On Unity-Struggle-Unity

Unity-Struggle-Unity

Unity-Struggle-Unity is "a Marxist-Leninist press publishing the Red Clarion, Crucible, and the Unity Journal". (@USUMLPress)

Although I've just been introduced to the effort and I haven't (yet) read much of the Red Clarion, I do want to share the site already.

I think their Contributor’s Guide is a great read, and it's helped me focus the scope/audience of my own site as I build it out. I highly recommend reading it if you have your own stories to tell; it may lend useful perspective from fellow authors who share a goal and mindset.

Along with that, they provide a helpful Glossary of Marxism-Leninism that may come in handy, especially for newer comrades.

The Red Clarion

The Red Clarion itself is available here. There's a variety of content, from news and analysis to book reviews and poetry.

Tweets

Homelessness and Its Criminalization - May 25, 2022 (src)

I have a homeless client. He's Black and he lives in his car.

The state is prosecuting him with a weapon in a motor vehicle law because he was pulled over, and he told police he had his pistol in the car. He was permitted to carry and kept it in his glovebox, where the law says its supposed to be. The law they're prosecuting him under has a 2 year mandatory minimum. He's a homeless uber driver.

The trick is, two months prior, cops arrested him for sleeping with his car on. They charged him with a DUI. Even though they couldn't prove it, the charge alone suspended his license. State police saw this and suspended his pistol permit. They sent him notice that he couldn't carry anymore.

Except he doesn't have an address.

This is gun control.

Police are the problem. The capitalist state is the problem.

If you're in Connecticut and you want to act, get organized

(image link to reading group in)

I agree - if you're anywhere, get organized.

On McDonalds - Jun 11, 2022 (src)

A McDonalds hamburger costs $2.09 at the register. McDonalds internal documents show that the raw materials (patty, bun, etc.) cost $0.34. A McDonalds employee makes $11/hr on average with a shift manager making $15/hr. Shifts are 8 people on average. That means McDonalds pays $77 + $15/hr in wages to a shift (total $92). The average McDonalds makes $2.7 million/year in sales. That is $308/hour, or roughly 147 hamburgers every hour at $2.09.

Subtracting the wage of the workers ($92) and cost of materials ($49.98), this means there is $166 in surplus value accumulated every hour by the capitalist.

If we take the value of the 147 hamburgers and distribute it among the workers who completed them and placed them into circulation, we get $258.02 ($308-$49.98) divided among 8 workers for $32/worker/hour as compared to their $11/hr wages.

The rate of exploitation of the McDonald’s workers is thus, when the raw materials are taken as constant capital and not variable capital, is 32:11, roughly 3:1.

This means, that of each hamburger, if 34 cents is raw material and the sale price is $2.09, there is $1.75 attributable to the work of the McDonalds employees in the store. We can divide that value among the 8 workers, and we’d come up with 21 cents per hamburger created by each one.

However, let’s look a little more carefully, not merely from the point of view of the

McDonald’s capitalist, but from the point of view of the imperialist.

The beef patty in a McDonald’s hamburger weighs 1.6 ounces. According to the corporation, the meat is a combination of chuck ($4/lb), sirloin ($9/lb), and round ($7/lb). The prices of these meats is from the US beef markets.

We can take the average of these three prices: $6.50/lb. For the amount contained in a hamburger (1.6 ounces), this comes to roughly .65 cents ($6.50/16 = .40).

As you can see, this is more than the entire value of the raw materials in the McDonald’s hamburger. Even if they receive a twenty-five per-cent discount for bulk operations, that’s still 49 cents per hamburger.

One of the top countries supplying beef to McDonalds is Brazil, which shouldn’t be a surprise: the Brazilian ranching industry supplies a huge amount of

worldwide beef, and grows it on land assarted from the Amazon.

A Brazilian livestock handler makes 16 reals/hr, which is $3.21 USD. Brazilian beef costs a mere $1.76 and $2/lb. We can see why. The price of Brazilian beef is so much lower because the Brazilian worker’s wage is so much lower.

