Who made your breakfast today?

 

By Steve Halpern

Recently I’ve been listening to the Marxist Professor David Harvey. Harvey used to introduce the students in his class to Marxism by asking the question: “Who made your breakfast today?” 

This sounds like a strait forward question that shouldn’t be difficult to answer. We all have an idea of what the answer to this question is, but we rarely, if ever, discuss the entirety of that answer. So, let’s take a look at who made our breakfast today.

We might reflexively say that we made our breakfast in the kitchen, or had it in a restaurant, or food truck, or on the run. Then, I have to ask: Who made those kitchens, and how did that food get into those kitchens? 

Well, there were factory workers who made the refrigerators, ovens, microwaves, and toasters. Then, there were the farm workers who picked the crops, and food processing workers who packaged the food. Then, there were the transport workers who brought that food to market. 

In order for all of this to happen, there needs to be electrical power plants. Those power plants run on fuel provided by coal miners, uranium workers, or natural gas workers. All these workers need food, clothing, housing, and health care. Education is necessary so people will have all the skills necessary to carry out all these tasks. 

During the winter, there is a lot of food that comes from other countries. Crude oil is shipped on supertankers from around the world. Then, you might say that you would like a cup of coffee.

In 1987 I spent a month in Nicaragua on a coffee plantation. This is only one of the coffee plantations from all over the world that provide us with our morning brew. 

Before the Sandinistas took power in Nicaragua, the workers on that plantation never saw a light bulb. The bathrooms were outhouses, and the people had no direct access to water. Wood needed to be collected every day, so there would be fuel to cook. In the month I spent on this plantation, three children died of easily preventable diseases. In the world, the United Nations estimates that 30,000 children die every day of preventable diseases.

Why don’t we think about who makes our breakfast?

So, looking at these facts, we might say: Well, we care about our families and friends. The workers who perform all those tasks receive a wage, and we all pay for our breakfast. So, why think about the million or more workers who toil every day to make sure we have breakfast?

We can begin to answer that question with two of the architects of the capitalist system, David Ricardo and Adam Smith. Both Smith and Ricardo supported the “labor theory of value.” This theory argues that all wealth is derived from human labor. Both Ricardo and Smith profited from this system and didn’t have a problem with it.

Then, Karl Marx took a look at this labor theory of value. Marx didn’t look at this theory from the viewpoint of the profiteers, but from the viewpoint of the workers. Looking at this theory from this perspective, Marx noticed a clear problem.

Marx argued that there is use value and then there is exchange value. Use value is the money paid to workers to produce a commodity. Exchange value is the price we pay for that same commodity. Marx noticed that there is a big difference between these two forms of value. As a result, many workers struggle to survive, while capitalists routinely possess obscene amounts of money.

So, when we look at the labor theory of value in this way, we see a clear problem. In order to change the relationship between capitalists and workers, there needs to be a completely different political economic system. Clearly, writing to government officials will not change the relationship between workers and capitalists. So, the answer posed by the question raised in the labor theory of value is that we all need to become revolutionaries in order to begin to live in a rational society.

Well, the capitalists and their economists in the world did not like that answer. So, they responded to Marx’s analysis of capitalism by not talking about the labor theory of value any more. 

This is one of the reasons who we don’t think about the question of: Who made our breakfast? Thinking about the million or more people who worked to make our breakfast possible has become an abstraction. Even in the most prestigious universities, Nobel Prize winning economists like Milton Friedman will not talk about the question of: Who made your breakfast today? 

Then, there are other facts we might look at. I believe we all need and want eight basic things. These include, food, clothing, housing, transportation, communication, health care, education, and exposure to culture, like music, art, sports etc.… 

In all the major cities of the world there are, what appears to be forests of skyscrapers. Some of the enterprises in those skyscrapers include, banks, insurance companies, advertising agencies, corporate law firms, as well as corporate administrative offices. 

Thinking about those enterprises we might conclude that none of them contribute to the value of those commodities we need and want. You can’t produce food, or clothing, or housing from a desk. Yet when we purchase any commodity, the cost of all those enterprises is factored into the price we pay. This is another difference between the use value and the exchange value.    

Why is this important?

There are many people in the world who encourage us to contribute to charities to aid people who routinely experience poverty. Well, charities have been around for hundreds of years. Yet, today there are 30,000 children of die of preventable diseases every day. There is another problem with that approach.

