Let the ruling classes tremble – an Interactive Revolutionary AAR

[Vivern]

I was one of those who supported freedom of Africa, but this independence must be proclaimed not in the name of pan-African national identity but in the name of efficiency and only at the time when Africa will be ready and there would not be risk of revolts and civil war.
Do not support National Communists, they are spreading harmfull ideas.

[Tommy4ever]

The Berlin Guardian was a pro-National Communist newspaper based in Berlin. It had enjoyed significant regional popularity in the city and in Brandenburg since the 1870s but turned national in the early days of the 20th century as it gained support from
the National Communists. By 1905 it was the 5th most circulated paper behind Spark (by far the most circulated), Truth (the state run paper), the Anarchist Zeal and Unity (an anti-Leninist paper that generally supported any faction that could damage the Marxists).

In early January the Berlin Guardian published a speech delivered by the pro-National Communist economist Keynes upon her return from a 2 year mission to Africa.

The Berlin Guardian

Africa

I can only shake my head in wonder at how Marxist party members call for the heads of the National Communists but we are named extremists for opening our eyes and seeing the world as it is rather then as we wish it to be. And I really wonder, what party member has standing to call me an extremist? I have stood against the left when they were tyrants and I have stood against the right when they were terrorists. At every turn I have denounced violence and called for peace and cooperation between workers. Time and again I have cried out "STOP!" as our leadership has plunged into some foolhardy scheme. As then I have sadly gazed upon the wreckage in the aftermath as our leaders returned to Cologne to congratulate themselves and pin medals for the glory of their destruction.

I expect no justice in this life and expect nothing of the next. But I know that truth exists and I will stand for truth no matter what comes to pass. And there is a truth that I will tell, no matter how deaf your ears are to it. Call me an extremist, but I will only say it all the louder! I have seen Africa in a way that none of you comfortable socialists of Cologne ever have. You all are well aware that I have been honored for my works on the continent. I have seen the shantytowns. I have walked the villages. And I have to laugh at those of you say we should not create a nation of Africa. Comrades, a nation of Africa already exists!

I have seen this nation with my own eyes, not a government or a revolution, but a people! A people who are more diverse then any people in history, but united all the same by a common experience. Theirs is the most exciting sight I have ever seen, a society building itself from nothing. You speak of them as if they had just escaped from barbarism. What little barbarism existed in Africa was among the old kingdoms and those are only memories. Most Africans never knew anything other then the very utopia that communism seeks. They have found it not in the technology or industry we have shared with them, but in the society that they themselves had long before we came.

Comrades, it is Europe, not Africa, that is barely escaping from barbarism. We are the continent that has allowed war to completely structure our society time and time again. We are the continent that allowed feudalism and capitalism to control every aspect of our lives. We took the cause of peace and bastardized it to the cause of worst war mankind has ever seen. Comrades, we are a very strange and alien people to the Africans. And of late, I find it very hard to not share their viewpoint.

Some say that allowing the Africans to control their own affairs will delay the coming of a stateless society. How little they know! The Africans, Comrades, understand a stateless society far better then we do. The state is in everything we do. It is not just in our factories and our hospital, it is in our speech and our thoughts. We consider it only natural that Cologne will be the center of the world. What an absurd notion for a socialist to accept but it is implicit in our actions. No, it is the Africans, to whom the government is nothing more then how they treat their community who are already living with no state except that which we impose on them. When the African people create their own nation, it will mark the days of the first stateless societies on earth. For in parts of Africa we will find people who are freed of poverty by industry but have inherited the feudal or bourgeois notions of class or imperialism. The day we have been hoping for is finally at hand!

Governing Africa from Cologne is senseless. From first hand experience I can tell you that Cologne governs very little. The real work is already done on the continent. All that is left is to stop imposing our will on a people who no more understand it then we understand the communism they already live. They do not understand our wars, fought between nations they have never cared about. They do not understand why their industry is shackled to plans from Cologne they dont need. And they dont understand why they must wait for a communist state that they are already capable of. Comrades, the simple truth is that the Africans are ready and willing to make a nation of their own tomorrow and that speaks volumes.

Comrades. It is time to bring a communist, stateless society to life. We have a choice. History can look back at us with pride at having established the first communist state in our time. Or we will be reviled as the fools who stood in the way of African nationalism just as the princes stood in the way as socialism. We will be the heroes who realized the dreams of Marx or we will be the fools who created conflict between socialist nations. Let us show wisdom, comrades, and bring mankind one step closer to the communist ideal.

- Comrade Keynes, Honorary Hero of the VSVR for her work in Africa

[Konnigratz]

If we had "saw the world as it is rather than as we want it to be", we would never have overthrown the oppressors in 1848. Socialism would never have come to the continent. We strive to eliminate the disgusting aspects of society, such as nationalism, not to tolerate and embrace them!

