COPS: Whatever You Say, Say Nothing

We can read a lot these days, especially with social media and the likes of Irish Blog around. Usually for me the important stuff, is between the lines, and while I read everything with a pinch of salt, it still usually, comes back to that Shakespearian saying, 'This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man,' nevertheless, it's still important to read. In the same sense. like what I hear, I listen, examine and process, as it relates to my own experience. My politics and way of life, have always been off the beaten track and as result, I have had numerous encounters with police from several juristictions. From my experience, I have learned, that the first important thing, dealing with police, is to pass the attirude test. Genuine respect is earned, while civic respect is an important component in any relationship, particularly at the outset of any engagement, unless it has been abused.

Because of British occupation of part of Ireland, there is a policy among genuine Irish republicans, when stopped at their numerous checkpoints, to furnish the paramilitary police, with the bare minimum requirements of the 'law,' which sometimes leads to hilarious encounters. Like one time my friends and I were stopped, something like half a dozen times on Hill Street in Newry, which incidentally doesn'r have a hill, and we gave our names in Irish, as was a basic requirement. When asked where we were coming from, because the police were almost always sectarian, we said we were coming from mass, and when we were asked where we were going, we said to another mass. Often we were also frisked and searched. Anyway by the sixth stop on the same street, my friend was fed up with the searching, so rather than let them physically touch him anymore, he proceeded to strip off, item by item, until he was naked on the busy street, whereupon he then displayed his arse to them, and asked them if the wanted to look up his anus. By this time a lot of ould dolls doing their shopping had gathered around in solidarity berating the British paramilitary police, and there was the makings of a decent riot, so the RUC told us to, "fuck off"  Warning; only try on a busy shopping street.

In all of Ireland after 800 years of Colonialism, whic still continues, there is a basic irreverence to anything in a uniform, on a public street. This gets a bit schizophrenic in private police stations, where there is ample historical evidence of schitzophrenia and the evidence, of all forms of rebellion, is, that there has always been considerable penetration by British intelligence, right up to several parts, of the most senior leadership of revolution. In my own case, I have been taken into formal interrogation on more than a dozen occasions. I remeber on one of my earliers encounters, when I would not talk at all to them, one interrogator said to me, that civilty costs nothing and for some strange reason, despite our code of silence, this hit a nerve, which I have never forgotten. Sometime the interrogations at that time, would last for a week during which I was isolated. I remember during one interrogation, where explicit photogrpahs were thrown in front of me and I was asked what I thought about them, and I replied, that they were evidence of a war going on in Ireland, at which point, one of the interrogators, appeared to go bexerk and had to be dragged out of the room, kicking and screaming by his colleagues.

It was dirty war and still is, albeit of lower intensity currently, but it will intensify again if Britissh Occupation continues, of that, there can be little doubt, because the much touted 'peace process' is fake, built on a false foundation of collaboration, at senior level, rather than on truth and justice. Anway from my own experience, I have to admit that most of the police I encountered, were civil enough, but like every group of people, it had bad eggs, some very eggs. Out of the more than a dozen occassion of serious interroagtion, I was abused twice, once in London by Scottish personnel abd once In Occupied Ireland by native interrogators. I would say that generally from my own encounters with police in five juristictions, that they generally reflect society, as I have experienced it. I have one general rule, with regard to these situations, from my experience, and that is to never grass, tout, snitch on a friend. For this reason I have learned to choose my friends, very,very, carefully. I would also qualify that, by saying, that being a smart ass in interrogation, is not prudent, unless you are a masochist. The last thing you need, is a cop with a boner for you and yes, they do have a very long arm. Like Mairead Farrell said in her interview, in these situations, our head is our best weapon.

Stop Kidding Yourself: The Police Were Created to Control Working Class and Poor People

By Sam Mitrani

December 31, 2014 "ICH" - "LAWCHA" - - In most of the liberal discussions of the recent police killings of unarmed black men, there is an underlying assumption that the police are supposed to protect and serve the population. That is, after all, what they were created to do. If only the normal, decent relations between the police and the community could be re-established, this problem could be resolved. Poor people in general are more likely to be the victims of crime than anyone else, this reasoning goes, and in that way, they are in more need than anyone else of police protection. Maybe there are a few bad apples, but if only the police weren’t so racist, or didn’t carry out policies like stop-and-frisk, or weren’t so afraid of black people, or shot fewer unarmed men, they could function as a useful service that we all need.

This liberal way of viewing the problem rests on a misunderstanding of the origins of the police and what they were created to do. The police were not created to protect and serve the population. They were not created to stop crime, at least not as most people understand it. And they were certainly not created to promote justice. They were created to protect the new form of wage-labor capitalism that emerged in the mid to late nineteenth century from the threat posed by that system’s offspring, the working class.

This is a blunt way of stating a nuanced truth, but sometimes nuance just serves to obfuscate.




Slave patrol badge, 1858. Slave patrols to hunt down escaped slaves were the original police in the South.

Before the nineteenth century, there were no police forces that we would recognize as such anywhere in the world. In the Northern United States, there was a system of elected constables and sheriffs, much more responsible to the population in a very direct way than the police are today. In the South, the closest thing to a police force was the slave patrols. Then, as Northern cities grew and filled with mostly immigrant wage workers who were physically and socially separated from the ruling class, the wealthy elite who ran the various municipal governments hired hundreds and then thousands of armed men to impose order on the new working class neighborhoods.

Class conflict roiled late nineteenth century American cities like Chicago, which experienced major strikes and riots in 1867, 1877, 1886, and 1894. In each of these upheavals, the police attacked strikers with extreme violence, even if in 1877 and 1894 the U.S. Army played a bigger role in ultimately repressing the working class. In the aftermath of these movements, the police increasingly presented themselves as a thin blue line protecting civilization, by which they meant bourgeois civilization, from the disorder of the working class. This ideology of order that developed in the late nineteenth century echoes down to today – except that today, poor black and Latino people are the main threat, rather than immigrant workers.




Chicago police cast themselves as the defenders of civilization for a society ordered by capitalist premises. After Haymarket in 1886, they contended that they stood between civilization and anarchy.

Of course, the ruling class did not get everything it wanted, and had to yield on many points to the immigrant workers it sought to control. This is why, for instance, municipal governments backed away from trying to stop Sunday drinking, and why they hired so many immigrant police officers, especially the Irish. But despite these concessions, businessmen organized themselves to make sure the police were increasingly isolated from democratic control, and established their own hierarchies, systems of governance, and rules of behavior. The police increasingly set themselves off from the population by donning uniforms, establishing their own rules for hiring, promotion, and firing, working to build a unique esprit des corps, and identifying themselves with order. And despite complaints about corruption and inefficiency, they gained more and more support from the ruling class, to the extent that in Chicago, for instance, businessmen donated money to buy the police rifles, artillery, Gatling guns, buildings, and money to establish a police pension out of their own pockets.

There was a never a time when the big city police neutrally enforced “the law,” or came anywhere close to that ideal (for that matter, the law itself has never been neutral). In the North, they mostly arrested people for the vaguely defined “crimes” of disorderly conduct and vagrancy throughout the nineteenth century. This meant that the police could arrest anyone they saw as a threat to “order.” In the post-bellum South, they enforced white supremacy and largely arrested black people on trumped-up charges in order to feed them into convict labor systems.

