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The language of Communist manifesto is brazenly clear and exciting. Marx and Engels have outrightly predicted the inevitable decay of Capitalism and subsequent reign of Communism. However, the book is classified into four sections with section three having further more sub-sections. The first section is about history of bourgeoisie and proletariat, briefly taking notes on how merchant class of industrial epoch crushed the feudal dispensation and Aristocratic classes of Middle Ages sprouting from the ruins of both. Further in the same section, reader comes to know history has been unfolding all due to strife between rival classes and that for solely economic reasons. As Marx avers: The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle. There is no reason to disagree with this reasonable argument that history is of class struggle. In ancient age of Romans, it was between patricians and plebeians, in Middle Ages it was between serf and feudal lord, and in industrial age it was, and thus far is, between bourgeoisie and proletariat.

Interestingly, Marx and Engels sardonically and in vehement terms rebuked bourgeoisie class vis--vis family values. The argument was that bourgeoisie class has reduced family values to mere economic relationships of profit. Even, as said in Manifesto, marriages are confirmed on account of how that will help greasing the profiteering course in future. The woman was, as Marx and Engels mention, considered an instrument of production to produce childrens fostering Capitalism. This truly runs afoul of natural trajectory of human values that mark them off all other living organisms.

But, all in all, one cannot accuse and incriminate bourgeoisie class alone while vindicating the working class irrational devotion for a communist world. It really is not easy to establish a communist country. Needless to say, the squalid and miserable conditions of working class people are full of resentment against those who are perpetually snatching away their shares; but uprooting the entire system while installing another system which will again propel this vicious circle is not convincing.

Furthermore, the healthy spectrum of bourgeoisie-led-capitalism, as Marx concedes, is that by the nature of its beefing up more and more new instruments of production, Bourgeoisie draws all, even the most unruly nations into civilization. The chicanery is cheap prices of commodities, Marx calls this the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls. The system creates a sort of doppelgnger which will further the bourgeoisie designs and shrink wage-labour. But however, it is arguable that does Capitalism really civilises unruly people in true sense of the word? Or merely turns them into a new form of vulturous people who only understand two words: buy or sell. This again is not convincing. In effect, the nature, and writings of Marx on communism, are sort of not crystal clear and are opaque with spaces of interpretation abounding.

The second section is about proletarians and communist; their convergences and possible divergences, if any. On which level does communism tout to be the representative of proletarians? And how communists present their credentials to nullify the nationalistic tinges of proletarians and think more broadly taking on board proletarians of all different countries? Marx and Engels argue that communism do not establish a separate party opposed to working class parties, rather it creates a level playing field for all working people. The unmistakeable difference is that communism finds and brings to the fore the common interests of proletarian belonging to different countries. In struggle against bourgeoisie, communists, unlike proletarians, represent and fight for common interests of all. Nonetheless, aim of both is same: Formation of proletariat into a class, overthrow of the bourgeoisie supremacy conquest of political power by supremacy. Besides, Marx and Engle clearly write that every country have different state apparatuses and they hold their own way of fighting their exploiter. However, they are under no obligation to follow what European workers do, but their aim disrupting bourgeoisie must converge since that is what communism is based upon.

Fears and perils vis--vis communism of most people, particularly profiteering class, are abolition of property in general. However, Marx and Engels intend otherwise in Communist Manifesto snapping: You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property. But in your existing society, private property is already done away with for nine-tenth of population. There is no mention of abolishing property in general in Manifesto, however, what is mentioned is the distinguishing feature of communism: not abolition of property generally but abolition of bourgeoisie property. Qualms about radical destroying of ideals, class distinctions, rapacious appropriation of collective labour are only qualms of bourgeoisie who fear losing Capital heaped and accrued on hard-won work of common worker. Better to disrupt the applecart of a bourgeoisie than buy into the bogus idea of progress and rationalism. In this sense, in succinct terms, if and only communism is defined in a single but seminal sentence, that would be: abolition of private property, as Marx and Engels write. The last two sections are about different branches of socialism and types of bourgeoisies. How petty- bourgeoisie buttress the ideals of appropriation and how conservative socialism endeavours to tone down the revolutionary aspect of socialism and reduce it to a mere cowering child satisfied with a toy. All these are explained very simply and logically. There are some secret agents always behind defaming socialism with irrational designs which are busted in this section.

