Labor Party Praxis is an organization and e-group that is committed to participating in the self-organization of the working class as a class and, consequently, a political party. History has shown that every class struggle is a political struggle.

Based on monopoly possession of the productive forces, the most powerful, economically dominant class is the most powerful politically dominant class. Those who own do not work, and those who work do not own. It is only when the working class is a community of owners of the productive forces and agriculture that we will become the most powerful, economically dominant class.

The productive forces are forms of wealth derived from the mode of appropriating labor and/or the products of labor. The capitalist mode of appropriation -- the result of the capitalist mode of production of commodities -- produces capitalist private property. The form of wealth is capital, and the economic domination of capital compels the individual members of society -- having no means of production of their own -- to capitalize their labor ability, that is, to sell their labor power in order to live.

Labor Party Praxis challenges this arrangement, and fights for a society in which the working class becomes the ruling class. We posit that winning the battle of democracy, taking the productive forces from the capitalist class, and transferring those means of social production and distribution from the private sector to public property could accomplish working class ownership of the means of social production.

The struggle by the working class for state power is a political struggle that requires an active and energetic American Labor Party that competes in the electoral arena against the Democratic Party as well as the Republican Party. The formation of an American Labor Party must be financially based in, and accountable to, the trade unions, and socially based in the class as a whole. This requires nothing short of internal revolutions in the trade unions -- throwing out of office the Democratic and Republican parties' advocates and representatives in the trade unions, and by replacing these with union representatives and officers that are committed to building the American Labor Party.

This is the praxis -- the practical-critical, revolutionizing activity in the self-organization of the working class. The focus is on this praxis as a strategy toward winning the battle of democracy in order to become the majority in the American House of Representatives, and to engage in class war with the Senate, Presidency, Judiciary, and their Constitution.

The struggle for democracy is necessarily the struggle for a Labor Party majority in the House of Representatives -- comprised of workers (industrial workers, agricultural workers, service workers, salaried medical professionals, sanitation workers, etc.) and members of oppressed ethnic and gender communities who are also overwhelmingly working class. This working class majority in the House of Representatives will:

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The working class making demands of our own!

1. The same process of natural history has produced human beings and human culture through it's creation of productive technology. The proletariat class, wherever it exists, has a natural relationship to the productive forces, as work is a natural human activity. The proletariat, wherever we exist today, are a product of advances in technology, and the capitalist mode of appropriation (method of distribution): the market. In the market economy, the working classes are, having no means of production of their own, reduced to selling their labour-power in order to obtain the wherewithal to live, money to purchase means of subsistence (food,clothing,shelter), constitutes the proletariat. Proletarians of all countries participate in the same historical process. The proletariat is a cosmopolitan class and thus it's class and class interests are present in every country of the world today. The economic interests of the working class are the same in all countries. The working class should be organized as they actually exist, internationally. We demand internationalist trade unions.

2. The cosmopolitan nature of capitalist industrial production has created technological economic conditions in which human beings must produce socially on a global scale to continue to exist as a species. The productive process is a socially necessary activity. Every living thing interacts with it's natural environment, produces, changing and consuming things provided by nature, soas to survive and multiply. The same for human beings. So long as we have existed, we have produced, socially. Today we produce socially on an international scale. Unlike any other species though, the means of human social reproduction, the production process, are controlled by a tiny sub-group/class. Private control of means of social reproduction is not necessary. Not all working class have access to productive technology. All humans can and should benefit from modern industrial mass-production technology. We therefore demand a full technology transfer to equalise the productivity of human labour to the highest available, in all branches of production, everywhere, globally.

3. Any worker, anywhere in the world today, given state-of-the-art technology, in any branch of industry or agriculture, mining, etc., can produce great surpluses of value/products over-and-above the daily needs of the producers themselves. Any worker can produce enough value in one week to sustain the worker and family for fifty weeks for example. We thus demand full employment; that the unemployed/under-employed working class be reabsorbed back into the workforce by reducing the workweek of those employed, spread the workweek equally among all, with a living wage for all.

4. The capitalist class of all capitalist countries enter into trade agreements among themselves so that their particular commodities (raw materials, semi-finished/finished products,etc.) can move without restriction across national borders, in search of markets. We demand that the working class as well should have the same ability to move, unrestricted, across national boundries in search of the highest price (wage) with our unique commodity, labour-power.

Wed, Jun 24, 2009 at 8:22 PM

The Black Panther Party. Race, Class and Revolution

A social revolution requires a passive element, a material basis: it is the transfer of the productive forces from one class to another. The rising class emerges from changes in the economic mode of production [means of production determined] changes in the mode of appropriation of labor. These changes in the economic base both creates and empowers the rising class and enables it to expropriate the productive forces and do away with the existing mode of production and thereupon to attack existing relations of production and corresponding property formation: the rising class is objectively positioned to take the production forces and destroy the existing mode of appropriation of labor and relations of production.

