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	<title>World Socialist Party (US) &#187; History</title>
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	<copyright>Copyright &#xA9; 2012 World Socialist Party (US) </copyright>
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		<title>World Socialist Party (US) &#187; History</title>
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		<title>Joseph Dietzgen – The Workers Philosopher</title>
		<link>http://wspus.org/2011/06/joseph-dietzgen-%e2%80%93-the-workers-philosopher/</link>
		<comments>http://wspus.org/2011/06/joseph-dietzgen-%e2%80%93-the-workers-philosopher/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 01 Jun 2011 08:39:28 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>ALB</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[History]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[News]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Philosophy]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://wspus.org/?p=2270</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[This was article written by Adam Buick for the journal Radical Philosophy 10. Spring 1975 . JOSEPH DIETZGEN is indeed a neglected philosopher. How many people know that he was the man Marx introduced to the 1872 Congress of the First International as ‘our philosopher’? Or that it was Dietzgen, not Plekhanov, who first coined the phrase ‘dialectical materialism’? Or that for the first thirty or so years of this century Dietzgen’s Philosophical Essays were to he found on the bookshelves of any working class militant with Marxist pretensions? Who, then, was Dietzgen? What were his views? And, indeed, why has he been neglected? Joseph Dietzgen was born in December 1828 near Cologne. His father was a master tanner and it was in this trade that Dietzgen was trained and worked. He was neither, a capitalist nor a propertyless worker but an artisan owning and working his own instruments of production. What distinguished him from other pioneer scientific socialists like Marx and Engels was that he never went to university; he was a self-educated man. Dietzgen was involved in the 1848 rising and after its failure left for America returning, however, after a couple of years. He spent another two [...]


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		</item>
		<item>
		<title>What Was He Fighting For? (Phil Ochs as the Sound of the New Left)</title>
		<link>http://wspus.org/2011/02/what-was-he-fighting-for-phil-ochs-as-the-sound-of-the-new-left/</link>
		<comments>http://wspus.org/2011/02/what-was-he-fighting-for-phil-ochs-as-the-sound-of-the-new-left/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 18 Feb 2011 12:52:39 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>MS</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Culture]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[History]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Music]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://wspus.org/?p=2067</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A new documentary film on the life and music of Phil Ochs, “There But For Fortune,” is being shown in a several US cities now. It hasn’t come too soon, certainly, because Ochs today is largely unknown outside the circle of lefty baby-boomers. Often Ochs is dismissed as a “topical” songwriter whose music, for that reason, hasn’t stood the test of time. “He’s no Bob Dylan,” his critics sometimes say. Dylan himself famously told Ochs he was “just a journalist” (as he threw him out of his limousine). This image of Ochs owes much to his own statements, for he frankly admitted that the pages of newspapers and magazines were a source of songs ideas, saying “every headline is a potential song.” He underscored this by naming his first album “All The News That’s Fit To Sing” – punning on the masthead of The New York Times. The origin of a song hardly determines its value, though; and in his best political songs Ochs cultivated poetry out of such pulpy fertilizer, just like Hank Williams finding song ideas from his sister’s True Romance comic books. Whatever one thinks of his music, though, it was clearly linked to the 1960s New [...]


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		<title>What&#8217;s wrong with religion?</title>
		<link>http://wspus.org/2010/11/whats-wrong-with-religion/</link>
		<comments>http://wspus.org/2010/11/whats-wrong-with-religion/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 06 Nov 2010 18:42:01 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Suzy</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[History]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Religion]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://wspus.org/?p=1912</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Occasionally [the SPGB] gets a membership application from someone who has a rough idea of what we stand for. They may have read few Socialist Standards and perhaps been to a meeting or two. They’re fired up and want to get involved so they ask for an application form, fill it in, &#8211; and suddenly they’re puzzled. &#8211; Why do we ask them their views on religion? (It’s not just religion we ask them about of course but their understanding and agreement with our case generally but it’s often a religious view that proves to be a sticking point). ‘Wasn’t Jesus a socialist’? They may ask. And if they do or if they hold the view that the stars or other mystical forces hold the key to our lives we have to politely ask them to find out a bit more about the Socialist case and then come back and talk to us again. So why are we opposed to religious beliefs? Well the socialist or materialist opposition to religion differs slightly from the usual atheist position. The non-socialist atheist argues that there is no evidence and thus no rational grounds for believing in supernatural beings or in life after [...]


