Military Resistance: thomasfbarton@earthlink.net 11.15.15 Print it out: color best. Pass it on. Military Resistance 13K7 [Thanks to SSG N (ret d) who sent this in. She writes: Who'd a thunkit? ] Paris: Individual Terror Is Inadmissible Because It Belittles The Role Of The Masses In Their Own Consciousness; Reconciles Them To Their Powerlessness In Place Of Kindled Hopes And Artificially Aroused Excitement
Comes Disillusionment And Apathy The Police Repression Grows More Savage And Brazen If We Oppose Terrorist Acts, It Is Because Individual Revenge Does Not Satisfy Us The Account We Have To Settle With The Capitalist System Is Too Great Paris: Comment T The article below may be a useful reminder of the futility of individual terrorism. It was written against terrorism practiced by anarchist political tendencies who thought killing this or that politician would serve some useful purpose. It is not directly on point with current events in Paris. Those attacks were not conducted by anarchists, but by stupid cowards. Cowards for choosing as their target unarmed civilians, rather than any part of the political leadership or armed departments of the French government, which is even now sending French soldiers on assorted Imperial missions in Africa and the Mid-East. As the article below discusses, even a less cowardly choice of target would still have been futile, useless, pointless; demoralizing forces fighting for human liberation. And stupid for failing to care how their attack will play into the hands of Imperial governments, opening the door for even more police repression everywhere in general, and even more police repression in particular against all those who reactionary regimes and politicians choose to label Islamic. There are already howls from politicians demanding further repression of Islamic extremists. The stupid cowards who conducted the attack serve our enemies.
They, and the oligarchs who now control every society on earth, without exception, are twisted mirror images of each other: brainless, deadly, reactionary, without honor or common decency, no longer serving any useful purpose, and overdue for extinction. *************************************************************************************** By Leon Trotsky; Originally published in German in Der Kampf, November 1911 Our class enemies are in the habit of complaining about our terrorism. What they mean by this is rather unclear. They would like to label all the activities of the proletariat directed against the class enemy s interests as terrorism. The strike, in their eyes, is the principal method of terrorism. The threat of a strike, the organisation of strike pickets, an economic boycott of a slave-driving boss, a moral boycott of a traitor from our own ranks all this and much more they call terrorism. If terrorism is understood in this way as any action inspiring fear in, or doing harm to, the enemy, then of course the entire class struggle is nothing but terrorism. And the only question remaining is whether the bourgeois politicians have the right to pour out their flood of moral indignation about proletarian terrorism when their entire state apparatus with its laws, police and army is nothing but an apparatus for capitalist terror! However, it must be said that when they reproach us with terrorism, they are trying although not always consciously to give the word a narrower, less indirect meaning. The damaging of machines by workers, for example, is terrorism in this strict sense of the word. The killing of an employer, a threat to set fire to a factory or a death threat to its owner, an assassination attempt, with revolver in hand, against a government minister all these are terrorist acts in the full and authentic sense. However, anyone who has an idea of the true nature of international Social Democracy ought to know that it has always opposed this kind of terrorism and does so in the most irreconcilable way. Why? Terrorising with the threat of a strike, or actually conducting a strike is something only industrial workers can do. The social significance of a strike depends directly upon first, the size of the enterprise or the branch of industry that it affects, and second, the degree to which the workers taking part in it are organised, disciplined, and ready for action. This is just as true of a political strike as it is for an economic one. It continues to be the method of struggle that flows directly from the productive role of the proletariat in modern society.
In order to develop, the capitalist system needs a parliamentary superstructure. But because it cannot confine the modern proletariat to a political ghetto, it must sooner or later allow the workers to participate in parliament. In elections, the mass character of the proletariat and its level of political development quantities which, again, are determined by its social role, i.e. above all, its productive role find their expression. As in a strike, so in elections the method, aim, and result of the struggle always depend on the social role and strength of the proletariat as a class. Only the workers can conduct a strike. Artisans ruined by the factory, peasants whose water the factory is poisoning, or lumpen proletarians in search of plunder can smash machines, set fire to a factory, or murder its owner. Only the conscious and organised working class can send a strong representation into the halls of parliament to look out for proletarian interests. However, in order to murder a prominent official you need not have the organised masses behind you. The recipe for explosives is accessible to all, and a Browning can be obtained anywhere. In the first case, there is a social struggle, whose methods and means flow necessarily from the nature of the prevailing social order; and in the second, a purely mechanical reaction identical anywhere in China as in France very striking in its outward form (murder, explosions and so forth) but absolutely harmless as far as the social system goes. A strike, even of modest size, has social consequences: strengthening of the workers self-confidence, growth of the trade union, and not infrequently even an improvement in productive technology. The murder of a factory owner produces effects of a police nature only, or a change of proprietors devoid of any social significance. Whether a terrorist attempt, even a successful one throws the ruling class into confusion depends on the concrete political circumstances. In any case the confusion can only be shortlived; the capitalist state does not base itself on government ministers and cannot be eliminated with them. The classes it serves will always find new people; the mechanism remains intact and continues to function. But the disarray introduced into the ranks of the working masses themselves by a terrorist attempt is much deeper. If it is enough to arm oneself with a pistol in order to achieve one s goal, why the efforts of the class struggle? If a thimbleful of gunpowder and a little chunk of lead is enough to shoot the enemy through the neck, what need is there for a class organisation? If it makes sense to terrify highly placed personages with the roar of explosions, where is the need for the party?
