The Dead By Jules Valles

The people who today saw our dead pass by will never forgive! Between them and the killers there is an abyss of hatred and fear dug as deep as the enormous pit into which the corpses were lowered.
The very ones who were frightened by the red flags that floated over the black catafalques will remember the ominous burial of April 6, and the men of Versailles, whatever may happen, will live cloaked in a silent and somber reprobation that will follow them, too, to the cemetery – whether they arrive by the glorious route of the Capitol, or arrive mutilated from the Tarpeian rocks!

Not a cry could be heard above that crowd that rolled like a black and silent river on all sides of the hearses, but everywhere could be heard the murmuring of a horrible, deliberate, and threatening pain.
If the men of Versailles had seen this convoy pass by they would have been seized either by a silent fear or an immense regret! On the path followed by the mortuary cart a curse will forever rise up against them – a formless and disarmed revolt, but one that will blow upon their dishonored faces like the sigh of a breeze of death!
The more corpses you pile up, and the more triumphs like this one come your way, the longer will be the lament and the more horribly it will weigh upon this mass grave!
Revolutionary hope remains alive even in our mourning!
But pale mothers could be found there, bowed over cut-off biers that had been guillotined by saws so that the heads of the dead could be seen.

One of these mothers had found her son. Another didn’t know if she recognized hers in a pile of broken, eyeless, toothless flesh that bled black on the white wood!
Twenty of them were laid out like that! Some in the shirts of the poor, frayed and full of holes; others had fine clothes. Plebeian and bourgeois mixed together in the sepulcher as they had been in combat!
Even as we were leaving more arrived in the straw at the bottom of a bus!
Perhaps tomorrow even more will be brought, ten times more!

Nevertheless, the music of the bugles gave chills today! How sad and heart-rending; it seemed to sound for the living as well as the dead!
Père Lachaise is a cemetery, but Paris is a tomb where they’ll be buried alive if they’re victorious, and which will refuse their cadavers if they are defeated!
Tonight the bayonets glistened hard and somber under the gray sky, and there were flashes of terrible sadness in the tearless eyes!

Long Live the Heroic Peasants in Naxalbari!

The social system that exists in India is semi-feudal and semi-colonial. So the democratic revolution in this country means agrarian revolution. All the problems of India are related to this one task. On this question of agrarian revolution there has been difference of opinion in Marxist circles from the beginning of this century and among Marxists the struggle between the two policies-the one revolutionary and the other counter-revolutionary-continues. The Mensheviks side-tracked the question of State power and searched for a solution in municipalization. Lenin declared a crusade against it and said that it was not possible to solve the problem by side-tracking the question of State power. He showed that however progressive the legislation framed by one might be, the present State structure could not implement it. The condition of the peasant will remain the same. That was why he said that only the democratic State of workers and peasants, led by the working class, could solve this problem. Only the other day even the Soviet Party writer, Yudin, while criticizing Nehru's Basic Approach, said that Nehru had not till then been able to solve the peasant problem. He challenged Nehru to show, in practice, how this problem could be solved in a peaceful way and added that Nehru would fail to do so. History has proved that, far from solving this problem, Nehru was not able even to bring about an iota of change.

After the twentieth congress of the Soviet party, the door to revisionism was opened wide and, as a result, the Soviet State has been transformed from a Socialist State into a capitalist State. By making the theory of peaceful transition to socialism-adopted at that twentieth congress-their basic guiding principle, the revisionists of our country are shouting loudly that the peasants' struggle for land is a struggle for realization of economic demands and that it is adventurism to talk of the State machinery. What strange similarity between the words of Dange and Basavapunnia!

What strange cooperation between Biswanath Mukherji and Harekrishna Konar! This is not accidental since its source is one and that is the Menshevik counter-revolutionary ideology. That is why the cunning rulers of the Soviet State have repeatedly declared that it is only by using fertilizers, improved seeds and agricultural implements that India's food problem can be solved. It is in this manner that they are coming forward to save India's reactionary ruling clique; they are concealing from the masses the basic and effective way of solving India's food, unemployment, poverty and other problems. This is because the Soviet State is today collaborating with British-American imperialists and has been turned into a State which exploits the masses of India. With the help of the native bourgeoisie the Soviet Union is also trying to invest capital in our country. In the sphere of trade and commerce with our country it has come to enjoy special facilities. That is why the arguments of the reactionary ruling clique are pouring out from the mouths of its spokesmen in a continuous flow and at an uninterrupted speed. That is why, as a collaborator of Britain and the U.S.A.,the Soviet State also is our enemy and it is by taking shelter under their wings that the reactionary Government of India weighs like a corpse upon the shoulders of the masses. But even then Naxalbari has been created and hundreds of Naxalbaris are smouldering. This is because on the soil of India the revolutionary peasantry is heir to the heroic revolutionary peasants of great Telengana. The then Party leadership betrayed the heroic peasant struggle of Telengana and it did so by using the name of great Stalin. Many of those who are occupying the positions of Party leaders today were a party to the act of betrayal on that day! On bent knees, we will have to take lessons from those heroes of Telengana, not only to have strength to carry the red banner of revolt but also to have faith in the international revolutionary authority. What boundless respect they had for the international leadership-the name of Stalin made them place their lives fearlessly at the disposal of the reactionary government of India. In all ages and in all climes this revolutionary loyalty is necessary for organizing revolutions. We must learn from the experience of the heroes of Telengana: we must take the mask off the face of those who oppose Marxism-Leninism by using the name of Stalin. We will have to snatch from their hands the Red Flag dyed with the blood of hundreds of workers and peasants. The traitors have, by touching that Flag with their hands, stained it.
Naxalbari lives and will live. This is because it is based on invincible Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought. We know that as we move forward we shall face many obstacles, many difficulties, many acts of betrayal and there will be many setbacks. But Naxalbari will not die because the bright sunlight of Chairman Mao's Thought has fallen on it like a blessing. When Naxalbari receives congratulations from the heroes in the rubber plantations of Malaya who have been engaged in struggle for 20 years, when congratulations are sent by Japanese comrades who have been fighting against the revisionist leadership of their own Party, when such congratulations come from the Australian revolutionaries, when the comrades of the armed forces of great China send their greetings, we feel the significance of that immortal call, "Workers of the World, Unite", we have a feeling of oneness and our conviction becomes more strong and firm that we have our dear relations in all lands. Naxalbari has not died and it will never die.

