The Red Republic

Revolutionaries: Where We Are At and Where We Should Go

2011-11-06T01:54:00.003-05:00

A podcast produced by Kasama 2 years ago, titled Crusty Left Rehabilitation is a guide on how revolutionaries can be relevant in today's modern age, overall the message is something I agree with. Iris, who I must assume is apart of the Kasama Project outlines 5 things we should all take into consideration to fight the Revolutionary Left's political isolation. Kasama recieves my respect for trying to start a dialogue among revolutionaries to re-evaluate Communism for the 21st Century. The points Iris addresses are:

1. We must take issues what people are talking about and put a revolutionary slant to it and not dismiss what any issue what someone is talking about

Examples of this would include environmental change, animal rights, foreclosures etc. The ruling class also support the same issues we talk about but we do not take a radical stand on them, we need to talk about this issues and yank them to the Left. We must not just demand these things but make the issue that capitalism simply does not work.

2. Speak plain, understandable language

Communist jargon has not changed for the past 146 years. Words like Dictatorship of the Proletariat, petty-bourgeois, revisionist, cadre etc. these words will become unknown to people who are not inside the Communist movement; the concept "Dictatorship of the Proletariat" might also trigger misconceptions in many people. We must stretch out to people and form terminology based on a different mindset, that is based on one that is "we come to you" as opposed to "you come to us"; Communism must take on a missionary form.

3. Do not worry so much about recruitment

Communists should feel more concerned about forming relationships with people and creative in forming our message. We should definitely focus on the new technology of the age, we should focus on blogs, podcasts, Facebook, twitter etc. the newspaper is a dying form of media. Nevertheless there is a need to put something into people's hands, whether it be articles, newsletters, flyers, CDs, pamphlets etc..

4. Use new spectacles and pranks to break daily monotony

Going beyond traditional media like Graffiti, public art and pranks, public theater, etc. bring attention, it is something the "establishment" does not engage in. Pranks can take on a political nature and are things that do not happen everyday, and it does bring attention. Take for example Anonymous on its protest of the Church of Scientology. The APL made its own "soviet guy" meme, there are different ways. Going out and having fun resonates with people. It destroys the pre-conceived notions that Communists are stiff-necks and stern faced.

5. Revolutionary Culture

There is indeed a stress in many groups on a focus a theory and not a focus on producing revolutionary poetry, music, art etc. many of the revolutionary artists that have come out, have come out independently and not out of organizations, during the 1930s the Communist Party influenced artists, authors and Hollywood actors, we must direct our groups into creating revolutionary forms of entertainment that speak to people.

The Red Republic Strikes Back!

2011-11-02T02:30:00.000-05:00

After so much delay The Red Republic is back online, some things have made it difficult to post but rest assured all is well. This will still be a place to promote Marxism-Leninism, International and National News, Labor and Communist History, opinion and some translations of articles from the ICMLPO and will be a supporter of the APL. While I am no longer a member of the American Party of Labor I do support its line, and while not perfect(no party is) it is the only Anti-Revisionist Marxist-Leninist Party in the United States.

This Goes on Everyday in Iraq and Afghanistan!

2010-06-21T22:46:00.000-05:00

I would say that most people in our company didn't consider the Vietnamese human.
—Dennis Bunning

Danger On the Job

2010-06-17T17:56:00.000-05:00

From Labor Notes

Behind the Headlines: The Workplace Kills 14 Per Day—One by One
Tom O’Connor
| June 14, 2010

It’s been a very bad couple of months for worker safety: Seven dead in Anacortes, Washington, following the explosion of the Tesoro refinery. Six dead in Middletown, Connecticut, in the Kleen Energy power plant explosion. Twenty-nine dead in West Virginia’s Upper Big Branch mine disaster. And 11 dead in the Gulf of Mexico oil rig collapse (a fact almost completely overlooked in media coverage of the spill’s environmental consequences).

But behind the headlines on the latest disaster is a far quieter but equally disturbing story of daily carnage. In the same week as the human-created disaster in the Massey mine in West Virginia, local media outlets around the country carried dozens of stories with headlines like “Man Killed in Trench Collapse” or “Fall from Roof Fatal.”

The toll of these routine incidents—14 deaths a day from injuries alone—is obscured because most occur one death at a time.

Month after month, year after year, workers die in trench collapses and falls from roofs. OSHA cites the employer, slaps it with a modest fine (a median penalty of only $3,675 per death in 2007), and points out that simple methods exist to prevent such tragic loss of life. Yet some employers continue to ignore the hazards and workers continue to lose their lives due to this criminal neglect.

Like the high-profile workplace disasters, the vast majority of deaths on the job are entirely preventable. The problem is not a technical one of chemical concentrations, safe machinery, and ventilation, but a political one—simply put, our national system for enforcing health and safety regulations in the workplace is broken.

We know how to prevent trenches from collapsing—by using trench boxes to shore them up. We know how to prevent falls from roofs from becoming fatal—by properly using safety harnesses. We know how to prevent coal mine explosions by minimizing the build-up of coal dust and monitoring methane concentrations. But employers routinely refuse to use these established precautions, and OSHA does not force them to.

WHY NO ENFORCEMENT

First, it’s a problem of resources: OSHA’s budget for enforcement is pitifully inadequate, a situation that has worsened since deregulation began in the Reagan era. In the late 1970s, OSHA had one inspector per 30,000 covered workers; today it’s one per 60,000.

Second, obstacles to any new workplace safety rules, put in place by deregulation ideologues in Congress, have effectively brought the OSHA regulatory process to a complete standstill. As the Center for Progressive Reform puts it, “In the nearly 40 years since its enactment, the OSHA Act has been exposed as a virtually useless tool for establishing occupational health and safety standards.” In the last 13 years, OSHA has issued exactly one new health standard establishing the maximum safe exposure to a chemical, and that under the duress of a court order.

Third, OSHA’s promise that all workers have the right to speak up about unsafe or unhealthy conditions without retaliation has proven to be a cruel joke to those who have risked their jobs by calling OSHA. The agency’s whistleblower protection program is so ineffective that worker advocates cannot in good conscience advise a non-union worker to file an OSHA complaint if he or she wants to keep the job.

The Massey mine explosion demonstrated clearly that the combination of de-unionization, lack of enforcement of safety regulations, minimal penalties for violations, and lack of whistleblower protections is lethal. As several current and former Massey workers noted, the mine was a time bomb waiting to explode, but in a non-union mine, it was keep your mouth shut or lose your job.

HOW TO FIX IT

The solutions to this sorry state of affairs are not complex:

1) Congress should amend the OSH Act and the Mine Safety and Health (MSH) Act to protect whistleblowers and to require serious monetary and criminal penalties for egregious violators whose willful neglect of safety results in workers’ deaths.

Under current law, even the most egregious case of employer neglect can result in no more than a misdemeanor, punishable by a maximum six months in jail. Civil penalties also lag far behind those for violations of other federal law.

New OSHA chief David Michaels noted in a recent Congressional hearing that when a Delaware refinery worker was killed in a sulfuric acid explosion, OSHA assessed a fine of $175,000, while the same incident resulted in EPA fines of $10 million for violations of the Clean Water Act.

2) Congress should dramatically increase the budget for OSHA enforcement.

3) OSHA should fundamentally rework its system for regulating hazards. It should issue a broad “Health and Safety Program Standard” and cite employers under the “General Duty Clause” for unsafe conditions.

These measures would require employers to develop worksite-specific health and safety programs and allow OSHA to enforce the employer’s duty to provide a safe workplace—without having to navigate the endless bureaucratic obstacles to issuing safety or health standards on a one-by-one basis.

4) Congress should close the loophole in the MSH Act that allows companies like Massey to avoid paying fines by contesting most MSHA citations, effectively shutting down the penalty system. Massey contested 3,601 citations in 2009, creating a logjam that prevents MSHA from collecting on assessed penalties.

5) Congress should enact labor law reform so that workers who want to join a union and speak up about unsafe conditions are able to do so.

FIST-POUNDING

But these changes won’t come about because Congress simply decides to do so. Despite much fist-pounding by senators at recent hearings on the mine disaster, they will likely soon forget about worker safety and move on to the next crisis.

A bill introduced in 2009 would go a long way toward strengthening OSHA’s ability to protect workers. The Protecting America’s Workers Act would increase maximum civil and criminal penalties, expand protections for whistleblowers, and extend OSHA protections to public employees, many of whom are now excluded.

Unfortunately, a timid Democratic-controlled Senate Labor Committee appears unwilling to move the bill without Republican support. (Can someone explain to me why it’s not a good idea to force Republicans to cast a vote against worker safety after the recent disasters?)

So perhaps we can expect little from Congress—unless the labor movement and its allies turn up the heat on our representatives. Now—in the wake of a slew of highly publicized and preventable disasters—is the time to demand action, before more workers die.

Tom O’Connor is executive director of the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health, the umbrella organization of 20 state and local COSH groups.

The Tea Party Movement, the Obama Regime and the Growing Fascist Danger in the USA

2010-06-16T18:01:00.001-05:00

From the Revolutionary Organization of Labor

The Tea Party Movement, the Obama Regime and the Growing Fascist Danger in the USA

“What is the source of the influence of fascism over the masses? Fascism is able to attract the masses because it demagogically appeals to their most urgent needs and demands. Fascism not only inflames prejudices that are deeply ingrained in the masses, but also plays on the better sentiments of the masses, on their sense of justice, and sometimes even on their revolutionary traditions.”

–Georgi Dimitroff (Political Report of General Secretary to the
Seventh Congress of the Communist International, August 1935)

Introduction: The USA in Crisis

For the past eighteen months, the world capitalist economy has been in crisis. Within the USA, this crisis has had several distinctive features.

The most striking fact of life in the USA in this period has been the naked give-away by the federal government of at least a few trillion dollars to the criminal Wall Street gang of finance capitalists, the dominant section of the U.S. ruling class, whose frenzied greed was most responsible for the current crisis. Most of this rescue money was provided to Wall Street in two multi-billion dollar bailouts. Both bailouts had the blessings of both the Republican and the Democratic Party. The first was provided under the Bush Regime and the second under the Obama Regime.

At the same time, the U.S. working class as a whole has experienced massive layoffs – eight million new unemployed and more millions chronically underemployed. As in the past, the monopoly capitalists today use the vast “army of the unemployed” as a club with which to beat down the workers still lucky enough to have jobs, to lower their wages, speed up their work, etc.

The oppressed nationality workers are the hardest hit. The Afro-American workers are still the last hired and first fired, and the epidemic of Black youth unemployment is a major source of the devastation being visited upon the Afro-American communities throughout the USA. As the situation of the rest of the working class is becoming increasingly desperate, the ability of the U.S. monopoly capitalist ruling class to mobilize significant numbers to support open attacks on Latino and other immigrant workers is also increasing. And this can only result in the weakening of the position of the working class vis-à-vis capital in each part and as a whole.

On top of all this, many working class families, as well as middle class families, are losing their homes in the epidemic of home foreclosures. And with the drastic reduction in home values and the stock market shocks, manipulation and decline that have accompanied this crisis, many more working class and middle class people have seen their main sources of old age security disappear. This is forcing more elderly workers to remain in jobs and further aggravating youth unemployment and the already parasitic youth culture. Finally, there is an epidemic of small business failures, aggravated by the unwillingness of the big banks that received the Bush and Obama billion dollar bailouts to grant loans to the hard pressed middle class business people. For the U.S. middle class, spoiled by decades of U.S. imperialist hegemony in the capitalist world economy, this calamitous state of affairs has traumatized them.

The Rise of the Tea Party Movement

In this setting, over the past year, a reactionary, right wing, mainly white middle class movement has emerged on the U.S. political scene. The Tea Party Movement has arisen in fits and starts, in one guise or another, under the leadership of one Republican Party politician or right wing media talk show personality and then another. Sometimes
, it has functioned in close cooperation with the Republican Party; at others, it has taken on an anti-Democratic and anti-Republican Party, decidedly anti-government, tone. Initially appearing in local protests around the country against the federal government on April 15th, 2009, the day that federal taxes were due, many wore Revolutionary War costumes with a Boston Tea Party theme. They were protesting the stimulus packages and especially the bank bailouts, which had happened under the George W. Bush Regime first and then under new President Obama.

Former Republican House majority leader, Dick Armey, is the leader of FreedomWorks, one of the three national-level conservative groups that gave “guidance” to this “bottom-up, grass roots” protest “against Washington.” Ironically, Armey had been a bag man for now imprisoned super lobbyist Jack Abramoff, the ultimate Washington insider, and had been driven out of Washington in disgrace. Likewise, Tim Phillips, the President of Americans For Prosperity (AFP), another of these leading groups, was a longtime Republican campaign director and Washington lobbyist for corporate interests, and also connected to Jack Abramoff! AFP is the political tool of the billionaire Koch brothers who are the enemies of public health care and public funding for anything other than war production and pharmaceuticals.

As Hightower Lowdown recently pointed out, “No one professes more hatred for the two-party business-as-usual political system in Washington than those angry Americans who’re caught up in the tea-bag rallies. Yet unbeknownst to most of the mad-as-hellers who have showed up, it was AFP’s Republican-tied lobbyists and political functionaries who cynically financed, organized, and orchestrated the very first tea-bag protest.” (February 2010)

Following the tax protest, the tea party folks next appeared en masse in August 2009 at the Town Hall Meetings on the Health Care Debate. There they weighed in on the side of the medical-industrial complex. (The Koch brothers, Phillips and AFP, for example, through a group they call Patients United Now, sponsored a “Hands Off My Health Care” bus tour.) Their fiery and angry presence in these meetings helped stifle any rational discussion of the virtues of “single-payer,” “socialized medicine,” supported by tremendous numbers of health care professionals, doctors, nurses, etc. as well as by millions of U.S. citizens. Such a plan, if implemented, would eliminate health insurance company private profits and threaten all private profit in the health care arena.

Likewise, the tea partyers, guided by their medical-industrial complex patrons, vociferously condemned any “public option” that could compete against the private insurance companies, pressuring them to improve their health coverage and diminish their corporate profits. Cleverly playing on the tea party folks’ widespread fear of socialism and communism in the USA, the medical-industrial complex, with most Democratic Party politicians as well as the Republicans bought off, was able to totally dominate the health care debate. This occurred despite the fact that an overwhelming majority of U.S. citizens had been in favor of single payer or at least a public option at the outset of the debate and that universal public health care is in the interests of the vast majority of tea party folks as well as the vast majority of the people of the USA.*

* Rather than supporting the just demand for Medicare for All, some tea party folks at town hall meetings selfishly and ignorantly declared that the government should keep its hands off their Medicare, a government program!

The corporate domination of the Town Hall debates, and the health care debate in the whole country, fueled the momentum of the tea party movement. On September 12, 2009, arguably the most dramatic political action yet pulled off by the tea party movement occurred. Tens of thousands marched on Washington, D.C. (The right wing press reported a million people!) Remarkably, no single issue brought the crowd. Their banners, slogans and demands were many and diverse. But the most common thread was white supremacist hatred for President Obama. Having a man of color at the helm of state seemed to underscore for these upset and increasingly impoverished white middle class folks, that the anti-people policies of the “Republicrat” government was taking their country away from them. For Obama’s policies and proposals were quite consistent with the policies of his Republican predecessor, George W. Bush. And the Bush Regime had never come close to inflaming the tea party folks enough to draw them to Washington, D.C.

The next big tea party development took place in January 2010 and involved the startling Scott Brown Republican victory in the Senate race to fill the unexpired term of the late Democratic Senator Edward Kennedy. Brown won the election with 52 percent of the vote compared to 47 percent for Martha Coakley. It was startling because Kennedy, one of the most liberal democrats in the U.S. Senate, had held the seat for forty-seven years and because the Massachusetts congressional delegation was 100% composed of Democratic Party members. Furthermore, the Democratic candidate, state attorney general Coakley, had trounced her Democratic rivals in the primary. She was so confident that she would win that she famously dismissed the suggestion that she should stand outside Fenway Park to shake hands with voters, as Brown had done.

At the outset of the campaign, the national Republican Party had all but conceded the seat to the Democrats. It was tea party movement folks from around the country that gave state senator Brown the momentum to seriously challenge the powerful Massachusetts Democratic Party apparatus.

In contrast to the passionate participation of the tea party movement in Brown’s Republican campaign, there was little incentive for the Democratic Party leadership in Congress to fight to retain this Senate seat for the Democrats. For the Senate makes its own rules and a simple Democratic majority in the Senate could theoretically pass whatever bills that it wants. In actual fact, even with Kennedy and the sixty votes, the Democrats have passed almost no progressive legislation and much negative legislation. In this light, the sixtieth vote, had they held onto the Kennedy seat, would only have served to continue to expose the fact that the Democratic Party as well as the Republican Party serves the interests of the U.S. monopoly capitalist ruling class. For, in the absence of really mass and militant mobilization, the Democrats will continue to “betray” the working class, including organized labor, and the oppressed nationalities, including the 12 million undocumented immigrants in the USA who provide so much of the labor that keeps this country going.*

* Recognizing this Democratic Party “betrayal,” 49% of union families in Massachusetts supported Republican Brown compared to 46% who supported Democratic candidate Coakley. (Hart Research Associates Poll on behalf of the AFL-CIO as reported in the 1/22/10 Wall Street Journal)

It is also noteworthy that Brown had voted for health care reform while in the Massachusetts Legislature. Nevertheless, his most important campaign promise was that he would deprive the Democrats of the sixtieth vote for “ObamaCare.” To further add to the political confusion, Brown’s most important exposure of Coakley leading up to the election was the infusion of money for her campaign from the medical-industrial complex!

Finally, the anger and frustration of the U.S. population is reflected in the following: “Exit poll data following the special election showed that 42% of voters reported casting their ballots to help stop Obama’s health plan from passing. But Brown’s winning margin came not from opponents of reform – but from voters who felt that Obama was not going far enough. ... 18% of people who voted for Barack Obama in 2008 supported Scott Brown in the Senate race. Of that group an overwhelming majority – 82 percent – favored a public option health plan while just 14 percent oppose it.” (Massachusetts Green Rainbow Party Press Release, 1/21/10)

On February 4, 2010, “The Tea Party Nation” began its first national convention in Nashville, Tennessee. About 600 people paid $549 for a ticket to attend the full three day convention, while others paid $349 just to attend the lobster-steak banquet to hear Sarah Palin’s keynote speech. The enormous cost led some tea party activists to criticize the convention as running counter to the coalition’s populist premise.

The opening night speaker was former Republican congressman Tom Tancredo of Colorado. Tancredo claimed that Obama was elected because “we do not have a civics, literacy test before people can vote in this country.” With this formulation, Tancredo was calling for a return to the days of legal segregation in the U.S. South when Afro-American people were systematically denied the right to vote on the basis of so-called “literacy tests.”

Tancredo also attacked the United States “cult of multiculturalism,” in keeping with his anti-immigrant rhetoric. On this basis he thanked god that Republican John McCain had lost the 2008 election for president. Tancredo was thankful that a “socialist ideologue” like Obama was elected, he said, because, for years, like the proverbial frog, the people of the USA had been boiling unawares by slow degrees. Obama turned up the heat so much that voters have awakened and jumped out of the boiling water.

Tancredo’s bottom line message to the tea party folks, overwhelmingly old, white and able to afford the several hundred dollars to register for the convention, is: “This is our country. Take it back!”

The keynote address to the Tea Party Nation convention was delivered by 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate, Sarah Palin. She too directed her rhetoric against Obama. But she also told the tea party folks that, “You’ve got both party machines running scared.” She also suggested that the tea party remain leaderless at least for now. Her fee was $100 thousand dollars for her appearance at the for profit event. Some tea partyers, including a rival Nashville group, criticized Judson Phillips, the convention organizer and Nashville attorney, for profiting from the event. Both Phillips and Palin vaguely promised that they would put their “convention earnings” back to “the cause.” But beyond the petty corruption of these “outsider-insiders,” the convention was, to some extent, an effort to link the tea party movement with the Republican Party.

A week after the Tea Party Nation convention, the South Carolina GOP agreed to create a “Tea Party Republicans” group to coordinate the two group’s activities in Greenville and Spartanburg. Less than a week later that arrangement had already fallen apart because some tea party groups refused to join up with the Republicans.

A few days later, Karl Rove, the main political strategist of former Republican President George W. Bush, advised both the Tea Party movement and the Republican Party to remain separate from each other. Rove understands that the Tea Party movement is a gateway to all the forces of right wing reaction in the USA today. Rove understands that to tie the movement too closely with the currently unpopular Republican Party will limit the movement’s ability to continue to draw millions of new, sometimes previously apolitical people, into right wing political activism.

At the same time, Rove recognizes that, “The GOP cannot possibly hope to control the dynamics of the highly decentralized galaxy of groups that make up the tea party movement. There will be troubling excesses and these will hurt Republicans if the party is formally associated with tea party groups.” (“Where the Tea Parties Should Go From Here,” Wall Street Journal, 2-17-10)

The fact that Rove, the chief of staff of arguably the most excessive and repressive U.S. President of the past hundred years, admits that there “will be troubling excesses” within the ranks of the tea party movement is important to note. Last month, David Barstow of the New York Times observed, “a significant undercurrent within the Tea Party movement … has less in common with the Republican Party than with the Patriot Movement ... It is a sprawling rebellion, but running through it is a narrative of impending tyranny.” (“Tea Party Lights Fuse for Rebellion on Right”) Already a resurgent militia movement, the John Birch Society, openly fascist followers of Lyndon LaRouche, and Glenn Beck’s 9/12 Project have all become “legitimate” voices within the Tea Party movement.

The problem with this Tea Party/Patriot Movement motion is two-fold. First and foremost, its answers to the threat of tyranny are to become the shock troops for the tyranny of the very system and ruling class that its ranks have been mobilized to oppose. This provides the general explanation for why such folks who have recently lost jobs or health coverage are calling for the elimination of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. And, secondly, its “narrative of impending tyranny” is largely true!* This means that the Tea Party/Patriot Movement motion has the potential to grow more powerful as the economic crisis of U.S. capitalism continues to worsen.

