The Victory of the Korean People

Statement from the New Communist Party of Britain

25th July 2009



On 27th July 1953 the guns fell silent on the Korean peninsula. US imperialism and its lackeys had been defeated. The Korean people, led by Kim Il Sung and the Workers Party of Korea, had preserved the independence of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and forced the greatest imperialist country in the world to the armistice table.
The heroism of the Korean People’s Army and the Korean people had beaten off the might of US imperialism and its satellites.
The imperialists had hoped to smash Korean socialism in 1950. Their legions believed that carpet bombing and terror would crush the spirit of the Korean revolution that had liberated the country from Japanese colonialism. They were proved wrong.
American imperialism. flying the false flag of the United Nations, believed that Democratic Korea could be isolated and crushed. But the socialist world rallied to assist the Korean people in their just struggle. The Korean people did not stand alone. The Chinese Volunteers and the assistance from the Soviet Union and the People’s Democracies of eastern Europe was a concrete demonstration of proletarian internationalism while the peace movement across the world, not least in Britain and the United States, exposed the crimes of the imperialists and mobilised world public opinion to end the war.
But the consequences of the Korean war remain unresolved. Though the Americans had pledged to end the partition of Korea to end the fighting Korea remains cruelly divided and the DPR Korea continues to be subjected to a US embargo in breach of international law.
Throughout his life Kim Il Sung worked tirelessly to fulfil the dream of the entire Korean nation for the peaceful re-unification of the country. His proposal for a reunified Confederal Democratic Republic of Koryo based on the principle of “one country/two systems” remains on the table. Korean leader Kim Jong Il has striven to normalise relations with the south Korean authorities to end tension on the peninsula and pave the way to reunification.
All these efforts have been thwarted by US imperialism that seeks to retain south Korea as a protectorate and military base as part of their efforts to dominate the region. Americans imperialism reneged on their commitments forcing the DPR Korea to resume its nuclear research. American imperialism stepped up its military threats and economic blockade forcing the DPR Korea to develop and test its own independent nuclear deterrent.
Now US imperialism stands isolated and exposed. The DPR Korea has stood firm breaking the diplomatic and economic embargo in the 1990s and the people have closed ranks around the Workers Party of Korea with renewed determination to defend their independence and socialist system.
Today communists throughout the world join their Korean comrades in reflection on the anniversary of the victory of the Fatherland Liberation War to pay tribute to the sacrifice made by the generations before us in the struggle for socialism and the emancipation of the working class.





Andy Brooks
General Secretary
New Communist Party of Britain

Joint Letter on the Korean War

Comrade Kim Jong Il
General Secretary, Workers’ Party of Korea
Chairman of National Defence Commission, DPRK
Pyongyang
Democratic People’s Republic of Korea


25th July 2009 (Juche 98)

Dear Comrade Kim Jong Il,

Our organisations participating in this celebration to mark the 56th anniversary of the end of the Korean War and the historic victory of the Korean people send you the warmest congratulations and heartfelt best wishes.

The Korean War was an illegal war of aggression organised by the US imperialists under the flag of the United Nations. US imperialism is the most barbaric force that humanity has encountered, armed to the teeth with nuclear and other weapons and operating on the fascist dictum "might makes right". It seeks to blackmail any people who affirm their collective right to existence, just as the DPRK is leading the Korean people in doing.

Just as hundreds of millions of people opposed the US-led illegal war of aggression against the Korean people in 1950, so today the working class and people of Britain, as well as all the peace loving people of the world, must not permit Anglo-US imperialism to justify another Korean War.

We participating organisations, on behalf of all democratic forces in Britain, are indeed proud to be called Friends of Korea. We declare our great admiration for the historic victory of the Korean people, and the heroic advance in rebuilding their country, and in their fervent aspiration to once again reunify the Korean Peninsula under the precept of “By our nation itself”. We also celebrate on this occasion your tireless and peerless work, your leadership, and the collective spirit of the whole Korean people under your guidance in defending their socialist system and fighting for complete freedom and independence.

We expresses our utmost confidence that the Korean people through their own efforts will oust the US occupation troops from the south of their country, and reunify their country through their own efforts, peacefully and without outside interference.

We regard the Korean people’s victories as our victories, as we struggle for the same ideals and against the same enemies. As ever, we assure our comrades in the DPRK that we fight shoulder to shoulder with them in their struggles now and in the future also.

With warmest fraternal regards

Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist)
European Regional Society for the Study of the Juche Idea
UK Korean Friendship Association
New Communist Party of Britain
Revolutionary Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist)
Socialist Labour Party

A sinister game in China

The hidden hand of US intelligence was seen in the attempt to destabilise Iran in the wake of the presidential elections in the Islamic Republic. Now the imperialist lie machine has gone into full swing over the riots in Xinjiang.
All sorts of nonsense is being parroted by the BBC and the American media about Xinjiang which has been a part of China since 60 BC. . They claim that the Uygur people are represented by the largely fictitious “World Uygur Congress” and not the people’s government of the region. We’re told that Xinjiang is being flooded with Chinese immigrants and that mainly Muslim Uygur people are oppressed and clamouring for independence.
What they don’t say is that separatist groups, connected to imperialism, have been waging a terror campaign against the people’s government of Xinjiang and that they were clearly behind the riots that have so far caused 184 deaths, most of them Han Chinese victims of Uygur racist violence. Thousands more have been injured, hundreds of vehicles burnt, shops looted and other public facilities destroyed in the regional capital, Urumqi. Fortunately the firm action of the Chinese government has restored calm and security to Urumqi and the rest of Xinjiang
The “World Uygur Congress” (WUC) was set up in Munich in 2004 as a coalition of a number of anti-communist émigré groups including the Uygur American Association and the “East Turkestan National Congress”. It was funded by the National Endowment for Democracy, whose main sponsor was US Congress and it is led by Rebiya Kadeer, who likes to be called the “spiritual mother” of the Uygurs.
Others have different opinion. Ismail Amat, the former chairman of the Xinjiang regional government, called her the “scum” of the Uygur community last weekend. The “spiritual mother” has a revealing past. Though of alleged humble origins she started off as a petty exploiter, denounced during the Cultural Revolution and then rising to riches during the reforms of Deng Xiaoping. In the early 1990s she was worth millions, running businesses in China, Russia and Kazakhstan and was named by Forbes magazine in 1995 as the eighth richest in People’s China.
Her introduction to open subversion came through her second husband Sidik Rouzi, who fled to America in 1996 where he works for “Radio Free Asia”, an American propaganda station set up by the CIA in 1950 to broadcast lies to the people’s republics of Asia. And her downfall came when she was arrested and jailed in 1999 on charges of harming national security and leaking state secrets. She left for the United States shortly after she was released on medical grounds in 2005. Kadeer has met former United States President George Bush in June 2007 and British Foreign and Commonwealth Office officials in October the same year.
There is no doubt that the riots were plotted by Uygur separatists outside the country to split the unity of different ethnic groups in the region. The ring-leaders were attempting to provoke ethnic violence between the Uygur and the Han Chinese as part of their campaign for “independence”. The real agenda, which the Tibetan Dalai Lama clique also serves, is to break-up China and establish weak client successor states for plunder by imperialism and the big corporations. US President Barack Obama can strut around the world posing as the humane face of capitalism for all he likes but behind the scenes it’s business as usual for American imperialism.

Communists condemn OSCE resolution

Joint Statement of communist and workers’ parties
We strongly condemn the adoption on 3 July, 2009 at the regular Parliamentary Assembly session of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in Vilnius (Lithuania) of a new anti-communist resolution titled «Divided Europe Reunited» which contains a gross distortion of history and denies the role of the Soviet Union in the victory over fascism. The resolution equates communism and fascism. Those who do so fail to remember that it was the Soviet Union that made the largest contribution to the liberation of Europe from fascism. The authors of the resolution -those falsifiers of history- pretend to have forgotten who gave away Czechoslovakia in 1938 in Munich which led to the elimination of the state independence of the country and to the fascist enslavement of the Czech and Slovak peoples.

Those who voted for the adoption of this resolution actually justify and encourage “a witch-hunt” against communists in several countries of the OSCE where communists are persecuted, their youth organisations prohibited and the parties prosecuted for the use of their traditional symbols.

Furthermore, the resolution offers great opportunities for the prosecution of communist ideology and the adoption of measures against communist parties.

At the same time, we witness the actual rehabilitation of the Nazis in a number of countries, including the country that hosted this session of the OSCE PA.

We cannot allow anyone to insult the memory of anti-fascists, participants in the Resistance movement, who lost their lives in the fight against Nazism.

The aggravation of anti-communism in Europe is not a transient phenomenon. It shows the fear of the ruling class over the exacerbation of the capitalist crisis and of the urgency of the demand to abolish capitalist exploitation and the need for fundamental society change acquire.

The working class, all workers, regardless of the extent of agreement or disagreement with the communists, must repulse decisively anti-communism bearers, as history has proven that anti-communist attacks foretell the onset of a general offensive against the social and democratic rights of the people.

Let us reply to the provocateurs and anti-communists through our joint struggle for workers' rights, for socialism.

PADS, Algeria
Communist Party of Argentina
Communist Party of Armenia
Communist Party of Bangladesh
Communist Party of Belarus
Workers' Party of Belgium
Communist Party of Brazil
Communist Party of Britain
New Communist Party of Britain
Communist Party of Bulgaria
Party of the Bulgarian Communists
Communist Party of Canada
Socialist Worker`s Party of Croatia
AKEL, Cyprus
Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia
Communist Party in Denmark
Communist Party of Denmark
Communist Party of Estonia
Communist Party of Finland
Unified Communist Party of Georgia
German Communist Party
Communist Party of Greece
Hungarian Communist Workers' Party
Communist Party of India
Communist Party of India [Marxist]
Tudeh Party of Iran
Iraqi Communist Party
Communist Party of Ireland
The Workers' Party of Ireland
Party of the Italian Communists
Party of the Communist Refoundation
Jordanian Communist Party
Socialist Party of Latvia
Lebanese Communist Party
Socialist Party of Lithuania
Communist Party of Luxembourg
Party of the Communists of Kirgizia
Communist Party of Macedonia
AKFM, Madagascar
Communist Party of Malta
Party of the Communists, Mexico
Popular Socialist Party of Mexico
New Communist Party of the Netherlands
Communist Party of Norway
Communist Party of Pakistan
Peruan Communist Party
Philippine Communist Party -PKP 1930
Communist Party of Poland
Portuguese Communist Party
Romanian Communist Party
Communist Party of Soviet Union
Communist Party of the Russian Federation
Russian Communist Workers' Party – Revolutionary Party of Communists
New Communist Party of Yugoslavia
Party of the Communists of Serbia
Communist Party of Slovakia
South African Communist Party
Communist Party of the Peoples of Spain
Communist Party of Spain
Party of the Communists of Catalonia
Communist Party of Sri-Lanka
Communist Party of Sweden
Syrian Communist Party
Communist Party of Turkey
Communist Party of Ukraine
Union of Communists of Ukraine
Communist Party of Uruguay
Communist Party, USA
Communist Party of Venezuela

Other parties that also support the joint statement:

Pole of Communist Renaissance in France
Union do Povo Galego (UPG)

Joint Letter to Kim Jong Il

Joint Letter to Comrade Kim Jong Il

The following letter was sent to Kim Jong Il, General Secretary of the Workers’ Party of Korea, Chairman of the National Defence Commission of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, on June 11, 2009.