We are All Assassins by Sartre

In November 1956 Fernand Yveton, member of the Combattants de la Libération, deposes a bomb in the power station at Hama. A sabotage attempt that can in no way be taken for an act of terrorism: expert testimony proved that it was a question of a time bomb, carefully set so that the explosion couldn’t occur before the departure of the personnel. It didn’t matter; Yveton is captured, he receives the death sentence, grace is refused and he is executed. There can be no hesitation about this: this man declared and proved he wanted to cause the death of no one; they wanted his death and they got it. Intimidation was necessary, was it not? That and, as an imbecile said the other day, “to show the terrible face of an irritated France.” How pure and certain of one’s purity one must be in order to render this archangelic justice. And even if one were to concede for a minute that this absurd war has a meaning, do we not see what these French soldiers and civilians must demand of themselves if they hope to justify the atrocious rigor of this condemnation?

A short while later came the trial of the “accomplices,” Jacqueline and Abdelkader Guerroudj. He is a political leader who ensured the liaison between the Combattants de la Libérationand the leadership of the FLN. She is a petite bourgeoise from the “metropolis” who wanted to take her share of the risks because she approved of her husband’s undertaking. She entered the movement well after him and her direct chiefs charged her, in November 1956, with giving Yveton the instruments for his future sabotage. She obeyed because she was guaranteed that the explosion wouldn’t cost any human lives.

For those who know the logic of military tribunals the sentence was not in doubt: since they had killed Yveton, and since the Guerroudj couple were his accomplices, they had to either go back on their decision or kill them as well. These predictions have since been confirmed. The government commissioner demanded the head of the accused, almost off-handedly. He obtained it. The complicity of the Guerroudjs in the Yveton affair wasn’t established? So what? In Algiers our justice prefers to shock the world with the severity of its sentences rather than by the quality of the proofs that support them.

Will they carry logic so far as to execute the Guerroudjs? As far as refusing presidential grace? If it was permitted to speak to the highest functionary of the Fourth Republic I would respectfully have him observe that we are no longer in the good old days of 1956. Since the Guerroudj trial an incident took place, a simple hitch to be sure, but which should nevertheless have some influence on our way of rendering justice, especially military justice: Sakiet. There were bombs at Sakiet, just as at the power station of Hama. Only they weren’t time bombs. And those responsible weren’t stupid enough to limit their operation to a simple deterioration of materiel. For at Sakiet as well the operation had been carefully chosen: it was that of the market. It’s true that Yveton’s only objective was to plunge a city into darkness. The objective of our planes was to plunge a village into death. If we had wanted to preserve our archangelic rigor we would perhaps have had to find the guilty and – who knows? – judge them. But no; M. Gaillard “covered” it. With what thick veil or impenetrable fog did he hope to “cover” the ruins of Sakiet? This I don’t know. But the operation didn’t succeed: the whole world saw the stones smoking in the sun. The only thing is that M. Gaillard is us; he is France. When from the height of his tribune he made the august gesture of covering it, he involved us all. Our foreign friends, as their press enjoys telling us every day, are beginning to seriously ask themselves if we haven’t become mad dogs. And here is the question we could humbly ask the first functionary of our great Republic: is it quite opportune to execute the Guerroudj couple? Would it not be in our interest to slacken our haughty severity a bit? A country whose government proudly takes credit for what M. Mauriac so accurately called the other day a “massacre of the poor,” is it truly qualified to have its representatives apply in its name the death penalty to a man whose sole role was that of ensuring the political liaison between a communist group and the FLN? To a woman who, participating in a sabotage operation, took all the necessary precautions so that the operation cause neither dead nor wounded? This has to be repeated every day to the imbeciles who want to frighten the universe by showing it “France’s terrible face.” France frightens no one; it no longer even has the means to intimidate: it’s beginning to horrify, and that is all. If it were ever to happen, the execution of the Guerroudjs, no one will see or admire our archangelic inflexibility; they’ll simply think that we have committed yet another crime.