* For example, Barstow points out: “Patriot ideology … holds that governments and economies are controlled by networks who wield power through exclusive entities like the Bilderberg Group, the Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations.”

Obama and the Federal Government Preside Over the U.S. Empire in Decline

Barack Obama is well suited for the difficult task of presiding over an orderly march of the U.S. population to impoverishment in the desperate effort of the U.S. monopoly capitalist and imperialist ruling class to save itself and its hegemonic position in the world capitalist system. Meanwhile, much of the “left,” along with the Afro-American, Latino and organized labor members of the U.S. working class, were seduced by petty bourgeois democratic illusions about the “power” and the “promise” of “voting for the Democrats.” Then they were seduced by the rhetoric of the Obama-Biden Democratic Administration (whose campaign had actually been largely funded by Wall Street) into accepting the government’s second give away (following the Bush give away) to the most greedy and powerful bankers and financiers on Wall Street.*

* The Bush and Obama multi-billion dollar bailouts of Wall Street are a dramatic confirmation of the observation by Simon Johnson, who had been the chief economist at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in 2007 and 2008. Johnson wrote that the “financial oligarchy” had “captured” the U.S. government. He added that it will lead to a new Great Depression if not resisted and stopped! (“The Quiet Coup,” May 2009 Atlantic Magazine)

During the eight years of the George W. Bush Regime, the Afro-American people became the most unwilling basic sector of the U.S. population to enlist, re-enlist, or participate in the war machine to keep the U.S. Empire afloat. With the advent of the Barack Obama Administration, the situation has been reversed. Even more striking, the Afro-American people have been among the hardest hit by sub-prime mortgages and by the home foreclosure crisis; they have experienced the highest levels of youth unemployment and lay-offs. (This is the infamous “last hired and first fired” syndrome.) Nevertheless, despite the devastating impact of the economic crisis of the past twenty months or so on their communities, with Obama in the White House, it is the Afro-American people who, surveys still show, remain, at least for now, the most optimistic about their future and most loyal to the Obama Regime!

Among the millions of mostly Latino immigrant workers, there is also optimism about the Obama-Democratic Party government carrying out immigration “reform” that will ease the terrible repression that they have experienced. And this hope still persists, in spite of the fact that, in Obama’s first year, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) immigration raids have continued to grow and the general U.S. population is increasingly being urged to scapegoat the immigrants in our midst.

Finally, although virtually none of the campaign promises to the AFL-CIO, to the organized section of the U.S. working class have been kept, the leaders of the trade union movement, while raising some protest, have tried to keep their members in line behind Obama and the democrats.

This march to impoverishment, however, is still only in its beginning stages. And the challenge to the U.S. monopoly capitalist and imperialist ruling class and President Obama to lead the masses of working people and oppressed nationalities in the USA to poverty without us opting to revolt, without us turning to socialist revolution for the way out of our difficulties, will only get more difficult.

In December 2009, the National Organization of Women (NOW) warned that “a stealth move is under way in Washington, D.C. to recover the billions spent on bailing out the banks and Wall Street by cutting benefits under the Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid programs. A special commission would address the federal deficit by considering cuts to entitlements programs and would fast track recommendations by an up or down vote in Congress … a reverse Robin Hood …”

In the November-December 2009 issue of the important ruling class journal, Foreign Affairs, no less an authority than C. Fred Bergsten, Assistant for International Economic Affairs to the National Security Council under Republican President Richard Nixon and Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs under Democratic President Jimmy Carter, as well as a major architect of the Rockefeller-led Tri-Lateral Commission, had a major article entitled, “The Dollar and the Deficits.”*

* NOW points out that, “The fear-mongering over the national debt has been promoted mostly by billionaire Peter G. Peterson who made his fortune doing takeover deals on Wall Street …” In fact, in the early 1970’s Peterson had been Secretary of Commerce under President Nixon and then was Chairman of Wall Street giant, Lehman Brothers, for many years. Peterson now runs Foreign Affairs magazine as “chairman.” Foreign Affairs magazine is the organ of the Council on Foreign Relations which the Patriot Movement is rightly warning about. Bergsten’s current job is as the Director of the Peter G. Peterson Institute for International Economic Affairs. He is a Peterson employee writing in a Peterson-led magazine.

Bergsten is concerned about the mounting debt of the USA to the rest of the world and the potential for the USA to become subordinated to countries to which it is in debt. Bergsten calls for “budget rectitude.”

Bergsten proposes a few procedural reforms, including: 1. “The implementation of ‘pay-as-you-go’ rules – requiring that “all increases in spending or tax cuts be financed by savings elsewhere in the budget.” 2. Statutory creation of a ‘fiscal future commission’ – a federal body whose recommendations are subject to an up-or-down vote in Congress.

It is important to note that President Obama is now implementing the Bergsten-Peterson plan! He has insistently applied the pay-as-you-go rule to his (and the Democrats’) health care reform plan! On February 18th, after Congress refused to create a fiscal future commission, President Obama issued an Executive Order creating his own commission. Obama’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform is being led by Erskine Bowles, formerly chief of staff of Democratic President Bill Clinton and by former Republican Senator Alan Simpson. The recommendations of Obama’s Commission won’t be able to compel the Congress to vote up or down on such key social safety net issues as Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare; but it will have bipartisan clout with which to pressure Congress to enact such regressive anti-people laws.

To bolster the U.S. economy Bergsten calls for three immediate reforms:

1. “Containing long-term medical costs.” The medical-industrial complex has successfully blocked positive healthcare reform so the impending healthcare bill, with budget rectitude, will mean worse healthcare for the people of the USA.

2. “Comprehensive Social Security reform.” Raising the retirement age and shrinking the benefit.

3. “Raising taxes on consumption.” Such taxes are always regressive, targeting the working class and the poor, for they spend a bigger share of their money (consume) to survive than the richer and more privileged classes.

Bergsten’s naked imperialist proposals also include “increasing productivity,” i.e. the intensification of the exploitation of the U.S. working class; and “cutting corporate tax rates” so as to “create incentives for both U.S. and foreign firms to locate their production in the United States.”

Obama’s presidential campaign and election were largely seen as a repudiation of the George W. Bush Regime. Nevertheless, as a loyal representative of the U.S. monopoly capitalist and imperialist ruling class, the Obama-Biden Administration has carried out policies in defense of the U.S. Empire remarkably consistent with, though more nuanced and clever than, those of the Bush Regime which it replaced.

On the economic front: the Obama Regime, as soon as it was installed in the White House, pushed through a second edition $700 billion dollars plus stimulus package, featuring massive bailouts to the Wall Street rich. It was virtually a replication of the Bush-Paulson (and Pelosi) $700 billion dollar stimulus package, supported by both Obama and McCain, in the run-up to the 2008 election. Neither bailout loosened up loan opportunities to help stop the massive numbers of home and small business foreclosures. The two bailouts did prop up the criminal Wall Street finance capitalists and their predatory system that had brought the country and the world into acute economic crisis.

With regard to health care reform, the Obama Administration took single-payer and universal health care coverage off the table before the debate had even begun. Democratic Party Congressional and Presidential leadership, thoroughly compromised by the same pharmaceutical companies, hospital corporations and insurance companies as the Republican Party, have helped create a situation where the current “reform” proposal will, if passed, provide relief for few working people but provide a new boondoggle for the private businesses that profit from our medical misfortune.

On the education front: Within the past few weeks, at a “failing school” in Rhode Island, all the teachers and administrators were fired. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and President Obama gave their blessing, much to the shock and chagrin of the two teachers unions and the AFL-CIO. In response to the Rhode Island firings, TV political humorist Bill Maher asked Obama/Duncan, where are the “good” teachers going to come from to replace these “bad” teachers? Maher then pointed out that there are poor teachers to be found everywhere, that Harvard University has some bad teachers and that studies have shown that the key predictor of academic success is not a good teacher, but a supportive home environment, parents, books in the living room, etc.

The Obama/Duncan reaction should not have surprised anyone. Prior to Duncan’s elevation to Education Secretary by Obama, he had previously been the superintendent of the Chicago public schools. In that capacity Duncan had been a strong proponent of three right wing Bush Regime directives: No Child Left Behind (NCLB), charter schools and merit pay for “high performing” teachers. In poor city schools, like Collins High in Chicago’s Lawndale District, many students were drawn from homeless shelters in economically devastated neighborhoods. When the students did poorly on test scores, every teacher was fired. The replacement teachers were fired when test scores didn’t rise. Then Duncan turned the failing schools over to the Army, Navy and Marines to run as charter schools. They continued to receive public funding but functioned as private schools not bound by District policy on union collective-bargaining agreements or curriculum. They are able to function as recruiting grounds for cannon fodder for the U.S. imperialist military machine.
On the political front: Early on, the new Obama Justice Department, in collaboration with Bush Administration colleagues, went into court to support the granting of immunity from prosecution to the monopoly telephone companies that had eavesdropped on the conversations of millions of their customers in the name of “national security” in violation of what had been existing U.S. law.* ICE raids and deportations of immigrants have sharply increased under the Democratic Obama Administration. Recently, a Justice Department official overruled his investigators who had found Bush Justice Department officials guilty of sanctioning torture. So the Obama Regime has held no senior or mid-level Bush Regime official responsible for the illegal torture carried out by the USA. Finally, just a few weeks ago, in late February 2010, the U.S. Congress, with the Obama Administration’s blessing, renewed the repressive USA PATRIOT Act.
* “During the campaign season, Senator Obama not only voted for the new FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act), providing unprecedented surveillance powers over its citizens to the federal government, but even supported amnesty for the monopoly telephone companies which had already provided FISA type information on the people of the USA to the Bush Regime, while it was still clearly illegal to do so.” (Ray O’ Light Newsletter #51, December 2008)

On the question of war and peace: The Obama Regime has continued the U.S. imperialist occupation of Iraq; it has expanded the U.S. military aggression in Afghanistan, largely supplanting its own NATO subordinate forces; and it has openly invaded Pakistan. In Latin America, as a culmination of its successful five month-long coup d’etat in Honduras, the Obama Regime formalized its agreement with the U.S. puppet Uribe government in Colombia to have seven new U.S. bases in Colombia, a massive new military launching pad against the leftward political trend that has improved the lives of millions of Latin American people over the past decade and has threatened the very existence of the oligarchies that have ruled Latin America jointly with U.S. imperialism for the past century and more. And it has introduced a large U.S. military presence in earthquake-ravaged Haiti, supplanting its United Nations surrogate armed force there.

After more than eight years of unending “war on terror” and “homeland security” which has continued seamlessly from Bush-Cheney to Obama-Biden, unending war is leaving its military stamp on every aspect of U.S. society. There is now a real question about whether the finance capitalists have a military or civilian government running the U.S.

In response to President-elect Obama’s selection of retired four-star Marine General James Jones to be his National Security Adviser and the apparent choice of retired Navy Admiral Dennis Blair to be his Director of Intelligence, Thomas Schweich who had served the Bush Regime in several high-level jobs, including deputy assistant secretary of state for international law enforcement affairs, wrote an article in the Washington Post expressing alarm at the “silent military coup d’etat” that he had witnessed firsthand in several senior capacities at the Bush State Department over the previous four years.

With remarkable candor, Schweich’s opening paragraph is as follows: “We no longer have a civilian-led government. It is hard for a life-long Republican and son of a retired Air Force colonel to say this, but the most unnerving legacy of the Bush administration is the encroachment of the Department of Defense into a number of aspects of civilian government. Our Constitution is at risk.” (“The Pentagon is muscling in everywhere,” Washington Post, 12-21-08)

Among other things, Schweich points out that the Pentagon had already drawn up plans “to deploy 20,000 U.S. soldiers inside our borders.”

The Anatomy of the Tea Party Movement and the Wisdom of the Communist International

In light of the Obama Administration’s record thus far in the face of the continuing economic crisis, it is no wonder that “politics as usual” is being cast aside by the increasingly impoverished and demoralized masses of the U.S. population. Tragically, the anger and indignation, justly felt by the masses, is being provided no vehicle for political expression by the communist left or any left wing tendency.

In a recent editorial entitled, “Tea Party Hypocrisy,” The Nation reports that forty-one percent of respondents to a recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll had a positive opinion of the tea party movement as compared to only 35% for the Democratic Party. Significantly, an even fewer 28% were favorable to the Republican Party. The editorial aptly observes that, while it is “a right wing reactionary movement,” “because the details of the tea party’s world view remain obscure, it’s startlingly popular with the broader public.” (The Nation, 3-1-10)

In August 1935, almost seventy-five years ago, the world’s leading anti-fascist fighter, Bulgarian Communist leader Georgi Dimitroff, hero of the Reichstag Fire Trial in Nazi Germany, presented his General Secretary’s political report to the Seventh Congress of the Communist International (Comintern). This famous report, with its appeal for the Communists to lead the working class and peoples of the world in a united front against fascism, became the political basis for the Comintern and Soviet Union-led Allied victory over the Fascist Axis Powers of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Imperial Japan in World War II.

Dimitroff’s deep understanding of fascism, reflected in the 75 year old quote which opens this Newsletter, remarkably characterizes the current, still amorphous and chameleon-like “tea party movement” that is emerging in the USA in 2009-2010 under the pressures of the economic crisis of the world capitalist system and the impending collapse of the U.S. Empire.

1. The Tea Party movement plays on the better sentiments of the masses, on their sense of justice, and sometimes even on their revolutionary traditions. The name “Tea Party” is itself a prime example of this. It is drawn directly from the 1770’s “American” Revolution against British colonialism and refers to the famous Boston Tea Party of 1773 that protested oppressive taxation by Britain’s King George. The Boston Tea Party significantly accelerated the revolutionary process that culminated in the independence of the colonies from England and the formation of the United States of America.

Last April 15th, the day that government taxes were due, small but spirited local demonstrations sprouted up all over the country. The mostly white and middle class demonstrators were indignant about the government bailout of the banks and financial institutions that had been responsible for the economic crisis, while the tens of thousands facing home foreclosures and rising small business bankruptcies received minimal relief. The corporate government tyranny they were protesting was indeed real and deserving of being outraged about and fought against.

The Patriot Movement, the Minutemen, the new Oath Keepers, and militia movements generally, as well as Friends of Liberty, a coalition encompassing forces in Glenn Beck’s 9/12 Project, the John Birch Society and the militia movement all experiencing new growth from the exploding ranks of the tea party movement, likewise all draw on the revolutionary traditions of the USA.

2. The Tea Party Movement demagogically appeals to urgent needs and demands. – Even Karl Rove, President George W. Bush’s chief of staff, admits that “the bank bailout in the fall of 2008 may have lit the fuse …,” i.e., when Bush was still President. In a time when white middle class people in the USA were losing their homes, small businesses and retirement savings, a time of great uncertainty and growing desperation, the tea party movement stood for keeping (middle class) folks’ money in their own individual possession in opposition to any public spending. So, the tea partyers were further enraged at the second Wall Street bail-out, this time under Obama. And, following its bailout of Wall Street, even though it was not the same give-away that marked the federal government rescue of the Wall Street financiers, they were outraged once again at the government bail-out of General Motors and Chrysler, two U.S. auto companies with a heavily unionized work force that include a large percentage of Afro-American workers. And the monopoly capitalist rulers made sure to fan their resentment and hostility toward unions, union workers and Black people.

Tragically, it is the right wing, led, ironically, by some of the nastiest and most corrupt former Washington insiders – former House Republican majority leader Dick Armey, Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform (ATR), Tim Phillips of Americans for Prosperity (AFP), and Patrick Pizzella of the Conservative Action Project – all former collaborators with now imprisoned super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who have provided a political vehicle for the indignation and outrage that so many U.S. people justifiably feel against the Washington, D.C. federal government.

As Rove describes it, “the movement’s activity reached a fever pitch in August with raucous town hall meetings where senators and congressmen felt the burning-hot opposition of tea partyers to ObamaCare.” It was during this August 2009 Congressional summer recess, that the tea party movement, funded by the medical-industrial complex of big Pharma, hospital corporations and the insurance giants, provided these corporate behemoths with the “ground troops” with which to dominate the health care “reform” “debate.”

Of course, the Obama Administration had already made an agreement with big Pharma (through chief of staff Rahm Emanuel) not to disturb the obscene profits of the pharmaceutical industry with any “reform.” And the Democratic Administration took single-payer health care off the table before engaging in the “debate.” Thus, there was not much left with which to attract and mobilize the workers and oppressed of the USA for positive health care reform. And, in fact, there was no concrete ObamaCare proposal at all to defend!

So, falling prey to the demagogic appeal of the medical-industrial complex, tea party folks, scared witless by their sudden loss in standard of living and threatened by an unknown health care “reform,” became unwitting participants in the destruction of their own healthcare safety net. (“Keep your government hands off my Medicare.”)

3. The Tea Party Movement inflames prejudices deeply ingrained in the masses. – White Supremacy, anti-immigrant “nativism,” and anti-socialism/anti-communism have all been ideological cornerstones of U.S. imperialism since it emerged more than a century ago. All three were key ingredients in the healthcare debate debacle that served as a major launching pad for the tea party movement and the right wing resurgence in the USA today.

Equating healthcare reform with “ObamaCare” gave this cause a Black face, an attractive target for those afflicted with the disease of white supremacy. As we pointed out at the time, “…the use of white supremacy to defend medical-industrial complex mega-profits is especially insidious. The insurance companies and Big Pharma have identified health care reform with President Obama, taking advantage of the fact that the President is a man of color and tapping into the deep-seated white supremacy of the vast majority of U.S. citizens to galvanize opposition to any real reform of health care. The mobilization of irrational and hysterical white supremacist mobs to the town-hall meetings has been key to the success of the big lie in the health care debate. These mobs also represent a new source of recruits for the mounting drive toward fascism in the United States.” (“The Current U.S. Health-Care Debate and the Fight for Workers Power,” Ray O’ Light Newsletter Number #56, September-October 2009)

One of the biggest arguments against the “ObamaCare” straw man has been that so-called “illegal immigrants” would benefit from universal healthcare. The growing number of ICE raids and deportations and the call to take back “our” country by prominent right wing politicians like Tom Tancredo, so full of chauvinist poison toward Latino documented and undocumented workers, is a reflection of the importance of anti-immigrant politics to the build-up of the tea party movement.

Finally, the unprecedented and virtually unchallenged anti-communism in the USA was used by the medical-industrial complex in the healthcare debate to suppress and drown out the massive popular cry for a single-payer plan, which is, in fact, a form of “socialized medicine.” Despite the fact that millions of U.S. citizens and health care professionals were strongly in favor of it, other than the principled Ohio Congressman Kucinich, almost no Democrat dared even defend single payer. This anti-communist hysteria worked so well for the insurance companies that, incredibly, they were able to characterize Obama and ObamaCare as “socialist” and wipe out any public option at all!

2008 Republican Vice-Presidential candidate, Sarah Palin, had inanely declared that this time of capitalist economic crisis and collapse is “no time to experiment with socialism.” And, while the financial system and the auto industry were being bailed out by the government, there had been no strong rejoinder: “What better time to experiment with socialism!” Today, while most tea party movement folks are skeptical of Republican as well as Democratic Party politicians, Palin, armed with her anti-socialism, anti-communism rhetoric, remains the most popular politician among their ranks.

The anti-socialism/anti-communism prejudice runs so deep in the USA that Glenn Beck, in his televised keynote address to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at the end of February, attacked the concept of “community” as a “cancer.” To wild applause, he labeled this alleged tumor of “community” as the evil “progressivism” and told his followers to “eradicate it” from the country!

With Beck, we now have the face and voice of the militia movement brought into the mainstream life of U.S. society!

The Right Opportunist Sins of the U.S. Left and the Suicide Attack on the IRS

“If you’re not outraged, than you’re not paying attention.”

–Bumper Sticker

On February 18, 2010, Joseph Andrew Stack deliberately flew the airplane he was piloting into an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) building in Austin, Texas, killing himself and one IRS employee in the process. The monopoly capitalist dominated mainstream mass media has portrayed Stack as a right wing lunatic. The right wing media as well as new right wing Republican political stars such as newly elected Massachusetts Republican Senator Scott Brown helped perpetrate this fraud by claiming “sympathy” with Stack. The reality, as reflected in Stack’s Suicide Letter is that, after years of bitter experience, he had finally concluded that the capitalist system has outlived its usefulness. Moreover, at least in the conclusion to his suicide note, he sounds a clearly pro-communist clarion call!*

* “The communist creed: From each according to his ability, to each according to his need. The capitalist creed: From each according to his gullibility, to each according to his greed.” – Joe Stack’s Suicide Letter, 2-18-10

Thus, Stack took a clear political stance in opposition to that of both the government and the “anti-government” tea party movement! For both the Obama government and the tea party movement are striving to defend the survival of the capitalist system as their top priority; and they are both anti-socialist and anti-communist to the core.

The Obama-Biden Regime has the onerous responsibility of making sure that the U.S. monopoly capitalist ruling class, and especially the U.S. financial oligarchy, continues to make mega-profits while, at the same time, keeping the masses of the U.S. population loyal to the monopoly capitalist system and passive and accepting of their lot, all in the face of the collapse of the U.S. capitalist economy. Obama’s biggest challenge is to preside over the substantial decline in the living standards of the people of the USA, after decades of living high at the expense of the international working class and the oppressed peoples, without the working people of the USA revolting against the literally bankrupt capitalist system.

Despite its strident and white supremacist-fueled criticism of the Obama Regime, the tea party “movement” represents, politically, merely a variety of different panaceas, bromides, hosannas, incantations and other metaphysical and mystical paths all of which are aimed at redirecting the anger and frustrations of the increasingly impoverished middle class away from the Wall Street financiers and their U.S. government stooges and toward the international working class, including organized labor and the massive immigrant worker population in the USA, and “foreigners,” especially non-whites, in general. In this way the tea party movement (with its mostly Republican Party-connected operatives) shares a common platform with Obama and the Democratic Party-controlled Congress in defense of the tottering U.S. imperialist Empire, in defense of maintaining its survival.

This is the motivation behind such tea party proposals as blocking and destroying any public health care – Medicare for none instead of Medicare for all, destroying “big unions,” eliminating Social Security. In the name of individual freedom, the tea party forces have been largely silent on the recent shocking Supreme Court decision to “free” corporations (as “individuals”) to spend as much money as they want in elections – opposing any limitations on corporate tyranny. What the tea party principle is reduced to is “the every man for himself” message of right wing media celebrity, Glenn Beck, attacking even the very notion of “community.”

