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101-475: The National Labor Federation ( NATLFED ) is a network of community associations, called "entities", that claim to organize workers who are excluded from collective bargaining protections by U.S. labor law. NATLFED was founded by Gino Perente . NATLFED entities keep a very low profile, operating with little public attention. Journalists who have discussed NATLFED entities have praised their social work, raised concerns about their lack of transparency, and condemned

202-636: A DJ for the radio station KAGR for about five years, Doeden began working at the Little Red Bookstore in San Francisco , where he went by aliases such as "Claude" and "Gino Savo." A number of individuals associated with the store reportedly formed a short-lived group called Liberation Army Revolutionary Group Organizations (LARGO). In March 1970, the group sent letters to government offices "announcing that armed guerrilla groups were about to attack public buildings." LARGO's only published statement,

303-457: A Girl Revolutionary was published by Random House Canada. The book details her personal relationship with Gino Perente/Gerald Doeden and the emotional, physical and sexual abuse of women which she witnessed while living at the safe house around the time of the organization's revolutionary 'countdown.' Perente died March 18, 1995, in the Crown Heights apartment of congestive heart failure . He

404-605: A Marxist ontology and played an active role in democratic movements in Hungary in 1956 and the 1960s. He and his associates became sharply critical of the formulation of dialectical materialism in the Soviet Union that was exported to those countries under its control. In the 1960s, his associates became known as the Budapest School . Lukács, in his philosophical criticism of Marxist revisionism , proposed an intellectual return to

505-519: A common concern for the long-term future of our communities". NATLFED entities are not themselves labor unions. The various entities identify themselves with the labor movement for the purpose of attracting volunteers and supporters, but when describing their organization make clear that they do not advocate the formation of trade unions per se, calling themselves "labor organizations of a new type". NATLFED entities are managed by full-time volunteers, called cadre, many of whom have dedicated their lives to

606-401: A dialectical understanding: It is in this dialectic as it is here understood, that is, in the grasping of oppositions in their unity, or of the positive in the negative, that speculative thought consists. It is the most important aspect of dialectic. The splitting of a single whole and the cognition of its contradictory parts is the essence (one of the "essentials", one of the principal, if not

707-446: A famous quote, "The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it." Dialectical materialism is thus closely related to Marx's and Engels's historical materialism (and has sometimes been viewed as synonymous with it). Marx rejected Fichte 's language of " thesis, antithesis, synthesis ". Dialectical materialism is an aspect of the broader subject of materialism , which asserts

808-577: A limp for the rest of his life. He was known in Marysville as a small-scale con artist . Doeden married Ruth Mikkelsen in 1960, and had a daughter. Doeden, however, reportedly also fathered a child outside of his marriage. He and Mikkelsen were divorced in 1962, and he later spent some time in jail for non-payment of child support . Some observers have suggested that he may have left California to avoid child support payments. After working in Yuba City as

909-469: A network of twenty such drives, called the National Labor Federation (NATLFED). By the late 1970s, Perente's activities were increasingly limited to giving lectures to volunteers interpreting the writings of Karl Marx , Vladimir Lenin , and Joseph Stalin and directing the daily activities of his volunteers. Perente also co-authored a number of tracts, including The Essential Organizer ,

1010-422: A priori schema. He explicitly rejects the idea of Hegel's followers that history can be understood as "a person apart, a metaphysical subject of which real human individuals are but the bearers". To interpret history as though previous social formations have somehow been aiming themselves toward the present state of affairs is "to misunderstand the historical movement by which the successive generations transformed

1111-426: A program that provides services to members free of charge and soon start door-to-door campaigns to recruit volunteers and recruit low-income workers. Available resources and the scope of the program vary, but usually include food, clothing, and holiday events for children. Some entities provide more involved services for members, such as medical, legal, and dental services for volunteers and low-income members. Critics of

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1212-514: A runaround. NATLFED entitites support "strata organizing", which focuses on "unrecognized workers" who are unable to organize due to the "dubious benefits of the National Labor Relations Act ." Instead of conventional union organizing, NATLFED argues that "local community-based associations" must unite unrecognized workers with "current and former union workers, retired workers, local business leaders, professionals and others who share

1313-606: Is a reflection of the material world in the brain, and that the world is in principle knowable. Marx criticized classical materialism as another idealist philosophy—idealist because of its transhistorical understanding of material contexts. The Young Hegelian Ludwig Feuerbach had rejected Hegel's idealistic philosophy and advocated materialism. Despite being strongly influenced by Feuerbach, Marx rejected Feuerbach's version of materialism ( anthropological materialism ) as inconsistent. The writings of Engels, especially Anti-Dühring (1878) and Dialectics of Nature (1875–82), were

