MONEY CHARMING SPIRITUALISTS: Bank of Ghana Asked to Investigate Them

A Money Charming spiritualist

By Samuel Akapule

The Upper Presbytery of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana, has expressed concerned about the activities of some spiritualists who appear on television purporting to have the ability to conjure money to make people rich overnight.

“It is the firm belief of the Presbytery that all members of our society must diligently commit themselves to whatever noble pursuit that their hands find to do for the Almighty God to bless their exploits and handiwork.

The “get rich quick’ syndrome has no foundation in the word of God as well as in nation building, the Church said at the end of its seventh session held at Navrongo.

It was on the theme: “When the Holy Spirit Moves: Energized to pursue our Evangelical mandate”.

The Chairperson of the Upper Presbytery, Reverend Emmanuel Atami, stressed that besides the legally acceptable money creation system overseen by the BOG, the constitution does not mandate anybody or an institution to create any legal tender.

Dr Ernest Addison, Governor of Bank of Ghana

The Presbytery therefore called on the Bank of Ghana to investigate the activities of these spiritualists who claim to have powers to raise money besides the legally acceptable money creation system overseen by the Bank of Ghana.

The Church stressed that the negative practice was not only unconstitutional but had the greater tendency in nurturing in the youth not to aspire higher and work hard for achievements in life, have patience and hope in God, but to resort to getting money quickly, which it noted could undermine the progress of the society and nation building as a whole.

The Church also called on the National Media Commission and all media houses to help put an end to what it referred to as “the public display of “get rich quick” activities of the ever increasing “juju” money spiritualists on their airwaves.”

Whilst expressing concern about the threat of political vigilante groups to national security, the Church called on the government, leaders of the various political parties and the security agencies to ensure that they were disbanded.

On Education, the Church commended government for the expansion of educational facilities   particularly, for taking bold steps in establishing a public university in each of the regions to open more opportunities for people to upgrade themselves using different models of learning.

It however observed that at the secondary school level many of the youth were not able to meet the minimum entry requirement to take advantage of tertiary education.

It attributed such problems to the addiction of the youth to social media at the expense of their books and impressed upon parents and guardians to step up their parental and supervisory roles over their wards. It further called on School Management Boards (SMB) and Parent Teacher Associations (PTAs) to support by instilling discipline in the students.

“Also at the basic level, the Presbytery has observed that the long standing partnership and cordial relationship between the Religious Educational Units and the Ghana Education Service is gradually breaking down and this is affecting collaboration, supervision and discipline in the schools. The Government and other stakeholders who are into education should strengthen their relationship. Government should treat both private and public educational institutions equitably”.

The Church, which spoke about the annual delay in releasing students’ grants for Second Cycle Institutions in the Northern parts of the country, entreated government to find lasting solution to the problem.

Whilst calling on the Government to be committed to the promise of planting for food and jobs and one district, one factory initiatives, it said the effective implementation of the interventions would help in addressing the unemployment problems among the youth and ensure food security.

It said the Presbytery was very worried about the recent recorded suicide cases among the youth and recommended that counselling by parents, educational institutions and religious bodies should be strengthened to enable the youth build emotional stability and cultivate the spirit of endurance.

It urged the government to sustain the fight against illegal mining by strengthening institutions that have regulatory, monitoring and supervisory role over mining as well as find alternative livelihoods for the affected or yet to be affected people in the galamsey business.

The Church commended the Electoral Commission, Political Parties, the previous Government, Civil Society Organizations, the Security Agencies, and the people of Ghana for collectively working for a peaceful election in December 2016 and ensuring smooth transition.

The Church called on all Ghanaians to help nurture the peace the country was currently enjoying.

The seventh Presbytery Session afforded delegates and commissioners the opportunity to reflect and to take stock of the various activities carried out by the Presbytery in 2016.

Editorial

IN THE NAME OF GOD

God Almighty ought to be very troubled about what many have done to his name and are doing around the world allegedly to manifest his powers.

There are those who specialise in predicting those who will die before the end of the year and how many accidents will be recorded in which part of town.

The most dangerous vendors of God are those who manage to convince sick people to abandon their medicines and to feed on miracles which send them to their graves.

It is interesting that the Upper Presbytery of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana has joined in the condemnation of those who have turned the Church into dirty business.

The church is calling on the Bank of Ghana to investigate “money charming spiritualists” and we agree.

Local News:

AMEWU UNDER FIRE

John Peter Amewu, Minister of Lands

By Mohammed Awal

Aggrieved students of the Ghana School of Surveying and Mapping (GSSM) have described as insensitive the attempted closure of the school by the Minister of Lands and Natural Resources, John Peter Amewu.

According to the students who spoke to Starr News on condition of anonymity, the Minister’s conduct was unwarranted owing to the fact that he failed to listen to their side of the story.

“It is very pathetic and unfair on the part of the Minister,” they said and that their careers are in “shambles” as a result.

Mr Amedu announced at a press conference two weeks ago his decision to close down the school following recent clashes there over land.

The students had clashed with construction workers on a project said to be an office complex for the Lands Commission, alleging that the land was being developed into a shopping mall.

Infuriated over the development, the Lands and Natural Resources Minister ordered the immediate closure of the school and re-assignment of its staff, saying the student must “vacate the premises and the hostel facilities immediately.”

“I direct the management of the Lands Commission to ensure that the staff at the school should be re-assigned other duties that would effectively support the agenda to reduce the turnaround time in land title registration in the country,” he added.

He further observed that the project site had been handed over to the contractors and that “unauthorized persons are not to be permitted on the premises and the contractors to take full responsibility of the site.”

Source:StarrFMonline

VICTOR SMITH ADVICES NDC

Ambassador Victor Smith

By Kwame Acheampong

Former Ghana High Commissioner to the UK Victor Smith has advised the opposition National Democratic Congress to retain former President John Mahama as flagbearer in the 2020 polls if they want to return to power.

He, however, believes all the current executives of the party must be kicked out in order to enhance the party’s chances of winning power again.

“If NDC wants to win 2020, there is no better candidate than John Mahama. If we want to just try 2020, then we can afford to put forth a new candidate so if he doesn’t win, he can be advertised for the future. But if we want 2020, what we need to do is to present him,” he said.

He added: “we should change the whole guard. We should start with some die-hard selfless people… I think he [Asiedu Nketia] has been there long enough. We should just clean the stables,” he told Citi FM.

Although Mr. Mahama has been coy on in his interest in the flagbearship of the umbrella family, he has met his former appointees and national executives of the party.

Meanwhile, a suspected flagbearer hopeful of the party Dr. Ekow Spio Gabrah has said Mr. Mahama must be given the first offer of refusal ahead of the race.