What, then, do Glenn Beck and the Tea Party Movement have in common with Joe Stack?* Anger and Outrage. Glenn Beck’s hate-filled keynote speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference, full of anger and outrage, strikes the same emotional tone as Joe Stack.

* In fact, Beck now poses as a libertarian against “big government” after previously pushing the big-government USA PATRIOT Act or the even-bigger-government bank bailout.

Meanwhile, practically the entire U.S. left, with its fatal embrace of the Democratic Party, the party now in power, has only tactical differences with U.S. monopoly capitalism and imperialism. It has no indignation, no outrage about anything at all. The revisionist Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA) is the ultimate example of this right opportunist “weakness.” For at least the past fifty years, the CPUSA has supported the Democratic Party and its political candidates and representatives against everyone else. In a recent article on the tea party movement, for example, CPUSA leader Jarvis Tyner calls on the people to rally around the bloody Obama Regime. In the name of opposing the tea party’s backward march (“the ultra right”), Tyner and the CPUSA defend the U.S. imperialist state, the imperialist status quo. Tyner has not one criticism of Obama, the helmsman of the chief imperialist country in the world, the main bulwark of world capitalism!

No wonder, Joe Stack, when he finally saw the light, felt so politically isolated that he carried out the desperate and counter-productive individual terrorist act of a suicide airplane attack on the IRS building in Austin, Texas.

The Struggle to Resist the Drive toward Fascism in the USA

“The accession to power of fascism is not an ordinary succession of one bourgeois government by another, but a substitution of one state form of class domination of the bourgeoisie — bourgeois democracy — by another form — open terrorist dictatorship. ... [B]efore the establishment of a fascist dictatorship, bourgeois governments usually pass through a number of preliminary stages and adopt a number of reactionary measures which directly facilitate the accession to power of fascism. Whoever does not fight the reactionary measures of the bourgeoisie and the growth of fascism at these preparatory stages is not in a position to prevent the victory of fascism, but, on the contrary, facilitates that victory.”

–Georgi Dimitroff (Political Report of General Secretary to the Seventh Congress of the Communist International, August 1935)

From 1917 until about 1950, the Lenin and Stalin-led Soviet Union and the Communist International were the decisive force in the unprecedented successes of the world-wide movement against international capitalism and for socialism. The construction of socialism in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), the establishment of an effective Communist International, the utter defeat of world fascism, the establishment and growth of a socialist camp that was comparable in size and strength to the capitalist camp, and the victory of the Chinese Communist Party-led national democratic revolution in China in 1949 were the remarkable products of this communist movement.

This hard won wisdom of the Communist movement on the struggle against fascism is alien to most of the U.S. left today. For it is anti-Soviet and anti-Communist International to its core. Indeed, most of this left retains tactical political cooperation with the Democratic Party, the political party that is at the helm of the main bulwark of world capitalism. It is a left that is the product of sixty years of U.S. imperialist hegemony in the world capitalist system and more than forty years of the domination of the international communist movement by right revisionism, characterized by rapprochement with and bourgeois democratic illusions about U.S. imperialism. Its affiliation with the Democratic Party and connections to U.S. imperialism render this left incapable of seeing the tea party movement as anything other than a Republican Party vehicle which threatens the Democrats. This applies not only to the CPUSA but to The Nation and almost all other left organizations and magazines in the USA today.

Alexander Cockburn, writing in The Nation this week in opposition to the editors of The Nation as well as most of the rest of the U.S. left, has it right when he says, “Under the leadership of Obama – cheered into office by 99.9 percent of the left – and a Democratic Congress, we have a whole new war and no antiwar movement of any heft; a bailout for Wall Street; an awful health bill connived at by both parties; the prospect of loan guarantees for new nuclear energy plants; a huge hike in defense spending, … an impending onslaught on Social Security. Constitutional abuses endorsed or instigated by the White House continue in a straight sequence from the Bush years. Response from the left? No twitch in the morgue.” (The Nation, 3-22-10)

This left has failed to fight passionately and fight hard and among the masses in the struggle against capital, against the tyrannical Obama-Biden Regime in the USA today – against the bank bailouts, the health care sellout, the ongoing imperialist wars, the special oppression of the Afro-American people and the immigrant workers, the accelerating loss of civil liberties under the USA PATRIOT Act, the Homeland Security Department, etc., the increasingly difficult position of women and youth, the fight for jobs. As a result, this anti-Soviet and anti-Communist International “left” has aided and abetted the Tea Party movement and the Patriot movement in their mobilization of the fascist shock troops of today and tomorrow. Unchallenged, this left will continue to help the Tea Party movement pave the way for a “Fortress America.”

For the USA is already the biggest debtor country in the world and its creditors in China and elsewhere want to get paid or at least have the potential to get paid at some point. In conjunction with this tremendous pressure, the current acute economic crisis in the USA is continuing to inflict powerful blows on the tottering U.S. Empire. And U.S. imperialism is constantly shifting the burden of this worsening situation onto the shoulders of the masses of the U.S. population, onto the oppressed nationalities and the working class in the first place. But the imperialist burden is also evidenced in the rapidly deteriorating position of the vast U.S. white middle class. This crisis has made it clear that the dictatorship of U.S. finance capital can no longer rule in the old way. It is continually providing more fuel to the fire of fascism.

Fascism in power was described by the Thirteenth Plenum of the Executive Committee of the Communist International as “the open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic and most imperialist elements of finance capital.”

Whether, fascism comes to power as a militarized defense of the constitutional government against the fascist mass movement that is currently being gathered together around the Tea Party/Patriot movements in particular, or, it comes to power by the overthrow of the government by the fascist mass movement in the name of defending the constitutional liberties of the people from the corporate tyranny of the Executive, Legislative and/or Supreme Court branches of the U.S. government, it will represent the last desperate stand of U.S. finance capital. And the working class and the peoples of the USA and the world as well as its creditors, its finance capitalist rivals, had better watch out.

To defeat this fascist drive in the USA, a revitalized international communist movement, capable of uniting the international working class on the basis of consistent proletarian internationalism, is needed.

Let comrade Dimitroff and the Communist International who successfully fought and smashed fascism have the last word here: “Whoever does not fight the reactionary measures of the bourgeoisie and the growth of fascism at these preparatory stages is not in a position to prevent the victory of fascism, but, on the contrary, facilitates that victory.”

“For the proletariat needs the truth and there is nothing so harmful to its cause as plausible, respectable petty-bourgeois lies.”

–V.I. Lenin,
Selected Works, Vol. X, p. 41

Al Jazeera English on the NPA

2010-06-15T21:08:00.001-05:00

Mexican Capitalist Police Attack Miners on Strike

2010-06-13T14:42:00.002-05:00

Israel's Security Cannot Come at Any Price

2010-06-13T12:17:00.002-05:00

From the National Lawyer's Guild International

Legal Analysis of Flotilla Attack by Dr. Ben Saul

Israel's response to the Gaza flotilla is another unfortunate example of Israel clothing its conduct in the language of international law while flouting it in practice. If you believe Israeli government spokesmen, Israel is metabolically incapable of violating international law, placing it alongside Saddam Hussein's Information Minister in self-awareness.

Raid Illegal Under San Remo Manual

Israel claims that paragraph 67(a) of the San Remo Manual on Armed Conflicts at Sea justified the Israeli operation against the flotilla. (The San Remo Manual is an authoritative statement of international law applicable to armed conflicts at sea.)

Paragraph 67(a) only permits attacks on the merchant vessels of neutral countries where they "are believed on reasonable grounds to be carrying contraband or breaching a blockade, and after prior warning they intentionally and clearly refuse to stop, or intentionally and clearly resist visit, search or capture".

Israel argues that it gave due warnings, which were not heeded.

What Israel conveniently omits to mention is that the San Remo Manual also contains rules governing the lawfulness of the blockade itself, and there can be no authority under international law to enforce a blockade which is unlawful. Paragraph 102 of the Manual prohibits a blockade if "the damage to the civilian population is, or may be expected to be, excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated from the blockade".

The background to that "proportionality" rule is the experience of past world wars where naval blockades had devastating effects on civilian populations.

There is little question that Israel's blockade of Gaza is disproportionate in legal terms. The proportionality rule requires an assessment of the military advantage against the harmful effects on civilians. Israel claims that the blockade is necessary to prevent Hamas from mounting indiscriminate rocket attacks on Israeli civilians.

Such attacks were well documented by the UN's Goldstone Report and are a serious security threat to Israel. Israel has every right to protect its civilians from indiscriminate terrorist attacks by Hamas.

The proportionality principle requires, however, that Israel's security cannot come at any price. A balancing of interests is necessary to ensure that civilians should not pay too dearly for the security needs of others.

Safeguarding the precious lives of innocents and respecting their dignity as fellow humans is the necessary burden that international law imposes on war. That is why Israel reveals its contempt for international law when, for example in the past, its leaders have pledged to "destroy 100 homes for every rocket fired".

Gaza Blockade Itself Illegal

The harmful effects of the blockade on Gazan civilians have included the denial of the basics of life, such as food, fuel, and medicine, as well widespread economic collapse.

The UN agency on the ground, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), has described a "severe humanitarian crisis" in Gaza in relation to human development, health, education, "the psychological stress" on the population, high unemployment (at 45 per cent) and poverty (with 300,000 people living beneath the poverty line), and the collapse of commerce, industry and agriculture.

Such effects are manifestly excessive in relation to Israel's security objectives and cannot possibly satisfy the conditions of a lawful blockade. Disrupting wildly inaccurate rockets from being fired at relatively underpopulated areas of southern Israel cannot possibly justify the acute disruption of the daily lives and livelihoods of more than one million Gazans. Nor is it lawful to seek to pressure Hamas by instrumentally impoverishing its civilian supporters.

It seems that Israel is the only entity incapable of recognizing the effects of its blockade. The United States, European Union and numerous independent sources have deeply criticized the disproportionate harm to Gazan civilians.

The UN Secretary General has condemned the "unacceptable suffering" caused by the blockade. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has criticized it for violating the law of armed conflict. The UN Human Rights Council, UN Humanitarian Affairs Coordinator, Oxfam, and Amnesty International have all strongly condemned it.

The UN's Goldstone Report found that blockade may even amount to international crimes: "Israeli acts that deprive Palestinians in the Gaza Strip of their means of subsistence, employment, housing and water, that deny their freedom of movement and their right to leave and enter their own country… could lead a competent court to find that the crime of persecution, a crime against humanity, has been committed."

Israel's Offers on Cargo Not Credible

Israel has further argued that it offered the Gaza flotilla an opportunity to deliver aid through the proper Israeli channels.

It is very difficult to regard that offer as sincere given Israel's track record. Israel's practices concerning the transit of goods through Israeli entry points has been arbitrary at best and deliberately obstructive at worst.

The UN notes that everything from crayons to soccer balls to musical instruments has been denied entry into Gaza - hardly rocket components. Goods sit idle for months or are never delivered at all. In such circumstances, no-one could have any confidence that the goods would ever reach Gaza.

Clear Violations of International Law

As yet, it is still unknown exactly what happened on board the flotilla vessels boarded by Israeli forces. Even at this early stage, however, some international law matters are fairly clear.

First, absent any intention by the flotilla to attack Israel, or any suspicion of piracy, it was unlawful for Israel to forcibly board foreign merchant vessels in international waters.

Secondly, such action amounted to an unlawful interference in the enforcement jurisdiction of the "flag-States" (countries of registration) of those vessels, such as Turkey.

Thirdly, it violated the fundamental principle of freedom of navigation on the high seas, codified in the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea of 1982.

Fourthly, under international human rights law, the apprehension and detention of those on board the vessels likely amounts to arbitrary, unlawful detention, contrary to article 9 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, since there is lawful basis for detention.

Fifthly, if Israeli forces killed people, they may not only have infringed the human right to life, but they may also have committed serious international crimes. Under article 3 of the Rome Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Acts against the Safety of Maritime Navigation of 1988, it is an international crime for any person to seize or exercise control over a ship by force, and also a crime to injure or kill any person in the process.

Ironically, that treaty was adopted after Palestinian terrorists hijacked the Italian cruise ship, the Achille Lauro, in 1985, in which a Jewish American was killed.

In such cases, any claim of self-defense by Israeli forces is irrelevant. The treaty necessarily adopts a strict approach. One cannot attack a ship and then claim self-defense if the people on board resist the unlawful use of violence.

Legally speaking, government military forces rappelling onto a ship to illegally capture it are treated no differently than other criminals. The right of self-defense in such situations rests with the passengers on board: a person is legally entitled to resist one's own unlawful capture, abduction and detention.

Whether doing so is wise, in the face of heavily armed commandos, is a different question. Whether running the gauntlet of an Israeli military blockade is sensible or foolhardy is another.

Israel Has Become Its Own Worst Enemy

This latest sad and shocking episode is a reminder of Israel's recklessness towards the lives of others, its utter disregard for international opinion, and its incivility as an outlaw of the international community.

Israel has become its own worst enemy. It prioritizes its own interests with a callous lack of empathy for others. It is simply unable to imagine the suffering it inflicts upon others, and treats harm to Israelis as the only game in town. Its absolutism of mind and politics has crushing consequences for Palestinians.

Far from ensuring its own security, Israel is unraveling it: no-one should be surprised if Israel has just succeeded in recruiting the next generation of martyrs keen to attack it.

Absolutism, violence, and the evaporation of peace in the region will continue as long as the international community continues to handle Israel with kid gloves.

Dr. Ben Saul's op-ed was originally published June 2, 2010, on "Unleashed," the blog of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's news site.

Dr. Ben Saul is Director of the Sydney Centre for International Law at Sydney Law School and a barrister (including in the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia). His book, Defining Terrorism in International Law (Oxford), is the leading work on the subject and his research has been cited in international criminal tribunals, United Nations bodies and the Australian High Court.

There Are No Child Fighters in the New People's Army!

2010-06-12T15:07:00.000-05:00

PRESS RELEASE
Information Bureau
Communist Party of the Philippines

CPP: No child recruitment in NPA; AFP biggest violator of children's rights
June 7, 2010

The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) today said claims of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) that the New People's Army (NPA) recruits children are "completely unfounded and are only desperate attempts to tarnish the image of the NPA before the public and the human rights community here and abroad."

"The CPP declares with full conviction that the NPA does not recruit children. The NPA upholds and defends the interests of children in line with the CPP's Program for a People's Democratic Revolution, the Basic Rules of the New People's Army, the Guide for Establishing the People's Democratic Government, the Geneva Conventions and Protocols on International Humanitarian Law and Rules on Warfare, the United Nations' Declaration of the Rights of the Child, and the Comprehensive Agreement for the Respect of Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law," the CPP reiterated in a statement today.

The statement of the CPP rebuts the claims made yesterday by AFP-Civil Relations Service that the NPA has recruited at least 340 children since 1999, including 209 who have "surrendered," 119 "captured" and 12 "killed in combat."

"Those figures are nothing but concoctions manufactured by the AFP's psywar mills. Most of the children cited in the AFP's reports as supposed "child combatants" were, in fact, victims of the AFP's abusive military operations that blatantly disregard the rights and welfare of civilians, including children, in rural communities suspected by the reactionary government of supporting the revolutionary movement," said the CPP.

The CPP cited the case of nine-year old Grecil Buya, a schoolgirl who was killed by soldiers of the 101st Bde while conducting a military operation in a rural barangay in New Bataan, Compostela Valley in March 31, 2007. In its reports, the AFP labeled Grecil as a "child combatant" of the NPA and even took photos of her dead body with an M-16 rifle placed beside her. Subsequent investigations by the Commission on Human Rights and other independent groups belied the AFP's reports.

The CPP also cited the case of 17-year old Michelle Adelantar whom the AFP took into custody last February 3 in San Jose de Buan, Western Samar on the accusation of her being an NPA combatant. "The military's accusation against Michelle was made on the utterly stupid logic that her parents and siblings are members of the CPP and NPA," the CPP stated. Michelle continues to be detained by the Department of Social Work and Development, despite demands of relatives to have Michelle released to their care.

In June 2009, the AFP has also accused Joel "Dayucdoc" Silvestre of being an NPA "child warrior." Joel is a mentally-handicapped 13-year old and resident of Barangay Montalban, Matuguinao in Western Samar. The CPP said that "The AFP committed a series of grave violations of the boy's rights. The personnel of the AFP's 8th ID took advantage of Joel's mental handicap by tricking him and taking him into custody. He was brought along the AFP's military operations, made to carry a gun and forced to identify alleged members of the NPA in their community. He was then exhibited to the media who were even encouraged to take photographs and videos of him."

The CPP reiterated that it maintains a policy prohibiting the recruitment of children below 18 years old as fighters of the NPA. "This policy prohibiting child combatants is being strictly observed by all units of the New People's Army."

"For several years now, we have invited representatives of the United Nations and other independent bodies to visit units of the NPA and areas of operations of these units to see for themselves how the revolutionary movement upholds its policy of prohibiting the recruitment of children, and furthermore, how the rights and welfare of children are respected and promoted in the revolutionary areas."

"The Philippine government and the AFP have, however, persistently prevented international observers from engaging with the revolutionary movement on the question of children's rights. It has churned out baseless figures accusing the NPA of violating childrens rights while preventing independent observers from verifying these claims."

"In truth, it is the AFP that is biggest violator of childrens rights in the Philippines. Hundred of thousands of children have been victimized by the AFP's military operations that have invariably targetted civilian communities in the fascist military's desperation to put an end to the people's revolutionary armed resistance," said the CPP.

The CPP cited the report made in 2007 by the United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef) where it revealed that 215,233 children were victimized in AFP operations including more than 215,060 victimized by forcible evaucations. At least 58 children were killed and another 58 survived attempts on their lives. It further revealed that ten children have disappeared, 40 maimed, 17 subjected to torture, 8 subjected to rape and sexual harassment, 51 victims of illegal search and seizure, 63 victims of coercion, 69 victims of illegal arrest and detention, 40 victims of physical assault and injury and 196 victims of threats and intimidation.

The Unicef report also cited that 106 children were orphaned and witnessed the government military's killing of their parents or other relatives.

In a recent report to the UN General Assembly, the UN Secretary General cited cases where the AFP has been making abusive use of children to carry supplies and serve intelligence purposes. Many of these cases were in Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) areas where children have been illegally detained by the AFP for alleged association with MILF forces. The report cited a case where three children were blindfolded and mistreated by elements of the Philippine Army's 7th and 40th IB in an attempt to force out of them confessions admitting to membership in the MILF.
Reference:
Marco Valbuena
Media Officer
Cellphone Numbers: 09156596802 :: 09282242061
E-mail:cppmedia@gmail.com

Norman Finkelstein Debates a Zionist Apologist

2010-06-12T12:43:00.001-05:00

Without a Left, US Labor Continues its Downward Spiral

2010-06-10T12:55:00.000-05:00

From Marxism-Leninism Today

The crisis in the U.S. labor movement continues unabated. Conditions for the vast majority of working people continue to deteriorate as capital moves to destroy the trade union movement.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan continue with a huge drain on the budget which results in the further cutting of social programs, a healthcare crisis that increasingly cannot sustain coverage for the mass of Americans, the use of bankruptcy to cancel union contracts, attacks on pensions, social security, and the privatization of Medicare, Medicaid along with government services are just some of the daily doses of “medicine” dished out by monopoly capital to working people in the USA.

It is true that these assaults have been going on for the past 25-30 years as the alleged “social contract” between capital and labor disintegrated into a one sided class war. However, in the present situation, the attacks have intensified and capital now senses an opportunity to set labor back to the “good old days” of the open shop and the destruction of all vestiges of the “New Deal.”

The response of the top leadership of the labor movement to this unprecedented crisis has been muted. Mass email campaigns, angry press releases and appeals to elect more Democrats typify this weakness. The current labor leadership is either unwilling or unable to mount a serious challenge to this assault.

While many observers point to the founding of the Change to Win coalition as a potential example of labor’s resurgence, the facts prove otherwise. A critical look at the platform of the new coalition shows no principled differences with the AFL-CIO agenda. During the current “debate,” (top leadership only, and apparently it’s over) there was lots of discussion about the structure and forms of the labor movement but precious little questioning of the mission or debating the purpose of the Change to Win or the AFL-CIO.

What does labor stand for? Will it lead a mass movement to challenge the prerogatives of business? Will it engage its membership through democratic forms and forums? Will it question failed policies of the past and allow honest discussion of alternatives? Will it stand up for independent political action? Will it lead a fight for national health care and speak out for a living wage? Will labor champion a peace economy, question the war(s), and the parallel destruction of civil liberties in the USA? None of these issues or others that really matter was discussed during the time period before the breakup or at the respective conventions of the AFL-CIO and Change to Win.

The “debate” was shallow, undemocratic, and obsessed with labor’s organizational form(s) with little or no substantive discussion of the overall mission and program of organized labor. Rearranging the decks of chairs on a boat that is sinking is not enough to meet the tremendous challenges facing labor today.

What the current situation does provide however, is space and opportunity for communists and the left to offer proposals that will move the labor movement toward “class struggle” unionism and begin to reclaim labors respect. This will not be easy as the top echelon of the labor leadership is firmly committed to its present path of “business unionism.” Class struggle unionism is not an alternative for the current top” leadership” of organized labor. In fact, Andy Stern, SEIU president and leader of the Change to Win coalition who is labeled as a “progressive” by the big business media has openly criticized the need for “class struggle unionism” and says today’s workers don’t want to cause “trouble” for their bosses. Apparently the bosses who Stern wants to “partner” with aren’t buying his line as workers are routinely fired and intimidated when exercising their “right” to a union in the USA.

Our proposals first must recognize the necessity of reconstituting a organized left presence in labor. We still feel the effects of McCarthyism and the current lack of a progressive ideology that challenges capital within the labor movement has given us no capability to mount a fight back.

We must not be Pollyanna’s and see things through rose colored glasses.

