WIKILEAKS — Attempted Suppression Of
The governments of the world, and especially the U.S. government, have been very embarrassed by the
many exposures of their crimes posted on the Wikileaks site. For this reason they have been going
to great links to try to suppress the Wikileaks website and to arrest and imprison its founder
Julian Assange. As of 2021, Assange is currently in poor health and in jail in Britain fighting the
U.S. government’s attempt to extradite him to America for trial.
“I think the prosecution of him [Assange] would be a very, very bad precedent
for publishers … from everything I know, he’s sort of in a classic publisher’s position and I
think the law would have a very hard time drawing a distinction between The New York Times
and WikiLeaks.” —David McCraw, lead lawyer for The New York Times. [Quoted in an ad for a book
about Assange.]
WILDLIFE DECLINE
See also:
BIRDS—Disappearance Of,
MASS EXTINCTIONS
“Human activities since 1970 have caused animal populations to decline on
average by almost 70%, according to a World Wildlife Fund report. Researchers working to create
the WWF Living Planet Index looked at data from 32,000 populations of more than 5,000 species
of mammals, amphibians, reptiles, birds and fish. They found that in areas rich in biodiversity,
animal population loss was as high as 94%.” —Steve Newman, “Earthweek: a Diary of the Planet”,
San Francisco Chronicle, Oct. 23, 2022.
WILHELM II (1859-1941)
German emperor from 1888-1918 and 9th king of Prussia.
“Kaiser Wilhelm, the last emperor of the German empire and grandson of
of Wilhelm I, ascended the throne in 1888. When he was emperor, Germany developed and
became a powerful imperialist country with its industrial production ranking second only
to the United States. Acting in the interests of the bourgeoisie and junkers (big
landlords), this empire was actively engaged in arms expansion and war preparations and
stepped up its aggression and expansion overseas.
“To contend with the old-line
imperialist powers for world domination, the German imperialists headed by Wilhelm II
provoked World War I (1914-18). In November 1918 a revolution took place in Germany and
Wilhelm II was forced to step down and flee to Holland where he lived in exile. He died
in 1941.” —Reference note, Peking Review, #45, Nov. 4, 1977, p. 42.
WILL OF THE PEOPLE
There are two sayings that are worth carefully considering and comparing. The first is something
I once found in a fortune cookie, and which expresses the essential democratic ideal: “The will
of the people is the best law.” But here’s a little different idea that is also very good:
“Salus populi suprema est lex.” [The good of the people is the highest
law.] —Marcus Tullius Cicero, De Legibus, III, 3, 8.
So which is it then? Should the highest law be the “good of the people” or the “will of the
people”? Obviously there is a lot to be said for both views. But if we are forced to choose
between them, the “good of the people” has to be the highest ethical and political principle,
since after all, people do not always choose to do what is actually in their own best interests.
On the other hand, Cicero’s statement can be interpreted in a very
paternalistic manner, and those who rule paternalistically can
easily start to promote their own self-interest rather than the interests of the masses. For this
reason, over the long run the safest place for important political decisions to be made, is by
the people themselves.
So our solution to this puzzle must be along
these lines: To allow (and indeed insist on) basic democracy among the masses while at
the same time finding a way for those who better understand the real and long-term interests
of the people, and how those interests can best be satisfied, to educate them about this and
help them to avoid working against their own true interests.
Fortunately Marxism-Leninism-Maoism has found
a brilliant way to do just this. A political party to educate and lead the masses must be drawn
from among the masses and must constantly refresh itself with the best new representatives from
the masses. Such a party must devote itself to studying society scientifically, and carefully
studying the objective situation. And such a party must itself be constantly supervised by the
masses it leads, always be open to mass criticism, and always be willing to purge elements who
start to think only of their own personal welfare and interests. But most of all, such a party
must lead the masses in a truly democratic way, using the mass line
method of leadership. This is our way of combining democracy and the wisdom that comes
from all the previous experience and investigations of people throughout history. —S.H.
“To link oneself with the masses, one must act in accordance with the
needs and wishes of the masses. All work done for the masses must start from their needs
and not from the desire of any individual, however well-intentioned. It often happens that
objectively the masses need a certain change, but subjectively they are not yet conscious
of the need, not yet willing or determined to make the change. In such cases, we should
wait patiently. We should not make the change until, through our work, most of the masses
have become conscious of the need and are willing and determined to carry it out. Otherwise
we shall isolate ourselves from the masses. Unless they are conscious and willing, any kind
of work that requires their participation will turn out to be a mere formality and will
fail. ... There are two principles here: one is the actual needs of the masses rather than
what we fancy they need, and the other is the wishes of the masses, who must make up their
own minds instead of our making up their minds for them.” —Mao, Quotations, ch. XI;
originally from “The United Front in Cultural Work” (Oct. 30, 1944), SW 3:236-7.
WILLIAMS, Robert F. (1925-1996)
A radical American civil rights leader and proponent of armed self-defence for
African-Americans being terrorized by not only the Ku Klux Klan and individual racists, but
also sometimes by the local, state and national governments of the U.S. When Williams was
a boy his grandmother, a former slave, gave him the rifle that his grandfather had used to
defend himself in an earlier period. Williams became president of the Monroe, North Carolina
chapter of the NAACP in the 1950s and 60s. He also organized the Black Armed Guard to defend
the local Black community against KKK attacks. His 1962 book, Negroes with Guns,
further promoted armed self-defense, and served to inspire many others, most notably Huey
Newton and the Black Panther Party.