The violence the police carried out and their moral separation from those they patrolled were not the consequences of the brutality of individual officers, but were the consequences of careful policies designed to mold the police into a force that could use violence to deal with the social problems that accompanied the development of a wage-labor economy. For instance, in the short, sharp depression of the mid 1880s, Chicago was filled with prostitutes who worked the streets. Many policemen recognized that these prostitutes were generally impoverished women seeking a way to survive, and initially tolerated their behavior. But the police hierarchy insisted that the patrolmen do their duty whatever their feelings, and arrest these women, impose fines, and drive them off the streets and into brothels, where they could be ignored by some members of the elite and controlled by others. Similarly, in 1885, when Chicago began to experience a wave of strikes, some policemen sympathized with strikers. But once the police hierarchy and the mayor decided to break the strikes, policemen who refused to comply were fired. In these and a thousand similar ways, the police were molded into a force that would impose order on working class and poor people, whatever the individual feelings of the officers involved.

Though some patrolmen tried to be kind and others were openly brutal, police violence in the 1880s was not a case of a few bad apples – and neither is it today.




Graffiti, location unknown.

Much has changed since the creation of the police – most importantly the influx of black people into the Northern cities, the mid-twentieth century black movement, and the creation of the current system of mass incarceration in part as a response to that movement. But these changes did not lead to a fundamental shift in policing. They led to new policies designed to preserve fundamental continuities. The police were created to use violence to reconcile electoral democracy with industrial capitalism. Today, they are just one part of the “criminal justice” system which continues to play the same role. Their basic job is to enforce order among those with the most reason to resent the system – who in our society today are disproportionately poor black people.

A democratic police system is imaginable – one in which police are elected by and accountable to the people they patrol. But that is not what we have. And it’s not what the current system of policing was created to be.




Sam Mitrani, The Rise of the Chicago Police Department: Class and Conflict, 1850-1894, available from University of Illinois Press

If there is one positive lesson from the history of policing’s origins, it is that when workers organized, refused to submit or cooperate, and caused problems for the city governments, they could back the police off from the most galling of their activities. Murdering individual police officers, as happened in in Chicago on May 3rd 1886 and more recently in New York on December 20th, 2014, only reinforced those calling for harsh repression – a reaction we are beginning to see already. But resistance on a mass scale could force the police to hesitate. This happened in Chicago during the early 1880s, when the police pulled back from breaking strikes, hired immigrant officers, and tried to re-establish some credibility among the working class after their role in brutally crushing the 1877 upheaval.

The police might be backed off again if the reaction against the killings of Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, and countless others continues. If they are, it will be a victory for those mobilizing today, and will save lives – though as long as this system that requires police violence to control a big share of its population survives, any change in police policy will be aimed at keeping the poor in line more effectively.

We shouldn’t expect the police to be something they’re not. As historians, we ought to know that origins matter, and the police were created by the ruling class to control working class and poor people, not help them. They’ve continued to play that role ever since.

Sam Mitrani is an Associate Professor of History at the College of DuPage. He earned his PhD from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2009 and his book The Rise of the Chicago Police Department: Class and Conflict, 1850-1894 is available from the University of Illinois Press.

IRISH PEACE PROCESS DYING WITHOUT THE TRUTH

The Irish Peace Process of British Secret Service origin, has been dying a slow death now for the last couple of years, since the Tories came to power in both England and Ireland in the form of Fine Gael. It has served its purpose of defeating the IRA, so it's back to business as usual. The principal reason for it's demise, is that from it's inception lacked the Truth & Reconciliation element of what worked with Mandela in South Africa. It was born and crafted in secrecy. Mandela is generally hailed, as the hero of the South African process but it is my humble opinion, that the real hero was Archbishop Desmond Tutu, whose admirers see him, as the man most responsible for the demise of apartheid and who has been active in defence of human rights, not just in his own country, but has also campaigned for the oppressed in the Occupied Territories of Palestine and also campaigned to fight HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, poverty, racism, sexism, the imprisonment of Chelsea Manning, homophobia and transphobia. Ireland does have similar seasoned campaigners, such as Fr. Raymond Murray, but his Church will never give him the profile of Archbishop, because as a truth teller and a person of integrity, he would be far too dangerous in Ireland and would be regarded as partisan by some.We need a genuine Tutu, Jimmy Carter or their equivalent in Ireland, urgently.

Irish bog bodies, mummified for more than 4,000 years by the elements of Irish bogs, are in a peculiar way also truth tellers, killed and deposited in Irish bogs, as part of a widespread cultural tradition of human sacrifice or execution of their time, they reveal some of the dark secrets of our ancestors. Yesterday another body was uncovered in a Co Meath bog, which has been confirmed as that of one of  the Disappeared, victim Brendan Megraw. Mr Megraw, was abducted by the IRA on April 8 1978, executed and secretly buried. He was a newly-wed of 23, awaiting the birth of his daughter, another Irish victim of the centuries old conflict, he died twenty years before the Belfast Agreement in 1998. His executioners, now participate daily in the same activity of which Mr Megraw was accused. I personally am not in a position to judge the rights and wrongs of all of this, but I can honestly say, that as an activist of almost 40 years, in one form or another, all of this has evolved into into a tragic farce of utter hypocrisy.


Serious human rights activists in Occupied Ireland, factor in assassination as a likely fate, with the original responsibility for most of those murders, being at the door of the British Secret Services, albeit executed by their various agents on both sides of their nurtured sectarian divide. Censorship sometimes fails their nefarious activity, while on other occasions, political internment without trial is employed or failing those, ultimately they resort to assassination. British secret service agents, daily manage drug cartels and pedophile syndicates, as their leverages of political power over all of the island and have been doing so, for a very long time. They have thousands of agents, scattered all over the island, penetrating the injustice system of both states, that includes lawyers, police, judges, politicians, media, banking, paramilitaries, drug cartels and freemasonry of the Orange Order. The evidence is there for all serious researchers. I have witnessed  this first hand from personal experience, which I have no problem making public, in any transparent and public forum of truth and reconciliation.


The tools of control freaks, such as manipulation, lying, violence, etc., are often honed to sophistry, in the homes of pedophiles and abusers, which often enables the power craven, to rise to the top of the British class system, while groomed in the process by their mentors, becoming long term pawns, that are often, inter generational for abuse by the Britain's SS. Ireland has been it's test laboratory. In the course of my recovery from alcoholism, I was fortunate enough to attend many different types of 12 step meetings in the Jellinek Clinic in the Netherlands, where I witnessed the full array of horrors, that are used by British colonialism in Ireland. I learned, that I was as sick as my secrets, and in the process, I learned that it is also true of my country. As a result, I am aware, that without Archbishop Desmond Tutu's element of Truth & Reconciliation, the Irish Peace Process has little if any chance of success. Many of the most horrific crimes committed in Ireland, are unlikely to ever see the light of day, because there are considerable resources of both British & Irish taxpayers, being used to keep all of this secret.


All of the serious power nodes in Ireland, have secrets, that would probably destroy their various privileges. From the Irish Authorities's collaboration in the Dublin & Monaghan bombings, that killed so many of their own citizens, to the extent of how Britain's MI5, used operations like Kincora Boy's Home, along with Nazareth Lodge, to both infiltrate and groom, the highest echelons of the paramilitaries and their subsequent political parties, which enabled their Pseudo Peace Process, to become a key part of their imperial policy in Ireland. Yes the Peace Process advocates, will pay lip service to Truth & Reconciliation but 16 years after the Agreement, their is still little prospect of a transparent one. In fact just recently, MI5 have blocked, once again any transparent inquiry. Secrecy is ingrained into all of Britain's bureaucracy, for them secrecy is power, as it is in their legacy in Ireland and in their client states of Commonwealth. It is rotten from top to bottom, with crimes against humanity both within and without of their own jurisdiction and is copper fastened with the Freemasonry of the Orange Order along with it's Gombeen equivalent in the south.