Police Calms Public

Ghana Police officers

By Jonas Nyabor

The Ghana Police Service has said it has increased the number of patrol teams in some parts of Accra where armed robbery is rampant.

According to the service, it is gradually working to address the menace of robbery in the country, especially in areas that have been identified as prone to the menace.

The Director General in charge of Operations of the Ghana Police Service, COP Christian Tetteh-Yohunu, said the extra patrol teams dispatched to some communities in Accra were only to support the regional command’s efforts.

Residents in areas such as Ashongman and Spintex, live in constant fear due to rampant robbery activities, but COP Tetteh-Yohunu said “For now at Ashongman, we have beefed up the patrols with two extra patrols teams from the national SWAT. If you get to community 18 the national SWAT has added two extra teams.”

“Also, the regional command should re-adjust and organize their teams to take care of the problems in those areas because at the national swat level, they respond to crisis countrywide. But as a quick measure we have come in also to support the regional command of which they have to re-adjust, put in intelligence and also beef up patrols in those areas to at least control the robbery situation in those areas,” he added.

A reasonable number of Ghanaians have expressed their frustration in engaging the police to guarantee their safety.

While many complained of the Police service’s lackadaisical attitude towards responding to crime issues, others alleged that personnel often demand money before carrying out an investigation into reported robbery cases.

COP Christian Tetteh-Yohunu said it’s unethical for officers to demand money before acting on crimes.

He urged the public to report officers who demand money or gifts before attending to reported cases to the regional commands for action to be taken against them.

He also advised the public to keep the contacts of their respective divisional commands and neighboughood watchdog groups to ensure easy access to them in case of emergency.

Source: citifmonline

Africa:

Mental freedom and the omission of African achievement from history 

Timbuktu Libraries

By Cosmic Yoruba

We hang our hopes on economic development playing a large role in allowing us to reclaim our history from the West, but which comes first, understanding of our own history or economic development? Is real economic development even feasible without a grasp of history?

Columnist and author Dr. Chika Ezeanya’s excellent piece on reclaiming Africa’s history from the West explores the power of history in building a sense of national identity and pride, as well as the effects of colonialism and its racist ideology on the way African history is taught today.

As she states, “Much of what today is studied as African history is the protégé of the racist ideology that viewed the black man as a little above an ape in terms of human intelligence.”

Ezeanya writes about how positive achievements from Africans in fields such as medicine were regarded by Europeans as not worth attention – they did not conform with the stereotypical views held by the Europeans about Africans; one medical missionary, delivering a paper on “Primitive Surgery”, noted:”Unfortunately, I feel unable to explain why in 1879 there existed in Kahura in Uganda, a black surgeon performing the Caesarean section safely and, in some respects, better than many of his contemporary white colleagues” – and argues that this omission of African achievement from the history books is on of the reasons why many African graduates today suffer from an inferiority complex and hold in awe the White man who, after all, invented everything he had learned in school. Education in a system that was cultivated by racist ideas means that Africans are regularly taught to despise their roots and do not make any effort to learn from indigenous paths.

However, Ezeanya’s essay does not fully give reasons why African history is in its current deplorable state. She rightly lays the blame on all Africans, but fails to recognise African efforts to move away from colonial history curriculums, not to mention the strides African tertiary institutions have made using traditional African forms of medicine.

Check the following:
Ancient Wisdom Meets New Knowledge for Health in Africa
Tanzania: Young Chemist Seeks Answers in Traditional Medicine
Zuma calls for faster traditional medicine
Miracle Tree is a Supermarket
Kenya medical research institute in final stages of developing herpes drug
Africa: Traditional Medicine Gains Ground in Universities

The essay also makes no mention of the works, progress made and challenges faced by African intellectuals in using history to encourage self worth and self knowledge from an African perceptive. And it doesn’t recall that African scholars were once able to move away from the colonial Europeans instructions and set up modes of learning that were beneficial to Africans themselves.

I have always been curious about why history has not been taught in Nigerian schools as much as I felt it ought to be. I’ve had an interest in history for as long as I can remember, regardless of the fact I was not taught history through primary school and junior secondary school. I spent two years studying history as an elective in senior secondary school – which, as anyone can attest, is not enough to learn African history – and there were, at most, ten other students in that class. When I went to the library to read about African history, all I could find were books about Roman and Greek historical achievements, and sometimes one or two on ancient Egypt. The history of other parts of Africa only merited scant paragraphs that were centred on the period immediately before and during colonialism. When I meet Africans who claim to adore history yet can only talk about colonial history, a part of me dies.

​The Pyramids of Egypt at Giza is one of the seven wonders of ancient civilisation Photo: atravelbook.com

It wasn’t always like this. African history once attracted a lot of interest from African students and academics. And African intellectuals once made efforts to use African history to further the process of mental decolonisation, and political and social development, for instance, by using evidence of the presence, culture and rituals of Africans throughout history right up to colonialism to explore the idea of African authenticity, and to help Africans rediscover/reclaim their pride in being African. (Side issue: in the early days of European colonialism, there was an increase in the number of people who were branded and killed as witches across Africa. People simply couldn’t understand why they were being colonised by foreign powers and thought it had to be because of evil forces within the community.)

In the early years of university education in Nigeria, for example, when Nigerian universities were still in alliance with English universities, history curriculums focused on European history and the history of Europeans in Africa. Nonetheless, by the late 1950s and early 1960s, African intellectuals were able to effectively overturn this and give African history a place in the African academic experience. History scholars such as Kenneth Onwuka Dike revolutionised the field in 1956 with the publication of his book Trade and Politics in the Niger Delta, 1830-1835. These academics successfully put Africans at the centre of their own history and paid heed to African history before European contact.

Unfortunately, due to changes in Nigeria’s political climate and economic circumstances, this intellectual utopia was not to last long. In 1986, the Nigerian government agreed to and adopted an IMF/World Bank programme of economic “reform” known as the Structural Adjustment Program (SAP). Now widely acknowledged as a major cause of severe economical decline across the sub-Saharan countries that implemented the reforms (see also Food Emergency: How the World Bank and IMF Have Made African Famine Inevitable), SAP led to a rise in unemployment and poverty levels, and a drop in living standards. Trying to survive amid this economic disaster, people began to question the relevance of history. Disciplines that were considered more lucrative such as Accounting, Business Administration and Law became du jour. As poverty levels continued to rise, Nigerian youths only became more interested in money-making possibilities.

At the same time, history scholars, similarly feeling the effects of economic decline with bad pay and a cutback in research and publishing, began to neglect academia for better paid jobs. With the introduction of American soft power via the Visa Lottery program, more Nigerians sought to claim American values at the expense of African philosophies. At the university level, history was no longer regarded as lucrative, and in secondary schools most students dropped history as soon as they could.

Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah

Where is the wisdom of our fathers now? Kwame Nkrumah (21 September 1909 – 27 April 1972) was the first President of Ghana, the first Prime Minister of Ghana, and an influential 20th-century advocate of Pan-Africanism

Kwame Nkrumah once called on Africans to free our minds from all forms of Western domination, control and enslavement in order to achieve social and economic development. Be that as it may, it would appear that economic decline can get in the way of mental freedom. This presents a quandary as a knowledge of history is necessary for real economic development, so while we’re busy trying to make money to survive we’re hindering our own economic development, and at the same time confusing making money and a growing GDP that benefits a minority with economic development.

The teachings of African leaders and visionaries have become largely ignored as instruments through which we can understand the means to African development. Similarly, achievement made by African visionaries in modern history seem to have been forgotten. It is now common to read modern critiques of African society that hardly ever mention the teachings of African visionaries. The chain of continuity seems to have been broken, for if contemporary African intellectuals cannot cite the works of visionaries from the 1950s and 1960s, how are they to go about reclaiming African history from the West?

The lack of development and continuity in history as a field has led to an incomplete process of de-colonisation and political and psychological independence on the African continent. Foremost African scholars were not able to complete these processes due to unforeseeable changes. Now thanks to the current poor states of most African higher institutions, the main centres for the development of African history still remain primarily the domain of Europe and the United States. While colonial institutions have for the most part destroyed traditional modes through which history was transmitted. African children who go through the Western education systems are not taught the oral traditions of their people.

We hang our hopes on economic development playing a large role in allowing us to reclaim our history from the West, but which comes first, understanding of our own history or economic development. Is real economic development even feasible without a grasp of history? This shows that the situation is more complex than Ezeanya argues in Reclaiming Africa’s History from the West and that assigning blame is not such a clearcut case.

Source: ThisisAfrica.me

Foreign News:

UK risks being ‘wiped off the map’

The UK, which recently said it could launch a preemptive nuclear strike “in the most extreme circumstances,” runs the risk of being “wiped off the face of the Earth,” the deputy head of a Russian upper house committee said.

 “The statement made by UK’s Defense Minister Michael Fallon calls for a harsh response and I’m not afraid of going too far. At best this statement may be seen as an element of a psychological war, which looks especially revolting in this context,” Frants Klintsevich wrote on Facebook.

“There is a quite natural question then: what country could be primitively targeted by the UK?” the deputy head of the Federation Council’s Committee for Defense and Security said.

In case the UK strikes a nuclear power, then “the UK, which doesn’t have vast territory, will be literally wiped off from the face of the earth with a counterstrike,” Klintsevich said.

In the event of targeting a non-nuclear country, this will remind of the US nuclear attack on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he added.

Klintsevich’s comment comes after Fallon on Monday said that the UK is prepared to carry out a preemptive nuclear strike against any enemies, even if Britain is not under attack.

 “In the most extreme circumstances we have made it very clear that you can’t rule out the use of nuclear weapons as a first strike,” Fallon said on the BBC’s Today program, however not specifying what “most extreme circumstances” imply.

“The whole point about the deterrent is that you have got to leave uncertainty in the mind of anyone who might be thinking of using weapons against this country,” he said.

The UK’s four submarines operating under the Trident nuclear program will be renewed, following last year’s vote in the House of Commons. The move is expected to cost up to £225 billion (about US$285 billion) over its service lifetime and is currently a matter of a heated debate among the Tories and Labour Party.

A recent report by the UN Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR) showed that the threat of a “nuclear weapon detonation event,” accidental or deliberate, is “arguably at its highest in the 26 years since the collapse of the Soviet Union,” as relations between nuclear powers continue to deteriorate.

United States:

Kissinger was right: the United States is losing Russia

President Putin and Trump

Political analyst, assistant professor at the Department of World Politics of the Moscow State University named after Lomonosov, Alexei Fenenko, analyses the latest history of Russian-American relations, debunks myths and says what to expect from the new US administration.

"The Russian elites depend on Western financial institutions a lot. Still, Russia's relations with the United States can be described as mostly negative. How can this be possible?"

"Even having property in the West, educating children in Western institutions and depending on the dollar has not made the Russian elite a partner of the United States. After all, if the Americans write about the need to contain Russia, it means that they admit that this is not enough. The Russian elite depends on the West, but the West still has to take measures to contain Russian elites, build a buffer zone of hostile states around Russia and bring NATO as close to Russia as possible. This is quite a paradox, is it not?

"There is another psychological paradox. We are often told that Russia surrendered everything during the 1990s. If this had been the case, the Americans should have been satisfied. Yet, this is not true to fact. If you look at official documents and read through transcripts of speeches by US leaders, you will see that the mixture of irritation, rage and anxiety about Russia in those documents is striking. Even in the 1990s, Americans admitted that Russia's residual power was too great.

"History repeats itself indeed. Look at Tolstoy's War and Peace. In the novel, all Russian noblemen  speak French, they know French better than Russian, they raise their children in France, have real estate there, but Russia still remains Napoleon's greatest enemy. Napoleon was Russia's enemy too. This is not a paradox at all. During those years, France was a real contender for world supremacy. A supremacist state needs to dismantle power potentials of its competitors.

"Today, the United States is a contender for world supremacy as well. Russian and Chinese elites may know English very well  and have many castles in the West, but this does not change much, because the American hegemony is impossible without dismantling the power potentials of Russia and China. This is the limit that no mutual financial or cultural dependence will cross."

"Does Trump have any strategy for Russia at the moment?"

"The Americans understand that Russia is the only country in the world that can destroy the US technically and wage war against them. China is not capable of this yet. Therefore, Trump, like Bush and Obama, has two goals to pursue in relation to Russia: to cut Russia's military potential and prevent the reintegration of the former USSR in any form. Of course, the USA can use Russia situationally in the interests of American tactical problems, such as, for example, in Afghanistan or with regard to the North Korean nuclear program. Yet, tactical interaction does not eliminate strategic tasks.

"The third objective is more alarming. It is very important for the Americans to upset the political alliance between Russia and China. If they do not succeed here, they will hardly be able to move forward. The Trump administration will have to think how to continue the game to set Russia and China against each other. If they fail, they will have to refuse from their supremacist strategy.

"We exaggerate differences between the policies of separate US administrations. The American strategy is based on the "pool of ideas." During a certain period of time, a breakthrough strategy is developed, which is then implemented for 30-40 years. The Americans change it in two cases: when their strategy fails, or when conditions change. The current foreign policy strategy of the United States is based on the "ideological pool" that was developed in the late 1980s. The pool had four provisions: a) to contribute to the disarmament of the USSR (then Russia); b) to maintain the American military presence in Europe and East Asia; c) to prevent the rise of a new competitor, comparable to the USSR in the 1970s; d) to prevent the change of regional balances, that is, the strengthening of US-unfriendly regional powers. For the time being, all "National Security Strategies of the United States" are based on these ideas."