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		<title>The Great Leap Forward</title>
		<link>http://wspus.org/2010/09/the-great-leap-forward/</link>
		<comments>http://wspus.org/2010/09/the-great-leap-forward/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 18 Sep 2010 17:35:38 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Suzy</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[China]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[History]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://wspus.org/?p=1804</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Frank Dikötter, a historian who teaches at the University of Hong Kong, said he found that during the time that Mao was enforcing the Great Leap Forward in 1958, in an effort to catch up with the economy of the Western world, he was responsible for overseeing &#8220;one of the worst catastrophes the world has ever known&#8221;. Dikötter, who has been studying Chinese rural history from 1958 to 1962- The Great Leap Forward &#8211; explains that at least 45 million people were worked, starved or beaten to death in China over these four years. His book, Mao&#8217;s Great Famine; The Story of China&#8217;s Most Devastating Catastrophe, reveals that while this is a part of history that has been &#8220;quite forgotten&#8221; in the official memory of the People&#8217;s Republic of China. Members of the rural farming communities were seen by the Party merely as &#8220;digits&#8221;, or a faceless workforce. For those who committed any acts of disobedience, however minor, the punishments were huge. State retribution for tiny thefts, such as stealing a potato, even by a child, would include being tied up and thrown into a pond; parents were forced to bury their children alive or were doused in excrement and [...]


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		<title>Mayday 2010</title>
		<link>http://wspus.org/2010/04/mayday-2010/</link>
		<comments>http://wspus.org/2010/04/mayday-2010/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 01 May 2010 05:30:37 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>FN Brill</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[History]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Labor]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://wspus.org/?p=1535</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[We’re celebrating the 124th anniversary of a General Strike held to win the 8 hour work day. That General Strike of May 1, 1886 was called by the forerunner of the American Federation of Labor and organized throughout the Canada and the US. On that day 300,000 to half a million workers set down their tools and marched in the largest industrial cities in North America. 80,000 in Chicago, 10,000 in Detroit, New York, St. Louis, etc. If an action of this size happened today, 4 to 6 million would be on strike and 100s of thousands in the streets. In Milwaukee 7 strikers and witnesses were killed by State Militia and 4 more by Police in Chicago. On May 4th a rally held to protest the shootings itself turned violent when police waded into a peaceful crowd and someone threw a bomb into the police line. Shooting broke out and 7 police and at least 4 workers were killed. According to contemporary newspaper reports, most of the police died from other police fire. In the aftermath, 7 labor leaders who organized the rally were arrested for murdering the police. Because of the men’s anarchist politics 6 were sentenced to hang [...]


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		<title>1789: France’s bourgeois revolution</title>
		<link>http://wspus.org/2009/11/1789-france%e2%80%99s-bourgeois-revolution/</link>
		<comments>http://wspus.org/2009/11/1789-france%e2%80%99s-bourgeois-revolution/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 20 Nov 2009 11:14:58 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>JB</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Europe]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[History]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://wspus.org/?p=1087</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[From the Socialist Standard, July 1989. Up until 1789 France was an Absolutist state ruled by a king who claimed that his total power to rule had been granted him by god. All the top posts in the army, the government, the civil service, the church and the judiciary were reserved for the members of a hereditary nobility. The population was in fact divided into three &#8220;orders&#8221; or &#8220;estates&#8221;: the clergy, the nobility and the rest – over 95 per cent of course – known simply as the Third Estate. Relics of Feudalism The vast majority of the population – some 22 or 23 million out of a total population of 25 million – were peasants who worked and lived on the land. Very few were serfs actually tied to the land or a master. It has in fact been estimated that between 30 and 40 per cent of the land in pre-1789 France belonged to peasants. But all peasants, whether landowners, tenants or share-croppers, had to pay feudal dues in money and in kind to the lord of the manor as well as tithes, payable in kind, to the church. They were obliged to use the lord’s mill, bread [...]


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		<item>
		<title>The Russian Revolution recalled</title>
		<link>http://wspus.org/2008/12/the-russian-revolution-recalled/</link>
		<comments>http://wspus.org/2008/12/the-russian-revolution-recalled/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 01 Dec 2008 16:49:34 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>SPGB</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[History]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[SPGB]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.wspus.org/?p=818</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Even 90 years after the Russian revolution there are still some who claim that the event shines as a beacon for socialism. We were able to say at the time that whatever was happening in Russia it was not a socialist revolution. In August 1918 the Socialist Standard pointed out that, while there were industrial towns in Russia, the country was largely agricultural with about 80 per cent of the population still living on the land. The answer to the question whether “this huge mass of people” (about 160 million), which indeed included some industrial and agricultural wage slaves, was “convinced of the necessity and equipped with the knowledge requisite for the social ownership of the means of life?” was “No!”; beyond the fact that the leaders in the November movement claimed to be Marxian socialists there was no justification for terming the upheaval in Russia a Socialist Revolution. Our analysis of the situation was based upon Marx’s definition of capitalism as a relation of wage-labour and capital and on the conditions necessary for that relation to be ended and replaced by socialism. Before “the Communistic abolition of buying and selling, of the bourgeois conditions of production”, as the Communist [...]