The book is anyhow a very revealing and educating read. That said, Communist Manifesto struck a nerve in 1848 all across Europe, particularly in France, igniting the fire of revolution which took aback the ruling class of Europe. Anyone who is interested in Marxism and oppressed-oppressor dialectics is suggested to pick this book.

The article has been written and contributed by Shahab Akram who is a student, based in Turbat. He Tweets at @shahabakram6 and can be reached at shahabakram0852@gmail.com

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A spectre is haunting Europe the spectre of communism - Daily Times

The first victim of the Soviet Unions international socialist crusade was Catholic Poland. By the spring of 1920 Poland was under attack from the Soviet Red Army.

At the national Marian shrine of Czestochowa candles were lit and desperate prayers intoned beside the icon of the Black Madonna. The intercession of Our Lady of Czestochowa was never more needed.

On May 20, 1920, the newly created Red Army crashed through the Polish frontier with one intention: to destroy all before it.

Bolshevik leaders meeting in Moscow for the Second Congress of the Communist International had already begun to prepare plans for a Communist-inspired world revolution starting with the nations of Central and Western Europe. Lenin had ordered that Warsaw be taken without delay.

Now the Red Army raced toward Warsaw, advancing to the banks of the Vistula River that flows through Poland from the Baltic to the southernmost part of the land. For the Poles, all looked lost especially as their pleas for help to the Western powers went unheeded. Prime Minister Lloyd George told the British Parliament that Poland had to accept her fate.

Now only a miracle could save Poland.

On Aug. 5, sensing the urgency of the situation, Pope Benedict XV exhorted all to pray for Gods mercy for Poland ... to join all the faithful in imploring the Most High God that through the intercession of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary may save the Polish Nation from her final defeat and may turn away this new plague from Europe.

With no military aid offered from abroad, Polands leader, General Pisudski, realized that this might be his nations last stand. After spending a night in prayer, Pisudski began to assemble soldiers as many as could be spared for a major assault on the Soviet left flank. The plan appeared foolhardy, an imprudent last-ditch attempt at survival.

On Aug. 10, the British government sent a telegram to the Polish government urging it to surrender to the Soviets to avoid annihilation. Instead, Pisudski began to handpick his favorite military divisions to join those assembling near Lublin for the proposed counterattack scheduled to begin on Aug. 17.

Opposing him stood a 100,000-strong Red Army, soldiers filled with revolutionary fervor ready to destroy Warsaw and all those whom they found there.

On Aug. 12, Pisudski prepared to leave Warsaw to join his strike force aiming to counterattack the Soviets. As he departed, Pisudski turned to his wife Aleksandra saying, It is in the hands of God.

On Aug. 13, 1920, the Soviets attacked Warsaw. Encountering little resistance, they captured the outer suburbs in the southeast and northwest of the city. Everywhere, it appeared Polish forces were in flight. The Soviet artillery unleashed a devastating bombardment upon all those now left in central Warsaw.

Warsaw began to take on a surreal appearance. The city was swollen with terrified refugees, with people camped out in public parks next to hastily-prepared and wholly-inadequate defenses. A special train carrying almost the entire foreign diplomatic corps left the capital bound for Poznan. One of the few foreigners who remained was Polands then-papal nuncio, Cardinal Achille Ratti, the future Pope Pius XI. Ratti organized a perpetual prayer for deliverance and, with monstrance held high, he led a Eucharistic procession through Warsaws streets as the Soviet shells rained down.

Polish generals, seeing that Warsaw could not hold out until relief from Pisudski's flanking maneuver arrived, urgently telegraphed him: Attack!Pisudski was shocked to hear the rapid deterioration of conditions in the Polish capital but agreed to launch his assault.