This is accomplished by the corresponding political revolution, whereby the old ruling classes are overthrown and the rising class becomes the new ruling class. Whether this revolution is accomplished by violence or not depends on the political situation, that is the degree of resistance of the old class power, and in particular whether their desire to hold power resorts to violence. If peaceful evolution is impossible, then the ruling classes make violent political revolution inevitable means of transfer of the economy from one class to the other.

The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas; hence of the relationships which make the one class the ruling one, therefore, the ideas of its dominance. The individuals composing the ruling class possess among other things consciousness, and therefore think. Insofar, therefore, as they rule as a class and determine the extent and compass of an epoch, it is self-evident that they do this in its whole range, hence among other things rule also as thinkers, as producers of ideas, and regulate the production and distribution of the ideas of their age: thus their ideas are the ruling ideas of the epoch. ... The existence of revolutionary ideas in a particular period presupposes the existence of a revolutionary class; about the premises for the latter sufficient has already been said above. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01b.htm#b3

Toward the end of his life by assassination by cultural nationalists of the Nation Of Islam Malcolm X came to realize revolutions are a transition from an economy based on class exploitation to another economy, the exploited and oppressed class being historically positioned objectively and subjectively determined to overthrow the exploitative and oppressive economy and establish a new one by their self-emancipation from the old. Thus Malcolm X became a conscious critic of the capitalist mode of production and appropriation, capitalism.
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Sunday, June 21, 2009 10:51 AM

Fake Leftists and Lessons on The Matter of a Free Palestine

By Lil Joe

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During its campaign to win executive office, the Democratic Party and its candidate, Barack Obama, claimed that were Obama to win, it would deliver to 'the American people' prizes: from peace to universal health care to an economy that puts Main Street before Wall Street. This being echoed by the CPUSA above.

"If Obama’s candidacy represented nothing more than the spark for this profound initiative to unite the working class and defeat the pernicious influence of racism, it would be a transformative candidacy that would advance progressive politics for the long term. The struggle to defeat the ultra-right and turn our country on a positive path will not end with Obama’s election. But that step will shift the ground for successful struggles going forward. One thing is clear. None of the people’s struggles — from peace to universal health care to an economy that puts Main Street before Wall Street — will advance if McCain wins in November."

This was the demogogic basis that West, Baraka, Chomsky, Zinn, and others reduced class politics to individual personality contests and a fake distinction of "progressive" vis-a-vis verses "ultra-right". I say fake distinction between Obama's policies and McCains, and between "progressive" vis-a-vis verses "ultra-right", because once in office Obama and the Democrats have followed the exact policies of what they said were those of the Republicans and McCain of putting "Wall Street before Main Street", lack of health care universal programs, and expanding the war. The Obama administration and the Democratic Party, if these policies constitute the "ultra-right", are behind their claim of being "progressive" actually themselves ultra-right by dolling out trillions of dollars to banks while workers houses are being confiscated by foreclosures, and hundreds of billions to industrial Auto-capitalists, as workers are being fired, and plants closed while government approves bankruptcies to end previously agreed upon union contracts. Universal health care (single payer health insurance) has been deleted into trash the bin. Tens of thousands more troops are being sent to kill and be killed in Iraq, Afghanistan and instead of peace the war is expanded into Pakistan.
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March, 2009

A Critique of Pat Buchanan

by Lil Joe

Pat Buchanan in his Commentary below is engaging in his usual, racist demagogy, concerning the economy and politicians in America, to "explain" the present economic crisis. The article is titled "systemic failure". One would expect an objective analysis of capitalist commodity production and appropriation, that is, the breakdown in the circulation of commodities by money: the failure of that system.

Instead, although Buchanan begins stating the obvious economic facts it is laced in mysticism and ideological demagogic individualism and guilt/blame. He wrote:

"As the U.S. financial crisis broadens and deepens, wiping out the wealth and savings of tens of millions, destroying hopes and dreams, it is hard not to see in all of this history's verdict upon this generation. We have been weighed in the balance and found wanting. For how did this befall us, save through decisions that brushed aside lessons that history and experience had taught our fathers?"

The obvious economic fact is that there is a financial crisis in the United States that, as it broadens and deepens, is wiping out monetary "wealth and savings of tens of millions". What does that mean? We must begin with objective, i.e., universal definitions:
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October, 2008

The Election's Rhetoric of American Anti-Communism

by Lil Joe

In this article I will explain Marx, Marxism, Sweden, Socialism, Communism, Keynesian economic theory and practices contrasted to Monetarism in theory and practice, taxes, redistribution and other words and concepts distorted by McCain and Palin, FOX News, the Republicans and others daily on television. They are playing to the ignorance and nationalist delusions of American workers, and it is that ignorance and those delusions that I address. I am not defending the Keynesian policies of the democrats or Obama's representation of it and that Party. Communism is opposed and Marx distorted and attacked by both the capitalist's Democratic Party as well as Republican Party. I am defending Communism and presenting Marx and Engels' actual positions and writings.