1414-439: Is absolute, just as development and motion are absolute." In Materialism and Empiriocriticism (1908), Lenin explained dialectical materialism as three axes: (i) the materialist inversion of Hegelian dialectics, (ii) the historicity of ethical principles ordered to class struggle , and (iii) the convergence of " laws of evolution " in physics ( Helmholtz ), biology ( Darwin ), and in political economy (Marx). Hence, Lenin

1515-580: Is also found in the biography Frederick Engels , by philosopher Karl Kautsky , written in 1899. Marx himself had talked about the "materialist conception of history", which was later referred to as " historical materialism " by Engels. Engels further explained the "materialist dialectic" in his Dialectics of Nature in 1883. Georgi Plekhanov , the father of Russian Marxism, first used the term "dialectical materialism" in 1891 in his writings on Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Marx. Stalin further delineated and defined dialectical and historical materialism as

1616-558: Is an accumulation of knowledge, based on experience relating to matter, to its properties; an accumulation of generalised understanding of how to subject this matter to the interests and needs of man. In his book In Defence of Marxism , Leon Trotsky defended the dialectical method of scientific socialism during the factional schisms within the American Trotskyist movement in the period 1939–40. Trotsky viewed dialectics as an essential method of analysis to discern class nature of

1717-479: Is considered the foundation of materialist philosophy. Marx was also familiar with Lucretius 's theory of clinamen . Marx and Engels both concluded that Hegelian philosophy , at least as interpreted by their former colleagues, was too abstract and was being misapplied in attempts to explain the social injustice in recently industrializing countries such as Germany , France , and the United Kingdom , which

1818-460: Is difficult to get information about NATLFED and its entities because the organization is institutionally secretive. An internal memo quoted in the East Bay Express in 1984 gave the following instructions on withholding information from outsiders: We regard outside inquiry from a position of distrust. [...] Never ask to know more than you need to know if you agree with the goals and strategy of

1919-455: Is governed by laws of development which reflect basic properties of 'matter in motion as a whole'." After reading Hegel's Science of Logic in 1914, Lenin made some brief notes outlining three "elements" of logic. They are: Lenin develops these in a further series of notes, and appears to argue that "the transition of quantity into quality and vice versa" is an example of the unity and opposition of opposites expressed tentatively as "not only

2020-416: Is not men's consciousness that determines their existence, but, on the contrary, their social existence that determines their consciousness'.... Only when the core of existence stands revealed as a social process can existence be seen as the product, albeit the hitherto unconscious product, of human activity. (§5) Philosophically aligned with Marx is the criticism of the individualist , bourgeois philosophy of

2121-406: Is to diminish this space, to overcome it, to economise time, to prolong human life, to register past time, to raise life to a higher level and enrich it. This is the reason for the struggle with space and time, at the basis of which lies the struggle to subject matter to man—matter, which constitutes the foundation not only of everything that really exists, but also of all imagination ... Every science

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2222-838: The Communist Party, United States of America (Provisional) [ CPUSA(P) ], Provisional Party , Provisional Party of Communists , Order of Lenin , or simply the Formation . The CPUSA(PW) allegedly includes much of NATLFED's leadership. The CPUSA(PW) is clandestine and has no party publications, conventions, or leadership elections. CPUSA(PW) members do not openly acknowledge its existence. Virtually all CPUSA(PW) members are full-time volunteers in NATLFED entities. Outside estimates cap membership at between 100 and 300 core members. CPUSA(PW) has virtually no identifiable offices or centers of operations. During Perente's lifetime he exercised full control over

2323-459: The Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn , and he lived there, surrounded by volunteers for his organizations, for the rest of his life. Some ex-full-time volunteers have alleged that Perente was a drug addict, sexually harassed female volunteers, and regularly physically abused some volunteer organizers during this period. In 2016 former cadre Sonja Larsen's memoir Red Star Tattoo- My Life as

2424-518: The Soviet system of education . In the People's Republic of China , an analogous text was the essay On Contradiction (1937), by Mao Zedong , which was a foundational document of Maoism . The term dialectical materialism was coined in 1887 by Joseph Dietzgen , a socialist who corresponded with Marx, during and after the failed 1848 German Revolution . Casual mention of the term "dialectical materialism"

2525-621: The Weather Underground were among its founders. The Party's secrecy makes appraisal of its internal structure and functioning difficult. Testimony from former members and contacts has led various observers to characterize the CPUSA (PW) as a "political cult". For example, party members are said to live communally and spend all their time working for NATLFED entities. The leadership reportedly maintains extensive files on members and limits contact with family members, while those who attempt to leave