On the morning of Aug. 15, the Feast of the Assumption, wave upon wave of Soviet soldiers continued to attack Warsaw. Yet that morning, from within the city, Polish forces managed somehow to stem their advance. And then, against all odds, they began to retake ground that the Red Army had won. The Soviets started to wonder how the Polish army, which they had seen defeated for many weeks, had begun to fight back with fresh heart against a superior foe. A Soviet counterattack ensued, but it was futile. The Red Army was unable to vanquish the defending Poles. In fact, as the day of Aug. 15 progressed, Polish soldiers seemed to become bolder in counterattack.

Strange rumors began to circulate in Warsaw. Some claimed that in the sky above the Polish lines had appeared the Black Madonna of Czestochowa.

While the Poles fought with a new resolve, the Soviets, curiously, lost theirs. One Russian rifleman was later to comment that by the afternoon of Aug. 15, The moment had come when not only individual units but the whole mass of the army suddenly lost faith in the possibility of success against the enemy. It was as though a cord that we had been stretching since the [invasion] had suddenly snapped.

To relieve Warsaw and to break the Soviet advance, the counterattack had begun with Pisudski at its head. Expecting to discover a significant Soviet force at any moment, the charging Poles were surprised to find their path mysteriously clear. As they advanced further, they found themselves all but unopposed. Pisudski worried that the Soviets were setting a trap that they were planning to encircle his men with a superior force once they had advanced sufficiently and escape was impossible. Yet for almost two days, Polish forces raced onward, brushing aside what few Bolshevik units they encountered. Pisudski could not believe his eyes.

On the night of Aug. 17, Polish forces finally made contact with significant concentrations of Soviet troops. But the Soviets were taken unawares by the sudden appearance of this major Polish force. The outcome for the Red Army was catastrophic: many were killed, including large numbers of high-ranking officers. On the banks of the Vistula the Polish strike effectively eliminated the massed Soviet troops, as well as disrupting their communication lines, thus preventing incoming Soviet reserves from reaching Warsaw.

In the days that followed, the seemingly invincible Red Army slouched back eastward whence it had come. On hearing of what had happened on the banks of the Vistula, Lenin declared that the army had suffered an enormous defeat and promptly put on hold his plans for a bloody world revolution.

Meanwhile, Poles returned to the shrine of Czestochowa. Again, candles were lit, once more to cast a faint glow upon the enigmatic face of the Black Madonna.

* * * * * * *

Many years later, Pope John Paul II wrote:

You know that I was born in 1920, in May, when the Bolsheviks marched toward Warsaw. And thats why since my birth I have carried the great debt toward those who died fighting against the aggressor and who won, giving their lives for their country

Then ... communism appeared as very strong and dangerous. It seemed that the communists would conquer Poland and would march to Western Europe, that they would conquer the world.

But it did not happen.

The Miracle on the Vistula the victory of Marshal Pisudski in the battle against the Red Army stopped the Soviets.

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Miracle of Vistula: When Our Lady Saved the World From Communism - National Catholic Register

Important among the factors responsible for the rise of the Left in India was the exploitative character of colonial British rule, which impacted adversity upon the Indian economy and the various socio economic sections of Society. The land-based system had led to unfair treatment of agricultural labour and resulted in the emergence of the Kisan Sabha movement. The rise of modern industries, based on capitalistic ideology, and exploitation of factory workers, only added fuel to the fire. The financial burden on account of the World War-I, rising prices, famine conditions, manipulative practices by businessmen, the romantic appeal of Marxist ideas, the formation of the new regime in the USSR and its success, showing the triumph of the power and struggle of the people, were the last straw.

Jawaharlal Nehru paid his first ever visit to Russia, the land of socialism in 1961. He studied the works of Marx and Lenin, and was greatly influenced by their ideologies. He then applied his knowledge to the ongoing struggle for achieving equitable growth and sustainable development, of India.