Commoners as they are called by their Majesty, rely on her old media networks, such as the BBC World Service, stuffed and vetted by MI5 agents and paedophiles, to stay misinformed along, coupled with rampant censorship in both Her own Kingdom and Ireland. Informed citizens from Hong Kong, to the Ukraine, to Occupied Ireland are daily witnesses to their disinformation. I personally was banned again at their behest, from Facebook last night, because of the post below. Truth tellers with any influence in Ireland are censored by assassinations, such as the journalists Veronica Guerin and Martin O'Hagan. Lawyers such as Rosemary Nelson and Pat Finnucane along, with human rights activists too numerous to mention.


Only a people's movement, the length and breath of the island of Ireland, will remove this cancer once and for all in it's entirety. It needs to be replaced with a completely transparent system of Government by the people for the people, who use their head and commonsense, to distinguish between self-serving, leaders of patriarchy and humble servants of the people. Gandhi proved this was possible peacefully, in a subcontinent, much larger than Ireland. Obviously as a result of the censorship of Facebook last night, in closing my account, an important platform has been removed. I can only hope people will read this, research what I write and verify it for themselves, share it, agitate, educate and organize, in a peaceful intelligent way and convince, their respective acquaintances in the paramilitaries, that their is a more intelligent way and that right now their activity is actually counter revolutionary in the present context. As Mairead Farrell, along with her book on Engel's dialectics and her statement affirming, "that our head is our best weapon." So without that platform, I ask you to please try to do your small bit, to make this happen, whatever that might be as Bobby Sands reminded us. You could start by sharing this article if you agree with it's contents. All of our lives, which are all very precious and those of our children depend on you doing it.

Censored Article below;

BBC

Londonderry: Man shot in leg 'by appointment'

Sinn Féin councillor Eric McGinley said he understood the man had been shot in the leg "by appointment" during a so-called punishment attack.


A 42-year-old man has been shot in an overnight gun attack in Londonderry.


Police said they were investigating a "paramilitary-style shooting" which happened in the Ballymagroarty area of the city at about 23:40 GMT.


Provisional Sinn Féin councillor Eric McGinley said he understood the man had been shot in the leg "by appointment" during a so-called punishment attack.


He said: "This is a very worrying development as it's the second shooting in this area in just over a month."


Police said they received a report that a 42-year-old man had been shot in the left leg at Corrib Court by a man described as being approximately 6ft tall, who was wearing a balaclava and dark clothing.


The victim was taken to hospital for treatment to his injury which is not believed to be life-threatening.


In a statement, Mr McGinley added: "It's important to repeat the message that there is no place for guns on the streets of our city.


"The community does not want this and the people behind these actions need to stop."




Which guns McGinley ? British Army? PSNIRA?
Continuity IRA? Flegger RA?, RAAD?, Real IRA?,
Official IRA?, ONH?, UVF?, MI5?, SAS????????????

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-29870232

ARISE FROM THE GUTTER

Out of prison for the second time, rambling the length and breath of the country, on a daily basis, sleeping rough, with a head full of shit, I was truly phukt in every sense of the word. I walked into a room full of smoke, whores and sober cutthroats in Galway, and learned from the discipline of simply showing up at 12 Phukt Steps meetings in the west of Ireland, taking what I wanted from the meeting and leaving the rest, along with the discipline of staying until the meeting was formally finished, that a day at a time I could stay sober. This is far easier said, than done for someone as far gone as I was, because each one there, in one way or another, was a mirror image of myself and I did not like what I saw but I had nowhere else to go only hell. Not everyone there was my cup of tea but I realized my life was on the line and slowly but surely, I found the ones who were, who helped me considerably. I learned that I was as sick as my secrets and while I still do not trust easily, after my lifetime's experiences but without trust, I was riddled with fear, which was a living nightmare. I realized eventually that in order to enjoy life I had to find something I could trust.



Trust from my experience is earned but sometimes beggars can't be choosers. During this period, the old saying, "Above All else to thine own Self be True," became particularly important, because aside from being very confused, I was intensely lonely and totally dysfunctional in all respects, with the exception of showing up at meetings on a daily basis and plonking myself in a seat and staying right to the end. I also had massive hatred against all forms of religion, and as I mentioned previously this digger deviant, has no aspirations to ever be a born again virgin. In fact before I came in, I once sat down with some people and discussed the potential of bombing every church in Ireland both Catholic and Protestant. I was riddled with so much fear, that hate became my cloak. My mind, heart and body were full of it and I learned eventually, that my Spirit or soul or whatever we want to call it, were poisoned. I was defeated as a person, along with every ethical belief I ever had.



Like the Orange Order, I was born, bred and indoctrinated, with the philosophy of NO SURRENDER !, but eventually, I was forced to be honest enough with myself, that I truly was defeated as a going concern. This for a person like me, was truly humiliating! This was where my best thinking, actions and behaviour had taken me! Fortunately for me I was at this time given a present of a book called, A New Pair of Glasses written by Chuck C. Apart from the word God, which I am still not comfortable with, it has probably been the most influential book, I have ever read. It first of all offered me the best explanation, of that much abused word Love, that I have ever found. It explained that Love is Patient. He also demonstrated that, "The most Powerful Thing on the Face of this Earth, is the Unadulterated Truth." I later learned from the mother of my ex-partner, that at end of the day, to function effectively, we need to trust something.



About this time, I met a man called Bob from Australia, who went to India where he spent almost 20 years, searching out, all the Guru's in India he could find, for a spiritual path. A friend of mine at this time, also learned from a monk in Amsterdam, a definition of the word Spiritual, that rang true with me, which simply says, " Reflect who You really Are." What Bob lerned in India, after his 20 years, with some of it's best Gurus, he told me, was that it all boiled down to, "Living and Breathing in the Moment, as aware as possible with Our Five or Six senses, as the case may Be! That was the sum total, of his 20 years wandering in India, among it's best Gurus. As time went by, I was to learn, that the most valuable thing in Life, really is Experience. I have learned from the evidence and proof of my own experience, that I have a Higher Power, that I don't understand very much, despite being a cynic, who truly does love me patiently and unconditionally, despite being the digger deviant, that I mostly am and it is most certainly is not fear based.




I am now 62 years young and have been doing this stuff for 27 years. Despite that, I still wake up most mornings with a head, that is not a million miles from a hangover. My head is often not my friend. It has a 3D imagination that works to the extreme, both for me and against me but unlike my past, I now have a choice, of which way to go. Before rising I have learned from experience, that it is a good idea for me, to apply the Third Phukt Step as sincerely as I can from my head, heart and gut, in the following words, that have special meaning and significance for me. Some days, I do not have the capacity to be very sincere about it but I do it anyway. (Higher Power ?) I offer myself to you, to do your will. Relieve me of the prison of my self, my extreme selfishness, my extreme self-centeredness and my extreme self-will. Please give me the power mentally, that I need today, the power physically, the power materially, the power emotionally, and the power sexually, I need today. I have learned over time, that I can trust these things will be given to me, to the extent of my sincerity, when request it from my mind, heart and soul.



Now for most people the gift of life is not a miracle at 62, but I can tell you for me, it is. I have always had a yearning to enjoy this gift to it's fullest but unfortunately on my own, I did not have a set of tools to achieve it. I have lost everything in life, that is worth having except my life. I lost 10 children by 5 partners, I lost several homes, I lost my freedom, with two spells in prison and before finding the 12 Phukt Steps, I lost my health and any form of sanity. Now there are plenty of people will tell you, I still haven't recovered it, but I am mostly a very happy man with a heart that is full and no longer isolated. I have recovered a lot of what I have lost, with the exception of several of my children. I have learned to enjoy life better, than even my best days drinking and I am being careful about the facts I write here, because I know I must walk the talk. I will not lie to you in these matters, because I can only keep what I have by giving it away and remembering where I come from. This not alll just for you benefit you know.