2626-448: The exegesis of a "sacred" book. On the contrary, orthodoxy refers exclusively to method. It is the scientific conviction that dialectical materialism is the road to truth and that its methods can be developed, expanded, and deepened, only along the lines laid down by its founders. (§1) In his later works and actions, Lukács became a leader of Democratic Marxism . He modified many of his formulations of his 1923 works and went on to develop

2727-627: The subject , which is founded upon the voluntary and conscious subject . Against said ideology is the primacy of social relations. Existence—and thus the world—is the product of human activity, but this can be seen only by accepting the primacy of social process on individual consciousness. This type of consciousness is an effect of ideological mystification . At the 5th Congress of the Communist International (July 1924), Grigory Zinoviev formally denounced Lukács's heterodox definition of Orthodox Marxism as exclusively derived from fidelity to

2828-574: The "Marxist method", and not to Communist party dogmas; and denounced the philosophical developments of the German Marxist theorist Karl Korsch . In the 1930s, Stalin and his associates formulated a version of dialectical and historical materialism that became the "official" Soviet interpretation of Marxism. It was codified in Stalin's work, Dialectical and Historical Materialism (1938), and popularized in textbooks used for compulsory education within

2929-638: The 2004 American Sociological Association Conference about poverty and social stratification . The Eastern Service Workers Association (ESWA) operates on numerous college and university campuses in the Northeast, quietly recruiting student volunteers through the service-learning offices available to all students. The ESWA is thriving in Boston, Massachusetts , and Rochester, New York , with assistance from several local churches and businesses that may not be aware of its practices or connection to NATLFED. Recruiters from

3030-640: The Ashland City Council to halt utility cutoffs. This entity distributes 30-40 cords of firewood each year to people in Jackson County, Oregon . Gino Perente Gerald Doeden was born in Crookston, Minnesota and grew up in Idaho and Yuba City / Marysville, California . He was an amateur actor who performed in plays at Yuba College. While in college, Doeden was injured in a car accident and walked with

3131-515: The California Homemakers Association (CHA) pressured Sacramento County and won wage increases for attendant care workers. Subsequently, the county agreed to bargain with CHA over the terms of individual contracts with its home care workers. CHA organizer David Shapiro hailed the agreement as "the first time that household workers have achieved the right to bargain". In 1973, the NATLFED manuscript The Essential Organizer described

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3232-479: The Coalition of Concerned Legal Professionals (CCLP) writes: CCLP is not subject to the whims of constantly changing Congressional and Presidential administrations. Because CCLP does not receive federal funds, it can organize without being subject to arbitrary restrictions on representation, audits of client files, unpredictable fluctuations in income, and general harassment from LSC and OIG bureaucrats, all of which are

3333-564: The Coalition of Concerned Legal Professionals (CCLP). WFWS member José Rodríguez said, "without organization, we could never have gotten money back". In 2006, the California State Legislature allocated $ 610,000 to settle Vega v. Mallory , which alleged that migrant camp workers were overcharged for rent. In 2006, the Jackson County Fuel Committee (JCFC) or Jackson County Workers Benefit Council (JCWBC) petitioned

3434-643: The EFWA in Suffolk County, New York . He and his followers headed to migrant labor camps in rural Long Island, New York , from an office in Bellport, New York , to organize agricultural workers. The EFWA received press attention in its early days for attempting to organize farm workers at the I.M. Young company, a potato grower. Perente organized 800 farm workers with 30 full-time EFWA staff and 70 volunteers in December 1972, when

3535-582: The EFWA led a strike of potato workers. This was the first union of agricultural workers on the East Coast, but the Department of Labor determined that EFWA was not a labor organization as defined by federal law. The 1972 strike against I.M. Young remains a central part of the volunteer training process. There is little further information about the EFWA's early years. In the mid-1970s, Perente removed himself from public view, but encouraged his followers to expand

3636-461: The Marxist method. So did Louis Althusser , who later defined Marxism and psychoanalysis as "conflictual sciences", stating that political factions and revisionism are inherent to Marxist theory and political praxis, because dialectical materialism is the philosophic product of class struggle: For this reason, the task of orthodox Marxism, its victory over Revisionism and utopianism can never mean

3737-627: The Party is by invitation, and invitation comes to volunteers in NATLFED entities as a revelation of the existence of the party, an explanation of the party's goals and strategy, and a brief "history" of the party, called the "genesis". This "genesis" is reportedly a narrative that includes claims that the party was part of a secret International including the Communist Party of Cuba , the Sandinistas , and revolutionaries in Chile and El Salvador , and that members of