"In which areas can Russia and the USA cooperate? How can Russia benefit from it?"

"Now Russia and the United States have three objectives. To develop a set of measures to reduce the danger of a hot military conflict. To resume strategic dialogue on preserving arms control and develop a set of mutual obligations in case of a conflict with third countries. These are priority measures. They were discussed at the first stage of the notorious "reset" policy, but it did not go beyond round-table discussions. Munich-2017 security conference has shown that the Trump administration is not ready to revisit that policy.

"The war in Syria has destroyed the idea of Russia and the United States sharing the common anti-terrorist goal. The two countries conduct two parallel anti-terrorist operations in Syria, but we do not cooperate. Instead, Russia and the USA think of how not to bump into each other in Syria. US officials persistently say that they will not cooperate with Russia in Syria. It means that we have lost another safety wire in the US-Russian cooperation."

"How should Russia react to the increase of the US defence budget?"

"It is high time we should turn to the legacy of prominent German military strategist and commander Helmut von Moltke - the architect of Prussia's lightning victories over Denmark, Austria and France. One can buy a lot of new weapons, but they will not cost anything without soldiers. What if soldiers dump all their weapons and run away? The weapons will become the trophy of the victor.

"Secondly, one needs to see how the military budget is spent. One can spend a lot of money on unpromising expensive projects. During Moltke's time, he would laugh at "battling balloons." Nowadays, the Americans have been trying to build "space interceptors" for almost twenty years: the money is gone, but there is no result. One can spend military budgets on life infrastructure: acquiring new mattresses and thermoses is a good thing, but it does not improve the combat capacity either.

"Thirdly, Moltke said that it is not enough to outstrip enemy in general terms - one needs to surpass enemy in specific time and in a specific place. The German strategist used to call it 'realisable superiority.' Russia, for example, was a lot stronger than Japan in all quantitative indicators in 1903 - but Russia was stronger in general, rather than in specific terms. Otherwise, the weaker side resorts to the mechanism of survival: it finds weak points of the stronger opponent and ruthlessly strikes them. When thinking about a response to the growth of US military spending, Russia ought to think about USA's weak points to be able to strike them to thus cause damage to the world's largest military budget.

"Former US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld - I believe, one of the best American defence secretaries - showed us a good example. In the winter of 2001, he sounded the alarm: the American army was too dependent on systems of satellite navigation and communication. The Americans have incredibly expensive armament. Yet, if someone strikes American satellites tomorrow, the US army will find itself defenceless instantly. Such an attack will make USA's huge spending on smart weapons pointless. As we can see, a large military budget is, we have to agree with Moltke here, does not guarantee military victory."

"Many experts believe that it is impossible to build relations with Trump in any format rather than trade. Do you agree with this opinion?"

"Trade is a very optimistic scenario. As soon as the new US administration comes to power, a hope appears in Russia to conclude some sort of a landmark agreement with America. For example, Russia supports USA's actions, and the latter will recognise Russia's interests in post-Soviet space, in Europe, etc. None of those hopes have ever been justified. The Americans refuse from trade saying that they do not exchange their principles for business deals. Washington believes that even if Russia helps America somewhere, the latter is not going to make any concessions for Russia. As Condoleezza Rice used to say in 2005, America does not sell democracy or allies.

"Trade implies mutual concessions. The Americans understand that Russia will also ask for something in return. For a great power, trade and compromises constitute normal diplomatic practices. Yet, the US does not see itself as an ordinary power, they want to be a hegemon.

"Most importantly: the Americans do not see what major concessions Russia could make for them. They know that Russia will not agree to cut its nuclear potential or reduce its influence in post-Soviet space or revise the Russian-Chinese agreement from 2001. Washington is not interested in petty deals.

"We often forget that the United States is a country with the priority of domestic legislation over international one. Why do the Americans renounce their international obligations so easily? They do it because it does not cost them much. Any senator may initiate a revocation of their signature or demand its verification for compliance with US law. For Americans, trade is a situation where they have to grudgingly acknowledge their failure or limited resources."

"In early March, unnamed sources in the administration of the US president, as well as some Western diplomats, said that Donald Trump could temporarily postpone the work on agreements with Russia to combat the Islamic State (the terrorist organisation is banned in Russia - Ed.). Then, the head of the White House refused to disclose his plans in relation to Russia? What do you think is behind it?"

"This once again proves that Russia and the United States have different goals in Syria. For Russia, it is a priority to eliminate ISIS and other radical groups. For the US, the prime goal is to topple the Assad government and reformat Syria to their liking that they have not specified.

"I'm more interested in something else: what will happen if the United States, during Trump's presidency, decides to establish cooperation with Russia on Syria? The result may not be as favourable for Moscow and Damascus, as we often think. For example, the Americans are very worried about the appearance of the "Astana format" of negotiations - the talks between Russia, Iran and Turkey. Judging by open information, Washington sees this format as a way to strengthen the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and Turkey's pullout from NATO. Let's imagine that the US decides to dilute the "Astana format" by becoming its participant or by introducing one of its partners into it. It will be a lot harder to counteract this threat for us. "Strangulation in embrace" is not a new tactic of American diplomacy."

"Strangely enough, most of the American establishment is extremely negative about Russia, while most of our leaders are ready to throw themselves into the Americans' arms at any moment. Have we lost something in ourselves, something very important?"

"This is a certain peculiarity of our mentality after the Second World War. Deep in our heart, we can not agree with the fact that confrontation (in one form or another) is a natural state of our relations with the United States. Ever since 1945, the Russian society has been expecting a good president to come to power in the USA who would relieve the world of the never-ending confrontation and start building a dialogue with the USSR and then Russia. We've never seen this type of president. He won't come. For some reason, it is difficult for us to admit that Russia's contradictions are not associated with a specific president, but rather with the US itself. Our intelligentsia does not consider normal the world where great powers are waging a tough and irreconcilable struggle with each other.

"Now I see rather the reverse process - the attitude to the US in the Russian society today is much worse than it was in Brezhnev's USSR. Back then, the Soviet society was convinced that it was communism that could not allow good relations with America. Now we have more knowledge of what the United States is like, and what we have learned about them has not contributed to the growth of the USA's popularity in our society. How would the USA speak to Russia, if the latter could not be capable of destroying the United States even in its most difficult years? Most people in Russia understand that their love for the American culture does not equal love for Washington's policy. Kissinger was right: the United States is losing Russia.