For many years, I did not have the strength, to engage with Irish politics, because it simply was too distressing. I have never ignored it and have carefully observed, that in many ways, it reflects my own personal life or perhaps I project that. But then as Jimmy from Limerick once said, how could it be any other way. My primary conditioning, is from a dysfunctional home and a dysfunctional country of violence with an inordinate  amount of politically engineered emigration and repression. I have now come to the conclusion, that Mairead Farrell's statement, "Your mind is your best Weapon," and Terence McSweeney's Principles of Freedom are my best guiding light for the future, from people who actually walked their talk before me. Terence McSweeney was Lord Mayor of Cork. He died in a British Gaol, gave his life on hunger strike for his Principles of Freedom. Mairead after ten years in Armagh's women prison on release, returned to the struggle and was summarily executed, unarmed in Gibraltar.



Under present conditions in Ireland, similar to deprived areas of the US, I do believe, that unfortunately, people do have the right to bear arms, strictly for defensive purposes. I long for the day when we have a society, that has evolved to a level of civility, where this archaic form of life, is no longer necessary. Life is very precious. Censorship and political internment, play a considerable role in creating political violence in Ireland. When people are denied free speech, they often as I did in the past, see no alternative, to what I now see as reactionary politics, which I now accept has no long term future. Gerry Adams may have recognized this earlier but the non transparent, devious manner of expediting it was wrong and the Republic does not belong to a bunch of elitist, whether intellectual or material. The Republic belong to all of the people of no property in Ireland. I trust that there is still enough commonsense left in Ireland, that all it's people can determine their own future, in an environment free from censorship and disinformation. I have seen no credible evidence to the contrary, I do however feel it is our moral requirement before resorting to any form of political violence, that every other eventuality is explored thoroughly first.



Perhaps in the age of the internet this is possible, despite considerable censorship, disinformation and blanket surveillance. Ultimately I believe that we are all as sick as our secrets and sadly I believe Ireland certainly is currently but there are a few green shoots, starting like the Right2Water, People before Profit, along with some enlightened leaders in Republican Sinn Fein, however elitism and patriarchy are still a bad hangover, from the various religions in Ireland. I am certain, that eventually the 'Truth will Out' and Ireland will collectively be liberated when the lessons of Unity and Principles before Personalities are learned. The Principles of Freedom by Terence McSweeney are in the link below and I believe are essential reading for any Irish Freedom Fighter. beir bua, brion

Principles Of Freedom  by Terence McSweeney

YOUR MIND IS YOUR GREATEST WEAPON

On March 6, 1988 in Gibraltar, the British SAS SWAT fired without warning, killing three young unarmed IRA volunteers.Among the victims was also Mairead Farrell, certainly the female figure more representative of Irish republicans. Mairead is one of ten women martyrs for freedom told them ,"The legacy of Antigone" , Here's an excerpt from the book:

The first bullet caught in the face and knocked to the ground. Then they reached the other shots in the back, finendola. Was twenty minutes past four Gibraltar was lit by a pale sun of March. A local woman had unwittingly witnessed the execution. Some time later, unearthed and interviewed by a television crew, recalled: "those (men of the security forces) have done nothing but get close and shoot. They did not say anything, did not cry out, did not notice these people to surrender. And they, when they turned to see what was going on, they realized that they no longer escape. " Mairead Farrell was massacred with eight bullets, all went to sign the head and back, a little more than a meter away. On the ground next to her, in the pitch of the gas station became a slaughterhouse, the bodies were riddled with bullets of his fellow Daniel McCann and Sean Savage . All three were unarmed and could easily be arrested. Instead they were finished while they were on the ground, helpless and wounded, with more bullets fired at close range. The British government had sent to Gibraltar SWAT SAS with the clear intent to kill and give a memorable lesson to the IRA, the Irish Republican Army...
Your mind is your greatest weapon....Mairead Farrell

Your soul is your mind, your will and your emotions. When trust gets rooted in there and begins to change your mind, it begins to heal your emotions and turn your will away from self-will and onto doing the will of healing ourselves and the world.

Your heart is your greatest weapon, but it is also your weakest defense.
Tim

Your heart will try to change your mind but your mind knows what's best for you. Sonya


In the mind, your mind controls your heart, in reality, your heart controls your mind. Wes

What consumes your mind, controls your life.

Take a step back. Clear your mind. Refresh your perspective.

Your mind is your weapon, your power. Your thoughts are powerful enough to move the world... you just have to believe they are.

If you don't get what you want, you suffer; if you get what you don't want, you suffer; even when you get exactly what you want, you still suffer because you can't hold on to it forever. Your mind is your predicament. It wants to be free of change. Free of pain, free of the obligations of life and death. But change is a law, and no amount of pretending will alter that reality. Never to forget, your mind is greater than our mighty universe... If your mind is pure, all buddha-lands are pure. Your mind is continuously projecting projecting itself Never separate your mind from your heart when making relationship decisions. The purpose of the mind is to protect the heart The world is your mirror and your mind is a magnet. What you perceive in this world is largely a reflection of your own attitudes and beliefs. Life will give you what you attract with your thoughts think, act and talk negatively and your world will be negative. Think and act and talk with enthusiasm and you will attract positive results. Remember your mind is a constant generator of thoughts, so providing negative energy to your mind will lead your mind to create negative thoughts. So provide your mind with positive energy,so your mind can create positive thoughts.Your mind is a powerful thing. When you fill it with positive thoughts, your life will start to change. Your biggest enemy isn't always the one holding the gun waiting to pull the trigger or the one you think hating or against you the most, your biggest enemy is sometimes your own self what you think in your mind is what you answer back to and take it as. Your breathing is your greatest friend. Return to it in all your troubles and you will find comfort and guidance.

12 PHUKT STEPS TO LIBERATION

I have often wondered why Mairead Farrell, in one of her last interviews, strategically placed a book by Engels, on the table in front of her to be filmed. It was obviously a matter of importance to her. Being the impatient person that I am, I am very picky about what material I choose to devote myself to. I have always glossed over Engels, as simply a mentor of Marx. I have been mistaken, the only issue I really have with the Dialectic of Materialism, is that it separates itself from the Dialectic of Spirituality, which for myself, is as self defeatist and schizophrenic as judea-christian based spirituality. I am not a religious person but I have learned from the character building attributes of personal adversity, that spirituality is an intrinsic part of both communal and self liberation.

Irish republicanism has struggled with much of this in the last century, in that after the revolution of 1916, it was particularly infected by Fascism with a capital F, principally in the form of the blueshirts. It clearly has happened again, in the last phase of the long war in the occupied 6, with the latest forms of the blueshirts, that are disgracing the noble Cause of Ireland. The solution is in Mairead Farrell's legacy for me. The solution of the Dialectic, is of course only possible in the absence of CENSORSHIP. 
I can forgive the ignorant for employing this Nazi tool, but there is simply no excuse, for someone who has had the time to reflect in a Gaol cell for years and afforded the luxury of access to the literature of any modern University. You know who you are and I am calling you out You assert courage in the face of bullets, so why are you running scared of the dialectic of truth seekers, because clearly, all Irish freedom fighters can see the current necessity of it, in the face of shameful censorship, exercised by those who have called themselves Irish republican in the last century. It is a tool subtly used by the British over 800 years, to turn freedom fighters into preemptive self destruct mode and fascist reactionary undertakings. I put my hands up as being guilty of all of these mistakes but surely to phuk we can learn from them?
CENSORSHIP IS NOT REPUBLICAN

dialectic

Popularity

2 ENTRIES FOUND:

1. dialectic
2. dialectical

di·a·lec·tic

 noun \ˌdī-ə-ˈlek-tik\

philosophy : a method of examining and discussing opposing ideas in order to find the truth