3838-567: The Penguin edition of Marx's Capital , Ernest Mandel writes, "When the dialectical method is applied to the study of economic problems, economic phenomena are not viewed separately from each other, by bits and pieces, but in their inner connection as an integrated totality, structured around, and by, a basic predominant mode of production." Marx's own writings are almost exclusively concerned with understanding human history in terms of systemic processes, based on modes of production (broadly speaking,

3939-589: The Soviet Union . Specifically, he described scientific socialism as "the conscious expression of the unconscious historical process; namely, the instinctive and elemental drive of the proletariat to reconstruct society on communist beginnings". György Lukács , Minister of Culture in the brief Béla Kun government of the Hungarian Soviet Republic (1919), published History and Class Consciousness (1923), in which he defined dialectical materialism as

4040-516: The Soviet Union and throughout the Eastern Bloc . In On Contradiction (1937), Mao Zedong outlined a version of dialectical materialism that subsumed two of Engels's three principal laws of dialectics, "the transformation of quantity into quality" and "the negation of the negation" as sub-laws (and not principal laws of their own) of the first law, "the unity and interpenetration of opposites". In his 1947 article New Life , Ho Chi Minh described

4141-627: The Western Service Workers Association (WSWA) entity participated in demonstrations against physician-assisted suicide . In 2004, members of the Western Farm Workers Association (WFWS) working in state-run migrant camps recovered illegal rent increases from the California Office of Migrant Services . The workers brought suit in 1996 and 1997 under the legal guidance and practical organizing participation of

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4242-401: The associations. According to the groups' literature, these benefit programs provide members with basic emergency food, clothing, medical and dental care, legal advice, child care, and job referrals. Since Perente's death in 1995 and the raid on its headquarters in 1996, there has been little information about how NATLFED is run, though Margaret Ribar is reported to have assumed leadership. It

4343-629: The average hourly pay for workers at I. M. Young in 1972. New members also sign an authorization form giving the association vague authority to bargain on the member's behalf. The groups also solicit resources (funds, food, clothing, medical services and legal aid) from professionals, business owners, and volunteers willing to contribute to the cause. NATLFED entities describe themselves as independent, locally chartered membership associations that accept only private donations that come "with no strings attached", and thus claim to be answerable only to their organizing committee and to their membership. For example,

4444-416: The cadre start new entities armed with lists of contacts. The recruiters approach community and business leaders with their mission statement and ask for help with founding the entity. An organizing committee is created that includes community leaders willing to at least lend their names to the new effort, and the recruiters solicit donated office space until they can purchase an office. The entities establish

4545-422: The concept. For all these authors, one of the main illustrations is the phase transitions of water. There has also been an effort to apply this mechanism to social phenomena, whereby population increases result in changes in social structure. The law of the passage of quantitative changes into qualitative changes can also be applied to the process of social change and class conflict . The third law, "negation of

4646-437: The defeat, once and for all, of false tendencies. It is an ever-renewed struggle against the insidious effects of bourgeois ideology on the thought of the proletariat. Marxist orthodoxy is no guardian of traditions, it is the eternally vigilant prophet proclaiming the relation between the tasks of the immediate present and the totality of the historical process. (§5) ...the premise of dialectical materialism is, we recall: 'It

4747-409: The dialectical relationship between the old and the new in building society, stating: Not everything old must be abandoned. We do not have to reinvent everything. What is old but bad must be abandoned. What is old but troublesome must be corrected appropriately. What is old but good must be further developed. What is new but good must be done. Historian of science Loren Graham has detailed at length

4848-445: The discovery of a weapons stockpile. NATLFED and its entities are often labeled a cult , are listed on cult watch websites, and have been described as a cult by various journalists. For example, in 2003, NATLFED was described as "one of the country's most extreme and controlling political cults," according to "watchdog groups and government agencies". In a 1984 Public Eye article, the former NATLFED member Jeff Whitnack argues that

4949-458: The entities are highly inefficient—that the cadre consumes much of the cash, food and clothing they purport to collect for the poor. Volunteers for the entities canvass poor residential areas to recruit low-income members, knocking on doors and delivering a pitch that includes a brief explanation of organization, promises benefits, and asks for participation. Poor members are asked to contribute $ 0.62 per month as membership dues, an amount said to be

5050-486: The first negation of individual private property ... But capitalist production begets, with the inexorability of a law of Nature, its own negation. It [this new negation] is the negation of negation." Z. A. Jordan notes, "Engels made constant use of the metaphysical insight that the higher level of existence emerges from and has its roots in the lower; that the higher level constitutes a new order of being with its irreducible laws; and that this process of evolutionary advance