Comrade by Maxim Gorky

All in that city was strange, incomprehensible. Churches in great number pointed their many tinted steeples toward the sky, in gleaming colours; but the walls and the chimneys of the factories rose still higher, and the temples were crushed between the massive façades of commercial houses, like marvellous flowers sprung up among the ruins, out of the dust. And when the bells called the faithful to prayer, their brazen sounds, sliding along the iron roofs, vanished, leaving no traces in the narrow gaps which separated the houses.

They were always large, and sometimes beautiful, these dwellings. Deformed people, ciphers, ran about like grey mice in the tortuous streets from morning till evening; and their eyes, full of covetousness, looked for bread or for some distraction; other men, placed at the crossways, watched with a vigilant and ferocious air, that the weak should, without murmuring, submit themselves to the strong. The strong were the rich; everyone believed that money alone gives power and liberty. All wanted power because all were slaves. The luxury of the rich begot the envy and hate of the poor; no one knew any finer music than the ring of gold; that is why each was the enemy of his neighbour, and cruelty reigned master.
Sometimes the sun shone over the city, but the life therein was always wan, and the people like shadows. At night they lit a mass of joyous lights; and then famishing women went out to the streets to sell their caresses to the highest bidder. Everywhere floated an odour of victuals, and the sullen and voracious look of the people grew. Over the city hovered a groan of misery, stifled, without strength to make itself heard.

Every one led an irksome, unquiet life; a general hostility was the rule. A few citizens only considered themselves just, but these were the most cruel, and their ferocity provoked that of the herd. All wanted to live; and no one knew or could follow freely the pathway of his desires; like an insatiable monster, the present enveloped in its powerful and vigorous arms the man who marched toward the future, and in that slimy embrace sapped away his strength. Full of anguish and perplexity, the man paused, powerless before the hideous aspect of this life; with its thousands of eyes, infinitely sad in their expression, it looked into his heart, asking him for it knew not what – and then the radiant images of the future died in his soul; a groan out of the powerless of the man mingled in the discordant chorus of lamentations and tears from poor human creatures tormented by life.
Tedium and inquietude reigned everywhere, and sometimes terror. And the dull and sober city, the stone buildings atrociously lined one against the other, shutting in the temples, were for men a prison, rebuffing the rays of the sun. And the music of life was smothered by the cry of suffering and rage, by the whisper of dissimulated hate, by the threatening bark of cruelty, by the voluptuous cry of violence.

In the sullen agitation caused by trial and suffering, in the feverish struggle of misery, in the vile slime of egotism, in the subsoils of the houses wherein vegetated Poverty, the creator of riches, solitary dreamers full of faith in Man, strangers to all, prophets of seditions, moved about like sparks issued from some far-off hearthstone of justice. Secretly they brought into these wretched holes tiny fertile seeds of a doctrine simple and grand – and sometimes rudely, with lightnings in their eyes, and sometimes mild and tender, they sowed this clear and burning truth in the sombre hearts of these slaves, transformed into mute, blind instruments by the strength of the rapacious, by the will of the cruel. And these sullen beings, these oppressed ones, listened without much belief to the music of the new words – the music for which their hearts had long been waiting. Little by little they lifted up their heads, and tore the meshes of the web of lies wherewith their oppressors had enwound them. In their existence, made up of silent and contained rage, in their hearts envenomed by numberless wrongs, in their consciences encumbered by the dupings of the wisdom of the strong, in this dark and laborious life, all penetrated with the bitterness of humiliation, had resounded a simple word:
Comrade!
It was not a new word; they had heard it and pronounced it themselves; but until then it had seemed to them void of sense, like all other words dulled by usage, and which one may forget without losing anything. But now this word, strong and clear, had another sound; a soul was singing in it – the facets of it shone brilliant as a diamond. The wretched accepted this word, and at first uttered it gently, cradling it in their hearts like a mother rocking her new-born child and admiring it. And the more they searched the luminous soul of the word, the more fascinating it seemed to them.
“Comrade,” said they.
And they felt that this word had come to unite the whole world, to lift all men up to the summits of liberty and bind with new ties, the strong ties of mutual respect, respect for the liberties of others in the name of one’s own liberty.
When this word had engraved itself upon the hearts of the slaves, they ceased to he slaves; and one day they announced their transformation to the city in this great human formula:
I will not.

Then life was suspended, for it is they who are the motor force of life, they and no other. The water supply stopped, the fire went out, the city was plunged in darkness. The masters began to tremble like children. Fear invaded the hearts of the oppressors. Suffocating in the fumes of their own dejection, disconcerted and terrified by the strength of the revolt, they dissimulated the rage which they felt against it.