Full Definition of DIALECTIC

1

:  logic 1a(1)

2

a :  discussion and reasoning by dialogue as a method of intellectual investigation; specifically:  the Socratic techniques of exposing false beliefs and eliciting truth

b :  the Platonic investigation of the eternal ideas

3

:  the logic of fallacy

4

a :  the Hegelian process of change in which a concept or its realization passes over into and is preserved and fulfilled by its opposite; also :  the critical investigation of this process

b (1) usually plural but singular or plural in construction :  development through the stages of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis in accordance with the laws of dialectical materialism (2) :  the investigation of this process (3) :  the theoretical application of this process especially in the social sciences

5

usually plural but singular or plural in construction

a :  any systematic reasoning, exposition, or argument that juxtaposes opposed or contradictory ideas and usually seeks to resolve their conflict

b :  an intellectual exchange of ideas

6

:  the dialectical tension or opposition between two interacting forces or elements

Dialectical Materialism

Dialectical Materialism is a way of understanding reality; whether thoughts, emotions, or the material world. Simply stated, this methodology is the combination of Dialectics and Materialism. The materialist dialectic is the theoreticalfoundation of Marxism (while being communist is the practice of Marxism).

"It is an eternal cycle in which matter moves, a cycle that certainly only completes its orbit in periods of time for which our terrestrial year is no adequate measure, a cycle in which the time of highest development, the time of organic life and still more that of the life of being conscious of nature and of themselves, is just as narrowly restricted as the space in which life and self-consciousness come into operation. A cycle in which every finite mode of existence of matter, whether it be sun or nebular vapour, single animal or genus of animals, chemical combination or dissociation, is equally transient, and wherein nothing is eternal but eternally changing, eternally moving matter and the laws according to which it moves and changes.

Fredrick Engels
Dialectics of Nature
Introduction

"Motion is the mode of existence of matter. Never anywhere has there been matter without motion, or motion without matter, nor can there be."

"Change of form of motion is always a process that takes place between at least two bodies, of which one loses a definite quantity of motion of one quality (e.g. heat), while the other gains a corresponding quantity of motion of another quality (mechanical motion, electricity, chemical decomposition).

"Dialectics, so-called objective dialectics, prevails throughout nature, and so-called subjective dialectics (dialectical thought), is only the reflection of the motion through opposites which asserts itself everywhere in nature, and which by the continual conflict of the opposites and their final passage into one another, or into higher forms, determines the life of nature."

Fredrick Engels
Dialectics of Nature

But dialectical materialism insists on the approximate relative character of every scientific theory of the structure of matter and its properties; it insists on the absence of absolute boundaries in nature, on the transformation of moving matter from one state into another, that from our point of view [may be] apparently irreconcilable with it, and so forth.

Vladimir Lenin
Materialism and Empirio-criticism

With each epoch-making discovery even in the sphere of natural science, materialism has to change its form; and after history was also subjected to materialistic treatment, a new avenue of development has opened here, too. [Ch. 2, The End of Classical German Philosophy]

"For dialectical philosophy nothing is final, absolute, sacred. It reveals the transitory character of everything and in everything; nothing can endure before it except the uninterrupted process of becoming and of passing away, of endless ascendancy from the lower to the higher."

Fredrick Engels
The End of Classical German Philosophy

An example of dialectical materialism applied is the materialist conception of history .

'Dialectical Materialism' was coined by Karl Kautsky and popularised in the Second International after the death of Marx and Engels.

See also: dialectics, materialism, Historical Materialism and Political Economy.

Dialectics

Dialectics is the method of reasoning which aims to understand things concretely in all their movement, change and interconnection, with their opposite and contradictory sides in unity.

Dialectics is opposed to the formal, metaphysical mode of thought of ordinary understanding which begins with a fixed definition of a thing according to its various attributes. For example formal thought would explain: ‘a fish is something with no legs which lives in the water’.

Darwin however, considered fish dialectically: some of the animals living in the water were not fish, and some of the fish had legs, but it was the genesis of all the animals as part of a whole interconnected process which explained the nature of a fish: they came from something and are evolving into something else.

Darwin went behind the appearance of fish to get to their essence. For ordinary understanding there is no difference between the appearance of a thing and its essence, but for dialectics the form and content of something can be quite contradictory – parliamentary democracy being the prime example: democracy in form, but dictatorship in content!

And for dialectics, things can be contradictory not just in appearance, but in essence. For formal thinking, light must be either a wave or a particle; but the truth turned out to be dialectical – light is both wave and particle. (See the principle of excluded middle)

We are aware of countless ways of understanding the world; each of which makes the claim to be the absolute truth, which leads us to think that, after all, “It’s all relative!”. For dialectics the truth is the whole picture, of which each view is a more or less one-sided, partial aspect.

At times, people complain in frustration that they lack the Means to achieve their Ends, or alternatively, that they can justify their corrupt methods of work by the lofty aims they pursue. For dialectics, Means and Ends are a unity of oppositesand in the final analysis, there can be no contradiction between means and ends – when the objective is rightly understood, "the material conditions [means] for its solution are already present or at least in the course of formation" (Marx, Preface of Contribution to a Political Economy)

An example of dialectical reasoning can be seen in Lenin's slogan: “All Power to the Soviets” spoken when the Soviets were against the Bolsheviks. Lenin understood, however, that the impasse could only be resolved by workers’ power. Since the Soviets were organs of workers’ power, a revolutionary initiative by the Bolsheviks would inevitably bring the Soviets to their side: the form of the Soviets during the time (lead by Mensheviks and SRs) were at odds with the contentof the Soviets as Workers’, Peasants’ and Soldiers’ Councils.

Formal thinking often has trouble understanding the causes of events – something has to be a cause and something else the effect – and people are surprised when they irrigate land and 20 years later – due to salination of the land, silting of the waterways, etc – they have a desert! Dialectics on the other hand understands that cause and effect are just one and another side of a whole network of relations such as we have in an ecosystem, and one thing cannot be changed without changing the whole system.

These are different aspect of Dialectics, and there are many others, because dialectics is the method of thinking in which concepts are flexible and mobile, constrained only by the imperative of comprehending the movement of the object itself, however contradictory, however transient.

History: Dialectics has its origins in ancient society, both among the Chinese and the Greeks, where thinkers sought to understand Nature as a whole, and saw that everything is fluid, constantly changing, coming into being and passing away. It was only when the piecemeal method of observing Nature in bits and pieces, practiced in Western thinking in the 17th and 18th century, had accumulated enough positive knowledge for the interconnections, the transitions, the genesis of things to become comprehensible, that conditions became ripe for modern dialectics to make its appearance. It was Hegel who was able to sum up this picture of universal interconnection and mutability of things in a system of Logic which is the foundation of what we today call Dialectics.

As Engels put it:

“the whole world, natural, historical, intellectual, is represented as a process – i.e., as in constant motion, change, transformation, development; and the attempt is made to trace out the internal connection that makes a continuous whole of all this movement and development.” [Socialism: Utopian & Scientific]

It was in the decade after Hegel’s death – the 1840s – when Hegel’s popularity was at its peak in Germany, that Marx and Engels met and worked out the foundations of their critique of bourgeois society.

Hegel’s radical young followers had in their hands a powerful critical tool with which they ruthlessly criticised Christianity, the dominant doctrine of the day. However, one of these Young Hegelians, Ludwig Feuerbach, pointed out that Holy Family was after all only a Heavenly image of the Earthly family, and said that by criticising theology with philosophy, the Young Hegelians were only doing the same as the Christians – Hegel’s Absolute Idea was just another name for God! For Feuerbach, ideas were a reflection of the material world and he held it to be ridiculous that an Idea could determine the world. Feuerbach had declared himself a materialist.