Today, it is becoming more and more difficult to pay for education, health care, housing, as well as all of our living expenses. On top of this we see routine discrimination with respect to Black people, Latinos, Native Americans, immigrants, and women. These problems are not merely the result of mistaken or insensitive government policies. 

The problem can be traced to that labor theory of value. While working people produce all wealth, a tiny minority of capitalists profit from this system. The government routinely runs the country in a way that will provide capitalists with literally everything they want.

Marx argued that there is only one way to escape from this capitalist trap. That is to put in place a government dedicated to producing goods and services people need and want. Then, we all would know who made our breakfast. Then, we would be doing everything in our power to make sure that all those workers who make our breakfast are treated with the human dignity working people deserve. 

So, the next time someone asks you to support a capitalist politician, or pay an exorbitant price for a commodity, you might ask the question: Who made your breakfast today? 

 

A Brief History of Neoliberalism

By David Harvey

Oxford University Press – 2005

Reviewed by Steve Halpern

All of the mainstream news from the written press, to the radio, to the television, to the internet, have one thing in common. They all report on how well corporations are doing in their business sections. From their perspective, our lives are influenced by how well the stock market is doing on a given day.

David Harvey has been a college professor in Britain, Baltimore, and New York City. Harvey’s book is about the basic capitalist strategies that have been utilized in the last fifty years, known as neoliberalism. He summarizes what his book is about with the three words: accumulation by dispossession. 

The capitalist economics of John Maynard Keynes and Milton Friedman

We can begin this story in the year 1944 in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire. Before the Second World War was over, capitalist representatives of the Allied Powers met in that town to decide how the economics of the world would be organized. The essence of that meeting decided that the tens of millions of people who died in the First and Second World Wars, died so that capitalists in the United States would be able to dominate the world and gouge out super-profits.

The United States would fund the rebuilding of Europe and Japan with its Marshall Plan. The dollar would become the currency of the world, and it was tied to the gold standard. The United States would become the manufacturing center of the world. Corporations would adhere to certain government regulations aimed at establishing capitalist stability. These policies roughly followed the ideas of the economist John Maynard Keynes.

We might consider that after the First World War, the allied powers imposed harsh economic sanctions on Germany. After the Second World War, the priority of the United States was to isolate the Soviet Union and China. So, instead of punishing Germany and Japan, the U.S. floated huge loans to those countries so they could rebuild.   

As a result, the United States favored free trade, while other nations imposed tariffs to protect their industries from competition from the United States. Because manufacturing was centered in this country, unions had political leverage with corporations because they could deny corporate profits by going on strike. This state of affairs, as well as the militancy of the trade unions, the civil rights, and women’s liberation movements all created an atmosphere where the standard of living improved for many from the 1950s to the 1970s.

However, we can also say, that during those same years, perhaps the least affluent twenty percent of the population continued to live in poverty. Millions didn’t have enough food to eat, and there were many who were homeless. 

Another meeting took place in 1947 in Switzerland organized by the Austrian political philosopher Friedrich von Hayek. Also attending this meeting was the U.S. based economist Milton Friedman. This is where the ideas that came to be known as neoliberalism were first discussed. Those ideas went in a different direction from the ideas promoted at Bretton Woods and advocated by Keynes. 

One of the ideas promoted by those who supported neoliberalism was a twisted concept of what personal freedom is. They argued that that the government interfered with corporate power after World War II. They countered that each individual should be able to determine for themselves their options in life. In making these decisions, the neoliberal theory also argued that workers need to take responsibility for their condition. 

Today, we see this trend where individuals choose health care insurance, pensions, employment, as well as the homes they live in and the cars they drive. While some people benefitted from this system, the majority of the population either experienced stagnating or deteriorating living standards. 

As we might see from this point of view, there are serious problems with that perspective. Most people in the capitalist world work for a living. During our working day, employers tell us exactly what to do, when to do it, and how that work is to be performed. If any of us has a problem with this, the boss can fire us, or we can resign. Then, we might not have the means to support ourselves.

We also might think about the reality of chattel slavery. In that system, slave owners purchased slaves to derive a profit from the labor of slaves. Slave owners motivated slaves with the use of physical torture. 

Today, employers hire workers to derive a profit. They motivate workers with the threat of termination. So, for those who support the system of neoliberalism, they believe that modern day wage-slavery is equivalent to personal freedom. Clearly, I do not agree with that perspective.