Around the second decade of the twentieth century, India began to be influenced by the Gandhian philosophy of peaceful confrontation as a means of securing freedom from the colonial rulers. The Marxist ideology of the working class overthrowing the propertied exploiter by sheer force, struck a chord deep within the hearts of the agitators of nationalism. The Russian revolution, however, set in a new course in the trajectory of nationalist struggle. People began looking for an alternative idea to the Gandhian constructive programme which caused disillusionment.

Many leaders such as M N Roy, (the founder of the Communist Party of India - CPI), who was personally mentored by Lenin in Russia to prepare Indian soil for revolution against the foreign colonisers), S C Bose, Bipin Chandra Pal and Nehru developed Leftist persuasions.

Student and youth associations were organised all over the country from 1927 onwards. Hundreds of youth conferences were organised during 1928 and 1929, with speakers advocating radical solutions for the political, economic and social ills from which the country was suffering from. Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhas Bose toured the country, making speeches attacking imperialism, capitalism, and landlordism and preaching the ideology of socialism.

These developments also had a desirable impact on women's movements. Various legislations and decisions of those times can be credited to Socialist workers' agitations; such as the Unions Act, the Fundamental Rights and Economic Programme at Karachi Session, and the National Economic Policy in Faizapur session. Socialist ideas began to spread rapidly especially because many young persons who had participated actively in the non-cooperation movement were unhappy with its outcome.

There was also broad acceptance of socialist principles and adoption of the Socialist outlook by INC, post-independence; the reason why the (erstwhile) Planning Commission was often called a Soviet era hangover. Still, the Communists have always had a love hate relationship with the Congress.

Bhagat Singh, the celebrated revolutionary, was noted to have studied in detail the life of Lenin and the Communist Manifesto during his time in jail. Periyar, who started the 'self-respect movement' and also the Dravida Kazhagham, is known to have drawn inspiration from the Russian Communist method of bringing social justice, which he thought was best applicable to the plight of the lower castes in India.

The All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC) the oldest trade union federation in India, is associated with the CPI. It was created originally by moderates associated with the INC. Founded on 31 October 1920, it had Lala Lajpat Rai as its first President.

During its initial days, the CPI focused on mobilising peasants and workers towards a revolutionary cause, while at the same time influencing the Congress in developing a sturdy Left leaning ideology. Trouble arose when, in the 1940s, Gandhi launched the Quit India movement against the British almost at the same time when the Soviet Union urged the CPI to back the British war efforts in the fight against Fascism. In their efforts to please the Russians, they alienated themselves from the nationalist struggle.

Post-Independence, the Party sprung back to form, leading armed struggles in several principalities where the princely rulers were reluctant to give up power. Most noteworthy among these was the rebellion against the Nizam of Hyderabad. In Manipur and Bihar too, the Party made its ideological impact felt strong. Having been successful in garnering enough support among some sections of the Indian population, it soon emerged as the first leading opposition Party that the Congress faced. The Party experienced its first-ever electoral success in the state of Kerala in the 1957 Legislative Assembly elections. Two decades later the Party gained a footing in West Bengal and soon after in Tripura.

By the early 1960s, however, international conditions affecting Communism had altered again, the ripples of which were felt strongly in the Left politics of India. The Soviet Union and China (two most important Communist powers of the world) at that time, were at daggers drawn over ideological implications of Left politics. The Chinese, led by Mao Zedong, denounced the Russians for leaning towards the West as a diplomatic means of spreading Communism, rather than leading to an armed struggle. The ideological conflict between the two countries had its immediate effect on the CPI, drawing sturdy lines between those who leaned towards a Soviet philosophy and those who supported the Chinese. The Indo-China border war in 1962 affected the politics within the Party with one section backing Nehru, while the other radical section opposed what they believed was an unqualified aggression towards China.

