My neighbors White and Black, The people who just came here, Or from generations back,

THE question asked of Communists more frequently than any other, if we can judge from the Hearst newspapers, is this:

“If you don’t like this country, why don’t you go back where you came from?”

The truth is, if you insist on knowing, Mr. Hearst,’ we Communists like this country very much. We cannot think of any other spot on the globe where we would rather be than exactly this one. We love our country. Our affection is all the more deep in that we have watered it with the sweat of our labor—labor which made this country what it is 5 our mothers nourished it with the tears they shed over the troubles and tragedies of rearing babies in a land controlled by profit and profit-makers. If we did not love own country so much, perhaps we would surrender it to Wall Street.

Of course, when we speak of our love of America, we mean something quite different from what Mr. Hearst is speaking about in his daily editorial diatribes. We mean that we love the masses of the toiling people. We find in these masses a great reservoir of all things admirable and lovable, all things that make life worth living. We are filled with anger when we see millions of these people whom we love being degraded, starved, oppressed, beaten and jailed when they protest. We have a deep and moving hatred of the system, and of those who fatten on the system which turns our potential paradise into a living hell.

We are determined to save our country from the hell of capitalism. And most of us were born here, so Hearst’s gag is not addressed to us anyway. But workers in America who happen to have been born abroad are just as much Americans as anybody else. We all originated across the waters, except perhaps a tiny minority of pure-blooded American Indians. The foreign-born

workers have worked harder for less wages on behalf of this country than anybody else. They deserve, at a minimum, a little courtesy from those who would speak of Americanism. There is less historical justification in America than perhaps in any other major country for that narrow nationalism, that chauvinism, which makes a cult of a “chosen people”.

We in America are a mongrel breed and we glory in it. We are the products of the melting pot of a couple of hundred nationalities. Our origin as a nation acknowledged its debt to a Polish Kosciusko, a German von Steuben, a French Lafayette and countless other “foreigners”.

Furthermore, let’s be careful not to get snooty about pedigrees j half the names in the American social register were originally borne by men who were transported from Europe after conviction of crime or who in the new country became bold bandits and buccaneers. It was the more aggressive and violent types who rose to the top most quickly in our early days and laid the foundations of the great American fortunes. They were the Al Capones of their day, with no income tax department to bring them to grief.

We love the past history of America and its masses, in spite of the Astors and Vanderbilts. We find in it a wealth of tradition striped in the purple tints of glory—the glory of men and women fighting fearlessly and self-sacrificingly against the throttling hand of a dead past, for those things upon which further progress depended.

Around the birth of our country as  an independent nation cluster such heroic names as those of Patrick Henry, whose famous shout, “As for me, give me liberty or give me death!” re-echoes down the corridors of time of Thomas Paine, whose deathless contributions to our national life of a militant anti-clericalism has long survived the many pamphlets with which he fought, the form of which alone belongs to a past age; of Thomas Jefferson, whose favorite thought revolved about watering the tree of liberty with the blood of tyrants (he thought this “natural manure” should be applied to the tree about every twenty years!) of all the founding fathers, whose chief claim to glory lies in their “treason” to the “constitutional government” of their day, and among whom the most opprobrious epithet was “loyalist”.

These men, in their own time, faced the issues of their day, cut through the red tape of precedent, legalism and constitutionalism with a sword, made a revolution, killed off a dying and outworn system, and opened up a new chapter in world history.

Our American giants of 1776 were the “international incendiaries” of their day. They inspired revolutions throughout the world. The great French Revolution, the reverberations of which filled Europe’s ears during the entire nineteenth century, took its first steps under the impulse given by the American Revolution. The Declaration of Independence was for that time what The Communist Manifesto is for ours. Copy all the most hysterical Hearst editorials of today against Moscow, Lenin, Stalin; substitute the words America, Washington, Jefferson and the result is an almost verbatim copy of the diatribes of English and European reactionary politicians in the closing years of the eighteenth century against our American founding fathers. Revolution was then “an alien doctrine imported from America” as now it is “imported from Moscow”.

After the counter-revolution engineered by Alexander Hamilton had been victorious and established itself under the Constitution in 1787, a period of reaction set in. There was, as in our modern days since the World War, a period marked by oppressive legislation which went down in history as the “Alien and Sedition Laws”. But the American masses had not been mastered those who rode high and mighty with their eighteenth-century counterparts of criminal syndicalism laws, deportations, Palmers, Dicksteins and McCormicks, were driven out of power in a struggle, often bloody and violent, which again for a period placed the representatives of the masses (then predominantly agrarian) in control of government.

The greatest figure of them all in the American tradition, Abraham Lincoln, became great because he, despite his own desire to avoid or compromise the struggle, was forced by history to lead to victory a long

and bloody civil war whose chief historical significance was the wiping out of chattel slavery, the destruction of private property rights in persons, amending the Constitution in the only way it has ever been fundamentally amended. Lincoln’s words, which still live today among the masses, are those which declared:

“This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it.”

These words of Lincoln are but a paraphrasing of the Declaration of Independence. Our national holiday, July 4, is in memory of that immortal document of American history. The very heart of the Declaration, that which gives it life, without which all else becomes empty phrases, are these lines, the memory of which had grown dim until the Communists rescued them from the dust of libraries:

“Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends [life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness], it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it and to institute a new government, laying its foundations on such principles and organizing its powers in such forms, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. . . . When a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them [the masses] under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government and to provide new guards for their future security.”

This is the heart of the American tradition. Without this revolutionary kernel, the whole history of the origin of our country becomes only the’ strutting of marionettes and stuffed shirts, the spread-eagle oratory of the Fourth of July under imperialism, the vulgar yappings of the Hearst press. Without this, patriotism becomes—as that acid critic of the British bourgeoisie, Dr. Johnson, described it—the last refuge of the scoundrel.

The revolutionary tradition is the heart of Americanism. That is incontestable, unless we are ready to agree that Americanism means what Hearst says slavery to outlived institutions, preservation of privilege, the degradation of the masses.

We Communists claim the revolutionary traditions of Americanism. We are the only ones who consciously continue those traditions and apply them to the problems of today.

We are the Americans and Communism is the Americanism of the twentieth century.

That does not mean, of course, that we Communists raise the slogan of “Back to 1776”. Such reactionary stupidity was committed by the LaFollette “third party” movement in 1924, typical as that movement Was of a class grouping (petty bourgeoisie refusing to ally with’ workers) that had lost its historically progressive significance. That was no more in the spirit of our revolutionary forefathers than it would have been for the Declaration of Independence to proclaim, “Back to the Republic of Rome”. To each day its own task that of 1776 was. to free a rising capitalism from the fetters of a dying feudal system, enabling it to expand the productive forces of mankind to a new high level; that of today is to free these tremendous productive forces created by capitalism, which are now being choked and destroyed because they have grown too big to live longer under capitalist property relations.

Americanism, in this revolutionary sense, means to stand in the forefront of human progress. It means never to submit to the forces of decay and death. It means constantly to free ourselves of the old, the outworn, the decaying, and to press forward to the young, the vital, the living, the expanding. It means to fight like hell against those who would plow under the crops in our fields, who would close down and scrap our factories, who would keep millions of willing toilers, anxious to create the good things of life, living like beggars upon charity.

Americanism, as we understand it, means to appropriate for our country all the best achievements of the human mind in all lands. Just as the men who wrote the Declaration of Independence had been nurtured upon the French Encyclopedists and the British classical political economists, so the men who will write our modern declaration of independence, of a dying capitalist system must feed themselves upon the teachings of Marx; Engels, Lenin and Stalin, the modern representatives of human progress.

In the words of a famous American whose memory we love, we say to Mr. Hearst and all the Red-baiting cohorts of Wall Street: “If this be treason, make the most of it.” This is how we American Communists read the history of our country. This-is what we mean by Americanism. This is how we love our country, with the same burning love which Lenin bore for Russia, his native land. Like Lenin, we will fight to free our land from the blood-sucking reactionaries, place it in the hands & of the masses, bring it into the international brotherhood of a World Union of Socialist Soviet Republics, and realize the prophetic lines of Walt Whitman: ‘We have adhered too long to petty limits . . .the time has come to enfold the world.”

The history of modern, civilised America opened with one of those great, really liberating, really revolutionary wars of which there have been so few compared to the vast number of wars of conquest which, like the present imperialist war, were caused by squabbles among kings, landowners or capitalists over the division of usurped lands or ill-gotten gains. That was the war the American people waged against the British robbers who oppressed America and held her in colonial slavery, in the same way as these “civilised” bloodsuckers are still oppressing and holding in colonial slavery hundreds of millions of people in India, Egypt, and all parts of the world.