Why meetings, mass agitation and elections if one can so easily take aim at the ministerial bench from the gallery of parliament? In our eyes, individual terror is inadmissible precisely because it belittles the role of the masses in their own consciousness, reconciles them to their powerlessness, and turns their eyes and hopes towards a great avenger and liberator who some day will come and accomplish his mission. The anarchist prophets of the propaganda of the deed can argue all they want about the elevating and stimulating influence of terrorist acts on the masses. Theoretical considerations and political experience prove otherwise. The more effective the terrorist acts, the greater their impact, the more they reduce the interest of the masses in self-organisation and self-education. But the smoke from the confusion clears away, the panic disappears, the successor of the murdered minister makes his appearance, life again settles into the old rut, the wheel of capitalist exploitation turns as before; only the police repression grows more savage and brazen. And as a result, in place of the kindled hopes and artificially aroused excitement comes disillusionment and apathy. The efforts of reaction to put an end to strikes and to the mass workers movement in general have always, everywhere, ended in failure. Capitalist society needs an active, mobile and intelligent proletariat; it cannot, therefore, bind the proletariat hand and foot for very long. On the other hand, the anarchist propaganda of the deed has shown every time that the state is much richer in the means of physical destruction and mechanical repression than are the terrorist groups. If that is so, where does it leave the revolution? Is it rendered impossible by this state of affairs? Not at all. For the revolution is not a simple aggregate of mechanical means. The revolution can arise only out of the sharpening of the class struggle, and it can find a guarantee of victory only in the social functions of the proletariat. The mass political strike, the armed insurrection, the conquest of state power all this is determined by the degree to which production has been developed, the alignment of class forces, the proletariat s social weight, and finally, by the social composition of the army, since the armed forces are the factor that in time of revolution determines the fate of state power. Social Democracy is realistic enough not to try to avoid the revolution that is developing out of the existing historical conditions; on the contrary, it is moving to meet the revolution with eyes wide open. But contrary to the anarchists and in direct struggle against them Social Democracy rejects all methods and means that have as their goal to artificially force the development of society and to substitute chemical preparations for the insufficient revolutionary strength of the proletariat.
Before it is elevated to the level of a method of political struggle, terrorism makes its appearance in the form of individual acts of revenge. So it was in Russia, the classic land of terrorism. The flogging of political prisoners impelled Vera Zasulich to give expression to the general feeling of indignation by an assassination attempt on General Trepov. Her example was imitated in the circles of the revolutionary intelligentsia, who lacked any mass support. What began as an act of unthinking revenge was developed into an entire system in 1879-81. The outbreaks of anarchist assassination in Western Europe and North America always come after some atrocity committed by the government the shooting of strikers or executions of political opponents. The most important psychological source of terrorism is always the feeling of revenge in search of an outlet. There is no need to belabour the point that Social Democracy has nothing in common with those bought-and-paid-for moralists who, in response to any terrorist act, make solemn declarations about the absolute value of human life. These are the same people who, on other occasions, in the name of other absolute values for example, the nation s honour or the monarch s prestige are ready to shove millions of people into the hell of war. Today their national hero is the minister who gives the sacred right of private property; and tomorrow, when the desperate hand of the unemployed workers is clenched into a fist or picks upon a weapon, they will start in with all sorts of nonsense about the inadmissibility of violence in any form. Whatever the eunuchs and pharisees of morality may say, the feeling of revenge has its rights. It does the working class the greatest moral credit that it does not look with vacant indifference upon what is going on in this best of all possible worlds. Not to extinguish the proletariat s unfulfilled feeling of revenge, but on the contrary to stir it up again and again, to deepen it, and to direct it against the real causes of all injustice and human baseness that is the task of the Social Democracy. If we oppose terrorist acts, it is only because individual revenge does not satisfy us. The account we have to settle with the capitalist system is too great to be presented to some functionary called a minister. To learn to see all the crimes against humanity, all the indignities to which the human body and spirit are subjected, as the twisted outgrowths and expressions of the existing social system, in order to direct all our energies into a collective struggle against this system that is the direction in which the burning desire for revenge can find its highest moral satisfaction.
