Translated by Red Phoenix staff.

The international Marxist-Leninist movement, the proletariat and the peoples of the world, celebrate the bicentenary of the birth of Karl Marx, founder of scientific communism, great educator and guide of the world proletariat, inspirer and organizer of the First International (International Workingmen’s Association).

The bourgeois ideologues, who do not cease to proclaim the “death of communism”, are forced to recognize the timeliness of Marx’s thought and his scientific critique of capitalism. Bourgeois economists are inclined to the scientific theories elaborated by Karl Marx, and recognize their current validity on the analysis of the structure that grips the capitalist-imperialist system. At the same time, they try to unite this language with the revisionist and opportunist currents to transverse the fundamental principles of Marxism by opposing the “young Marx” against the “Communist Marx”, the guide of the world proletariat. In their anticommunist diatribe they try to separate the classics from Marxism-Leninism and oppose Marx and Engels against Lenin and Stalin.

The Voltaic Revolutionary Communist Party (PCRV), in its work to guide the working class, people and popular youth of our country, in order to arm them for the revolutionary struggle, issues this statement on Karl Marx, founder of scientific socialism.

Marx was born on May 5, 1818 in Trier (Germany) in a family of the middle bourgeoisie. His father was a lawyer. He finished his studies brilliantly at secondary school, and continued at the universities of Bonn and Berlin, where he joined the group of “Left Hegelians” of revolutionary tendency. Having completed his PhD thesis, Marx participated in the drafting of the Rheinische Zeitung organ of the radical bourgeoisie. He published his work “Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right” in 1843. That work was the beginning of the transition from the idealist conception to the materialist conception of the world, and from revolutionary democratism to communism. Marx clearly stated his position:

“Philosophy finds in the proletariat its material weapons, just as the proletariat finds its intellectual weapons in philosophy, and when this clarity of thought strikes at the heart of this virgin soil, the emancipation that will make the Germans men will be fulfilled” (Marx and Engels, Selected Works, Moscow, Vol. II, page 452)

The Rheinische Zeitung, for its critical, democratic and revolutionary positions, was censored and finally banned.

At the end of 1843, Marx, driven into exile, took refuge in Paris. There he contributed to the founding of the Franco-German Annals, a magazine in which he published articles that confirmed his revolutionary commitment, among them, “A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right”. Lenin writes about it:

“In the articles of Marx published in the magazine, he already appears as a revolutionary who advocates the “ruthless criticism of everything in existence” and in particular “the criticism of weapons” where he appeals to the masses and the proletariat. ” (Lenin, “Karl Marx and Frederick Engels”).

Marx confirms his dual role, that of philosopher and that of revolutionary militant; one the scientific researcher and the other intellectual at the service of the historical mission of the proletariat, causes to which he consecrated his life.

At that time, Engels resided in the industrial center of the city of Manchester, England, and carried out a similar activity. The collaboration between the two friends was reinforced and gave rise to a great intimacy, to the point that the name of the two great educators of the proletariat is mixed in numerous works and writings such as The Holy Family.  At the beginning of 1845, Marx, at the request of the Prussian authorities, was expelled from France, and settled in Brussels, Belgium, where he carried out a deep and systematic critique of Hegel’s idealism and Feuerbach’s metaphysical materialism. On that basis, Marx elaborated the scientific conception of the world of the proletariat: dialectical and historical materialism.

Karl Marx linked his theoretical work to the mobilization and organization of the workers against capitalist exploitation. He founded the Association of German workers.

In 1847, Marx and Engels joined the League of the Just, which would later become the Communist League. The Second Congress of the League commissioned Marx and Engels to write their program. Thus, in 1848, the famous Manifesto of the Communist Party was published, exposing the Marxist doctrine as the revolutionary theory and compass of the proletariat to the world. Of that work Lenin wrote:

“This work exposes with clarity and rigor, the new conception of the world, the consequent materialism linked to social life, the dialectic, as the broadest and deepest science of evolution, the theory of class struggle and the revolutionary role that it corresponds in world history to the proletariat as the creator of a new society, the communist society. ”

In 1848, revolution shakes France and influences the neighboring countries, namely Belgium and Germany. The frightened Belgian government suddenly expels Marx, who, after the revolution of 1848, moved to Cologne (Germany), where he founded the magazine The New Rhenish Gazette. The counter-revolution in Germany unleashes a great repression. Marx, again, is condemned and expelled to Paris. In Paris he suffers the same fate, and after the uprising of June 1849, he is expelled. He settles in London, where he would reside until his death.

The Thought of Marx and The Class Struggle in the Social Movement.

The immense theoretical and scientific work of Marx, grows with new publications linked to the political and social events of his time. The Class Struggles in France and The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, constitute an accurate analysis of the revolution of 1848-1851 in France. Marx devotes himself to the monumental work of his life, Capital. In 1859 he publishes “Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy”, where he raises his theory about value for the first time. In 1867, the first book of Capital appears. Engels emphasizes the depth of this major work:

“Since there are capitalists and workers in the world, there is no book of such importance for workers, as this one. The relations between capital and labor, the axis on which the current social system revolves, are, for the first time scientifically developed.”

The early ‘60s of the nineteenth century were marked by a booming labor movement and the struggle against capitalist exploitation in the different industrialized countries. Marx finds this development in the breadth and depth of the social movement, the opportunity to carry out his aspiration: to found an international organization of the proletariat, with the essential objective of uniting, educating and directing it towards its social emancipation. In September 1864, he promoted the creation of the International Workingmen’s’ Association (the First International) of which he is the main inspirer and editor of its founding documents. This international organization contributes decisively to the unity of the workers’ movement, and against its dispersion. The Association draws its orientation based on Marxist, revolutionary principles, and carries out a systematic struggle against the different opportunist and non-proletarian socialist currents.