Why is that?

Imperialism.

The labor market of Brazil is artificially depressed by fascists like Bolsonaro, who are put into power by US interests to keep prices low. US monopoly capital also destroys the quality of life in imperialized countries because this is how the socially necessary labor time is determined for reproducing the labor force.

If the Brazilian beef costs 34 cents for 1.6 ounces while the reproduction cost of the Brazilian ranch hand is $3.21 an hour, then we may establish a ratio - roughly $3/hr to 30 cents or $1/hr to 10 cents. If the ranch hand made $11/hour just as the metropolitan workers do, this would be an increase of 3 and a half times, increasing the Brazilian beef cost to $1.19 for 1.6 ounces.

If we wished to maintain the price equilibrium by which the hamburger is sold at $2.09, this would require an equalization of wages between the metropolitan worker and the peripheral worker. That is to say, because the hamburger is worth $1.75 in labor ($1.75+$0.34=$2.09) from the metropolitan worker, we must equalize the $1.75 in metropolitan labor with the $0.34 in peripheral labor.

If we were to divide these into two equal parts, that is, $1.04 worth of peripheral labor crystallized in the meat and $1.04 worth of labor in the metropole for the finishing of the meat into a final product, that is a change of $0.71 in favor of the peripheral worker.

For each hamburger made, the metropolitan worker is paid 3x the wage of the peripheral worker. The metropolitan worker cooking the burger on the grill, assembling the worker, dealing with angry customers, and selling the burger; the ranch hand is enduring near-slave conditions on the Brazilian plain.

The metropolitan worker is directly paid 3 times more for their labor, the hamburger’s cost is depressed for all metropolitan workers, the metropolitan capitalists (the monopoly capitalists) provide other social safety benefits to keep the class consciousness of the metropolitan workers from developing, and they also concentrate the high-waged, final finishing work for products and the management positions within the metropole.

These are the wages of imperialism.

Lots of quote tweets etc. demanding I account for credit, interest payments, advertising, salaries for HR and executives, franchising fees, rent, machinery, etc.

I didn't factor in any of the standard constant capital valuations for a reason: it obscures the point, which is

the law of unequal development and the imperialist forced underdevelopment of the periphery. The pay for the entire cavalcade of non-productive or marginally productive executives, HR reps, advertising, etc., etc., all comes out of the 11 hamburgers sold after the first 7.

So do the salaries of the CEOs.

Rent actually isn't a factor for a McDonalds because the corporation owns the ground. The franchisee pays the corporate office rent, but the corporate office pays no one.

These costs are all marginal - as are the electricity and water costs and the degradation of the grill, etc.

The grill itself costs around $3,000 but can make an untold number of hamburgers, imparting to the hamburger a mere fraction of a fraction of a cent.

The typical annual mcdonalds power bill is $40,000. That works out to $4.5/hour or

3 cents per burger at the average rate of 147 burgers per hour.

The cost of upper management is mostly faux frais which can be eliminated, or non-productive labor which is parasitic, etc. There is still PLENTY of value to cover the necessary work at higher levels.

And obviously there are things other than burgers made at a McDonalds - each product has a different individual rate of exploitation for the workers (for example, the soda is hugely exploitative and mostly mark-up).

Important, however, is that most of the profit is not from MARKUP (charging more than a thing is worth) but from THEFT (stealing and refusing to compensate the legitimate labor of the worker).

On Unity-Struggle-Unity - Jun 24, 2022 (src)

I am pleased to announce that I'm part of a project with some other great folks that will soon be launching a press designed to help unite the fragmented Communist movement in the imperialist centers of North America - the settler states of the US and it's junior partner Canada

This week we are releasing our PLAN and the guidelines for submitting to our three periodicals: The Red Clarion, Crucible, and Unity–Struggle–Unity

'From our analysis of the present-day U.S. Communist movement and its recent history, we have concluded that the task of achieving Communist unity will entail two major components:

