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About security sector reforms

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This week Cain Mathema in his book Why the West and its MDC stooges want Zimbabwe’s Defence and Security Forces reformed that The Patriot is serialising takes a closer look at the 1917 Russian Revolution. He says it was a successful proletarian revolution that toppled the Russian capitalist class and its state.

NOW let us go to the Russian socialist revolution of 1917.
That was a revolution of the Russian workers against the Russian bourgeoisie; together with the Russian workers were the Russian peasants who were exploited by the Russian big farmers (the kulaks) with impunity.
The kulaks were on the side of the Russian bourgeois and the bourgeois state headed by the Russian Emperor.
It was a successful proletarian revolution that toppled the Russian capitalist class and its state.
The proletariat (the working class) became the ruling class and it created the workers’ state (the Soviet state in the case of Russia) in the world; and the bourgeoisie became the suppressed class, its state was smashed, and it, as a class, was crushed, it was crushed by soviet power.
But what really was Soviet power?
The leader of the Russian revolution was Vladimir I. Lenin.
It is only fair, therefore, to allow Lenin to answer the question himself.
He wrote in 1919, two years after the revolution:
“What is Soviet power? What is the essence of this new power, which people in most countries still will not, or cannot, understand?
“The nature of this power, which is attracting larger and larger numbers of workers in every country, is the following: In the past the country was, in one way or another, governed by the rich, or by the capitalists, but now, for the first time, the country is being governed by the classes, and moreover, by the masses of those classes, which capitalism formerly oppressed.
“Even in the most democratic and freest republics, as long as capital rules and the land remains private property, the government will always be in the hands of a small minority, nine-tenths of which consists of capitalists, or rich men.
“In this country, in Russia, for the first time in world history, the government of the country is so organised that only the workers and the working peasants, to the exclusion of exploiters, constitute those mass organisations known as Soviets, and the Soviets wield all state power.
“That is why, in spite of the slander that the representatives of the bourgeoisie in all countries spread about Russia, the ‘Soviet’ has now become not only intelligible, but popular all over the world, has become the favourite word of the workers, and of all working people.
“We know very well that there are still many defects in the organisation of Soviet power in this country. Soviet power is not a miracle-working talisman. It does not, overnight, heal all the evils of the past – illiteracy, lack of culture, the consequences of a barbarous war, the aftermath of predatory capitalism.
“But it does pave the way to socialism. It gives those who were formerly oppressed the chance to straighten their backs and to an ever-increasing degree to take the whole government of the country, the whole administration of the economy, the whole management of production, into their own hands.
“Soviet power is the road to socialism that was discovered by the masses of the working people, and that is why it is the true road, that is why it is invincible.” – (V.I. Lenin Collected Works, Vol. 29, March-August 1919 1980).
As we can see, Soviet power, the workers’ state, is power that excludes the capitalists, it is power, it is a state machine, whose purpose is to do away with capitalism, it is power to create a new socio-economic formation, socialism.
Therefore all the state organs (parliament, the executive of the country, the army, police, intelligence services, the judiciary system, the civil service, the news media, the education, etc) must understand and implement that objective.
Any organ that is out of line has to be brought back into line, and any individual member therefore who is out of line has to be brought back on course or face prosecution and punishment according to the Soviet legal system.
It is clear Lenin does not beat about the bush, like capitalists and their political leaders do; he does not do like the leaders of the capitalist system who lie to the people about the state of capitalism being the state of everybody, leaders who lie about the colonial state as the state of the colonised as well.
About the army of the Soviet state, Lenin said it must know what its role is in society, it has to be clear politically and ideologically, there are no two ways about it.
In a speech delivered at the first Moscow Soviet Commanders’ course on April 15 1919 Lenin was reported to have; “recalled the words of a certain German who said that if the soldiers knew what they were fighting for, there would be no war.
“The situation was different in our times. The Red Army (the Soviet Army) had a great and definite task to perform – to emancipate the working class. The workers’ and peasants’ Red Army was growing and gaining strength day by day.
“This growth was due to the fact that the workers and peasants were profoundly conscious of their aims.” – (Lenin Collected Works, Vol. 29, 1980).
Lenin said the Red Army’s major role was to serve the working people against all exploiters.
It was a partisan army; it was an army of workers and peasants – the opposite of a bourgeois army, it was the opposite of the German army one of whose generals is referred to above whose ordinary soldiers were lads from poor working class families fighting for the interests of the German bourgeoisie that exploited the parents of the very same ordinary soldiers who did not know the real reason of the war.
On who had or did not have voting rights in Soviet Russia, Lenin once said:
“The only people who have no voting rights and no right to take part in or influence the country’s political life are exploiters, those who exploit the labour of others and do not work themselves.
“There are only a handful of such people among the population. You can just imagine how many people are exploiting hired labour in the towns.
“Private ownership of land is no more. The landowners have been deprived of their estates and the homesteaders, who were still robbing the peasants under Stolypin, have had their land taken away.
“The number of those exploiting other people’s labour in the countryside is negligible too. But the Soviet government has not told them it will take their vote away. It has said that we recognise anyone’s right to participate in administration if he wants to stop exploiting other people’s labour.
“If you want to be a worker, God bless you. If you want to be an exploiter, we shall not only disfranchise you, but we shan’t let you feed off someone else’s labour.” (Lenin Collected Works, Vol. 28, 1981).

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