About 150 years have passed since then. Bourgeois civilisation has borne all its luxurious fruits. America has taken first place among the free and educated nations in level of development of the productive forces of collective human endeavour, in the utilisation of machinery and of all the wonders of modern engineering. At the same time, America has become one of the foremost countries in regard to the depth of the abyss which lies between the handful of arrogant multimillionaires who wallow in filth and luxury, and the millions of working people who constantly live on the verge of pauperism. The American people, who set the world an example in waging a revolutionary war against feudal slavery, now find themselves in the latest, capitalist stage of wage-slavery to a handful of multimillionaires, and find themselves playing the role of hired thugs who, for the benefit of wealthy scoundrels, throttled the Philippines in 1898 on the pretext of “liberating” them, and are throttling the Russian Socialist Republic in 1918 on the pretext of “protecting” it from the Germans.

The four years of the imperialist slaughter of nations, however, have not passed in vain. The deception of the people by the scoundrels of both robber groups, the British and the German, has been utterly exposed by indisputable and obvious facts. The results of the four years of war have revealed the general law of capitalism as applied to war between robbers for the division of spoils: the richest and strongest profited and grabbed most, while the weakest were utterly robbed, tormented, crushed and strangled.

The British imperialist robbers were the strongest in number of “colonial slaves”. The British capitalists have not lost an inch of “their” territory (i.e., territory they have grabbed over the centuries), but they have grabbed all the German colonies in Africa, they have grabbed Mesopotamia and Palestine, they have throttled Greece, and have begun to plunder Russia.

The German imperialist robbers were the strongest in organization and discipline of “their” armies, but weaker in regard to colonies. They have lost all their colonies, but plundered half of Europe and throttled the largest number of small countries and weak nations. What a great war of “liberation” on both sides! How well the robbers of both groups, the Anglo-French and the German capitalists, together with their lackeys, the social-chauvinists, i.e., the socialists who went over to the side of “their own” bourgeoisie, have “defended their country”!

The American multimillionaires were, perhaps, richest of all, and geographically the most secure. They have profited more than all the rest. They have converted all, even the richest, countries into their tributaries. They have grabbed hundreds of billions of dollars. And every dollar is sullied with filth: the filth of the secret treaties between Britain and her “allies”, between Germany and her vassals, treaties for the division of the spoils, treaties of mutual “aid” for oppressing the workers and persecuting the internationalist socialists. Every dollar is sullied with the filth of “profitable” war contracts, which in every country made the rich richer and the poor poorer. And every dollar is stained with blood—from that ocean of blood that has been shed by the ten million killed and twenty million maimed in the great, noble, liberating and holy war to decide whether the British or the German robbers are to get most of the spoils, whether the British or the German thugs are to be foremost in throttling the weak nations all over the world.

While the German robbers broke all records in war atrocities, the British have broken all records not only in the number of colonies they have grabbed, but also in the subtlety of their disgusting hypocrisy. This very day, the Anglo-French and American bourgeois newspapers are spreading, in millions and millions of copies, lies and slander about Russia, and are hypocritically justifying their predatory expedition against her on the plea that they want to “protect” Russia from the Germans!

It does not require many words to refute this despicable and hideous lie; it is sufficient to point to one well-known fact. In October 1917, after the Russian workers had overthrown their imperialist government, the Soviet government, the government of the revolutionary workers and peasants, openly proposed a just peace, a peace without annexations or indemnities, a peace that fully guaranteed equal rights to all nations—and it proposed such a peace to all the belligerent countries.

It was the Anglo-French and the American bourgeoisie who refused to accept our proposal; it was they who even refused to talk to us about a general peace! It was they who betrayed the interests of all nations; it was they who prolonged the imperialist slaughter!

It was they who, banking on the possibility of dragging Russia back into the imperialist war, refused to take part in the peace negotiations and thereby gave a free hand to the no less predatory German capitalists who imposed the annexationist and harsh Brest Peace upon Russia!

It is difficult to imagine anything more disgusting than the hypocrisy with which the Anglo-French and American bourgeoisie are now “blaming” us for the Brest Peace Treaty. The very capitalists of those countries which could have turned the Brest negotiations into general negotiations for a general peace are now our “accusers”! The Anglo-French imperialist vultures, who have profited from the plunder of colonies and the slaughter of nations, have prolonged the war for nearly a whole year after Brest, and yet they “accuse” us, the Bolsheviks, who proposed a just peace to all countries, they accuse us, who tore up, published and exposed to public disgrace the secret, criminal treaties concluded between the ex-tzar and the Anglo-French capitalists.

The workers of the whole world, no matter in what country they live, greet us, sympathise with us, applaud us for breaking the iron ring of imperialist ties, of sordid imperialist treaties, of imperialist chains—for breaking through to freedom, and making the heaviest sacrifices in doing so—for, as a socialist republic, although torn and plundered by the imperialists, keeping out of the imperialist war and raising the banner of peace, the banner of socialism for the whole world to see.

Small wonder that the international imperialist gang hates us for this, that it “accuses” us, that all the lackeys of the imperialists, including our Right Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, also “accuse” us. The hatred these watchdogs of imperialism express for the Bolsheviks, and the sympathy of the class-conscious workers of the world, convince us more than ever of the justice of our cause.

A real socialist would not fail to understand that for the sake of achieving victory over the bourgeoisie, for the sake of power passing to the workers, for the sake of starting the world proletarian revolution, we cannot and must not hesitate to make the heaviest sacrifices, including the sacrifice of part of our territory, the sacrifice of heavy defeats at the hands of imperialism. A real socialist would have proved by deeds his willingness for “his” country to make the greatest sacrifice to give a real push forward to the cause of the socialist revolution.

For the sake of “their” cause, that is, for the sake of winning world hegemony, the imperialists of Britain and Germany have not hesitated to utterly ruin and throttle a whole number of countries, from Belgium and Serbia to Palestine and Mesopotamia. But must socialists wait with “their” cause, the cause of liberating the working people of the whole world from the yoke of capital, of winning universal and lasting peace, until a path without sacrifice is found? Must they fear to open the battle until an easy victory is “guaranteed”? Must they place the integrity and security of “their” bourgeois-created “fatherland” above the interests of the world socialist revolution? The scoundrels in the international socialist movement who think this way, those lackeys who grovel to bourgeois morality, thrice stand condemned.

The Anglo-French and American imperialist vultures “accuse” us of concluding an “agreement” with German imperialism. What hypocrites, what scoundrels they are to slander the workers’ government while trembling because of the sympathy displayed towards us by the workers of “their own” countries! But their hypocrisy will be exposed. They pretend not to see the difference between an agreement entered into by “socialists” with the bourgeoisie (their own or foreign) against the workers, against the working people, and an agreement entered into for the protection of the workers who have defeated their bourgeoisie, with the bourgeoisie of one national colour against the bourgeoisie of another colour in order that the proletariat may take advantage of the antagonisms between the different groups of bourgeoisie.

In actual fact, every European sees this difference very well, and, as I shall show in a moment, the American people have had a particularly striking “illustration” of it in their own history. There are agreements and agreements, there are fagots et fagots, as the French say.

When in February 1918 the German imperialist vultures hurled their forces against unarmed, demobilized Russia, who had relied on the international solidarity of the proletariat before the world revolution had fully matured, I did not hesitate for a moment to enter into an “agreement” with the French monarchists. Captain Sadoul, a French army officer who, in words, sympathized with the Bolsheviks, but was in deeds a loyal and faithful servant of French imperialism, brought the French officer de Lubersac to see me. “I am a monarchist. My only aim is to secure the defeat of Germany,” de Lubersac declared to me. “That goes without saying (cela va sans dire ),” I replied. But this did not in the least prevent me from entering into an “agreement” with de Lubersac concerning certain services that French army officers, experts in explosives, were ready to render us by blowing up railway lines in order to hinder the German invasion. This is an example of an “agreement” of which every class-conscious worker will approve, an agreement in the interests of socialism. The French monarchist and I shook hands, although we knew that each of us would willingly hang his “partner”. But for a time our interests coincided. Against the advancing rapacious Germans, we, in the interests of the Russian and the world socialist revolution, utilized the equally rapacious counter-interests of other imperialists. In this way we served the interests of the working class of Russia and of other countries, we strengthened the proletariat and weakened the bourgeoisie of the whole world, we resorted to the methods, most legitimate and essential in every war, of manoeuvre, stratagem, retreat, in anticipation of the moment when the rapidly maturing proletarian revolution in a number of advanced countries completely matured.