So, in essence, neoliberalism is about more or less unrestricted corporate policy. The people who support this theory believe that corporate officers are more qualified to run corporations than government officials.

What they don’t understand, is that the primary goal of corporate officers is to maximize profits, and not to produce quality goods and services at reasonable prices. The only class interested in a rational political economic system is the working class. As workers, we understand the best way of producing commodities in the most efficient way possible. Since corporate officers rarely do this work, they have no idea what workers do every day.

As we will see, while the neoliberals favor unrestricted corporate power, they also demand harsh repressive measures against the working class of the world. 

How and why did neoliberalism become an international economic model?

Chile

In the early 1970s, the Chilean military headed by General Augusto Pinochet removed the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende from power. Allende tried to nationalize the most profitable enterprises in Chile, so the standard of living in that country would improve. The new government, headed by General Augusto Pinochet, murdered thousands, placed many of his opponents in prison, or forced them to leave the country.

Pinochet collaborated with Milton Friedman in an attempt to make that country more friendly to corporate interests. Friedman argued that Chile needed a form of “shock therapy.” That shock therapy meant that the worker’s rights would be stripped. There would be no meaningful regulation of corporations. However, the rights of workers would be highly regulated.

As a result, corporations cut down Chilean forests, huge fishing ships overfished the waters off of Chile’s coast. People started using gas masks in the Chilean capital, Santiago. Since there was no pollution control of the busses, the exhaust from vehicles made the air of the city unhealthy. 

The people who organized this disastrous system were students of Milton Friedman at the University of Chicago. They became known as the “Chicago Boys.” 

While those policies represented a disaster for most of the Chilean people, Wall Street investors in Chile were rewarded with handsome dividends. As a result, Milton Friedman received a Nobel Prize in economics.

By the 1980s, the Chilean economy went through an inevitable downturn. However, no one asked Friedman to return his Nobel Prize because of the unmitigated disaster his policies created. This was another case of accumulation by dispossession.  

New York City

In the year 1975, the New York City government went bankrupt. City governments routinely sell bonds in order to finance their operations, but in 1975 Walter Winston of Citibank refused to roll over the city’s loans. So, the government had a choice. They could give bondholders a “haircut” where they might lose money on their investments. Or, there would be a drastic cutback in social services.

We might consider that many of the bondholders were extremely affluent. They made a bet that they might make money by investing in city bonds.

We might think about the fact that when workers make bets and lose money in the casinos, we don’t ask for our money back. We certainly wouldn’t ask the workers in the casino to compensate us for the money we lost.

However, the banker Felix Rohatyn brokered a deal between the city, state and financial institutions. That deal allowed for the city to make massive cutbacks in social services, while bondholders would get every penny that they expected. Again, we see the accumulation by dispossession.       

Treasury Secretary Paul Volcker 

Paul Volker was an investment banker who worked in the Treasury Department while Richard Nixon was President. Volker was one of those who influenced the President to take the dollar off the gold standard. That decision made it clear that the Bretton Woods international agreement was dead. 

The U.S. economy then experienced double digit inflation. Volcker then got a promotion under the Carter Presidential administration to Secretary of the Treasury. To deal with the inflation that Volker helped to create, he raised interest rates to the double digits. 

Reading this information, we might think about the fact that the interests of workers were never a consideration. I don’t think Volker ever considered giving workers a Constitutional right to health care, housing, and food. This certainly was possible if the government made the needs of people it’s priority. However, because we live in a system known as capitalism, that isn’t what happened.

When the interest rates went up, corporations cut back on their investments and there were massive layoffs. Clearly corporations are in business to profit. Because corporations rely on financing, when interest rates go up, manufacturing corporations receive less in profits and hand over more money to the banks. 

So, when we see all these events emerging at the same time, we might see why corporations started to close down factories, and move to nations where wages are between one and ten dollars per day.  

So, up until the 1970s, unions had real leverage with respect to corporations. When workers went on strike, corporations could lose millions of dollars every day. As corporations cut back on production and moved to other countries, they dealt with the threat of strikes by closing down factories. The government that pretends to represent all the people went along with this, and allowed for more accumulation by dispossession.

China

During the 1980s Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher became the heads of state of the United States and Britain. Reagan used his political power to break the strike by the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO). Thatcher used her power to break the strike of the mine-workers union. 

These actions demonstrated that in order for corporations to have a free rein of the economy, the government would need to take repressive actions against the workers who create all wealth. Reagan and Thatcher followed the trend established by Augusto Pinochet in Chile. 

