These people evidently think that socialism calls for equalisation, for levelling the requirements and personal, everyday life of the members of society. Needless to say, such an assumption has nothing in common with Marxism, with Leninism. By equality Marxism means, not equalisation of personal requirements and everyday life, but the abolition of classes, i.e., a) the equal emancipation of all working people from exploitation after the capitalists have been overthrown and expropriated; b) the equal abolition for all of private property in the means of production after they have been converted into the property of the whole of society; c) the equal duty of all to work according to their ability, and the equal right of all working people to receive in return for this according to the work performed (socialist society); d) the equal duty of all to work according to their ability, and the equal right of all working people to receive in return for this according to their needs (communist society). Moreover, Marxism proceeds from the assumption that people's tastes and requirements are not, and cannot be, identical and equal in regard to quality or quantity, whether in the period of socialism or in the period of communism.

There you have the Marxist conception of equality.

Marxism has never recognised, and does not recognise, any other equality.

To draw from this the conclusion that socialism calls for equalisation, for the levelling of the requirements of the members of society, for the levelling of their tastes and of their personal, everyday life—that according to the Marxist plan all should wear the same clothes and eat the same dishes in the same quantity—is to utter vulgarities and to slander Marxism.

It is time it was understood that Marxism is an enemy of equalisation. Already in the Manifesto of the Communist Party Marx and Engels scourged primitive utopian socialism and termed it reactionary because it preached "universal asceticism and social levelling in its crudest form." 11 In his Anti-Duhring Engels devoted a whole chapter to a withering criticism of the "radical equalitarian socialism" put forward by Duhring in opposition to Marxist socialism.

". . . The real content of the proletarian demand for equality," said Engels, "is the demand for the abolition of classes. Any demand for equality which goes beyond that, of necessity passes into absurdity." 12

Lenin said the same thing:

"Engels was a thousand times right when he wrote that to conceive equality as meaning anything beyond the abolition of classes is a very stupid and absurd prejudice. Bourgeois professors have tried to make use of the concept of equality to accuse us of wanting to make all men equal to one another. They have tried to accuse the Socialists of this absurdity, which they themselves invented. But in their ignorance they did not know that the Socialists—and precisely the founders of modern scientific socialism, Marx and Engels—said: Equality is an empty phrase unless equality is understood to mean the abolition of classes. We want to abolish classes, and in this respect we stand for equality. But the claim that we want to make all men equal to one another is an empty phrase and a stupid invention of intellectuals" (Lenin's speech "On Deceiving the People with Slogans About Liberty and Equality," Works, Vol. XXIV, pp. 2 9 3 - 9 4 13).

Clear, one would think.

Bourgeois writers are fond of depicting Marxist socialism in the shape of the old tsarist barracks, where everything is subordinated to the "principle" of equalisation. But Marxists cannot be held responsible for the ignorance and stupidity of bourgeois writers.

J. V. Stalin
Report to the Seventeenth Party Congress on the Work of the Central Committee of the C.P.S.U.(B.)
January 26, 1934

#Stalin #Lenin #Marx #Engels #Equality

@Communism

Barge haulers on the Volga

Work by Ilya Repin - 1873

Lay down your weapons, you soldiers at the front. Lay down your tools, you workers at home. Do not let yourselves be deceived any longer by your rulers, the lip patriots, and the munitions profiteers. Rise with power and seize the reins of government. Yours is the force. To you belongs the right to rule. Answer the call for freedom and win your own war for liberty.

- Karl Liebknecht, Call for Revolution (1918)

"V.I. Lenin with N.K. Krupskaya at the opening of the first rural power station in the village of Kashino. November 14, 1920", painting by Nikolay Sysoev, 1969

8 mansions owned by Ukrainian generals burnt in LA wildfires – reports

The properties were reportedly purchased with Western funds provided to Kiev as military aid

@MTodayNews

Nazism is being allowed to arise once more in Europe. Ukraine, Latvia and Finland all have a strong Nazi ideology still prevalent. It seems Moldova does too.

"Atom should work for peace, for Communism!"

By Yu Golubev, 1976