The phantom of famine rose up before them, and their children wailed plaintively in the darkness. The houses and the temples, enveloped in shadow, melted into an inanimate chaos of iron and stone; a menacing silence filled the streets with a clamminess as of death; life ceased, for the force which created it had become conscious of itself; and enslaved humanity had found the magic and invincible word to express its will; it had enfranchised itself from the yoke; with its own eyes it had seen its might – the might of the creator.

These days were days of anguish to the rulers, to those who considered themselves the masters of life; each night was as long as thousands of nights, so thick was the gloom, so timidly shone the few fires scattered through the city. And then the monster city, created by the centuries, gorged with human blood, showed itself in all its shameful weakness; it was but a pitiable mass of stone and wood. The blind windows of the houses looked upon the street with a cold and sullen air, and out on the highway marched with valiant step the real masters of life. They, too, were hungry, more than the others, perhaps; but they were used to it, and the suffering of their bodies was not so sharp as the suffering of the old masters of life; it did not extinguish the fire in their souls. They glowed with the consciousness of their own strength, the presentiment of victory sparkled in their eyes. They went about in the streets of the city which had been their narrow and sombre prison, wherein they had been overwhelmed with contempt, wherein their souls had been loaded with abuse, and they saw the great importance of their work, and thus was unveiled to them the sacred right they had to become the masters of life, its creators and its law-givers.
And the life-giving word of union presented itself to them with a new face, with a blinding clearness:
“Comrade!”
There among lying words it rang out boldly, as the joyous harbinger of the time to come, of a new life open to all in the future – far or near? They felt that it depended upon them whether they advanced towards liberty or themselves deferred its coming.
The prostitute who, but the evening before, was but a hungry beast, sadly waiting on the muddy pavement to be accosted by someone who would buy her caresses, the prostitute, too, heard this word, but was undecided whether to repeat it. A man the like of whom she had never seen till then approached her, laid his hand upon her shoulder and said to her in an affectionate tone, “Comrade.” And she gave a little embarrassed smile, ready to cry with the joy her wounded heart experienced for the first time. Tears of pure gaiety shone in her eyes, which, the night before, had looked at the world with the stupid and insolent expression of a starving animal. In all the streets of the city the outcasts celebrated the triumph of their reunion with the great family of workers of the entire world; and the dead eyes of the houses looked on with an air more and more cold and menacing.

The beggar to whom but the night before an obol was thrown, price of the compassion of the well-fed, the beggar also, heard this word; and it was the first alms which aroused a feeling of gratitude in his poor heart gnawed by misery.
A coachman, a great big fellow whose patrons struck him that their blows might be transmitted to his thin-flanked, weary horse; this man, imbruted by the noise of wheels upon the pavement, said, smiling, to a passer by: “Well, comrade!” He was frightened at his own words. He took the reins in his hands, ready to start, and looked at the passer by, the joyous smile not yet effaced from his big face. The other cast a friendly glance at him and answered, shaking his head: “Thanks, comrade; I will go on foot; I am not going far.”
“Ah, the fine fellow!” exclaimed the coachman enthusiastically; he stirred in his seat, winking his eyes gaily, and started off somewhere with a great clatter.
The people went in groups crowded together on the pavements, and the great word destined to unite the world burst out more and more often among them, like a spark: “Comrade.” A policeman, bearded, fierce, and filled with the consciousness of his own importance, approached the crowd surrounding an old orator at the corner of a street, and, after having listened to the discourse, he said slowly: “Assemblages are interdicted ... disperse.” ... And after a moment’s silence, lowering his eyes, he added, in a lower tone, “Comrades.”

The pride of young combatants was depicted in the faces of those who carried the word in their hearts, who had given it flesh and blood and the appeal to union; one felt that the strength they so generously poured into this living word was indestructible, inexhaustible.
Here and there blind troops of armed men, dressed in grey, gathered and formed ranks in silence; it was the fury of the oppressors preparing to repulse the wave of justice.
And in the narrow streets of the immense city, between the cold and silent walls raised by the hands of ignored creators, the noble belief in man and in fraternity grew and ripened.
“Comrade.” – Sometimes in one corner, sometimes in another, the fire burst out. Soon this fire would become the conflagration destined to enkindle the earth with the ardent sentiment of kinship, uniting all its peoples; destined to consume and reduce to ashes the rage, hate, and cruelty by which we are mutilated; the conflagration which will embrace all hearts, melt them into one – the heart of the world, the heart of beings noble and just – into one united family of workers.
In the streets of the dead city, created by slaves, in the streets of the city where cruelty reigned, faith in humanity and in victory over self and over the evil of the world, grew and ripened. And in the vague chaos of a dull and troubled existence, a simple word, profound as the heart, shone like a star, like a light guiding toward the future: Comrade!

MAXIM GORKY.