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		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Socialism: Utopian and Scientific</title>
		<link>http://wspus.org/2008/11/socialism-utopian-and-scientific/</link>
		<comments>http://wspus.org/2008/11/socialism-utopian-and-scientific/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 27 Nov 2008 18:19:09 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>WSPUS</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[History]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Marxism]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.wspus.org/?p=806</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[[Excerpts from a talk at Cooper Union, N.Y.C. November 23, 1973. This was originally printed in the Western Socialist, No.1, 1974. The talk was delivered by World Socialist Party comrade Charles P. Davis] Our subject this evening is &#8220;Socialism &#8211; Utopian and Scientific.&#8221; Most relevant in the examination of this subject is history. Not the history you have studied at school nor the history with which current literature is so preoccupied. Currently a history titled &#8220;History as Mirror&#8221; comparing the fourteenth century and its horrible conditions with the twentieth century that we know contributes very little to understanding with a statement such as: &#8220;Chivalry was to the landowners ideology, their politics, their system &#8211; what democracy is to us or Marxism is to the Communists.&#8221; The speakers that I have listened to at Cooper Union with their declaimers of being apolitical and their talks of historical developments with a collection of &#8220;we,&#8221; &#8220;our,&#8221; and &#8220;us,&#8221; spoke as if the world were made of one homogeneous non-political mass of mankind rather than those who own little but the ability to work for wages. Such speakers never impressed me as understanding their subjects. As to being apolitical, that is some kind of [...]


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		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Materialist Conception of History</title>
		<link>http://wspus.org/2008/11/materialistic-conception-of-history/</link>
		<comments>http://wspus.org/2008/11/materialistic-conception-of-history/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 22 Nov 2008 05:37:01 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>WSPUS</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Featured]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[History]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Marxism]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.wspus.org/?p=799</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Down through the ages there have been various interpretations of history. For example, there are the theories which see in history the working out and realization of some sort of divine plan &#8211; like Hegel&#8217;s philosophy of history, which sees the whole historical development of society as the realization stage by stage of the so-called Absolute Idea. Again, there are the various theories which see history as moving through &#8220;cycles,&#8221; every civilization passing by some inescapable necessity through the cycle of rise, plentitude of power and decline &#8211; as in Spengler&#8217;s Decline of the West or Toynbee&#8217;s Studies in History. These are idealist theories and socialists are opposed to them. The idealism of such theories lies in the fact that they see the laws of development of society as a &#8220;fate&#8221; imposed upon society from outside, so that men and women are mere instruments of fate, the tools of external necessity. If such theories are accepted, then we are driven to fatalism. If what takes place is in the hands of God, or is decreed by fate, or follows by some iron necessity &#8211; it makes little difference in practice which you say &#8211; then it follows there is little [...]


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		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Economic Roots of WW2</title>
		<link>http://wspus.org/2008/10/economic-roots-of-ww2/</link>
		<comments>http://wspus.org/2008/10/economic-roots-of-ww2/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 28 Oct 2008 21:36:29 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>SPGB</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[History]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[War]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.wspus.org/?p=687</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Chopping up history is a common method of distorting it and preventing anything being learned from it. Chopped-up history comes to us as a series of largely self-contained, unconnected and accidental events which were crucially influenced by the personalities of the leaders of the time. The implication is that there is no overall pattern in what happens in the world, that things would have been different had other people been in charge or if certain events had not coincided. It follows from this that there is no need to make any fundamental changes in society because a bad historical accident at one time can be redressed by a good one at another time. Mad Dictators versus The Democracies? The popular account of the last world war goes something like this. After 1918 the victorious Allies made two big mistakes. Firstly, they did not ensure that Germany had been properly finished off as a military power. Secondly, they imposed the Versailles Treaty, a settlement so stringent as to cause a lingering resentment among the German people which was too easily exploited by Hitler, an unusually mad dictator whose consuming ambition was to lead Germany into a conquest of the entire world. [...]


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