During the 1980s the economies of Germany and Japan increased significantly. German sales of cars and machinery increased, while Japan’s car and electronic sales increased. However, by the year 1987 there was an international downturn of the economy. That downturn would be followed by downturns in the years 2001, 2008, and 2020. 

China had a revolution in 1949 where that nation was taken out of the capitalist orbit. However, the Chinese Revolution was different from the Russian Revolution. 

The Russian Revolution was about an alliance of workers and farmers symbolized in their red flag with the hammer and sycle. The new revolutionary Russian government made the needs of workers and farmers their ultimate priority. The many oppressed nations within Tzarist Russia would move away from the routine discrimination of the past. The new nation became the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

However, this new nation experienced unimaginably difficult times and new government officials headed by Joseph Stalin betrayed the fundamental goals of the revolution. Stalin used his influence in China to demand adherence to his idea of a block of four classes. So, unlike the Russian revolutionaries, who made the interests of workers and farmers their priorities, the Chinese Communist Party worked for a block of classes that had opposing interests.

Because of this approach, the government headed by Mao Zedong did not attempt to make China a worker’s democracy. Instead, Mao’s government, like the government of Stalin, ruled from the top down.

As a result, Mao initiated his Great Leap Forward that proved to be a disaster. The CCP dealt with this crisis by making Liu Shaoqi the head of the party. Mao then advanced his disastrous policy of Cultural Revolution through the military. As a result, Mao regained the leadership of the party, and the government sent Liu Shaoqi to the countryside. 

After Mao died, a supporter of Liu Shaoqi named Deng Xiaoping became President of China. While Deng reversed many of Mao’s policies, he continued to support the idea of a block of four classes. As a result, Deng opened up China to capitalist investment, while suppressing the 1989 Tiananmen demonstrations.

During these years, as we have seen, capitalists were looking around the world for places where worker’s wages were low. Initially, capitalists from Hong Kong began investing in China. Those investments became so successful that capitalists from South Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan also began investing in China. Investments from the United States also mushroomed. Those nations didn’t just invest, they also gave the Chinese the technological skills they needed to develop state of the art industries. 

One of the capitalist attractions of China was its huge population of people who lived in the countryside. As of the year 2020, about 300 million Chinese people from the countryside migrated into the cities, where they made China the manufacturing center of the world.

Then, with the capitalist crisis of 2008 Chinese exports plummeted, and employers eliminated tens of millions of jobs. Workers protested those layoffs. 

So, the Chinese government decided to use the credit they had with their banks to make massive investments within China. As a result, in about three years, China used more concrete than the United States used in about 100 years.

In the United States, the government responded to the 2008 economic crisis with the Troubled Asset Relief Program or TARP. This program consisted of hundreds of billions of dollars that the government gave to U.S. banks. President Barrack Obama then gave the banks trillions of dollars in his program called quantitative easing. 

However, David Harvey Spoke about this development after the publication of this book. He argued that the astronomical amount of money given to banks by the U.S. government wasn’t nearly enough to fix the 2008 capitalist economic crisis. It was the extraordinary development of China that stabilized the world capitalist economy for a while.

Conclusion

When we look at this entire history, we see some clear trends. From the end of the Second World War until the 1970s many workers in the United States experienced an improved standard of living. Then, the inevitable happened. The improvement in the standard of living for workers caused capitalists to have a slight decline in their share of the economy.

Capitalists responded by raising prices, rather than accepting this slightly reduced share. Then the dollar went off the gold standard, and interest rates shot up. Capitalists began to move their factories to nations with extremely low wages. The percentage of workers who belonged to unions went down. 

So, while the United States financed the Marshall Plan after WWII, capitalists in the United States have been profiting off of international investments to the tune of fifty Marshall Plans. While African Americans and Latinos might have lost eighty billion dollars, capitalists cashed out on eighty billion dollars during the same years. 

President Donald Trump was only one of the Presidents in the world that favored increasingly repressive policies. Today, there are Presidents in Brazil, India, and the Philippines who also favor brutal repression of workers. As we have seen, these Presidents are merely following the course set by General Augusto Pinochet in Chile.

So, when we look at this history, we see that the working class of the world has decisions to make. First, we need to understand that we are the working class of the world. An injury to one, anywhere in the world, is an injury to all. 