Because the current top labor leadership lacks any principles, standards, or ideology, they will attack and ridicule advocates of any class struggle approach as “disruptive ”or “impractical,” and resort to red baiting when all else fails. However, proposing and struggling for advanced economic and political proposals that go against the current big business agenda will find solid support among lower level labor leaders, rank and file trade unionists, and the general public. This we must be convinced of and this support represents the foundation of any real change. Our challenge is to give this latent anger and sentiment that working people are getting a raw deal a conscious expression in the ranks of labor and the general public.

Workers have been and are ready to struggle but have little or no organized leadership or expression in the current set-up. For example, the need for a single payer national healthcare plan is evident. Over 45 million are uninsured, premiums continue to rise eating away any real wage increases, and coverage is increasingly restricted. All polls show solid support among the U.S. population for a government provided healthcare system. Yet, even with this crisis situation, the AFL-CIO, Change to Win, and the SEIU, (which claims to be “the” healthcare union) have not endorsed H.R. 676, United States National Health Insurance Act, the current bill in Congress for national single payer heath care!

Instead, some top national labor leaders, including John Sweeney of the AFL-CIO and Andy Stern of the SEIU, are meeting with business leaders and insurance company executives to talk about “joint” efforts to “reduce” the numbers of uninsured. Efforts like these produce nothing other than provide a few extra people access to commercial healthcare insurance.

Incremental change, or the “go slow,” be “practical” approach to solving the healthcare problem has actually made the whole situation much worse over the past few years as the number of uninsured has risen by millions, premiums have continued to rise, and coverage reduced!

Of course, the drug manufacturers, insurance company executives, and big business love this kind of “cooperation” with labor as they still retain all control over the system and the profits continue to climb. Unfortunately, labor and the public get nothing out of these “programs”, simply because they are a band aid and do nothing to solve the root of the health care crisis, which are the insurance industry and the whole profit motive itself.

To add insult to injury, the Democrat party removed the demand for a national health program from its 2004 national convention plank.

Another example is the Iraq war. With the numbers of U.S. citizens opposed to the war approaching, if not already a majority of the population, there is no visible expression of this substantial public sentiment in the political sphere among Democratic politicians (labors political “voice”) or in any public statements by the leadership of organized labor. The death, destruction, and waste of needed money and resources continue while labor and the Democrats, with a few exceptions, remain virtually silent, as if the issue of the war didn’t matter to working people.

Similar examples exist in other industries and public entities where the needs of the general public run counter to the current policy of the capitalist industry or political party in control.

Labor cannot win the “hearts and minds” of the general public (even its own members) when it has no ongoing program with a popular appeal that encourages rank and file union members and the general public to get involved and challenge the power and control of big business that exists in all facets of daily life. Millions of dollars of labor money are spent on donations to politicians each election cycle (and every election is “more important” than the last …) but there is no budget or time to build a real alternative movement. And the atjosphere for organizing new workers can only improve if the public sees labor fighting for the needs of all workers in a visible and aggressive way.

How many more whole industries will have to lose their jobs, pensions, and healthcare to the “free market” before labor “leaders” wake up? Unfortunately, the type of fight back necessary at his time simply cannot be organized under the parameters that guide the present top leadership of labor.

A broad fight back that unites workers along class lines is crucial to achieving any real power to stem the attacks. Labor still has ample resources and a latent capacity to energize its membership and the public. Communists and the left can help move the process forward by reorganizing a strong conscious left presence at all levels.

Without it, labor will continue to go nowhere but down.

A few items for discussion and debate to move labor forward may include:

• Organizing a conscious left presence/formation at all levels of the labor movement is essential to any progress and is not disruptive or counterproductive at this point.

• Unity must be achieved through a practical program of struggle to change the balance of power.

• The current leadership may not see struggle as an option and the left must always assess its relative strength at all levels when moving a new agenda.

• Membership must always be engaged and mobilized through constant political discussion. Without this support, our initiatives go nowhere.

• Our political agenda must always “push the envelope” of the bosses or capital’s power but remain attainable and a practical solution to the issue(s) in the eyes of the membership or public.

• Our job as leaders is to concretely frame all issues in a class context to the membership and public in terms of its impact on the workers and public interest both short and long term.

• Have confidence that our proposals are supported by the majority, the know how to popularize them to anyone and the principles to fight for them.

Cuba Condemns Racist Arizona Law

2010-06-10T12:34:00.000-05:00

From Marxism-Leninism Today

Cuba's parliament has passed a resolution condemning Arizona's "racist and xenophobic" new immigration law. National Assembly of People's Power deputies proclaimed their solidarity with "those who are facing the brutal violation of their human rights in the US," according to a report in Thursday's edition of Communist Party daily Granma.

The Arizona law was signed by Governor Jan Brewer on April 23. It requires police to question people about their immigration status if there is reason to suspect that they are in the country illegally. The deputies' resolution, dated Wednesday, states that the Arizona law "has a profound racist and xenophobic character, and permits police to use racial profiling."

It warns that the legislation effectively criminalises immigrants without documents, thus "creating an atmosphere of persecution against immigrants in general."

The resolution observes that a third of Arizona's population is made up of Hispanic immigrants - and that over 300,000 undocumented workers, mainly Mexicans, carry out the hardest agricultural labour for "paltry wages."

These super-exploited workers will "from now on will be constantly submitted to arbitrary detentions, searches and humiliation, including deportation to his or her country of origin," it stresses.

Several US cities including Seattle, Los Angeles, San Diego and Austin, Texas, have passed resolutions against the law or urged outright boycotts.

The Cuban parliamentarians noted the widespread opposition within the US to the law, but said they feared similar measures would be adopted elsewhere, "spreading like a plague across North American territory."

The deputies said that the Arizona law aimed "to close the doors on immigrants to territories that were stolen by force from the noble Mexican people."

Mexico was forced to sell most of the territory that is now Arizona to the United States in 1848 following its defeat in the Mexican-American war.

Arizona became the 48th state admitted to the union in 1912, the final area of the continental United States to attain statehood.

Cuban economic migrants are treated differently from other people seeking a new home in the US.

Under Washington's notorious "wet foot, dry foot" policy, any Cuban who survives the perilous sea voyage across the Florida straits is automatically granted residency rights and qualifies for expedited "legal permanent resident" status and US citizenship.

Wednesday's resolution observes that the Cuban Adjustment Act "constitutes a permanent encouragement to disorganised emigration that has caused hundreds of deaths of Cubans through the years."

Restore Rights to Ex-Felons!

2010-05-19T22:12:00.000-05:00

From Science Blog

Felon exclusion laws impact not only individuals, but also communities, according to a University of Missouri-Columbia law professor. By their suppressive nature, the legal statutes, which vary from state to state, have devastating socio-economic, political and legal effects on African-American communities nationwide, he contends.

"Most felons come from particular communities - lower socio-economic status communities and primarily communities of color," said S. David Mitchell, associate professor of law. "The problem is that upon release, if you send that large percentage back into those communities, you're adding an increased layer of problems to a community that's already suffering. What you're sending back are voiceless and powerless individuals. Thus, the economic and political power of the community is limited."

In his article, "Undermining Individual and Collective Citizenship: The Impact of Exclusion Laws on the African-American Community," to be published this month in the Fordham Urban Law Journal, Mitchell discussed exclusion laws that prohibit convicted felons from exercising a host of legal rights - most notably the opportunity to vote. In addition to suffrage, which is most commonly debated among scholars and legal experts, Mitchell advocates that upon completion of their sentences, ex-felons should have all of their rights restored - especially those associated with social services; public and private employment; the opportunity to serve on a jury; and privilege to hold public office. He said restoration should take place without requiring burdensome processes or financial restitution, which are required in some states.

"When ex-felons have finished their time, they should have all of their rights automatically restored," Mitchell said. "Now, my detractors would say, 'Does that mean if someone is convicted of a sex offense crime, they should be allowed to hold a job in an education-related field?' No ... there are conditions; however, a greater relationship between the nature of the offense and the restrictions being applied should exist."

In examining the issue, Mitchell said his goal was to explore the "entire notion of citizenship and what it really means to be a United States citizen." He concluded the restoration of a cadre of rights is just as important as the right to vote. Restrictions only limit the quality of life and impede the successful reentry of individuals attempting to re-establish themselves in their communities.

"Most people tend to focus solely on the denial of the right to vote, which is incredibly important. But I think it's a narrow view, which is why I discuss what it means to be a citizen - particularly for African Americans and other underrepresented groups," said Mitchell, who also is a sociologist. "Citizenship is more than just an opportunity to cast a ballot. Voting is important, but if I can't have a home, can't feed my family and don't have a job, do I really feel like an American citizen? If an ex-felon can't earn a living, then why would he or she adopt the values of society upon being released? If you're not allowing them back into society fully, then why should they adopt our rules? They have no reason to uphold the laws, and there becomes a greater propensity to re-commit crimes."

http://munews.missouri.edu

Propaganda

2010-05-16T18:30:00.000-05:00

Introducing Team Red Trax: Red Comedy

2010-04-26T21:05:00.001-05:00

From the Description:

We are anti-revisionist Marxist-Leninists who make fun of revisionism and counterrevolution in MST3K/ retsupurae style.

LONG LIVE THE APL!

Some Videos:

Statement from the American Party of Labor

2010-04-26T20:52:00.000-05:00

From The Red Phoenix

The American Party of Labor recognizes the passage of the racist bill SB1070 is a blow to the oppressed communities in Arizona. We are calling for a United Front to oppose this bill. We call for a diverse set of tactics to be used to show the people’s opposition to this blatant racism.
The APL is providing a list of organizations opposed to this bill for Arizona residents to get involved with in their local area.
Links for Arizona residents:
ACLU Arizona
http://acluaz.org/
Alto Arizona
http://www.altoarizona.com/events.html
Coalición de Derechos Humanos (The Human Rights Coalition)
http://www.derechoshumanosaz.net/
Hispanic Federation
http://www.hispanicfederation.org/
International Action Center in Tucson, Arizona
http://www.iactucson.org/
National Council of La Raza
http://www.nclr.org/

Leftists in the U.S. South: An Interesting Idea

2010-04-24T18:13:00.010-05:00

This Facebook group presents an interesting proposition, that most of the Left has ignored. The South as the weakest link in the United States. On one topic about a Revolutionary "Southern Strategy", not since the Civil Rights Movement has a mass progressive movement taken place in the South. The Southern states are a hotbed of reaction, but it is also home to the poorest segments of society. If a proletarian movement ever took hold in the South it would sweep the nation. some principles were put forward for discussion.

Broad Positions

1) RACE: Anti-white supremecist, pro-reparations for both blacks and poor whites. we need a sort of data mine that links to relevant infothat can be used to debunk racist ideas, and like other successful revolutionaries we have to use sources that come from other than radicals (thinking here of marx and lenin). defend affirmative action, there is more than enough wealth and work to go around for everone, expose the lie that is "hiring a less qualifies black means displacing a white worker" for what it is: an example that the whole system has got to go. illustrate that the attack of social programs hurts whites too. * I REALLY BELIEVE: the success of socialism in the south and therefore n the US is entirely dependent on race issues. race is class times 10. *

2) FEMINISM: how many strong, independent southern women you know? how many of them demand respect by the virtue of their competence, hard work, and ability to balance the traditional demands of being a woman with full time careers? how many trucks you see with stickers that say things like "this is a girls toy" or whatever? How many sothern guys you know are great dads, who take good care of their kids and are available and supportive? Our duty is to illustrate how advances in womens rights make these things possible, and that being a feminist means that good work is good work, regardless of if its a man or women. we also need to bring to light continuing problems, and work on a method of defending abortion in the religious south

3) RELIGION: this is tricky. its been both a positive influence (how many reverends and churches struggled for equality and served as national liberation HQs?) and a negative one (how many churched defended white supremacy as gods law?). there needs to be concrete scholarship here, both on contradictory ideas in our society and in Christianity, in particular, and we need to bring to light the secular evolution of ideas like hard work + virtue = wealth = god's love and approval, and expose southerners to the long tradition of Christian socialism in the US and south america. the fact is churches have a real positive influence in many southerners lives, as the heart of a social sphere and a network of relief for the poor. working with churches as volunteers in various food/housing relief efforts can show that non-religious folks have the same values of compassion and sacrifice that give so many religious folk meaning and direction.

4) UNIONS/EMPLOYMENT: anti-disinformation campaign. we need data on rates of unionization and its relation to quality of life. we can use norway as examples. the mondragon cooperative/coops in general. long history of unions, racism, and the self implosion of the US working class as related to infighting. acknowledge real limits to unions, especially if they purge radical leadership motivated by more than careerism. we need to show that we believe in good work for all, and that we aren't knee-jerk environmentalists or willing to sacrifice a decent quality of life for ideological purposes; dispel rumors and lies by capitalists that this is an either/or proposition for having both good, useful and fulfilling work and a sustainable, fair economy.

5) WEDGE ISSUES: Things like undocumented workers, 2nd amendment, taxes, size of government, and you know all the rest. the watered down identity politics used to convince people there is a real difference between (R) and (D). we cannot ignore these issues, and having another data mine on these issues is important for us. these issues tie into all of the above and more, but the media does nothing but harp on them so we have to have something to say about it which also conveys a broader message

a note on personal conduct:

we need to practice what we preach, within good reason. people love asking you how much you give to charity, how much you volunteer, how much you work, and the slightest character flaw can and will be held against you because its more important to discredit you out of hand than consider what you say separate from your human failures, for all the obvious reasons. your nonradical friend catches you leering at a woman, and calls you out (rightfully) on saying one thing about womens rights and doing another. say something disparaging about a cherished identity politics issue without forethought and sensitivity and you will be dismissed as an out of touch liberal elitist.

From the description:

This group exists to help leftists in the U.S. South network, share information and organize. Define the South however you want, so long as you don't call it Dixie.

Sympathetic non-southerners around the world are also welcome. Join. Invite your friends. Unite. Make revolution. I formally ask everyone involved in this group to be civil. We are diverse and disagreements are inevitable. However, we are all presumably here because we are people of the Left and want to transform society in progressive ways. It is therefore important that we approach one another with respect, not allowing our ideological differences to translate into attacks. Try to struggle over ideas without alienating group members with sectarianism. Matters of line should not be glossed over in an unprincipled "let's agree to disagree" fashion, but neither should they cause us to identify one another as enemies. Discussion should be geared toward mutual learning and the clarifying of important issues

If you are a leftist in the South and are on Facebook, be sure to check this group out and get involved! You might find someone from your area and you can connect with them.

The Red Republic Strikes Back!

2010-04-24T16:41:00.000-05:00

The Red Republic. Back. Now.

Enver Hoxha on Revolution in Latin America Part. 2

2009-11-09T16:46:00.001-06:00

The following work was taken from a conversation between Enver Hoxha and two leaders from the Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist) of Ecuador, later renamed the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party of Ecuador. The advice Enver Hoxha gives the Latin Americans is to analyze the Cuban Revolution, Che Guevara and see them for what they were. The state of Cuba, while now a thoroughly anti-imperialist state was in the service of Modern Revisionism headed by Fidel Castro, an open collaborator with Soviet Revisionism. While Che Guevara was a genuine socialist the Focoist theory is one that is incorrect and has led to the demise of this iconic figure. In this second part Enver Hoxha criticizes this anti-masses ideology. This work is the Second Part, and this is the first time it has been publicly posted on the Internet, all credit goes to Marcus Winter for transcribing this work.

The question whenever the Soviet revisionists fail to prevent the masses of the working class and the people from carrying out the revolution, this trend steps in and, by means of a putsch, destroys what the revisionists are unable to destroy by means of evolution. The Soviet revisionists and all the traitor cliques which led the revisionist parties preach evolution, coexistence and all those other anti-Marxist theories we know. From the terms it employs, left adventurism seems more revolutionary, because it advocates armed struggle! But what does it mean by armed struggle? Clearly—putsches. Marxism-Leninism teaches us that only by proceeding with prudent and sure steps, only by basing ourselves firmly on the principles of the Marxist-Leninist doctrine, only by making the masses conscious can victory be ensured in the preparation and launching of the armed uprising, and only in this way will we never fall into adventurism.
The authors of the theory that the “starter motor” sets the “big motor” in motion pose as if they are for the armed struggle, but in fact they are opposed to it and work to discredit it. The example and tragic end of Che Guevara, the following and prorogation of this theory also by other self-styled Marxists, who are opposed to the great struggles by the masses of people, are publicly known facts which refute their claims: We must guard against the people lest they betray us, lest they hand us over to the police; we must set up “wild” isolated detachments, so that the enemy does not get wind of them and does not retaliate with terror against the population! They publicize these and many other confusing theories, which you know only too well. What sort of Marxism-Leninism is this which advocates attacking the enemy, fighting it with these “wild” detachments, etc. without having a Marxist-Leninist party to lead the fight? There is nothing Marxist-Leninist about it. Such anti-Marxist and anti-Leninist theories can bring nothing but defeat for Marxism-Leninism and the revolution, as Che Guevara's undertaking in Bolivia did.
This trend brings the theses of the armed uprising into disrepute. What great damage it causes the revolution! With the killing of Guevara, the masses of common people, contaminated by the influences of these anarchist views, will think: “Now there is no one else to lead us, to liberate us!” Or perhaps a group of people with another Guevara will be set up again to take to the mountains to make the “revolution,” and the masses, who expect a great deal from these individuals and are burning to fight the bourgeoisie, may be deceived into following them. And what will happen? Something that is clear to us. Since these people are not the vanguard of the working class, since they are not guided by the enlightening principles of Marxism-Leninism, they will encounter misunderstanding among the broad masses and sooner or later they will fail, but at the same time the genuine struggle will be discredited, because the masses will regard armed struggle with distrust. We must prepare the masses politically and ideologically, and convince them through their own practical experience. That is why we say that this inhibiting, reactionary theory about the revolution that is being spread in Latin America is the offspring of modern revisionism and must be unmasked by the Marxist-Leninists.
Certain leaders of some Latin-American state put in the odd word in a veiled “opposition” to the Soviet Union, but we cannot infer from this that they are really opposed to it. Those words are only pressure and blackmail for the purpose of gaining some advantage, on the one hand, of deceiving the naive, on the other. If the advocates of these theories were to stop serving the Soviets in their imperialist-revisionist expansion, the latter would cut off all aid to them. We know the Soviets only too well. However, this will not occur, because they serve the Soviets admirably. This is why the Soviet revisionists continue to give them aid and keep them alive.
It is the duty of all the Marxist-Leninists to expose this anti-Marxist trend, the advocates of which style themselves Marxist-Leninists and use Marxist terminology only as a disguise without which they would be lost. We must tear this disguise from them and this can be done only through organized struggle on the Marxist-Leninist course, as you comrades from Ecuador and others are doing.
We were very pleased over the way you have gone about strengthening the Party and the correct views you hold on armed struggle. If we Marxists do not thoroughly understand that the party must be strong as steel and this can be brought about only on the Marxist-Leninist road, we can achieve no victory. Our people fought in the past, too, just like your people, but did not win. Very good and able individuals have emerged from the bosom of our people, persons with clear illuminist views and great revolutionary determination, who fought with rifle and pen against the Turks, and later, against other invaders. But they shed their blood and toiled in vain. The bourgeoisie and the feudal lords exploited the victories of the people and these outstanding individuals to foster their own interests, while the people remained as oppressed as before. They came about because there was not even a progressive party, let along a Marxist-Leninist party, to lead our people forward. Only after the founding of the Communist Party were the Albanian people able to realize their age-old aspirations; it was only under its leadership that their sweat and blood were not shed in vain. Hence, it is the leadership by the Marxist-Leninist party which ensures the victory of the people, and not the actions of a guerrilla “centre,” as some people preach.
We rejoice that you comrades of the Communist Party of Ecuador have purged your Party of elements alien to a genuine Marxist-Leninist party. We are very pleased to see that you are clear about how the party should be strengthened and expanded, with what class elements its ranks should be filled, how it should be extended to the countryside, and in the first place, how it should implant itself more deeply in the ranks of the working class. People are not born communists, but they are born pure, and during their life and in the course of the daily struggle they learn, are educated and become communists who will sacrifice even their lives for their ideals. It is very good that you have opened courses and schools for Marxist-Leninist education. This is what we did, too, during the National Liberation War. The learning and assimilation of Marxism-Leninism are essential for and the salvation of every communist and every Marxist-Leninist party.
Even today, this is the course we follow. We have put lessons, work in production, and physical and military training for the defense of the Homeland in the centre of our activity for the education of the youth...
We assure you, dear comrades, that our Party, closely united with the people, has striven and will strive with might and main and with the greatest loyal to defend the purity of Marxism-Leninism, and will work tirelessly to strengthen proletarian internationalism. The Party will do everything to ensure that its efforts and the efforts of the people are understood and t create conditions, not only for the consolidation of our socialist Homeland, but also for the strengthening of the bonds of friendship with all the fraternal Marxist-Leninist parties, so that our Party, too, makes its modest contribution, devoting all its energies, to our common cause, the triumph of the proletarian revolution.
We are very moved by the high appraisal you make of the modest work of our Party. As Marxism-Leninists, we understand very well everything you, dear comrades, said about our Party and its experience. We thank you for all these things and tell you that they are a great encouragement to us, because we know they come from the clear and realistic judgment of Marxist-Leninist comrades. Of course, as Marxist-Leninists, we assure you that this does not make us conceited. On the contrary, it increases our sense of responsibility to make ourselves worthy of at least one per cent of what you say. Therefore, we must fight even harder, must perform our duty even more honourably, to ensure that every action of ours not only does not harm the great cause of socialism in the world, the cause of world revolution, or even that of an individual Marxist-Leninist party or group, but, on the contrary, serves as an encouragement and example for everybody, so that Marxist-Leninist parties grow in number and strength, because, as a saying of the Albanian people goes, just one or two flowers do not mean summer. For the socialist revolution to triumph everywhere more flowers are and will be needed. This is how we understand our internationalist duty.
For us, too, this meeting with you will remain unforgettable, because you told us about the situation in Latin America. We feel ourselves a hundred times stronger when we see that yours is a true Marxist-Leninist Party, with a clear line and perspective. There is no doubt that such a party will certainly triumph. You say that when our Party was founded it had about 200 members. But this did not prevent us in the slightest from winning the masses, leading them, fighting and, together with them, defeating the internal and external enemies, triumphing and setting up the dictatorship of the proletariat.
What great strength we gain to step up our struggle, when we see that your Party in Ecuador is a party with a brilliant future, since it upholds the banner of Marxism-Leninism!
You say you have made mistakes, that you have not seen some things as you ought to. What party has not made mistakes? Our Party, too, had made mistakes in the course of its revolutionary activity, but not in its general line. The important thing is that we have corrected our mistakes immediately, as soon as we have detected them.
What you say about strengthening the work of the party with the organization of the youth and the women is extremely important to the revolution. I have noticed, and you have said this yourselves in your talks with our comrades, that you are very interested in the question of students. This is very good, but you must keep in mind that students are part of the youth, not the whole of it. Likewise, you attach importance to the problems of the countryside and problems of the working class. If you attach importance to the countryside and the working class, you cannot fail to be interested in the problems of youth and women in the countryside, as well. The question now is that you must concretize these issues better. We shall be very happy if our modest experience is of any help to you.
I want to add this, too: our Party was small, our working class at the time when the Party was founded was exceptionally small. Nevertheless, thanks to the great work carried out by the Party, the youth, in the first place, embraced its ideology, Marxism-Leninism. The Party was quick to organize them, and they threw themselves into the war and played an extremely great role in it; they fought as they did, enlightened by the ideology of the working class.
As for the women, right from the start the slogan of the Party was that the armed struggle could not be waged and carried through to victory without them. The Party stressed that, in the first place, the women themselves must understand that, while fighting for the liberation of the Homeland, they would be fighting for the emancipation of women, too. At that time the Party said: If the women do not understand the great idea of the Party about their participation in the war, there will be no genuine liberation war. We attached major importance to this question, for without its solution the women would have become a hindrance to the war, because they had only to say to their husbands or sons, “where are you going?”, “why are you leaving us?”, “they will kill us!”, “don't go to war!”, “let us mind our own business!”, “what good is the war to us?” etc., and things would have taken another direction.
The Party did its work so thoroughly that the women became ardent propagandist of the line of the Party within their families. “Take the rifle,” they would urge their husbands and sons, “and throw yourselves into the fight for the liberation of the Homeland!” You understand, comrades, what courage this stand on the part of the woman gave the husband or son who seized the rifle and joined the partisans.

