At our epoch, the bourgeoisie is in decay; it destroys culture, it produces pessimism and irrationality. In this process, the national heritage is considered as a commodity, to use following the decadent lifestyle of the high bourgeoisie.

That's why we call to protest to the selling of some parts of the Palace of Versailles! This is another shame. This is another proof that the ruling classes, always richer, don't care about the masses, about culture, about history, about our national heritage and its democratic values.

It is especially a provocation as this first September, we celebrate the death of Louis XIV of France, three hundreds years ago.

The parts of the Palace of Versailles that should be “lent” for sixty years consist in three buildings of 2800 m²: the Grand Contrôle, the Petit Contrôle, the Pavillon des premières cent marches.

Naturally, it's an hotel that should be made, so that the high bourgeoisie can appropriate the place, in a caricature of our great 17th century, our French century.

The pretense of the state to justify this sell is that renovation must be made, that the maintenance of the Palace costs a lot, when the entry for it costs already 18 euros. This is merely propaganda to justify that monopolies take more and more the power. Those buildings have been let tumbledown so that the high bourgeoisie can come and take it.

A proof of this general process is the great operation of contemporary art invading the Palace of Versailles for a couple of months each year, with decadent “artists” like Jeff Koons in 2008, Xavier Veilhan in 2009, Takashi Murakami in 2010, Bernard Venet in 2011, Joana Vasconcelos in 2012, Giuseppe Penone in 2013, Lee Ufan in 2014, Anish Kapoor in 2015.

Contemporary art is here the expression of subjectivism, relativism, a line which is anti-history and anti-people. The promotion of this decadent form of “culture” is absolutely counter-revolutionary, an anti-people activity and the people having organized this must be prosecuted, judged, condemned.

The Palace of Versailles is the symbol of the absolute monarchy, of the highest stage of feudalism.

The Palace of Versailles is not the symbol of aristocracy, but of its highest form, absolute monarchy, where the state is centralized, the country united, the local divisions abolished. Absolute monarchy plays a progressive role, unifying the masses, developing culture and bringing it to the next level.

Historically, this form came too early in some countries like Bohemia, or too late like for Austria or Russia. Feudalism was too strong, aristocrats managed to block the formation of a national market, of a national bourgeoisie, of a centralized state. In Germany, this process even didn't happen and it was Prussian militarism, with its junkers, that made the country catch up the unification, but through high reactionary forms, giving a huge contribution to the development of national-socialism, as the Austrian Alfred Klahr explained it in its Auschwitz text.

In France the timing for the absolute monarchy was perfect: the bourgeoisie was growing and a national market nearly established, the absolute monarchy needed this wealth and the intelligence for its administration; absolute monarchy as the big compromise could happen.

It permitted the formation of a unified language, it permitted the development of culture through literature and arts. Francis I, Henry IV, and Louis XIV are the ones who led the formation of France as a nation. The Palace of Versailles is the symbol of it.

The French nobility was submitted to the central power; it has to be present in Versailles and couldn't plot anymore, with the aim of dividing the country, of blocking the general development. The Palace of Versailles is therefore also a symbol of the unity of our country against the centrifugal forces produced by reaction.

In selling some parts of it, the French bourgeoisie is organizing itself the splitting of our country, the partition of all cultural life, so to serve private interests. It is the symbol of the cosmopolitan vision of the world of the bourgeoisie.

This is a trend really strong in France, where the children of the high bourgeoisie organize theirs careers often in others countries. The capitalists the best paid in the English “City” come from the French Ecole Polytechnique and half of the cadres present there come from French business schools: l'Ecole Centrale de Paris, HEC, ESCP, EDHEC, ESSEC, Paris-Dauphine.

Those capitalists don't care about the national heritage, and it is here to stress that neither do the others capitalists in general: their only goal is profit and it comes to irrationality. The theory of a “national” capitalism is, in the imperialist countries, a reactionary fiction.

We can see in practice that the defense of the Palace of Versailles, of the national heritage, never comes from such a fictional “national” bourgeoisie, but only from democratic currents. The extreme right is nationalistic, it promotes nationalism, but its definition of nation is fictional, corresponding only to the ideology of imperialist wars.

In defending the Palace of Versailles, we don't call to nationalism but to the defense of the national heritage, to bring it as a contribution to the socialist unified world that will inevitably arise in this 21th century.

This can be done only by a new state, a popular democracy, which unite the masses under the banner of progress, of real democracy, rejecting the vision of the world of the monopols, of the high bourgeoisie: micro-economy, neo-darwinism, theory of the genious, quantum mechanics, contemporary art, cladistics, etc. i.e. all the conceptions explaining that evolution comes through individual, that each thing is isolated, that there is a “source” to everything, a beginning and an end, etc.

It is necessary here to warn about the fifth column. We live in the epoch of the world socialist revolution, through socialist revolutions and new democratic revolutions and against this unstoppable trend, the bourgeoisie tries to formulate the conception of “left” ultra-individualism, through cosmopolitanism and post-modernism.

This new ideology promotes the cult of the individual, through his “rights”. Those rights obey only to one law: negating the teachings of dialectical materialism.

As we know, dialectical materialism teaches that there are classes and class struggle and the oppressed must struggle for democratic relationships along the working class, because the general frame is the one of a mode of production.