On the first hand, an “All-Empire” Communist Party must be capable of uniting, centralizing, and effectively coordinating the myriad local struggles already being waged across the U.S. Empire, which have hitherto carried on in a dissociated,

Moreover, these relatively large, unsalvageable all-U.S. parties have, in effect, if not intent, served our enemies, by drawing out several thousand potential revolutionaries from actually revolutionary struggles and meaningful praxis;

by putting them to work as election volunteers for the Democratic Party; by corralling them into settler-patriotism and expelling those who uphold the necessity of decolonization; by absorbing these comrades into massive, cop-infested,

pyramid-scheme-designed, thoroughly anti-revolutionary honeypots. This situation has left a significant bulk of U.S.-based Communists entirely pacified. And, it can't go unstated, it has left countless gender-oppressed comrades abused and silenced in the process. In sum, none of

the relatively large U.S. “Marxist” parties have proven themselves capable of achieving Communist unity, let alone of becoming the vanguard of the revolutionary movement that is once more taking hold in North America.

To again refer to Lenin, Communist unity should not be mistaken to mean a “unity” between Marxists and the opponents, distorters, and liquidators of Marxism who currently dominate our movement, impede its further advancement, and shamelessly serve our enemies by absorbing and

redirecting a significant portion of its resurging energy. On the contrary, the task of achieving Communist unity demands that these hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of comrades, who currently linger as potential revolutionaries in the rank-and-file general memberships of the

relatively large but unsalvageable parties, be drawn back into the revolutionary movement. In other words, we must unite those comrades who can be united, while isolating the reactionaries who long ago commandeered leadership.

These two components are the essence of the task of Communist unification and set the preconditions for advancing our movement to its next stage."

Are you in the imperial center? Are you in a Communist formation? It's not the vanguard. Why not? Because it has not been able to unite revolutionary practice and theory with the revolutionary masses. You MUST help form the vanguard. Now is the hour.

We cannot do that except by breaking up the vast reservoirs of reaction that have taken over every major formation. Strike at them. Destroy them! Free your comrades from meaningless tailism. FIGHT!

On Trans People - Jul 28, 2022 (src)

Given the concentration of trans people currently organizing in Marxist spaces, I'm willing to say that anti trans is anti Communist at this point

I mean this in the most direct sense - not that the theory is incompatible (it is) but that anti trans ideologues are a shield for anti communism designed to undermine and destroy it

Sep 16, 2022 (src)

For some few days in July of 1877, the city of St. Louis was held by a revolutionary Commune. You fancy yourself a communist but don't know about the only self-organized commune in the territorial U.S.? Sit right down and listen.

It began, as revolutionary actions often do, with a depression.

Beginning in 1873, the world capitalist economy was struck with stagnation and contraction. It was kicked off by the Panic of '73; a series of bank failures in Austria soon spread to the rest of the world economy.

Industrial production in the U.S., which had been growing at a rate of 3x each year, slowed to 1.7x between 1873-1890. There was a 10% decline in manufacturing output during that period, with most of this being in consumer goods, iron, and construction.

On July 14, 1877, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad cut its wages again - for the third time that year. The railroad workers had no unions, but they spontaneously broke out into a strike.

The strike started on July 14, 1877, with B&O railroad workers in Martinsburg, West Virginia. They blockaded the town, a critical rail juncture, and prevented all rail traffic from rolling through, demanding that the wage cut be revoked.

The governor of West Virginia dispatched the National Guard to clear the lines and resume rail service, but the guardsmen refused to fire on the strikers. At the same time, the B&O workers in Maryland took up the strike and closed the railroad center at Cumberland.

Albany, Syracuse, and Buffalo New York, all major railyards, closed. The strike spread from the B&O to other lines. In Pittsburgh, the Pennsylvania railroad baron Thomas Alexander Scott recommended the strikers be given a "rifle diet."

On July 21, the Pennsylvania National Guard bayoneted strikers and then opened fire, killing 20 railroad workers. The strikers did not disperse; they retaliated, trapping the guardsmen in a roundhouse and razing 39 buildings.