"Nobody in Russia had any superfluous hopes about Trump. Our media have snatched a few of his phrases out of context, where he talked about the possibility of normalizing relations with Russia. Bush Jr. and Obama used to say the same things, by the way. All that was nothing but empty pre-election statements."

Interviewed by Alexander Dremlyugin
Pravda.Ru

Syria:

Assad had the upper hand, so why would he gas his own people?

Syrian Child sufers chemical poisoning by syrian rebels

By Dina Formentini and Chris Ernesto

Common sense, historical facts and circumstantial evidence suggest that it’s unlikely that Assad gassed his own people.  In fact, it’s much more likely that the chemical weapons were from al-Qaeda, ISIS and/or other anti-Assad factions. Indeed, a case can be made that the attack was coordinated by the White Helmets, with US neoconservatives providing the script.

On March 30, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said that the future leader of Syria should be determined by the people of Syria.

This major policy statement by the US took regime change off the table, and was obviously great news for Bashar al-Assad.  Combined with Syrian military gains on the ground, Assad was in the strongest position he’d been in since the war in Syria began.

So, why 5 days later would he gas his own people?

But even without a thorough investigation, and less than 72 hours after the alleged chemical attack took place, American political leaders and establishment media claimed that Assad carried out the attack on April 4.  Hours later, the US launched 59 tomahawk cruise missiles on a Syrian airfield based on these unproven allegations, killing 9 civilians including 4 children in Idlib province.

Common sense, historical facts and circumstantial evidence suggest that it’s unlikely that Assad gassed his own people earlier this week.  In fact, it’s much more likely that the chemical weapons were from al-Qaeda, ISIS and/or other anti-Assad factions. Indeed, a case can be made that the attack was coordinated by the White Helmets, with US neoconservatives providing the script.

In 2013, US-supported, anti-Assad forces were losing ground in the war in Syria.  Assad claimed that the rebels were using chemical weapons in Aleppo in a last-ditch effort to hold territory.  Assad asked the UN to investigate his claims, and they agreed, and began an investigation in Syria.  Within days of the UN inspectors’ arrival, another chemical weapon attack occurred in Syria.  Western media was quick to blame Assad, even though it defied logic that Assad would use chemical weapons when chemical weapons inspectors were inside Syria at his invitation.

As conservative columnist Pat Buchanan said,

“I would not understand or comprehend that Bashar al-Assad, no matter how bad a man he may be, would be so stupid as to order a chemical weapons attack on civilians in his own country when the immediate consequence…might be that he would be at war with the United States. So this reeks of a false flag operation.”

Former member of congress Ron Paul pointed out, “the group that is most likely to benefit from a chemical attack is Al-Qaeda. They ignite some gas, some people die and blame it on Assad.”

And Russian President Vladimir Putin said, “There is every reason to believe sarin gas was used, not by the Syrian army, but by opposition forces to provoke intervention by their powerful foreign patrons, who would be siding with the fundamentalists.”

Nonetheless, the Obama administration and other western leaders blamed Assad, and talk of US military action in Syria was contemplated.

Fortunately, journalists like Seymour Hersh helped put a halt to war talk, by revealing that it was indeed the US-supported rebels who used chemical weapons – weapons they received from Turkey, a US ally.

The sarin gas attack that just occurred in Syria is eerily similar to the attack that occurred in 2013:  US-backed anti-Assad rebels are losing ground, a sarin gas attack occurs and US politicians quickly blame Assad without an investigation.  One difference between today and 2013 is that the US military actually bombed a Syrian military target in “retaliation.”  Another difference is that this time, Russian military is in Syria at the invitation of the Syrian government, so the risk of military confrontation with Russia is real.

The US announcement on March 30 that it would not seek regime change in Syria was a massive blow to neoconservatives, liberal interventionists, ISIS, al-Qaeda and all other anti-Assad factions who have been trying to oust Assad for years.  In 2016 alone, the CIA reportedly spent $1 billion supplying and training the rebel forces attempting to overthrow the Syrian government.

The Assad opposition is willing to revert to any means necessary, as history showed in 2013, so it’s conceivable that this week’s chemical attack was perpetrated by one of those factions who saw the window of opportunity to oust Assad closing.

And the US has a long history of making false claims to go to war, such as the Gulf of Tonkin incident, and the Iraq WMD claims — both of which led to major wars.

Given this, it is conceivable that the chemical weapons attack in Syria was perpetrated by The White Helmets, with the goal of tricking the US into taking military action against Assad, something the White Helmets have pushed for years.

As Max Blumenthal points out, The White Helmets, who call for a military imposed no-fly zone in Syria, were founded in collaboration with a wing of the USAID — the wing that has promoted regime change around the world — and have been provided with $23 million in funding from the department.

Money to the White Helmets is just part of the $339 million that the USAID has allotted for “supporting activities that pursue a peaceful transition to a democratic and stable Syria.”

Russian deputy ambassador to the UN said on Wednesday that allegations that Assad used chemical weapons this week are based on “falsified reports from the White Helmets”, an organization that has been “discredited long ago”.

This doesn’t mean the White Helmets were involved in Tuesday’s attack, or that the attack itself didn’t really happen, we’re just asking the question.

With that said, clearly the neocons and all anti-Assad forces have a lot more to gain from this week’s chemical attack than does Assad.  And Assad has much more to lose than any of those groups.  And this week’s attack followed the same script used during the 2013 attack, and that attack was wrongly blamed on Assad, as we suspect this attack is as well.

Although, it is too early to know what really happened, one of the possibilities is that the Syrian military bombed an al-Qaeda hideout, not knowing that chemical weapons were in the building, and the gas spread, killing people, as Russian officials have pointed out.  But it’s odd that the White Helmets just happened to be on the ground, and rapidly produced an HD video complete with a script that was read on most major media outlets within hours of the attack.

Other than the people responsible for the alleged chemical attack this week, nobody really knows what happened, including us.  Now that the US has attacked Syria, Russia’s ally, the question is, will Russia back down? If they don’t, we may look back at this week’s attack as a flashpoint to the start of a military confrontation with Russia.  And given that this could lead to World War III, we think it’s worth the time to consider all possibilities, including the ones mapped out here.

* Dina Formentini and Chris Ernesto are members of St. Pete for Peace, a non-partisan antiwar organization providing peace oriented education events and services to the Tampa Bay, FL community community since 2003. This article previously appeared in Counterpunch.

Source: Pambazuka

WAS MARX EVER A LENINIST?

Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin

It’s a silly question of course since Lenin was only 13 when Marx died in 1883 and the two never met. But Lenin considered himself to be a Marxist and saw nothing incompatible between Marx's views and his own view that a minority, vanguard party could seize power in the course of a bourgeois revolution and turn it into a socialist revolution. Indeed, he probably sincerely believed that this was Marx's view too. If Lenin sincerely believed this, this means that he didn't simply make things up. It implies that there must have been something there for him to distort, some at least superficially plausible basis for him not to see it as a distortion.