Dear Comrade Kim Jong Il,

Our organisations participating in this seminar on the occasions of the ninth anniversary of the historic June 15 North-South Joint Declaration and the 45th anniversary of the start of your work at the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea, send you our warmest congratulations and heartfelt best wishes.

These occasions are a testament to your achievements in the field of Party-building, and in the historic task of re-unifying the Korean peninsula.

The Workers’ Party of Korea is imbued with the humanity and concern for the whole society which you have embodied, and which serves to unite the people around the cause of independence and socialism, in contrast to the bestiality and brutality of imperialism which stands for war and reaction, and which is arousing the opposition of the whole of progressive humanity. Those who take up responsibility for revolutionary leadership are greatly to be cherished, and it is an immense testament to your qualities that you have taken up this responsibility within the Central Committee of the WPK for these 45 years.

We express our firm solidarity with the entire Korean people, who desire above all else the reunification of their homeland and the end of tension and the danger of war on the Korean peninsula. The Joint Declaration of June 15, 2000, remains the way forward for the Korean people themselves to reunify their country, being a tremendous blow to the schemes of Anglo-US imperialism to keep the Korean nation divided. It was a vindication of your far-sighted stand on the reunification of the one Korea, advancing further along the road laid down by President Kim Il Sung. Despite the set-backs which have been caused by the Lee Myung Bak group of traitors to the Korean nation, the reunification movement has been striving to open the way for independent, peaceful reunification under the principle of: "By our nation itself". We in Britain will do all we can to contribute to building the movement for the peaceful reunification of Korea also.

These are very dangerous times for the DPRK and the peoples of the entire world. US imperialism, closely supported by the British government, has shown itself to be the worst violator of human rights in its quest for global hegemony and would even like to deny the Korean nation its right to exist. We wish to emphasise that it is US imperialism which is the threat to world peace and security with its nuclear monopoly and aggressive policies.

Our organisations express once again our admiration for your work and leadership, which inspires us to greater heights and to work harder. We regard the Korean people’s victories as our victories, as we struggle for the same ideals and against the same enemies. We assure our comrades in the DPRK and the Korean people that we fight shoulder to shoulder with them in their struggles now and in the future also.

With warmest fraternal regards,

Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist)
European Regional Society for the Study of the Juche Idea
UK Korean Friendship Association
New Communist Party of Britain
Revolutionary Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist)
Socialist Labour Party

People's China in Perspective

By Eric Trevett


A reply to a letter published in last week’s New Worker

WE HAVE published Peter Savage’s letter in full and it reflects the position of many in the left of the labour movement but we find it necessary to refute the basic foundations of it. We must also stress that our ideological position is taken independently of any other party and we do not base our analysis on patronage from anyone.
The history of the Communist Party of China (CPC) has been very turbulent. Up to and following the revolution the CPC strategy for developing socialism included strengthening relations with the Soviet Union.
But the rupture between the parties arose from Krushchov’s so-called secret speech at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1956. The CPC was correct in saying – which very few others apart from the Albanian Party of Labour saw at the time – that Krushchov’s speech was a betrayal of Marxism-Leninism and they condemned Krushchov correctly as a capitalist roader.
There was a direct link between Krushchov’s speech at the 20th Congress and the weakening of working class state power in the Soviet Union, which was further weakened by the ridiculous claim that the dictatorship of the proletariat had given way to the state of the whole people.
This pandered to the counter-revolutionary movement in Soviet society and with Gorbachov coming to office the counter-revolution was achieved. The CPSU was dissolved and socialism was abandoned.
As a consequence socialism was dismantled throughout Eastern Europe and the unity between the nations in the Soviet Union itself gave way to nationalism and a hierarchy scrambling to establish privatisation in the hands of the opportunists.
Whilst the Chinese communists were correct in condemning Krushchov, they took up a subjective analysis in which they perceived the Soviet Union as a greater threat than that of United States imperialism. This led to China playing a negative role in the struggle of the Afghan people for the improvements in their lives that were being achieved under the leadership of the Babrak Kamal government.
The CPC policy of that time squandered the budding relationship it enjoyed among the developing countries at the Bandung conference of 1954.
The CPC’s domestic policies were also undermined by the efforts of so-called self sufficiency during the Great Leap Forward and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution which embraced the ideas of backyard steelworks and so on.
The New Communist Party stands by the critical analysis it made of the CPC at that stage of its development.
The reason why it would be wrong to report the attacks made then by myself and the late Comrade Ernie Trory today is that the basis for such an analysis no longer exists.
Communists and communist parties have to make an ongoing analysis of global and domestic events and these take into account the developing situation.
In upholding the principles of Marxism-Leninism it is necessary sometimes to make major changes in policies. The basic mistake made in evaluating the situation of the CPC’s direction and international policies is to regard socialism in that country as being fully developed.
In fact China is a developing country with a communist leadership and its perspective for achieving a fully socialist state will stretch over decades.
In the shorter term its aim is to raise the living standards of the people, strengthen its trade relations with other countries and attract inward investment and new technology. It is also developing the size and influence of the working class, strengthening its state control and influence among the population, which is still largely peasant dominated.
In a way the tactics of the CPC are not dissimilar to those adopted by Lenin and Stalin in dealing with the kulaks and temporarily making concessions to them in order to boost production to feed the growing urban industrial proletariat.
The working class in the Soviet state was numerically small but highly concentrated in strategic areas. The industrial working class there developed on a mass scale because of commodity production, which was achieved by mechanical engineering and which required a labour-intensive quality to its development.
The Chinese problem is that to raise the level and number of its working class is complicated by its commodity production taking a much more capital intensive form.
You have only to see the use of robotics in the car industry to appreciate that.
The strategy of the CPC is to maintain working class state power with the Party maintaining and developing its influence. This includes countering the tendency of the peasants to look backwards to private ownership of land instead of looking forward to collectivisation, which provides a surer basis for prosperity.
The Chinese have taken advantage of their low wage economy and used divisions among the imperialist powers, while the country’s political stability can only be assumed by its expanding economic conditions.
The role of China, which is emerging as a major power, is extending international trade relations and expanding its internal market cannot be ignored, and therefore the Chinese are achieving access to a great deal of modern technology.
This fundamental change in the economic strategy has allowed China to achieve great advances and improvements in the interests of the Chinese people. This is all the more valuable when it is realised that the achievement has been made in spite of the population of China increasing by about 50 million every five years.
The advance on the domestic front has been accompanied by a major change in its foreign policy over the past few years as it strengthens its standing with Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, some African countries, the Middle East and so on.
China has greatly assisted in the economic development of Cuba, Democratic Korea and the other remaining people’s democracies following the collapse of the Soviet Union. China has helped to thwart US imperialist intentions to stir up hostile actions against other developing countries that are making a stand against imperialism.
We live in a country where the survival of capitalism is dependent to some degree on denigrating China and negating the positive influence it now exercises in the world arena.
We stand by the analysis made by myself and Ernie Trory and the articles published at the time. But in the present stages of China’s global and domestic development it would be fundamentally wrong to say they apply to the current situation.
The position taken by Peter Savage is much too negative to be consistent with the current analysis.

A slap in the face for imperialism

Anglo-American imperialism and the rest of their pack at the United Nations are wailing at Democratic Korea’s latest nuclear test. None of this would have happened in the first place had the Americans honoured their agreement with the DPR Korea to build light-water reactors as they promised in 1994. None of this would have happened had the imperialists worked sincerely to resolve the nuclear issue and ease tension on the Korean peninsula during the Six-Party talks in Beijing. Instead the imperialists chose to continue to diplomatically and economically isolate north Korea in the hope of bringing down the socialist system of the DPRK.
With sickening hypocrisy the United States, with the blood of millions of Iraqis and Afghans on its hands, poses as the arbiter of “human rights” and “democracy” throughout the world.
Millions of Palestinian Arabs live under brutal Israeli occupation or languish in refugee camps but the imperialists do nothing. When Israel attacked Lebanon in July 2006 the imperialists did nothing to stop the fighting until it became clear that Israel was losing. When the people of Gaza defied the might of the Zionist war-machine in January the imperialists did nothing to stop it at the United Nations.
Democratic Korea has had no choice but to develop its nuclear energy programme and its own independent nuclear deterrent. The DPRK threatens no one. But it is surrounded by enemies. An American nuclear armada is stationed off the coast of Korea while tens of thousands of US troops prop up a puppet regime in the south. More troops are based in Japan, a willing vassal of US imperialism. The imperialists and their puppets do little to mask their true intentions which are to perpetuate the criminal partition of the Korean peninsula and restore the rule of the hated capitalists and landlords in the free north.
The DPRK nuclear test has demonstrated the resolve of the people of north Korea to defend their socialist system come what may. We whole-heartedly support them.


Boycott the European elections
The farcical European elections take place next week but in Britain hardly anyone knows who their MEPs are or what they do. In fact they do next to nothing apart from draw their colossal wages and expenses for taking part in a charade that is paid for by the workers of Europe.
In this election Labour and the two major opposition parties are united, in differing degrees, in support of European integration – the building of a European capitalist super-state revolving around British and Franco-German imperialism. The anti-EU opposition ranges from fringe left parties to the neo-nazi BNP, all scrabbling after the juicy perks that a seat in the EU parliament provides. The most successful is the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), a rabid independent Tory front that is defending its nine British seats and has high hopes of gaining more from the backlash over the Commons expenses scandal. UKIP claims to fight to get Britain out of the EU. But what have UKIP’s nine MEPs achieved over the years? Absolutely nothing apart from drawing their Euros.
In Britain there is indifference and often outright hostility to the undemocratic institutions of the European Union. This was shown by the conscious decision of the vast majority of the electorate to boycott the 2004 European Parliament elections. Little more than a third of the electorate bothered to vote despite the blandishments of the media, the appeal of proportional representation to minority parties and the cajoling of the bourgeois parties. In many working class areas the turnout was even lower.
The European Parliament, like the Commission, has become a byword for undemocratic practices, corruption, nepotism and waste and fraud on a massive scale. The elections themselves are nothing more than a bogus public relations exercise for a body that possesses no meaningful executive powers at all. They don’t deserve the credibility of a vote at all. Boycott the EU elections in June!