However much the Anglo-French and American imperialist sharks fume with rage, however much they slander us, no matter how many millions they spend on bribing the Right Socialist-Revolutionary, Menshevik and other social-patriotic newspapers, I shall not hesitate one second to enter into a similar “agreement” with the German imperialist vultures if an attack upon Russia by Anglo-French troops calls for it. And I know perfectly well that my tactics will be approved by the class-conscious proletariat of Russia, Germany, France, Britain, America—in short, of the whole civilized world. Such tactics will ease the task of the socialist revolution, will hasten it, will weaken the international bourgeoisie, will strengthen the position of the working class which is defeating the bourgeoisie.

The American people resorted to these tactics long ago to the advantage of their revolution. When they waged their great war of liberation against the British oppressors, they had also against them the French and the Spanish oppressors who owned a part of what is now the United States of North America. In their arduous war for freedom, the American people also entered into “agreements” with some oppressors against others for the purpose of weakening the oppressors and strengthening those who were fighting in a revolutionary manner against oppression, for the purpose of serving the interests of the oppressed people. The American people took advantage of the strife between the French, the Spanish and the British; sometimes they even fought side by side with the forces of the French and Spanish oppressors against the British oppressors; first they defeated the British and then freed themselves (partly by ransom) from the French and the Spanish.

Historical action is not the pavement of Nevsky Prospekt, said the great Russian revolutionary Chernyshevsky. A revolutionary would not “agree” to a proletarian revolution only “on the condition” that it proceeds easily and smoothly, that there is, from the outset, combined action on the part of the proletarians of different countries, that there are guarantees against defeats, that the road of the revolution is broad, free and straight, that it will not be necessary during the march to victory to sustain the heaviest casualties, to “bide one’s time in a besieged fortress”, or to make one’s way along extremely narrow, impassable, winding and dangerous mountain tracks. Such a person is no revolutionary, he has not freed himself from the pedantry of the bourgeois intellectuals; such a person will be found constantly slipping into the camp of the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie, like our Right Socialist-Revolutionaries, Mensheviks and even (although more rarely) Left Socialist-Revolutionaries.

Echoing the bourgeoisie, these gentlemen like to blame us for the “chaos” of the revolution, for the “destruction” of industry, for the unemployment and the food shortage. How hypocritical these accusations are, coming from those who welcomed and supported the imperialist war, or who entered into an “agreement” with Kerensky who continued this war! It is this imperialist war that is the cause of all these misfortunes. The revolution engendered by the war can not avoid the terrible difficulties and suffering bequeathed it by the prolonged, ruinous, reactionary slaughter of the nations. To blame us for the “destruction” of industry, or for the “terror”, is either hypocrisy or dull-witted pedantry; it reveals an inability to understand the basic conditions of the fierce class struggle, raised to the highest degree of intensity that is called revolution.

Even when “accusers” of this type do “recognise” the class struggle, they limit themselves to verbal recognition; actually, they constantly slip into the philistine utopia of class “agreement” and “collaboration”; for in revolutionary epochs the class struggle has always, inevitably, and in every country, assumed the form of civil war, and civil war is inconceivable without the severest destruction, terror and the restriction of formal democracy in the interests of this war. Only unctuous parsons—whether Christian or “secular” in the persons of parlour, parliamentary socialists— cannot see, understand and feel this necessity. Only a life less “man in the muffler” can shun the revolution for this reason instead of plunging into battle with the utmost ardour and determination at a time when history demands that the greatest problems of humanity be solved by struggle and war.

The American people have a revolutionary tradition which has been adopted by the best representatives of the American proletariat, who have repeatedly expressed their complete solidarity with us Bolsheviks. That tradition is the war of liberation against the British in the eighteenth century and the Civil War in the nineteenth century. In some respects, if we only take into consideration the “destruction” of some branches of industry and of the national economy, America in 1870 was behind 1860. But what a pedant, what an idiot would anyone be to deny on these grounds the immense, world-historic, progressive and revolutionary significance of the American Civil War of 1863-65!

The representatives of the bourgeoisie understand that for the sake of overthrowing Negro slavery, of overthrowing the rule of the slaveowners, it was worth letting the country go through long years of civil war, through the abysmal ruin, destruction and terror that accompany every war. But now, when we are confronted with the vastly greater task of overthrowing capitalist wage-slavery, of overthrowing the rule of the bourgeoisie—now, the representatives and defenders of the bourgeoisie, and also the reformist socialists who have been frightened by the bourgeoisie and are shunning the revolution, cannot and do not want to understand that civil war is necessary and legitimate.

The American workers will not follow the bourgeoisie. They will be with us, for civil war against the bourgeoisie. The whole history of the world and of the American labour movement strengthens my conviction that this is so. I also recall the words of one of the most beloved leaders of the American proletariat, Eugene Debs, who wrote in the Appeal to Reason, I believe towards the end of 1915, in the article “What Shall I Fight For” (I quoted this article at the beginning of 1916 at a public meeting of workers in Berne, Switzerland)—that he, Debs, would rather be shot than vote credits for the present criminal and reactionary war; that he, Debs, knows of only one holy and, from the proletarian standpoint, legitimate war, namely: the war against the capitalists, the war to liberate mankind from wage-slavery.

I am not surprised that Wilson, the head of the American multimillionaires and servant of the capitalist sharks, has thrown Debs into prison. Let the bourgeoisie be brutal to the true internationalists, to the true representatives of the revolutionary proletariat! The more fierce and brutal they are, the nearer the day of the victorious proletarian revolution.

We are blamed for the destruction caused by our revolution. . . . Who are the accusers? The hangers-on of the bourgeoisie, of that very bourgeoisie who, during the four years of the imperialist war, have destroyed almost the whole of European culture and have reduced Europe to barbarism, brutality and starvation. These bourgeoisie now demand we should not make a revolution on these ruins, amidst this wreckage of culture, amidst the wreckage and ruins created by the war, nor with the people who have been brutalized by the war. How humane and righteous the bourgeoisie are!

Their servants accuse us of resorting to terror. . . . The British bourgeoisie have forgotten their 1649, the French bourgeoisie have forgotten their 1793. Terror was just and legitimate when the bourgeoisie resorted to it for their own benefit against feudalism. Terror became monstrous and criminal when the workers and poor peasants dared to use it against the bourgeoisie! Terror was just and legitimate when used for the purpose of substituting one exploiting minority for another exploiting minority. Terror became monstrous and criminal when it began to be used for the purpose of overthrowing every exploiting minority, to be used in the interests of the vast actual majority, in the interests of the proletariat and semi-proletariat, the working class and the poor peasants!

The international imperialist bourgeoisie have slaughtered ten million men and maimed twenty million in “their” war, the war to decide whether the British or the German vultures are to rule the world.

If our war, the war of the oppressed and exploited against the oppressors and the exploiters, results in half a million or a million casualties in all countries, the bourgeoisie will say that the former casualties are justified, while the latter are criminal.

The proletariat will have something entirely different to say.

Now, amidst the horrors of the imperialist war, the proletariat is receiving a most vivid and striking illustration of the great truth taught by all revolutions and bequeathed to the workers by their best teachers, the founders of modern socialism. This truth is that no revolution can be successful unless the resistance of the exploiters is crushed. When we, the workers and toiling peasants, captured state power, it became our duty to crush the resistance of the exploiters. We are proud we have been doing this. We regret we are not doing it with sufficient firmness and determination.

We know that fierce resistance to the socialist revolution on the part of the bourgeoisie is inevitable in all countries, and that this resistance will grow with the growth of this revolution. The proletariat will crush this resistance; during the struggle against the resisting bourgeoisie it will finally mature for victory and for power.

Let the corrupt bourgeois press shout to the whole world about every mistake our revolution makes. We are not daunted by our mistakes. People have not become saints because the revolution has begun. The toiling classes who for centuries have been oppressed, downtrodden and forcibly held in the vice of poverty, brutality and ignorance cannot avoid mistakes when making a revolution. And, as I pointed out once before, the corpse of bourgeois society cannot be nailed in a coffin and buried.[*] The corpse of capitalism is decaying and disintegrating in our midst, polluting the air and poisoning our lives, enmeshing that which is new, fresh, young and virile in thousands of threads and bonds of that which is old, moribund and decaying.

For every hundred mistakes we commit, and which the bourgeoisie and their lackeys (including our own Mensheviks and Right Socialist-Revolutionaries) shout about to the whole world, 10,000 great and heroic deeds are performed, greater and more heroic because they are simple and inconspicuous amidst the everyday life of a factory district or a remote village, performed by people who are not accustomed (and have no opportunity) to shout to the whole world about their successes.