After he became a socialist in 1843, Marx was politically active (in the sense of being involved in politics as a member of an organisation) for two periods of his life—from 1846 to 1851 and from 1864 to 1873—but under two quite different political conditions. In the 1840s, Germany had yet to undergo its bourgeois revolution—as a revolution that would bring the capitalist class of factory owners and merchants to power in place of a semi-feudal landed aristocracy and an absolutist monarch—while in the 1860s Marx, in Britain, was working with British and other trade unionists and political activists interested in running what amounted to a trade union (not to say reformist) international.

Lenin, naturally since conditions in Tsarist Russia were more akin to 1840s Germany than 1860s Europe, was more interested in Marx's first period of political activity, when Marx was a Socialist active in a pre-bourgeois-revolutionary situation. Most of Marx's writings from this period—including the Communist Manifesto—were concerned with the tactics Socialists should adopt in the course of a bourgeois revolution.

Marx's position was that Socialists—or Communists, as most Socialists including Marx then called themselves—should support the struggle of the bourgeoisie to win political power from the absolutist rulers and should virtually act as its extreme left wing (advocating a democratic republic rather than a constitutional monarchy advocated by the moderates). But that, after the bourgeoisie had come to power, Socialists should urge the workers to wage a political class struggle against them to begin their own struggle for political power.

Marx adhered to this position fairly strictly, even to the extent of criticising those Socialists who argued either that workers should oppose the bourgeoisie politically even before the latter had won political control or that workers should concentrate on the economic struggle leaving the capitalists to fight their own political battles. In the context of Tsarist Russia, this would have made Marx more of a Menshevik than a Bolshevik—the Mensheviks being the non-Leninist wing of the Russian Social Democratic movement who held that pre-1917 Russia was ripe only for a bourgeois revolution. However, for a period from the beginning of 1848 to the middle of 1850, Marx did believe that there was a real possibility that the German bourgeois revolution could turn into—could be turned into, in fact—a "proletarian revolution” in which the proletariat would come to control political power.

"Proletarian revolution"is not a term we normally use and it is not to be understood as the same thing as a "socialist revolution", i.e. a revolution that would lead directly to the establishment of socialism. Marx used it to mean a political revolution which would bring the proletariat into control of political power. He knew perfectly well that, in the conditions prevailing in 1848, the immediate establishment of communism/socialism was impossible but he believed that some inroads into capitalist property rights and conditions of production could be made and gradually extended. This of course meant that he was committed to the concept of a more or less lengthy "transition period" of "proletarian rule".

It was from some of Marx's writings from this period that Lenin was able to convince himself that his tactics in 1917 had some basis in Marx.

The Communist Manifesto itself advances the view that the coming bourgeois revolution in Germany would be rapidly followed by a proletarian revolution. The actual title of the manifesto was The Manifesto of the Communist Party—of course it had nothing to do with the parties which after 1917 called themselves "the communist party" in most of the countries of the world. In 1848 the word "party" was not yet understood in its modern sense of an organisation with its own structure and membership. At that time it simply meant a current of opinion—and this was the sense in which it was meant in the title (it should be party with a small p). Actually, today the title under which it is generally known of Communist Manifesto conveys the meaning more accurately than its actual title of Manifesto of the Communist Party. Having said this, the manifesto was in fact that of a specific organisation—The Communist League of Germany, of which Marx and Engels were members.

Marx's view on what was likely to happen in Germany and what socialists there should do are stated right at the end of the Manifesto:

The Communists turn their attention chiefly to Germany, because that country is on the eve of a bourgeois revolution that is bound to be carried out under more advanced conditions of European civilization, and with a much more developed proletariat, than that of England was in the seventeenth, and of France in the eighteenth century, and because the bourgeois revolution in Germany will be but the prelude to an immediately following proletarian revolution.

Marx and the Communist League soon had a chance to test their theory. In February 1848 a revolution in Paris overthrew the king there and established a democratic republic. In March street battles broke out in Berlin, Vienna and Milan (then ruled by Austria). In Berlin the King of Prussia was forced to allow the election of a national assembly to draw up a constitution, the first step towards turning Germany into a constitutional monarchy.

At the time of the February revolution in France Marx was in Brussels but was soon expelled to France where he had lived before for a while and where he was welcomed back with honours as "Citizen Marx". With the outbreak of the German revolution in March, Marx moved to Germany, but to Cologne in the Rhineland rather than to Berlin, the capital city. There were two reasons for this choice. One was that, as the Rhineland had been occupied by Napoleon’s troops, feudalism had been abolished there and the Napoleonic Code was in force as the basic law, which allowed more freedom of organisation and the press than in Prussia proper, even though the Rhineland formed part of the Kingdom of Prussia.

The second reason was that Marx had been politically active there before—In 1842 and 1843 when he had been the editor of a Cologne paper, the Rheinische Zeitung (Rhenish Gazette). That was before he had become a Socialist and was still merely a republican democrat. But even democratic views were too much for the Prussian authorities and Marx left for France where he met Parisian workers and completed his conversion to Socialist ideas (so, incidentally, refuting another of Lenin’s views: that socialist ideas had to be first brought to workers by bourgeois intellectuals; in fact it was the other way round: Marx, the bourgeois intellectual, learned his socialist ideas from German and French workers in Paris).

When he returned to Cologne in 1848 Marx’s idea was to revive the Rheinische Zeitung as a daily paper, to be called the Neue Rheinsche Zeitung (New Rhenish Gazette), to agitate for “democracy” (i.e. a democratic republic, i.e. but also not socialism). The subtitle of the paper—the first issue of which appeared in June 1848—was precisely “Organ of Democracy”. This was in accordance with Marx’s general political position that workers should first help the bourgeoisie destroy absolutism and feudalism before beginning the political struggle against them. So in practice the Neue Rheinische Zeitung acted as the voice of the extreme left wing of the radical section of the bourgeoisie. In fact Marx was a member for a while of the Democratic Association as well as the Communist League.

As editor much of Marx’s time was taken up with the routine tasks of bringing out a daily paper and most of the articles were in fact written by Engels.

Engels later explained that, although the members of the Communist League knew that what was going on in Germany in 1848 and 1849 was essentially a bourgeois revolution, the only model they had to go on was the French revolution, particularly the period 1793-4 when Robespierre and the Jacobins were in power. There had in fact been two revolutions in France. The first in 1789 which, with the storming of the Bastille, led to the establishment of a constitutional monarchy. And a second in 1792 which eventually led to the establishment of a republic, the execution of the king and the waging of a revolutionary anti-feudal war against the absolutist states of Europe.