Striking railroad workers in Pennsylvania burned 104 locomotives and 1,245 freight and passenger cars. The Pennsylvania National Guard fought their way out of the roundhouse, shooting and killing over 20 people as they cut their way out of the railyard.

This was the background of the strike action in St. Louis. As the country seized in strikes and transport actions, the Workingman's Party (the first Marxist party in the U.S.) and the Knights of Labor gathered in St. Louis.

On July 22, one day after the massacre in the Pennsylvania railyards, train workers held a secret meeting to call for an increase in wages and determined to strike. They then held a public outdoor meeting, which was steered by 200 members of the Workingmen's Party.

That night, a third meeting was held, and the rail workers adopted a resolution that read:

WHEREAS, the United States government has allied itself on the side of capital and against labor; therefore,

RESOLVED, That we, the workingmen's party of the United States,

heartily sympathize with the employees of all the railroads in the country who are attempting to secure just and equitable reward for their labor.

RESOLVED, That we will stand by them in this most righteous struggle of labor against robbery and oppression,

through good and evil report, to the end of the struggle.

The demand was put to the bosses who rejected it immediately. The strike began at midnight in East St. Louis and within hours of announcement, the strikers controlled the city uncontested.

In the morning, the rail strikers announced they would permit passenger and mail trains to pass through the city, but all freight traffic would be stopped. The rail companies waited.

Chicago & Alton tried to start a freight train, but it was stopped and turned back to the yard. The Union Railway & Transit Company removed their wage decrease, but the Transit workers continued to strike in solidarity with their brothers, stiffened by militants in their ranks.

City officials wired frightened messages, warning that this was a repetition of the Paris Commune of '71.

The second day of the strike, July 24, the strikers determined they would expand their blockade to passenger trains. A train was decoupled from its passenger cars and only permitted transit when the locomotive was bare.

At 11:00 AM that morning, twenty-five strikers led by an Ohio and Mississippi Railway engineer seized two Missouri Pacific Railroad locomotives, took the Missouri Pacific engine shops, and tried to persuade the workers there to cease work. They refused.

3,000 - 4,000 people gathered at the depot as unrest increased. It was announced by the city authorities that six companies of infantry were marching to put an end to the blockade and clear the rail lines. Police began to sweep the streets.

At 4:00 PM that afternoon, flatcars from other striking yards arrived, loaded with more strikers. The word had gotten out that St. Louis was the hub of a powerful solidarity movement across all railway lines.

At 6 PM, six companies arrived from Fort Leavenworth. Their commander stated that "I have been ordered here with general instructions to protect the property of the United States" but declined to take action except to hole up in an army barracks.

That night, Communist leaders held meetings throughout the city. Processions of people marched through the streets. The city government, paralyzed by the fear that they were not heavily armed enough to act, did nothing. The police remained "inert."

On July 25, 1877, at 9 AM, the Communists gathered a crowd in a downtown marketplace. There, they convinced wire manufacturers to join the strike. At 10 AM they marched to Turner Hall where the executive committee of the Workingmen's Party was meeting.

By now, Black workers had joined the white strikers. An air of solidarity prevailed throughout the city. The Workingman's Party declared that all work within St. Louis would soon come to a halt.

On the morning of July 26, a mass meeting of coopers agreed to join the strike. Smelter and clay workers joined the strike. 35% of the workers striking were U.S. born; 29% were German; 18% Irish; 12% English or Welsh. A full 12% of strikers were Black.

The strike was entirely controlled by the Executive Committee, a group of 47 or so men that appear to have been elected or appointed by unknown processes. The most prominent were clerks, a student organizer, a doctor, a drug and bleach maker, a newspaper seller and a boot fitter.

On the evening of Wednesday, July 26, in Carondelet, six miles south of the city center, as ironworkers called on the Martindale Zinc Works to enter the strike, the foreman of the works struck a striker with a crowbar. The police tried to step in, but were driven off with rocks.

