this riot of artistic work Gorky remained faithful to a number of fundamental tenets.

He remained the friend of the masses. His chief concern is the baker’s helper, the truckman, the factory hand, the farm hand, the painter’s apprentice, the lumberjack, the night watchman, the clerk. In dealing with these characters he draws from a vast store of experience accumulated in his adolescence and youth. He is not a Kuprin who goes a-slumming to fish out types. He is not an Andreyev who has to invent his personages and make them act by virtue of sheer artistic suggestion. He is not even a Serafimovich who always, in spite of democratic tendencies, speaks of “them.” Gorky, when creating proletarian figures, is always among his own people. He is at his best in these creations. He is not primarily interested in showing the “better” types; neither is he sitting judgment over his people. He just thrusts his artistic pitchfork into the thick mass of humanity whether in the town of Okurov or in the remotest priest-ridden village, whether on a Volga log raft or among the intellectuals in a Petersburg salon, — and brings out whatever happens. What he brings out palpitates with life and remains alive forever. Gorky is not making propaganda in the sense of trying to prove that the workers are good and the exploiters are bad. That is below the dignity of his talent. He gives those people as they are, as they have emerged from the crucible of his experience on the lense of his creative imagination and because the capitalist social system is intrinsically wrong, and because every social type is unavoidably a representative of his class, Gorky’s works give you material of incalculable value for the understanding of the class composition and the class struggle of Russia. If Gorky were to argue on behalf of his own method, he would say together with Foma Gordejev! “You have not built a life, you have made a garbage heap of it. You have created with your own hands mountains of dirt; it is suffocating. Have you a conscience? Do you think of God? Pennies, these are your gods. As to conscience, you have driven it away…Where is it? Blood-suckers! You live on somebody else’s toil! No end of people must shed bloody tears on account of your miserable deeds! You scoundrels do not deserve even to be in hell…You will be boiled not in fire but in hot mud. Not for centuries will you get rid of your tortures.” It was not Gorky’s fault, indeed, that capitalism was so little attractive.

In one respect Gorky was a propagandist all his life: he did not try to beautify ugly reality. He gave it as it existed. He hated exploitation, the degradation of the human personality, the humiliation of the human mind. In his intense sympathy for the sufferers he resembled Dostoijevsky, but while the latter sought escape in mystic moods, Gorky sought escape in fighting the hateful system.

It was natural for him to portray the revolutionary movement in its varying aspects. From “Mother” to the “Life of Klim Samgin” there is an immense distance artistically. The former novel has something of the romantic: the latter is all sound and sober realism; the main hero of the former, the old working woman who turns Bolshevik after her son is arrested, is somewhat idealized; the figures in the “Life of Klim Samgin” are ruthlessly exposed both as to positive and negative qualities. The spirit that pervades these and many other works dealing with the revolutionary movement, however, remains unchanged. Toiling humanity breaking its chains. Workers rising against exploitation. The human personality in the oppressed battling to assert itself. The vision of a great tomorrow illuminating the difficult road.

“Man, — that sounds proud,” said Gorky in one of his early writings. He has remained faithful to this slogan throughout his life. Gorky is perhaps the most humane writer living in spite — or even because — of the fact that he is not sentimental, that he sees people in their proper proportions. Gorky loves life. He loves the processes of life. He loves the crowded avenues of life.

He seems always to be moving in a crowd. And this is why he so adamantly despises the typical bourgeois intellectual who lives for himself by himself. With what sarcasm Gorky scolded the esthetic intellectuals who tried to run away from the revolution under various ideological pretenses. “Here we see them,” he writes in 1905, “disturbed and pitiful, hiding from the revolution wherever they can — in the dark corners of mysticism, in the pretty bowers of estheticism, in the artificial structures hastily built by them out of stolen material. Sad-eyed and hopeless, they wander through the labyrinths of metaphysics over and over again returning to the narrow paths of religion all heaped with the rubbish of centuries, everywhere bringing with them their vulgarity, the hysterical moanings of a soul smitten with petty fear, their sterility, their brazenness, and everything they touch they shower with a hail of pretty but empty words that have a false and pitiful ring.”

Gorky was actively and intensely interested in political events. He lived those events with all the passion of his being. The writer of these lines has a personal interest in the following passage of a letter written by Gorky to Brjusov right after the sentencing of 218 students of the Kiev University to serve one year in the army — “for correction.” The writer was among the sentenced; the punishment was the czar’s reaction to a students’ demonstration. Gorky wrote:

“My mood is that of a mad dog who was beaten up and leashed to a chain. If you, sir, love man, I hope you will understand me. You see, I feel that to send a student to the army is hideous; it is a brazen crime against his personal freedom. It is an idiotic measure of scoundrels oversated with power. My heart is boiling over and I would be glad to spit into the shameless mugs of those man-haters who when reading your ‘Northern Flowers’ will give them a gracious praise. But then they praise me too. This is revolting and intolerable to such a degree that an inexpressible hatred is surging in me against everything, even against Bunin whom I love but whom I do not understand; I do not understand why his talent, beautiful like opaque old silver, is not being sharpened by him like a knife to be thrust where it belongs.”

Gorky has never been one of the literati. He is never an outsider, an observer. He is always part of the revolutionary struggle even when he lives abroad, even when he is confined to the Capri island in consequence of his illness. He is conscious of being an active part of the stream of social life.

Gorky hates with all his might the darkness of the Russian past, the domination of man over man, the ignorance, the brutality, the crudity of “holy Russia.” No less does he hate those poison flowers of art that throve on the accursed soil. He was and is an enemy of religion, an enemy of the church and an enemy of those writers who tried to find “profundities” in religious mysticism luxuriating amidst poverty and filth. When he was accused of opposing Dostoievsky’s “Devils” he wrote: “Kipling is very talented, but the Hindoos cannot fail to recognize the damage he causes by his preachment of imperialism, and many Englishmen agree with them in that …. Dostoievsky is great, and Tolstoy is a genius, and you gentlemen, if you please, are all talented and clever, but Russia and its people are more significant and more important than Tolstoy, Dostoievsky, and even Pushkin, not to speak about us all.”