Marx and Engels began as supporters of Feuerbach. However, very soon they took up an opposition to Feuerbach to restore the Hegelian dialectic which had been abandoned by Feuerbach, and to free it from the rigidity of the idealisticHegelian system and place the method on a materialist basis:

“Hegel was an idealist. To him, the thoughts within his brain were not the more or less abstract pictures of actual things and processes, but, conversely, things and their evolution were only the realized pictures of the ‘Idea’, existing somewhere from eternity before the world was. This way of thinking turned everything upside down, and completely reversed the actual connection of things in the world. ” [Fredrick Engels,Socialism: Utopian and Scientific]

Thus, for Marx and Engels, thoughts were not passive and independent reflections of the material world, but products of human labour, and the contradictory nature of our thoughts had their origin in the contradictions within human society. This meant that Dialectics was not something imposed on to the world from outside which could be discovered by the activity of pure Reason, but was a product of human labour changing the world; its form was changed and developed by people, and could only be understood by the practical struggle to overcome these contradictions – not just in thought, but in practice.

Further Reading: [The Science of Dialectics], by Fredrick Engels, Dialectics of Nature, by Fredrick Engels, an example of dialectics in: The Metaphysics of Political Economy, by Karl Marx; The ABC of Materialist Dialectics, by Leon Trotsky; Lenin's Summary of Dialectics.

See also the Sampler for multiple definitions; Dialectics Subject Section. For examples of Dialectics: references toExamples from History and Society and Examples from Personal Life in Hegel’s Logic; and see the definition on Taoismfor a look at an ancient process of dialectics.

Dictatorship

Dictatorship means the imposition of a rule on others who do not consent to it. Sometimes ‘dictatorship’ is wrongly used in contrast to ‘democracy’, but ‘democracy’ implies the imposition of the will of a majority, i.e., a dictatorship, on a minority.

The word originates from the dictatura of the ancient Roman Republic, an important institution that lasted for over three centuries. The Dictatura provided for an emergency exercise of power by a trusted citizen for temporary and limited purposes, for six months at the most. Its aim was to preserve the republican status quo, and in the event of a foreign attack or internal subversion of the constitution. Dictatura, thus had much the same meaning as “state of emergency” has today. Julius Caesar gave the dictatura a “bad name” by declaring himself dictator for life.

Right into the nineteenth century, ‘dictatorship’ was used in the sense of the management of power in a state of emergency, outside of the norms of legality, sometimes, but not always, implying one-man rule, and sometimes in reference to the dominance of an elected government over traditional figures of authority.

The French Revolution was frequently referred to by friends and foes alike as a dictatorship. Babeuf’s “Conspiracy of Equals” advocated a dictatorship exercised by a group of revolutionaries, having the task of defending the revolution against the reactionary peasants, and educating the masses up to the eventual level of a democracy, a transitional period of presumably many decades. It was this notion of ‘dictatorship’ that was in the minds of Auguste Blanqui and his followers who actively advocated communist ideas in the 1830s and ’40s.

In general political discourse in the nineteenth century, however, it was quite routine to describe, for example, the British Parliament as a ‘dictatorship’. Given that in most countries the franchise was restricted to property-owners, this usage was quite appropriate, but it was also used to attack proposals for universal suffrage, which, it was held, would institute a dictatorship over the property owners.

Modern usage of the term begins to appear in connection with the Revolutions which swept Europe in 1848. The Left, including its most moderate elements, talked of a dictatorship, by which they meant nothing more than imposing the will of an majority-elected government over a minority of counter-revolutionaries. Terrified by the uprising of the Parisian workers in June 1848, the Provisional Government handed over absolute power to the dictatorship of General Cavaignac, who used his powers to massacre the workers of Paris. Subsequently, a state-of-siege provision was inserted into the French Constitution to provide for such exigencies, and this law became the model for other nations who wrote such emergency provisions into their constitutions. From the middle of the nineteenth century, the word ‘dictatorship’ was associated with this institution, still more or less faithful to the original Roman meaning — an extra-legal institution for the defence of the constitution.

It was only gradually, during the 1880s, that ‘dictatorship’ came to be routinely used to mean a form of government in contrast to ‘democracy’ and by the 1890s was generally used in that way. Prior to that time, throughout the life-time of Karl Marx for example, it was never associated with any particular form of government, everyone understanding that popular suffrage was as much an instrument of dictatorship as martial law.

Dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie

The most democratic bourgeois republic is no more than a machine for the suppression of the working class by the bourgeoisie, for the suppression of the working people by a handful of capitalists.

Even in the most democratic bourgeois republic "freedom of assembly" is a hollow phrase, for the rich have the best public and private buildings at their disposal, and enough leisure to assemble at meetings, which are protected by the bourgeois machine of power. The rural and urban workers and small peasants – the overwhelming majority of the population – are denied all these things. As long as that state of affairs prevails, "equality", i.e., "pure democracy", is a fraud.

"Freedom of the press" is another of the principal slogans of "pure democracy". And here, too, the workers know – and Socialists everywhere have explained millions of times – that this freedom is a deception because the best printing presses and the biggest stocks of paper are appropriated by the capitalists, and while capitalist rule over the press remains – a rule that is manifested throughout the whole world all the more strikingly, sharply and cynically – the more democracy and the republican system are developed, as in America for example...

The capitalists have always use the term "freedom" to mean freedom for the rich to get richer and for the workers to starve to death. And capitalist usage, freedom of the press means freedom of the rich to bribe the press, freedom to use their wealth to shape and fabricate so-called public opinion. In this respect, too, the defenders of "pure democracy" prove to be defenders of an utterly foul and venal system that gives the rich control over the mass media. They prove to be deceivers of the people, who, with the aid of plausible, fine-sounding, but thoroughly false phrases, divert them from the concrete historical task of liberating the press from capitalist enslavement.

V.I. Lenin
First Congress of the Communist International

See Also: The same government: Bourgeois Democracy, save put in the perspective of the ruling class; and Democracy in general.

Dictatorship of the Proletariat

Freedom consists in converting the state from an organ superimposed upon society into one completely subordinate to it; and today, too, the forms of state are more free or less free to the extent that they restrict the "freedom of the state".

Between capitalist and communist society there lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.

Marx/Engels
Critique of the Gotha Programme
Part IV

This dictatorship consists in the manner of applying democracy, not in its elimination, but in energetic, resolute attacks upon the well-entrenched rights and economic relationships of bourgeois society, without which a socialist transformation cannot be accomplished. This dictatorship must be the work of the class and not of a little leading minority in the name of the class – that is, it must proceed step by step out of the active participation of the masses; it must be under their direct influence, subjected to the control of complete public activity; it must arise out of the growing political training of the mass of the people.

Rosa Luxemburg
The Russian Revolution
Democracy and Dictatorship

What, then, is the relation of this dictatorship to democracy?

We have seen that the Communist Manifesto simply places side by side the two concepts: "to raise the proletariat to the position of the ruling class" and "to win the battle of democracy". On the basis of all that has been said above, it is possible to determine more precisely how democracy changes in the transition from capitalism to communism.

The dictatorship of the proletariat, i.e., the organization of the vanguard of the oppressed as the ruling class for the purpose of suppressing the oppressors, cannot result merely in an expansion of democracy. Simultaneously with an immense expansion of democracy, which for the first time becomes democracy for the poor, democracy for the people, and not democracy for the money-bags, the dictatorship of the proletariat imposes a series of restrictions on the freedom of the oppressors, the exploiters, the capitalists. We must suppress them in order to free humanity from wage slavery, their resistance must be crushed by force; it is clear that there is no freedom and no democracy where there is suppression and where there is violence.