Engels, in his articles, called for the German bourgeois revolution to follow the same course as the French revolution, and move on from the constitutional monarchy stage to the more radical stage of dictatorship, terror and revolutionary war. That Engels was calling for a strong centralised government that would use terror against the old ruling classes and their supporters, and wage a revolutionary war against Russia can be seen from the following quotes:

“Every state which finds itself in a provisional situation after a revolution requires a dictator, an energetic dictator at that,”(14 September 1848).

“. . . the only way of shortening, simplifying and concentrating the murderous death pangs of the old society, the bloody birth pangs of the new, only one way—revolutionary terrorism.”(7 November 1848).

“. . . hatred of the Russians was, and still is, the first revolutionary passion of the Germans…We can only secure the revolution against these Slav peoples by the most decisive acts of terrorism.(16 February 1849)

It was not precisely clear what “acts of terrorism” Engels had in mind for the Czechs and the Croats; it is probably as well not to ask. To a Socialist today such views are unacceptable and even shocking. Engels himself later played down their significance, attributing them to an erroneous assessment of the conditions of the time. But they were of course music to Lenin’s ears and provided a superficial justification for his own practice, after 1917, of dictatorship and terror.

One thing Lenin ignored, however, was that Engels was talking about what should happen in the course of a bourgeois revolution and not about what should happen in a proletarian revolution. He and Marx had already developed a theory of the significance of terror during a bourgeois revolution as something necessary to wipe out feudalism but which, because the bourgeoisie was too timid to do this itself, fell to other more radical groups within society.

In an article written in October 1847, for instance, Marx had written:

“The terror in France could thus by its mighty hammer-blows only serve to spirit away, as it were, the ruins of feudalism from French soil. The timidly considerate bourgeoisie would not have accomplished this task for decades. The bloody action of the people thus only prepared the way for it.” (Moralising Criticism and Critical Morality)

Engels said more or less the same thing in one of his articles in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung on 15 December 1848. Where, in the course of a bourgeois revolution, he wrote, “the proletariat and the other sections of the town population which did not form part of the bourgeoisie”:

“ . . . stood in opposition to the bourgeoisie, as for example in 1793 and 1794 in France, they were in fact fighting for the implementation of the interests of the bourgeoisie, although not in the manner of the bourgeoisie. The whole of the French terror was nothing other than the plebeian manner of dealing with the enemies of the bourgeoisie, with absolutism, feudalism and parochialism.”

This didn’t mean that Marx and particularly Engels didn’t support such decisive actions against feudalism and the old ruling class and their supporters, but they saw this as a necessary stage through which a bourgeois revolution had to pass if it was to deal decisively with feudalism and clear the way for the free development of capitalism—and so for the proletariat to wage its political class struggle against the bourgeoisie.

It does, however, provide some clues as to how they thought a bourgeois revolution might develop into a proletarian revolution.

Engels, writing nearly 50 years later in 1895 (in his introduction to a re-edition of some of Marx’s writings from the period, The Class Struggles in France), suggested that what revolutionary socialists like himself had thought at the time was that, whereas in 1794 the bourgeoisie had got rid of the radicals once they had done the dirty work of eliminating feudalism and its supporters for them, in 1848 it could be different: Socialists could get the proletariat to push the revolution even further and turn it from a minority, bourgeois revolution (which it would be even in its radical phase) into a majority, proletarian revolution. Two reasons were given for supposing that the outcome in 1848 could be different from what it had been in 1794, both of which are mentioned in the Communist Manifesto: one was the existence of a more developed and politically advanced working class; the other was the presence and intervention of revolutionary socialists who understood what was going on.

But we don’t need to rely just on Engels’ reminiscences of 47 years later. There exists a document, drafted by Marx on behalf of the central committee of the Communist League and known as the “Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League (March 1850)” which is explicit enough.

The German bourgeois revolution had not succeeded. On the contrary, in November 1848 the counter-revolution had won a decisive victory. The national assembly in Berlin was dissolved. In reply, its more radical members called for a tax strike—which Marx and the Neue Rheinische Zeitung fully supported (in fact Marx later went on trial in Cologne for this, but was acquitted)—but things got worse and in May 1849 the last issue of the daily Neue Rheinsiche Zeitung appeared (printed in red). Marx went into exile, first in France, then in England where he settled. Engels went on to fight on the barricades in Southern Germany (to give him his due, he wasn’t all talk) and when these were put down went to Switzerland and then to England.

At first Marx, Engels and the other members of the central committee of the Communist League, in exile in London, refused to believe that it was all over. In fact they thought that the bourgeois revolution would soon break out again in Germany and still thought that this could be immediately followed by a proletarian revolution. The March 1850 Address advances this view, arguing that once the working class had helped the bourgeoisie against feudalism and absolutism they should refuse to hand over their arms; they should organise workers’ councils in working class districts; and socialists should encourage them to raise ever more radical demands.

Marx and the Central Committee of the League called this a policy of “permanent revolution”. This of course is a phrase which Trotsky and Trotskyists use—and this is in fact where Trotsky got it from. This Address was also a favourite of Lenin’s, for obvious reasons, as it appeared to provide some justification for his policy of Socialists trying to win power in the course of a bourgeois revolution.

In fact we don’t have to be mealy-mouthed about this and say it “appeared to justify” Lenin’s policy; it didn’t just appear to, it did justify it. But, unfortunately for Lenin, before the year 1850 was out Marx realised that his assessment had been completely mistaken: the bourgeois revolution was not going to break out again in the near future (that would have to await the next economic crisis, he said) and it was merely revolutionary romanticism for Socialists to continue to think in terms of the working class winning power in the immediate future.

This change of attitude on the part of Marx, Engels and the majority in fact of the central committee of the Communist League led to a split in the organisation. The issue was precisely about whether or not a proletarian revolution was on the cards. The Minutes of the meeting of the central committee of 15 October 1850 refer to a discussion at a previous meeting on “The position of the proletariat in the next revolution” and record the views of Marx and of Karl Schapper, one of the minority on the central committee who disagreed with him and the majority.The Minutes make interesting—and amusing—reading:

Marx says, criticising his opponents:

“The will, rather than actual conditions, was stressed as the chief factor in the revolution. We tell the workers: If you want to change conditions and make yourselves capable of government, you will have to undergo 15, 20 or 50 years of civil war. Now they are told: We must come to power immediately, or we might as well go to sleep.”

To which Schapper replied:

“It boils down to whether we do the beheading at the outset or whether we ourselves are beheaded. The workers will have their turn in France, and thereby we will in Germany. If that was not the case I would [indeed take to my bed].”