Whenever we entered the homes of our people, in city or village, the women gave us every possible help, they linked themselves closely with our war, with the line of the Party. Many of their husbands or sons were fighting in the mountains, and, when we went to their homes for shelter and food, they treated us as their sons, as their closest relatives. See the importance of women and their activity! It was in these conditions that the womens' organization was set up in our country. Of course, the same process will develop in your country, too. In the beginning we came up against many difficulties, everything was not achieved at once, as you see it today. We know what difficulties there are in the capitalist countries, but they can all be overcome when the line is correct and the party determined.
You, my dear comrades, have helped us greatly in another direction too, in further enhancing our confidence in the future victories of the common struggle. We assure you that we will honourably accomplish our tasks as soldiers of the revolution, as loyal soldiers of Marxism-Leninism. We would like you, dear comrades of Communist Party (M-L) of Ecuador, to consider our Party as yours in everything. Weare ready to give you whatever assistance you consider useful, because as internationalists we are duty bound to do so. If we do not do this, we cannot call ourselves internationalists, cannot be Marxists. We have spared and will spare nothing to give you every possible assistance, as our comrades and brothers, because your internationalist assistance to us is also great.
You also help us with your experience, and if you notice that we may be going wrong in some direction, please criticize us, shake us up with your open criticism, and rest assured that we consider and treat your comrades' criticism as the most sacred thing. Our people say that he that criticizes loves you, he that does not love you pats you on the back so that you may continue on the wrong road.
Our Marxist-Leninist dialectics teaches us that not everything goes straight, that people's heads are not all cut into one pattern, that the energies of each individual are not equal, some go straight, others do not. In these conditions, the implementation of the norms of the Party, Bolshevik criticism and self-criticism set people right, keeps the party pure and carries the revolution forward.
These are the relations we want, this is the sincere proletarian love we want to have for one another, and the more we do for one another, for the revolution, the more modest we must be. Therefore, the modesty of communists must be exemplary, like that of proletarians; the efforts and thoughts of communists must be like those of proletarians, the feelings of their souls and hearts must be like those of proletarians. Only thus can our revolution march forward.
We are sorry, dear comrades, that you will be leaving, but rest assured that our hearts are united with yours.
We know that you are very busy. Even greater and more difficult tasks await you in the future, nevertheless, we would be be very happy if you could come more frequently ans stay longer in our country, regardless of the fact that this cannot be done in every instance according to our wishes.
May your great wish be fulfilled, may the day come when we can visit you in your country.

Enver Hoxha on Revolution in Latin America Part. 1

2009-11-08T17:19:00.000-06:00

The following work was taken from a conversation between Enver Hoxha and two leaders from the Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist) of Ecuador, later renamed the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party of Ecuador. The advice Enver Hoxha gives the Latin Americans is to analyze the Cuban Revolution, Che Guevara and see them for what they were. The state of Cuba, while now a thoroughly anti-imperialist state was in the service of Modern Revisionism headed by Fidel Castro, an open collaborator with Soviet Revisionism. While Che Guevara was a genuine socialist the Focoist theory is one that is incorrect and has led to the demise of this iconic figure. This work is divided into two parts, and this is the first time it has been publicly posted on the Internet, all credit goes to Marcus Winter for transcribing this work.

The Fist of the Marxist-Leninist Communists Must Also Smash Left Adventurism, the Offspring of Modern Revisionism

From a conversation with two leaders of the Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist) of Ecuador

October 21, 1968

We are very glad to meet you comrades from Ecuador. Of course, we would like to have more frequent and longer talks with you, because the struggle of the Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist) of Ecuador, as well as the Marxist-Leninist parties of Latin America, has great importance for the revolution. We consider your struggle as a great assistance to the world revolution and to our Party which always feels the need to learn and profit from the experience of fraternal parties.

Marxism-Leninism, our universal doctrine, applied in the conditions of every country, is enriched with the new experience of all revolutionary parties. The experience of each Marxist-Leninist party gained in the course of its work and struggle against the common enemies, imperialism and revisionism, helps the other parties at the same time. Without this experience we would be limping along.

You comrades, with your revolutionary activity and struggle on the continent of Latin America, with a large population and with wonderful ardent people, are in permanent insurrection, in revolution, in the full meaning of the term. At the head of the people of this continent today there are fraternal Marxist-Leninist parties. Their realistic Marxist-Leninist understanding of the situation of your continent fills the true Marxist-Leninist parties of Europe, Asia and Africa with boundless enthusiasm and inspiration and helps all of us to carry the revolutionary actions of every country through the end on a national, continental or international scale against our common enemies: the imperialists, with the U.S. Imperialists at the head, the modern revisionists, with the Soviet revisionists at the head, and reactionaries of every hue.

The Party of Labour of Albania, the Albanian communists feel very greatly the need for contacts in order to exchange experience with all the fraternal parties, because close co-operations strengthens us reciprocally. Although we are very far apart geographically, in our minds and our hearts we are very close to each other, and the “distance” factor does not constitute an insurmountable difficulty today.

As you may have seen for yourselves during our visits, many changes have been made in our country since the triumph of the revolution. This is due to the correct Marxist-Leninist line of the party and the revolutionary spirit of our people. In order to form a more precise idea of Albania's state in the past, as the Marxist-Leninists you are, you must compare it with one of the most poverty-stricken, most backward and oppressed regions of present-day Ecuador. Just like your country today, before Liberation Albania suffered greatly under savage feudal oppression. We had no schools. The people were in want of food, clothing, and every vital necessity. Most of the plains you have seen were swamps and marshes before Liberation. Malaria, tuberculosis and many other diseases took a heavy toll of the population, especially of children. But as a result of the peoples' revolution which our party led, transformations have been carried out on such a vast scale and so rapidly that without boasting we can describe them as colossal by our Albanian standards.

However, as Marxists, taking a realistic view of the situation, we are fully aware that, along with the very great successes that have been achieved, we also have weaknesses and a great deal more remains to be done in the future, in the first place, to raise the level of the working masses still higher, especially their political and ideological level, as well as their economic level; we must work hard to make our country even stronger militarily, to raise the educational and cultural level of our people still higher, and all this only on the revolutionary Marxist-Leninist road.

Our Party is working in these directions. We can say that now we have created a sounder, more powerful base, but the main thing is that everything we have done, everything we have created, we have achieved in unrelenting struggle against the difficulties of growth, encircled by rapid enemies, in such conditions the independence, freedom and sovereignty of our Homeland and socialism were in danger at every moment. We have created these things through struggle to defend and strengthen the Marxist-Leninist unity of the Party and the people, which is a special target for enemy attacks. We have worked ceaselessly to temper this unity. Our strength lies in the ever greater steeling of the party-people unity. This is of vital importance, because the dangers of intervention by means of armed force and every other possible means against our country have been and remain great and unrelenting, both from the imperialists and from the Titoite renegades and the Soviet revisionist militarists who, as the occupation of Czechoslovakia showed, excuse any action of theirs with the interest they allegedly have in the consolidation of “fraternal” states.

In the present revolutionary situations, the Marxist-Leninist parties throughout the world must fight continuously to strengthen their ranks and their Marxist-Leninist unity, to link themselves closely with the masses of people and with one another, because the communist and workers' movement throughout the world is one of the fundamental factors frustrating the plans concocted against the people by both the Soviet revisionists and the US imperialists, who from day to day are strengthening their fascist dictatorships in order to dominate the world. These Marxist-Leninist parties must increase their vigilance, too.

At all times, but especially in the situations we are living through, our country consistently has enhanced and will enhance its unity and vigilance. To this end, as always, we have taken ideological, political, economic and military measures. All our people are armed in the full meaning of the word. Every Albanian city-dweller or villager, has his weapon at home. Our army itself, the army of a soldier people, is ready at any moment to strike at any enemy or coalition of enemies. The youth, too, have risen to their feet. Combat readiness does not in any way interfere with our work of socialist construction. On the contrary, it has given a greater boost to the development of the economy and culture in our country.

At these moments the Soviet and Yugoslav revisionists, the Greek and Italian fascists know full well that if they dare embark on any adventure against Albania, they will never succeed, but will be dealt mortal blows instead. This we have made clear to everybody at all times. Thus, in general, the situation in our country is sound, secure and with brilliant prospects. However, we must not rest on our laurels on this account, but must work more and more every day.

It is clear to all that a militarist fascist dictatorship exists in the Soviet Union today. But, as is known, where there is oppression there is also movement, therefore, both in the Soviet Union and in the satellite countries, there is revolutionary movement that is steadily mounting. Great pressure is being exerted on the Soviet Union today by imperialism, too. On the one hand, imperialism aims to defeat it as a rival imperialist power, and on the other hand to prevent the emergence of revolutionary movements at all costs, or to put them down immediately if they do emerge, not only in the Soviet Union but also in its satellite countries.

For its part, the Soviet Union is trying to attain two objectives: first, to crush any revolutionary movement which might arise, and second, unable as it is to defeat the United States as a rival imperialist power, it is striving to retain its positions and to ensure that together with US imperialism each of them will rule in the areas which fall within its sphere of influence.

We are very glad to learn that the Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist) of Ecuador is making progress. The comrades whom you have met immediately informed me about the talks you held and the experience you exchanged. We hold special meetings to keep the Political Bureau of the CC continually informed about the very useful and fruitful exchanges between our Party and other fraternal parties. We are very happy that your Party is ceaselessly tempering itself and advancing on the Marxist-Leninist road. Likewise, we are in complete agreement with the views of your Party and are convinced that the road you are following is the right one. There is no doubt that you know better than anybody else the problems that concern you and the most correct way to solve them, always basing yourselves on our ideology, Marxism-Leninism.

Only your Party is in a position to work out your tactics properly, based, of course, on the Marxist-Leninist strategy, because, as the heart of the proletariat and people of Ecuador, it knows better than anyone else the situation in the country and the legitimate aspirations of your people. For this reason, as long as your Party has a correct strategy based on Marxist-Leninist theory and the real practice of the country, the tactics it works out will be correct and revolutionary, too. During our National Liberation War we, too, employed varied tactics, just as you are doing.

Our parties should try to learn and profit from one another. But every party must bear in mind that some things from the experience of other parties are suitable only in the conditions of their respective countries, and many of them may not be suitable in the conditions of other countries. They must elaborate and adopt the experience of other parties when they find they need it and it suits their concrete conditions, otherwise they fall into stereotypism. As for our experience, we cannot tell you whether or not many of our tactics are appropriate for you. It is up to you to study it and choose what you want from it, but we think that you should bear in mind that Marxism-Leninism, the general laws of the proletarian revolution provide the compass which prevents us from erring on this question. Only these laws guard a genuine Marxist-Leninist party against mistakes.

We are clear about these laws and try to acquaint ourselves with them more and more each day, and that is why we have never slid into revisionism, or into Trotskyism, left adventurism, or other anti-Marxist trends.

With these theories, with the dangers and damage they cause, you are better acquainted than we. For instance, Che Guevara was killed. Such a thing is liable to happen, because a revolutionary may get killed. Che Guevara, however, was a victim of his own non-Marxist-Leninist views.

Who was Che Guevara? When we speak of Che Guevara, we also mean somebody else who poses as a Marxist, in comparison to whom, in our opinion, Che Guevara was a man of fewer words. He was a rebel, a revolutionary, but not a Marxist-Leninist as they try to present him. I may be mistaken—you Latin-Americans are better acquainted with Che Guevara, but I think that he was a leftist fighter. His is a bourgeois and petty-bourgeois leftism, combined with some ideas that were progressive, but also anarchist which, in the final analysis, lead to adventurism.

The views of Che Guevara and anyone else who poses as a Marxist and claims “paternity” of these ideas have never been or had anything to do with Marxism-Leninism. Che Guevara also had some “exclairicies” in his adoption of certain Marxist-Leninist principles, but they still did not become a full philosophical world-outlook which could impel him to genuinely revolutionary actions.

We cannot say that Che Guevara and his comrades were cowards. No, by no means! On the contrary, they were brave people. There are also bourgeois who are brave men. But the only truly great heroes and really brave proletarian revolutionaries are those who proceed from the Marxist-Leninist philosophical principles and put all their physical and mental energies at the service of the world proletariat for the liberation of the peoples from the yolk of the imperialists, feudal lords and others.

We have defended the Cuban revolution because it was against US imperialism. As Marxist-Leninists let us study it a bit and the ideas which guided it in this struggle. The Cuban revolution did not begin on the basis of Marxism-Leninism and was not carried out on the basis of the laws of the proletarian revolution of a Marxist-Leninist party. After the liberation of the country, Castro did not set out on the Marxist-Leninist course, either, but on the contrary, continued on the course of his liberal ideas. It is a fact, which nobody can deny, that the participants in this revolution took up arms and went to the mountains, but it is an undeniable fact also that they did not fight as Marxist-Leninists. They were liberation fighters against the Battista clique and triumphed over it precisely because that clique was a weak link of capitalism. Battista was an obedient flunky of imperialism, who rode roughshod over the Cuban people. The Cuban people, however, fought and triumphed over this clique and over American imperialism at the same time...

In our opinion, the theory that the revolution is carried out by a few “heroes” constitutes a danger to Marxism-Leninism, especially in the Latin-American countries. Your South-American continent has great revolutionary traditions, but, as we said above, it also has some other traditions which may seem revolutionary but which, in fact, are not genuinely on the road of the revolution. Any putsch carried out there is called a revolution! But a putsch can never be a revolution, because one overthrown clique is replaced by another, in a word, things remain as they were. In addition to all the nuclei of anti-Marxist trends which still exist in the ranks of the old parties that have placed themselves in the service of the counterrevolution, there is now another trend which we call left adventurism.

This trend, and that other offspring of the bourgeoisie, modern revisionism, constitute great dangers to the people, including those of the Latin-American countries. Carefully disguised, modern revisionism is a great deceiver of the peoples and revolutionaries. In different countries it puts on different disguises. In Latin America, Castroism, disguised as Marxism-Leninism, is leading people, even revolutionaries, into left adventurism. This trend appears to be in contradiction with modern revisionism. Those who are ideologically immature think thus, but it is not so. The Castroites are not opposed to the modern revisionists. On the contrary, they are in their service. The separate courses each of them follows lead them to the same point.

ICMLPO: To the Working Class, the Working People and the Oppressed Peoples Around the World!

2009-11-08T11:39:00.002-06:00

The International Conference of Marxist-Leninist Parties and Organizations is an international network of Communist Parties that uphold the line of Enver Hoxha and the Party of Labour of Albania. The ICMLPO meets every year in Quito, Ecuador with twenty parties and organizations participating. It also releases the journal Unity and Struggle.

ICMLPO: To the working class, the working people and the oppressed peoples around the world!

November is the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the bourgeoisie is carrying on its umpteenth attack on communism and the working class, peppered with the stalest historical falsifications.
It has been 20 years in which the ruling class has tried to divert the aspirations for change of the working class and peoples with demagogic promises of a “new world order” and lies about the “end of socialism,” to prevent any attempt at resistance, revolt, discussion of or doubt in the capitalist system.
As a result of the events of 1989, the imperialist propagandists announced the end of history, that ideologies were finished, obsolete (except obviously those of the bourgeoisie), that the revolution is a thing of the past, and that therefore there is only one direction for humanity: the one based on private property of the means of social production.

Since then, together with presenting the developments in Eastern Europe as the "defeat of communism," they have imposed the neoliberal policy, the "right to interference," "preventive wars" for the reconquest of the world by the U.S. imperialists. The bourgeoisie has strengthened its offensive against the working class and popular masses to increase their exploitation and the looting of the peoples by imperialism.
The revisionists and social-democrats are currently divided between those who cover themselves with ashes and those who alter and distort the facts that led to the fall of the Wall. In recent years many of them have shifted further to the right, showing their ideological and political weakness, and others have gone directly over to the enemy camp. Others advocate that it is no longer time for revolution, that one must go along with the rules imposed by the bourgeoisie, or must limit oneself to reforms, and they condemn the communist and revolutionary forces who oppose the situation that has been created and are reorganizing and retaking the road of struggle.

The communists know that the fall of the Berlin Wall has not meant the collapse of proletarian socialism; it has been the final stage of a process of destruction of the dictatorship of the proletariat and of capitalist restoration by the revisionism that began in the 1950s and 1960s in the USSR and in most countries of the East. The collapse of the so-called "real socialism" has meant the collapse of a superstructure which did not correspond to the existing relations of production, but because of its external features in "socialist" theory it has helped to sow confusion, leading to an ebb and the loss of positions of the working class.
The fall of the Wall does not overturn the validity of Marxism-Leninism as a revolutionary theory, but has completed the parabola of the revisionist ideology in Eastern Europe. It has not resolved the principal contradictions of our time but has led to their worsening, as evidenced by today's reality.
What have we actually seen in the last 20 years?

Instead of overcoming the economic, social and political obstacles that hold back the emancipation of mankind, we have seen even higher walls raised against the exploited and oppressed.
Walls that separate the financial oligarchy, which lives in luxury and wastefulness, from the great masses of men and women who create all wealth with their labour, without benefitting from it because they are forced to suffer the yoke of intense exploitation, unemployment, precariousness and poverty, only receiving charity from the bourgeois governments.

Walls between a handful of imperialist powers and the dependent countries subjected to brutal looting of their resources, forced into underdevelopment and condemned to hunger.
Walls represented by obscurantism, ignorance, religious oppression and bourgeois cosmopolitanism, which serve to keep the workers submissive and ignorant.
Walls such as the one raised against migrants between the U.S. and Mexico, in Europe, in the Mediterranean, or the one built by Zionism in Palestine, the one maintained by imperialism in the Korean peninsula and many others.

What has been the result after two decades of promises thrown to the four winds by the ruling class?
They promised "economic growth," but we have seen the unprecedented extension of parasitism and speculation, economic and financial crises that are more and more frequent and deeper, up to the present one, the most serious and destructive crisis of the last 80 years, which is the manifestation of all the problems accumulated previously.

They guaranteed "freedom and democracy", but these hypocritical words were soon transformed into the enhanced dictatorship of a group of imperialist countries and financial monopolies, into an even fiercer neo-colonial domination to which hundreds of dependent countries and nations are subjected, into coups d'état such as the ones that took place recently in Honduras and in Africa, into the suppression of the rights of the workers and of democratic liberties in many countries, into police States that are increasingly authoritarian and fascist.

They promised a "world of peace," but the imperialist powers, headed by the U.S., have re-enforced their arsenals and military apparatus, they have unleashed a succession of wars of aggression and acts of real terrorism that have cut down hundreds of thousands of victims, and they have intensified the rivalries between the imperialist countries and monopoly groups for a new division of raw materials, of markets and spheres of influence, thus increasing the risk of a new world conflict.

They spoke of "protection of the environment," but we see that the search for maximum profit has devastated the ecosystem and made evident that capitalism, with its desire for pillage, is incompatible with the very existence of humankind. And what about the situation of the countries of East European who have “returned to freedom”? Starvation wages, mass unemployment, the elimination of social gains, economic catastrophe, increased mortality, crime, prostitution, most servile subordination to the interests of Western imperialism or, in the case of Russia, affirmation of the most reactionary chauvinism in order to assert the same imperialist interests. Is it to be wondered if in these countries today there is a growing "nostalgia for socialism," that is for a social system superior to capitalism, which made great achievements in spite of the continuous imperialist aggression, until revisionism undermined it from within and then caused it to collapse?

In these 20 years the working class, the working people and the majority of the peoples have not surrendered in spite of the blows they have suffered, they have not accepted wage slavery and imperialist oppression in silence. The ebb in the class struggle has gradually given way to a greater resistance and a new rise in the political and social struggle, which is expressed in different ways in different countries. In particular in the last decade we have seen an important process of renewal of the struggles, significant advances of the workers and peoples, despite the increasing aggressiveness of the bourgeoisie.