V.I. Lenin
The State and Revolution
Chpt. 5: The Economic Basis of the Withering Away of the State

The real tasks of the workers' state do not consist in policing public opinion, but in freeing it from the yoke of capital. This can only be done by placing the means of production - which includes the production of information - in the hands of society in its entirety. Once this essential step towards socialism has been taken, all currents of opinion which have not taken arms against the dictatorship of the proletariat must be able to express themselves freely. It is the duty of the workers' state to put in their hands, to all according to their numeric importance, the technical means necessary for this, printing presses, paper, means of transportation.

Leon Trotsky
Freedom of the Press and Working Class

See Also: The same government: Proletarian Democracy, save put in the perspective of the ruling (working) class; andDemocracy in general.

Difference

Difference is part of the very first stage of Essence in the genesis of a Notion in the grade of Reflection. Difference is the negation of Identity. The identity of something is defined by what is deemed to be not-equal to it, different. But Difference soon cancels itself through the discovery that 'everything is different', which is the "maxim of Diversity" (inessential difference). Difference is only meaningful where the objects considered are also in some sense identical, and thus passes over into Opposition (essential difference) and Contradiction, the unity of identity and difference.

In recent European philosophy, especially Derrida, quite of lot is made of Difference, but it is noteworthy that Difference is given a systematic development by Hegel in the earliest, most abstract part of the Logic. Marx can be seen developing the concept of Difference in Chapter 3 of Capital.

Further Reading: Hegel on Difference in the Shorter Logic.

Direct Struggle

A theory set out by the People's Will party in Russia. The theory stipulated that revolution could be instigated through terrorism, called a "direct struggle" against the government apparatus. Direct Struggle aimed to show, through terrorism, an "uninterrupted demonstration of the possibility of struggling against the government, in this manner lifting the revolutionary spirit of the people and its faith in the success of the cause, and organising those capable of fighting." (from the Programme of the People's Will, 1879)

Discrete

Discrete is a synonym for discontinuous, denoting breaks in development, "leaps" in Nature, matter in the form of distinct objects or particles, counting-numbers as opposed to indefinitely divisible magnitudes.

See Also: Continuity and Discontinuity.

Distribution and Exchange

Distribution is the process whereby the total social product is divided up among the population.

Exchange is the practice of trading of different products of equal value, between different individuals or organisations.

In this relation, distribution is determined by the community, exchange by the individual, but the individual is able to exchange only what has been allocated to her in the process of distribution.

Distribution and exchange only arise on the basis of a division of labour which creates a separation between productionand consumption, and requires a socially determined means of mediating between the two.

But distribution and exchange do not only mediate between production and consumption: they are themselves forces of production. For example, it is the system of distribution which creates the propertyless labourers and it is the system of distribution which is then needed to realise the surplus value acquired by exploiting them.

Thus, the system of distribution and exchange is inseparably bound up with the development of the productive forces themselves. Distribution and exchange are not just external appendages of the labour process, but its life blood.

A system of distribution which provides for the concentration of a social surplus is the fundamental precondition for the development of civilisation; a system of distribution which creates a class of people who have nothing to sell but their labour power and a class of people who own the means of production as their private property is the fundamental pre-condition for the development of bourgeois society. Socialist society, on the other hand, implies a system of distribution which eradicates social inequality and transcends the need for exchange.

Exchange begins as a marginal and incidental practice at the periphery of self-sufficient communities based onCollaboration, and gives rise to the genesis of the form of value which takes on an independent form in money, and on the basis of money arises a developed system of distribution as well as an elaborate social division of labour which is the foundation for the development of all modern forces of production.

The exchange relation is the essential relation of bourgeois society, and Marx takes it as the starting point of Capital in terms of the commodity. Increasingly relations of exchange, and even distribution, penetrate into the labour process itself as a result of the process of socialisation.

See Exchange.

Diversity, the maxim of

The maxim of Diversity – ‘There are no two things completely like each other’ is attributed to Leibnitz.

This maxim is dealt with in Hegel's Doctrine of Essence as part of a series of “Laws” beginning with the Law of identity - ‘everything is equal to itself’, the Maxim of Diversity (or Variety), Opposition, Contradiction and Ground, in which understanding of the essentially contradictory sides of a concept is successively deepened.

Further Reading: Hegel on the Law of Identity in the Science of Logic and Trotsky's ABC of Materialist Dialectics; and Essential Identity.

Division of Labour

The division of labour is a specific mode of cooperation wherein different tasks are assigned to different people. Division of labour is as old as labour itself, stretching back to the birth of the human race.

“This division of labour is a necessary condition for the production of commodities, but it does not follow, conversely, that the production of commodities is a necessary condition for the division of labour. In the primitive Indian community there is social division of labour, without production of commodities. Or, to take an example nearer home, in every factory the labour is divided according to a system, but this division is not brought about by the operatives mutually exchanging their individual products.

“... In a community, the produce of which in general takes the form of commodities, i.e., in a community of commodity producers, this qualitative difference between the useful forms of labour that are carried on independently of individual producers, each on their own account, develops into a complex system, a social division of labour.

“... Wherever the want of clothing forced them to it, the human race made clothes for thousands of years, without a single man becoming a tailor. [Capital, Chapter 1]

More than anything else, human history is characterised by the ever-increasing complexity of the division of labour. The form of the division of labour changes however, passing through a number of distinct phases.

“The various stages of development in the division of labour are just so many different forms of ownership, i.e. the existing stage in the division of labour determines also the relations of individuals to one another with reference to the material, instrument, and product of labour.” [German Ideology]

Prior to the rupture of society into classes, the social division of labour was almost exclusively based on kinship relations, within a relatively closed circle, wherein the character of an individual’s labour was determined by their age, sex and position within the family. This division of labour based on kinship relations continues up to the present day, but with the collapse of tribal society and the formation of social classes there began a new kind of division of labour, based on class relations, including the division between mental and manual labour.

The division of labour has the most profound effect on the forms of consciousness predominating in a given society since such forms can only be, after all the internalised forms of social activity.

During the whole feudal period, the division of labour is still determined along kinship lines, but now on a much wider class encompassing social classes.

With the development of manufacture however, division of labour takes a big step upwards:

“That co-operation which is based on division of labour, assumes its typical form in manufacture, and is the prevalent characteristic form of the capitalist process of production throughout the manufacturing period properly so called. That period, roughly speaking, extends from the middle of the 16th to the last third of the 18th century.

“Manufacture takes its rise in two ways:

“(1.) By the assemblage, in one workshop under the control of a single capitalist, of labourers belonging to various independent handicrafts, but through whose hands a given article must pass on its way to completion. ...

“(2.) Manufacture also arises in a way exactly the reverse of this namely, by one capitalist employing simultaneously in one workshop a number of artificers, who all do the same, or the same kind of work [Capital, Chapter 14]

All subsequent developments in the forces of production correspond to qualitative changes in the social division of labour. In the last hundred years, the most significant markers in the development of the social division of labour are the successive management ideologies which achieved dominance: Taylorism, Fordism and Toyotism.

Up till the present time, the development of the social division of labour has tended to channel individuals into narrowly defined occupations, situating them in a well-defined position in the social division of labour for a life-time. That is to say, no-one is a person, she is rather a labourer in this or that occupation. Nowadays however, in the developed capitalist countries, it is rare for someone to work in a specific line of work for more than a decade without being obliged, if not by their own will, to change occupation.