Demand serious action on pensions!

By Renee Sams

THE BROWN government has at last increased the basic pension, which has now crept up to the grand sum of £95.25 a week. This means that at least one in four pensioners still lives below the official poverty line.
Millions of pensioners will have to rely on the means-tested benefits, an unpopular, demeaning and costly way of keeping retired people in the poverty trap.
Those who were relying on occupational pensions to provide them with a decent pension are facing a future without a pension as they are closed down. The funds lost £billions when the stock markets went into free fall and now are unable to pay out.
A large number of pensioners also invested their savings in expectation of a good return but the lowering on the Bank of England interest rate to 0.5 per cent has put paid to a lot of hopes.
There are people however who have no worries about their lives in retirement; one of them is bank boss Sir Fred Goodwin, who received his knighthood for services to banking and was the architect of the RBS loss of £24.1 billion.
The bank was only saved by a multi-billion pound bail out by the Government with, of course, the taxpayers’ money.
He won’t be joining in the pensioners’ demand for at least a pension at the official poverty level of £151 per week.
His pension of £693,000, funded by the taxpayers, which is a staggering £13,000 a week, will ensure that he can live a life of luxury and enjoyment for the rest of his life.
Taxpayers’ money also came in handy to save the banks facing collapse caused by the reckless gambling of bankers greedy for ever higher bonuses.
The Government pumped in almost £1,200 billion of our money to save the banking system which will cost us dearly in public spending cuts and is prepared to stand by with more money if more banks are in danger of collapse.
Some members of Parliament, once elected, were seduced by ambition and greed and found that a life of luxury could be funded by the lax system of expenses they were allowed.
They made use of the system to pay off mortgages on their second homes but apparently absentmindedly let the loan payments carry on after the mortgage was paid up.
Since the pensioners’ lobby of Parliament on 22nd October 2008 two important Bills have become law, the Pension Reform Bill and the Welfare Reform Bill.
Despite a large number of pensioners, including some trades unionists, calling on their MPs to oppose the Bill it was passed with members of all three parties voting for it.
The word “reform” is one of the most used and abused words in the English language, particularly by health service consultants, senior managers and politicians.
Originally the word was meant to “improve” but in the mouths of ministers and politicians it has come to mean the privatisation and the break up of once public organisations. The results have been continually worsening services and ever rising costs.
Working people showed their discontent with the situation that is making thousands worse off, with demonstrations in the City, centre of banking and finance, Docklands, Trafalgar Square, and towns all over the country on 1st April.
Thousands of people demonstrated on a variety of issues including, peace, for better pensions, for justice and democracy, jobs, food and healthcare before private gain.
Many pensioners were active on that day across the country in a number of towns; precisely at 11 am pensioners’ organisations and action groups voiced their anger at receiving a pension well below the official poverty level.
They will have a chance to express their anger again at the Pensioners’ Parliament organised by the National Pensioners’ Convention.
It is even more important this year because the Government is about to establish a new forum to be called the UK Forum on Ageing and the second reason for its importance is that at it centre is health and social care.
Introducing it in the House of Commons, Minister Rosie Winterton said: “This will bring together representative views of older people at a national level, and will build links with forums in the devolved nations, the English regions and at local level.”
She explained that “the Government will set up a new structure with a designated regional co-ordinator for older people’s engagement in each English region” and “This will build on existing arrangements for older people and address weaknesses in the current structure.”
Sceptical pensioners feel that this may turn out to be another example of pensioners being told what is best for them and who best represents them. If it is, then it will need mass protests and demonstration of the kind that took place in April but on a far larger scale.
The National Pensioners’ Parliament will be held on 2nd -4th June in Blackpool.

NCPB and RCPB(ML) joint statement on DPR Korea satellite launch

The Launch of an Experimental Communications Satellite by the DPRK Is its Sovereign Right

Joint Statement of the New Communist Party and the Revolutionary Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist), April 21, 2009


On April 5th , the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) successfully launched an experimental communications satellite, the Kwangmyongsong-2, into orbit by means of carrier rocket Unha-2. The satellite is part of the DPRK's long-term plan for the development of outer space. Both carrier rocket and satellite were made and developed by the DPRK using only their own resources and technology, in keeping with the guiding philosophy of self-reliance.
The DPRK points out that the satellite is of decisive significance in promoting scientific research into the peaceful use of outer space and solving scientific and technological problems for the launch of practical satellites in the future. The successful satellite launch was conducted against the backdrop of a national drive aimed at bringing about a renewed revolutionary surge throughout the DPRK to "open the gate to a great prosperous and powerful nation without fail by 2012, the centenary of birth of President Kim Il Sung, under the far-reaching plan of General Secretary Kim Jong Il".
Despite the fact that it is the DPRK's sovereign right to engage in peaceful scientific experimentation and to create the conditions for its own prosperity, the US, Japan, South Korea and Western European powers, including Britain, demanded that the DPRK be condemned. They have persisted in spreading the misleading impression that the DPRK was testing an intercontinental ballistic missile, capable of carrying a nuclear warhead. The US puppet government of south Korea branded the launch "reckless". The US and Japan reacted to the news of the satellite by escalating the warmongering and disinformation campaign against the DPRK and demanding its further international isolation.
US President Barack Obama during his visit to Prague on April 5 used the occasion to condemn the DPRK with high-sounding rhetoric: “Rules must be binding. Violations must be punished. Words must mean something.” If Obama’s call for nuclear disarmament meant something, why then was he in the Czech Republic to promote a US missile base? If his words meant something, why does the US not withdraw its arsenal of one thousand nuclear weapons from the south of Korea, together with its tens of thousands of troops, in order to promote peace and security on the Korean Peninsula, and end its threats of aggression against the DPRK? To anyone that cares to see through the rhetoric to the objective reality, the spectacle of this representative of the armed international might of the US calling upon the blockaded and sanctioned DPRK to be peaceful and follow the rules is ludicrous and shameful.
Bill Rammell of the British Foreign Office added his voice to the clamour in arrogantly condemning the launch, and blustering that the British government was “seeking at the Security Council the most united and robust international response”.
In line with these outlandish statements of the big powers, the UN Security Council on April 13 approved a “Presidential Statement” condemning the launch and linking it with the nuclear issue, as well as adjusting the sanctions imposed on the DPRK in October 2006. This is an abuse of the Security Council to violate the sovereign right of the DPRK.
In response, the DPRK Foreign Ministry issued a statement, pointing out that throughout its history the Security Council had never before taken issue with satellite launches. It rejected the unjust action of the Security Council as infringing upon the sovereignty of the DPRK and seriously hurting the dignity of the Korean people. It pointed out that since the six-party talks have now turned into a platform to force the DPRK to disarm and to bring down its social system, the DPRK would no longer participate in the talks nor be bound by any agreement there, including the disablement of its nuclear facilities, which it will now take measures to restore.
Our Parties vigorously condemn the warmongering and chauvinism of the US and Britain. We call on all democratic and peace-loving people, irrespective of their political viewpoints or other considerations, to reject the infantile hysteria and outright disinformation being generated against the DPRK over this issue, and to take a stand in defence of its sovereignty and independence. In our view, this is a duty of the working class and people in order to contribute to the peace and security not only of the Korean Peninsula but world-wide.



New Communist Party of Britain
PO Box 73, London SW11 2PQ.

Revolutionary Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist)
170 Wandsworth Road, London SW8 2LA

Kim Il Sung: a life dedicated to the people

by Andy Brooks - General Secretary NCP

IT HAS LONG BEEN a Marxist tradition to elevate the lives of comrades whose daily work was an example to others, developed and advanced Marxist-Leninist theory or led the struggle for liberation. Kim Il Sung was all of these. A fighter, a thinker and a leader, Kim Il Sung was an outstanding communist of the 20th century whose name will forever be remembered as the founder of the modern Korean communist movement that began amongst the patriotic youth of Korea when he was a student in the 1920s.

Kim Il Sung was born into a world dominated by the great colonial powers of Europe, the United States and Japan. In Korea the old feudal rulers had been ousted by the Japanese imperialists and the peninsula turned into a colony of Japan.

Wherever there is oppression there is always resistance and Korean patriots tried to fight-back in whichever way they could. Some nationalists, those representing the landowners and bourgeois elements looked to Nationalist China and America for help. Others were inspired by the Bolshevik revolution in 1917.

In the 1920s the Korean communist movement was riddled with divisions that had left them isolated from the masses. Kim Il Sung condemned those who simply hoped to rely on outside forces or those who strove for the recognition of others, as a disgrace to the Korean nation.

Kim Il Sung saw the uselessness of the sectarians, flunkeyists, dogmatists and factionalists who called themselves communists in the 1920s. So he decided to form a communist movement from the youth and the grassroots of the villages and factories.

Kim Il Sung stressed that a revolutionary movement was not something to carry on with the approval of others but a work to be done out of one’s own conviction. Problems should be solved by oneself, he said, and only when the struggle was waged well would others recognise it.

In words as relevant today as when they were written Kim Il Sung said: “Factionalism is a product of bourgeois and petty bourgeois ideologies, particularly of self-heroising, fame-seeking and careerism. It has nothing in common with the revolutionary ideas of the working class”.From student leader to guerrilla commander Kim Il Sung grasped the fundamental principles of Marxism and applied the lessons of the Great October Russian Revolution to the concrete conditions of the Korean people, who were slaves of the Japanese Empire. The “Young General”, as he soon was called, gathered a group of young communist men and women prepared to take on the might of the Japanese army.

Over the years that small band of heroes grew into a people’s army that humbled the Imperial Japanese Army in 1945 – a victory that led to the establishment of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. And it was that People’s Army that fought US imperialism and its lackeys to a standstill during the Korean war and forced the American imperialists on their knees begging for an armistice in 1953.

Kim Il Sung was a great commander in war and a great leader in peace. In the north of Korea, so brutally partitioned by imperialism, he built a modern communist movement dedicated to serving the working people of Korea and he led the people in the mass struggle to build a new life after they had won their freedom in 1945.