(( A good article nonetheless, even if I strongly disagree with it. ))

[Enewald]

Fact being, this 'Afrika', is not ruled by Africans nor populated by Africans.
Germans are everywhere there and are the majority.
The local populations, have 'disappeared'.

Afrika is more German than Poland, Danmark, Wallonia or Böhmen.

How ironic is it that Colonia Agrippina should rule Colonia Afrika?

[yourworstnightm]

It's not that Africa don't have feudalism. "Glares at Ethiopia and Sokoto".
Free the slaves and serfs of the African Barbarian Kingdoms and help them to join the World Proletariat NOW!!!
Ok, Ethiopia is already anal raped by Egypt, another evil Barbarian Imperialist Feudalist Power!! Crush them now!!

[Seek75]

Fact being, this 'Afrika', is not ruled by Africans nor populated by Africans.
Germans are everywhere there and are the majority.
The local populations, have 'disappeared'.

Afrika is more German than Poland, Danmark, Wallonia or Böhmen.

How ironic is it that Colonia Agrippina should rule Colonia Afrika?

The Germans in Africa are supposed to be German-speaking Africans, Enewald. So Africans are still the majority, whereas white workers are 10-20% of the population.

[Enewald]

The Germans in Africa are supposed to be German-speaking Africans, Enewald. So Africans are still the majority, whereas white workers are 10-20% of the population.

'Supposed'... Europeans moving to America are supposed to be European, or become Indian natives?
Russians moving to Siberia become Siberian, deserving their own state?

Where-ever we spread our glorious cultures, we destroy everything that was before us.
There is no Africa. It is a German colony.
Words do not change the fact. So, whose idea was it in in the first place to contaminate Africa?
If we had not killed/integrated/re-educated/educated/civilized/revolutionized/liberated the Africans, the French or the Englishmen would have done it.

One state for Germans, one for Russians, one for the French, one for Finns, one for Italians, one for each culture that dominates one area.
The black Africans no longer make the majority of the local populations, it is a part of the German Empire now.

Did I say German Empire?

Yes.

[Communard]

'Supposed'... Europeans moving to America are supposed to be European, or become Indian natives?
Russians moving to Siberia become Siberian, deserving their own state?

Where-ever we spread our glorious cultures, we destroy everything that was before us.
There is no Africa. It is a German colony.
Words do not change the fact. So, whose idea was it in in the first place to contaminate Africa?
If we had not killed/integrated/re-educated/educated/civilized/revolutionized/liberated the Africans, the French or the Englishmen would have done it.

One state for Germans, one for Russians, one for the French, one for Finns, one for Italians, one for each culture that dominates one area.
The black Africans no longer make the majority of the local populations, it is a part of the German Empire now.

Did I say German Empire?

Yes.

No. They are black Africans who speak German. ((You're arguing with the Word of God - Tommy - here ))

[Enewald]

No. They are black Africans who speak German. ((You're arguing with the Word of God - Tommy - here ))

Jsut because Tommy says Germans are black, does not make them Africans.

[Phalanxia]

Oh man two of my favourite things, the Guardian (neatly relocated to Berlin rather than Cologne, I like that) AND Keynes! Thanks Tommy!

EDIT: Oh wait, the Guardian supports the N-Cs! What a fantastic subversion of reality!

[Tommy4ever]

Spark

Prescriptions for Strategy

The Great War achieved many things. The capitalists created the greatest barbarity known to humanity, offering up their workers in chains by the millions while our brave Red Army soldiers fought, tears in their eyes, through them to get at their masters. They succeeded in the end, as the forces of progress must always do when faced by reaction, and out of their struggle emerged the liberation of millions more people in France, Russia, and South America. But politically, the Great War finally laid bare the essential contradiction between capitalism and communism. Prior to the War one could pretend with credibility, as did Bernstein in our Republic as well as the British and American social democrats, that there could be rapprochement between capitalist and communist powers, that two antagonistic social systems could exist side by side in peace. Goldman claims just this today, and is laughed off the street whenever she ventures outside her faction’s strongholds. Such was the political change wrought by the War.

The capitalists in Britain and the United States understand this just as well as the Marxists. They understood that, despite their social democrats’ pacifism, they would be forced to choose between defending the capitalist states in which they resided, or advancing international socialism. They feared that the progressive influence of Cologne would overcome the social democrats’ instincts, inculcated in them by the bourgeoisie, to defend their fatherlands. Thus they unleashed bloody repression on anything and anybody that smacked of socialism. Now there are four socialist parties in Britain and America: two, socialist only in name, in bed with the capitalist elites, and two alternately in prison or in hiding. For the purposes of the international revolution, Labour and the American Socialist Party offer no perspectives for the future. It is the tasks of American and British communists to build new organizations that can withstand enforced clandestinity and still influence and lead the mass workers’ movements in their respective countries. It is the Communist International’s task to aid in the reconstruction of American and British socialism. For now, however, we must reluctantly cede America and Britain to the capitalists.