In one form or another Gorky always remained a member of a revolutionary organization. Since 1905 he has been affiliated with the Bolshevik party. There were times when he deviated from the Communist line as in the case of that ultra-left movement known as “recallism” (demanding the recall of the Bolshevik Duma deputies) or in the case of other disagreements with one of the other measures undertaken by the Bolshevik Party. There were times when he had his quarrels even with the new Soviet state. But all his life he remained loyal to the revolution and loyal to socialism. Gorky as a writer and Gorky as a fighter was always hated by the bourgeoisie and by the very many intellectuals defending the bourgeoisie. For about thirty years his enemies were shouting about the “death” of Gorky. In this their wish was father to their thought. Gorky kept on growing, broadening, reaching out into new fields, creating monumental works to the dismay of the enemies.

Gorky is considered the father of proletarian literature in Russia. His very language was a challenge to the language prevailing in pre-war Russian literature. He is colorful but he is an enemy of that artful polish and exaggerated refinement that the language received at the hands of the Russian symbolists. He is natural in the true sense of the word, but he never tries to imitate folklore in the manner in which it was done by the Russian classics: he has no need of that. He is idiomatic but without the “holy Russian” darkness that creeps into the language of a Dostoievsky or a Chekhov or a Sergejev Tsensky or an Andrey Belyj. He is strong with the strength of one who does not have to tighten his muscles to show power. He is musical like the Russian steppe, like the ripples of the Volga, but he is seldom sentimental and never shallow.

Gorky is the father of Russian proletarian literature not only because he gave samples of great art of molding social material under the rays of the class-conception of society with the purpose of bringing the class-struggle into bolder relief, but also in the sense of having been the first organizer of the young proletarian writers who began their activities at the turn of the century. In 1914, three years before the revolution, a volume of stories of young proletarian writers, factory workers, the first of its kind, was published with the aid of, and with an introduction by, Gorky. Here Gorky, addressing himself to the readers and to the writer workers, says:

“This book written by your comrades is a new and very significant phenomenon in your life. It speaks eloquently of the growth of the intellectual powers of the proletariat. You understand very well that for a self-taught writer to write a little story is infinitely more difficult than for a professional writer to write a novel of several hundred pages. Without equivocation we may say that this collection of yours is interesting. You have ground to be proud. And who can tell the future? Maybe this little book will be mentioned in the future as one of the first steps of the Russian proletariat towards the creation of its own artistic literature. One may object that this is a fantasy, that such a literature has never existed. Well, there are many things that have never existed; the working class itself has never existed in those forms and with that spiritual content which it has acquired in later days. I am convinced that the proletariat can create artistic literature as it has created, with great difficulty and toil, its daily press.”  

Gorky foresaw the development of the proletariat’s creative forces as Lenin foresaw the development of the proletariat towards the social revolution. Lenin valued Gorky, thinking of him as “an authority in proletarian art,” as “the greater representative of proletarian art,” defending him against attacks while criticizing his mistakes and declaring that “Gorky is a tremendous artistic talent who has done and will do much service to the world proletarian movement.”

Gorky never knew the line of demarcation between “literature” and journalism, the art of the creative writer and the art of the pamphleteer. Such works as the “Island of the Yellow Devil” or “Beautiful France” are a happy blending of satirical denunciation and striking artistic presentation. Many chapters of his works are of similar nature. When necessity requires, Gorky puts aside his artistic pen to grip the publicist’s club with which he belabors the enemies of the working class and the enemies of the revolution all the while using his artistic talent to make his ideas stand out in clear relief. It is difficult to say in which field he is a greater master.

As a publicist he is particularly effective in his attacks upon bourgeois culture. His letter to the American intellectuals published in pamphlet form in this country may serve as an example. He defends the Soviet Union, describing the achievement of the proletarian dictatorship, countering the attacks of the capitalists. Never for a moment does he lose sight of the great future of a classless society now under construction. In this publicist’s work he is as realistic, as close to the earth as in his artistic writings.

Russia of today does not appear to him in a haze of ideal beauty. He sees the ugly remnants of “old mother Russia”; he is aware of the scars of the dark past that Russia still bears, he feels the obstacles which arise not only in the objective world but also within the minds of those who build the new life. But never for a moment does he forget that these are the sufferings of growth, that old “Mother Russia” is vanishing, that new Russia is rapidly casting off the remnants of the old hideous habiliments, that the future is assured. In this ability to see the future amidst the difficulties of to-day Gorky finds Lenin’s greatest genius. “He knew how to foresee what must happen like nobody else before him knew. He knew this and he knew how to do it, it seems to me, because with one half of his great soul he lived in the future, because his iron-clad but flexible logic showed him the remote future in perfectly concrete real forms. This seems to explain his astonishing stability in relation to the reality which never dismayed him, no matter how difficult and complicated it was, which never shook his firm belief that the moment will come when the working class and the peasantry must and shall be the masters of the whole world.” This holds true not only of Lenin but of his friend and collaborator Gorky.

Gorky is one of the outstanding champions of the Soviet Union and of socialist construction. The fortieth anniversary of his literary activity was celebrated in a fashion worthy of the Socialist country and the great artist fighter. This was the first time in history that a great writer was celebrated not by dozens or hundreds of thousands, but by scores of millions of toilers in cities and villages.

Gorky is inseparable from the Soviet Union. Gorky is bringing the Soviet Union to millions of workers still exploited under capitalism throughout the world. The workers must know Gorky. It is the duty of such magazines as the New Masses and such organizations as the John Reed Club to bring Gorky most intimately to the consciousness of the American workers.