The Workers Party of Korea with Kim Il Sung at the helm led the battle for land reform, education and socialist construction in the 1950s and 60s and then pushed forward on the engineering, technical and scientific fronts to build a modern socialist republic where every individual worker is master of his or her own life.

In western Europe communists understood the economic case for scientific socialism but ignored the philosophical aspects of the teachings of Marx and Engels. Though the role of mass action was clearly understood, the role of the individual was often ignored. Though the achievements of the Soviet Union led by Lenin and Stalin were studied, they were often not properly understood.

Kim Il Sung not only grasped Marxism-Leninism but he applied it to the concrete conditions of the Korean people. He knew that once the masses realised their own strength they would become unstoppable. He knew that serving the people was the be-all and end-all for the Korean communists and for the Workers’ Party of Korea that he launched in 1945. He developed Korean style socialism into the Juché idea – which elevates the philosophical principles of Marxism-Leninism as well as its economic theories – and focuses on the development of each individual worker, who can only be truly free as part of the collective will of the masses. In the western world Juché is simply described as “self-reliance” but it is much more than that. Kim Il Sung said that working people could only become genuinely emancipated if they stood on their own feet. But the Juché idea doesn’t negate proletarian internationalism. The Soviet Union, People’s China and the people’s democracies of eastern Europe all closed ranks behind Democratic Korea during the Korean war. The Korean people responded with their trade and assistance whenever they could, while Korean experts and advisers helped the Vietnamese, the Arabs and the Africans struggling to break the chains of colonialism and continue to do so today.

In the world communist movement Kim Il Sung steered a careful path during the Sino-Soviet ideological conflict remaining on good terms with the Soviet and Chinese parties.

Unlike British communist leaders in the past, and indeed many others in Europe and beyond, Kim Il Sung stressed that Marxism-Leninism goes far beyond simple economic formulas and the Soviet “model”.

Kim Il Sung knew that material prosperity and ideological strength were of equal importance to the people. He called this the twin towers. Though both couldn’t advance simultaneously, when progress in one was made the other had to be advanced to catch up.

This was pointed out by Stalin in the 1930s when he told Soviet shock workers, the Stakhanovites, that working people had benefited concretely from the revolution. All previous revolutions had failed but: “Our proletarian revolution is the only revolution in the world which had the opportunity of showing the people not only the political results but also material results” Stalin declared.

“It is a good thing, of course, to drive out the capitalists, to drive out the landlords, to drive out the Czarist henchmen, to seize power and achieve freedom. That is very good. But unfortunately, freedom alone is not enough, by far. If there is a shortage of bread, a shortage of butter and fats, a shortage of textiles, and if housing conditions are bad, freedom will not carry you very far. It is very difficult, comrades, to live on freedom alone. In order to live well and joyously, the benefits of political freedom must be supplemented by material benefits”. Stalin said.

But Stalin’s revisionist successors abandoned the ideological tower and failed to even maintain the material benefits for the Soviet masses.

And after the counter-revolutions in the Soviet Union and the eastern European socialist countries, an enormous setback for communism globally, when parties were becoming demoralised and failing around the world, Kim Il Sung stopped the rot by summoning a global conference of communist and workers’ parties in Pyongyang in 1992.

When Kim Il Sung passed away his successor, Kim Jong Il, told the Korean people and the world that they could “expect no change from him” and with Kim Jong Il at the helm, the Workers’ Party of Korea has won great victories in recent years. Natural disasters have been overcome.

Diplomatic isolation has been broken, the intrigues of US imperialism have been exposed and Korean rockets reach for the stars.

Kim Il Sung, the great leader of the Korean revolution, died in 1994 but his work lives on in the Workers’ Party of Korea and in the colossal achievements of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea today.

joint statement of communist and workers' parties on the 60th anniversary of Nato

The 4th April 2009, is the 60th anniversary of the foundation of NATO, the imperialist organisation which is under the leadership of the USA.
NATO was created allegedly in order to confront the USSR, the first workers’ state in the world that withstood and confronted successfully the attack of the Nazi plague, giving a new impetus to the struggle for national and social liberation all over the world.
At the same time, the capitalist governments of the USA, Canada and Western Europe needed a military political mechanism to repress and intimidate the peoples. This need was served by the foundation of NATO.
Its goal was to confront and obstruct with the use of arms any type of progressive changes. For that reason, but also for ensuring the interests of imperialism, NATO supported the reactionary regimes and dictatorships in Greece, Turkey, Spain, Portugal, while it played a leading role in the partition of Cyprus.
Its action was and still is based on anticommunism and all types of fabrications and provocations against the revolutionary communist movement and the peoples’ struggle for peace, social justice and socialism.
NATO’s history in its role as world “sheriff” of imperialism is linked to violations of international law. It is marked with the blood of victims of its direct or indirect interventions throughout the world.
Especially nowadays the character of NATO as a military mechanism, as a basic tool of imperialist action inside the member states as well as outside their borders for the establishment of the “new order” has been fully exposed.
The argument that NATO was an allegedly defensive treaty is a lie and empty propaganda aiming at concealing the real goals and role of this aggressive organisation. Following the summit in Rome in 1992 and in 1999 in Washington, NATO has adopted a new doctrine that provides the possibility of intervention throughout the world, in the name of new threats, under the pretext of combating terrorism, the protection of natural sources’ flow etc. During this period NATO moved on with its new structure which is based mainly on the aggressive “rapid deployment forces”.
The USA along with the EU organised the dissolution of Yugoslavia and in this way NATO triggered off the war in Bosnia, realized the dirty war against Serbia, with the 78 days of bombing in 1999 that levelled the country to the ground and led to the NATO and EU occupation of Kosovo and its “independence” from Serbia.
The wars of NATO in the Balkans and Afghanistan, the participation in the war in Iraq, the interventions in Pakistan and in South Asia demonstrate the brutal nature of imperialism. NATO was always the main supporter for Israel in its aggression against the Palestinian people and other Arab peoples. NATO, also, played, and still plays a role in the siege imposed on Gaza. Contrary to peoples’ will, NATO attempts to draw to its web Ukraine and Georgia. It encourages in every possible way their armament, supporting the most reactionary circles of these countries. The imposition of a “new order” have as an enemy the states and the peoples that react to the imperialist aggressiveness. Therefore, it escalates the armament and develops new threatening weapon systems, such as the so-called antimissile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic.
NATO’s programme “Partnership for Peace” promotes its expansion with new country-members. It was implemented in all former socialist countries of Central and South-Eastern Europe that later became members of the NATO. Nowadays, pressure is being exerted to the government of the Republic of Cyprus to join this programme and be integrated in the Euro-Atlantic plans. The government and the people of Cyprus strongly resist because an approval would give an indulgence for the invasion of the Turkish army in Cyprus conducted with the approval of the USA and the NATO, as well as acceptance of the de facto occupation of part of the island by the Turkish troops that continues till nowadays.
Imperialism-USA-NATO-EU are closely related concepts. Despite their contradictions and their antagonisms, both the EU and USA turn against the peoples, since the EU in the Euro-treaty considers NATO as its main pillar and fully accepts its role. The EU army is linked with the NATO and France has returned to the latter’s military arm.
On the 60th anniversary of its establishment, NATO attempts to present itself as “innocent as a dove”, with an unprecedented propaganda of distortion of history, through the media manipulated by the system, the universities funded by research programmes of NATO etc.
NATO appears to be all-powerful, but it is not. The world economic crisis of capitalism strengthens the imperialist aggressiveness while at the same time it shows its limits. Imperialism cannot exist without controlling new markets, without broadening its influence, without capturing and oppressing other peoples, along with the peoples of its own states, for the expansion of monopolies’ activity.
There is a counterweight to NATO; it’s the anti-imperialist forces all over the world, the global anti-war, anti-imperialist, peace movement that in coordination with the workers’ movement and the other social movements of women, the youth, in defence of nature of natural resources and the movements of solidarity struggle against imperialism and demand from the collaborators of the “predatory alliance” the immediate dissolution of the NATO.
This is the “one-way road” for the peoples. We have to stop the imperialist aggressiveness, contribute to the defeat of imperialism that constitutes a prerequisite for a peaceful world.
Nowadays, the verbal condemnation of NATO’s crimes and threats is not enough. There needs to be a wide anti-war, anti-imperialist peace movement that will rally the workers, the youth and broad social and popular forces.
The peoples through their struggle can actually set obstacles to the criminal plans of the NATO and the other imperialist forces and win.
The Communist and Workers’ Parties call the peoples to intensify their struggle:
Against the military expenditure.
Prohibition of NATO programmes at the universities.
The immediate return of all troops and other missions that participate in imperialist operations outside our countries.
The emancipation of our countries from the imperialist wars, countries’ occupation and imperialist interventions.
The removal of all foreign military bases from our countries.
The disengagement of our countries from the NATO.
The dissolution of NATO.

LONG LIVE THE FRIENDSHIP OF THE PEOPLES

DOWN WITH THE NEW ORDER OF THE IMPERIALISTS

The parties

Algerian Party for Democracy and Socialism
Communist Party of Bangladesh
Communist Party of Belarus
Worker’s Party of Belgium
Workers' Communist Party of Bosnia and Herzegovina
Brazilian Communist Party
Communist Party of Brazil
Communist Party of Britain
New Communist Party of Britain
Party of the Bulgarian Communists
Communist Party of Canada
Socialist Workers' Party of Croatia
Communist Party of Cuba
Communist Party of Bohemia Moravia
Communist Party in Denmark
Communist Party of Estonia
Communist Party of Finland
German Communist Party (DKP)
Communist Party of Greece
Hungarian Communist Workers’ Party
Communist Party of India
Communist Party of India [Marxist]
Communist Party of Ireland
Party of the Italian Communists
Jordanian Communist Party
Socialist Party of Latvia
Lebanese Communist Party
Socialist Party of Lithuania
Communist Party of Luxemburg
Communist Party of Malta
Party of the Communists, Mexico
New Communist Party of the Netherlands
Communist Party of Pakistan
Communist Party of Poland
Portuguese Communist Party
Romanian Communist Party
Communist Party of Russian Federation
Communist Party of Soviet Union
Communist Workers Party of Russia-Party of Communists of Russia (RKRP-RPC)
Union of Communist Parties –CPSU
New Communist Party of Yugoslavia
Party of the Serbian Communists
Communist Party of Slovakia
South African Communist Party
Communist Party of Spain
Communist Party of the Peoples of Spain
Communist Party of Sri-Lanka
Syrian Communist Party
Communist Party of Syria
Communist Party of Sweden
Communist Party of Turkey
Communist Party of Ukraine
Union of Communists of Ukraine
Communist Party of Uruguay

A Turbulent Life

Book Review

by Andy Brooks

A Turbulent Life by Jock Nicholson pbk, 111 pp, illus, £8.99, Praxis Press Glasgow 2009.