But even if the contrary were true—although I know such an assumption is wrong—even if we committed 10,000 mistake for every 100 correct actions we performed, even in that case our revolution would be great and invincible, and so it will be in the eyes of world history, because, for the first time, not the minority, not the rich alone, not the educated alone, but the real people, the vast majority of the working people, are themselves building a new life, are by their own experience solving the most difficult problems of socialist organization .

Every mistake committed in the course of such work, in the course of this most conscientious and earnest work of tens of millions of simple workers and peasants in reorganizing their whole life, every such mistake is worth thousands and millions of “lawless” successes achieved by the exploiting minority—successes in swindling and duping the working people. For only through such mistakes will the workers and peasants learn to build the new life, learn to do without capitalists; only in this way will they hack a path for themselves—through thousands of obstacles—to victorious socialism.

Mistakes are being committed in the course of their revolutionary work by our peasants, who at one stroke, in one night, October 25-26 (old style), 1917, entirely abolished the private ownership of land, and are now, month after month, overcoming tremendous difficulties and correcting their mistakes themselves, solving in a practical way the most difficult tasks of organising new conditions of economic life, of fighting the kulaks, providing land for the working people (and not for the rich), and of changing to communist large-scale agriculture.

Mistakes are being committed in the course of their revolutionary work by our workers, who have already, after a few months, nationalized almost all the biggest factories and plants, and are learning by hard, everyday work the new task of managing whole branches of industry, are setting the nationalized enterprises going, overcoming the powerful resistance of inertia, petty-bourgeois mentality and selfishness, and, brick by brick, are laying the foundation of new social ties, of a new labour discipline, of a new influence of the workers’ trade unions over their members.

Mistakes are committed in the course of their revolutionary work by our Soviets, which were created as far back as 1905 by a mighty upsurge of the people. The Soviets of Workers and Peasants are a new type of state, a new and higher type of democracy, a form of the proletarian dictatorship, a means of administering the state without the bourgeoisie and against the bourgeoisie. For the first time democracy is here serving the people, the working people, and has ceased to be democracy for the rich as it still is in all bourgeois republics, even the most democratic. For the first time, the people are grappling, on a scale involving one hundred million, with the problem of implementing the dictatorship of the proletariat and semi-proletariat—a problem which, if not solved, makes socialism out of the question.

Let the pedants, or the people whose minds are incurably stuffed with bourgeois-democratic or parliamentary prejudices, shake their heads in perplexity about our Soviets, about the absence of direct elections, for example. These people have forgotten nothing and have learned nothing during the period of the great upheavals of 1914-18. The combination of the proletarian dictatorship with the new democracy for the working people—of civil war with the widest participation of the people in politics—such a combination cannot be brought about at one stroke, nor does it fit in with the outworn modes of routine parliamentary democracy. The contours of a new world, the world of socialism, are rising before us in the shape of the Soviet Republic. It is not surprising that this world does not come into being ready-made, does not spring forth like Minerva from the head of Jupiter.

The old bourgeois-democratic constitutions waxed eloquent about formal equality and right of assembly; but our proletarian and peasant Soviet Constitution casts aside the hypocrisy of formal equality. When the bourgeois republicans overturned thrones they did not worry about formal equality between monarchists and republicans. When it is a matter of overthrowing the bourgeoisie, only traitors or idiots can demand formal equality of rights for the bourgeoisie. “Freedom of assembly” for workers and peasants is not worth a farthing when the best buildings belong to the bourgeoisie. Our Soviets have confiscated all the good buildings in town and country from the rich and have transferred all of them to the workers and peasants for their unions and meetings. This is our freedom of assembly—for the working people! This is the meaning and content of our Soviet, our socialist Constitution!

That is why we are all so firmly convinced that no matter what misfortunes may still be in store for it, our Republic of Soviets is invincible.

It is invincible because every blow struck by frenzied imperialism, every defeat the international bourgeoisie inflict on us, rouses more and more sections of the workers and peasants to the struggle, teaches them at the cost of enormous sacrifice, steels them and engenders new heroism on a mass scale.

We know that help from you will probably not come soon, comrade American workers, for the revolution is developing in different countries in different forms and at different tempos (and it cannot be otherwise). We know that although the European proletarian revolution has been maturing very rapidly lately, it may, after all, not flare up within the next few weeks. We are banking on the inevitability of the world revolution, but this does not mean that we are such fools as to bank on the revolution inevitably coming on a definite and early date. We have seen two great revolutions in our country, 1905 and 1917, and we know revolutions are not made to order, or by agreement. We know that circumstances brought our Russian detachment of the socialist proletariat to the fore not because of our merits, but because of the exceptional backwardness of Russia, and that before the world revolution breaks out a number of separate revolutions may be defeated.

In spite of this, we are firmly convinced that we are invincible, because the spirit of mankind will not be broken by the imperialist slaughter. Mankind will vanquish it. And the first country to break the convict chains of the imperialist war was our country. We sustained enormously heavy casualties in the struggle to break these chains, but we broke them. We are free from imperialist dependence, we have raised the banner of struggle for the complete overthrow of imperialism for the whole world to see.

We are now, as it were, in a besieged fortress, waiting for the other detachments of the world socialist revolution to come to our relief. These detachments exist, they are more numerous than ours, they are maturing, growing, gaining more strength the longer the brutalities of imperialism continue. The workers are breaking away from their social traitors—the Gomperses, Hendersons, Renaudels, Scheidemanns and Renners. Slowly but surely the workers are adopting communist, Bolshevik tactics and are marching towards the proletarian revolution, which alone is capable of saving dying culture and dying mankind.

In short, we are invincible, because the world proletarian revolution is invincible.

In Comrade Vladimir Lenin’s letter to American workers in 1918, an explanation was set forth for all Marxist-Leninists to factor into our analysis of the July 4^th 1776 Revolution.

“The history of modern, civilized America opened with one of those great, really liberating, really revolutionary wars of which there have been so few compared to the vast number of wars of conquest which, like the present imperialist war, were caused by squabbles among kings, landowners or capitalists over the division of usurped lands or ill-gotten gains. That was the war the American people waged against the British robbers who oppressed America and held her in colonial slavery, in the same way as these “civilized” bloodsuckers are still oppressing and holding in colonial slavery hundreds of millions of people in India, Egypt, and all parts of the world.”

• V.I. Lenin, Letter to American Workers, 1918.

This July 4^th is the day that we celebrate our independence from the British. While the development from a colony of a monarchy to an independent capitalist democracy was objectively progressive, it’s crucial, now more than ever, to recognize that independence of the country was not independence for all of the nations or classes within that country. Indigenous genocide and Black enslavement constituted the economic and political foundation of our country at its founding and shaped our development.

The subjugation of women has permeated throughout our history and culture, the LGBT+ community has been murdered and oppressed, and the general working class has suffered from the ongoing exploitation and subjugation perpetuated by the capitalists and their reactionary lapdogs. Even though we have made some progress in our development as a country, we still have much more to accomplish. For those who genuinely love their home and their neighbors, we must understand the need for further revolutionary progress; that is, the complete transition of power from the minority of capitalists to the working class which is the majority and the establishment of a socialist state. In spite of the horrors unleashed by our ruling class, the American people have also given rise to the abolitionist movement of the 1800s, the Civil Rights struggle of the 1960s, the anti-imperialist movement during the Vietnam war of the 1970s, and of course, the influential labor rights struggle of both the 1930s and the present period.

The American Revolution of 1776 had an international impact as exemplified by the colonial national liberation war against British imperialism. The Revolutionary War also had an internal domestic aspect exemplified by the popular upsurge against the idea that government could only be derived from a “divine right” to rule under a monarchy. It ushered in the modern era of revolutionary struggles and became the prototype of a whole series of bourgeois-democratic upheavals in Europe and colonial uprisings throughout the world. Today, looking back at Comrade Lenin’s support for the American bourgeois revolution of July 4, 1776, is significant considering the Ultra-Left attacks against the American Revolution. Referring to petty-bourgeois “left” radicals, Comrade Gus Hall correctly analyzed that their attack is basically against the long-standing legacy of Communists who have always served as the working-class patriots of their respective countries.

Our country represents the Marxists idea of a contradiction between having in its entity both oppression and resistance. We’ve achieved national liberation from British imperialism but social revolution is still yet to come. The first revolution was a war of national liberation against the colonizer. The second revolution completed the bourgeois revolution during the Civil War. The third revolution sets forth the task of the party to see to the victory of socialism. In the words of Grenadian revolutionary Maurice Bishop, “Forward ever, backward never.”