Moissaye J Olgin was born in Ukraine in 1878 where he joined the revolutionary movement, organized Jewish self-defense groups and participated in 1905 as a member of the Central Committee of the local Bund in Vilnius. He emigrated to the US in 1915 where he wrote for Forverts and became a Left Wing leader of the Socialist Party’s Jewish Socialist Federation as he was when this was written. He, like many in the JSF, sided with the Workers Council group and stayed in the SP to fight for its adherence to the Third International until 1921. He played a leading role in popularizing Marxism and Marxist texts among Yiddish speaking workers. He joined the CP in 1922 and became editor of the Workers (Communist) Party’s Yiddish language daily Freiheit, which he would continue until his death in 1939. He also wrote for Pravda, the Daily Worker, and the party’s large and varied Jewish press. He was a member of the National Committee of the CPUSA for most of his time in the Party. A rival of Bittleman, Cannon, Foster and Browder’s for much of the1920s, he would become ardent supporter of Browder and Foster’s throughout the many turns of the following fifteen years who immense authority among Jewish revolutionaries was used to attack Trotsky and Trotskyism, whom he formerly championed, throughout the 30s. Fluent in nearly a dozen languages, he was a translator and responsible for producing several volumes of Lenin’s Collected Works in English, as well as many classic texts of Marx and Engels in Yiddish. Tens of thousands attended his funeral in New York City when he died.

The New Masses was the continuation of Workers Monthly which began publishing in 1924 as a merger of the ‘Liberator’, the Trade Union Educational League magazine ‘Labor Herald’, and Friends of Soviet Russia’s monthly ‘Soviet Russia Pictorial’ as an explicitly Communist Party publication, but drawing in a wide range of contributors and sympathizers. In 1927 Workers Monthly ceased and The New Masses began. A major left cultural magazine of the late 1920s and early 1940s, the early editors of The New Masses included Hugo Gellert, John F. Sloan, Max Eastman, Mike Gold, and Joseph Freeman. Writers included William Carlos Williams, Theodore Dreiser, John Dos Passos, Upton Sinclair, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, Dorothy Parker, Dorothy Day, John Breecher, Langston Hughes, Eugene O’Neill, Rex Stout and Ernest Hemingway. Artists included Hugo Gellert, Stuart Davis, Boardman Robinson, Wanda Gag, William Gropper and Otto Soglow. Over time, the New Masses became narrower politically and the articles more commentary than comment. However, particularly in it first years, New Masses was the epitome of the era’s finest revolutionary cultural and artistic traditions.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/new-masses/1932/v08n04-nov-1932-New-Masses.pdf

Republished From: https://revolutionsnewsstand.com/2023/10/19/the-work-of-maxim-gorky-by-moissaye-j-olgin-from-new-masses-vol-8-no-4-november-1932/?fbclid=IwAR3eJucuRpDclJdeVzn10zTqIENTVGuaoIZScGyZk9v2C1YgwJ1wJcyizLs

The post ‘The Work of Maxim Gorky’ by Moissaye J. Olgin from New Masses. Vol. 8 No. 4. November, 1932. appeared first on Asia Commune.

A discussion about Common or Communal land, The Paris Commune, and the Marxist Dictatorahip of the Proletariat.

“The principles of the Commune are eternal and indestructible; they will present themselves again and again until the working class is liberated.” -Karl Marx

The post Principles of the Commune and Socialist Organisation appeared first on Asia Commune.

The speech by Lenin at the All-Russian Conference for Organizations for Political Education delivered on November 5, 1920.

‘Political Education in Soviet Russia’ by Nikolai Lenin from Soviet Russia (New York). Vol. 4 No. 18. April 30, 1921.

Comrades! Permit me to impart a few thoughts to you that occurred to me in the Central Committee and in the Council of People’s Commissars in our discussion of the question of an organization of a central body for political education. Personally I take the liberty to remark that I have been opposed to an alteration of the name of your institution. What better name could be used than the designation “free culture,” which has now been replaced by the stilted Soviet designation, “Main Center for Political Education”? But as this question has already been decided, I beg of you to regard this observation as one that is personal only, and if the entire alteration is not to be limited to a change of name, if you are to succeed in attracting new members and to reestablish your activity in the field of education, it will be possible to adapt ourselves to the foible of the Soviet organs, to provide each thing and each authority with a special label, and in that case the new designation can perhaps even be welcome.

The most important point at present for the comrades engaged in the work of culture and education is that of the relation between education and our political aim. In bourgeois society it has always been, and still is maintained, that the spirit of knowledge is apolitical, or unpolitical. This is a piece of hypocrisy on the part of the bourgeoisie, nothing more or less than a refined method of deceiving the masses, 99 per cent of whom are oppressed by the domination of the church, of private property, etc. Under these circumstances, every “free” expression is directly or indirectly prejudiced by capital. Every state mechanism—and the larger the significance of this mechanism, the more is this dependence a fact—depends absolutely on capital and its policy. The connection between the bourgeois political parties and the educational system is in capitalist countries particularly firm and solid; but bourgeois society cannot openly admit this.

One of our chief tasks is that of opposing to bourgeois deception and hypocrisy our truth, and of obliging the bourgeoisie to recognize our truth.

The educational task must at present therefore be put in the foreground because it is urgently necessary to make the masses ripe for the Socialist order.

This is particularly important in Russia, where the urban proletariat constitutes a minority of the population. There could have been no possibility of a dictatorship of the proletariat, if the latter had not reached a high degree of consciousness, discipline, and fidelity in its struggle against the bourgeoisie. We do not take a utopian viewpoint, according to which the working masses per se are mature for the Socialistic society. We know through precise data taken from the entire history of the Socialism of the workers, that this is not the case, that maturity for Socialism is only attained through great industry, through struggle in strikes, through political organization. In order to carry the victory, in order to put through the Socialistic transformation, the proletariat must be capable of acting in solidarity to eliminate the exploiters, must be capable of playing the role of a pioneer. These class peculiarities and class abilities of the proletariat must be transformed into actual deed. For the comrades active in the field of education, this must be taken as one of the most important tasks. The Communist Party must here serve as a vanguard of the proletariat in the education and training of the working masses, must help them slough off the old habits, the old practices which we have received as an heirloom from the old regime, the practices and habits of private property, with which the great mass is still more or less permeated.

Main Center for Political Education

This fundamental task of the entire Socialistic transformation must never be lost sight of in the examination of specific questions. How the main center for political education is to be constructed, how it is to be united with the individual institutions, not only with the center but also with its own special divisions—these questions will be treated in your presence by comrades who are more competent in this field, who have already had great experience and engaged in the study of these things. I should like only to emphasize matters of principle.