5151-405: The first to present [dialectic's] form of working in a comprehensive and conscious manner". But he then criticizes Hegel for turning dialectics upside down: "With him it is standing on its head. It must be turned right side up again, if you would discover the rational kernel within the mystical shell.". Marx's criticism of Hegel asserts that Hegel's dialectics go astray by dealing with ideas, with

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5252-446: The following examples: For example, in biological evolution the formation of new forms of life occurs precisely through the unity and struggle of opposites in heredity and variability. In physical processes the nature of light was explained precisely by means of the unity and struggle of opposites appearing, for example, as corpuscular and wave properties; this, moreover, cleared the path for a “drama of ideas” in physical science, whereby

5353-428: The group are said to be subjected to intense pressure and harassment. After Perente's death in 1995, leadership of the CPUSA (PW) was assumed by Margaret Ribar, who is reported to have relaxed some of those restrictions. The party has a Central Committee and is divided into cells, called "fractions", including a select "Military Fraction" that made news in 1996 after a raid on the party's New York headquarters resulted in

5454-519: The group has with volunteers, members, donors, and other supporters. Whitnack has claimed that this elaborate paperwork is unnecessary, inefficient, and intended to exhaust the volunteers, in order to keep them in a suggestible state. NATLFED recruits many of its members and volunteers from college campuses, through voluntary service programs, and by appeal to the larger community through speaking engagements and direct contact. For example, Western Service Workers Association (WSWA) member Mark Levine spoke to

5555-675: The group's narrow and paranoid ideology, long working hours that sever volunteers' connections to the outside world, and deliberate schedule of mind-numbing work are all features of a cult. Later, Public Eye argued that it "no longer feels it is accurate to call Newman’s political network a cult", though "we still have strong criticisms of the group’s organizing style". In her 2016 memoir, former NATLFED member Sonja Larsen described NATLFED as cultlike: The sense of urgency. The time table. The secret language. The mythical elements. The sexual control. The lack of sleep. The control, internal and external, over thought and movement. The denial of self. There

5656-413: The group. It's unfair to burden a comrade with unneeded information, and also unprofessional. The standard answer to any question you have not been instructed to answer is "It's not my department." Some entity operations managers have been directed not to give interviews to reporters; others have insisted that reporters volunteer with the organization to get a story on it; and volunteers have given reporters

5757-458: The higher level of being is a new order with irreducible laws, and that evolution is governed by laws of development, which reflect the basic properties of matter in motion . In the 1930s, in the Soviet Union, the book Dialectical and Historical Materialism (1938), by Joseph Stalin , set forth the Soviet formulation of dialectical materialism and of historical materialism , which were taught in

5858-468: The human mind. Hegel's dialectic, Marx says, inappropriately concerns "the process of the human brain"; it focuses on ideas. Hegel's thought is in fact sometimes called dialectical idealism , and Hegel himself is counted among a number of other philosophers known as the German idealists . Marx, on the contrary, believed that dialectics should deal not with the mental world of ideas but with "the material world",

5959-404: The idealist perspective of Hegelian dialectics , the materialist perspective of Marxist dialectics emphasizes that contradictions in material phenomena could be resolved with dialectical analysis, from which is synthesized the solution that resolves the contradiction, whilst retaining the essence of the phenomena. Marx proposed that the most effective solution to the problems caused by contradiction

6060-460: The importance of real-world conditions and the presence of functional contradictions within and among social relations, which derive from, but are not limited to, the contradictions that occur in social class , labour economics , and socioeconomic interactions. Within Marxism, a contradiction is a relationship in which two forces oppose each other, leading to mutual development. In contrast with

6161-483: The initial obituary, the Times issued a corrected obituary the next day. Dialectical Materialism Dialectical materialism is a materialist theory based upon the writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels that has found widespread applications in a variety of philosophical disciplines ranging from philosophy of history to philosophy of science . As a materialist philosophy, Marxist dialectics emphasizes

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6262-422: The knowledge of society as a whole, knowledge which, in itself, was the class consciousness of the proletariat . In the first chapter "What is Orthodox Marxism?", Lukács defined orthodoxy as fidelity to the "Marxist method", not fidelity to "dogmas": Orthodox Marxism , therefore, does not imply the uncritical acceptance of the results of Marx's investigations. It is not the "belief" in this or that thesis, nor

6363-400: The limit within which we have hitherto known matter disappears, and that our knowledge is penetrating deeper; properties of matter are disappearing that formerly seemed absolute, immutable, and primary, and which are now revealed to be relative and characteristic only of certain states of matter. For the sole 'property' of matter, with whose recognition philosophical materialism is bound up, is