WHAT MAKES a communist tick? We think we know that from our own experience. We recall the struggles against the revisionist “euro-communists” in the 1970s and the struggle that led to the foundation of the New Communist Party. Some remember the fight to save the Morning Star by the Communist Campaign Group in the 1980s. Others will turn to the legion of academic works and turncoats’ memoirs that followed the downfall of the old Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB). But what of the “loyalists” who remained faithful to the Gollan and McLennan leadership to the bitter end?
Jock Nicholson was one of those who comprised the vast majority of the old party’s membership whose class-consciousness was borne out of the tenements of Hamilton in Scotland and steeled by Spain and the communist party in the 1930s.
Nicholson was a militant trade unionist who worked with Willie Gallacher in Fife and played a leading role in the National Union of Railwaymen (NUR) and the CPGB. Veteran readers may remember him when he was on the NUR Executive. Jock was certainly no friend of the NCP describing us as “a club of fanatics who were still living in the atmosphere of the Bolshevik insurrection”. But don’t let that deter you from reading this autobiography!
Nicholson’s book gives us an insight to the struggle starting with the back-breaking poverty of Scotland during the Great Slump and the struggle to make ends meet and ending with the liquidation of the old Party and the counter-revolution in the Soviet Union.
It’s packed with anecdotes about Willie Gallacher, the charismatic communist MP for West Fife from 1935 to 1950 ; life on the railways; the St Pancras rent strike in the 50s which Jock helped lead and lots more.
Being a communist is never easy and many fell by the wayside. Others, like Jock, stayed the distance. He describes Gallacher’s defeat in 1950 during the height of the Cold War and the political clashes with the right-wing on the NUR.
Though he says little about the internal struggles within the CPGB what he does say raises many questions. For instance he controversially says that the old Party elevated the industrial struggle above the electoral fight in the latter days of the Gollan leadership stating that “the factory proletariat had been elevated above the political thinker” particularly after Bert Ramelson took charge of the industrial department at King Street. It’s a pity that he didn’t write more but we must be grateful for what we have.
Working class memoirs are few and far between despite the renewed academic interest in local history in recent years. No-one wanted to know when Jock sent his manuscript out in 1992. It’s at last seen the light of day, with a foreword by Bob Crow, the General Secretary of the Rail, Maritime and Transport union, thanks to the good offices of Praxis Press. Jock Nicholson certainly led a ‘turbulent life’ and his book is well worth the read. It can be ordered from your local library or bookshop or directly from: Unity Books, 72 Waterloo St, Glasgow G2, Scotland at £8.99 post free.

Pakistan -- Marching to Freedom

by Daphne Liddle

HUNDREDS of thousands of Pakistanis: workers, peasants, lawyers, trade unionists, communists, socialists and all manner of progressives have been marching in the last two months. And they have already achieved one big goal – the restoration of Iftikhar Chaudhry, the country’s Chief of Justice and the rule of law.
This may go a long way to achieving the full restoration and implementation of the country’s 1973 constitution – in line with the United Nations Human Rights Charter – which demands an end to bonded labour and wide-ranging land reforms that would give liberated bonded labourers their own land to support themselves.
The military feudal clique that has ruled Pakistan since 1947 – set in place by the departing British colonial regime – is now beginning to crumble and mass demands for civil rights are surging forward.
All existing and former heads of state in Pakistan have been drawn from that military feudal clique and the marchers want them all out, including existing Prime Minister Zardari (husband of assassinated Benazir Bhutto) and opposition leader Nawaz Sharif.
Sharif two weeks ago decided to lend his support to the ‘long march’ organised by lawyers and other civil rights activists demanding the full restoration of Iftikhar Chaudhry as Chief of Justice, along with all the other judges and lawyers who were summarily and illegally removed from office two years ago by the American-backed military dictator Pervez Musharraf.
At the time General Musharraf had been trying to regularise his position by preparing a presidential election in which he would be returned as a “democratically elected” leader. Traditionally Pakistani presidents are elected from within the parliament. To achieve his end he would have to breach all manner of constitutional laws and Chaudhry was not prepared to stand aside and let him get away with this, so Chaudhry had to go.
In the autumn of 2007 Musharraf engineered his “election” as president but it was a short lived victory. It provoked mass protests and he declared martial law. Popular outrage grew and he was forced to concede new parliamentary elections early in 2008 – and to allow former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto – candidate for the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) – to return from exile and begin election campaigning.
Nawaz Sharif, the former president kicked out by Musharraf, was living in forced exile in Saudi Arabia. But he slipped back into the country to join the campaign for free elections.
In the final days of 2007 Bhutto was assassinated while campaigning and the whole country was convinced that Musharraf’s intelligence thugs were either behind it or had deliberately allowed it to happen.
Popular anger rose to a crescendo; Sharif temporarily allied himself to the PPP in a joint effort aimed at getting rid of Musharraf. The delayed elections went ahead and Bhutto’s widowed husband, Ali Asif Zardari, won a landslide. Shortly after Musharraf was forced to stand down and the whole country celebrated.
But Zardari failed to fulfil the PPP promise to reinstate Chaudhry and the rule of law. He himself had old corruption charges hanging over him. All the leaders: Musharraf, Bhutto Sharif and Zardari were from the rich landowner class and all had “legal irregularities” and reason to fear the full implementation of the law. They had all failed to implement the 1973 constitution.
Furthermore they had all acted as willing tools of United States imperialism in the area, allowing Pakistan to be used as a base for Muslim fundamentalist terrorists undermining People’s Afghanistan in the 1980s and as a base to invade Taliban-controlled Afghanistan in 2001. Musharraf also supplied Pakistani troops to back the US invasion of Somalia in the 1990s. Nevertheless Sharif continued to call for the restoration of Chaudhry; it was a very popular demand and he knew that Zardari’s rule was becoming less and less popular. The people would soon be looking for a new leader.
When Sharif declared his support for the lawyers’ civil rights long march and urged the protesters to occupy the area around the parliament building, Zardari had him put under house arrest. But he defied this to join the demonstrators.
Officials from his Muslim League (PML-N) party said that Sharif had been detained in his home town of Lahore. Hundreds of police surrounded his residence before dawn and detained him along with scores of his supporters.
Speaking to Al Jazeera before he was allowed by the police to head for the protest rally, Sharif said: “The police and the administration have sealed this house totally and there are a lot of very heavy police contingents standing outside my house.
“They say that I am under house arrest, but so far I haven’t been served any arrest warrant.” Sharif’s brother, Shahbaz, who is a senior member of the Muslim League, was also thought to have been placed under house arrest.
Scuffles broke out in Lahore shortly after Sharif’s detention was declared, with riot police firing tear gas at stone-throwing demonstrators.
Lawyers and opposition party supporters had planned to gather near Lahore’s main court complex before heading toward Islamabad to stage a mass sit-in front of parliament, in defiance of a government ban.
Sharif’s supporters denied he was a destabilising influence and insisted that all Zardari had to do was to reinstate Chaudhry and “he can enjoy uninterrupted government for four years,” he told Al Jazeera.
“We are not demanding an overthrow of the government, nor are we asking for mid-term elections. All we are asking is for Mr Zardari to fulfil the promises he made to restore the judges.”
Sharif was claiming to speak on behalf of the protesters, but he did not organise or lead the demonstration and most of the protesters wanted a lot more.
Ishtiaq Ahmad, a professor of international relations at Islamabad’s Qaid-e-Azam university, said that Zardari was resisting reinstating the judges for fear they might revoke his protection from corruption charges.
“The return of Benazir Bhutto and Zardari to Pakistan took place under a deal with Musharraf in 2007. As part of the deal all the corruption charges, through a special presidential ordinance called NRO [National Reconciliation Ordinance], were removed, against Zardari especially.
“The NRO remains, but the fear of the Zardari-led regime is, if they restore chief justice Chaudhry – given his assertive background – the NRO might be revoked and then obviously all those charges will come back to haunt Zardari and other party leaders.” Zardari relented and reinstated Chaudhry and the rest of the judges – and the mass sit-in in parliament square was averted.
It was greeted as a major step forward by the vast majority of people: trade unionists peasants, civil rights activists and many more. In London veteran civil rights activist Mukhtar Rana told the New Worker: “This has been a big demand of the people of Pakistan; it’s a return to the rule of law. The reinstatement of Chaudhry and all the judges and lawyers is a big achievement of the people of Pakistan.
“Lawyers in Britain and the US supported their cause.”
In Pakistan Baz Mohammed Kakar, a leader of the lawyers’ movement said: “This is a victory for the people of this country. Chaudhry is the first chief justice in the history of Pakistan who has proved himself to be a judge for the people, as a chief justice for the people.”
For now, calm has settled after the big demonstration. The army is supporting the chief justice and say they will obey him.
The People’s Party is opposing Nawaz Sharif for his record of bad government and violating constitution by declaring martial law.
Trade unions are growing in strength and confidence and many new civil rights and progressive groups are growing up.
Another giant protest long march has happened just a few weeks before, in the Sindh province, demanding the implementation of land reforms. It was mainly a march of the haris – landless peasants and recently liberated bonded labourers, demanding land to grow food to support themselves.
Article 38(a) of the Constitution of Pakistan says: “The State shall secure the well-being of the people... by preventing the concentration of wealth and means of production and distribution in the hands of a few to the detriment of general interest and by ensuring equitable adjustment of rights between employers and employees, and landlords and tenants.”
United Nations declarations specifically acknowledge this need. The Declaration on Social Progress, adopted by the General Assembly back in 1969, recognises the social function of property, including land, and calls for forms of land ownership that ensure equal rights to property for all..
Syed Mohammed Ali, writing in the Pakistani Daily Times, says: “Despite international conventions and our own constitutional imperatives, not much has been done to address the profound violations facing a multitude of small landless farmers across our country. A highly skewed distribution of land in our country continues to prevail, although there is growing evidence pointing to the need for security of land tenure to promote more investment in land to ensure higher yields.
“When agricultural land is owned in smaller parcels, production practices are also seen to become less extractive.
Nonetheless, landed politicians continue to deny the poorer rural workforce access to not only land, but also other productive resources, such as seeds, fertilisers and water.
“According to the International Labour Organisation’s World Labour Report, there are approximately 1.7 million bonded labourers in Pakistan, and a majority of them are in the agricultural sector.
“The introduction of canal-irrigated agriculture by the British and the migrations associated with the development of the so-called canal colonies’ created serious rural disparities in our part of the world, which enabled an increasingly incontestable dominance of the landed elite on sharecroppers/tenant farmers and landless agricultural labourers.
“Even after Partition, the lack of effective land reforms and the continuation of archaic laws meant to regulate the legal relationship between landowners and tenant farmers who occupy rural land in major agricultural areas in Punjab and Sindh have severely undermined the interests of the rural poor.”
Landlord and tenant farmer relations are guided by the Sindh Tenancy Act of 1950, which is said to be a result of the long struggle by the peasant organisations of the 1940s.
This Act articulated the rights, obligations and remedies available to the haris (tenant farmers/land-tillers) as well as to the Zamindars (landlords). The law recommended that borrowing and lending related be regulated strictly to avoid exploitation on either side. The law thus fixed a time limit of such lending or borrowing and further required written documents as proof for financial transactions. And a court was supposed to be formed to settle disputes between haris and the zamindars.
In practice, however, proper land records are not being maintained under the Sindh Tenancy Act. Despite trying to regulate loaning arrangement, landlords still apportion a large quantity of harvests, claiming these to be repayments of interest on loans given to their haris. The ease with which landlords circumvent the existing provisions of the law has impelled calls for a complete overhaul of this legislation.
There was even a Sindh High Court’s Hyderabad branch decision to amend the Sindh Tenancy Act according to needs of the peasants back in 2002. In 2007, the speaker of the Sindh Assembly finally formed a committee to amend the Sindh Tenancy Act. But, the prevalent political party lent its support to the landed politicians in order to remain in power, and once again not much was done to address the on-ground exploitation of the rural masses.
Furthermore the Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act 1992 has never been properly implemented. Although the Asian Development Bank also provided a loan to the Sindh government aiming to end bonded labour, seven years after getting this loan, little groundwork has been done to achieve this objective.
In mid-February thousands of haris and their supporters set off on a two-week march to demand amendments to the Sindh Land and Tenancy Act, which will be tabled at the next Sindh Assembly session, according to deputy speaker Shehla Raza. The march was organised by South Asia Partnership, Pakistan (SAP-Pakistan), Sindh Haari Porhiat Council (SHPC) and Bhandar Hari Sangat (BHS).
On the last day of the march, the procession of the peasants from Sindh and the leadership of SAP-Pakistan, SHPC and BHS, were joined by thousands of peasants from Punjab, Balochistan and NWFP, as well as members of organisations working for the rights of peasants, workers and women.
The march was delayed as some groups were by police and Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz workers.
Regardless, when the rally did start off, all one could see was a mass of people interspersed with thousands of flags, including those of the SHPC, Awami Party, and the historic Haider Bux Jatoi’s Sindh Haari Committee.
Various slogans reverberated through the air as the sea of people wove their way along main roads, by-lanes and footpaths. Several volunteers kept order, and many shopkeepers, residents and passers-by came up to the marchers with encouragement.
Many even joined the procession, or at least responded to slogans while flashing victory signs.
The rally, which had covered almost all of M A Jinnah Road, finally reached the Sindh Assembly around 6:30pm, where it was surrounded by massive trucks and hordes of police.
The leadership of the movement went into the Sindh Assembly building to speak with the ministers. After a while, Deputy Speaker Shehla Raza came out and addressed the rally. She said she was proud of the fact that the peasants and workers of the country were now aware of their rights and were also aware of how to get them.
She also promised that the amendments in the Sindh Land and Tenancy Act would be tabled at the next Sindh Assembly session.
“If these promises are not fulfilled, we will march again on 15th August and stage another sit-in here. That sit-in will be an absolute re-enactment of the peasants’ sit-in led by Haider Bux Jatoi more than 50 years ago. It had resulted in the passing of the Sindh Land and Tenancy Act,” SAP-Pakistan provincial coordinator Syed Zulfiqar Shah said in his speech.
He made the participants promise not to give up the fight, and to continue “till the rule of the workers and peasants was set up in the country”.
SHPC head Punhal Sario lambasted past and present rulers and systems of the government in the country for doing nothing substantial for the rights of peasants, workers and women, and for not ensuring the implementation of laws in letter and spirit.
Speakers at the sit-in took pride in the fact that not a single window was broken during the march. “Our peaceful struggle is our strength. It should, however, not be taken as a sign of weakness,” they said.
The long march started in Hyderabad on 15th February from the tomb of “Baba-e-Sindh” (father of Sindh) Haider Bux Jatoi and culminated on 26th February in Karachi with a sit-in in front of the Sindh Assembly building to demand the establishment of Haari courts, amendments in the Sindh Land and Tenancy Act and rights for landless peasants in the province.
In London Mukhtar Rana told the New Worker:
“Our movement has been supporting this. So many bonded labourers marching for their freedom! This is the task we have been fighting for years and years. It’s why I visited Karachi last year.
“But even when people got their freedom their was no work for them to support themselves.
“Now they are demanding land reforms so they can become landowners and have somewhere to grow their crops and support themselves.
“That’s the most important thing. Now things are going forward and we are playing an active role in supporting this struggle.”