History did not end with the fall of the Berlin Wall; on the contrary there has been an evident acceleration. The struggle of the social classes, which is the motive force for the achievement of communism, is advancing together with the communist and international workers movement. The protagonists of the struggle for social transformation are arising and are prepared for battle! This also concerns the bourgeoisie which, twenty years after the proclaimed “death of communism," has to exorcise it continuously, to denigrate and criminalize its ghost, in order to prevent the proletariat from recovering its revolutionary theory.
All this shows that the alleged superiority and invincibility of capitalism is a lie, that the reasons for the revolution and socialism continue to be as present and valid as ever.

Today we are in an international situation that is very different from that of 1989. The bourgeoisie is in a disastrous economic crisis as a result of the laws of capitalism, and it does not have answers for the needs and aspirations of the workers and peoples. It is more vulnerable than before, and there are many weak links in the chain of its rule. The current crisis of relative overproduction, interrelated with the general crisis of the imperialist-capitalist system, will last for a long time, revealing to the masses the true face of the bourgeoisie: a class which has long ago exhausted its historic role, but which is still calling on the workers and peoples to make the "necessary sacrifices" to ensure its survival and privileges.

While the governments are taking huge sums of money from the public treasury to serve the capitalist monopolies and the banks, unemployment is constantly growing, wages, pensions and social services are being dismantled, and therefore the workers are falling into misery and hunger. The offensive of the capitalists is taking ever sharper forms, the bourgeoisie and their governments are launching their attack against the political and economic gains achieved at the cost of hard struggles. Fascism is advancing in many countries, promoted by the most reactionary groups of financial capital. New robbers’ wars are being prepared.
This situation shows the incompatibility of interests between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie and places before the working class and the working masses the urgent need to form a united front of struggle against the capitalist offensive, political reaction and imperialist aggression.

The main obstacle that today is hindering the formation of the united front is the policy of class collaboration followed by the social democratic parties and the yellow unions, the real social props of the bourgeoisie. They promise the masses a "reformism" already put out of use by the inexorable laws of capitalism, they put a break on and divide the workers’ and trade union movement, they divert it towards parliamentary cretinism and they open the doors to the reactionary forces. To remove this obstacle, to fight effectively, the workers need to unite in order to intransigently defend their economic and political interests, advancing a concrete program of action against the bourgeoisie: against layoffs, the decline in wages, cuts in social spending, so that the consequences of the crisis fall on the bosses, the rich, the parasites. They must intensify the fight against the capitalist offensive in the factories, the countryside and the streets, organizing a broad international counter-offensive, so that the proletariat and peoples will not be sacrificed for the economic interests of the capitalists!
At the same time, the communists and revolutionaries must unite all the genuinely democratic, progressive and left-wing forces, to give impetus to the anti-imperialist and anti-fascist struggle, to encourage the trend towards change that is developing in the world, particularly in Latin America and Asia, to develop solidarity between the peoples.

The parties and organizations of the ICMLPO, together with the political and social forces that support the present call, put forward to the masses the problem of the revolutionary solution to the crisis of capitalism. Faced with the measures taken by the bourgeois governments, with the illusions sown by those who propose to "regulate" a social order in decomposition, the communists state that the evils of imperialism have no cure, that the only solution to the general crisis of capitalism is proletarian socialism, a planned society of the producers. Therefore, while we take part and in and support the increasingly acute forms of struggle under the blows of the crisis, while we cooperate in their organization, pointing out that the workers must refuse to bear the consequences of the crisis, we say that the situation will get worse if the proletariat and peoples fail to accumulate forces to respond to the attack and to fight to overturn the dictatorship of the exploiting classes, for a new and higher social order. Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the socialist revolution has once again become a problem that must be solved by the consolidation and the formation of strong communist parties that raise the banner of Marxism-Leninism, the flag of the October Soviet Revolution, the flag of the world proletarian revolution!

October 2009

International Conference of Marxist-Leninist Parties and Organizations (ICMLPO)

Anniversaries of two revolutions and one sham, November 7-9

2009-11-07T23:31:00.004-06:00

This article is from the Durham Spark on the Anniversary of the Great Ocotober Revolution, the first successful Socialist Revolution in the world, as well as the anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of Albania(later known as the Party of Labour of Albania). Included is a well done propaganda video from the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party of Ecuador, of which the first few minutes are images from the October Revolution.

Anniversaries of two revolutions and one sham, November 7-9

Today in 1917 the Bolsheviks drove out the Kerensky government, putting all power in the hands of the soviets and beginning the socialist stage of the Russian Revolution. That night the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets started, and the next evening it passed decrees on peace and land, and established the Council of People's Commissars, led by Lenin and other Bolsheviks, in coalition with the Left Socialist-Revoluntionaries after the Congress of Peasant Soviets. The Decree on Peace called for a three month armistice to negotiate an end to World War I, and called for the international working class to work for peace and the end of exploitation. The Decree on Land nationalized the land, without compensation, ended rent to landlords, and freely gave more than 400 million acres seized from the monarchy, aristocracy, capitalists, and religious institutions to the peasantry. Forests, waterways, and natural resources were also nationalized. The revolution quickly triumphed in Petrograd, but it took a few more days in Moscow and it took several years to defeat all of the White forces and the imperialist intervention, including US soldiers.

Thanks to the leadership of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and socialism, the USSR industrialized and continued to develop at a rabid pace and guarantee social welfare while the capitalist countries suffered through the Great Depression. Counterrevolutionary revisionists were exposed and Nazi collaborators were uncovered, so the USSR did not collapse when the Germans invaded, unlike the countries of Western Europe. The outcome of World War II in Europe was decided by the superior strength of the USSR, and fascist aggression gave way to revolution across Europe and Asia.

Unfortunately the fierce class struggle of the 30's did not defeat revisionism in the Soviet Union, and in fact revisionists seem to have gotten the upper hand, and when they could, persecuted people unjustly and undermined the government. After Stalin died, or was assassinated by the revisionists, in March 1953, they gained complete power and carried out a counter-revolution during the 50's and 60's, and persecuted the real communists. The USSR probably was a useful counterweight to US influence during the Cold War, but it was still led by counterrevolutionaries who staged a coup in the Greek Communist Party in exile, betrayed the Vietnamese Revolution, staged a counterrevolution in Afghanistan, and enabled the first Iraq War.

Tomorrow is the anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of Albania in 1941, later renamed the Party of Labor of Albania. It formed through the merger of three regional communist groups and was led by Enver Hoxha (born October 16, 1908). Albania was occupied by fascist Italy in spring 1939, and the CPA began in struggle against Italy and later Germany, and their Albanian allies and revisionists, freeing the country and parts of Yugoslavia in late 1944. Then the Albanian communists had to fight British and American intervention, invasion by Greece, and prevent Albania from being swallowed by Yugoslavia and Tito's pro-capitalist Communist Party of Yugoslavia. Ironically, Albania was friendly to the UK and USA, but was rewarded with provocations and paramilitary attacks similar to the "Bay of Pigs" operation in Cuba until 1953. They thought Albania was the weak point of the Warsaw Pact, but Albania uncovered and defeated all of the attacks.

Under the PLA, the severely war damaged economy began to recover and the economy was industrialized. Foreign aid, especially from the USSR, was vital for development, but the revisionist Soviet government under Khrushchev gained power and tried to push its revisionism on Albania. Khrushchev succeeded in undermining most of the communist parties, and all of those with state power in Europe, except Albania, which openly criticized Soviet revisionism in 1960. Later Albania was a leader in the fight against Chinese revisionism. Despite Albania's small size, the Albanian communists upheld Marxism-Leninism and were a progressive, revolutionary force in the world. Revisionism still triumphed there in the late 80's, but the PLA has been rejuvenated, though there is still a lot of work to do, given the embarrassing popularity of GW Bush and Bill Clinton in Albania.

For about a month BBC radio (carried on the local NPR station every day) has been crowing about "Europe's Revolution" in 1989. The Berlin Wall fell on November 9, 1989, and ironically Stalin was probably for reunifying Germany, but was opposed by the East Germans. To a revolutionary communist, those events don't have the power the BBC thinks, because the governments that were toppled were led by revisionists, presiding over capitalistic economies. In the USSR, the leadership decided it no longer needed to pretend to be socialist, while China has kept up the sham that it is a socialist country led by a communist party. The European "Socialist Bloc" was toppled from within or fatally weakened by revisionists and the influence of Gorbachev, and to call counterrevolution a collapse is to buy the lie that capitalism, and not just any capitalism, but "free market" neoliberal capitalism, is the natural order of the world. Ironically, in many of these countries there is wide nostalgia for the past (of course decried as a result of lack of education and desire for faded glory by the UK's radio propaganda). Capitalism, bourgeois democracy, and following advice from Western imperialists has brought corruption, unemployment, poverty, and the other ills of capitalism. Thanks to Yeltsin, Russia is run by imperialist autocrats and profiteers and has declining life expectancy and is losing population, while racism is increasing.

The end of the Cold War has not frozen history, and class conflict is spontaneous and inevitable under capitalism, and won't end because the capitalist media says it has. Contrast the change in the revolutionary USSR and Albania with the fraud of Obama. The Bolsheviks got Russia out of WWI, while Obama continues all of Bush's occupations and sanctions and is widening the war in Pakistan, may attack Iran, and continues the attacks on Palestine, Cuba, and other countries, as well as Bush secrecy and cover for torture. We face an economic crisis, and Obama helps the companies that caused it to get richer, while unemployment rises and credit dries up. The Democrats' idea of health insurance reform is to help the private insurers get more customers, and their idea of fighting climate change is making carbon pollution another way to get rich without doing much about greenhouse gas emissions. The US desperately needs to find its communist party and socialist revolution, while the supposedly socialist countries that suffer under revisionism need to renew their revolutions, watering the tree of liberty with blood if necessary, not follow their Gorbachevs and Yeltsins to capitalist poverty, autocracy or virtually meaningless elections (like ours in the USA), and subservience to foreign and domestic imperialism.

Unemployment Is at Its Highest Since April of 1983

2009-11-07T22:57:00.001-06:00

Unemployment Is at Its Highest Since April of 1983

As we look at the crisis today we see more and more that rings true of what Karl Marx said on the Double character of capitalism. That is when "wealth is produced, poverty is produced also". In the month of October, Americans have witnessed the highest unemployment in decades, at 10.2%, while stock values continue to rise along with a 3.5% increase in GDP. The total job loss for the month of October according to the Labor Department was 190,000, that’s 15,000 more job losses than predicted by capitalist economists. Meanwhile, the talking heads on the Right try to tell us that all is calm that things will get better, where all signs point to the fact that unemployment is expected to rise to 10.5% next year. As of now, we can say that one in ten working people in the United States is left without a job. A paradox present in this whole conundrum is that while we have the highest unemployment rate in 26 years, workers have showed a 9.5% increase in production in the Third quarter of 2009. This is due to the fact that as fear of unemployment grips the working person they are instilled with a desire to keep their job and cater to management’s whim. While we may look at the statistics and see the high numbers, we must also realize that they are much higher than the government is telling us they are. The Labor Department before Ronald Reagan used to calculate those with temporary employment and part-time jobs as those in the same lot with the workers on the unemployment line, and rightly so! A worker on a part-time or temp job does not do so as a means to make a career but to merely survive. If we calculate these numbers we arrive at much higher unemployment rate in this nation. California, the largest state in the union, had a higher unemployment rate than the nation at 12.2%, this is expected to rise higher as the State calculates its statistics in two weeks. The real numbers again would be even higher than this since once again part-time and temporary workers are not placed into the mix. The solution to this problem should not be for us, the working people of America, to sit on our hands and watch as unemployment continues to rise. We should demand with a clear and unified voice that we demand a “Working People’s Stimulus”, we must demand on Obama to deliver on his promise of employing America with well paying “Green Jobs”, we cannot just “expect” those who run the nation to give us what we want and need, we must demand from these people, if they do not answer our calls then there are consequences to these actions. As of now, 90% of black children must eat from government funded food stamps, the nation is involved with two losing wars and while the rich get richer more and more of the working class are escorted to the long lines of unemployment. This much is clear, we must not look to a “messiah” to come to deliver us from the peril which befalls us, rather we must lift ourselves up and set this path ourselves, by any means necessary.

Revisionist Quotes from the CPUSA

2009-11-05T20:51:00.003-06:00

The CPUSA used to be a revolutionary party for the working class. Despite a history of revisionism infecting the leadership, the Communist Party from its beginnings in 1919 to the depression was key on organizing the working class along revolutionary Marxist-Leninist lines. After the "destalinzation" that occurred in many world parties after Nikita Khrushchev's "secret speech", the Party adopted a reformist and anti-revolutionary strategy to achieve socialism, needless to say this was not and has not been successful. From 1956 until the present the Party has slid down a slippery slope of the most disgusting and appalling social-democratic nature. American Marxist-Leninists should deeply mourn the loss of such a wonderful party with such a rich militant history of fighting for the workers and the oppressed peoples of the imperialist USA. Genuine Communists must be unmerciful on exposing the CPUSA's anti-worker and anti-people's politics while simultaneously building the genuine Party for the working class! The following quotes are taken from Sam Webb, the current National Chairperson of the "Communist" Party, USA and one from Political Affairs the "theoretical" organ of the CPUSA.

Sam Webb, National Chairperson of the CPUSA

"Two “lions” died last week. One was known, adored by millions, and a life-long Democrat. Born to a privileged life, he could have done anything, including choosing a life of relative leisure. Instead, he turned into a tireless liberal warhorse for justice in all its many forms.
On Saturday a Catholic mass, included a eulogy by President Obama, celebrated his life of public service to the commonweal. I am obviously speaking about Senator Ted Kennedy."

"President Obama is a brilliant politician, but his election victory was as much the doing of the broad coalition that supported him, as it was his own brilliance. The alliance of candidate and coalition was mutually dependent, dynamic, and decisive in the end."

"Both in the transition to socialism and in its construction, I don’t foresee Communists being the sole decision makers. We will be one political force within a much larger coalition. We are getting away from the notion that the Communists are the "top dog" in the struggle for socialism while other political forces will either merge or come in behind us. In our view, we will be one component of a very diverse coalition, at the center of which is the working class, the racially and nationally oppressed, and women. Of course, in such a varied coalition, there will be competing views and we will forthrightly express ours, but our emphasis will be on cooperation, on finding common ground, on unity. "

"I don’t think that the political structures that currently exist will be dismantled. Nor do I think that a socialist movement will sideline the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence or a system of checks and balances on concentrated political power. It may want to extend, deepen or modify them based on both experience and the needs of socialist construction."

"PA: Many countries that have a socialist orientation are in the developing world: China, Vietnam, Cuba. Several have adopted a concept of socialism called market socialism. I know we have said there are no models, but is the socialist market economy the new model?

Webb: These countries are in the early stages of socialism – they are developing countries and the productive forces are at a low level – so they are employing market mechanisms to assist in their economic development. This doesn’t contradict the thinking of Marx, Engels or Lenin. Even if we were dealing with more advanced countries – take our country for example - if this were the day after, the week after, the year after, the decade after the socialist revolution, we would employ market mechanisms in the construction of the socialist economy."

"Slightly over a year ago, the American people elected a young African American to the presidency and increased the Democratic majorities in the Congress. President Obama's victory represented a repudiation of the right-wing ideology, politics and economics. It constituted a serious setback for neoliberalism in both its conservative and liberal skin.

The defeat of right-wing extremism was a long time in coming, but when it finally happened it did so not only because of the brilliance of the candidate, now president, but also due to the broad wings of a people's coalition. Not in our lifetime have we participated in such a movement."

"The notion of the capitalist class on the one side and the working class on the other may sound "radical," but it is neither Marxist, nor found in life and politics."

Nepal: The Tactic of General Insurrection

2009-11-03T16:22:00.004-06:00

It is a litmus test for ANYONE claiming to be a revolutionary to support the Maoist People's War in Nepal, India and the Philippines, it should be supported not with merely a nod, but should be whole-heartidely by Marxist-Leninists around the world. It is certain that many ultra-sectarians on the left such as the Trotskyites, Left-Communists, some Maoists and so-called Marxist-Leninists in imperialist and capitalist nations will tend to throw the Nepalese, Filipino and Indian people under the bus for their own sectarian goals! This is indeed very Communist! As a Marxist-Leninist I support the Filipino, Indian as well as the Nepalese Maoists fighting imperialism and reaction, for the simple fact that these forces of reaction will never give up power voluntarily. This however, does not change my position towards Maoism which I regard as a form of revisionism. The AKP wrote on the matter, it best reflects my views on the subject "All this does not change the general position of the APK towards Maoism, which we regard as a variant of modern revisionism, and which at the end will not lead to the creation of socialist societies under the dictatorship of the proletariat. The development of Mao Zedong's China, during and after him, is the proof of this thesis. The fundamentally not Marxist-Leninist character of Maoism, its character of first and foremost being a national liberation ideology and theory, and its lacking ability of creating a truly socialist society under the dictatorship of the proletariat, was not revealed until a prolonged, historical process clarified the matter – and the battle on the assessment of Maoism has not ended yet." The Maoist-led People's Wars in Southeast Asia should be supported by Marxist-Leninists as it is first and foremost a national liberation war against modern imperialism. This article was retrieved from Dissident Voice.

Nepal: The Tactic of General Insurrection

by Gary Leupp / November 2nd, 2009

[N]ow we are focusing on the mass movement… [N]ow we [can] really practice what we have been preaching. That means the fusion of the strategy of PPW [Protracted People’s War] and the tactic of general insurrection. What we have been doing since 2005 is the path of preparation for general insurrection through our work in the urban areas and our participation in the coalition government.

– Maoist leader Baburam Bhattarai, interview with the Britain-based World People’s Resistance Movement, October 26, 2009

Today (November 1) Nepal’s Maoists initiate, with torch rallies in Kathmandu, a mass movement to bring down the regime. This is the regime that succeeded the one their chair Prachanda headed as prime minister from August 2008 to May 2009–a compromise arrangement, always understood to be temporary and transitional, that collapsed when the Nepali Army refused to take orders from the Maoist prime minister.

Prime Minister Prachanda, noting the obvious (that the Maoists’ suspension of the People’s War and participation in parliamentary processes had not really given them state power), might have then ordered the resumption of the war. Instead, the first elected Maoist national leader made a surprising (I think even shrewdly Gandhian) move of resigning his post, while his party, the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) redoubled its efforts to organize support among the urban masses of Kathmandu.

The Maoists claimed that acquiring top posts in the government following the toppling of the monarchy in 2008 was less important than two other tasks: achieving goals in the composition of the new constitution and building that mass urban movement. The “Prachanda Path” has always been about combining Mao’s theory of People’s War (surrounding the cities from the countryside) with Lenin’s model of the urban uprising—the October Revolution.

As of November 2005 the Maoists controlled about 80% of the country. They surrounded Kathmandu Valley but felt incapable of taking it militarily. Meanwhile King Gyanendra, deeply unpopular, had made himself even more widely despised by dissolving the parliament and arresting mainstream political leaders. The Maoists cut a deal with the legal political parties to coordinate actions to bring down the king. They agreed to eventually lay down their arms under UN supervision, in return for the other parties’ acceptance of new elections for a Constituent Assembly to author a new constitution. In the April 2008 elections, Maoists won 220 of 575 seats in the assembly, double the figure of their nearest competitors. International observers such as Jimmy Carter verified that the elections were free and fair. There is no question the Maoists have a mass base.

And there’s no question there are real limits to what you can accomplish following the normal rules. Hence “the tactic of general insurrection.”

The U.S. State Department has always seen the Maoists as “terrorists” and even keeps them on the terror list now. That’s not because they’ve used violence to overthrow a social order that inflicts misery in subtle and not so subtle, violent and not so violent ways every day as the Nepali state presides or looks on indifferently. “Terrorism” in the State Department’s lexicon refers to anything that terrifies State Department officials, and the prospect of the red flag flying over Mt. Everest is one of their nightmares. But the fact is they do believe in the violent overthrow of oppressive institutions, they do believe the revolution isn’t by any means over yet, and they do have a program for seizure of power through what Bhattarai terms “the tactic of general insurrection.”

Knowing this, U.S. Charge d’Affaires in Kathmandu Jeffrey Moon called on Prachanda at his home in the city Oct. 28 to express U.S. concern about these upcoming protests. He was apparently told that the Maoists remain committed to the peace process and the drafting of a new constitution. But suspension of the guerrilla war is one thing. General insurrection centered in the city is another. And the People’s War and the urban insurrection may connect at some point in the near future, just as the government of neighboring India undertakes an assault on the Maoist movement that has come to control vast regions of that county.

I have no idea what the outcome may be. But history is clearly not over, Communist movements are clearly not dead, and the ideal of classless society has clearly not vanished in societies where class oppression is most intense.

Half of US children, most black children, will use food stamps

2009-11-02T23:40:00.002-06:00

The results of a recent Cornell University study are shocking. 90% of Black children, 90% of children in single-parent homes and nearly 50% of American children as a whole will eat meals provided for by food stamps at one point in their childhood."The situation is likely bad for children," said Thomas Hirschl, co-author of the report with Mark Rank, "because families eligible for food stamps who participate tend to be worse off nutritionally than eligible families who don't participate." Mr. Hirschl states that only around 60% of families eligible for food stamps will actually participate due to stigma associated with government aid. The study should come as no surprise to the disproportionate numbers of black and working class children.. The statistics broken down as follows:

90% of Black Children
37% of white children
62% of children born to parents who did not graduate high school
31% of children who had more than 12 years of school.

Black Children born to unwed parents with less than 12 years of education were reported at a staggering 97% on receiving food stamps. The total cost of poverty in children is $22 Billion says Mark Rank. It is the duty of anyone claiming to be a Marxist-Leninist to challenge unmercifully the anti-children policies of the bourgeoisie and the most reactionary elements of the right wing that stigmatize those receiving government aid. Lenin tells us with rather inspiring words that if we are to help the masses we "should not fear difficulties, or pinpricks, chicanery, insults and persecution." We must be quick to look for solutions and stand our ground in face of opposition, we have a duty to the children of this nation to not give one inch of ground to the reactionaries.