6464-565: The movement. NATLFED aggressively recruits new cadre from the ranks of volunteers who participate. NATLFED entities send speakers to churches, residential neighborhoods, shopping centers, university campuses, music festivals, and other venues to introduce themselves and solicit volunteers and resources. At these events, organizers read a brief introduction to the organization to new volunteers and try to schedule visits to their office and participation in volunteer-run activities. NATLFED also has an elaborate system for persuading volunteers to further

6565-464: The natural world in general, arguing that contemporary science is increasingly recognizing the necessity of viewing natural processes in terms of interconnectedness , development, and transformation. Some scholars have doubted that Engels' "dialectics of nature" is a legitimate extension of Marx's approach to social processes. Other scholars have argued that despite Marx's insistence that humans are natural beings in an evolving, mutual relationship with

6666-449: The negation", originated with Hegel. Although Hegel coined the term "negation of the negation", it gained its fame from Marx's using it in Capital . There Marx wrote this: "The [death] knell of capitalist private property sounds. The expropriators are expropriated. The capitalist mode of appropriation, the result of the capitalist mode of production, produces capitalist private property. This is

6767-410: The opposition and synthesis of corpuscular and wave theories characterized scientific progress. The most basic expression of the unity and struggle of opposites in the world of commodity capitalism is that of use value and value; the most highly developed oppositions in capitalism are the working class and the bourgeoisie, The first law was seen by both Hegel and Vladimir Lenin as the central feature of

6868-483: The organization's exploitative treatment of volunteers. NATLFED's entities deny any political affiliation, but many former participants and outside observers say NATLFED is a front for the Provisional Communist Party , a communist party also founded by Gino Perente . Perente's party is officially named the Communist Party, United States of America (Provisional Wing) [ CPUSA(PW) ] and is also known as

6969-465: The organization's goals by assuming roles of authority themselves, and the social pressure they apply convinces some volunteers to de-emphasize goals of their own. Regular volunteers are periodically interviewed and asked to increase their commitment to the organization. Former members claim that deception and psychological manipulation mix with the sensation some new recruits experience of an intellectual awakening as stories of past labor struggles explain

7070-420: The organizations contend that the 11-point benefit program promises far more than the entities can deliver. Supporters use criticisms of the paucity of resources to motivate volunteers to take action to expand these resources. Critics and supporters of the organizations agree that the cadre consumes some of the food, clothing and other goods collected for the poor. Critics and some former members have claimed that

7171-577: The organizing drive's volunteers. Later accounts identified him as Gerald William Doeden, a former disc jockey from California with a less than pure reputation. In 1971 or 1972, Perente worked in the New York office of the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee and, according to Dolores Huerta , "created a lot of problems for the union, attacking us in the press. Then he went off and formed his own group." In 1972, Perente founded

7272-661: The party, communicating directly with members through long orations held at his office in Brooklyn , New York, through audiotapes of those speeches sent to members running the various NATLFED entities, and through rare printed manuals, such as Perente's 1973 mimeographed The Essential Organizer . NATLFED literature asserts the principle that "every man, woman and child is entitled to adequate and appropriate food, clothing, shelter and medical care as basic human rights." Carlotta Woolcock, an organizer for Northwest Seasonal Workers Association (NSWA), described its goal as providing "a voice for

7373-548: The plight of an LSC-funded attorney in the 21st century. Unfortunately, the over 30-year history of the LSC shows that these conditions are likely to continue for the foreseeable future. CCLP does not focus merely on individual representation or the issue-oriented litigation which others rely on to gain backing. NATLFED is substantially larger than the Communist Party, United States of America (Provisional Wing) [CPUSA(PW)]. Membership in

7474-558: The poor and working people that is independent from the government", because what "most people vote for is the lesser of two evils offered them". Critics claim that NATLFED's focus on the poor is just cover for more sinister activity. Jeff Whitnack told The Boston Globe , "They are like political Moonies . They use poor people as flypaper to attract members." NATLFED consists of several dozen mutual benefit associations and organizers who canvass working-class neighborhoods and coordinate assistance programs operated by members and volunteers of

7575-404: The predecessor of United Farm Workers of America (UFW) in its New York office. After taking charge during a power vacuum, he was fired when UFW sent Jose Gomez to head the office. About 20 years later, he was remembered by Dolores Huerta as a "colorful biker type who played a small role in the boycott for about nine months or a year.... He created a lot of problems for the union, attacking us in

7676-536: The press. Then he went off and formed his own group." After leaving UFW, Perente founded the Eastern Farm Workers Association (EFWA) in Suffolk County, New York , an agricultural region on Long Island . Within a few years, Perente's followers had started similar organizations patterned on EFWA in California and elsewhere on the east coast, and eventually one farm worker organizing drive had spawned