Hegelian Dialectics

Charu Mazumder to the Students and Youth Revolutionaries

AFTER the death of the great Marxist-Leninist, Stalin, the Soviet revisionist renegade clique usurped the leadership of the state, party and the army and established a bourgeois dictatorship in the Soviet Union, the land of the Great October Socialist Revolution. This revisionist renegade clique has become the leader and focal point of the revisionists of the world. Naturally, after the establishment of bourgeois dictatorship, they have become the No. 1 accomplice of the imperialists; particularly, they have advanced far along the road of collaboration with the U.S. imperialists. This is because U.S. imperialism is today the leader of the imperialist camp, and is pursuing even more fiercely and widely the aggressive policies of the German, Italian and Japanese imperialists. The traitorous leaders of the Soviet Union are supporting these aggressive activities and even use Lenin's name to belittle them and are themselves carrying on colonial exploitation with various imperialist powers and, in particular, with U.S. imperialism. By acting in this way, the leaders of the Soviet state and party have turned into enemies of all liberation struggles of the world, enemies of the great Socialist China, enemies of communism and even of the Soviet people. In India also they are acting as No. 1 accomplice of U.S. imperialism and are directing the state power and exploiting the people of India. As in various other parts of the world, they are allies of the reactionaries in India and support them. That is why India's liberation struggle can win victory only by fighting against the guns of the Soviet revisionists and by hitting out at the Soviet revisionists' state power. This explains why the Dange clique and the neo-revisionist leadership have, by their actions, joined the Indian reactionary clique and have turned into enemies of all democratic movements. They consciously and zealously support the bourgeois and imperialist propaganda.

It is because of these world developments that the thought of Chairman Mao has emerged as the only Marxism-Leninism, Marxism-Leninism which he has greatly developed and enriched through the great proletarian cultural revolution. This is why the world has entered today into the era of Mao Tse-tung's thought. Therefore, the thought of Chairman Mao can be called Marxism of the era of the total collapse of imperialism.
So, the political task of the student and youth workers is to study this new and developed Marxism, the thought of Chairman Mao, and put it into practice. He who shuns this task can never acquire the knowledge about the principles of Marxism. They must, therefore, study the Quotations of Chairman Mao Tse-tung. As Chairman Mao has said, there can only be one criterion by which we should judge whether a youth or a student is a revolutionary. This criterion is whether or not he is willing to integrate himself with the broad masses of workers and peasants, does so in practice and carries on mass work.

The Quotations of People's War published by the Central Committee of the great Communist Party of China is now available with us, a Bengali translation of which has also been published. This book is meant for revolutionary workers and peasants. We should make this our propaganda and agitation material. Whether a worker is revolutionary or not will be judged on the basis of the number of workers and peasants to whom he has read out and explained this book.
We have seen how good agitators in the student movement, how even students who fought in the barricade over some student demand or political issue, subsequently sat for the I.A.S. examination and became administrators, that is, went over to the enemy camp. As Chairman Mao teaches us, only those students and youth who can integrate themselves with the masses of peasants and workers are revolutionaries; those who cannot are at first non-revolutionaries and may in some cases join the counter-revolutionary camp afterwards.

This is a lesson which we get not only from China but from every country in the world. From my own experience I can say that unless the revolutionaries in the towns and cities undertake this task, they will eventually become demoralized and degenerate.
The political organization of the youth and the students must necessarily be a Red Guard organization, and they should undertake the task of spreading the Quotations of Chairman Mao as widely as possible in different areas.

All Things Are Nothing to Me By Max Stirner

I've set my cause on nothing
[Ich hab’ mein’ Sach’ auf nichts gestellt]

What is not supposed to be my concern [Sache] ! First and foremost, the good cause [Sache], then God’s cause, the cause of mankind, of truth, of freedom, of humanity, of justice; further, the cause of my people, my prince, my fatherland; finally, even the cause of Mind, and a thousand other causes. Only my cause is never to be my concern. “Shame on the egoist who thinks only of himself!”
Let us look and see, then, how they manage their concerns – they for whose cause we are to labour, devote ourselves, and grow enthusiastic.

You have much profound information to give about God, and have for thousands of years “searched the depths of the Godhead,” and looked into its heart, so that you can doubtless tell us how God himself attends to “God’s cause,” which we are called to serve. And you do not conceal the Lord’s doings, either. Now, what is his cause? Has he, as is demanded of us, made an alien cause, the cause of truth or love, his own? You are shocked by this misunderstanding, and you instruct us that God’s cause is indeed the cause of truth and love, but that this cause cannot be called alien to him, because God is himself truth and love; you are shocked by the assumption that God could be like us poor worms in furthering an alien cause as his own. “Should God take up the cause of truth if he were not himself truth?” He cares only for his cause, but, because he is all in all, therefore all is his cause! But we, we are not all in all, and our cause is altogether little and contemptible; therefore we must “serve a higher cause.” – Now it is clear, God cares only for what is his, busies himself only with himself, thinks only of himself, and has only himself before his eyes; woe to all that is not well pleasing to him. He serves no higher person, and satisfies only himself. His cause is – a purely egoistic cause.
How is it with mankind, whose cause we are to make our own? Is its cause that of another, and does mankind serve a higher cause? No, mankind looks only at itself, mankind will promote the interests of mankind only, mankind is its own cause. That it may develop, it causes nations and individuals to wear themselves out in its service, and, when they have accomplished what mankind needs, it throws them on the dung-heap of history in gratitude. Is not mankind’s cause – a purely egoistic cause?
I have no need to take up each thing that wants to throw its cause on us and show that it is occupied only with itself, not with us, only with its good, not with ours. Look at the rest for yourselves. Do truth, freedom, humanity, justice, desire anything else than that you grow enthusiastic and serve them?