Another drawback of the Party was that it mostly looked outside India for political guidance. The internal politics within the CPI soon manifested themselves in the famous split of 1964, when the radical section leaning towards China walked out of a meeting held in Delhi, calling themselves the 'real Communist Party'. Soon after they formed the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI-M), which eventually overshadowed the CPI.

Cultural tradition and ideological positioning of a certain community can never decide the fate of a party in electoral politics especially given the Indian ethos. This was why the Left suffered a drastic loss of power in West Bengal in 2011 to the All India Trinamool Congress led by Mamata Banerjee, an experience that was to repeat itself in succeeding elections.

(The writer is former Chief Secretary, Government of Andhra Pradesh)

Link:
The influence of Communism in India - The Hans India

Grandma and grandpa communists, the lucky ones in the Netherlands. (Sison and wife)

AND I mean both: as a failed revolutionary organization and in terms of its leaders. The party is 52 years old, nearly four decades more than the average 15 years it took successful revolutionary organizations elsewhere to grab state power.

The party's founder Jose Ma. Sison is 82 his life obviously extended by the comforts and health services of the Netherlands. Only Sison is left among the original dozen or so central committee members, all of whom but two Kumander Dante and former party chairman Rodolfo Salas - died violently in their youth or of old age. Its core of idealistic young people, who built it up in 1970, are all now past 70 years old.

Its last known chairman, Julius Giron, who was killed last year, was 69 years old. He had replaced the captured Benito Tiamzon, 68 years. From a party of young idealistic students barely out of their teens, the party is now a party of septuagenarians.

As happened in failed revolutions, there is no capable second generation of leaders that has emerged. Those who would have had the intellect to lead the revolution, have instead chosen to be party-list representatives reveling in public attention and enjoying taxpayers' money as "congressmen."

The party has become pathetic, as the baby boomers that led it are apparently unaware, they are in the twilight of their lives, and there is no proletarian heaven where they can be with Lenin and Mao. Many are unable to live with their grown-up children who detest them for having abandoned them to their grandparents, or fear being involved with a fugitive from the law.

Those who have become useless to the party because of old age and sickness find themselves without "retirement" pay, and of course no savings, as the organization's sources of funding from loggers and miners in the 1970s ad telecom firms have dried up. There are no homes for the elderly for retired cadres.

While I detest this organization for the crimes it has and continues to commit against the nation, I still felt a tinge of sadness reading recently of the death of three communist leaders I had met when I was still with the organization.

Antonio Cabanatan and his wife Florenda Yap were killed back in November although it was only announced as no relatives claimed his body and of his wife in March when the military found out who he was. "Tonycab" was 74, his wife 65. The police claimed they were killed by burglars. The party claimed they were tortured and killed by the military, and they had "retired" from the organization in 2017. Cabanatan was nearly legendary in Central Visayas in the 1970s. He was a hunchback five feet tall, yet was an agile NPA commander.

The other day the military announced the killing - also in the Visayas, which appears to be the dwindling epicenter of the communist insurgency - of Rey Bocala and former priest Rustico Tan, known to have been ranking communist leaders but which the party claimed had already retired; Bocala was 75, Tan, 80 years.

Revolutionary organizations are living organisms, having their periods of youth and adulthood. After that, they either die if they lose to the government, or if they win, they transform into a different entity, the core of governments.

Lenin joined the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party in 1901: in 17 years, he was in power. The Chinese Communist Party fought for 22 years to win power in 1949. Fidel Castro's guerrillas toppled the Batista regime in six years. The Vietnamese Workers Party fought for 16 years, even against the most powerful nation on earth, the US, and won in 1975. The longest running Marxist revolutionary organization has been the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia which emerged in 1964. It entered into a peace agreement with the government only in 2013, and in 2017 ceased to be an armed group.

Sison's Communist Party has been organizing and killing Filipinos for 52 years. Can't these communists find some sanity left in their brains to realize they are defeated, and have become a zombie organization, surviving because the past four administrations had given it hope? Aren't the 50,000 Filipinos they slaughtered on the altar of the failed god communism enough?