Discouraged readers will want to know if there is any fertile ground for revolution left in the world. We would like to reassure them that there is, but only if the Communist International does its utmost to nurture its development. In China, for instance, there is a strong Communist party. However, it has begun down the road of opportunism by joining the national-liberal Koumintang, lending socialist legitimacy to a fundamentally bourgeois party and befuddling the workers away from itself and into the lap of Dr. Sun. Unfortunately, this situation will take much work to remedy, and due to the influence of the Soviet Union on developments in China, it will take time for our Republic to make its voice heard. For the time being we must push for the greatest possible autonomy of the Communist Party within the Koumintang. For it to maintain its membership in that party the Communists must be able to organize as a bloc within it, to publish their own propaganda, and to maintain their own armed wing. Anything less amounts to liquidation of the Communist party and the guillotining of the Chinese proletariat. Direct VSVR intervention in China is impractical for now, but we should work with Plekhanov to station Red Army forces on Soviet soil so that the Red and Soviet Armies can strike at China in unison with a Chinese uprising, in accordance with Plekhanovist thought on revolution. In all our dealings in this matter we must be comradely, but firm. We have sixty years of revolutionary experience behind us: let that fact take the place of bluster and bombast.

While in China the Troika allowed the Soviet Union to monopolize the development of the International’s policy, the movement in northern Latin America is much younger and hitherto unguided by the International. Zapata looks to our Republic for aid, and we must answer. Let us remember that the liberation of Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, Ecuador, Argentina, and Chile was achieved in cooperation between the peoples of those countries and our Republic. It was Luxemburg who gave the Chileans the money and arms needed to make their revolution. It was Trotsky who, by distracting the capitalist powers in the Great War, allowed the people of Brazil to overthrow their tyrant Emperor. Let us now complete what they began by sponsoring the liberation of Mexico, Central America, Colombia, and Venezuela from capitalism.

For a red Latin America in five years. For a red China in ten. For a red world in twenty, vote Marxist, Ballot Line 4.

-Comrade Zimmerwald

[Gergenuss]

For the first time ever will i vote for the Marxists

[Mr. Sometimes]

Excellent article by Comrade Zimmerwald!

Why isn't he chairman yet?

[keynes2.0]

Oh man two of my favourite things, the Guardian (neatly relocated to Berlin rather than Cologne, I like that) AND Keynes! Thanks Tommy!

EDIT: Oh wait, the Guardian supports the N-Cs! What a fantastic subversion of reality!

Wrong keynes, mate.

[Vivern]

I agree with Keynes that more effective would be to run African economy from Africa, but for now it can make a lot of harm, to free this territory, we must think about widening autonomy of region, but we must not stimulate and praise nationalistic ideas.

[Lenin Cat]

What are the polls currently at?


The National Communists dont seem to understand one of the secondary goals of socialism, the abolition of the notions of nation, and race for one giant melting pot of socialist cultures.

[thekonkoe]

Socialism is internationalist, it is not necessarily anti-nationalist. Does that convey the distinction. The earliest government we had was the German Socialists, nationalists. Socialist countries can be nationalist as well, the two are not mutually exclusive. This is the central promise of the National Communists, their domestic politics, there need be no contradiction between being nationalist and being internationalist. A fabric worker may be part of a union that aid his fellow fabric workers, but he can also be proud of his individual factory and the quality of its fabric, he can be proud to produce a better quality of fabric, or to produce fabric more quickly. The mindset put forth by the NC's even provides a motivation for the more cynical worker to try and excel at his job for reasons other than to aid other workers. He tries to improve himself, because he is engaged in harmless competition with his fellow workers to better serve the revolution.

EDIT: (The last part assumed that Marxists, like Marxist economists accept the model of man as a rational consumer. This may not always be the case, and has several caveats, but I find it hard to imagine that we would be the world's largest economy without using this tenet in some form or another.) (By this model competition is inherent in th market, but socialism redistributes the output of the economy.)

[LeCare]

What are the polls currently at?


The National Communists dont seem to understand one of the secondary goals of socialism, the abolition of the notions of nation, and race for one giant melting pot of socialist cultures.

Well, I have to say that a case can be made that continously splitting the world into ever smaller divisions should also end in a stateless society (first divide it on ethnical lines, then geographic lines, then into kilometer squares (or whatever), then into parcels, then into collectives and then every person gets to be his own state and then the state is abolished)

However, this would only work once Britain and their navy dont have the opportunity anymore to bully little states around, which means that even if the NC way of dividing the world is not completely wrong, it would only work once the World Republic is here, and once that is here the state can be abolished right away anyways.

So Trotsky's approach is simply a timesaver

[Enewald]

Excellent article by Comrade Zimmerwald!

Why isn't he chairman yet?

Because he is not a young Russian immigrant that appears in a Kölsch bar?

[Brin Milo]

If only the NatComs weren't regionalists.

Marxists