YOUR INVITATION: Comments, arguments, articles, and letters from service men and women, and veterans, are especially welcome. Write to Box 126, 2576 Broadway, New York, N.Y. 10025-5657 or email contact@militaryproject.org: Name, I.D., withheld unless you request publication. Same address to unsubscribe. AFGHANISTAN WAR REPORTS 65 Security Force Members Surrender To Helmand Taliban: A Woman Whose Son Is Serving Claims Her Son And His Colleagues Have Been Surrounded By The Taliban For 15 Days The President And The Army Should Wake Up And Stop Victimizing Our Sons 14 November 2015 by Tamim Hamid, TOLONews At least 65 Afghan security force members reportedly surrendered to the Taliban in southern Helmand province on Friday, local officials said. Mirza Rahimi, the provincial governor, said at a press conference on Saturday that 65 Afghan security force members including three commanders surrendered in Sangin district, and that the situation is under control in the district. Eighty five Afghan security force members and three civilians were also killed in clashes, he said. More troops have arrived and we have started military operations in Marjah district and the forces have re-taken control of most of the areas which were under control of insurgents but clashes continue.
But provincial council officials rejected these claims and said so far no operation has been launch in Marjah. However, the officials said that heavy clashes are also ongoing in the capital of Sangin district but so far no reports of casualties has emerged A woman whose son is serving on the frontline with the Afghan National Army (ANA) claims her son and his colleagues have been surrounded by the Taliban for 15 days. She said she has knocked on the doors of several government offices but no one has addressed her pleas. She said that now she wants to raise her voice through the media. The president (Ashraf Ghani), Dr. Abdullah (the CEO) and the army should wake up and stop victimizing our sons, Bibi Hanifa told TOLOnews. MORE: Taliban Close To Taking Over Key Afghan District: As Many As 70 Government Soldiers Surrender Along With Five Armored Personnel Carriers, Weapons And Ammunition; The Taliban Welcomed Them By Slaughtering Two Sheep For A Feast NOV. 13, 2015 By JOSEPH GOLDSTEIN, New York Times & Ayaz Gul, VOANews.com KABUL, Afghanistan A crucial district in Afghanistan s southern Helmand Province is close to falling to the Taliban after three days of heavy fighting left more than 85 Afghan troops dead, government officials said Friday night. Taliban fighters now occupy part of the bazaar in the Sangin district and have their sights set on seizing the district s main government compound, said Hajji Mohammad Attal, who is head of the local provincial council. The Sangin district had long been the one of the deadliest places in Afghanistan for the British and American troops who fought for years to push out the Taliban. A member of the Sangin district council, Hajji Shadi Khan, said that as many as 70 government soldiers defending the area surrendered on Thursday night to the Taliban, who welcomed them by slaughtering two sheep for a feast.
A Taliban spokesman, Qari Yusuf Ahmadi, said five Afghan national army commanders are among the soldiers who repented their mistakes and surrendered to Mujahideen (Taliban fighters) along with five armored personnel carriers, weapons and ammunition. Freed Hostages Claim Taliban Freed Them, Not Govt 14 November 2015 Written by Tamim Hamid, TOLONews Five of the 31 Zabul bus passengers kidnapped in February arrived in Kabul on Saturday and said it had been the Taliban who freed them from Daesh insurgents. According to one freed hostage, clashes erupted between Taliban and Daesh early this week. Taliban allegedly seized the area from Daesh and then released them, he said. The 31 Zabul bus passengers were kidnapped in February by alleged Daesh militants who had stopped several buses on the Kabul-Kandahar highway. The kidnappers reportedly took the hostages to Khak-Afghan district in Zabul. One freed hostage Mohammad Yusuf said: We were severely beaten by them (Daesh). They were very cruel to us and they often warned us that 'we will kill you'. He went on to say that Daesh militants warned: If government does not swap you we will behead you. The freed hostages said that although government claims it freed eight hostages in an operation, there were only five of them. They also rejected claims that security forces had rescued them and said the Taliban freed them following a clash with Daesh. Another freed hostage Khuda Bakhsh said: We were freed by Taliban. We were moved by the Taliban to another place where they gave us a key to unlock our handcuffs. The five hostages were part of a group of 31 bus passengers kidnapped in February. One was released hours later and 30 were held captive. Daesh militants were allegedly behind the kidnapping and are believed to have killed five hostages following the incident. Nineteen were freed in an alleged prisoner swap. Six hostages remained of which public perception was that they had been killed. However, last month another hostage was released.