In a socialist society of the future, there would remain of course a highly developed social division of labour, but it is likely that a person who is one day an artist, will be on another a tourist guide, on another a teacher and on another a machinist. It is in this sense that Marx and Engels said:

“In the present epoch, the domination of material relations over individuals, and the suppression of individuality by fortuitous circumstances, has assumed its sharpest and most universal form, thereby setting existing individuals a very definite task. It has set them the task of replacing the domination of circumstances and of chance over individuals by the domination of individuals over chance and circumstances. .... This task, dictated by present-day relations, coincides with the task of organising society in a communist way.

“... the abolition of a state of affairs in which relations become independent of individuals, in which individuality is subservient to chance and the personal relations of individuals are subordinated to general class relations, etc. - that the abolition of this state of affairs is determined in the final analysis by the abolition of division of labour. We have also shown that the abolition of division of labour is determined by the development of intercourse and productive forces to such a degree of universality that private property and division of labour become fetters on them. We have further shown that private property can be abolished only on condition of an all-round development of individuals, precisely because the existing form of intercourse and the existing productive forces are all-embracing and only individuals that are developing in an all-round fashion can appropriate them, i.e., can turn them into free manifestations of their lives. We have shown that at the present time individuals must abolish private property, because the productive forces and forms of intercourse have developed so far that, under the domination of private property, they have become destructive forces, and because the contradiction between the classes has reached its extreme limit. Finally, we have shown that the abolition of private property and of the division of labour is itself the association of individuals on the basis created by modern productive forces and world intercourse.” [German Ideology]

Further Reading:

[In the Iron Age] the second great division of labor took place: handicraft separated from agriculture. The continuous increase of production and simultaneously of the productivity of labor heightened the value of human labor-power. Slavery, which during the preceding period was still in its beginnings and sporadic, now becomes an essential constituent part of the social system; slaves no longer merely help with production -- they are driven by dozens to work in the fields and the workshops. With the splitting up of production into the two great main branches, agriculture and handicrafts, arises production directly for exchange, commodity production; with it came commerce, not only in the interior and on the tribal boundaries, but also already overseas. All this, however, was still very undeveloped; the precious metals were beginning to be the predominant and general money commodity, but still uncoined, exchanging simply by their naked weight.

The distinction of rich and poor appears beside that of freemen and slaves -- with the new division of labor, a new cleavage of society into classes. The inequalities of property among the individual heads of families break up the old communal household communities wherever they had still managed to survive, and with them the common cultivation of the soil by and for these communities. The cultivated land is allotted for use to single families, at first temporarily, later permanently. The transition to full privateproperty is gradually accomplished, parallel with the transition of the pairing marriage into monogamy. The single family is becoming the economic unit of society....

[In overview:] At the lowest stage of barbarism men produced only directly for their own needs; any acts of exchange were isolated occurrences, the object of exchange merely some fortuitous surplus. In the middle stage of barbarism we already find among the pastoral peoples a possession in the form of cattle which, once the herd has attained a certain size, regularly produces a surplus over and above the tribe's own requirements, leading to a division of labor between pastoral peoples and backward tribes without herds, and hence to the existence of two different levels of production side by side with one another and the conditions necessary for regular exchange. The upper stage of barbarism brings us the further division of labor between agriculture and handicrafts, hence the production of a continually increasing portion of the products of labor directly for exchange, so that exchange between individual producers assumes the importance of a vital social function.

Civilization consolidates and intensifies all these existing divisions of labor, particularly by sharpening the opposition between town and country (the town may economically dominate the country, as in antiquity, or the country the town, as in the middle ages), and it adds a third division of labor, peculiar to itself and of decisive importance: it creates a class which no longer concerns itself with production, but only with the exchange of the products -- the merchants. Hitherto whenever classes had begun to form, it had always been exclusively in the field of production; the persons engaged in production were separated into those who directed and those who executed, or else into large-scale and small-scale producers. Now for the first time a class appears which, without in any way participating in production, captures the direction of production as a whole and economically subjugates the producers; which makes itself into an indispensable middleman between any two producers and exploits them both. Under the pretext that they save the producers the trouble and risk of exchange, extend the sale of their products to distant markets and are therefore the most useful class of the population, a class of parasites comes into being, "genuine social icbneumons," who, as a reward for their actually very insignificant services, skim all the cream off production at home and abroad, rapidly amass enormous wealth and correspondingly social influence, and for that reason receive under civilization ever higher honors and ever greater control of production, until at last they also bring forth a product of their own -- the periodical trade crises....

Fredrick Engels
Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State

With commerce the prerogative of a particular class, with the extension of trade through the merchants beyond the immediate surroundings of the town, there immediately appears a reciprocal action between production and commerce. The towns enter into relations with one another, new tools are brought from one town into the other, and the separation between production and commerce soon calls forth a new division of production between the individual towns, each of which is soon exploiting a predominant branch of industry. The local restrictions of earlier times begin gradually to be broken down....

The existence of the town implies, at the same time, the necessity of administration, police, taxes, etc.; in short, of the municipality, and thus of politics in general. Here first became manifest the division of the population into two great classes, which is directly based on the division of labour and on the instruments of production. The town already is in actual fact the concentration of the population, of the instruments of production, of capital, of pleasures, of needs, while the country demonstrates just the opposite fact, isolation and separation. The antagonism between town and country can only exist within the framework of private property. It is the most crass expression of the subjection of the individual under the division of labour, under a definite activity forced upon him -- a subjection which makes one man into a restricted town-animal, the other into a restricted country-animal, and daily creates anew the conflict between their interests. Labour is here again the chief thing, power over individuals, and as long as the latter exists, private property must exist. The abolition of the antagonism between town and country is one of the first conditions of communal life, a condition which again depends on a mass of material premises and which cannot be fulfilled by the mere will, as anyone can see at the first glance.....

Marx and Engels
German Ideology -- Section 3

How far the productive forces of a nation are developed is shown most manifestly by the degree to which the division of labour has been carried. Each new productive force, insofar as it is not merely a quantitative extension of productive forces already known (for instance the bringing into cultivation of fresh land), causes a further development of the division of labour....

Further, the division of labour implies the contradiction between the interest of the separate individual or the individual family and the communal interest of all individuals who have intercourse with one another. And indeed, this communal interest does not exist merely in the imagination, as the "general interest", but first of all in reality, as the mutual interdependence of the individuals among whom the labour is divided. And finally, the division of labour offers us the first example of how, as long as man remains in natural society, that is, as long as a cleavage exists between the particular and the common interest, as long, therefore, as activity is not voluntarily, but naturally, divided, man's own deed becomes an alien power opposed to him, which enslaves him instead of being controlled by him. For as soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a herdsman, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic. This fixation of social activity, this consolidation of what we ourselves produce into an objective power above us, growing out of our control, thwarting our expectations, bringing to naught our calculations, is one of the chief factors in historical development up till now.

Marx and Engels
German Ideology -- Section 1

The great progress of the division of labor began in England after the invention of machinery. Thus, the weavers and spinners were for the most part peasants like those one still meets in backward countries. The invention of machinery brought about the separation of manufacturing industry from agricultural industry. The weaver and the spinner, united but lately in a single family, were separated by the machine. Thanks to the machine, the spinner can live in England while the weaver resides in the East Indies. Before the invention of machinery, the industry of a country was carried on chiefly with raw materials that were the products of its own soil; in England, wool, in Germany, flax, in France, silks and flax, in the East Indies and the Levant, cottons, etc. Thanks to the application of machinery and of steam, the division of labor was about to assume such dimensions that large-scale industry, detached from the national soil, depends entirely on the world market, on international exchange, on an international division of labor. In short, the machine has so great an influence on the division of labor, that when, in the manufacture of some object, a means has been found to produce parts of it mechanically, the manufacture splits up immediately into two works independent of each other.

Karl Marx
The Poverty of Philosophy