ام كلثوم تغني لفلسطي

A beautiful song for Palestine by the great Egyptian singer Om Kuthum recorded in 1967 during the Nasser era.

Joint Statement of communist and workers parties in Europe

The Czech presidency of the EU, in the middle of a capitalist economic crisis, takes the initiative to organize a number of anticommunist events in order to bring in the forefront the attempt to equate communism with Nazism, to rewrite history and manipulate the consciences mainly of the young generations, with a view to the future rather than the past.
The intention, expressed within the EU (in countries where CP have been already outlawed), for the communism and the class struggle to be characterized as a crime, not only targets against the communists nor does it concern solely the EU countries.

The anticommunist hysteria that burst out a few years ago with the so-called “Memorandum” for the “need of international condemning of the crimes by totalitarian communist regimes” in the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly and goes on till nowadays is targeting to the working class as well as to the other popular strata”.
They want to strike the avant-garde of the popular movement and its struggle against the anti-popular plans and the attempt to place the burden of the world crisis on the workers’ shoulders. They want to eliminate the dispute of the exploitative system and the prospect of a just society, expressed by the ideology and the struggles of the communists. They intent to strike the forces of resistance and popular counterattack based on an anticommunist hysteria, lies and persecutions. They have announced new offences against Socialist Cuba and the peoples that resist imperialism.

We condemn these actions undertaken by the presidency of the EU and we call the peoples of Europe to react dynamically and condemn them massively.

======================

The Parties


Workers' Party of Belgium
New Communist Party of Britain
Party of Bulgarian Communists
AKEL, Cyprus
Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia
Communist Party in Denmark
Communist Party of Estonia
Communist Party of Finland
Communist Party of Greece
Hungarian Communist Workers’ Party
Communist Party of Ireland
Workers' Party of Ireland
Party of the Italian Communists
Communist Party of Luxembourg
New Communist Party of the Netherlands (NCPN)
Communist Party of Norway
Communist Party of Poland
Portuguese Communist Party
Communist Party of the Russian Federation
Communist Workers Party of Russia-Party of Communists of Russia (RKRP-RPC)
Communist Party of Peoples of Spain
Communist Party of Sweden
Communist Party of Turkey

Solidarity with Sean Garland

Statement signed by over 50 Communist & Workers Parties at Athens Greece in solidarity with Sean Garland


We, the undersigned Communist and Workers parties attending the 18th Congress of the Communist Party of Greece, Athens on 18th/22nd February 2009, condemn the arrest of Comrade Sean Garland, former President of the Workers’ Party of Ireland and current member of the Central Executive committee. He was arrested outside the Party offices in Dublin on Friday 30th January 2009, at the request of the U.S. authorities who are seeking his extradition to the U.S. The request for the extradition was signed by Condoleezza Rice in the final days of the Bush Administration.
Comrade Garland was first arrested in October 2005 while attending the Party congress in Belfast. This was a blatant attempt by the U.S. authorities to take advantage of the unjust and controversial extradition treaty between the U.S. and British governments which would have afforded him little or no legal protection. After having been granted permission to return to Dublin for urgent medical attention, after much consideration Sean Garland decided not to return to Northern Ireland.
Sean Garland has lived openly and has conducted his political activities and engagements in public for the last 3 years. He made his address known to the Irish authorities. He is 75 years old and is in serious ill health, suffering from a number of medical conditions.
Sean Garland has consistently denied any wrongdoing. He has received strong support from a wide spectrum of political, trade union and public figures concerned at the manner in which he was treated. Sean Garland is being subjected to a relentless and vindictive campaign of persecution by the U.S government.
We condemn this blatant attack on a leading member of The Workers’ Party of Ireland who has pursued a struggle against imperialism for almost 60 years. We express our solidarity with the Workers’ Party of Ireland and with Comrade Sean Garland in the fight against extradition to the U.S.
We demand the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of these extradition proceedings on political, legal and humanitarian grounds and call on all communist, workers parties and progressive organisation to send messages of support to the Workers’ Party at wpi@indigo.ie
and the Campaign to Defend Sean Garland at: defendseangarland@gmail.com

Communist Party of Albania
Algerian Party for Democracy and Socialism (PADS)
Communist Party of Armenia
Workers Party of Belgium
Brazilian Communist Party
New Communist Party of Britain
Communist Party of Canada
Colombian Communist Party
Communist Party of Cuba
Socialist Workers Party of Croatia
Progressive Party of the Working People – AKEL Cyprus
Communist Party of Denmark
Communist Party in Denmark
Communist Party of Estonia
French Communist Party
Communist Party of Greece (KKE)
Communist Party of India (Marxist)
Communist Party of India
Tudeh Party of Iran
Communist Refoundation Party, Italy
Party of the Italian Communists
Workers Party of Korea
Socialist Party of Latvia
Communist Party of Malta
Party of the Communists Mexico
New Communist Party of the Netherlands
Communist Party of Pakistan
Palestinian Communist Party
Party of the People, Panama
Peruvian Communist Party
Communist Party of Poland
Communist Refoundation, Puerto Rico
Romanian Communist Party
New Communist Party of Serbia
Party of the Communists of Serbia
Communist Party of Spain
Communist Party of the Peoples of Spain
Party of the Communists, Catalonia
Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Communist Workers Party of Russia (RKRP)
Party of the Communists of Russia (RPC)
Syrian Communist Party
Communist Party of Sweden
Communist Party of South Africa
Communist Party of Turkey
Union of Communists of Ukraine
Communist Party of Venezuela
World Peace Council
World Federation of Trade Unions
Communist Party of Portugal

To confirm:-

Communist Party of Ireland

Communist Party of Britain

Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine

Joint Statement on Palestine

The Communist and workers’ parties and liberation organizations listed below, having convened on the eve of the 18th Congress of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) in Athens, wish to express their strong condemnation of the barbaric ground, naval and aerial aggression launched by Israel against Gaza which began in late December 2008. This brutal assault on Gaza lasted some 22 days and resulted in the death of over 1,350 citizens, wounded thousands of innocent civilians including women, children and the elderly, and left a massive trail of destruction of homes, properties and infrastructure, depriving the residents of Gaza of the most basic services.