Source:

http://www.physorg.com/news176402213.html

Indian Democracy In A State Of Emergency

2009-11-01T21:53:00.001-06:00

Indian Democracy In A State Of Emergency

Western media and the Indian government have often (though, cagily, less and less often) described India as the "world's largest democracy." Yet the conditions for the majority of its people have worsened year after year. In response, people's movements, rebellions, and revolutionary struggles have rapidly grown and become widespread. The question is why?

CNN/IBN "Devil's Advocate" program: an interview with Arundhati Roy: 'Indian Democracy In A State Of Emergency' a program in 5 parts

Part One:

Part Two:

Part Three:

Part Four:

Part Five:

The Night Zhou was Drunk Under the Table

2009-11-01T21:37:00.001-06:00

The Night Zhou was Drunk Under the Table
By Ian Williams

As we approached the 60th anniversary on Thursday of Mao Zedong's declaration that the "Chinese people have stood up," I trawled through the memories of my time in China straddling 1970 and 1971, and found, with all the accuracy of retrospective prophesy, that there were more auguries of the current China than one might suspect.

Although my putative memoirs would be called "I was a Teenage Maoist", by the time I landed in Beijing I was a callow 21-year-old, a month older than the People's Republic. In fact, Zhou Enlai, the first premier, from 1949 until his death in 1976, repeated to us his dictum that it was too early to tell whether or not the French Revolution had been a success, let alone China's. Forty years

later, I wonder what Zhou, one of the more sophisticated and cosmopolitan of the Chinese leaders, but nonetheless a devoted communist, would have made of present-day China.

I was part of a delegation from an obscure British party that enjoyed unprecedented access to the Chinese leadership, including a drinking competition with Zhou - and a very risky argument about literature with Mao's wife, Jiang Qing, who had, after all, instituted the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) by demonizing all but a tiny group of writers and artists. It was so long ago that even the Chinese used the old Wade-Giles Romanization system for the Mandarin language. We were in Peking (Beijing), and read the Peking Review every week. In fact, our visit featured in it.

Our sessions with the Chinese cadres were often like negotiations, conducted over innumerable cigarettes and a constant flow of tea. The idea was that whoever called for a bathroom break was conceding the field of battle. Sadly for Chinese pride, our side had been brought up on a diet of gallons of tea and bitter beer and had formidable resistance to such diuretics.

Even at the time, I had a sense of bewilderment at the relative isolation from the world outside, of the top leadership. They provided us with a daily English press summary of world affairs and the difficulties of a binary view of the world became apparent. For example, Pakistan was an ally of China, therefore it was socialist and progressive - which the Pakistanis themselves would hardly claim, while social-democratic governments, like the British Labour Party, were reactionary and capitalist to the core.

As for our visit: I suspect that Zhou had hoped that it would provide information and encouragement for his planned opening to the West. We were there before British premier Edward Heath, or former secretary of state Henry Kissinger and president Richard Nixon from the United States. Indeed, as almost the only gweilos (foreigners) in town, we could attract crowds just by peering in a shop window. In those far-off days, my hair was red, which was almost like having eyes on green stalks for some people. However, enlisting us as a resource for global realpolitik confirms the naivety of their approach.

We were a sectarian groupuscule with fewer members nationally than the Chinese Communist Party's Central Committee. Our contact with the working political system in Britain was minimal and our knowledge of other countries tended to be based on contacts with equally out-of-touch groups. It would be nice to think that we changed the course of history, but there is absolutely no basis for thinking so. Our input probably pointed in the opposite direction to what they did. When we asked why they did not walk in and take Hong Kong, which was then ruled by Britain, Zhou suggested it was better to lessen the economic disparities between the two sides first.

Despite their own sectarian squabbles, despite the Cultural Revolution, the Chinese were at least dealing with some aspects of the real world. For example, they had built a state-of-the-art metro system in Beijing. Even though it was as yet unopened, Zhou took us for a ride on it, which tangentially introduced yet another paradox.

They told us, with almost schoolboyish glee at their boldness, that they were calling the metro station for Tiananmen Square "Zhuxi [Chairman] Station." It was a paradox even then, that in the midst of history's biggest-ever personality cult, no physical location was named after Mao, let alone any of the other revolutionary personalities. I can only presume that it was intended as a gesture of superiority to the Soviet proclivity for churning out city names in honor of top people.

This saved a lot of sign-painting during the various rectification campaigns, the Cultural Revolution and its aftermath. Not many of the leadership stayed in power throughout.

Apart from Zhou, we met the full Gang of Four - Jiang Qing and her close associates, Zhang Chunqiao, Yao Wenyuan and Wang Hongwen - but we noticed the omissions. Lin Biao, the powerful military commander who rose to political prominence in the Cultural Revolution and whose picture and introduction was at the front of hundreds of millions of Little Red Books, was absent in name and person. In a seamen's club in Shanghai, I noticed a book on sale by Chen Boda, Mao's personal secretary. Our minders immediately took it out the case and said it was too old and faded to sell.

Our party chairman, Reg Birch, an old communist trade unionist, asked to meet his old chum, Kang Sheng. They brought along his wife instead, explaining that the head of the security and intelligence apparatus was indisposed. In fact, along with Chen Boda, it now seems as if he, and indeed Lin Biao, were at that time in the process of being purged.

Lin shortly afterwards died in a plane crash. Kang resurfaced long enough to ensure that the People's Republic put its weight behind Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. In retrospect, I am glad I never had to shake his hand. Kang was posthumously accused of sharing responsibility (with the Gang of Four) for the Cultural Revolution. The Gang of Four had effectively controlled the power organs of the Communist Party through the latter stages of the Cultural Revolution.

In contrast with all the mass campaigns and circus antics of the Cultural Revolution, which resulted in widespread social and political upheaval and and economic disarray, these purges were being conducted in secrecy with no word of them leaking out from the leadership.

A case in point was a bizarre Christmas feast with an elderly American couple, old-style communists who had moved to China and taken up citizenship and party membership. They were brought out because they knew several of the delegation, who had asked about them.

The turkey dinner was odd in several ways. The couple were Jewish for a start, and although our Chinese hosts were trying to be hospitable with the seasonal bird, they obviously found something alien about the idea of cooking an intact animal: it came as a sort of turkey construction kit, disassembled, cooked and then reassembled. As for the couple, it was only many years later that I heard that their goose had been well and truly cooked. They were languishing in prison, brought out and dusted off for us, and then returned afterwards. But nothing they said gave any of us any grounds for suspicion.

The full Gang of Four came along to join Zhou for talks and a banquet on New Year's Eve. Jiang Qing stood out in a sea of nondescript cotton Mao suits. The still striking woman, who had reduced the repertoire of a huge nation to a handful of revolutionary Beijing operas, one ballet, the Red Detachment of Women, and pretty much one classical sonata, flounced in, every inch the imperial consort. The former actress' cotton greatcoat was draped around her shoulders like a cape, and she carried herself like an imperial consort.

When she discovered that I had been studying English literature, she immediately pronounced that Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre and Charles Dickens' Hard Times were the only two English proletarian novels. Even as I blurted out a negative, I was thinking hard. I saw the rest of the senior leadership of the party withdraw a little in expectation of the thunderbolt to come. Jane Eyre was clearly a bit too close to home. A governess who marries the boss had too much resonance with the career of a Shanghai starlet who married the chairman. I concentrated on Hard Times, pointing out that its hero was in fact a strikebreaker - a traitor to his class in Marxist terms.

Through narrowed eyes, Jiang delivered her ultimate riposte, "You have long hair. It makes you look like a girl." There was a barely concealed sigh of relief around the table. At least it was not "Off with his head!" or "Counter-revolutionary scum".

The evening, after a banquet fit for an emperor, ended with drinks for us and Zhou and his entourage. The Gang of Four did not, as I remember, hang around. It became a drinking match, with shots of mao tai, the ferocious-smelling sorghum-based overproof liquor that had become the official drink of the party.

As the youngest there, but already with a reputation as a determined drinker, I was moved forward as the champion on going glass-for-glass with Zhou, a man with an iron constitution. But I saw how he stayed ahead. He only drank half his, while I was drinking the lot. Even so, he gave up first, as I remember - allowing for the fact that after large amounts of the stuff, memories can be unreliable.

Despite the Moscow-style purges going on behind the wainscoting, economically, China's development was more balanced than that of the Soviets. We could go on a pub crawl through the streets of Beijing, pijui - beer, being one of the early accessions to our Mandarin vocabulary and although, for example, cotton was rationed, consumer goods seemed in adequate supply. In the covered market, locals looked superior as Aeroflot pilots came rushing through stocking up on things from soap to razor blades to tomatoes that the Soviets' heavy industrial base couldn't provide.

The variety of cigarettes, from coffin nails to the crush-proof packs of the most expensive brands, has always made me wonder about the role of tobacco in industrialization - selling the peasants highly profitable cigarettes was a financially painless way of raising state funds compared with expropriation. The other aspect was the amount of collective entrepreneurial activity that was taking place, even after years of disruption from the Cultural Revolution, which had not officially finished by then.

For example, in the countryside, communes were making cement boats for sale, while in Shanghai we visited a back-street factory that was etching silicon chips - almost state-of-the-art at the time. Even then, I remember wondering about the flue that vented the hydrofluoric acid fumes from the process onto the street. In a microchip, it encapsulated the future environmental problems of reckless development, even as it demonstrated the entrepreneurial urges that Deng Xiaoping was later to unleash.

I returned to Britain puzzled. The Cultural Revolution had not visibly destroyed the economy, as was sometimes claimed. But it was difficult to know what it was all about. It was bad enough when party leaders were denounced for esoteric sins of culture and ideology during the Cultural Revolution, but these silent purges and behind-the-scenes disappearances reduced the struggles to personalities and power-plays. Mao himself seems to have been playing off the leaders against each other.

So perhaps that was the twin legacy of the first 20 years. It developed the ground for the upsurge of economic activity in which China seems not only to have stood up but appears to be racing ahead. But it also has left the Communist Party totally committed to clinging onto power, without much in the way of ideology, while its leadership changes behind closed doors, with only the faintest pretence of consulting the masses. And by all accounts, party leaders at every level are still fond of banquets and mao tai.

Ian Williams is the author of Deserter: Bush's War on Military Families, Veterans and His Past, Nation Books, New York.

(Copyright 2009 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)

Albania: 1997 On the Brink of Revolution

2009-10-31T11:41:00.005-05:00

The year 1992 marked the end of the Socialist People's Republic of Albania, from the mid-1990s Albania liberalized its economy and by March 1997 the nation descended into chaos as two-thirds of Albanians lost their retirement, due to the fradulent pyramid investment schemes, under the protection, of the new capitalist goverment. The total loss was around $1.2 billion dollars. The political beliefs of those involved were diverse, the most recognizable though being the Communist Party of Albania (PKSH). The rebellion spread throughout the nation, finally contained to the South. The uprising was finally quelled by foreign imperialist troops a month later, it exists as a testament to the response the Albanian proletariat gave when faced with counter-revolution.

Albania - The Inside Story
The Armed Insurrection in Albania and the imperialist Intervention, India-Albania Friendship Association, Delhi, 1997, 16 pages. Price Rs. 7/- including postage from: The Manager, 'Revolutionary Democracy'.

Ernie Trory
This is a collection of seven articles originally published in various Marxist-Leninist periodicals during the critical months of March and April, 1997. Together they give a picture of events about which little is known outside Albania.

In the first of these articles, 'a comrade in the Communist Party of Albania' who is not named for obvious reasons, is interviewed by a journalist from La Nostra Lotta, organ of the Communist Party of the Proletariat of Italy.

This comrade dates the beginning of the collapse of socialism in Albania from shortly after the death of Enver Hoxha in 1985. 'Despite some negative phenomena in 1985' he says 'with the transformation of the Party of Labour of Albania (PLA) into the Socialist Party, reformism has spread, opening the way for the "democratic" reaction of Sali Berisha.'

At first there were illusions about the benefits that capitalism would bring, but after the fraudulent election of Sali Berisha in 1992, people quickly changed their minds.

During 1996 the social climate became explosive due to the failure of almost all economic activity, the crisis of education, the failure to pay pensions, mass unemployment, the lack of goods of prime necessity and the fall in living standards generally.

Asked what he considered to be the role of the Socialist Party of Albania in 1997, he said: 'This Party is linked with big European capital and has good relations with US imperialism.

'It also has unofficial relations with the party of Berisha who, these days, is using Serbian mercenaries and is engaged with counter-revolution.' Berisha's party was, of course, the so-called 'Democratic Party.

The years from 1991 to 1997 in Albania were years of destruction in the name of the fight against communism. They are described in some detail in an article, by another member of the Communist Party of Albania, which was published in the 13 March, 1997 issue of Roter Morgen, journal of the Communist Party of Germany.

This member said that one of the theses of the Democratic Party was that everything that had been built up during the years of socialism was worthless and had to be destroyed so that work could begin again from 'zero point.' Or, as formulated by the economist, Gramoz Pashko, a leading member of the Democratic Party: 'We are destroying communism in Albania down to the roots.'

In pursuit of this thesis, factories, social and cultural organisations, stock- breeding complexes and warehouses, even hospitals were closed down or destroyed. Vineyards and plantations of tropical fruits were burned and telephone networks in the villages, as well as irrigation plants, were put out of action.

Graves of the heroes and heroines of the national liberation movement were desecrated. 'We are fighting against communism so that the European and American world will like us and help us,' trumpeted the Berisha clique.

More than 600,000 young Albanians fled the country to seek work in Italy and Greece or anywhere else that seemed to offer an opportunity for survival. But many stayed and fought back in desperation.

The popular anger surfaced on the 26th May, 1996, during the rigged elections, when the headquarters of the Democratic Party, as well as police stations and the buildings of other state organisations were burnt to the ground. These actions were accompanied by hunger strikes of students in the universities of Vlora and Gjirokaster in the south, where working people raided depots and armed themselves.

In Saranda and in Shenkoll the prisons were opened and political prisoners released.

President Berisha replied by declaring a state of emergency and placed the whole country under the control of the army, the police and the secret service (SHIK). But he did not get the guns back.

In an interview with Ubaldo Buttafava, secretary of the Central Committee of the Organisation for the Communist Party of the Proletariat of Italy, on the 22 March, 1997, presumably for the La Nostra Lotta, it was pointed out that the bourgeois press in the US 'says that there is anarchy in Albania, and that the rebellion was due to the pyramid money schemes.'

But what are the real facts? In the opinion of Buttafava, 'The popular rebellion in Albania is the product of an economic, social and political crisis which has matured over the past year.

'It is the result, in the first place, of the reformism of Ramiz Alia and Fatos Nano inaugurated in 1991 at the 10th Congress of the PLA with the expulsion from the Party of officers faithful to Enver Hoxha and the defence of socialism; and in the second place of the 'Democratic' politics of Sali Berisha who has demonstrated a neo-colonial policy subservient to the US and to Italy. The popular rebellion in its internal force has diverse politics, among them those of the new Communist Party of Albania.'

In reply to a further question it was stated: 'The Socialist Party is a typical social-democratic party which openly supports capitalism, bourgeois democracy, integration into Europe and NATO. It is the true obstacle to revolution and the principal counter-revolutionary force; but in these days it is being unmasked in the eyes of the masses.

Meanwhile, according to an article appearing in the Turkish publication, Emek, on the 1 April, 1997: 'within the Rebellion Committee in Vlora the influence of the people and that of the Communist Party of Albania is very great. In meetings that take place twice daily, thousand of people discuss further ways of proceeding.' On one thing they appear to be adamant: 'We will not lay down our weapons.'

Another decision taken by the Rebellion Committee in Vlora was not to march on Tirana. 'Berisha and the foreign powers.. are trying to provoke a war between the south and the north....' it decided. 'Such a march would reinforce this attempt of Berisha and the imperialist countries.' In Vlora, control remained firmly in the hands of the Rebellion Committee. There was neither chaos nor looting nor arbitrary shooting.

Similar Rebellion Committees were set up all over the south of Albania, chosen directly at public meetings by the people who reserved the right to recall any elected member who did not fulfil his or her obligations.

In an interview in the same edition of Emek, a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Albania complained that even the history of Albania was being manipulated by the new rulers; for example: 'The resistance of the Albanian people against fascism in 1944 was declared to have been a civil war in which allegedly much blood was spilled between brothers.' The anniversary of the liberation of Albania from the Nazis on the 29 November 1944, as a result of a struggle which had cost the lives of 28,000 partisan men and women, was no longer allowed to be commemorated.

In the final article in this compilation, published in Roter Morgen on the 10 April 1997, there was a grave warning that following detailed discussions between the Albanian Prime Minister Fino and his Italian colleagues, plans for military intervention by the imperialists had reached an advanced stage.

It was known that Italy had agreed to provide 2,500 troops, France 1,000, Greece 700, Turkey 500, Spain 500 and Rumania 400. Ostensibly this was to provide humanitarian aid.

The Communist Party of Albania responded with an appeal headed, 'Hands off Albania,' which was immediately signed by the Communist Party of Denmark (M-L), the Federation of Democratic Workers' Associations of Turkey, the Communist Workers' Party of France, the Communist Party of Germany and the Revolutionary Organisation of Norway.

In a foreword to the booklet under review, dated the 20 April 1997, it was announced: 'Foreign troops have landed in Albania in response to the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1101 under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter upon the request of the besieged President Sali Berisha: it has been supported by NATO and the European Union. The Italian armed forces have provided the bulk of the soldiers of this military adventure.

'This is no coincidence as Italian capital covets Albanian copper and oil. Just 58 years ago, under Mussolini, Italian troops landed on Albanian shores and occupied the country.'

Subsequent events have been sparsely reported in the capitalist press. We know, for instance, that despite a political coup that at first seemed successful, Berisha lost the election that followed and that the pathetic attempt to restore the Albanian monarchy did not survive a referendum held at the same time as the election.

Fatos Nano, replacing Sali Berisha as President, has, according to an article in the New Worker on the 4 July, 1997, 'reassured the European Union that he will continue to support the market economy and the restoration of capitalism in Albania.'

But as the New Worker added: 'The Albanian Communist Party which led the revolt, remains loyal to Albania's revolutionary' traditions.'

Or, as a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Albania is quoted in this booklet as having said when the struggle was at its height: 'This uprising will bring our people numerous experiences and self-assurance.

'A people that lived for decades under socialism and places great importance on independence will not put up with everything.'

Read this booklet and become inspired - as I have been.

From 'New Worker', 20th February, 1998

Back From Hiatus

2009-10-24T08:15:00.004-05:00

Despite not writing anything for months at a time. The Red Republic is not going anywhere, due to a popularity in my blog amongst the ML Left, I will return with my writings and translation.

Website of the American Party of Labor

2009-09-19T17:00:00.002-05:00

(Click on Image)

Nation pt. 1

2009-01-13T17:36:00.004-06:00

The following work was written by Comrade LaVida, a cadre of the American Party of Labor, a growing Marxist-Leninist Party in the United States. Comrade LaVida in this work defines the Marxist analysis of a nation and its history of development.

The disunity characteristic of feudal society disappears in the course of capitalist development and a single national market is formed as a result of which nationalities turn into nations. "Nations," wrote Lenin,"are an inevitable product, an inevitable form, in the bourgeois epoch of social development."¹

A nation, like a nationality, has such features as a common territory, language and culture. But as distinct from nationality it is a durable community of people,and as Lenin noted, it owes its durability to "profound economic factors".²

Community of economic life is a key feature of a nation. It is the economy, economic links that unite people living on common territory and having a common language into a single whole,into a nation. Economic and political development fosters a common psychology which is manifested in the historical traditions of a nation and in its distinctive culture and mode of life.

Nations are not races! Racial distinctions are certain external biological traits such as the color of skin, shape of the eyes,and others. On the basis of these distinctions humanity has been divided into four basic races, red, yellow, black and white.

Imperialist ideologists have claimed that the economic, political and cultural level of one or another people,or the position of a person in society depend on racial traits.
They have talked a lot about the ascendancy of the white race which,they said has been assigned by nature itself to dominate the"non-white"races. But historical experience and scientific data prove that people of all races have equal abilities. As regards the backwardness of some peoples which do not belong to the white race,it is not due to the color of their skin or hair, as bourgeois ideologists have asserted, but to the centuries of colonial oppression by the white exploiters. Now they have cast off the imperialist yoke, the peoples of the former colonies and dependencies are successful developing their economy and culture. Rapid progress has been made but much more needs to be done.

Historical Forms of Social Communities

We know that in addition to the mode of production, basis and superstructure a socio-economic formation includes definite historical communities of people, gens, tribe, nationality and nation. Let us examine these communities.

A gens is a historical community of people who are united by blood relationships and certain economic ties, and who jointly protect common interests and combat the elements. The economic basis of a gens was collective ownership and use of the means of production. It's members worked together and together consumed the means of livelihood they produced. A gens was headed by a council made up of all the adult men and woman who elected or removed the leaders, elders and military commanders.

In the initial stage of the development of the gens its members were those whose descent was reckoned through the mother (matriarchal). Later when the labor of men became socially more important, particularly with the spread of stock breeding and tilling, the matriarch was replaced with the patriarch. The father tried to leave the family property to his heirs and the gens' property gradually became separated from the collective, clan property.

Several gentes would unite into a tribe characterized not only by a common ancestry, but also in a common language and territory.

The gens and tribe existed under the primitive system and played a tremendous role in the development of society, people settled almost throughout the planet and laid the foundation for mankind's material and spiritual culture.

With the development of production and the rise of a class society and the state, blood relationships gradually fell apart and the gens and tribe gave way to a new historical community of people, the nationality. But the survivals of the tribal system persist for a long time and in some Asian and African countries they have remained to this day as a result of the imperialist colonial policy.

As an historical community of people nationality is more typical of the slave-owning and feudal systems. Unlike the gens it is not based on consanguinity, but above all on common territory, language and culture. Nationalities emerged mainly as a result of the union of kindred tribes.