Opposed to this, the new cosmopolitan post-modernist ideology affirms that they are only struggles for “rights” and that history consists in the struggles, mostly of minorities, to conquer rights.

The post-modernist ideology speaks of sexism, racism, ableism, ageism, genderism, fatphobia, transphobia, islamophobia, etc. The individual would dispose of a total “freewill” and society would be “reactionary” to deny the choices made. Real “progress” would be to recognize the “isms” and the “phobias” and to abolish them.

This vision of the world is absolutely petty bourgeois, but obeys to the needs of the high bourgeoisie of an ultra-individualist society. We can see it especially in the USA, where the high bourgeoisie supports this “revolutionary” ideology promoted by teachers in the great (private) universities.

This is the trend to consider society as made of individuals and progress as a modernized capitalism, hiding this under the “discovery” of always new “revolutionary subjects”.

It is particularly clear when we see the question of “fatphobia”, when in fact the fact of being fat is produced by the conditions of living in the capitalist society. Being fat is bad, it comes from a capitalist decided consumption, but the post-modern ideology pretends that society should accept it and consider it as “normal”, in the name of the rights of the fat individual.

The question of transgenderism is also very famous and is a very good example of anti-materialist irrationality. According to dialectical materialism, there is no “separation” between the body and the mind; the post-modern ideology pretends that there is one and that a mind can be in the “wrong” body. This is absolutely anti-materialist and can only be justified by concepts like “freewill” or “soul”.

It is of great signification also that the post-modern ideology follows the work of the Muslim Brotherhood in promoting the concept of “islamophobia”, which only goal is to deny the fact that religion is the opium of the people and the Islam of immigrant people or their descendants in Western Europe is connected to semi-feudalism.

Lenin told us that imperialism means political reaction all along the line – but the post-modernist ideology pretends that there is progress within a capitalist society. The fact that the US imperialism and the European Union support totally the “lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT)” demands is not debated by post-modern ideology, which considers this as a normal trend, a kind of democratization of the society.

We know historically that this concept of “democratization” of the capitalist society is only a way to modernize it.

Dialectical Materialism has always taught that the general crisis of imperialism means decay, decadence, social and cultural forms that are to reject; the post-modern ideology pretends that the contrary is true, that post-modernist demands coming from within the capitalist society, through teachers in universities, are the most progressive thing.

The masses make history, said Mao Zedong; the post-modernist ideology explains that the masses are reactionary, that they are full of prejudices, that what count are the individuals, at a cosmopolitan level.

The national frame is absolutely rejected; only what seems “international” is accepted and no topic connected to the class struggle in the national frame is taken in account.

We can see, indeed, that the petty bourgeois “radical” left in the USA and in Europe have mostly accepted that, helping massively the fascists to pretend to be the only real working class movement.

We can see, also, that revisionist “Maoism” is here often on the frontline of this trend. “Maoism” means here only a radical logorrhea of post-modernist demands, with the pretension to be the least possible opportunist, the only “real” revolutionaries.

The teachings of the Dialectical Materialism are negated; there is totally no knowing of science produced in the USSR of Stalin and the People's Republic of China of Mao Zedong. The International Communist Movement from the 1930's-1950's is negated; only the 1920's are considered as of some interest.

In this sense, there are always connections and alliances of the post-modernist ideology with ultra-leftist currents of the anarchists and of trotskyism; in France most of the groups and organizations of the far left have split up on the question of how much post-modernist ideology is to accept.

What counts is to try to appear the most “radical” possible and the misuse of “Maoism” is a petty bourgeois trend, typical of the students.

If it was not the case, those “radicals” would like at the armed struggles in the USA and in Western Europe, like those made by the Red Brigades, the Red Army Fraction. But of course this is impossible, as it is not “radical” only in words.

In the same way, the ecological catastrophe provoked by the capitalist mode of production is never taken in account. It is another proof of “radicalism” in closed circle.

This post-modernist ideology is only a tool for the bourgeoisie, it is a fifth column in the ranks of the youth. It is a very important threat for the International Communist Movement, as it is an all-level offensive of the bourgeoisie, through ostensibly “modernism” and an alleged anti-conservatism.

Dialectical Materialism considers that dying capitalism can only produce decay – the post-modernist ideology pretends the contrary, because it tries to save it.

Dialectical Materialism is the only way to go out of the general crisis of capitalism, because it permits to understand what blocks the development of society : irrationality in the field of science, arts and literature, economy, politics. This irrationality is the one of the bourgeoisie, struggling for imperialist hegemony, always more ready to wars.

The defense of the Palace of Versailles, with this as background, is therefore something of great importance, as it is the symbol of our national heritage, as it is a masterpiece of our national heritage.

The avant-garde of the resistance of the masses to the general crisis of capitalism must not fall in the trap of the “revolutionarism” of the ultra-leftist “anti-France” line, which only forms a fifth column helping fascism.

The real task is to unite the broad masses against the monopolies, against their conquest of power through decadence and fascism.

Let's protect the democratic national heritage! Oppose to the monopolies, refute cosmopolitanism!

Long live Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, principally Maoism, dialectical materialism of our era!

Crush the petty bourgeois post-modernist trends negating the teachings of the International Communist Movement!

Communist Party of France (Marxist-Leninist-Maoist)
August 2015