Freedom Road Socialist Organization has announced nation-wide zoom study sessions on the Fight Back! News Red Theory article series by J. Sykes. The first group of four sessions will cover the first five articles in the series and will occur biweekly, with the first session happening Thursday, July 14. You can find all the articles in the series here.

Join FRSO leaders for a report back on the organization's recent 9th Congress. We will also discuss the importance of mobilizing to defend Roe v. Wade. Hosted by Tom Burke, FRSO Organization Secretary and Standing Committee, Chrisley Carpio of the Standing Committee, and Andy Koch, FRSO National Organizer.

Marxist-Leninists are practical people. This has been true since Marx wrote his famous Eleventh Thesis on Feuerbach: “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.” Many Marxists might even consider themselves “pragmatists.” But Marxism and pragmatism, though there may be some superficial similarities, are, in fact, fundamentally opposed. So, let’s look more closely at this. What is pragmatism?

In our exploration of the fundamental concepts of historical materialism so far, we have looked closely at the economic and material base of society. We’ve talked about the forces and relations of production that make up a mode of production. But every mode of production which forms the base of society has a superstructure that arises from it and in turn reinforces it. So, let’s look now at what the superstructure is and the relationship between it and the base.

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Much is made of what is often referred to as the urban/rural divide. There is a fundamental disconnect, we are told, between the people from the cities and the rural population. Marx and Engels called this contradiction the division between town and country. Marxism-Leninism can help us understand this contradiction, how it arose historically, and how it can be overcome.

Since the very origin of class society, when the productive forces developed to the point of producing some surplus beyond bare subsistence, the contradiction between mental and manual labor has been a characteristic of productive relations. Broadly speaking this means that the majority of people toil away physically, while a small minority conducts intellectual labor, such as science and art or planning and administration. Historically, this contradiction arose alongside the contradiction between town and country, specifically when the cities of the ancient slave societies came to dominate society.

• Liberation Party (Argentina)

With the successful conclusion of the 9th Congress of Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO), a real leap has been made in our efforts to build a serious, revolutionary organization that can make meaningful contributions to the people’s struggle. It is also clear that we are continuing to make progress in our efforts to construct a new communist party, one that can stand at the forefront of the fight for socialism.

Now that we’ve nailed down what we mean by forces of production, let’s talk about the other aspect of the mode of production: the relations of production. Remember that the forces of production are comprised of the means of production (the instruments of production, such as factories and tools, and the objects of labor, like raw materials, land and natural resources) and the agents of production (the workers themselves and their techniques of labor).