7777-428: The primacy of the material world: in short, matter precedes thought. Materialism is a realist philosophy of science , which holds that the world is material; that all phenomena in the universe consist of "matter in motion," wherein all things are interdependent and interconnected and develop according to natural law ; that the world exists outside consciousness and independently of people's perception of it; that thought

7878-431: The principal, characteristics or features) of dialectics. That is precisely how Hegel, too, puts the matter. The second law Hegel took from Ancient Greek philosophers, notably the paradox of the heap , and explanation by Aristotle , and it is equated with what scientists call phase transitions . It may be traced to the ancient Ionian philosophers, particularly Anaximenes from whom Aristotle, Hegel, and Engels inherited

7979-425: The property of being an objective reality , of existing outside of the mind. Lenin was developing the work of Engels, who said that "with each epoch-making discovery, even in the sphere of natural science , materialism has to change its form". One of Lenin's challenges was distancing materialism, as a viable philosophical outlook, from the "vulgar materialism" expressed in the statement "the brain secretes thought in

8080-410: The requirements of our thinking, and that nothing actually corresponds to them in reality. But it is difficult to agree with this view. If any idealist philosopher, instead of arriving in time to catch the 9   pm train, should turn up two minutes late, he would see the tail of the departing train and would be convinced by his own eyes that time and space are inseparable from material reality. The task

8181-471: The rest of nature, Marx's own writings pay inadequate attention to the ways in which human agency is constrained by such factors as biology, geography, and ecology. Engels postulated three laws of dialectics from his reading of Hegel's Science of Logic . Engels elucidated these laws as the materialist dialectic in his work Dialectics of Nature : The first law, which originates with the ancient Ionian philosopher Heraclitus , can be clarified through

8282-463: The results acquired by the generations that preceded them". Marx's rejection of this sort of teleology was one reason for his enthusiastic (though not entirely uncritical) reception of Charles Darwin 's theory of natural selection . For Marx, dialectics is not a formula for generating predetermined outcomes but is a method for the empirical study of social processes in terms of interrelations, development, and transformation. In his introduction to

8383-492: The same way as the liver secretes bile" (attributed to 18th-century physician Pierre Jean Georges Cabanis ); "metaphysical materialism" (matter composed of immutable particles); and 19th-century "mechanical materialism" (matter as random molecules interacting per the laws of mechanics). The philosophic solution that Lenin (and Engels) proposed was "dialectical materialism", wherein matter is defined as objective reality , theoretically consistent with (new) developments occurring in

8484-480: The sciences. Lenin reassessed Feuerbach's philosophy and concluded that it was in line with dialectical materialism. In 1926, Trotsky said in a speech: It is the task of science and technology to make matter subject to man, together with space and time, which are inseparable from matter. True, there are certain idealist books—not of a clerical character, but philosophical ones—wherein you can read that time and space are categories of our minds, that they result from

8585-656: The scope of the initial organizing drives in Sacramento and Long Island. He established an office in Brooklyn to direct the growing network he called the National Labor Federation (NATLFED), and refined an elaborate system to train and ensure the loyalty of volunteers by founding the Provisional Communist Party, a secret society of his associates. Perente gave lectures offering idiosyncratic interpretations of

8686-454: The source of the main doctrines of dialectical materialism. The concept of dialectical materialism emerges from statements by Marx in the second edition postface to his magnum opus , Das Kapital . There Marx says he intends to use Hegelian dialectics but in revised form. He defends Hegel against those who view him as a "dead dog" and then says, "I openly avowed myself as the pupil of that mighty thinker Hegel". Marx credits Hegel with "being

8787-751: The techniques of "systemic organizing", which purport to allow unrecognized workers to obtain needed benefits and learn how to build their own organizations. In 1978, the NATLFED manuscript Sociology and the Unrecognized Worker argued that most workers are not employed in large-scale factory operations and that new union organizing methods are therefore needed. In the 1970s, Perente and NATLFED briefly worked with alleged cult leader Lyndon LaRouche 's National Caucus of Labor Committees (NCLC). During at least 1976 and 1977, Perente and NATLFED worked and considered merging with alleged cult leader Fred Newman 's International Workers Party (IWP), but did not. In 1999,

8888-464: The traditional comforts of religion) for societal ills , Marx and Engels concluded that alienation from economic and political autonomy , coupled with exploitation and poverty , was the real culprit. In keeping with dialectical ideas, Marx and Engels thus created an alternative theory, not only of why the world is the way it is but also of which actions people should take to make it the way it ought to be. In Theses on Feuerbach (1845), Marx wrote