On Monday the remaining five went free and were brought to Kabul on Saturday. On Tuesday, the National Directorate of Security (NDS) said in a statement that eight were freed early in the week. However, the freed hostages said it was only the five of them that were released. POLICE WAR REPORTS [Thanks to SSG N (ret d) who sent this in. She writes: Welcome home to the Military Industrial Complex. ] MILITARY RESISTANCE BY EMAIL If you wish to receive Military Resistance immediately and directly, send request to contact@militaryproject.org. There is no subscription charge. Same address to unsubscribe. MILITARY NEWS
[Thanks to SSG N (ret d) who sent this in. She writes: The invisible wounds. ] Veterans Drop Hundreds Of Empty Pill Bottles In Front Of The White House: There s Something Seriously Wrong Going On. It s Disgusting VA Hospitals Over-Medicating Veterans, Prescribing Large Number Of Psychoactive Medications To Treat PTSD Call On The President And Other Federal Officials To Make Medical Marijuana Accessible To Veterans
Army veteran Perry Parks, of Rockingham, N.C., reaches to lift a symbolic pill bottle that was dumped in front of the White House after a group of veterans and supporters of medical marijuana marched to the Department of Veterans Affairs and the White House. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post) November 11 By Perry Stein, Washington Post [Excerpts] A couple dozen servicemen and women marched to the White House this Veterans Day and dumped a large box of empty pill containers, calling on the president and other federal officials to make medical marijuana accessible to veterans. Here s what the over-medication of our veterans looks like, they said as they spilled the canisters onto the floor. We don t want it. The veterans and protesters affiliated with various veteran and marijuana advocacy organizations argued that Veterans Affairs hospitals are over-medicating veterans, prescribing them a large number of psychoactive medications to treat PTSD. They marched from McPherson Square to the Department of Veterans Affairs headquarters, then to the White House, some smoking joints along the way, which is illegal in D.C. VA health-care providers can t talk to their patients about medical marijuana options, even in states where there are legal medical marijuana programs. A bill in Congress, the Veterans Equal Access Amendment, would allow doctors to provide recommendations about participating in such state programs. There s something seriously wrong going on. It s disgusting, said Jose Martinez, 27, a triple amputee who stepped on a bomb while serving in Afghanistan in 2012. Martinez, who lives in California and works with the Weed for Warriors Project, said he was prescribed a cocktail of pills and had a debilitating pain pill addiction.
He now uses marijuana and says he no longer takes those prescribed pills. Organizers said that about 50 people slept in tents in McPherson Square on Monday and Tuesday as part of the rally. The participants outfitted McPherson Square for the rally, selling cannabis products, giving away samples and displaying photographs of veterans using marijuana. Twenty-two small American flags were planted in the ground at the front of the park, each representing a veteran to illustrate the oft-cited statistic that 22 veterans commit suicide each day. Each flag was adorned at its base with empty pill bottles and glow sticks meant to signify syringes. A larger flag at half-mast stood at the center of the park mounted to a liberty pole the same pole that local D.C. marijuana activists chained themselves to on the National Mall in April as they decried congressional meddling into D.C. s local marijuana laws. Here on Veterans Day, we have to acknowledge that this change has to happen, said Brandon Wyatt, 31, who served in Iraq for two years when he was 18 and later graduated from Howard University law school. The group is circulating a petition to President Obama and the Senate with hopes of building support for the Veterans Equal Access Amendment. The Department of Veterans Affairs didn t immediately respond to a request for comment. MORE: Texas Vets Call For Legal Medical Marijuana, End To Painkiller Dependence: We Feel Trapped By Pharmaceutical Drugs, And We Want Access To Medical Marijuana Instead Of Addictive Painkillers Unlike Painkillers And Antidepressants, Which Can Be Used To Commit Suicide