Marx replied:

“We are devoted to a party which would do best not to assume power just now. The proletariat, if it should come to power, would not be able to implement proletarian measures immediately, but would have to introduce petty bourgeois ones. Our party can only become the government when conditions allow its views to be put into practice. Louis Blanc provides the best example of what happens when power is assumed prematurely.”

Engels, in a long article written about the same time (later published as a separate pamphlet, The Peasant War in Germany), developed the same argument about what would happen in the event of a premature capture of power, even using the same example of Louis Blanc as a member of the provisional government that took over from King Louis Phillippe in February 1848:

“The worst thing that can befall a leader of an extreme party is to be compelled to take over a government when society is not yet ripe for the domination of the class he represents and for the measures which that domination implies. What he can do depends not on his will but upon the level of development of the material means of existence, and of the conditions of production and commerce upon which class conditions always repose . . .  Thus he necessarily finds himself in an unsolvable dilemma. What he can do contradicts all his previous actions and principles, and the immediate interests of his party, and what he ought to do cannot be done. In a word, he is compelled to represent not his party or his class, but the class for whose domination the moment is then ripe.”

Marx had said the same thing in the October 1847 article already quoted:

“If therefore the proletariat overthrows the political rule of the bourgeoisie, its victory will only be temporary, only an element in the service of the bourgeois revolution itself, as in the year 1794, as long as in the course of history, its ‘movement’, thematerial conditions have not yet been created which make necessary the abolition of the bourgeois mode of production and therefore also the definitive overthrow of the political rule of the bourgeoisie.” (Moralizing Criticism and Critical Morality).

These two quotes were put to very effective use by the Mensheviks to criticise Lenin and the Bolsheviks and to develop a theory, based on Marx’s views, of what happened in Russia in 1917: in 1917 a bourgeois revolution was taking place; in the course of it the Bolsheviks seized power in the bid to promote a socialist revolution; however, since conditions were not ripe for a socialist revolution or for socialism, Bolshevik rule would be merely “an element in the service of the bourgeois revolution itself” (Marx).

The Bolsheviks certainly did live up to the terror of 1794—the Tsar and many other supporters of the old regime were executed or put into camps and the whole Tsarist order was completely uprooted—but, in the end, this did not turn out to be an entirely adequate theory. This was because, contrary to what it posits and to what many Mensheviks and Social Democrats expected as late as 1929, Bolshevik rule was not overthrown and replaced by that of the bourgeoisie (it was eventually, but after 80 years). Instead, they remained in power and evolved into a new ruling class themselves. What developed in Russia was not private capitalism after a more or less brief period of Bolshevik rule and terror against Tsarism, but a new form of capitalism under state ownership and control not seen before—which was not anticipated by Marx in the 19^th century.

Nevertheless, these two passages do provide the basis for an explanation as to why the Bolshevik revolution, insofar as it was an attempt to move towards socialism, was bound to fail and for why the Bolshevik leaders would end up as the servants not the masters of objective material conditions.

What Marx and Engels were in effect sayings was that conditions in 1848 and 1850 were not ripe for what Marx sometimes called “the dictatorship of the proletariat”. This was a phrase borrowed from French revolutionary socialists of the time, but to which Marx gave a more democratic content.

In fact, in April 1850 the Communist League joined with some French revolutionary socialists, or “Blanquists” as they came to be called, and leftwing Chartists to form a secret international organisation called the World Society of Revolutionary Communists. Its stated aim, which Marx signed on behalf of the League, was:

“The aim of the association is the overthrow of the privileged classes and their subjugation to the dictatorship of the proletariat, which will carry through the permanent revolution until the realization of communism, the ultimate form of organization of the human family.”

Marx, however, never understood the term “dictatorship of the proletariat” in the Leninist sense of a dictatorship exercised by a vanguard party claiming to represent the proletariat (though the same cannot be said of the Blanquists), but its use was still ambiguous. Not so much the word “dictatorship” which had not yet acquired its modern sense but meant something like “full powers”. The ambiguity was over who was to exercise these “full powers”. Who was the “proletariat”? If it was meant, as Marx generally did, the working class in the sense of those who were forced to sell their labour-power to live, this would have meant that the “full powers” would have been exercised by a minority only of the population—since the working class proper was at this time still only a minority class (most producers were either peasants or artisans working with their own instruments of production, those Marx called the “petty bourgeoisie”). But this would be a denial of the democracy Marx said he stood for (and really did stand for). If, on the other hand, the “full powers” were envisaged as being exercised by the people via their democratically-elected representatives (as Marx did envisage) then this could only be legitimately called the “dictatorship of the proletariat” if the word “proletariat” was stretched to include the petty bourgeoisie and the peasantry. Which was precisely one of the criticisms Marx had made of Schapper:

“The word ‘proletariat’ has been reduced to a mere phrase, like the word ‘people’ was by the democrats. To make this phrase a reality one would have to declare the entire petty bourgeoisie to be proletarians, i.e. de facto represent the petty bourgeoisie and not the proletariat.”

Here again, Marx was saying that conditions weren’t ripe for the rule of the proletariat and that to attempt it would lead to rule by or on behalf of the petty bourgeoisie. In 1850, he was in effect saying even the “dictatorship of the proletariat” as the beginning of a transition to socialism, let alone socialism itself, was not possible.

Engels’ comments in 1895 can serve as an epitaph to the illusions he and Marx had entertained in 1848-1850 about “an immediately following proletarian revolution”:

History has proved us, and all who thought like us, wrong. It has made clear that the state of economic development on the Continent at that time was not, by a long way, ripe for the elimination of capitalist production.

The time is past for revolutions carried through by small minorities at the head of unconscious masses. When it gets to be a matter of the complete transformation of the social organisation, the masses themselves must participate, must understand what is at stake and why they are to act. That much the history of the last fifty years has taught us. But so that the masses may understand what is to be done, long and persistent work is required(1895 Preface to Marx’s ‘The Class Struggles in France 1848-1850’).

So, sometime between April and September 1850, Marx came to the conclusion that not only were conditions not ripe for a “proletarian revolution” at that time but that, precisely because of this, it was a mistake to try for one since even if Socialists were to come to power they would not be able to serve the interests of the working class nor to further the cause of socialism. All they would be able to do was to serve the interests of a section of the bourgeoisie and to further the development of capitalism.

This represented a repudiation of his previous views, which were those Lenin latched onto to justify the Bolshevik seizure of power in 1917, and in fact represented a powerful and far-sighted criticism of it.

So, we can say, in answer to the question “Was Marx a Leninist?”, that he did flirt with Leninist-type ideas for a while but then abandoned them and always thereafter opposed them in favour of a long and protracted process of working-class self-organisation which would eventually lead to them being ready to win political control and establish socialism.