We must treat this question frankly and in complete opposition to tradition, must combat the erroneous conception that education may under no circumstances be combined with politics. We are living in a historical period, in the period of struggle against the world bourgeoisie, which is still very much stronger than we are. In such a moment of struggle we must defend our Socialist work of construction and wage a conflict with this bourgeoisie, both in a military and—what is more important—in a spiritual sense, in the way of education.

It is necessary that the convictions, the ideas, that the working class has acquired in these decades, in the struggle for political freedom, that these habits, practices, may serve as weapons for the education of all the workers. The conviction must be imparted that it is not possible, that it is not permissible, to stand outside the struggle now being waged by the proletariat, which is embracing in increasing measure all the capitalist countries of the world without exception. The union of all great capitalist countries of the world against Russia, against Soviet Russia—this is the whole business of the present international political situation, and we must be entirely clear as to the fact that the fate of hundreds of millions of workers in the capitalist countries depends on this fact.

This shapes the situation—and we may say this quite openly—in such a way as to force us to take sides for one party or the other, for the dictatorship of the proletariat, or for the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. It is possible only for either extremely ignorant people, who lack the necessary information, or for conscious betrayers, to stand aloof in this division.

In our country we experienced such a manifold shaping of events in the Kerensky period, among the Social Revolutionists and the Social Democrats, such a variegated color scheme in the various towns of Russia, that we may say that we have been tested more than any other people. If we look toward Western Europe we shall see that the same thing is now going on there that happened in our country. We are beholding a repetition of our own history. Almost everywhere you may see the Kerensky people by the side of the bourgeoisie. In a great number of states, particularly in Germany, they are at the head, and everywhere the same fact may be observed: the impossibility of assuming a middle position, and a clear understanding: either there will be a dictatorship of the Whites—the bourgeoisie in all the nations of Western Europe are preparing for this dictatorship and arming themselves against us—or a dictatorship of the proletariat. We have had to feel this so keenly and profoundly that I need not dwell on this in speaking to Russian Communists. But I draw only one inference, and one that must be laid at the basis of all the discussions and instructions connected with the Main Center for Political Education: we must openly recognize the predominance of the Communist Party in our policy.

The party may express the interests of its class more or less, may pass through alterations of one kind or another, but we do not yet know of a better form: no other form has as yet been found in any country. The entire struggle of Soviet Russia in the course of its three years’ resistance to the onslaught of world capitalism is based upon a realization of the task of supporting the proletariat, of executing its function as an educator, organizer, and leader, without which the downfall of capitalism is impossible.

Liberation from the Intellectuals

The working masses, the mass of peasants and workers, must free themselves from the tutelage of the intellectuals and educate themselves anew for the constructive activity of Communism, for it is otherwise impossible to approach this activity of construction. Our whole experience teaches that we are dealing with too serious a situation and the discussion of the activity of organizational reconstruction must begin with the recognition of the guiding function of the party. How this construction is to be realized—on this we shall have more to say later.

After the decree on the Main Center for Political Education shall have been published, you will see that it lacks a direct declaration of its attitude toward the party. The entire juristic and practical constitution of the Soviet Republic is built upon the fact that it is the party that is improving and determining everything, reconstructing everything according to a single principle, in order that the Communist elements in close contact with the proletariat may permeate it with their spirit and liberate it from the heritage of capitalism, which we are so ardently striving to overcome. The Commissariat for Public Education already has passed through a long struggle. Already for a long time the teachers’ organization has been fighting against the socialist transformation. In pedagogical circles the bourgeois prejudices have taken particularly firm root, and we are compelled to conquer our Communist position slowly, step by step. For the Main Center for Political Education, whose function it will be to spread information outside of the school, the decisive task of such instruction and enlightenment of the masses will be the necessity of putting in the foreground this leadership of the party, of subordinating this gigantic apparatus, this half million army of teachers, which is at present in the service of the workers, filling them with its spirit, fanning the flame of their initiative. The teaching staff, which grew up in bourgeois prejudices, was at the bottom of its heart hostile to the proletariat and had no contact with it. We must now raise a new army of pedagogical workers, which must be more closely connected with the party, more intimately acquainted with its ideals, more fully impressed with the spirit of these ideas. The teaching staff must itself attract the working masses, fill them with the Communist spirit, interest them in what the Communists are doing and win them over to the Communist standpoint.

The Nature of the Communist Leadership

In principle there cannot be any doubt for us that the leadership belongs to the Communist Party, that it is the aim of political education, of political culture, to educate true Communists, who shall be in a position to combat victoriously the lies and prejudices, and help the working masses in putting down the old order and carrying out the reconstruction of the state without capitalists and exploiters. How may this be done? It is only possible after we have gained all the knowledge that the teachers have received as a heritage from the bourgeoisie. All the technical achievements of Communism would be impossible without this, would be an empty illusion. The question now arises—how are those co-workers who are not accustomed to working in connection with a definite policy, in accordance with a policy necessary for us and particularly for Communism, to be adapted to this policy? This is a very difficult task, for which we have no ready-made solution.

We have taken up this question in the Central Committee of the party and made every effort to acquaint ourselves with all suggestions made in this field, and believe that the work of such conferences as yours will be of great importance in this connection.

We must now regard each propagandist, who formerly was considered only as a man belonging to a certain circle, to a certain organization, from an entirely different point of view. Every propagandist belongs to the party, which is guiding and directing the entire state, the world struggle of Soviet Russia against capitalism. This propagandist is a representative of the fighting class and party that controls and necessarily must control this mighty state apparatus. Many Communists, who were splendidly efficient in our former illegal work and who are tested and trusted workers either will not or cannot grasp the full significance of this time, the transition period, in which he who was an agitator and propagandist in the mass meeting must now become a leader of the gigantic national organization. If in this connection he should receive an inappropriate or misleading title, such as that of an “administrative official for public schools,” etc., the damage would not be great. It is important and necessary that he should be capable of guiding the masses of teachers.