Nolan Prejean
Contributing Editor 

Since the dawn of the New Left, the notion that Marxism-Leninism and Enlightenment liberalism are completely antagonistic ideologies has become prominent among certain sections of the Petit-Bourgeois Left. Marxist-Leninist theory, however, as developed by Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin, proves the contrary.

Historical materialism demonstrates that Marxism-Leninism is not the complete negation of liberalism, and is the logical next step of ideas set forth during the Enlightenment Period.

The ultra-left, owing to its petty-bourgeois nature, cannot help themselves but to distort this historical development. Most on the ultra-left side see no difference between liberals and conservatives, even between liberalism and fascism. Certain elements of the ultra-left go to the extreme in claiming that Marxism-Leninism has more in common with conservatism.

Ultra-Left Attacks on Liberalism in Service of the Bourgeoisie

Ultra-leftists claim that, “if you scratch a liberal, a fascist bleeds.” While the inability of the liberal center to effectively defeat fascism is well known to Marxist-Leninists; this line of thinking only helps feed into the sectarianism that prevents the defeat of fascism. Originating in the New Left, this phrase is nothing more than a modern adaptation to the underdeveloped concept of “social fascism” from the Third Period of 1928 to 1935. It is no surprise that with this idea, the ultra-left openly rejects the more successful Popular Front policy, which replaced “social fascism” as the official policy and analysis of the Comintern at the Seventh Congress in August 1935.

Continuation from Enlightenment Period

As the development of the capitalist mode of production reached its climax in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the character of the bourgeoisie became reactionary. Large sections of the bourgeoisie began to abandon their progressive ideals. Ideas like advocacy of universal suffrage, the elimination of want, and the freedom of speech and association were discarded in their maximization of profit. 

As the capitalists, especially the monopolists, dropped “the torch of liberty”, the ascending working class picked it up. The revolutionary working class, with their vanguard communist parties, carry on the task of preserving and expanding Enlightenment theories. Communists have removed the idealist and static aspects of liberal ideology. By removing these archaic aspects, Communists were able to correctly identify the dominant progressive and reactionary forces at a given point in history and accordingly develop correct strategies and tactics to carry on the struggle for liberation. It is therefore important to review the principles of Historical Materialism in order to set the basis for the connection between the Enlightenment liberal tradition and the Marxist-Leninist outlook.

Brief Review of Principles of Historical Materialism

Historical materialism as a science demonstrates that the historical development of humanity occurs in successive stages according to the contradictions of social forces of that epoch. Comrade Stalin explained that: 

“Historical materialism is the extension of the principles of dialectical materialism to the study of social life, an application of the principles of dialectical materialism to the phenomena of the life of society, to the study of society and its history.” 

Dialectical and Historical Materialism is the philosophical and scientific method at the heart of Marxist-Leninist ideology that bases itself on four main axioms:

1) Reality is fundamentally material and objective and that consciousness and ideas are the reflection of the material world.

2) The development of matter, both nature and society, develop according to the laws of dialectics. These laws state that this development takes on a gradual, quantitative pace until it reaches a critical point whereby the matter takes on a qualitative transformation via revolution with conscious leadership before taking on further quantitative evolution. 

3) That this development occurs primarily by contradiction between opposing forces within the matter or society.

4) That in society, the primary contradiction that drives its history is the contradiction within its means of production; between the forces of production (i.e. the instruments of production, laborers, raw materials, etc) and the relations of production (i.e. the relations between those who work the forces of production and those who expropriate the products of the labor).

When taken as a whole, the theory of Historical Materialism asserts that society is always in a state of development that is governed by the contradiction between the forces of production and the incompatible relations of production. Furthermore, the development of the forces and the social relations of production are independent of the will of humanity. At a critical point of development where the forces of production develop beyond its corresponding relations, an acute conflict begins. Guided by a class-conscious leadership, society erupts into social revolution where the fetters of the outdated relations of production are either thrown off or reaction succeeds in eroding the means of production. 

Comrade Karl Marx also made a distinction between the objective (i.e. material conditions) and subjective processes (i.e. the consciousness of the laboring class). He explains that as the material conditions of society (social relations and forces of production) develop, the consciousness of the members of society correspondingly develop. At the same time, the conscious reflection of the inhabitants also influences further development of the social being of the masses. Marx stated, 

In the social production which men carry on they enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will; these relations of production correspond to a definite stage of development of their material powers of production. The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society—the real foundation, on which rise legal and political superstructures and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production in material life determines the general character of the social, political and spiritual processes of life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but, on the contrary, their social existence determines their consciousness. 

He continues:

With the change of the economic foundation the entire immense superstructure is more or less rapidly transformed. In considering such transformations the distinction should always be made between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, aesthetic or philosophic—in short ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out just as our opinion of an individual is not based on what he thinks of himself, so can we not judge of such a period of transformation by its own consciousness; on the contrary, this consciousness must rather be explained from the contradictions of material life, from the existing conflict between the social forces of production and the relations of production. 

In essence, class conscious elements of the subject class develop ideological and political frameworks that correspond to the development of the modes of production. These ideologies guide the subjected masses in the struggle to dislodge the ruling class from the means of production and their moribund ideological, philosophical, political, etc, superstructure.

What was Enlightenment fighting for?

In Europe and America, where the semi-feudal and colonial superstructure was being outmoded by the capitalist mode of production, the rising bourgeois class developed its liberal ideology in what was called the Enlightenment Period. With feudal relations and colonial subjugation obstructing the development and spreading of capitalism, historical necessity “demanded” ideology that rejected the supposed divine right to rule by kings, that allowed the bourgeois press to criticize the monarchy, and that removed barriers to manufacturing and trade such as Intolerable Acts in the American Colonies.

Beginning in the late Middle Ages, and culminating in the age of bourgeois democratic revolutions; trade guilds (particularly merchant), secret societies, and fraternal orders developed as institutions of the emerging bourgeois superstructure. Similar groups formed in the American colonies with groups like the Sons of Liberty in Boston. Each of these organizations played different but inter-connected roles in the struggle to overthrow monarchy, remove colonial monopolies from trade and production, and guarantee individual liberties.

Trade guilds formed among the petty bourgeoisie and handicraftsmen who struggled to secure contracts under feudal society. The guilds developed as a way for the collective of guild members to secure contracts and in order to develop political control over the cities. Later on, these guilds developed into monopolies like the East India Company. These monopolies created a hostile environment for the emerging industrial bourgeoisie. These monopolies gave preferential treatment to handicrafts which opposed the mass production of the manufactories. Out of the struggle between these sections of the young bourgeoisie, manufacturing capital developed an ideology that favored free trade and equality amongst the bourgeoisie economically and politically.

The emerging bourgeoisie lacked the recognition and privileges that had been afforded to the nobility and the guilds they supported. The rising bourgeoisie brought in the workers, farmers, and others who had been oppressed by the ruling nobility and their allies in both the clergy and the guilds. They threw off the fetters that the ruling class put on the means of production and the superstructure of society. From there, bourgeois governments began to emerge. Conflict rose again as the now emergent bourgeois were beset with splits and conflicts within their ranks and against the working masses. As capitalism built up, the bourgeois became the new oppressors of society and the workers. The advanced workers, building on the prior philosophy and ideas in the Enlightenment, began to develop the ideas of socialism as a solution to the evils of capitalism. Early iterations were idealist, while Karl Marx and Frederick Engels turned it truly scientific and rational. 

(Need to expand on the prior section some and how it leads to the ideology developing).

(Need better transition to the next section). (One is how the bourgeoisie dropped Jeffersonianism and picked up Hamiltonianism).

Bring in the passage of the Declaration of Independence that Thomas Jefferson wrote that was struck out due to being for the banning of slavery and the full citizenship of the African-American people.

In the original draft of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson included the following passage:

He [King George] has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian King of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where Men should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or restrain this execrable commerce. And that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people on whom he has obtruded them: thus paying off former crimes committed again the Liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.

This passage was struck from the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson claimed, on objections from the planter-landowners in South Carolina and Georgia and Northern delegates who represented merchants and bankers who were at the time actively involved in the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. At the time, it was struck to preserve the alliance of the bourgeoisie with the workers and others in order to declare independence.

Hamilton represented the desire for a new aristocratic oligarchy to rule and suppress the masses as the fascists and Trump are doing today. The Chambers of Commerce, which sprung up thought ideas of Alexander Hamiliton related to free enterprise and represented the large merchants and gentry, operated as early monopolies in the towns and cities and tended to be more loyalist. They wanted small reform and ability to trade with whomever, but feared revolution as they feared it would go to the masses. They were reluctant supporters of the American Revolution, and many were open collaborators and colluders with the British Empire around the War of 1812. 