The defeat of the Paris Commune was the prelude to difficulties for the functioning of the First International; forced, provisionally, to leave the political scene. However, the labor movement continued its extension in the period of the construction of numerous parties that claimed socialism. Despite the dissolution of the First International, Marx and Engels continued the task of directing the labor movement with criticism and guidance, and published works of great ideological and political scope.

After the defeat of the Paris Commune in 1871, Marx published his famous The Civil War in France, in which he raises the lessons of that first experience of the seizure of power by the proletariat.

Several writings such as Critique of the Gotha Program and Anti-Duhring, illustrate the life and work of Karl Marx and his friend Engels. The prodigious genius of Marx discovers the scientific laws of the development of capitalist society in the nineteenth century. He analyzed the contradictions between the relations of production and the development of the productive forces, the crises caused by the overproduction of commodities, at the same time as the pauperization of the working class is growing. The capital-labor contradiction is developed and materialized by the struggles of the proletariat. At first these struggles had a spontaneous character. It is precisely there where the scientific thought of Marx was decisive for the awareness of the proletariat. He creatively and critically developed the three main currents of thought of the nineteenth century: Classical German philosophy, English political economy and French utopian socialism.

On the philosophical sphere, its construction of dialectical and historical materialism gave the proletariat and humanity a method of analyzing the laws of social evolution and class struggle:

“Thanks to the complete study of the economic and political life of bourgeois society, Marx describes the origins of capitalism, defines the laws and trends of its development, and proves the ineluctability of its demise. He showed that capitalism had a transitory character, and that the victory of a new social regime, of communism, is inevitable.” (Abbreviated Philosophical Dictionary, page 321)

He continued writing Capital, Books II, III and IV. But illness prevented him from completing that immense task. Karl Marx died on March 14, 1883 in London, at the age of 65.

Marx’s theoretical thinking is a coherent and harmonious whole. It is useless, as the opportunists, revisionists and anti-communists try, to separate the acceptable “young Marx” in different periods and reject the “dictatorship of the proletariat”. Marx, throughout his life was in the first row of the struggle of the proletariat, permanently assuming the work of organization, education and leadership in revolutionary action. He was a revolutionary militant, not just a thinker.

The precise cornerstone that allows us to unmask all those falsifiers, resides in the fundamental principles underlined by Marx, from an objective analysis of the different social classes in the capitalist regime.

“Of all the classes that now face the bourgeoisie, only the proletariat is a truly revolutionary class.” (Manifesto of the Communist Party)

Marx clearly indicated the world historical role of the proletariat as the gravedigger of capitalism and the builder of the new society, the communist society without classes, without exploitation of man by man. It has shown the proletariat the only way to liberate itself: Under the leadership of its vanguard, the communist party, the proletariat allied with the peasantry, uses revolutionary violence to overthrow the domination of the bourgeoisie and seize power. From this point of view, the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat is the cardinal point of the Marxist theory of scientific socialism.

The doctrine of Marx, was developed under the conditions of imperialism, by Lenin and then by Stalin. Marxism-Leninism is enriched by incorporating the new scientific discoveries and mutations of capitalism with all its fundamental contradictions. Lenin developed Marxism in the conditions of a new epoch, that of imperialism and proletarian revolutions.

Marxist-Leninist Thought and the Path of Revolution in Upper Volta, Called Burkina Faso.

Our party, the CRPV, since its foundation in 1978, has been untiringly fighting to apply Marxism-Leninism to the concrete conditions of our country, a backward neo-colony dominated by French imperialism. The PCRV has traced the path of revolution in our country and widely disseminated, as a pioneer, communist ideas within the working class and the people, despite barbarous repression, the maneuvers and the attempts of the reactionary bourgeoisie and its different parties to liquidate it.

The revisionist and opportunist groups, (PAI, Proletarian ULC, etc.) that once camouflaged themselves with a pseudo-Marxist phraseology, have been unmasked in the fire of the class struggle, and their true counterrevolutionary and anti-communist nature has appeared:  Serving the coupist clans of the colonial army and of international, mainly the French, imperialism. These small groups have disappeared from the political arena for a long time. The parties of the bourgeoisie in power, and in the alleged opposition, who have an obsessive dream of liquidating the PCRV, are undermined by internal convulsions, and by the development of the revolutionary spirit, accumulated by our heroic people since the popular insurrection of 30 and 31 October 2014, and the resistance against the fascist and counterrevolutionary coup of September 2015.

The PCRV, oriented with the compass of Marxism-Leninism, calls the working class, the popular youth, the men and women of the people, both in the cities and in the countryside, to unite to achieve the National Democratic and Popular Revolution, through the armed general insurrection, to expel imperialism, specifically the French, and its local allies, to constitute a Provisional Revolutionary Government, to convoke a Constituent Assembly and to establish a modern Democratic Republic that applies the minimum program of transition to scientific socialism.

The PCRV thus confirms its fidelity to the thought of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, as proclaimed in the Communist Manifesto:

” The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.”

Eternal glory to Marx! Long live Marxism-Leninism!

LONG LIVE THE PCRV, PARTY OF REVOLUTIONARY ACTION!

Central Committee

May 2018

Categories: Burkina Faso, Colonialism, Dialectics, Economic Exploitation, History, Imperialism, International, Myths About Socialism, Revolutionary History, Theory, Workers Struggle, World History