8989-527: The training manual of the EFWA, and "The Genesis," a story of the origins of NATLFED claiming that the party was part of a secret International including the Communist Party of Cuba , the Sandinistas and revolutionaries in Chile and El Salvador , and that members of the Venceremos were among its founders. Perente retreated from public view in the mid- to late-1970s. Individuals associated with Perente purchased 1107-1115 Carrol St, an apartment building in

9090-467: The underside of U.S. history, and classes in dialectical materialism provide a coherent, if stilted, worldview. NATLFED converts' commitment is solidified by the emotional impact of working to exhaustion surrounded by others who constantly reinforce the group's message and beliefs. For recruitment purposes, NATLFED entities keep extensive records of their contacts on index cards . Drawers of these cards contain detailed information about any sort of contact

9191-465: The unity of opposites but the transitions of every determination, quality, feature, side, property into every other [into its opposite?]." In his essay "On the Question of Dialectics", Lenin stated, "Development is the 'struggle' of opposites." He stated, "The unity (coincidence, identity, equal action) of opposites is conditional, temporary, transitory, relative. The struggle of mutually exclusive opposites

9292-418: The ways in which societies are organized to employ their technological powers to interact with their material surroundings). This is called historical materialism . More narrowly, within the framework of this general theory of history, most of Marx's writing is devoted to an analysis of the specific structure and development of the capitalist economy . For his part, Engels applies a "dialectical" approach to

9393-398: The world of production and other economic activity. For Marx, a contradiction can be solved by a desperate struggle to change the social world. This was a very important transformation because it allowed him to move dialectics out of the contextual subject of philosophy and into the study of social relations based on the material world. For Marx, human history cannot be fitted into any neat

9494-462: The world outlook of Marxism–Leninism , and as a method to study society and its history. Marx and Engels each began their adulthood as Young Hegelians , one of several groups of intellectuals inspired by the philosopher Hegel. Marx's doctoral thesis, The Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature , was concerned with the atomism of Epicurus and Democritus , which

9595-472: The writings of Karl Marx , Vladimir Lenin , and Joseph Stalin to audiences at the NATLFED office. Perente's movement used its core of volunteers to expand, sending recruiters to other cities and towns, starting about 20 mutual benefit associations and perhaps as many related support organizations by the late 1970s. The new organizing drives were built closely on the model of the EFWA, using its 1973 organizational handbook, The Essential Organizer . In 1973,

9696-567: Was a checklist, and I made a mark by nearly every line. NATLFED supporters and organizers contest the label as loaded and misleading. For example, Western Massachusetts Labor Action (WMLA) newspaper editor Carol Rogers said, "we're definitely not a cult". NATLFED emerged from Gino Perente 's organization the Eastern Farm Workers Association (EFWA). Perente was by all accounts a charismatic person. He inspired volunteers with revolutionary positions and established discipline among

9797-534: Was a growing concern in the early 1840s, as exemplified by Dickensian inequity. In contrast to the conventional Hegelian dialectic of the day, which emphasized the idealist observation that human experience is dependent on the mind's perceptions, Marx developed Marxist dialectics , which emphasized the materialist view that the world of the concrete shapes socioeconomic interactions and that those in turn determine sociopolitical reality. Whereas some Hegelians blamed religious alienation (estrangement from

9898-541: Was a proclamation of intent to overthrow the government starting on March 15, 1970. While this quickly attracted the attention of the authorities, the group was described as quixotic by the media and dismissed by law enforcement. Around 1970 Doeden left California and resurfaced in New York City as "Gino Parenti". There he worked briefly in 1971 for the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee,

9999-475: Was buried at Oak Hill Cemetery in Stony Brook, NY by the organization he founded. The New York Times printed his obituary , and then a correction. The initial obituary relied primarily on information from two close associates, Daniel Fiske and Christopher Day. The Times was then contacted by his former wife, former colleagues, and longtime critics of Perente, including Chip Berlet , and, after fact checking

10100-440: Was philosophically positioned between historicist Marxism ( Labriola ) and determinist Marxism—a political position close to " social Darwinism " (Kautsky) . Moreover, late-century discoveries in physics ( x-rays , electrons ), and the beginning of quantum mechanics , philosophically challenged previous conceptions of matter and materialism, thus matter seemed to be disappearing. Lenin disagreed: 'Matter disappears' means that

10201-428: Was to address the contradiction and then rearrange the systems of social organization that are the root of the problem. Dialectical materialism recognises the evolution of the natural world, and thus the emergence of new qualities of being human and of human existence. Engels used the metaphysical insight that the higher level of human existence emerges from and is rooted in the lower level of human existence. That

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