Hundreds of thousands of teachers constitute an apparatus that must push our work forward. The fact that the masses of teachers are permeated with the heritage of capitalistic culture, must not and cannot prevent us from placing them in service of Communist education. The Communist active in the field of popular education must learn and understand to conduct this mass, which runs into hundreds of thousands.

This task is complicated, difficult, full of contradictions, but we can overcome it. We have already solved it in our Red Army. In this army tens of thousands of representatives of the old army were incorporated, and they adapted themselves to the army in a definite although rather extended process, fused themselves into a single unit with the army. Their victories are a proof of this. We must attain the same result in our work of culture and enlightenment. To be sure, this work does not appear so brilliant but it is not less important. Only after mastering this task, can we guide on the proper path the masses that capitalism had kept down and isolated from us. This is the goal that every agitator and propagandist must pursue in his work outside of the school. You must help Communism overcome in every way the resistance of the capitalists, not only the military and political resistance, but also their ideological resistance. The mightiest and most profound work is the mental transformation of the masses. Their eagerness for knowledge, their striving for education, for an understanding of Communism, which is apparent to us, afford us a guarantee that we shall be the victors here also, to be sure, not so quickly as at the front, and perhaps with greater difficulty and occasional defeats, but we shall nevertheless finally be the victors.

I should like to dwell on one point a little. Perhaps the designation: “Main Center for Political Education” is not properly understood as far as the use of the word “political” is concerned. Of course politics are here under discussion, but how are we to understand politics? If we think of politics in the bourgeois sense, we may fall into a grave error. Our politics are those of the proletariat struggling against the world bourgeoisie for its liberation. In our struggle two main factors are apparent. On the one hand there is the task of destroying, of annihilating the heritage received from the bourgeois regime, of suppressing the ceaselessly repeated attempts of the bourgeoisie to destroy the Soviet power. This task has hitherto taken up most of our attention and prevented us from going about the other task, that of reconstruction. Politics, as the bourgeoisie understands it, is to a certain extent detached from economics. The bourgeoisie said: “Workers, peasants, if you would attain the possibility of subsistence, work. Work, in order to buy in he market the things you need in order to live; the economic policy will be taken care of by your employers.”

But with us the case is different. Politics must be an affair of the entire people, the business of the proletariat. And let us here emphasize that we have hitherto been obliged to devote nine-tenths of our working time to the struggle against the bourgeoisie. The victories over Wrangel prove however that this on the conflict is approaching its end, that we have conquered peace with a number of countries, that every victory on the military front is liberating us for the internal struggle, for the reconstruction of the state. Every step that brings us nearer to a victory over the White Guards is a part of the gradual transfer of the center of gravity in this struggle to the field of economic policy.

Old and New Propaganda

The old style propaganda aimed to make clear what Socialism is. This old propaganda is at present of no use. We must now not describe but prove by practice how Socialism is to be constructed. Our whole propaganda must be based on the political experience of economic construction. This is our most important task. If anyone should grasp the situation in the old sense of the word, he would have to be regarded as backward and as not fitted for propaganda activity among the worker and peasant masses. Our main policy at present is directed at the economic reconstruction of the state; it has the object of gathering as much grain as possible, of distributing as much coal as possible, and of solving the problem of how this grain and this coal is to be used to the best purpose, in order to eliminate hunger. This is our policy. On this all our agitation and propaganda must be based. We must have fewer phrases, as phrases cannot fill the needs of the working population.

As far as the course of the war may afford us the possibility of transferring the center of gravity from the struggle against the bourgeoisie, against Wrangel, against the White Guards, to this new field, we shall devote our main attention to these economic questions. And it is in this matter that agitation and propaganda must play an increasingly enormous role. All tasks of agitation must be devoted to the practical reconstruction of national economy. Every agitator must be a national leader, must be a director of the peasants and workers in economic reconstruction. He must awaken in them the understanding that in order to be a Communist it is necessary to know the contents of a certain pamphlet, of a certain book, and to read such works attentively.

This is the way we shall take in order to elevate our economy, to make it more productive, to place it in a still higher measure in the service of the common good, to increase production, to shape the grain situation more favorably, to perfect the distribution of food, to raise the efficiency of coal mining and to reestablish industry without the capitalist spirit, all of which taken together constitute the essence of Communism. All our propaganda must be conducted in such a way that the result will be a practical control of the national structure. Communism must be easily accessible to the working masses, as it is a matter of life and death to them.

At present the matter is not yet being well formed; thousands of mistakes are being made. There is no reason for our concealing this.

It is not we, but it is the peasants and workers, who with our help, with our cooperation, with our slight and weak powers, must regulate and order the entire apparatus. For us, Communism has already ceased to be a program, a theory, a problem. For us it is an affair of actual constructive activity of today. Even when our enemies, in this war, inflicted the most cruel defeats upon us, we always learned something from them and ultimately reached victory. Now also we must learn from every defeat in the field of education, and improve our understanding accordingly. If from these examples, failures, mistakes, from our repeated misses, we gain knowledge for application in our constructive activity, we shall succeed in turning unfit Communist officials into true rebuilders, particularly of our economic life. We shall attain all that is needed, shall overcome all the obstacles placed in our way by the remnants of the old regime. We must reeducate the masses, which is possible only by propaganda and agitation. We must put the masses in direct contact with the reconstruction of the entire economic life. This must be the chief, the most important point in the activity of every agitator and propagandist; if he is clear in his own mind on this point the success of his activity is certain.

Soviet Russia began in the summer of 1919, published by the Bureau of Information of Soviet Russia and replaced The Weekly Bulletin of the Bureau of Information of Soviet Russia. In lieu of an Embassy the Russian Soviet Government Bureau was the official voice of the Soviets in the US. Soviet Russia was published as the official organ of the RSGB until February 1922 when Soviet Russia became to the official organ of The Friends of Soviet Russia, becoming Soviet Russia Pictorial in 1923. There is no better US-published source for information on the Soviet state at this time, and includes official statements, articles by prominent Bolsheviks, data on the Soviet economy, weekly reports on the wars for survival the Soviets were engaged in, as well as efforts to in the US to lift the blockade and begin trade with the emerging Soviet Union.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/srp/v4-5-soviet-russia%20Jan-Dec%201921.pdf

Republished From: https://revolutionsnewsstand.com/2023/09/09/political-education-in-soviet-russia-by-nikolai-lenin-from-soviet-russia-new-york-vol-4-no-18-april-30-1921/?fbclid=IwAR3aq8TtD1HiWcHLLjdPY9gqwPYJ_DXPhBDM72vh_5EEfGkZ761pIdau-Ps

The post ‘Political Education in Soviet Russia’ by Nikolai Lenin from Soviet Russia (New York). Vol. 4 No. 18. April 30, 1921. appeared first on Asia Commune.