If Sison were to find in his heart a shred of patriotism and morality or in his mind an ember of reason, he should call for the disbandment of the party, or at least the total cessation of its armed struggle. The old 1950s leaders of the old pro-Soviet Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas did.

Spare the lives of young people who you know will only die in some godforsaken jungle or in prisons while you enjoy the affluence of Utrech, Mr. Sison.

Email: tiglao.manilatimes@gmail.com

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The Communist Party is dying of old age - The Manila Times

In a square in front of a Communist Party memorial hall at Xibaipo in northern China, row upon row of party members stood, raised their fists and chanted the party oath in unison.

"I will never betray the party," they called out, facing statues of the People's Republic of China founder Mao Zedong and other revolutionary leaders before moving on, to be quickly replaced by another group.

Xibaipo was an important Communist Party base during China's civil war, which ended in 1949 with the victorious communists sweeping to power.

Earlier this month, it was a stop on a four-day government-organised media tour to some of the party's most important historical sites to mark the 100th anniversary of its founding on July 1.

Thirteen delegates, including Mao, attended the first congress in Shanghai in 1921 to set up the party.

Party researchers and officials told Reuters the large numbers of visitors at Xibaipo reflects a national push to get people, especially party members and cadres, to get involved with the upcoming anniversary.

Schools are also taking part. At Xibaipo, in Hebei province, a large group of students was lined up, given small national flags and told to recite their Communist Youth League oaths, just as the senior party members were doing.

"I feel I'm taking on a responsibility to strive for the realisation of communism," said Mao Weijia, 17, a high school pupil from Hebei. "As a young person entering adulthood, I carry the future of our motherland."

The idea of the motherland also featured in Yanan, the city in northwest China mythologised in party history as the birthplace of the revolution where Mao cemented his authority as party leader. Students were seen being asked to recite the patriotic song "Ode to the Motherland" by a tour guide.

The guide, who only gave his last name as Gao, said students are brought to such sites so they understand at an early age "our proletarian forefathers' spirit of hard work and struggle".

Among the adult visitors, many, such as Zhang Zhaoyang from Hunan province, said they were in Yanan as part of a "red tourism" or party-building trip organised by their party unit or employer.

Visitors are seen in front of a giant emblem of the Communist Party of China, ahead of the 100th founding anniversary of the party, during a government-organised tour at Nanniwan, a former revolutionary base of the party, in Yanan, Shaanxi province, China May 11, 2021. REUTERS/Tingshu Wang

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"We take party-building activities very seriously. It is the leadership of the Communist Party that gives us happiness," Zhang, 50, said.

'UNMATCHED CORE'

The push to study the party's history this year is a boon to tourism in red tourist hot spots like Yanan and Xibaipo, say officials. But the trend is not new.

Before the pandemic, tourism in Yanan grew consistently, officials said, from 40.25 million visitors in 2016 to 73.08 million in 2019.

Nationwide, the drive to step up patriotic sentiment in part through party study has been a theme since Xi Jinping became China's leader nearly a decade ago, said Xu Jia, a researcher at the CPC Central Committee's Institute of Party History and Literature.

The push is aimed "to increase cohesion in the country", at a time when China faces challenges such as the recent trade war with the United States, Xu said.

At Yanan's China Executive Leadership Academy, one of several across the country where senior officials study the party and its history, academy Vice Director Li Guoxi explained the chief aim of their courses.

"In our cadres' education and training, we emphasise loyalty, honesty, and responsibility, but loyalty is the No.1 requirement, the priority," Li said.

Many here expressed confidence for the future of the party, which includes roughly 90 million members among China's population of 1.4 billion.

"For the next 100 years, I don't believe the Chinese people will change to another party," said Feng Jianmei, who teaches at the academy.

"It won't happen because the Chinese Communist Party has proven to the world and especially the Chinese people with 100 years of magnificent achievements that it provides an unmatched core of leadership."

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Chinese visit 'red' sites ahead of 100th Communist Party anniversary - Reuters