And Have Been Linked To Overdoses, Cannabis Has Never Been Known To Cause A Fatal Overdose Photo: Texans for Responsible Marijuana Policy November 11, 2015 by Wilson Dizard, Al Jazeera America United States military veterans rallied at a parade in Texas on Wednesday for the right to treat their war wounds, both physical and psychological, with medical marijuana, which remains illegal under federal law and is strictly limited in Texas. The Veterans Day protest came a day after the U.S. Senate approved a measure allowing federal Veterans Affairs doctors to prescribe medical marijuana in the District of Columbia and the 23 states that have legalized the medicinal use of cannabis. Texas allows the use of only a nonpsychoactive marijuana oil product for the treatment of severe seizures. The veterans, affiliated with pro-legalization group Texans for Responsible Marijuana Policy (TRMP), want much wider legalization, saying it could help veterans with long-term pain and psychological disorders. Texas has 1.7 million veterans, the second most number in the country, after California. Dozens of former service members from the Army, Marines, Air Force and Navy marched to press their call for change in Austin s Veteran s Day parade Wednesday. They then gathered at the Vietnam War memorial near the statehouse to announce the launch of Operation Trapped, a campaign to raise awareness of veterans hope for access to medical marijuana, both edible and smokable. We feel trapped by pharmaceutical drugs, and we want access to medical marijuana instead of addictive painkillers and psychotropic medication, said TRMP spokesman
Dave Bass, 59, a retired Army major and native Texan who served in Iraq in 2004 and 2005. For its awareness campaign, Operation Trapped seeks to collect from veterans 1,000 pill bottles that once contained painkillers, antidepressants or mood stabilizers each containing a slip of paper with the veteran s name, rank and dates of service. TRMP plans to then put toy soldiers in the bottles and present them to lawmakers at the start of the Texas state legislature s next session, starting in January 2017. The bottles are meant to show how many veterans feel trapped by the treatment options available to them in their state. We don t want to be treated as criminals, Bass said. We have jobs, we pay taxes, some of us go to universities on the GI Bill, yet Texas makes us into criminals because we choose to use medical cannabis. A Texas medical marijuana bill introduced this year failed in May in the state s House Public Health Committee, despite hours of testimony from people who said marijuana has helped alleviate their illnesses. The Texas push comes amid nationwide changes in marijuana laws, with Colorado, Oregon, Washington, Alaska and Washington, D.C., legalizing recreational possession over the last two years. In New York, veterans started a billboard campaign on Tuesday to have the plant approved for the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder when medical marijuana dispensaries open in 2016. Research has shown that medical marijuana can help soothe the side effects of cancer treatment and relieve pain. The National Institutes of Health recognizes several uses for marijuana and its extracts, and another study by the agency said marijuana shows promise in treating PTSD. Bass said many veterans in Texas use medical marijuana even though it s illegal. Smoking or eating it helps alleviate chronic pain caused by injuries suffered in battle, he said, adding that it can also help fight the recurring nightmares some veterans endure. The Department of Veterans Affairs expresses skepticism about the usefulness of marijuana to treat PTSD and said that in 2014 about 40,000 veterans showed symptoms of what it called cannabis use disorder, which it said can involve dependence on the drug. Bass said that many troops used marijuana in Iraq and Afghanistan to help manage the stress of combat. Soldiers would use hashish to try to relax between battles and combat operations because it would relax them and help them get some sleep, he said. Our medical doctors only gave us Ambien to sleep and narcotic pain medication. You wouldn t believe the number of pills I came home with.