During a period of high racial tensions in
the area, a white couple linked to the KKK was stopped by an angry crowd of Blacks. Williams
escorted them away from the potential trouble and sheltered them in his own home. Ironically,
the state then charged him with kidnapping! Since there was no hope for a fair trial nor any
kind of justice, Williams fled the country and went to Cuba. From there he made regular
radio broadcasts to Southern Blacks on “Radio Free Dixie”, a station he established with the
help of Fidel Castro’s government. This station’s signal was hypocritically jammed by the
U.S. at the same time they condemned Cuba for jamming U.S. propaganda broadcasts directed
against that country!
The NAACP, Black religious leaders such as
Martin Luther King, the liberal white civil rights movement, and even the revisionist
(so-called) Communist Party, USA, all opposed Blacks arming themselves in self-defense
against racist attacks. In a 1964 letter to his lawyer, Conrad Lynn, Williams wrote that
“... the U.S.C.P. has openly come out against my position on the
Negro struggle. In fact, the party has sent special representatives here [to Cuba]
to sabotage my work on behalf of U.S. Negro liberation. They are pestering the Cubans
to remove me from the radio, ban THE CRUSADER [a newspaper Williams published] and to
take a number of other steps in what they call ‘cutting Williams down to size.’...
“The whole thing is due to the
fact that I absolutely refuse to take direction from Gus Hall’s idiots... I hope to
depart from here, if possible, soon. I am writing you to stand by in case I am turned
over to the FBI...”
In 1965 Williams and his wife left Cuba to settle in China, where he was warmly welcomed.
He was, however, never a Marxist or a communist. In August 1966, during the Cultural
Revolution, he and the Communist Party of China organized a major demonstration against
the continuing discrimination and oppression of Black people in the U.S. His
speech on that
occasion appeared in the Chinese publication Peking Review. In 1968 he was invited
home to the U.S. by Conrad Lynn and other supporters in order to run for U.S. president!
But he wisely decided that until he could reasonably be assured that he would not be sent
to prison he should not return. He did return to the U.S. in late 1969, where in the period
of warming relations between the U.S. and China his knowledge of China was welcomed at the
Center for Chinese Studies at the University of Michigan. There were continuing attempts
to extradite him to North Carolina, however, and this finally happened in 1976. However, by
then there was significant support for him from the left and from Blacks, and the charges
against him were soon dropped. In the years that followed Williams continued to work at the
Center for Chinese Studies. He died of Hodgkin’s disease in 1996.
For more information and a list of further
sources, see the Wikipedia
entry about Robert Williams, from which much of the material here has been taken.
WISHING THAT THINGS WERE DIFFERENT
Everyone often wishes that things were different—and much better! But sensible people need
to avoid wasting time in imagining in some religious or fantasy way that things really are
not so bad, or in foolish notions that everything will spontaneously improve, or in supposing
that fundamental changes for the better will be easy to accomplish (say through the ballot
box), or even in thinking that nothing fundamental can ever really be changed. Marxist
materialists must spend less time wishing or imagining that things were different,
and more time facing reality and working to make them different! And we need to do that
through our participation with the people in their struggles, while educating them about the
absolute need for socialist revolution, and in the process learning from the masses themselves
how to go about leading them.
If someone only wishes that things were
different, and doesn’t actually work hard to make them different, then they will sooner or
later come to hate “the people” for not changing the bad situation which we all face—and
despite the fact that they themselves are really doing nothing to change it either!
Just wishing that things were different is
simply not enough!
“A mortal should think mortal thoughts, not immortal thoughts.”
—Epicharmus of Kos (Greek dramatist and philosopher, c. 550-c. 460 BCE).
[No more unrealizable liberal or
utopian dreams! No more fantasies about changes in society that it would really take a
“god” or a dream to “accomplish!” Let us resolve to work with the masses to change the
world step-by-step through rational plans and actions to carry out revolution, that the
leaders themselves largely discover in the course of that great struggle! —S.H.]
WITHERING AWAY OF THE STATE
The Marxist conception that the class struggle, and the proletarian state which
enforces the rule of the proletariat over the bourgeoisie after the socialist revolution,
will gradually “wither away” and cease to exist.
The revolutionary Marxist view is that
every state is the organized agency of one
social class which exists for the purpose of maintaining by force
(“when necessary”) its own dictatorship over one or more other classes. Specifically, our
view is that the socialist state exists to exercize the dictatorship of the proletariat
over the remnants of the bourgeoisie it overthrew as well as over any new bourgeois elements
that might arise in the early stages of the new socialist society. But we intend to organize
that socialist society so that it will gradually transform the class outlook of the older
generations, and even more importantly, bring up the new generations with socialist and
communist consciousness. This will be done through both educational means, and by continually
transforming the relations of production and distribution in the direction of communism.
Before too many decades pass there will no longer be any bourgeoisie left and there will no
longer even be any basis for the creation of new bourgeois outlooks. By that point there will
no longer be any need or use for the dictatorship of the proletariat, or for the state at
all, and it will cease to exist.
Of course there will still need to be social
organization, the planning and organization of production, the organization of education,
health services, and so forth. However, this will be handled by the agencies of communist
civil society, and there will no longer be any agencies of
force whose task is the suppression of one class by another. That is, the
state—properly speaking—will have ceased to exist.
WITTGENSTEIN, Ludwig (1889-1951)
Austrian-British philosopher, who founded two major twentieth century schools of
bourgeois philosophy. The first, logical positivism,
was largely inspired by his 1921 work Tractatus Logical-Philosophicus. The second school,
in many respects a reaction against the first (at least for Wittgenstein himself), was
linguistic philosophy. Wittgenstein’s major work in
his second period was his Philosophical Investigations (1953).
See also:
Philosophical doggerel about
Wittgenstein.
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