The Republicans have called the Keynesian economic theory and policies, as represented by the Swedish economy, "socialist". This is of course ridiculous, because the Swedish economy is capitalist commodity production by wage workers, the exploitation of wage labor by capital. I have posted an article on the history of the Swedish economy, one on the Social-Democratic Labor Party's government instituting a social wage and raising the Swedish workers standard of living to one of the highest of all capitalist countries, much higher and more secure than the ignorantly anti-socialist American workers, and Malcolm X's comment on Martin Luther King's praise of Sweden ending poverty, homelessness, and violence in the country.

July/August, 2008

Sociology of the State

by Lil Joe

Dear Reader,

This article originated in a discussion of Max Weber and the sociology of the state.

However, the issue was raised concerning Engels and Lenin's concept of state and revolution, as if they were identical. They are not. Engels' concepts are identical with Marx's, and Lenin's with Trotsky and Stalin. Since these issues and authors have universal significance for revolutionaries and socialists, and in particular revolutionaries who consider themselves socialists, especially of significance since the collapse of the Soviet State and the privatization of the economy, I recognized the need to deal with these things generally in an article.

Most importantly for revolutionaries who consider themselves socialists, is the issue of capitalism and overcoming capitalism by national liberation movements and worker's parties in power. In the 1960's-70's United States in the African-American movement and the Anti-War movement activists rediscovered socialist and communist literature and politics, after having been demonized by McCarthyism's anti-communism.

Yet, the rediscovery by American activists of socialism and communism was but only a caricature of it. It was a "New Left" demonized the American working class and trade unions as selfish white men, spoiled by the crumbs from the imperialist table. This New Left believed that racial and identity politics - Black nationalists, Chicano ethnic activist-nationalists, feminists, and the outcaste lumpinproletariat - were the revolutionary forces internal in the belly of the U.S. imperialist "beast"/ "Babylon". [See Malcolm X Speaks, Hamilton and Carmichael's "Black Power", Aquino's "Occupied America", Kate Mallet's "Sexual Politics"]

June, 2008

Preface to "Strategy for a Working Class Electoral Agenda"

By Lil Joe

LilJoe.Radical@Gmail.Com

The article following this Preface was written in 2005 following the 2004 election. In this article, which was initially written as a commentary on the lessons of Bernie Sanders, a socialist winning a seat in the US Senate (after several terms in the House of Representatives) was the context in which this article was written.

This article is the result of 40 years of direct participation in the Black liberation and socialist revolutionary movement, and study. Malcolm X said to Black revolutionaries that of all our researches, history rewards best. In the 60s and 70s, Black liberationists and socialist and communist revolutionaries studied and integrated the national liberation movement's strategies and tactics - especially the combined national liberation and socialist revolutionary wars led by Mao in China, to integrate it into strategies to take power in the US.

The assumptions of this article is that America, in the 20th -21st century, is one of the world's most technologically advanced industrial capitalist democracies on Earth, based completely on wage labor, unlike rural, peasant based less developed China in the 1920s -40s when the People's Liberation Army fought imperialist and Kuomintang nationalist lackeys of imperialism. In America, the revolution will take place in the cities, in connection with a national strategy for winning State Power. Thus, I spent a couple of decades doing serious studies of urban revolutions in Europe.

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Original draft posted May 31, 2005

A Working Class Strategy To Win The Battle of Democracy:
A Red-Green-Blue Electoral Alliance

by Lil Joe

Snip: "That support is evident at the Old Labor Hall in Barre. "He is as good as they
come," says Sue Lucas, a nurse in Morrisville. "He is about everything we believe in."

"He is not afraid to stand up to either party," said Jim Genovesi, a worker for an
electric utility in Rutland. "He doesn't seem to be affected by political pressure or
lobbyist pressure. He stands his ground."

"Sanders' booming voice fills the hall as he nears the end of his speech. "We know that
our opponents have hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars that they put
into the political process. We know they control much of the media. We know they
have an attack machine that goes from Fox to Rush Limbaugh, the Drudge Report and
all over the place.

"We know that is what THEY have," his voice thunders.

"But there is one thing they do not have. They do not have ordinary people prepared to
knock on doors and organize all over America. "That is what WE have.

"They have the money. We have the people.

"And when push comes to shove, the people are going to defeat the money."

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Lil Joe Comment: Of course, 'ordinary people' versus the rich folk is not a clear statement of partisan working class socialist politics. It is populism bordering on demagogy, but in America, for a successful populist running as an open 'socialist' in independent campaign races, beating Democrats as well as Republicans, is very significant. Sander's successes in House races, which aren't as expensive as Senate races, shows to the Green Party, the Peace and Freedom Party, and to the Labor Party activists that it can be done.

Rather than Greens, Socialists and Communists spreading money and resources running of symbolic --- so-called "educational" candidates for President, Governors, the US and State Senate, with no chance of winning those races --- it is demonstrated by this maverick Congressman, Bernie Sanders, that we can in fact win seats to the House of Representatives.

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