He added that service members didn t tell doctors about smoking cannabis, fearing disciplinary action. Unlike painkillers and antidepressants, which can be used to commit suicide and have been linked to overdoses, cannabis has never been known to cause a fatal overdose. The VA, citing statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said it has found that veterans suffer almost twice the rate of fatal painkiller overdoses than nonvets. And getting those medications has become harder, after new Drug Enforcement Agency rule in 2014 restricted prescriptions in an effort to curb painkiller addiction, The Washington Post reported. Bass said medical marijuana has helped him far more than the narcotic painkillers and psychopharmacological drugs like VA doctors prescribe. Some of these pills come with severe side effects, he said. I was having terrible nightmares after returning from Iraq, he said. I had angry outbursts, paranoia. I was very isolated. I didn t want to be out with people. And then I took the psychopharmacological medication, and I felt nonfunctional. I felt like a zombie. I had suicidal ideation. Then when I switched to Prozac, it caused impotence. When I started using medical-grade cannabis, I didn t have nightmares anymore. I wasn t paranoid. I felt very comfortable. I felt like a normal person. Military Resistance In PDF Format? If you prefer PDF to Word format, email: contact@militaryproject.org FORWARD OBSERVATIONS
At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. Oh had I the ability, and could reach the nation s ear, I would, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppose. Frederick Douglass, 1852 The development of civilization and of industry in general has ever shown itself so active in the destruction of forests, that everything done by it for their preservation, compared to its destructive effect, appears infinitesimal. -- Karl Marx; Capital: A Critique Of Political Economy; Volume II; The Process Of The Circulation Of Capital Manifesto Of The Communist Party
The Executive Of The Modern State Is But A Committee For Managing The Common Affairs Of The Whole Bourgeoisie By Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, 1848 Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels Introduction: A spectre is haunting Europe the spectre of communism. All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Pope and Tsar, Metternich and Guizot, French Radicals and German police-spies. Where is the party in opposition that has not been decried as communistic by its opponents in power? Where is the opposition that has not hurled back the branding reproach of communism, against the more advanced opposition parties, as well as against its reactionary adversaries? Two things result from this fact: I. Communism is already acknowledged by all European powers to be itself a power. II. It is high time that Communists should openly, in the face of the whole world, publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the Spectre of Communism with a manifesto of the party itself. To this end, Communists of various nationalities have assembled in London and sketched the following manifesto, to be published in the English, French, German, Italian, Flemish and Danish languages. Chapter I. Bourgeois and Proletarians
[Part 1] The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes. In the earlier epochs of history, we find almost everywhere a complicated arrangement of society into various orders, a manifold gradation of social rank. In ancient Rome we have patricians, knights, plebeians, slaves; in the Middle Ages, feudal lords, vassals, guild-masters, journeymen, apprentices, serfs; in almost all of these classes, again, subordinate gradations. The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones. Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinct feature: it has simplified class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other Bourgeoisie and Proletariat. From the serfs of the Middle Ages sprang the chartered burghers of the earliest towns. From these burgesses the first elements of the bourgeoisie were developed. The discovery of America, the rounding of the Cape, opened up fresh ground for the rising bourgeoisie. The East-Indian and Chinese markets, the colonisation of America, trade with the colonies, the increase in the means of exchange and in commodities generally, gave to commerce, to navigation, to industry, an impulse never before known, and thereby, to the revolutionary element in the tottering feudal society, a rapid development. The feudal system of industry, in which industrial production was monopolised by closed guilds, now no longer sufficed for the growing wants of the new markets. The manufacturing system took its place. The guild-masters were pushed on one side by the manufacturing middle class; division of labour between the different corporate guilds vanished in the face of division of labour in each single workshop. Meantime the markets kept ever growing, the demand ever rising. Even manufacture no longer sufficed. Thereupon, steam and machinery revolutionised industrial production.
The place of manufacture was taken by the giant, Modern Industry; the place of the industrial middle class by industrial millionaires, the leaders of the whole industrial armies, the modern bourgeois. Modern industry has established the world market, for which the discovery of America paved the way. This market has given an immense development to commerce, to navigation, to communication by land. This development has, in its turn, reacted on the extension of industry; and in proportion as industry, commerce, navigation, railways extended, in the same proportion the bourgeoisie developed, increased its capital, and pushed into the background every class handed down from the Middle Ages. We see, therefore, how the modern bourgeoisie is itself the product of a long course of development, of a series of revolutions in the modes of production and of exchange. Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding political advance of that class. An oppressed class under the sway of the feudal nobility, an armed and self-governing association in the medieval commune: here independent urban republic (as in Italy and Germany); there taxable third estate of the monarchy (as in France); afterwards, in the period of manufacturing proper, serving either the semi-feudal or the absolute monarchy as a counterpoise against the nobility, and, in fact, cornerstone of the great monarchies in general, the bourgeoisie has at last, since the establishment of Modern Industry and of the world market, conquered for itself, in the modern representative State, exclusive political sway. The Executive Of The Modern State Is But A Committee For Managing The Common Affairs Of The Whole Bourgeoisie. The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary part. The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his natural superiors, and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous cash payment. It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervor, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.
The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honored and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage labourers. The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation. The bourgeoisie has disclosed how it came to pass that the brutal display of vigor in the Middle Ages, which reactionaries so much admire, found its fitting complement in the most slothful indolence. It has been the first to show what man s activity can bring about. It has accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals; it has conducted expeditions that put in the shade all former Exoduses of nations and crusades. The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind. The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere. The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world market given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country. To the great chagrin of Reactionists, it has drawn from under the feet of industry the national ground on which it stood. All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed.