The working class picked up the ideals of Jefferson. The farmers, the artisans, the small traders, the “yeomen”, tended to support the Revolution. They picked up the ideals of Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine.

Communists Carry On Revolutionary Tradition, Reject the “Back to 1776” Slogan

Former General Secretary Earl Browder correctly outlined that the task of American Marxists is not to idealize the bygone era of 1776 or to recreate the social conditions that existed. His lesson is to learn from our predecessors and apply Marxist-Leninist theory creatively to the existing conditions today. Comrade Browder states:

“We Communists claim the revolutionary traditions of Americanism. We are the only ones who continue those traditions and apply them to the problems of today. We are the Americans and Communism is the Americanism of the twentieth century. That does not mean, of course, that we Communists raise the slogan of “Back to 1776.” Such reactionary stupidity was committed by the LaFollette “third-party” movement in 1924, typical as that movement was of a class-grouping that had lost any historical progressive meaning. That was no more in the spirit of our revolutionary forefathers, than it would have been for the Declaration of Independence to proclaim “Back to the Republic of Rome.” To each day its own tasks; that of 1776 was to free the rising capitalism from the fetters of a dying feudal system, enabling it to expand the productive forces of mankind to a new high level; that of today is to free these tremendous productive forces created by capitalism but now being choked and destroyed because they have grown too big to live longer under capitalist property relations.”

Comrade Browder continues:

“Americanism, in this revolutionary sense, means to stand in the forefront of human progress. It means never to submit to the forces of decay and death. It means constantly to free ourselves of the old, the outworn, the decaying, and to press forward to the young, the vital, the living, the expanding. It means to fight like hell against those who would plow under the crops in our fields, who would close down and scrap our factories, who would keep millions of willing toilers, anxious to create the good things of life, living like beggars upon charity.”

Comrade Browder is clearly stating here that the progressive nature of the American Enlightenment liberals in their fight against the British monarchy is carried on by the working class in its fight against the current economic royalists, the monopoly capitalists.

Jacob Ginsberg
Contributing Editor

We are living in a very dangerous and tumultuous period of history which contradicts the long-standing view that we have been living in the “end of history.” Many have considered our country’s 250 years of existence to be proof of the stability of its political system. Many times, in history, historians took the analysis that the fascist leaders, the ‘Mussolinis’ and ‘Hitlers’ were clowns— they were ‘farcical characters;’ meaning they were disconnected from the real class interest of the capitalists. After a closer analysis, it became evident that these so-called ‘farcical characters’ were in reality, using very logical tactics to maintain their class rule. The capitalist class which had ushered in democracy over monarchy has now begun ‘to put a straight-jacket’ on democracy; they consider it a hindrance to continue to maintain their class rule. When bourgeois democracy is no longer useful, the bourgeoisie try to get rid of it. When the softness of the velvet glove is no longer useful for continued class control, the bourgeoisie resorts to the harshness of the iron fist.

Georgi Dimitrov talks on the rise of fascism when capitalism is in a crisis. Capitalists are drawn to reaction in this crisis and there is a struggle within the bourgeoisie to go towards fascism,

 …the accession to power of fascism must not be conceived of in so simplified and smooth a form, as though some committee or other of finance capital decided on a certain date to set up a fascist dictatorship. In reality, fascism usually comes to power in the course of a mutual, and at times severe, struggle against the old bourgeois parties, or a definite section of these parties, in the course of a struggle even within the fascist camp itself—a struggle which at times leads to armed clashes, as we have witnessed in the case of Germany, Austria, and other countries. All this, however, does not detract from the fact that before the establishment of a fascist dictatorship, bourgeois governments usually pass through a number of preliminary stages and institute a number of reactionary measures, which directly facilitate the accession to power of fascism.

 Today, in the courtroom, the attack on the First Amendment is represented by Trump’s Executive Order 14161 “Protecting the US from Foreign Terrorists and other National Security and Public Safety Threats”, the unnumbered executive order on “Designating Antifa as a Terrorist Organization”, and National Safety Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7) on “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence” which are meant to suppress the labor movement in the US. All of these orders are a direct attack on the ability of Americans to speak their mind and to exercise their constitutional right to peacefully assemble and protest.

The Trump Administration has used the facade of ‘making the federal government more efficient,’ when in reality, it is weakening the public sector union movement by eliminating unionized federal workers and replacing them with non-union, lower-paid employees. ICE is denying American citizens’ right to the First, Second, and Fourth Amendments. ICE and other federal agents are denying people the right to assemble to peacefully protest and record ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents. They are also denying people their Second Amendment rights with the murder of Alex Pretti and their Fourth Amendment rights with the seizure of people out of their homes by agents without just cause. However, the First Amendment violations are the most egregious.

Federal agents have attacked people for filming and peacefully protesting. Renee Nicole Good was expressing her rights as a legal observer to ICE arrests, and was murdered when an agent fired multiple shots into her car. Alex Pretti was protesting Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agents and was helping a woman who was shoved down by agents. Pretti was attacked without provocation by agents with fists and blunt objects, he was shoved down to the ground, maced, then disarmed of his legal concealed carry firearm that he never touched or reached for. Afterwards, he was murdered when multiple agents emptied their guns into him.

Public Sector Unions are being prevented from the “right to assemble” through an executive order that dissolved recognition of federal unions. Under the guise of “National Security”, the Trump Regime stripped hundreds of thousands of federal workers of their collective bargaining agreements through Executive Order 14251, Exclusions from Federal Labor-Management Relations Programs (E.O. 14251), and Executive Order 14343, Further Exclusions from the Federal Labor-Management Relations Program (E.O. 14343). Trump’s executive order proclaiming this came at the same time when Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) was mass-laying off thousands of federal workers and siphoning the data and personal information of millions of Americans. The capitalist’s aim is to gut the public sector and declare it “inefficient” since the agencies are unable to carry out their work. The “solution” is to replace unionized workers who have extensive legal protections with underpaid scabs who lack the protections of collective bargaining agreements and related laws. Federal unions traditionally had dues taken out of paychecks and given office space at worksites for union work. These have disappeared from attempts in the current environment to weaken labor and progressive workers in the public sector and society.

Historical Context

The attack on the First Amendment requires that we analyze our country’s history from its inception in the Bill of Rights, passed by Thomas Jefferson’s leadership, to the current constitutional crisis that the Trump Administration has exacerbated.

The first attack on the right of freedom of speech, expression and assembly was that of the struggle for independence and the formation of a democratic nation. Thomas Jefferson was denounced as an agent of the French Revolution by the mercantilist property owners, exemplified by Alexander Hamilton and his Federalist Party, which turned towards reaction. The Alien and Sedition Laws of 1798 were based upon the theory that the rising democratic movement in the United States was merely an extension of the forces behind the French Revolution. The Federalist Party feared that the democratic clubs in the new United States were reminiscent of the Jacobin Clubs in France.

Defenders of the First Amendment, embedded in the Bill of Rights, were slandered as agents of a foreign power, namely Republican France. Reactionaries called the rising forces of democracy “seditious,” and their inspiration and leadership as “alien”. Jefferson was pictured as an “agent of the French Jacobins,” while “French gold” was supposed to furnish the means of his struggle. Jefferson’s election as President in 1800 was a rejection of the policies behind the Alien and Sedition Laws. Throughout history, reactionaries always tend to use similar tactics against progressive ideas and their adherents (the Federalists would go on to create a counter revolution in the War of 1812 against the newly-founded democratic America).

Legislation like the Alien and Sedition Acts gave birth to the House of Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in the 1950s. After 1947, anti-Communism influenced all of America’s democratic processes. A notable example was the anti-Communist oath demanded of Associate Justice Byron White when he became a Justice of the Supreme Court. He had to sign an affidavit stating he was not now and never had been a member of the Communist Party. Such “loyalty oaths” violated the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution he was supposed to protect.

John Foster Dulles, a foremost political adviser, admitted that our government was engaged in a tidal wave of “artificial hysteria.” America’s ruling class has historically made a supreme effort to halt progressive legislation and ideas. The capitalist class resorts to loyalty oaths through such reactionary formations as the HUAC and its comparative legislation as the Smith Act and the McCarran Act. It resorts to punitive prison sentences against those who refuse to adhere to a foreign policy that leads to wars of aggression against America’s neighbors.