They all have an admirable time of it when they receive zealous homage. Just observe the nation that is defended by devoted patriots. The patriots fall in bloody battle or in the fight with hunger and want; what does the nation care for that? By the manure of their corpses the nation comes to “its bloom"! The individuals have died “for the great cause of the nation,” and the nation sends some words of thanks after them and – has the profit of it. I call that a paying kind of egoism.
But only look at that Sultan who cares so lovingly for his people. Is he not pure unselfishness itself, and does he not hourly sacrifice himself for his people? Oh, yes, for “his people.” Just try it; show yourself not as his, but as your own; for breaking away from his egoism you will take a trip to jail. The Sultan has set his cause on nothing but himself; he is to himself all in all, he is to himself the only one, and tolerates nobody who would dare not to be one of “his people.”
And will you not learn by these brilliant examples that the egoist gets on best? I for my part take a lesson from them, and propose, instead of further unselfishly serving those great egoists, rather to be the egoist myself.

God and mankind have concerned themselves for nothing, for nothing but themselves. Let me then likewise concern myself for myself, who am equally with God the nothing of all others, who am my all, who am the only one [Der Einzige].
If God, if mankind, as you affirm, have substance enough in themselves to be all in all to themselves, then I feel that I shall still less lack that, and that I shall have no complaint to make of my “emptiness.” I am not nothing in the sense of emptiness, but I am the creative nothing [das schöpferiche Nichts], the nothing out of which I myself as creator create everything.
Away, then, with every concern that is not altogether my concern! You think at least the “good cause” must be my concern? What’s good, what’s bad? Why, I myself am my concern, and I am neither good nor bad. Neither has meaning for me. The divine is God’s concern; the human, man’s. My concern is neither the divine nor the human, not the true, good, just, free, etc., but solely what is mine [das Meinige] , and it is not a general one, but is – unique [einzig], as I am unique.
Nothing is more to me than myself!

Critique on the Four Year Undergraduate Program of Delhi University

The student referendum, with all its magnanimity of participation has made one fact crystal clear that the FYUP has been the bane of existence for the first ear students since its institutionalization and so a whopping 10,519 students voted against FYUP out of 11,556 which constitutes roughly 91% of the total votes. If we critically analyze the issue of FYUP, strip it naked and examine its private parts, we might find something very unwanted, hideous, grotesque, and outright repulsive. I won’t waste the ink in my pen and the matter in my hawking vile comments on FYUP, its course structure, its financial burden caused by the additional courses especially on those who pay double the rent of college hostel by staying at paying guest accommodation just because DU is not able to provide ample housing facilities to all its students, its worthless foundation courses or the anarchy it has created with the introduction of the applied and foundation courses and the irregularities in both infrastructure and time table.

I will go knee-deep into this muck of FYUP and discuss the orifice from where the grime of filth is ebbing out. Getting to the root base of this problem, we can as well put aside the Vice Chancellor’s claim of broadening the higher education horizon on a more ‘international’ basis as the Guardian; a British newspaper cites the FYUP as ‘a broken attempt at Americanization of India’s higher education system.

The fact of the matter is that this Four Year Program, in the long run, will actually deteriorate the reputation of the University so much so that the individual colleges would want total autonomy to save themselves from the embarrassment of the dissent in higher education and so the most prestigious Ivy League University in India would fall asunder paving way for privatization of the biggest and most booming sector, education. There is also the question raised on the newly issued books for foundation courses which are all published through private publishing houses even though DU is a central govt. university and so the books for the foundation courses could have been published availing subsidy by the NCERT but the VC and his lackeys brought the whole notion of privatization even in this context and entered into a coalition with the book mafia ensuring more money goes into their own pockets.

If we look more and more comprehensively into the apparent realities of FYUP and develop a critique, there are no bounds to the monetary profit that the VC and the DU administration gains through the implementation of the FYUP along with the foundation courses and all that a student gains is misery, bad education and an unsecure future, all thanks to the visionary and the avant-garde thinking of the most respected Mr. Dinesh Singh who very cunningly had avoided much student agitation by including the Congress student-hand in the students’ union panel judging the FYUP that would obviously support what the Party says with a blind eye to safeguard their own interest and make their own future political career while the future of DU with a dawn of this kind of corporate takeover is much like the state of Sanskrit Tols and Perso-Arabic Madrassas at the sawn of East India Company with its notion of ‘enlightenment’ which was imposed in that era and is imposed mow. In the end, things will fall apart if the students fail to see beyond the ‘Fucha fests’ and college parties and just look at the bare facts that would affect every single student of Delhi University at all possible levels with a painful sting if we fail to unite against the demise of the education provided in our University because finally we are the ones who will be at the receiving end of the FYUP after four years and I take it that all of us wouldn’t want to end up on the wrong side thinking we made a wrong choice and ended up in the wrong path because a revolt in our university will change the course of education of the whole nation as there has been much talk of establishing FYUP as the general norm for every single govt. university in India. It is time to fight for our right to a proper education and a prosperous future that is becoming and fit enough for the status of Delhi University. The time calls for us to struggle to study!