They are dislodged by new industries, whose introduction becomes a life and death question for all civilised nations, by industries that no longer work up indigenous raw material, but raw material drawn from the remotest zones; industries whose products are consumed, not only at home, but in every quarter of the globe. In place of the old wants, satisfied by the production of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes. In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations. And as in material, so also in intellectual production. The intellectual creations of individual nations become common property. National one-sidedness and narrowmindedness become more and more impossible, and from the numerous national and local literatures, there arises a world literature. The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilisation. The cheap prices of commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilisation into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image. The bourgeoisie has subjected the country to the rule of the towns. It has created enormous cities, has greatly increased the urban population as compared with the rural, and has thus rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life. Just as it has made the country dependent on the towns, so it has made barbarian and semi-barbarian countries dependent on the civilised ones, nations of peasants on nations of bourgeois, the East on the West. The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the scattered state of the population, of the means of production, and of property. It has agglomerated population, centralized the means of production, and has concentrated property in a few hands. The necessary consequence of this was political centralization. Independent, or but loosely connected provinces, with separate interests, laws, governments, and systems of taxation, became lumped together into one nation, with one government, one code of laws, one national class-interest, one frontier, and one customs-tariff. The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together.
Subjection of Nature s forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam-navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalization of rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground what earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social labour? We see then: the means of production and of exchange, on whose foundation the bourgeoisie built itself up, were generated in feudal society. At a certain stage in the development of these means of production and of exchange, the conditions under which feudal society produced and exchanged, the feudal organisation of agriculture and manufacturing industry, in one word, the feudal relations of property became no longer compatible with the already developed productive forces; they became so many fetters. They had to be burst asunder; they were burst asunder. Into their place stepped free competition, accompanied by a social and political constitution adapted in it, and the economic and political sway of the bourgeois class. A similar movement is going on before our own eyes. Modern bourgeois society, with its relations of production, of exchange and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells. For many a decade past the history of industry and commerce is but the history of the revolt of modern productive forces against modern conditions of production, against the property relations that are the conditions for the existence of the bourgeois and of its rule. It is enough to mention the commercial crises that by their periodical return put the existence of the entire bourgeois society on its trial, each time more threateningly. In these crises, a great part not only of the existing products, but also of the previously created productive forces, are periodically destroyed. In these crises, there breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurdity the epidemic of over-production. Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism; it appears as if a famine, a universal war of devastation, had cut off the supply of every means of subsistence; industry and commerce seem to be destroyed; and why? Because there is too much civilisation, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce. The productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to further the development of the conditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary, they have become too powerful for these conditions, by which they are fettered, and so soon as they overcome these fetters, they bring disorder into the whole of bourgeois society, endanger the existence of bourgeois property.
The conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them. And how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On the one hand by enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the other, by the conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough exploitation of the old ones. That is to say, by paving the way for more extensive and more destructive crises, and by diminishing the means whereby crises are prevented. The weapons with which the bourgeoisie felled feudalism to the ground are now turned against the bourgeoisie itself. But not only has the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring death to itself; it has also called into existence the men who are to wield those weapons the modern working class the proletarians. RECEIVED FROM READERS RE: Military Resistance 13K6: Slaughter Day From: Daniel R To: Military Resistance Newsletter Subject: RE: Military Resistance 13K6: Slaughter Day Date: Nov 13, 2015 That's an incredible spaaaan of views and news! The quotes from Marx will have to read on the train on my cell phone. And the veteran's messages are difficult to read because one can really feel their pain. Kitty Wells I listen to regularly along with Patsy and Hank...Sr. that is. Incidentally, Venezuela's Telesur has the following article on the suicides by USA soldiers and veterans...12 daily. It has been circulated widely in Puerto Rico also by the Socialist Front on their list. And it is below with the link. [Here is the link. http://www.telesurtv.net/bloggers/-22-veteranos-de-guerra-se-suicidandiariamente-en-estados-unidos-20150209-0003.html] As you know, Puerto Ricans have been going to USA wars since 1917.
I have a very good friend who is a veteran and 50 years old and is now in San Francisco. We agree that we should spend some time in Puerto Rico next year. I have been in contact with some of the main union leaders over there as a result of the worsening economic/colonial situation. And so would like to follow-up with some concrete work over there. While he is interested in getting something going with the vets. CLASS WAR REPORTS Fast-Food Strikes Rock 270 Cities: Protests In Hundreds More Across The Country; The Largest-Ever Strike To Hit America s Fast-Food Industry November 12, 2015 by Dave Johnson, Campaign for America's Future With Tuesday marking one year before election day the Fight For $15 movement hit the fast-food industry with walkouts and protests in hundreds of U.S. cities. They hope to get presidential candidates talking about raising the minimum wage.