The parties also express their grave concern for the resulting humanitarian tragedy, and outrage at the intentional targeting of schools and civil institutions, including the UNRWA school in Jabalia Camp.

The Israeli attack on Gaza is in reality an aggression against the entire Palestinian people.

Based on the above, the signatories wish to declare the following:

(1) We salute the heroic steadfastness of the Palestinian masses of Gaza, and stress the fundamental right of the Palestinian people to resist the occupation, a right recognized by the U.N. and international law. We demand the immediate lifting of the siege of Gaza, the re-opening of borders, and the rapid reconstruction of all that was damaged or destroyed by this wanton aggression;

(2) We reaffirm our support for and solidarity with the Palestinian people in their struggle to regain their legitimate and inalienable national rights, including the right to self-determination and the establishment of an independent and sovereign state with Al-Quds (East Jerusalem) as its capital, as well as the right of return for all Palestinian refugees in accordance with U.N. Resolution 194;

(3) We strongly condemn the perpetuated construction of the racist wall as well as of the colonial settlements in the occupied West Bank which are in flagrant conflict with all the relevant UN decisions.

We demand the immediate remove of the wall and of the settlements as well as the immediate release from custody of all the freedom prisoners in the Israeli detention.

(4) We call on the U.N. Security council and other international organizations to conduct a comprehensive and thorough investigation of the grave human rights violations and war crimes committed by the Israeli army during this assault on Gaza, including its use of internationally prohibited weapons against the civilian population. The parties also call for the formation of special legal commissions to file “war crimes” charges against the Israeli authorities before the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court and/or national juridical structures;

(5) We urge all sections of Palestinian national movement to work seriously and in a responsible manner toward ending the internal split and re-establishing Palestinian national unity. In this regard, the parties confirm the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) is the legitimate and the internationally recognized unified address of Palestinian people, and call for reactivating the role and status of the PLO with an open door to all those Palestinian national forces desiring to join it;

(6) We declare our intention to help build the international campaign to support Gaza and demand emergency assistance from the international community for its reconstruction.

Finally, the signatories commit to the following action measures on behalf of their organizations and members:

(1) to step up their solidarity actions with the Palestinian people internationally and within their respective countries;

(2) to pressure their respective governments to cancel the military and some political accords with the State of Israel;

(3) to organize and send, at the earliest opportunity, a joint party delegation to the occupied Palestinian territories to express our common solidarity with the national struggle of the Palestinian people;

(4) to convene an international symposium in solidarity with the Palestinian people, to be held in Damascus before the end of 2009;

(5) to organize a joint caravan of material aid to Gaza; and

(6) to hold an International Day of Action in Solidarity with the Palestinian people, with particular focus on the demand to break the siege of Gaza.

The signatories extend an invitation to other Communist and Workers’ parties and organizations to endorse this statement, and urge the Working Group of the International Meetings of Communist and Worker’s Parties (IMCWP) to work out the details of implementation of the above programme of action, in consultation with the Palestinian and Arab member-parties.

List of Parties and Organizations Co-signing this Statement – February 17th 2009

Communist Party of Albania
PADS, Algeria
Communist Party of Belarus
Workers’ Party of Belgium
Party of Bulgarian Communists
Communist Party of Brazil (PCdoB)
Communist Party of Britain
New Communist Party of Britain
Communist Party of Canada
Colombian Communist Party
Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (Czech Republic)
Communist Party of Egypt
Socialist Worker’s Party of Croatia
Communist Party of Cuba
AKEL, Cyprus
Communist Party in Denmark
Communist Party of Denmark
French Communist Party
Communist Party of Macedonia
German Communist Party
Communist Party of Greece
Hungarian Communist Workers’ Party
Communist Party of India
Communist Party of India (Marxist)
Tudeh Party of Iran
Communist Party of Israel
Party of the Communist Refoundation, Italy
Party of the Italian Communists
Jordanian Communist Party
Socialist Party of Latvia
Lebanese Communist Party
Communist Party of Luxembourg
Communist Party of Malta
Party of Communists, Mexico
Political Movement –“People’s Resistance”, Moldova
New Communist Party of the Netherlands
Communist Party of Norway
Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine
Palestinian Communist Party
Palestinian People’s Party
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
Peruvian Communist Party
Communist Party of Poland
Portuguese Communist Party
Socialist Alliance Party, Romania
Romanian Communist Party
Communist Party of the Russian Federation
Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Communist Worker’s Party of Russia – Party of the Communist of Russia
New Communist Party of Yugoslavia
Communist Party of Slovakia
South African Communist Party
Communist Party of Spain
Communist Party of the Peoples of Spain
Party of the Communists, Catalonia
Communist Party of Sri-Lanka
Syrian Communist Party
Communist Party of Syria
Baath Party, Syria
Communist Party of Tajikistan
Communist Party of Turkey
Labour Party (Turkey)
South African Communist Party
Communist Party of Sweden
Union of the Communists of Ukraine
Communist Party of Venezuela
Polisario Front
World Federation of Trade Unions

Forward with the Greek communists!

by our European Affairs Correspondent

GREEK communists gathered in Athens last week to chart the way forward at the 18th Congress of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE). During the five days of sessions delegates reviewed the work of the KKE, the international communist movement and launch the counter-attack against the ruling class offensive against working people at this time of world slump.
Congress unanimously re-elected Aleka Papariga as the General Secretary of the 77-strong central committee and agreed to set up a people’s anti-imperialist front and a programme of action in solidarity with Cuba and Palestine.
The Congress was attended by 435 delegates and 400 guests from around the country as well as over 90 delegates from communist and workers’ parties and progressive movements from 72 countries.

fraternal

These included fraternal delegations from the ruling parties of China, Cuba, Democratic Korea and Vietnam, communist parties in government from Cyprus, Syria and South Africa and fraternal delegates from parties across the world including the New Communist Party.
Opening Congress Aleka Papariga stressed that “Socialism is timely and historically necessary”, speaking of the party’s counterattack on all fronts at a time when big financial, social and political problems all over the globe, in the region and Greece are being examined.
Comrade Papariga reviewed the international and domestic situation, the global financial crisis and its causes, political developments, and prospects in light of the KKE’s ideological and political positions, while she also placed the KKE on “full alert” for the forthcoming European Parliament elections and the prospect of general elections.
“We all know that demands rise due to the fact that the crisis has begun becoming evident in Greece. It will break out, be sharp and last long,” she declared.
“We only have one choice, which is to rise to the occasion so that the labour movement can counterattack and build the social alliance to progress.
Aleka Papariga said that both the conservative New Democracy (ND) government and main opposition social democratic PASOK party, albeit with different phraseology and slogans, were essentially saying the same thing, that the maximum cooperation among the social partners, all the “productive forces”, must be ensured so that the crisis will pass as smoothly as possible.
At the same time, however, their choices and proposals had two basic interlinking characteristics: Measures to safeguard profits and “aspirin” measures to alleviate extreme poverty, she added.
She dismissed the Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA) for exceeding “all boundaries of opportunism and anti-communism” during the recent protests and riots and said the far-right Popular Orthodox Rally (LAOS) had “shown its aversion to the mass popular action and struggles, rendering itself an apologist of police violence”.
In his greetings to Congress NCP leader Andy Brooks said that “the Greek communists’ heroic struggle for liberation and against reactionary terror over the decades is an inspiration to communists in Europe and throughout the world. The theses of the Central Committee of the KKE will consequently provide the basis for discussion and advance that will go far beyond the ranks of the Greek communist movement.
The Communist Party of Greece’s tireless work to restore international communist co-operation has played a crucial role in rallying our world movement following the counter-revolutions in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in 1989”.