Figt for Freedom!

The three Pillars of Soviet Communism

Warning to the People By Auguste Blanqui

What reef menaces tomorrow’s revolution?

The reef that broke that of yesterday: the deplorable popularity of bourgeois disguised as tribunes of the people.

A dismal list! Sinister names written in blood on the paving stones of democratic Europe.

The provisional government killed the Revolution. It is upon its head that the responsibility for all these disasters, for the blood of so many thousands of victims must fall.

Reaction is doing nothing but its job in cutting democracy’s throat.

The crime is that of the traitors the trusting people accepted as guides, but who instead gave them reaction.

Miserable government! Despite screams and prayers, it decrees the 45 centime tax that causes the desperate countryside to rise up; it keeps in place the royalist headquarters, the royalist magistrates, the royalist laws. Treason!

It runs down the workers of Paris; April 15 it imprisons those of Limoges; it guns down those of Rouen on the 27th; it sets loose all its executioners; it deceives and tracks down all sincere republicans. Treason! Treason!

To it alone belongs the terrible burden of all of the calamities that have all but wiped out the Revolution

Oh, these are the real guilty ones, the guiltiest among the guilty; those the deceived people saw as its sword and shield; those it acclaimed with enthusiasm, the judges of its future.

What a misfortune it would be for us if, on the forthcoming day of the people’s victory, the forgetful indulgence of the masses allows a single one of these men who forfeited their mandate to take power! That, for a second time, would be the end of the revolution.

Let the workers always have before their eyes this list of accursed names! And if even one should ever appear in a government that is a product of the insurrection, let them all cry out with one voice: treason!

Speeches, sermons, and programs would only be frauds and lies; the same jugglers will return to perform the same act, with the same bag of tricks; they would form the first link of a new, more furious chain of reaction!

Anathema on them, should they ever dare reappear!

Shame and pity on the imbecilic mass which would again fall into their net!

It’s not enough that the thieves of February be ejected for good from the Hotel de Ville; we must be protected against new traitors.

That government would be treasonous which, raised upon the proletarian bulwark, doesn’t instantly carry out:

1. The disarmament of the bourgeois guards,

2. The armament and organization of a national militia of all workers.

There are doubtless other indispensable measures, but they will grow naturally from this first act, which is the preliminary guarantee, the only pledge of security for the people.

There must remain not one rifle in the hands of the bourgeoisie. Without this, there is no salvation.

The diverse doctrines which today dispute among themselves for the sympathy of the masses can one day fulfil their promises of betterment and well being, on condition they not abandon the prey for its shadow.

Arms and organization, these are the decisive elements of progress, the serious method for putting an end to misery.

Who has iron, has bread.

We prostrate ourselves before the bayonets; they sweep up the disarmed crowd. France bristling with workers in arms means the advent of socialism.

In the presence of armed workers obstacles, resistances, and impossibilities will all disappear.

But for those workers who allow themselves to be amused by ridiculous strolls in the street, by the planting of liberty trees, by the mellifluous phrases of lawyers, there will first be holy water, then insults, and, finally, the gun. And misery forever.

Let the people choose!

How to Become a Good Communist

In order to become faithful and worthy pupils of the founders of Marxism-Leninism, we must engage in all round self-cultivation in the course of the great and protracted revolutionary struggles of the proletariat and the masses. We must engage in self-cultivation in the Marxist-Leninist theory; self cultivation in applying the Marxist-Leninist stand, view point and method to the study and handling of all problems; self-cultivation in proletarian ideology and morality; self-cultivation in upholding unity in the Party, practising criticism and self-criticism and observing discipline; self cultivation in developing the style of hard work and persistent struggle; self-cultivation in building close ties with the masses; self cultivation in various branches of scientific knowledge, etc. We are all members of the Communist Party and therefore we must all without exception carry on self-cultivation in these respects. However, since Party members differ from one another in political consciousness, experience of struggle, field of work, cultural level and in the conditions in which they work, it is natural that comrades should differ to some extent in the various aspects of self-cultivation to which they must pay special attention of which they must stress.

When Zeng Zi, in ancient times, said, "I reflect on myself three times a day,"¹ he was discussing self-examination. The Book of Odes in the famous lines, "As knife and file make smooth the bone, as jade is wrought by chisel and stone, ² referred to the need for help and criticism among friends. What all this shows is that very hard work and very earnest self-cultivation are essential if one is to make progress. But the "self-cultivation" perused by many people in the past was generally idealistic, formalistic, abstract and divorced from social practice. They exaggerated the role of subjective intentions, thinking that so long as they had "good will" in the abstract, they could transform reality, society and themselves. Of course this is absurd. Our self-cultivation cannot be done that way. We are revolutionary materialists; our self-cultivation cannot be separated from the revolutionary practices of the masses.