When we look at the unprecedented development in China, we need to understand that that development will need to continue to sustain capitalist stability. With all of the concrete China used in the past years, China will need to increase that level of production or eliminate jobs. We can see that there will be severe problems in the attempt to continuously increase production.  

The nation of Cuba has made a courageous effort to stand up against the capitalist rape of the world for the past 61 years. They have shown by example that it is possible to have a government that makes the needs of people more important than corporate profits.

The Declaration of Independence

 

Signed on July 4, 1776

A critical historical review

By Steve Halpern

The signing of the Declaration of Independence is a national holiday in the United States on July 4th every year. Based on my personal experience, while this is a national holiday, there is little discussion of the words in this document, or why this document was signed by representatives of the thirteen colonies.

We can begin by looking at a passage from this declaration that many people are familiar with. 

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Thinking about those words, we might also think about a speech Frederick Douglass gave in the year 1852 on the meaning of the Fourth of July holiday. Douglass was a slave for the first nineteen years of his life. He violated the slave laws and risked his life at the age of 13, in order to learn to read. He needed to do battle with a “slave breaker” by the name of Covey, just to maintain some sense of who he was. This is what Douglass had to say about the Fourth of July celebration:

“I am not included within the pale of glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me … This Fourth of July is yours, not mine.”

In another section of this speech, Douglass argued:

“Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the old world, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me, that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reins without rival.”

So, looking at the words of the Declaration of Independence and Frederick Douglass’ 1852 speech, we might ask a basic question: How did the nation that was born with the ideals of “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness, become the nation of “revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy?”

In beginning to answer this question, we might also think about a basic problem with the way the so-called educational system in this country teaches history. One the one hand, there are the outright falsifications that James Loewen documented in his book Lies My Teacher Told Me. Then, there is the idea that there were only good and bad sides in history. The idea that history reflects differing forces that interacted with one another is, for the most part, missing from the educational system in this country.

We see this clearly when we look at the fact that the Declaration of Independence was written by a slave owner by the name of Thomas Jefferson. How could someone who’s entire wealth came from the labor of slaves, believe that all men have, “certain inalienable rights?”

In order to begin to answer this question, we need to look at the reality of what the rule of kings and queens was in the system known as feudalism. In that system, working people, and even individuals with considerable resources had no rights. The Gentry class ruled, and their power came from the fact that their parents were members of the royal family. 

Although Britain had a government, the King had ultimate authority and he was viewed as the “father’ of the people. Because the thirteen colonies were colonies, the British power brokers wanted to use those colonies to enhance their own privileged status. For those reasons, although Thomas Jefferson lived a life of comfort, he was also a debt slave to British bankers.

So, those who lived in the thirteen colonies began to understand that their future would be severely compromised as long as they lived under British rule. In the 245-year history of this country, very few people argue that we would be better off if this country had remained a British colony. 

So, before the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Paine wrote his popular pamphlet titled Common Sense. In that pamphlet Paine argued that the king was nothing more than a “sceptered savage.”  

On the other hand, most Black people, as well as most Native Americans supported the British during the revolution. They rightfully understood that a revolutionary government in the United States would mean the strengthening of the system of slavery, as well as increasing genocide against Native Americans. 

Clearly the genocide against Native Americans has been a constant in this history of this country. Clearly, the system of slavery and brutal discrimination against Black people has also been a constant in the history of this country. However, the revolution of the thirteen colonies did signal a significant change in many areas. 

Six out of the thirteen colonies abolished slavery after the Revolution. The political division of the revolutionary government consisted of the federalists and the anti-federalists. The federalists supported a centralized government that was moving away from slavery. The anti-federalists supported slavery, and became the Democratic Party that we know today. These two factions of the government had disagreements that became intolerable with the election of Abraham Lincoln for President.

After the Revolution Shay’s Rebellion erupted and demanded concessions for those who fought in support of ending British rule. The government responded to that rebellion by drafting the Bill of Rights to the Constitution.   

Sections of the Declaration of Independence

The actual Declaration is a list of grievances settlers in the thirteen colonies had with the British. I believe the following quotation gives an idea of the sentiment of the signers of that document.

“Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses, and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce then under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security…” 

So, the signers of this declaration weren’t merely about writing letters to government officials. They had reached the point where they were preparing to remove the British representatives by force of arms. Because feudalism was a problem throughout the world, revolutionaries from Europe came to the thirteen colonies to join in the battle to have a government that at least pretended to represent the will of the people, and where citizens would have certain rights.