The New International, March 1944

Leon Trotsky

What Is Leninism?

A Timely Excerpt from Trotsky’s New Course

From The New International, Vol. X No. 3, March 1944, pp. 78–79.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.

Leninism cannot be conceived of without theoretical breadth, without a critical analysis of the material bases of the political process. The weapon of Marxian investigation must be constantly sharpened and applied. It is precisely in this that tradition consists, and not in the substitution of a formal reference or of an accidental quotation. Least of all can Leninism be reconciled with ideological superficially and theoretical slovenliness.

Lenin cannot be chopped up into quotations suited for every possible case, because for Lenin the formula never stands higher than the reality; it is always the tool that makes it possible to grasp the reality and to dominate it. It would not be hard to find in Lenin dozens and hundreds of passages which, formally speaking, seem to be contradictory. But what must be seen is not the formal relationship of one passage to another, but the real relationship of each of them to the concrete reality in which the formula was introduced as a lever. The Leninist truth is always concrete!

As a system of revolutionary action, Leninism presupposes a revolutionary sense sharpened by reflection and experience which, in the social realm, is equivalent to the muscular sensation in physical labor. But revolutionary sense cannot be confused with demagogical flair. The latter may yield ephemeral successes, sometimes even sensational ones. But it is a political instinct of an inferior type. It always leans toward the line of least resistance. Leninism, on the other hand, seeks to pose and resolve the fundamental revolutionary problems, to overcome the principal obstacles; its demagogical counterpart consists in evading the problems, in creating an illusory appeasement, in lulling critical thought to sleep. [1]

Leninism is, first of all, realism, the highest qualitative and quantitative appreciation of reality, from the standpoint of revolutionary action. Precisely because of this it is irreconcilable with the flight from reality behind the screen of hollow agitationalism, with the passive loss of time, with the haughty justification of yesterday’s mistakes on the pretext of saving the tradition of the party.

Leninism is genuine freedom from formalistic prejudices, from moralizing doctrinalism, from all forms of intellectual conservatism attempting to bind the will to revolutionary action. But to believe that Leninism signifies that “anything goes” would be an irremediable mistake. Leninism includes the morality, not formal but genuinely revolutionary, of mass action and the mass party. Nothing is so alien to it as functionary-arrogance and bureaucratic cynicism. A mass party has its own morality, which is the bond of fighters in and for action. Demagogy is irreconcilable with the spirit of a revolutionary party because it is deceitful: by presenting one or another simplified solution of the difficulties of the hour it inevitably undermines the next future, weakens the party’s self-confidence.

Swept by the wind and gripped by a serious danger, demagogy easily dissolves into panic. It is hard to juxtapose, even on paper, panic and Leninism.

Leninism is warlike from head to foot. War is impossible without cunning, without subterfuge, without deception of the enemy. Victorious war cunning is a constituent element of Leninist politics. But, at the same time, Leninism is supreme revolutionary honesty toward the party and the working class. It admits of no fiction, no bubble-blowing, no pseudo-grandeur!

Leninism is orthodox, obdurate, irreducible, but it does not contain so much as a hint of formalism, canon, nor bureaucratism. In the struggle, it takes the bull by the horns. To make out of the traditions of Leninism a supra-theoretical guarantee of infallibility of all the words and thoughts of the interpreters of these traditions is to scoff at genuine-revolutionary tradition and transform it into official bureaucratism. It is ridiculous and pathetic to try to hypnotize a great revolutionary party by the repetition of the same formulae, according to which the right line should be sought not in the essence of each question, not in the methods of posing and solving this question, but in information … of a biographical character.

Since I am obliged to speak of myself for a moment, I will say that I do not consider the road by which I came to Leninism as less safe and reliable than the others. I came to Lenin fighting, but I came fully and all the way. My actions in the service of the party are the only guarantee of this: I can give no other supplementary guarantees. And if the question is to be posed in the field of biographical investigation, then at least it ought to be done properly.

It would then be necessary to reply to thorny questions: Were all those who were faithful to the master in the small matters also faithful to him in the great? Did all those who showed such docility in the presence of the master thereby offer guarantees that they would continue his work in his absence? Does the whole of Leninism lie in docility? I have no intention whatever of analyzing these questions by taking as examples individual comrades with whom, so far as I am concerned, I intend to continue working hand in hand.

Whatever the difficulties and the differences of opinion may be in the future, they can be victoriously overcome only by the collective work of the party’s mind, checking up each time by itself and thereby maintaining the continuity of development.

This character of the revolutionary tradition is bound up with the peculiar character of revolutionary discipline. Where tradition is conservative, discipline is passive and is violated at the first moment of crisis. Where, as in our party, tradition consists in the highest revolutionary activity, discipline attains its maximum point, for its decisive importance is constantly checked in action. Thence, the indestructible alliance of revolutionary initiative, of critical, bold elaboration of questions, with iron discipline in action. And it is only by this superior activity that the youth can receive from the old this tradition of discipline and carry it on.

We cherish the tradition of Bolshevism as much as anybody. But let no one dare identify bureaucratism with Bolshevism, tradition with officious routine.

Note by ETOL

1. The printed version reads: “Leninism, on the other hand, seeks to pose and resolve the fundamental revolutionary problems, in creating an illusory appeasement, in lulling critical thought to sleep.” This was corrected in Correction, The New International, Vol. X No. 4, April 1944, p. 108.

Republished From: https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/ni/vol10/no03/trotsky.htm?fbclid=IwAR1lQ2UrnBpiPr7ZhjxsN24eytch-Wp1EKSjpYD3Awavx6V2KdzV6nwrURw

The post What Is Leninism? By Leon Trotsky! appeared first on Asia Commune.