The Fight For $15 movement has two demands. The first, a $15 minimum wage. The second, the right to be represented by a union. The mayor of Pittsburgh responded by announcing that all city workers will get a $15 minimum wage. The movement has seen other successes with several cities passing minimum wage hikes in response. The #FightFor$15 movement has organized walkouts in 270 cities with protests taking place in those and hundreds more across the country. The #FightFor15 movement is fighting for a $15 minimum wage and the right for all people to organize or join a union without getting fired for doing it. A few reports from across the country: Detroit Free Press: Detroit fast-food workers strike for $15-an-hour wage : About 200 workers protested in the dark as cold rain fell outside a McDonald s in Detroit this morning, demanding the fast-food company supersize their check as part of a national effort aimed at drawing attention to a minimum wage of at least $15 an hour and better benefits. I m here to fight for $15 and a union, said Lakecha Jackson, 37, a Detroit mother of two young daughters who earns $8 an hour and has been working at the McDonald s at 15501 Plymouth where the protesters gathered. That would be a lot for me.
Chicago news outlet Fox32 reports: Tuesday morning, hourly wage earners are taking their fight for a raise to the streets, when walkouts took place in more than 270 cities. Chicago fast-food cooks and cashiers joined the largest-ever strike to hit America s fastfood industry on Tuesday, November 10. According to a report, there are about 2.5 million workers in Illinois who are paid less than $15 per hour. Orlando Sentinel: Supporters rally across state and nation in Fight for $15 In Central Florida home to the lowest median wage of any major metropolitan area in the country several events are scheduled, including a 6 a.m. strike line at the McDonald s at 4066 South Semoran Blvd. in Orlando and a noon strike line at the McDonald s at 719 West Vine St. in Kissimmee. Fight for $15 volunteers, Congressional District 9 candidate Susannah Randolph and Osceola County Commissioner Michael Harford are expected to participate. The main event, though, will be a rally and march to Orlando City Hall late Tuesday afternoon. Los Angeles Times: Nationwide minimum wage protests begin in L.A. Los Angeles fast food workers are joining a nationwide Fight for 15 protest and strike Tuesday calling for a $15 minimum wage and a union. Workers in 270 cities are expected to walk out in what organizers hope will be the fast food industry s largest strike ever. A major backer of the Fight for 15 campaign is the Service Employees International Union, which is trying to organize fast food workers in Los Angeles. In Los Angeles County, workers have already assembled in front of a McDonald s in Compton. Workers also plan to walk out of a McDonald s at 7th and Alameda streets. Workers will walk from the McDonald s locations to Los Angeles City Hall for a protest at 11 a.m. The federal minimum wage is an incredibly low $7.25 $2.13 for tipped workers like waitresses, nail salon workers, or parking attendants. If the minimum were raised 35 million workers (one in four) would be affected, because of the ripple-up effect. Of these, 89 percent are over 20 and 27.7 percent of these have children. Media Matters for America (MMFA) points out that raising the minimum wage does not cost jobs. MMFA looks to the recent minimum wage increase in Seattle and refutes Fox News propaganda that this has cost jobs, in Latest Seattle Jobs Numbers Disprove
Fox s Minimum Wage Misinformation, writing that newly-released data from the BLS reveals that Seattle s food service industry has actually added 1,800 jobs since the start of the year, despite the higher wage: According to the Economic Policy Institute the minimum wage would be over $18 today had it kept up with the increase in productivity since 1968. Yes, this means that the 2013 post, 40% Of Americans Now Make Less Than 1968 Minimum Wage is sadly out of date. The #FightFor15 movement is fighting for a $15 minimum wage and the right for all people to organize or join a union without getting fired for doing it. Copies Of Military Resistance Newsletter Free On Request If you have some good use in mind for a package of Military Resistance newsletters, email CONTACT@MILITARYPROJECT.ORG with a mailing address, an indication of how many you need, and how they will be used. DANGER: POLITICIANS AT WORK
DO YOU HAVE A FRIEND OR RELATIVE IN MILITARY SERVICE? Forward Military Resistance along, or send us the address if you wish and we ll send it regularly. Whether at a base in the USA or stationed outside the Continental United States, this is extra important for your service friend, too often cut off from access to encouraging news of growing resistance to the war and economic injustice, inside the armed services and at home.