We also might consider that in the year 1776, Britain had the most powerful army in the world. However, as powerful as that army was, the colonists had good reason to believe that they needed a completely different armed force to defend their interests. 

This passage, I believe is an eloquent argument that supports the idea of using armed force to remove a despotic government from power. There are many nations in the world today where those words would apply.

In the following section, the Declaration argues that the signers opposed British restrictions of immigration to this part of the world.

“He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither…”

We might think about the fact that at the time of the signing of the Declaration there were only about three-million residents of the thirteen colonies. Today there are about 340 million citizens of this country. 

However, the words of the Declaration are clear. The original signers of this document favored unobstructed immigration to this country. Today, the government has invested a huge amount of resources to keep immigrants out. At the same time there are about twelve million people who live here who were born in another country. Many of these people have horrendous jobs that few citizens in this country want. 

While the colonists of the thirteen colonies favored immigration, they had a completely different attitude towards Native Americans. The signers of the Declaration labeled Native Americans as “Indian Savages” and made it clear that they supported a war against the original inhabitants of this land. 

So, when I look at the Declaration of Independence, I’m looking at a document that reflected opposing class interests. Today, my opinion is that there is an international working class that has a clear interest in establishing governments that make a priority of human needs over profits. That class did not exist in the year 1776.

Because the working class was in its infancy in those years, the government that came to power because of the Revolution had conflicting interests. On the one hand, this government worked to separate the church from the state and abolish the power of the monarchy. On the other hand, this same government worked to defend the horrendous institution of chattel slavery, as well as advance the genocide of Native Americans. 

Because of the Revolution, forces went into motion that would eventually mobilize millions of soldiers to overthrow the system of chattel slavery in the Civil War. However, those same forces would also betray President Lincoln’s words in his Gettysburg Address when he argued that the soldiers who perished in battle did not die, “in vain.”

The facts are that the Republican President Rutherford B. Hayes withdrew the Union Army from the former slave states. That action effectively allowed the Ku Klux Klan to take political power and institute the Jim Crow laws. Those laws effectively stripped Black people of citizenship rights in this country. Those actions were a clear violation of the words in the Declaration of Independence that argued for the “self-evident” truth, that “all men are created equal.”            

Last summer, I participated in a massive demonstration against police brutality in Philadelphia. There were similar demonstrations around the world. Those demonstrations prompted the government to place Derrick Chauvin on trial and convict him of the murder of George Floyd.

I also took part in a demonstration this spring protesting the Israeli bombing of the Gaza Strip. Today the Palestinian people can appreciate the words in the Declaration that argue: “But when a long train of abuses, and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce then under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security…” 

So, for me, there are two sides to the Declaration of Independence. One side is the promise of liberty and justice for all. Then, there is the reality of a government that today can only be realistically described as a brutal and repressive dictatorship. In looking at this Declaration, we can see the forces that were set in motion to liberate humanity, as well as to advance a brutal system of wage slavery.

The words of Frederick Douglass, I believe support this sentiment:

“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did, and it never will. Find out what any people will quietly submit to, and you have found the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them. And these will continue, until they are resisted with words, or blows, or both.”

Chen Duxiu and the 100-year anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party

 

By Steve Halpern

Recently 70,000 people celebrated the 100-year anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party at Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. Chinese President Xi Jimping spoke at the occasion. However, one of the two founders of the CCP was probably never mentioned at this event. His name was Chen Duxiu. 

Chen studied French, English, and naval architecture in his early years. He studied in China and Japan, and became a leader of the 1911 Xinhai Revolution. That revolution ended the Qing Dynasty that ruled China for over a century. 

In 1917 Chen became a professor and Dean of Peking University. At that time, Chen also became a leader of the May 4th Movement that reflected a cultural awakening in China. Chen criticized the philosophy of Confucianism, he advocated for the study of the sciences, and even a reforming of the Chinese language Mandarin. 

However, the new Chinese government didn’t like Chen’s ideas. He spent a few months in prison and fled to Japan for a short period of time. These were some of the reasons why Chen became critical of the Kuomintang, that was under the leadership of Chiang Kai-shek. That opposition to the Kuomintang explains why Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao first organized the Chinese Communist Party.

Several of the initial members of the CCP went to the Soviet Union to study Marxism in a school outside of Moscow. Karl Radek was a leader of the Soviet government who headed the school to train Chinese communists. 