Mondli Makhanya

Modern South African history has seen its fair share of evil men and women, many of them linked in one way or another with the apartheid system and the security apparatus that upheld it.

There were people such as DF Malan and Hendrik Verwoerd, the architects and foundation-layers of the apartheid system. In later years, there were the likes of BJ Vorster and PW Botha, who took apartheid to another level and designed dark security that formed the shield for apartheid.

There were hard men such as Louis le Grange, Adriaan Vlok and Magnus Malan, who built and nurtured the killing squads that acted with absolute impunity and with the sanction of the highest levels of government.

Then there were the generals in the army, police and intelligence, who hired the men and women who carried out dastardly deeds that you could not believe were executed by human beings.

Lower down, there were the foot soldiers such as Eugene de Kock, who carried out the orders with glee.

Most of the people acted out of conviction that they were serving the interests of the volk and the God that Afrikaners worship.

They were the custodians of Western civilisation on this dark continent. But, as in the slave trade days, there were the black enablers who sold out their people for personal gain and individual power.

You could find them in the Bantustan governments, the puppet township councils, the Security Branch and among the askari turncoats. And as is always the case, the collaborators often went much further than the master could ever have expected.

Undoubtedly, the most enthusiastic and most effective of these apartheid collaborators was one Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi, who died yesterday, aged 95. If those who put up Buthelezi’s tombstone were to be honest it would read: 

“Chief apartheid collaborator and mass murderer.” Those who write the obituary to be read at his funeral would acknowledge the tens of thousands of people who were killed, maimed, displaced and had their properties destroyed by his impis and hit squads. Those who stand up to pay tribute at his memorial service would mention the names Boipatong, KwaMakhutha, Swanieville, Shobashobane, Thokoza and so many other scenes of mass murders that were committed in his name. In the coming days of the so-called mourning period, they should remember those who were mercilessly slaughtered on train coaches from where they could not escape.

REWRITING HISTORY

Yesterday, following his death, there was a torrent of lies about the legacy of a man who must count as one of the most evil people to have trod the soul of our nation.

Buthelezi was being lauded as a great man, nation-builder and contributor to the democratic republic that we live in. President Cyril Ramaphosa described him as “a formidable leader in the political and cultural life of our nation” and pledged that the country would “reflect more extensively on his extraordinary life and diverse contribution to the development of our nation”.

National Assembly Speaker Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula called Buthelezi “a towering figure in our nation’s history”. She praised Buthelezi for his “legislative and political leadership experience, having led a political party both during the apartheid era and in post-apartheid South Africa”.

There were many more dishonest tributes from the ANC, other political parties and even some organs of civil society and faith-based organisations.

In the past 24 hours, we have witnessed the culmination of the greatest whitewashing of history that South Africa has seen, a process that began some years ago.

TRUTH ABOUT GATSHA BUTHELEZI

So who is this Buthelezi and why is everybody so afraid to tell the truth about him?

The facts are that Buthelezi used the role that he built for himself as the traditional prime minister to the Zulu kingdom to cultivate a personality cult around himself and amass massive power.

He tightly controlled a young and dimwit King Goodwill Zwelithini to build what was initially a cultural movement called Inkatha, which then evolved into a political force.

The driver behind this was the assertion of Zulu nationalism and the evoking of the nostalgia for the kingdom that fought heroic battles against colonialists before succumbing in 1879.

This is a nostalgia that runs deep among many Zulu people and Buthelezi was able to commodify it and turn it into a political weapon.

Everyone knows how potent and dangerous a weapon nationalist jingoism can be. Buthelezi tapped into this.

In KwaZulu schools, children were subjected to Inkatha lessons in which Buthelezi was placed at the centre of the restoration of the Zulu kingdom.

Young people would be sent to the Mandleni-Matleng camp outside Ulundi for further indoctrination and turned into IFP zombies. Traditional structures such as chiefdoms and the induna system in the hostels were purposed as Inkatha conveyor belts.

The youthful zombies, together with regiments in the traditional areas and hostels, would later become the fighting forces that Inkatha used to crush anti-apartheid forces on behalf of the apartheid government.

Inkatha’s violent war against the people began in the 1970s and 1980s when Buthelezi dispatched his warriors to help the apartheid government crush student protests.

When the nationwide uprising against apartheid intensified in the mid-1980s, the regime leant on its trusted surrogate to help it contain them or put them down. Inkatha gladly complied and regiments conducted terror campaigns against members and supporters of the United Democratic Front and its allies.

The apartheid government even helped Inkatha to form the United Workers Union of SA to counter the growing power of Cosatu.

Fast-forward to the unbanning of the organisations and release of political prisoners such as Nelson Mandela.

With negotiations for a democratic South Africa in full force, right-wing elements in FW De Klerk’s government and security forces unleashed more bloodshed on South Africans, working hand in hand with Buthelezi’s now rebranded Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) as well as state-backed criminal gangs that had been turned into the government’s killing machines.

The carnage of those times was raw: people butchered in broad daylight, babies stabbed with spears while in bed with their mothers because “a baby snake will eventually grow up into a big snake”, and weddings attacked by marauding impis.

As a young reporter at the time, this lowly newspaperman would more than once weekly be on the scene of yet another killing field as we journalists became accustomed to those middle of the night calls and pager alerts telling of yet another mass killing by Inkatha warriors.

The Inkatha warriors would be marching around the hostel yard or on the perimeter, triumphantly singing traditional songs, celebrating their killing spree. They would tell us that they were killing the enemies of the Zulus because Inkatha had told them the ANC wanted to destroy the Zulu kingdom and strip the king of his powers.

The sight of severed limbs, heads separated from the torsos, and congealed blood thick on the floors of homes and streets still haunts to this day. The images of the blood that would be splattered on train windows after a train attack and bodies of those who jumped out and died still lingers. As does the wailing of family members, including orphaned children, at the numerous funerals of innocents who were killed by Inkatha impis simply because the apartheid regime and Buthelezi wanted to sow terror.