Comrade Stalin said the following on both the ultra-left and right opportunists: 

 “[…] the “Left” deviations in essence the same thing as the Right opportunist deviation, then what is the difference between them, and where do you actually get two fronts? Indeed, if a victory of the Rights means increasing the chances of the restoration of capitalism, and a victory of the “Lefts” would lead to the same result, what difference is there between them, and why are some called Rights and others “Lefts”? And if there is a difference between them, what is it? Is it not true that the two deviations have the same social roots, that they are both petty-bourgeois deviations? Is it not true that both these deviations, if they were to triumph, would lead to one and the same result? What, then, is the difference between them?

If the Rights say: “Let the kulak alone, allow him to develop freely,” and the “Lefts,” on the contrary, declare: “Strike not only at the kulak, but also at the middle peasant, because he is just as much a private owner as the kulak,” it must be admitted that there obviously is a difference.

…

There you have a picture of the specific platform and the specific methods of the “Lefts.” This, in fact, explains why the “Lefts” sometimes succeed in luring a part of the workers over to their side with the help of high-sounding “Left” phrases and by posing as the most determined opponents of the Rights, although all the world knows that they, the “Lefts,” have the same social roots as the Rights, and that they not infrequently join in an agreement, a bloc, with the Rights in order to fight the Leninist line.

 That is why it is obligatory for us, Leninists, to wage a fight on two fronts—both against the Right deviation and against the “Left” deviation.”

Stalin’s words are a guide to understanding the clear difference between the ultraleft and right deviation when it comes to the Marxist-Leninist position today on the First Amendment. It is plain to see the high sounding “Left” phrases of the ACP which in reality are objectively supporting the suppression of speech by monopoly capital.  [5]

The Ultra-left on the First Amendment

The ultra-left places little importance on the issue of the First Amendment. Multiple groups in the US either lack a stance on the First Amendment or take an ultra-left position arguing that the United States and the Constitution itself are all instruments of the bourgeoisie. For example, the Party of Socialism and Liberation (PSL) states that while the Bill of Rights is seen as the only guarantor of basic political rights in the Constitution, they ignore its historically progressive nature for its time.[1]

 The Trotskyites take an even further ultra-left position. The Revolutionary Communists of America (RCA) (ironically a Trotskyite organization, not a Communist one), states that besides the Bill of Rights there was nothing “democratic” in the US Constitution. To quote:

                “…the Bill of Rights was a concession by those who held the most power, in order to give the illusion of a genuinely popular democracy, a concession ultimately designed to   prevent a popular revolt against the new federal government.”[2]

To the ultra-left, the Bill of Rights and First Amendment are nothing more than a “legal thorn” in the side of the monopoly capitalists that while it may give the workers some legal rights also serves the ruling class as a way to foment acceptance by more reactionary elements of the working class to their interests and policies both abroad and internationally.[3] Therefore, according to the ultra-left, the Bill of Rights and the Constitution should be done away with as they are instruments of the ruling monopoly capitalist class.

This understanding lacks a historical materialist analysis. The ultra-left forget that levels of consciousness change as the relationship to the means of production changes in class society. The First Amendment was a product of the most progressive thinkers at the time, and since its inception, reactionaries in monarchies and now capitalism try to curtail and limit it for all progressive forces.

Right Opportunism on the First Amendment

There are those who call themselves “Communist”, but they are “Communist” in name only. They are detached from reality where they only exist online in a petty-bourgeois environment removed from any working class. They call for free speech for fascists but call for suppression of “liberal” and “woke” speech, decry “cancel culture”, all while distorting the spirit of the First Amendment. They admire Alexander Hamilton while ignoring that Hamiliton was a Federalist that was opposed to the Bill of Rights being added to the Constitution. In reality, these people are Right-deviationists and opportunists.

They criticize liberal and woke speech, decry cancel culture, all while distorting the spirit of the First Amendment which objectively benefits fascists (state differently?).

 A questionable-backed seemingly-manufactured formation who call themselves the “American Communist Party” (ACP) is an example of the petty-bourgeois right deviationist trend. They are reminiscent of the government COINTELPRO operations of the past. The ACP frequently denounce science, Enlightenment thinking, and incite hatred against LGBT+, workers, and immigrants, yet cry when they get banned on various social media platforms for spouting hate while hosting meetings with reactionaries and neo-nazis.

Recently, printed in their March 2025 edition of their “theoretical journal”, an interview with the ACP quoted:

 “Trump has proposed creating a national fund and potentially buying TikTok with it. This would be a monumental return to a Hamiltonian style American economics, which is a lot closer to a socialistic style of banking than the current federal reserve. If TikTok gets bought with this national fund, that means that the first amendment (freedom of speech, press, etc.) is protected under it. As someone who belongs to a communist Institute that, after amassing almost half a million followers on TikTok, has had seven accounts banned, this would be superb for disseminating revolutionary, anti-imperialist information.”

 Here, the right-opportunist ACP platforms a right-winger, who uses their own social media stats and history, to hail a possible buyout of a social media platform as “free speech, press”. Objectively they champion a backdoor form on suppression of speech no different from what corporations do already on platforms like Meta. TikTok was bought on January 22, 2026 by billionaire monopoly-capitalist Larry Ellison, who is on Trump’s so-called ⁠President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST). Since then, TikTok frequently suppresses speech and expression of leftist thought.

 Trump’s idea of a “national fund” is not controlled by the working class in any way. Nationalization by itself is not inherently socialist unless it is controlled by the working class. In the United States, “nationalization” of companies, especially when ordered by the government, results in primarily benefiting monopoly-capitalists by letting them reap all rewards with no cost once the companies and institutions are re-privatized. In U.S. the only examples we have are during wartime, for instance in WWI the railroad industry was nationalized, then after the war, they were re-privatized.

 These capitalists further restrict First Amendment freedoms of speech like what Meta under Mark Zuckerburg has done with Facebook. Elon Musk’s X and Steve Huffman’s Reddit have similar suppressions of progressive speech. These platforms then give freer rein to rightwing voices that opportunists like ACP are closer to than progressive groups.

PCUSA Position on the First Amendment

For communists in the US, the defense of the first amendment is of vital importance. It is a proud American tradition to defend the right of workers to speak their mind, especially in the face of persecution from the bosses who try to limit the ability of workers to organize. In American history, the attack on the First Amendment has always precipitated from the interests of the capitalist class to further the growth of reaction. If the Communist Party, USA (CPUSA), did not defend itself in court against the fascist-minded McCarthyites in the 1950s, the ability of anyone to question monopoly capital in this country would have ceased to exist openly.

The victory of the CPUSA in its movement to defend the First Amendment was a victory for the average American. For us to not defend the First Amendment would guarantee the ideological victory of reaction over the workers movement. Lenin was clear that such left-sectarian tendencies are a “Left-wing Communist” failure, and in particular the slogan of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) “After Hitler, us.”

In fact, every victory of the working class is reliant on the existence of the First Amendment to organize freely against the aims of monopoly-capital. Indifference or refusal to defend this most vital civil liberty is to objectively aid reaction, and ultimately, disarm the workers in allowing the victory of fascism. Through his experience with the IWW and the anarcho-syndicalists, William Z. Foster proved that indifference towards struggle against reaction surrenders the fight and allows reactionaries free reign to influence the working masses.

Reactionaries revel in ultraleft apathy and destroy democracy in darkness. Both the Right and the ultra-Left are bringing up something alien that is not in the interest of the working class. The First Amendment is crucial for those who seek social change.

Timothy Dirte
Editor in Chief

Communists are not anti-American (e.g., Lenin was anti-Tsar not anti-Russian; Communists are anti-Capitalist not anti-American).

Today there is an infection in the left which dates back to the time of Lenin which he called “Left-communism” or what we call “Ultra-leftism” today. Lenin referred to these ultra-leftists in his book “Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder”. The gist of Lenin’s analysis is that there are some who call themselves “communists” but who failed to apply the correct application of Marxism to their situation, instead falling for non-Bolshevik methods of work. 

Left-wing communism takes the form of ultra-leftism which is best exemplified by the various trends of petty-bourgeois radicalist-philosophies of anarchism, Maoism, Trotskyism and so-called self-proclaimed “radicals” who are infected with the Frankfurt School’s New-Left radicalism. All of these groups suffer from the same “infantile disorder”. These ideologies have a sense of national nihilism, i.e., their adherents have separated themselves from American history; they reject the national history of their own people and how it is traditionally viewed by their people.

America, as with every other bourgeois country, exist with different classes. A small, ruling class that controls the superstructure of that country, and the masses of people who produce the wealth of that country.