Peng Shu-tse was one of those students, who also became a leader of the CCP. Peng recruited Liu Shaoqi, who became President of China in later years. Liu Shaoqi was also a mentor to Deng Xiaoping who also became President of China.

Both Chen Duxiu and Peng Shu-tse were critical of the Kuomintang and felt that the Chinese Communist Party needed to become the leader of the Chinese Revolution. These opinions agreed with the position of Leon Trotsky who had been a central leader of the Russian Revolution. By 1927, the CCP had a membership of about 60,000, and close ties to large peasant organizations.

However, after Vladimir Ilyich Lenin died, the Soviet Union was in an unimaginably difficult situation. Millions of soldiers lost their lives in the First World War, and then in the war to defend the Soviet Union from an invasion of 14 nations. The infrastructure of the country had been destroyed and the government needed to implement emergency measures so people would have food to eat. Under those circumstances, Joseph Stalin came to power and reversed the goals of the Russian Revolution. Stalin organized to murder the entire leadership of the Revolution, and this included Leon Trotsky and Karl Radek.

Stalin disagreed with Lenin’s idea that the revolution would advance with an alliance of workers and farmers. Stalin argued that the Chinese Revolution needed to advance as a block of four classes. Those classes included capitalists, the middle class, workers, and peasants. Because of this perspective, the Soviet Union gave Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang considerable support. Stalin also demanded that members of the Chinese Communist Party follow the orders of Chiang Kai-shek and his Kuomintang. Mao Zedong was initially an ardent supporter of the Kuomintang. 

Then, in the year 1927, there was a revolution in China. In one city after another, Chiang Kai-shek ordered members of the Chinese Communist Party to give up their arms. So, instead of leading a revolution that might have placed workers in power, Chang ordered the mass executions of thousands of members of the CCP. The Long March of the CCP was the result of the defeat of the 1927 Revolution, and the need to escape the determined attempt by the Kuomintang to destroy that organization. 

In the Soviet Union, Stalin blamed this disaster on the politics of Leon Trotsky. In China, the CCP blamed the disaster of the 1927 revolution on Chen Duxiu. Then, in 1929 the CCP expelled Chen from the party. Both Chen Duxiu and Peng Shu-tse served several years in a prison run by the Kuomintang. They both escaped when the Japanese bombed the prison.

Chen Duxiu also argued against Mao Zedong’s belief that the Chinese Revolution needed to be centered around the struggle of the peasantry. Chen advanced the Marxist position that socialism can only become a reality when the working class takes power. Today, the Chinese working class has engaged in 20,000 strikes every year for the past several years. This is clear evidence that Chinese workers continue to battle against capitalist exploitation.  

So, we might ask the question: How is the life of Chen Duxiu relevant to the Chinese people today? There is no question that most of the 1.4 billion people in China have experienced a significant improvement in their standard of living. In the past twenty years, China has become the manufacturing center of the world. There were several reasons for this. 

300 million Chinese people from the countryside came into the cities and worked in factories.

Factories that used to be located in developed countries closed their doors and many moved to China.

The wages of Chinese workers were lower than in other relatively underdeveloped nations. 

The Chinese government used the vast revenue and credit it had established to carry out a huge development of the country.

However, there is one thing we know about the capitalist system. The years of relative capitalist prosperity are always followed by years of economic collapse. The Chinese economy will not be able to continue to grow as it has over the past twenty years. This means that Chinese workers will need to find their own voice to demand a government where human needs are more important than profits. 

Today, there are members of the Chinese Communist Party who are billionaires. The Chinese government has carried out a brutal repression of the Uighur nationality. There is a sharp wage disparity between workers in the cities and workers in the countryside. The demonstrations in Hong Kong demanding democratic reforms have been repressed. All these measures support the argument that today the Chinese Communist Party continues to support Stalin’s perspective of a block of four classes, rather than Lenin’s idea of a democratic dictatorship of the proletariat that includes an alliance with farmers. 

I’m confident that the Chinese working class will find its own independent voice. When it does, my opinion is that the Chinese people will rediscover the origins of the Chinese Communist Party, as well as the names of Chen Duxiu, Peng Shu-tse, and Leon Trotsky.

Saying that, we can also say that the United States has always been hostile to the working class of the world, as well as competing capitalist powers. This is what drives Washington’s hostility to China. Ultimately that hostility is about the drive to maximize profits for corporations located in this country. Saying that, I’m opposed to any and all measures of the United States government against China. Let the Chinese people decide for themselves their own destiny.