Today, if you go to communities in the Vaal, the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands, Ekurhuleni, Soweto, Kagiso, Clermont, Magabheni and many rural villages, the residents will have vivid memories of what Buthelezi did to them, their loved ones and their communities.

DEMOCRACY SPOILER

As the democracy talks commenced, Buthelezi was playing spoiler, aligning himself with far-right Afrikaner groups and other stubborn Bantustan parties to derail the negotiations. Because his party and the Afrikaans conservatives had the capacity to cause chaos, the main negotiation had to sit up and take them seriously.

For all the talk that Buthelezi helped the country’s transition to democracy, it cannot be forgotten that the IFP held the nation to ransom in the run-up to the 1994 elections and entered the polls at the absolutely last minute. He was to continue his obstinate ways even after democracy when he was a serving minister in the Government of National Unity (GNU).

Many a time he would throw tantrums and threaten to pull the IFP out of the GNU and the Constitutional Assembly that was drafting the final Constitution.

Carefully couched in his threats was that he could not predict what his supporters would do if the IFP was excluded.

Yesterday, ANC national spokesperson Mahlengi Bhengu-Motsiri told the nation that Buthelezi had a “multifaceted relationship with the ANC and the nation, and his legacy will be subjected to intense debate”.

Well, that “intense debate” should have been settled by the unequivocal findings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), which made damning findings against the IFP and Buthelezi.

One of these related to Buthelezi’s request for the SA Defence Force (SADF) to bolster him with training offensive units (basically hit squads), in his capacity as KwaZulu chief minister who was also in charge of the Bantustan police, to deal with his opponents. These resulted in the training of hit squads in the Caprivi Strip (then part of South West Africa).

Those men went on to do some deadly killings. According to a document of the SADF’s directorate of special tasks that the TRC obtained, his right-hand man MZ Khumalo said Buthelezi wanted help to train “cells that could take out undesirable members”.

“The training of the offensive group of Inkatha’s para-military unit in the Caprivi Strip during 1986 accords fully with the meaning of offensive action … According to former military intelligence officer, Lieutenant-Colonel J A Nieuwoudt, who was involved in the training of the para-military unit, the aim of the offensive group was to attack and eliminate ANC targets,” the TRC said in papers answering Buthelezi’s bid to set its findings aside.

It was a comprehensive answering document that laid out the IFP’s hand-in-glove relationship with the apartheid security establishment. Buthelezi promptly walked away and the case that would have proved his complicity was never heard.

There is nothing “formidable” about a cold-blooded killer who created orphans, destroyed communities and did the utmost to delay our democracy. There is no ambiguity about Buthelezi’s role in aiding and abetting the apartheid regime. There is nothing “towering” about a man who is responsible for more than 20 000 deaths in a war that only benefited the regime.

Buthelezi never acknowledged his role in propping up apartheid through violent means and his role in the slaughter of innocents. He spent his last years trying to convince the world that he had always been a man of peace, right up there with Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi.

In the next few days, Ramaphosa will announce how the mass killer will be honoured by the democratic republic he spilt blood to prevent the birth of.

There will be the usual bells and whistles that come with such occasions. Lies will be told about a man who was one of the midwives of the new South Africa.

But it is okay. It is in the nature of politicians to tell bare-faced lies. But we will owe it to ourselves as South Africans not to forget that Buthelezi was a thoroughly evil man to the end, and history must record that.

https://www.news24.com/citypress/news/truth-of-buthelezis-murder-legacy-20230910

The post Mangosuthu Buthelezi – The unfiltered truth of a murderous legacy appeared first on Asia Commune.

Hernán Chacón Soto, 86, had been sentenced to 15 years in prison for aggravated homicide and 10 years for aggravated kidnapping for the assassinations of the singer and Littré Quiroga

Rocío Montes

Santiago – Aug 30, 2023

One of the seven former members of the Chilean military convicted of the torture and assassination of singer-songwriter Víctor Jara, retired brigadier Hernán Chacón Soto, took his own life after the verdict was returned by the Supreme Court, as confirmed to this newspaper by the Ministry of the Interior. Soto, 86, was found dead by the Investigations Police (PDI), as reported by Radio ADN, who arrived at his home to transfer him to prison to serve his sentence: 15 years for aggravated homicide and 10 years for aggravated kidnapping for his part in the murders of Jara and Littré Quiroga, who oversaw the prison system during the socialist government of Salvador Allende. The killings took place a few days after the coup d’état of September 11, 1973.

According to local media, the PDI arrived at Chacón’s home in the municipality of Las Condes, in the eastern part of Santiago, to notify him of the ruling, when he reportedly asked for permission to go to his bedroom to retrieve some medicines. At that point, he shot himself.

According to his defense testimony, in his rank of major at the time of the coup, he was only tasked with guarding the perimeter of the Estadio Chile, where the crimes took place. However, the court said such an assignment was not consistent with his rank, nor with the testimonies and evidence gathered.

According to the 2021 ruling of the Court of Appeals, which was ratified Monday by the Supreme Court, Chacón had tactical and intelligence knowledge, “conditions that allowed him to intervene directly in the interrogations” that were carried out in the locker rooms of the Estadio Chile, where Jara and Quiroga were imprisoned along with thousands of Allende supporters, “as well as in the previous process of classification of the detainees” — deciding who was to be interrogated.

The investigation adds that “several testimonies corroborated that he participated in the selection process and reported these to his superiors, so his statements that he was guarding the perimeter were neither credible nor plausible.” It was also noted that according to witnesses Chacón “was carrying a 9-millimeter STYER pistol at the time, a weapon that fully coincides with the technical description of the injuries that, according to forensic records, caused the deaths of Víctor Jara and Littré Quiroga.”

Republished From: https://english.elpais.com/international/2023-08-30/retired-chilean-army-brigadier-takes-own-life-after-conviction-for-1973-murder-of-victor-jara.html?fbclid=IwAR2aMoY-EHLltjL36vSM65c7oxCx1dc1h2nT_YmWUPBBWMNEIuYAYDLiE_o

The post Retired Chilean Army brigadier takes own life after conviction for 1973 murder of Víctor Jara appeared first on Asia Commune.