It is incorrect for Marxist-Leninists to consider the whole society illegitimate and therefore seek its destruction, if its ruling class is the cause of this illegitimacy. In the case of apartheid South Africa, the position of the South African Communist Party was to eliminate its apartheid leadership and set the country on a new road of racial equality and social justice. This understanding was pointed out by Lenin when he stressed that the propertied ruling class of a country does not necessarily represent that country, they are just the parasitic current rulers of that society.  Once again, “We don’t throw out the baby when we throw out the dirty bathwater”. Lenin stated:

“Is a sense of national pride alien to us, Great-Russian class-conscious proletarians? Certainly not! We love our language and our country, and we are doing our very utmost to raise her toiling masses (i.e., nine-tenths of her population) to the level of a democratic and socialist consciousness. To us it is most painful to see and feel the outrages, the oppression and the humiliation our fair country suffers at the hands of the tsar’s butchers, the nobles and the capitalists. We take pride in the resistance to these outrages put up from our midst, from the … Great-Russian working class having created, in 1905, a mighty revolutionary party of the masses; and in the Great-Russian peasantry having begun to turn towards democracy and set about overthrowing the clergy and the landed proprietors.”

This means that communists are not National Nihilists. Communists have a great love for their country because of their desire to uplift its workers to a higher level of class consciousness in order to get rid of the capitalists who drag their countries through the mud, plundering the world in their insatiable search for profits. This is why we want to retake our country from the corporations and return it to its’ working class which built it up.

There are some petty-bourgeois radicals who consider our country to be wholly reactionary and deserving only of destruction, in other words, to throw the baby out with the bath water. Such  views were never shared by either Marx or Lenin and is in fact one which was borne outside the ideology of the working class. Workers must work together to improve the consciousness of their brothers and sisters to organize the class struggle. Workers, comprising the majority of society, do not have a nihilistic view of their own country. They want to make life better for themselves and their family.

I. The Ultra-Left on Patriotism

The ultra-left takes a generally negative view of American patriotism anytime it is mentioned. The idea of patriotism and being a patriot is seen from the ultra-left in the same way as the nationalist-chauvinism of the bourgeois and American exceptionalism. Historical documents like the Constitution are viewed by the ultra-left from a present-day understanding when the means of production have advanced and levels of consciousness are higher. They do not view the documents in a historical materialist manner, which prevents them from seeing the progressive nature of the Constitution.

This view is paradoxically an exceptionalist view. This is because it is different in form from the American exceptionalist view of Jay Lovestone in the 1920s, but is in essence the same. The present-day theory of settlerism states America and its workers are inherently reactionary, denies the class struggle of white workers, and confuses what class struggle does exist objectively dividing the working class. In short, the ultra-left assumes anyone who calls themselves a “patriot” is automatically a “traitor to the revolution” and should be chastised. This view paints a picture of a country whose political economy has been turned on its head and forms a “peculiarity of American capitalism”. Which is the same argument made by Jay Lovestone, a so-called “Communist” who later defected to the CIA, in which Stalin refuted in his speech to the American Commission of the Presidium of the Executive Committee of the Communist International in 1929.

II. Left in Form and Right in Essence

Is it a departure from an internationalist position to be patriotic of one’s country? It is an immensely patriotic stance, standing in contradistinction to the barbaric policies of finance capital, to take the side of the working class, the overwhelming majority of this nation. How could it be otherwise? And how could we ever hope to instill among our people the vision and drive for revolution if it is based on a regressive and backwards view of the national question in the US? The ultra-left speak of the balkanization of the US, a contradiction to the basic tenets of a revolutionary position on the national question to the workers and call it a “enlightened vision” of the future. Comrade Liu Shaoqi in Internationalism and Nationalism wrote:

“Genuine patriotism means fervent love of one’s own fatherland, and its people, language, culture, literature and best traditions, behind which lie thousands of years and generations of historical development. This kind of patriotism has no connection whatsoever with self-centered, selfish and anti-foreign bourgeois nationalism, nor with such national prejudices as narrow-minded exclusivism, isolationism, sectarianism and provincialism, which reflect the sentiments of the small peasant and the backward patriarchal system.”

Such ultra-left perspectives on the national question in the US will isolate and disparage the workers and their history in their totality. It is a reactionary position and a gift to those pursuing fascism who seek to uphold the most reactionary characteristics of our national legacy which would preserve bourgeois class domination. The ultra-left perspectives fail to separate the progressive sections of our history from the reactionary ones and allows fascist support to be built among working people. Lenin noted such “infantile leftists” are relegated to the fringes of the Communist movement, isolated from the majority of the workers who inherently have an interest in the future of their country.

The American people’s understandable anger at the transgressions and oppression organized by the bourgeoisie in the history of our nation might serve as the impetus for the objectively progressive and patriotic initiative to free the American people from the bourgeoisie dragging the country through the mud.

We of course must recognize the destruction of the indigenous cultures which is a blot on the country’s history. It is a requirement for the full liberation of the workers from capitalist oppression to see to the emancipation of the nationalities that the United States oppresses. In the words of Karl Marx:

 “…in the United States of North America, every independent movement of the workers was paralyzed so long as slavery disfigured a part of the Republic. Labour cannot emancipate itself in the white skin when in the black it is branded.”

Karl Marx, Capital Vol I Chapter 10 Section 7

However, settlerism is an anti-Marxist position which is characterized by a confusion on the class characteristics of racism, white-supremacy, and the national question applied to the US. It is inconsistent with a Marxist-Leninist perspective. The objective realities of the political situation in the US requires the unity of Black, White, and Native American workers to abolish monopoly-capital and its Confederate-minded bosses in the south, which William Z. Foster called “the bulwark of racism and anti-democratic activity”.

Our present society is fundamentally meant to defend the development of capitalism. But our bourgeois-republic is at the same time poised to exhibit an extreme backwardness cultivated by the capitalists taking inspiration from the Confederacy in order to make possible the victory of fascism. This backwardness develops out of the regressive and backwards elements of the bourgeoisie in the US such as the most reactionary elements of finance capital.

All the means of production, distribution, and communication, are sufficiently centralized for the immediate transition into socialist production. Yet, because of the complete backwardness of the bourgeoisie, we experience crises of compounding severity while fully cognizant of the methods and means to organize production scientifically. Under capitalism, science is degraded to a subservient position to be used in the interests of the capitalists. The increasing frequency and severity of the crises, because of the lack of scientifically-organized production, compels the political development of the masses. Every American from the most advanced proletariat to the most socially-disconnected person who in good times lived comfortable, routine lives and paid no heed to concerns around them, are reacting to the crisis. As the proletariat awakens to the barbarity of their oppression, fascism, which is in development in the US, serves as the counter to preserve the class domination of the bourgeoisie.

Our bourgeois-democratic republic was progressive in contrast to slave society, but it has reached a decadent, decaying, and rentier state which necessitates its abolition for the further progression of our society. We must therefore take up the patriotic aim of lifting up our people to a progressive and socialist consciousness to combat the disfiguring influence of the bourgeoisie on our national development and to realize real freedom which to many for so long has been but a lofty idea.

That is why it is a cover and disguise to uphold “freedom” without detailing for whom and what class. We speak here, always, and forever, for the freedom of the workers. We stand in defiance to the freedom of the capitalists to inflict our people with illness and death. We ruthlessly expose the decadence of the present bourgeoise-republic and reject the idea that this is the highest form of democracy. At the present time, those who speak of freedom and democracy in general, while our people are tattered and worn by exploitation at the hands of the capitalists, prove themselves to be but the watchmen for our people’s suffering. Our present democracy is simply the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.

The supposed “patriots” espousing bourgeois reaction and the ultra-left petty-bourgeois radicals in despair who fail to uphold the progressive characteristics of working-class history in the US will prove themselves traitors to the workers of this country, to the international community of nations, and to the cause of socialism. This includes participation in activities which the ultra-left considers to be beneath them such as meeting the workers where they are. We must first build an anti-monopoly coalition to raise the class consciousness of the American worker to what is necessary for the victory of socialism. As Lenin says, “the masses learn from life and not from books.”

The vast majority of Americans are workers and oppressed nationalities, who at present have little access to democracy. Real patriotism seeks to establish for the American people a democracy based on Marxism-Leninism.

 movement against their power. All progressive Americans must continuously fight against these tactics, because they will never cease so long as the capitalist system is in place. Americans must understand that the drive of fascism is not one of abstract totalitarianism, but rather it should be seen as a concrete expression of the will of corporate America and the military-industrial complex, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), to suppress democratic institutions.