The ironworkers took control of the zinc works and unfurled the red flags of the International. By the end of the day, there was not a single manufactory in operation. The strike had shut down the entire city. It was all in the hands of the Workingmen's Party.

That evening, there was another mass meeting at Lucas Market of over 10,000 people. Peter Lofgreen, a workingman's delegate, harangued the crowd and told them that if the managers could not restore their pay, it was time for the railroads to be in the hands of the workers.

Thomas Curtis declared that the demands of St. Louis must go all the way to the president of the United States. This, he said, was "not a strike - but a social revolution!"

On BPP and CPUSA - Sep 27, 2022 (src)

There's a reason the BPP was violently liquidated and, say, CPUSA wasn't

Two Registers - Sep 29, 2022 (src)

Communists, if they are serious and not merely playing at Communism, must learn to master at least two registers, two modes of speaking. The first is for talking to other Communists - it makes use of technical language and argument. It is dense and self-referential.

The second mode or register is the agit-prop mode, which is used to converse with a mass audience. This mode is straight-forward, uses no technical language (or defines its terms very carefully) and designed to communicate complex ideas in a straightforward fashion.

This is something public defenders who care about their clients also do, by the way. There is a technical-legal language that you need for the court and opposing counsel - the "magic words" that don't mean what they sound like. But then there is language you use with a client.

So for example, to the court you might say "This strikes at the heart of fundamental fairness; there is no authority to do what I'm asking you to do, your Honor, but you should do it anyway because it is just."

I tell my clients: "This isn't fair, but it's legal."

You can't talk to someone who's never read Marx or Lenin about the dictatorship of the proletariat the first time you speak to them. Those words are meaningless. You can't talk about the bourgeoisie. You can MAYBE talk about imperialism, but they won't understand what you mean

HOW do you communicate this? You eliminate all technical jargon. You don't talk like you're quoting Lenin or writing an article in 1897. You say "working people" or the "working class." You talk about "owners," the "ruling class," "bosses."

I'm going to do a Midnight Communism that touches on this issue when I'm done with the script.

Oct 4, 2022 (src)

Liberalism is counter-revolution. The liberal "class struggle" is a bourgeois-led class struggle to subdue, subvert, and destroy revolutionary class-consciousness

What are the weapons in the liberal class struggle? Superprofits distributed as reforms, social safety, etc. The temporary lifting of social and cultural oppressions. These are the weapons of the liberal

Liberals in the U.S. since the early 1930s have used the threat of fascism (which is already here in the united right-liberal left-liberal bloc of the ruling class) to try to fuse together opposed class interests

Coincidentally, this is fascism itself, by the by

To be unwilling to drive to overall victory (the destruction of capitalism and the bourgeois state, the SOURCE of fascism) in order to win individual skirmishes (elect this left-fascist rather than this right-fascist) is to throw away the revolutionary project

AT ONE TIME, when liberalism was counterposed to the old feudal regime in Europe, it was progressive (in that relation). Now, it is reactionary, regressive, and a brake on liberation

To distinguish between "fascism" on the one hand and "liberalism" on the other is to compare two different categories (the "categorical error"). Fascism is the fighting form of the bourgeoisie; liberalism is their ideological arrangement

As a political ideology, liberalism makes a certain case for universal suffrage, etc. But the liberal has never adhered in actuality to this ideological commitment. Therefore, it is absolutely possible for one to be both a committed liberal and a fascist

Reading Groups - Oct 14, 2022 (src)

Why Reading Groups?

Marxists are renowned for forming reading groups, usually focusing on difficult-to-read classics like Capital. Is this some weird hold-over from the olden days when bespectacled petit-bourgeoisie met in dark and sooty rooms to plot revolution? No!

There is a good reason why we have reading groups and why we continue to form them. Those reasons are that:

1. Struggle is communal.

We can all read whatever we want on our own and think deep thoughts about our lives and our readings, but unless we put those thoughts to the test and exchange them, temper them, and interact with other people who have had different struggles, then we will never come to a truly correct understanding. The reading group is the place to study our current social order and find ways to change it.

