Spark
In Defense of Marxist-Leninism
Breathing on the Embers
Five years ago, the Marxist-Leninist Faction was young and untested. Now, on the eve of the transition from the present government to another, it can point to its record. Workers in the Republic are freer than ever before in the only sense that matters: the real, material sense. The shortening of the working day has increased the amount of time to which workers can devote to politics, to leisure, and to their families, by twenty percent. We have ensured that those unable to find work, or unable to work, can live with dignity. And both these groups have shrunk, all while the productivity and reach of the Republic’s industry have grown.
And we propose to further increase the real, material freedom of workers by further shortening the working day by further seventeen percent. We propose a better life for both active and down on their luck workers by raising the minimum wage and unemployment subsides. We are the only faction that proposes all three such reforms: without the other two, any one reform would be meaningless, favoring one subset of workers over the whole working class. The whole Marxist-Leninist faction can only abhor and oppose this bourgeois division of workers.
The workers recognize that we fight in their interests: five years ago the Marxist-Leninists were the most popular faction among the working class, and our popularity has only grown since. Workers appreciate the real, material freedom they have, they bask in the glory of socialist society, and they solidarize with both the workers our Republic has been able to liberate in the past five years and those that remain beyond our reach. Indeed, this support by the workers for the Marxist-Leninist faction is only one facet of the political division in the Republic.
Five years ago, the Marxist-Leninist faction came into power not only through support of the workers, but through the support of many intellectuals in the People’s Party. Today, despite both the Majority’s and the Minority’s calls for faction discipline, many of these career politicians and intellectuals have flocked to the banner of the Independent faction. This was to be expected, and indeed the Minority warned the Majority of this possibility. It was to be expected because of the remnants of bourgeois ideology within the People’s Party, and because of the opportunism of the renegade Liebknecht.
In the People’s Party, ideological freedom is cherished above real, material freedom: though the Minority criticized the censoring of the Anarchist press from a strategic standpoint, we recognize that material freedom is more important than the right of elite intellectuals within the People’s Party to pontificate. And let’s be honest. Under the old press system, the fact is that the factions and the Unions were printing by far the vast majority of the papers. The workers’ political education takes place in discussion circles and People’s Party meetings, perhaps informed by the papers, perhaps not. What was destroyed was in fact a part of the Anarchist faction’s ability to make war on the Republic, not ideological diversity within the working class, nor the freedom of that class.
During the governing term of our faction, the Minority put great emphasis on the importance of discipline, on the fortitude to back the only faction that was really fighting for the material liberation of the working class. We see now that many intellectuals in the People’s Party, still infected with bourgeois ideology, do not possess that discipline in any important degree. The renegade Liebknecht has no vestige of that discipline whatsoever. The man has never committed to a program for the emancipation for the working class, but has flitted around from his own private sphere, to the United Front, to this new Independent monstrosity faction, ever seeking one thing: power for himself. His base appeals to the lowest bourgeois instincts within the People’s Party may yet catapult this consummate opportunist into power. The courting of the Union leadership by the Independent faction—which even the Anarchists have rejected as anti-worker—further showcases the perfidy of that faction.
The policies of the Independent faction make manifest the opportunism of its leadership. By pushing for a reduction in the working day without a consummate increase in the minimum wage they decrease, in reality, the purchasing power of the Republic’s workers. It is in fact an attack on the living conditions of the working class disguised as a benevolent social reform. And by not pushing for a rise in subsidies for unemployed or disabled workers they attack the class consciousness that binds these people into the working class, introducing a bourgeois division into the working class. Do not fall for it, comrades! The workers have not.
Vote with the workers. Vote for real liberation. Vote against bourgeois ideology. Vote against opportunism. Vote for the Marxist-Leninists, ballot line 2.
- Comrade Zimmerwald