Socialism and Darwinism

by Daphne Liddle

THE WORLD has recently been commemorating the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin, a timid naturalist who rocked the scientific establishment because he could not deny to himself or the world the plain evidence of his scientific observations: evidence of how species evolve from one thing to another.
In 1831, as a new theology graduate, he undertook a five-year voyage on the ship The Beagle as a naturalist, studying plant and animal specimens from all the places this ship visited. In the Galapagos Islands in the Pacific he noted that the different islands had very similar but different species of many animals. He noted that the finches in one island had short strong beaks – ideal for cracking seeds, while those on another had longer, thinner beaks, ideal for rooting out insects. Natural selection had produced 13 different species.
He could not help but conclude that they had a common ancestor but, isolated by the ocean and prevented from breeding together, they had evolved to adapt to the best food resources on each island and so became separate sub-species.
The implication was that all species of plants and animals have descended from common ancestors, originally primitive, single-cell organisms, and have diversified to thrive under different and constantly changing environmental conditions.
This was in direct confrontation to the words of the Bible, which proclaims in the book of Genesis that all living things were created by God exactly as they appear today, and that since this creation there have never been any changes.
Darwin knew the uproar his findings would cause and delayed publishing for around 20 years, until 1859; he did not publish his famous The Origins of the Species, when he discovered another scientist, Alfred Russell Wallace, was about to publish a very similar study.
One of the first to congratulate him was Karl Marx, who sent him a copy of Das Kapital, which Darwin reportedly never got around to reading. Marx pointed out that Darwin’s god-free account of the evolution of life in all its diversity was consistent with his own account of the evolution of human society – that the general theory of nature was converging with the general theory of society.
But Marx and Engels did not agree with all Darwin’s subsequent assertions. In particular they contradicted his idea that evolution is a gradual process, asserting instead that is was a dialectical process with long slow build-ups to sudden, rapid changes.
Darwin was convinced that before long fossils would provide evidence of long, slow periods of change from one species to others; that there would be evidence of giraffes with medium length necks and so on.
The intermediate stages of evolution are gradually coming to light but they are a lot rarer because, in evolutionary terms, the changes happened dialectically and rapidly (thousands of years nevertheless). And where the changes were prompted by sudden changes in the environment, they occurred within a few generations.
The fossil record shows six major mass extinctions took place at the beginning and end of the Cambrian period (600 million and 500 million years ago respectively), and the ends of the Devonian (345 million years ago), the Permian (225 million), the Triassic (180 million) and the Cretaceous (63 million).
In circumstances where there is rapid change of the environment many species are wiped out completely. In some species just a few will survive that have some genetic variation that makes them better adapted to cope with the new environment. The survivors have only each other to breed with and so the crucial genetic variations – and other variations that may be neutral to survival – rapidly become a defining characteristic of the species and quickly become so exaggerated that a new species is formed.
The Russian Marxist Plekhanov commented: “Modern evolutionists introduce a considerable admixture of conservatism into their teaching. They want to prove that there are no leaps either in nature or in history. Dialectics, on the other hand, knows full well that in nature and also in human thought and history leaps are inevitable. But it does not overlook the undeniable fact that the same uninterrupted process is at work in all phases of change. It only endeavours to make clear to itself the series of conditions under which gradual change must necessarily lead to a leap.”
Change can also come through geographical isolation where a small population has become separated from the main population at its periphery. This form of speciation, called triallopac, allows a rapid evolution to take place. As soon as an ancestral species is separated, the inter-breeding stops. Any genetic changes build up separately. However, in the smaller population, genetic variations can spread very quickly in comparison to the ancestral group.
This can be brought about by natural selection responding to changing climatic and geographical factors. As the two populations diverge, they eventually reach a point where two species are formed. Quantitative changes have given rise to a qualitative transformation. If they ever meet in the future, then so genetically divergent are they, that they are unable to breed successfully.
As Engels commented: “The organic process of development, both of the individual and of species, by differentiation, is the most striking test of rational dialectics.” And, “The further physiology develops, the more important for it becomes these incessant, infinitely small changes, and hence the more important for it also the consideration of differences within identity, and the old abstract standpoint of formal identity, that an organic being is to be treated as something simply identical with itself, as something constant, becomes out of date.” Engels then concludes: “If there the individuals which become adapted survive and develop into a new species by continually increasing adaption, while the other more stable individuals die away and finally die out, and with them the imperfect intermediate stages, then this can and does proceed without any Malthusianism, and if the latter should occur at all it makes no change to the process, at most it can accelerate it.”
Right from the first publication of The Origins of the Species, capitalist theoreticians have tried to use it to justify the brutal and highly competitive society they have created.
The followers of Thomas Malthus argued, in 1789, that in the “Battle of Life” there will always be losers; there will always be people who are poor and starving. To try to correct this by giving charity or welfare to the poor will only encourage them to breed more. “Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio. Subsistence only increases in an arithmetical ratio.” (Thomas Robert Malthus, The Principle of Population.) Ultimately, he argues, this will lead to far more people dying in poverty and starvation. He was obsessed by the dangers of population growth.
This fitted in with Darwin’s idea that natural selection operates through the survival of only the fittest and, though nature was cruel, the species would not be able to progress if those with “inferior” genes were artificially helped to survive and pass on their “weaknesses” to future generations.
Since then many right-wing thinkers have tried to use this to justify the class system, arguing that the rich and powerful have risen to the top of society because they are genetically superior – not just because they are more greedy and aggressive. In modern times they have argued that greed and aggressiveness are positive and progressive traits.
The eugenicists, including the Nazis, have argued that it is necessary to intervene artificially to prevent “inferior” specimens from breeding, either by forcibly sterilising them or simply murdering them. This policy was exposed when the Nazis took it to its logical conclusion in the gas chambers and the Holocaust. But even after that some governments in Scandinavia, the United States, Switzerland and Australia still continued until just a few decades ago in forcibly sterilising young people who were deemed “inferior”. These included people with learning difficulties, Gypsies, Australian Aborigines and other minority ethnic groups.
But if Darwin demonstrated anything it is that, in an uncertain and ever changing environment, any species needs the widest possible gene pool to stand the best chance of survival. The eugenicists, by trying to narrow the gene pool, make the human race less likely to survive. Our strength lies in our diversity; each different individual brings their own strength to the collective while the collective gives support to each individual. Darwin had read Malthus and Adam Smith, the founder of capitalist economics theory, who argued that competition in the market place led to competent and efficient producers of commodities at a low price prospering while inefficient producers selling at high prices would go out of business – and in this way the best methods of production would prevail over the inferior.
Engels commented: “Darwin did not know what a bitter satire he wrote on mankind, and especially on his countrymen, when he showed that free competition, the struggle for existence, which the economists celebrate as the highest historical achievement, is the normal state of the Animal Kingdom.”
But Darwin spoke of “fitness” in relation only to a given environment, not to an absolute scale of perfection. In fact, neither of the two terms with which Darwin’s name is chiefly associated, “evolution” and “survival of the fittest,” occurs in early editions of The Origins of the Species, where his key ideas are expressed by the words “mutability” and “natural selection”.
On the 18th June 1862, Marx wrote to Engels: “Darwin, whom I have looked up again, amuses me when he says he is applying the ‘Malthusian’ theory also to plants and animals, as if with Mr Malthus the whole point were not that he does not apply the theory to plants and animals but only to human beings — and with geometrical progression — as opposed to plants and animals.” Engels also pointed out: “Darwin’s mistake lies precisely in lumping together in ‘natural selection’ or the ‘survival of the fittest’, two absolutely separate things:
“1. Selection by the pressure of over-population, where perhaps the strongest survive in the first place, but where the weakest in many respects can also do so.
“2. Selection by greater capacity of adaption to altered circumstances, where the survivors are better suited to these circumstances, but where this adaption as a whole can mean regress just as well as progress (for adaption to parasitic life is always regress).
“The main thing: that each advance in organic evolution is at the same time a regression, fixing one-sided evolution and excluding evolution along many other directions. This, however, is a basic law.”
The Malthusians compare humans to flies, frogs and other species that produce hundreds of offspring, most of which will die before reaching adulthood, so that, by chance, a few will survive to keep the species going.
But the human race is very different. We produce mostly one offspring at a time which reaches maturity slowly. We are born very vulnerable with our brains still developing. Our behaviour as adults is governed less by innate instinct than by what we have learned as we grow up. Our experiences as children fit us to cope with the environment we find ourselves in. This makes us adaptable to cope with virtually any environment.
But our long, highly dependent childhood means we need a collective, collaborative society to live in. A frog or a fly only needs to survive long enough to mate, deposit eggs and its genes are successfully passed on to the next generation. Humans need not only to mate but also to sustain a pregnancy, survive childbirth and to rear their offspring. They cannot do this alone without the help and support of a wider family or society. And the only creature we know of that lives a significant time after it has ceased to be able to reproduce itself is the human female, a clear indication that babies with living grandmothers stand a better chance of survival than those without. It also indicates that human survival depends on the wider family support – not just that of the narrow one-man-and-one-woman nuclear family that is a product of bourgeois society.
And in turn our well developed brains, used collectively, have enabled the human race to adapt and change our environment (not always for the better). The ability to build shelters, make clothes and use fire means that humans can live in far colder climates than our primate ancestors. We can pipe water and transport food over long distances; we can sow and harvest food plants and husband animals; we can produce and exchange useful tools and artefacts; we can make and use medicines and so on.
History has shown that Malthus was wrong to say that human population growth leads to poorer conditions and increased poverty and starvation.
The population of Europe has risen steadily from the tenth to the 20th century and living standards have also risen. When the population was temporarily reduced it had nothing to do with food shortages. The 30 Years War reduced the population of Germany by a half but the causes were political – nothing to do with too many people or not enough food. The dramatic fall in the population of Ireland during the potato famine was not caused by excess population or insufficient food – the English owners of most of Ireland’s best land were shipping good wheat to England from Ireland throughout – but by the politics of capitalism. Following sound free market principles, the “Liberal” government in London refused to introduce any measure which might interfere with free trade or prices, and cancelled the supply of cheap maize to the Irish, therefore condemning millions to death by starvation.
The Malthusian principles of the English government were defended by Charles Grenville, secretary to the Privy Council thus: “…The state of Ireland is to the last degree deplorable, and enough to induce despair: such general disorganisation and demoralisation, a people with rare exceptions besotted with obstinacy and indolence, reckless and savage — all from high to low intent on doing as little and getting as much as they can, unwilling to rouse and exert themselves, looking to this country for succour, and snarling at the succour which they get; the masses brutal, deceitful and idle, the whole state of things contradictory and paradoxical.
“While menaced with the continuance of famine next year, they will not cultivate the ground, and it lies unsown and untilled. There is no doubt that the people never were so well off on the whole as they have been this year of famine. Nobody will pay rent, and the savings banks are overflowing. With the money they get from our relief funds they buy arms instead of food, and then shoot the officers who are sent over to regulate the distribution of relief. While they crowd to the overseers with demands for employment, the landowners cannot produce hands, and sturdy beggars calling themselves destitute are apprehended with large sums in their pockets.” (28th November, 1846).
This obscene lie was used to justify the greed of the English landowners, who had stolen the land from the Irish and driven them to the infertile margins to die of hunger. The same lie is now being used to condemn the Palestinians.
In the 1980s the leading capitalist thinkers, after espousing Keynesianism for a few decades, reverted to absolute adherence to the “free market” as the most progressive force in society. And along with it they revived Malthusianism, blaming the poor for their poverty and justifying their own greed and oppression of the working class. They presented again a picture of human beings locked in selfish strife, the Battle for Life with each against all and all against each.
John Forbes Nash, a mathematician, who later was committed to an asylum, devised “Game Theory”, full of complicated formulae that were complete rubbish and Richard Dawkins wrote The Selfish Gene, trying to use Darwinism to justify capitalist greed. Dawkins has great problems with human altruism; he cannot understand why people help each other in ways that do not directly benefit each other. In the end he leaves it as a temporary aberration, people doing favours for others only in the hope of getting something back in return.
The political and economic policies of western governments were based on the crazy ideas of Nash – the assumption that everyone would cheat everyone else if they could get away with it. Altruism, idealism and selflessness were looked on with great suspicion; politicians who claimed to be working for the good of anyone but themselves were completely distrusted. Greed and the accumulation of wealth were seen as the only sane goals. And we can see how this has inevitably led to the current economic crisis.
But altruism is innate in humans; we could not survive without it. Our slow growing, intelligent children would never survive their infancy without the existence of society to protect them and their vulnerable mothers. And society would not survive without the accumulated knowledge and wisdom of the elderly. We are all interdependent. If there ever were any totally selfish groups of humans as Dawkins described, they perished long ago.
The communist way of living is far closer to our inherited characteristics than capitalism is.