2. Class-consciousness can develop spontaneously, political development can’t. Class-consciousness is the Marxist awareness that present (capitalist) society is divided into discrete “classes” with differing interests. This develops organically and spontaneously as you look around and see things like the 2008 bailouts, etc. However, what we should do about the existence of social classes, that is, political development, is not spontaneous.

3. Reading groups develop sympathizers into Communists. The journey from just being on the left to understanding what needs to be done about the brutal inequality of capitalism is a hard one, and you need friends and allies to help you through it. Essentially, we all have to discard old “liberal” ideas about government and look the truth — the bare facts — in the face. When U.S. ideologues talk about “human rights,” what do they mean? When they talk about a “free press” what does that mean? It’s through collective study and group accountability that we learn to purge ourselves of these old prejudices.

4. It’s hard to develop politically when the hegemonic, ruling, culture tells you that Communism is evil. You need allies to help buoy you up and help you sort the truth about social justice from the fiction.

5. Reading groups help teach more than political education — they help us practice real democracy, accountability, and organization. Organizing, no matter what anyone tells you, isn’t about putting on marches, protests, sit-ins, or phone banks (although some of those things can be used to organize). Organizing is about developing groups with internal relations that allow them to make decisions, act collectively, and remain in-tact between meetings. Reading groups are a form of organizing, so long as they don’t descend into meaningless debate clubs.

6. Reading groups, when done right, draw others into the struggle. One of the big challenges of the struggle right now is activating or drawing in other people who are prepared to disbelieve the self-evident lies of the ruling class, but have no real avenue to express their anger, dissent, or disagreement. Particularly by organizing reading groups in public places and advertising them in public places, this brings in class-conscious people who have a desire to learn more and helps transform them into fighters for justice. In short, the reading group is a site of reproduction of Communist thought, theory, practice, and revolutionaries.

If you're considering something to read, may I recommend that you can form a reading group around currently-unpublished @USUMLPress work if you contact us, or we can help you set up a reading group around the Red Clarion.

Oct 19, 2022 (src)

I feel like most of the people who say the US isn't ready for revolution have never been in a poor neighborhood

Have you stood in a decaying building and talked to someone whose apartment was recently gutted by fire about the police? Don't tell me the quality of life is too high. The revolution isn't made in the suburbs

On Voting - Oct 21, 2022 (src)

The argument is not whether you should vote (debatable) but whether or not a COMMUNIST ORGANIZATION should BREATHLESSLY PROCLAIM that a CLASS ENEMY represents the BEST INTERESTS OF THE WORKING CLASSES

Its actually not possible to support the "democrats" because they don't have a coherent national policy. Their party lacks all political discipline and acts as a catch-all for class collaboration on a "left" line

What are the "democrats"? They're a coalition of the most reactionary elements of labor fused with the interests of the labor aristocracy and petit-bourgeoisie, governed in rough form by the left-leaning haute bourgeoisie

They beg from the same pot of money that the GOP does; this pool of "big donors" (the ruling class) swings between parties on a per-issue and per-year basis

Military Power - Oct 24, 2022 (src)

A revolutionary uprising in the US does not need to overcome the full might of the US military

Facing the revolution in this manner is a fast way to revolutionary nihilism (AKA counter revolution, right deviationism)

Nov 7, 2022 (src)

One of the big errors of the US movement was classifying fascism as something inherently and qualitatively different from bourgeois settler democracy

"Fascism is worse than the bourgeois republic" fascism is merely the settler logic applied to the bourgeois republic

Thanks to @primarycatdad for leading me to these resources and for contributing as an editorial board member for USU. He also runs Midnight Communism, a youtube channel which "is the place where [he] whisper[s] to you at night while [his] family is asleep, telling you all the ins and outs of Communist theory."

index tags: Unity-Struggle-Unity, @USUMLPress, Glossary of Marxism-Leninism, Contributor’s Guide, Red Clarion, @primarycatdad

category tags: Modern Communists, Tweets, Resource Lists