For us it is most important to never divorce ourselves from the current revolutionary struggle of the masses, but to identify ourselves with it, in order to study, sum up and apply the revolutionary experience of the past. This means that we must cultivate and temper ourselves in revolutionary practice and that in turn our self-cultivation and tempering are undertaken solely for the sake of the people and of revolutionary practice. It means that we must modestly learn the Marxist-Leninist stand, viewpoint and method, learn from the noble proletarian quality of the founders of Marxism-Leninism and apply all this in our practice, in our words and deeds, our daily life and work, constantly correcting or eliminating anything in our ideology contrary to it and strengthening our own proletarian communist ideology and character. It means that we should listen modestly to the opinions and criticisms of our Party comrades and of the masses, make a careful study of the practical problems in our life and work, carefully sum up and draw lessons from our experience in work, and that, in the light of all this, we should ascertain whether our understanding of Marxism-Leninism and our use of the Marxist-Leninist method are correct and check up on our shortcomings and mistakes so as to overcome them and improve our work. Furthermore, on the basis of new experience we should ascertain whether there are any individual conclusions or aspects of Marxism-Leninism that need supplementing, enriching and developing. In short, we must integrate the universal truth of Marxism- Leninism with the concrete practice of the revolution.

This is the method of self-cultivation for us communists. It is entirely different from those methods of self-cultivation which are idealistic and divorced from the revolutionary practice of the masses.
In order to persevere in this Marxist-Leninist method of cultivation, we must resolutely oppose and thoroughly eradicate one of the worst vices bequeathed to us by the old society in the field of education and study, namely, the separation of theory from practice. In the old society many people who studied thought it unnecessary, or even impossible to act upon what they had learned, and though they wrote and spoke abundantly of justice and morality, in fact they were out and out scoundrels. Although the Kuomintang reactionaries memorize the "Three People's Principles"³ and recite Sun Yat-sen's Testament,⁴ in actual fact they bleed the people white with taxes, practice corruption and slaughter, oppress the masses, are opposed to "those nations who treat us as equals", and go as far as to compromise with or surrender to the national enemy. An old ixucai⁵ once told me that of all the teachings of Confucius he was able to observe only this one, "For him no food can ever be too dainty and no minced meat too fine"⁵ and that he could not observe the rest and had never intended to. Since that is what these people are like, why do they run schools and study the "teachings of the sages"? They are after advancement and money, use the "teachings of the sages" to oppress the exploited, and deceive the people by paying lip service to justice and morality. This is typical of the attitude of the exploiting classes of the old society towards the sages they "worship". Needless to say, when we Communists study Marxism-Leninism an all that is best in our national heritage, we must never adopt such an attitude. What we learn we must practice. Being proletarian revolutionaries who are honest and pure in purpose, we cannot be untrue to ourselves, to the people, or to those who went before us. This is an outstanding characteristic as well as a great merit of Communists.
Is it possible that the old society's separation of theory from practice can have no influence on us? No, it is not! It is true that none of you students are studying Marxism-Leninism for the sake of advancement and money and or oppressing the exploited. Yet is it possible to maintain that none of you ever entertains the idea that your thoughts, words, deeds and life do not necessarily have to be guided by Marxist-Leninist principles or that you do not intend to put all the principles that you have learned into practice? Is it possible that none of you ever thinks of studying Marxism-Leninism or going deeper into the theory as a means of getting ahead in life, of showing off and becoming famous? I cannot guarantee that none of you thinks along these lines. That kind of thinking runs counter to Marxism-Leninism and to the basic Marxist-Leninist principle of the integration of theory and practice. Certainly we must study theory, but we must also practice what we learn. And it is for the sake of practice, of the Party, of the people, and of the victory of the revolution that we study theory.

Comrade Mao Zedong has said:

The great strength of Marxism-Leninism lies precisely in its integration with the concrete revolutionary practice of all countries. For the Chinese Communist Party, it is a matter of learning to apply the theory of Marxism-Leninism to the specific circumstances of China. For the Chinese Communists who are part of the great Chinese nation, flesh of its flesh and blood of its blood, any talk about Marxism in isolation from China's characteristics is merely Marxism in the abstract, Marxism in a vacuum. Hence to apply Marxism concretely in China so that its every manifestation has an indubitable Chinese character, i.e., to apply Marxism in the light of China's specific characteristics, becomes a problem which it is urgent for the whole Party to understand and solve. Foreign stereotypes must be abolished, there must be less singing of empty, abstract tunes, and dogmatism must be laid to rest; they must be replaced by the fresh, lively Chinese style and spirit which the common people of China love.

Our comrades must study the theory of Marxism-Leninism by following the method Comrade Mao Zedong speaks of here.