The common territory and community of language and culture typical of a nationality rested on a definite material foundation, natural, primarily agricultural economy with no social divisions of labor worth mentioning, peasant, crafts and later manufacturing. Yet a nationality was not a sufficiently durable community of people because under the slave-owning system and feudalism the development of country wide economic ties,without which close,stable connections between people could not emerge, was impossible. There was,of course, exchange of commodities and markets in the slave-owning society and feudalism, but they were merely of local importance and were incapable of overcoming economic and political disunity. Some nationalities that emerged in the slave-owning system and in a number of countries under feudalism have remained under capitalism and socialism but they have acquired specific capitalist or socialist features.

¹V.I.Lenin,"Karl Marx", Collected Works, Vol. 21 p.72
²V.I.Lenin,"The Right of Nations to Self- Determination", Collected Works, Vol. 20 p. 397.

Israel's New Holocaust

2009-01-09T20:48:00.004-06:00

The following work was written by Comrade Marcus Winter, a cadre of the American Party of Labor, a growing Marxist-Leninist Party in the United States. In his article Comrade Marcus Winter shows the general views that the internationalist proletarians are taking towards the cowardly attacks by the Israeli Defense Force against the Palestinian people in Gaza.

Israel’s New Holocaust
By Marcus Winter

Attack on “Hamas?” Don’t Make Me Laugh!

It seems at this point, the international community would defend Israel’s imperialist ethnic cleansing even if the IDF started using gas chambers. “225 Killed as Israel Rains Fire on Hamas,” the Jerusalem Post headline says. One wonders: if someone bombed America, would the media say that they “rained fire on George W. Bush?” As I write this, the Post’s headline is outdated. The death toll in Gaza is now 635 and counting, with over 3,000 injured. Thousands of Israeli Arabs have already taken to the streets in protest, and there have been several such demonstrations by masses of people in front of Israeli embassies worldwide.
Over 100 tons of explosives have already been dropped by Israeli planes in the heaviest bombing in the region since the Six-Day War back in 1967. Ground troops have already begun invading and occupying Palestine. Israeli Prime Minister Olmert’s statement that the invasion of Palestine is to “bring about a fundamental improvement in the security situation in the South [of Gaza]” and to “allow citizens to lead normal lives” is undermined by the sudden, massive airstrike that is specifically targeting infrastructure. In the past day, Israeli shells hit two UN Jabaliya schools, leaving 33 children dead and 55 injured, 13 in critical condition.

Who’s the Terrorist?

The Palestinian territory of the Gaza strip—the victim of this bloody imperialist attack—has about 1.5 million inhabitants, 45% under the age of 15. At least 115 children have already died. Still, “these people are nothing but thugs,” Gordon Johndroe, a spokesman for the National Security Council says. “So Israel is going to defend its people against terrorists like Hamas that indiscriminately kill their own people.” That remark came soon before a report that a Hamas police academy had been bombed during a graduation ceremony, killing 80.
Israeli Foreign Affairs Minister Tzipora Livni demands that Olmert “topple” the Hamas government, and insists that if the Palestinian government “gets down on its knees and begs Israel to stop,” then a ceasefire will be “considered.”
In spite of the US’s responsibility in this matter—giving 5 billion dollars to Israel annually and continually blocking a ceasefire agreement—our “dear leader” Obama has thus far been mysteriously silent. It will be interesting to see which bourgeois stooch breaks the silence first.

The Objective Situation

Olmert and his cronies say that this Zionist terror is due to the rocket attacks launched by Hamas fighters into Israeli territory. He fails to mention, however, that the election of Hamas to power in Palestine and the violence that has resulted are all a reaction to Israel’s decades-long occupation and subjugation of the Palestinian people inside and outside of Israel.
Israel currently controls the borders and airspace around the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Road crossings into Gaza are currently blocked. Gaza itself currently has a 49% unemployment rate, while the West bank has 23%. Most Palestinian residents of the Strip currently live without running water. 50,000 children are currently suffering malnutrition because of the recent Israeli blockade, an action that brings back memories of the Nazi blockade of Stalingrad during WWII where citizens of the city were reduced to eating wallpaper to survive.
Let’s be crystal clear—Israel, not Hamas, is responsible for the invasion. Nothing will stop the rockets except the end of apartheid in Israel and the end of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land. Hamas are not socialist, but they are a movement of the national bourgeoisie that fights for the civil rights of the Palestinian people. The objective situation demands that US and Israeli imperialism must be fought in Palestine and the entire Middle East through armed struggle if we hope to see an end to the bloodshed once and for all.

ICMLPO declaration on Israeli attack on Gaza

2009-01-08T16:04:00.008-06:00

Posted by Comrade Vijay Singh on the Marxist-Leninist List

Declaration of the International Conference of Marxist-Leninist Parties and Organizations (ICMLPO)

Zionist Barbarism Must Stop Immediately!

The Zionist government of Israel, which is the strike force of Western imperialism in the Middle East, is once again decimating the defenseless people of Palestine. The large-scale aggression carried out by fighter planes, bombers and heavy artillery has already caused about 500 deaths and 2,500 wounded in Gaza.
Despite the protests and outrage of the Arab peoples and the peoples of the world, the Zionist murderers are now carrying out ground operations in the Gaza Strip. Those who murder children, who deliberately bomb and ravage the places considered sacred by the people, who flout the humanitarian feelings of millions of people, who practice state terrorism, are cynically pretending to "fight against terrorism", "to defend the values of the civilized world". But who allows them to act with complete impunity? Who supports them, encourages them and urges them to act in this way? The response to these questions is found in the "resolution" (or rather the irresolution) of the recent meeting of the Security Council of the UNO. Those who claim to give lessons in democracy and human rights to the entire world have not even been able to denounce this barbarism of the Zionist state.
Even before the spokespersons of the Zionist army justified their barbarism, the spokespersons of Western imperialism demeaned themselves to the point of declaring that this was a "defensive war". Israel is encouraged by the silence of the governments of the big powers, by the absence of concrete measures, of sanctions, that would force them to stop this war.
Those who have the decision-making power in the United Nations are the same capitalist and imperialist bandits who support the Zionist aggressors and occupiers. This is why we cannot expect anything from these "champions of humanity and civilization".
But as it has done for 60 years, Palestine remains standing and continues to resist.
If the Arab and Muslim peoples of the Middle East truly wish to help their Palestinian brothers, they must get rid of their collaborationist governments. It is not possible to collaborate with U.S. imperialism and at the same time to oppose the Israeli oppression of Palestine. We must proclaim this truth loud and clear.
We, the International Conference of Marxist-Leninist Parties and Organizations (ICMLPO), call on all workers and all democratic forces of the whole world to defend and organize concrete actions of solidarity with the Palestinian people who are fighting against Zionist oppression.
We call for
* increasing the pressure on the governments to place sanctions against Israel, such as freezing diplomatic relations and suspending cooperation agreements with Israel.
* increasing the international denunciation of this war of massive destruction directed against the Palestinian people
* supporting the initiatives and demonstrations which, throughout the world, are demanding the end of the Israeli military offensive.

We call for the intensification of the struggle against imperialism and its collaborators, against Zionism and all those who support and encourage Israeli barbarism.
Immediately stop the Zionist slaughter in Gaza!
Immediately lift the blockade of Gaza
Freedom for Palestine
Down with imperialism and Zionism

Twelve Editorial Staff Rules for the Great International Media When the News is from the Middle East

2009-01-07T20:19:00.003-06:00

Twelve Editorial Staff Rules for the Great International Media When the News is from the Middle East

1) In the Middle East it is always the Arabs who attack first and always Israel that is defending themselves. This defense is called a reprisal.

2) The Arabs, Palestinian or Lebanese have no right to kill civilians. That is called “terrorism.”

3) Israel has the right to kill civilians. That is called “legitimate defense.”

4) When Israel kills civilians en masse, the western powers claim that it is more measured. This is called “reaction of the international community.”

5) The Palestinians and the Lebanese have no right to capture soldiers of Israel inside military installations with sentries and combat posts. This is called, “Kidnapping of defenseless people.”

6) Israel has the right to kidnap anytime and anywhere as many Lebanese and Palestinians as they want. Currently there are more than 10 thousand, 300 of whom are children and a thousand are women. No proof of guilt is needed. Israel has the right to keep kidnapped prisoners indefinitely, even if they are authorities democratically elected by the Palestinians. This is called "terrorist prisoners.”

7) When the word Hezbollah is mentioned, it is compulsory in the same sentence to contain the words “supported and financed by Syria and by Iran.”

8) When you mention "Israel" it is forbidden to make any mention of the words "supported and financed by the U.S." This may give the impression that the conflict is uneven and that Israel’s existence is not in danger.

9) When referring to Israel, expressions that are prohibited: "Occupied Territories," "UN resolutions," "Violations of human rights" or "Geneva Convention.”

10) Both the Palestinians and the Lebanese are always “cowardly,” they are hidden among the civilian population, which does not want them. If they sleep in their homes, with their families, that gives them the name of “cowards.“ Israel has a right to destroy with bombs and missiles the neighborhoods where they are sleeping. This is called a “precision surgical action.”

11) The Israelis speak better English, French, Spanish or Portuguese than the Arabs. Therefore they and those who support them must be interviewed more and have more opportunities than the Arabs to explain the present Rules of the Editorial Staff (from 1 to 10) to the general public. That is called “journalistic neutrality.”

12) All those who are not in accordance with the Rules of Writing above are "highly dangerous anti-Semitic terrorists."

(Text Portuguese, anonymous, sent by a reader of the Carta Maior blog)

CPGB(ML) Videos on the Gaza Massacre. Victory to the Intifada

2009-01-06T21:51:00.005-06:00

These are videos of members of the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist) discussing the state terrorism inflicted by the government of Israel against the entire Palestinian people. This is not a Muslim vs. Jewish issue, this is an anti-imperialist struggle. The Communists must extend unconditional support to the Palestinian people and their armed forces resisting the illegal and racist occupation by Israel.

"Turn Gaza into a graveyard for the occupation soldiers " -Ahmad Sa'adat

2009-01-06T17:54:00.009-06:00

This statement is from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine website, a commendable revolutionary and communist organization that has resisted Israeli oppression against the Palestinian people for decades. Ahmad Sa'adat, is the imprisoned General-Secretary of the organization and has called for a continued resistance of the Palestinian people against their occupiers.

General Secretary: Turn Gaza into a graveyard for the occupation soldiers

Comrade Ahmad Sa'adat, the imprisoned General Secretary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, issued a statement from his prison cell on January 5, 2009, calling for Gaza to be turned into a graveyard for the occupiers and for the Palestinian resistance to unite and strike the occupation everywhere they can in order to defeat the enemy.

General Secretary Sa'adat also called upon the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank to immediately release its political prisoners and for PA President Mahmoud Abbas to make clear where he stands - on the side of the resistance, or on the side of the enemy. The General Secretary's call was widely distributed by Arab media.

Aziz Dweik of Hamas and Marwan Barghouthi of Fateh, Palestinian national leaders also imprisoned by Israel, also issued statements echoing Comrade Sa'adat's sentiments, calling for national unity and resistance to the occupier.

A statement from Palestinian political prisoners inside Israeli jails was issued last night, signed to by all national and Islamic forces, calling for steadfastness in front of the Israeli crimes and massacres in Gaza and for unity in the battlefield in the struggle.

Hoxha on Social Democracy and Democratic-Socialism pt. 2

2009-01-04T13:17:00.004-06:00

Special thanks for my comrade Ismail Badiou of the Hoxhaist Union on compiling this Essay from the book The Party of Labor of Albania in Battle with Modern Revisionism. This work is testament to the Albanian Communist, Enver Hoxha, who defended Communist theory not only from Eurocommunists, Maoists, Khrushchevites and Titoites; but as one shall read in this 8 part series, the fight against the agents of the bourgeoisie in the workers movement themselves, the Social-Democrats and “Democratic Socialists”. This is the first time this has been posted on a public forum of the internet and until it has been posted in its entirety on http://marxists.org this will be a place where one may find this work. This work is essential for Marxist-Leninists in understanding the history and the positions of the Social Democrats and "Democratic Socialists".

Enver Hoxha
First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Party of Labor of Albania
"The Modern Revisionists on the Way to Degenerating Into Social-Democrats and to Fusing with Social-Democracy"
Reproduced from “Zëri i Popullit” dated April 7, 1964

Modern Revisionists Have Slipped into the Positions of Social-Democracy

Just as the old opportunists and reformists betrayed Marxism-Leninism, the cause of the working class, of the revolution and of socialism, so do the modern revisionists betray these ideals and are pursuing the same road as their forerunners who are at the same time their spiritual inspirers. Those who have changed are not the social-democrats but the modern revisionists, who have fallen into the treacherous positions of social-democracy.

Rejecting Marxism-Leninism, the social-democrats claim that “problems of today cannot be solved by old concepts”. Following in their wake, the revisionists too, speculate with the newer conditions and phenomena, and, under the guise of fighting “dogmatism” and upholding “the creative development of Marxism” claim that many things today should be looked at with a critical eye, that what was right 30 years ago cannot be such any longer, that atomic weapons and the danger of a nuclear war makes it indispensable to revise our views and stand on many questions of strategy and tactics, that he who abides by the basic theses of Marx and Lenin in the sixties of the 20th century is a dogmatist who takes no account of the great changes that have come about in the world, and he who consults the classic works of Marxist-Leninists in order to analyze and explain the present historical process, is afflicted with the mania of quotations and so and so forth. Hence, Marxism-Leninism is outdated for revisionists too, it no longer suits the newer conditions, it should be “enriched” with new ideas and new conclusions. Just like all the old opportunists and reformists, the revisionists too are stripping Marxism of its critical and revolutionary spirit and are attempting to turn it from a weapon in the hands of the working class into a weapon in the hands of the bourgeoisie to be used against the working class.

“Not the class struggle but the solidarity and harmony of all men who possess the sense of responsibility towards society”--this is the motive power of present-day society, the social-democrats maintain. The revisionists too have erased the class struggle from their books, and in fact have replaced it with the idea of class reconciliation in the name of “preserving peace” in the world, they have renounced this struggle in the name of “saving the world from the danger of nuclear war”, and instead of the class struggle they preach “peaceful coexistence” as the only method to solve all the vital problems that stand before human society. “Peace at all costs, peace with all and above all”, “christian love for everybody”, “abstract humanism above classes”, these are the ideas that the modern revisionists preach far and wide. In the name of this ideal the revisionists make common cause with the enemies of the class, with the imperialists and reactionaries of various countries and their agents and lackeys—the right-wing leaders, social-democratic leaders and the Titoite clique, while, on the other hand, they fight furiously against all those who loyally uphold the interests of the working class and their Marxist-Leninist ideology—the communists parties and all the revolutionary communists.

The social-democrats have long given up the revolution and preach that socialism will come about through reforms within the framework of the bourgeois order of things, of democracy and bourgeois legality. Following in their tracks, the revisionists too have abandoned the revolutionary way, saying that the way to socialism is the way to an ever broader democracy, the way of observing and carrying out bourgeois constitutions, the way of “reforming structures”. Just like the social democrats, the revisionists too, identify the struggle for democracy with that for socialism, confine the struggle for socialism to that for democracy. Dragging Kautzky's and Bernstein's theories from their burial place, they express themselves in and only in favor of the “peaceful” and “parliamentary” way, which they hold up as a world strategic principle, and they have concentrated all the efforts on the struggle for votes in order to win the majority of seats in bourgeois parliaments.

The social-democrats consider the capitalist state as a state above classes, as an interpreter and champion of the interests of society as a whole, they are opposed to breaking up the old bourgeois state machine, they are opposed to the dictatorship of the proletariat, which, according to them, is the negation of democracy, is a totalitarian rule and so on and so forth. And the revisionists spread the illusions that the capitalist state may change its class nature, that it may become a state that will express not only the interests of the bourgeoisie but also those of the proletariat and of the laboring masses, they say that Lenin's thesis on the indispensability of breaking up the bourgeois state apparatus must be modified, that the dictatorship of the proletariat is an out-dated idea, or, at most, suitable only for backward countries, that it may take not only various forms but also quite a different content. Both the social-democrats as well as the revisionists slander against the dictatorship of the proletariat and describe the entire period of its rule as a period of mass terror and arbitrariness, as a period of brutal violation of laws, of socialist democracy, and so on and forth.

In their practical political activity too, the modern revisionists are proceeding in the footsteps of the traitorous leaders of social democracy. As a matter of fact, they have joined with the enemies of socialism and of the peoples—with the imperialists and particularly with the American imperialists, and with the reactionaries of various countries. For the sake of getting closer to imperialism, for the sake of achieving Soviet-American collaboration, which is N. Khrushchev's and his group's highest aspiration and ideal, the revisionists do not hesitate even to betray the true friends and allies of the Soviet people, the vital interests of the socialist countries, the working class, the peoples and nations oppressed and exploited by the imperialists. A proof of this lies in such activities of the revisionists headed by Khrushchev's group as their adventuresome and capitulating attitude in the Caribbean crisis, in their pressure exerted on socialist Cuba to capitulate to the American imperialists, sacrificing its dignity and its sovereignty, in their union with the Indian reactionaries against the People's Republic of China, with the Titoite clique and with Venizelos against the People's Republic of Albania, in the infamous Moscow Treaty for a partial ban on nuclear tests, which is high treason to the interests of the Soviet Union, to the other socialist countries and to peace in favor of the American imperialists, as well as in a number of other facts.

Anti-communism permeates all the ideology and practical activity of the modern social-democrats, they slander the socialist countries and communist parties, they split the workers movement, counter scientific socialism with “democratic socialism” which is no other than reformed capitalism, try their utmost to preserve the capitalist order where it prevails and re-establish it where it has been overthrown. The modern revisionists are also carrying on anti-socialist and anti-communist activities on a wide scale. N. Khrushchev's group and their followers have split the socialist camp and the international communist movement and are speeding ahead towards degenerating the socialist countries into “docile bourgeois republics” and the communist and workers parties from parties of social revolution into “parties of social reforms”. N. Khrushchev and his group deny the proletarian class nature of the socialist state and the communist party, they are liquidating the dictatorship of the proletariat and the communist party in the Soviet Union under the pretext of turning them into the state and party of “the entire people”. The revisionists are organizing and reorganizing with a view to changing the forms of management of socialist economy after the pattern of Titoite Jugoslavia, violating the Marxist principles of managing socialist economy, they belittle the experience of many years of socialist construction in the Soviet Union and in other socialist countries, and call on all to learn from the experience of capitalist countries, going as far as to stretch their hands to the imperialists for aid, credits and capital investments “to build socialism and communism”, as Khrushchev himself did of late. Under the guise of fighting “the cult of the individual and its consequences”, they have done away with the sound Marxist-Leninist cadres and have rehabilitated the traitors and enemies of socialism, living or dead. They have flung open the door of the socialist countries to the unhindered penetration of bourgeois ideology, of all kinds of alien antisocialist trends and manifestations in art, letters and in all the life of country, in the name of “freedom of conscience” and of “an abstract humanity above classes”. This “liberal” and “humanist” socialism of the modern revisionists is getting closer and closer to the so-called “democratic socialism” which the leaders of the modern social democracy preach.

Thus, all the given facts show clearly that the modern revisionists are proceeding along the treacherous tracks of the social-democrats. This is very clear to the socialist leaders who have openly expressed their approval, their joys and hopes regarding the traitorous course followed by N. Khrushchev's group and their followers. Here are some of their statements:

In a speech to the General Assembly of the United Nations at its last session P.H. Spaak said: “N. Khrushchev is trying to test peaceful coexistence and the West should not make it difficult for him to make this experiment. It would be a terrible and inexcusable mistake to discourage him. At this moment the future line of demarcation will not be any longer between communists and non-communists, between colonized and colonizers, between ideologies and races. We are witnesses of the struggle between those who wait the opportune time and inhuman doctrinarians on one hand and those who have had confidence in progress and have never ceased to hope, on the other. Let us not let this great occasion slip from our hands”.

In his interview on February 24, 1964, the chairman of the English Labour Party, H. Wilson, pointed out that he was the first of the Western politicians who visited Russia after the death of Stalin and, on his return from there, reported to W. Churchill, Prime Minister at that time, that “a great change was taking place in Soviet politics” and that this “is of major importance as regards relations between East and West”. He is fully justified to be proud of his farsighted anticipations which today have become realities.

Before going to Moscow with the socialist delegation to talk with Khrushchev Gerard Jacques, director of the newspaper of the French Socialist Party stated: “We have long given up engaging in polemics with the Soviet Union and admit that this country is in the full phase of evolution. . . The problems raised are those of democracy and the democratic guarantees of the single party, of the role of the socialist party in socialist society, of the nature of the socialist regime and its structure. The attitude maintained by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in the divergences between Moscow and Peking throws ample light on the attitude of this party towards dogmatism and political sectarianism”.

After his return to Paris from colloquys with N. Khrushchev, the Secretary General of the French Socialist Party, Guy Mollet, stated that he became convinced that “a positive evolution is taking place in the Soviet Union”, which, according to his words, were summed up in these matters: “Admittance of many ways to build socialism”, “end of the proletarian dictatorship”, “internal evolution” and so on. Whereas an interview granted the newspaper “Unita” (Feb. 22, 1964), Guy Mollet declared “I am convinced that the communist world has embarked on the road to transformation”.

These statements of the leaders of social-democracy are at one with the statements made by the leaders of imperialism and their spokesmen who also express their support for N. Khrushchev's revisionist line and consider him “the best friend of the West in Moscow”. They say that “The Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev acts like an American politician” and affirm that the officials in the State Department in the USA are of the opinion that “the United States should facilitate N. Khrushchev's task to a certain extent” and so on and so forth.

Towards a Complete Fusion of the Modern Revisionists with the Social-Democrats

The falling of the modern revisionists into the ideological position of the social-democrats in major issues constitutes the basis of the complete amalgamation of revisionists with the social-democrats. By pursuing this course and recommending it to communist and workers parties of different countries, the modern revisionists with N. Khrushchev's group in the lead, aim at causing the degeneration of the communist parties into reformist parties of the social-democratic type, at impregnating the working class with bourgeois ideology and reformist illusions, at weakening the revolutionary fighting spirit of the working class movement, and alienating it from the only correct road against the capitalist order of oppression and exploitation.

The revisionists, of course, do not, as a rule, proclaim their hostile intentions openly. They accompany every step they take to the detriment of the cause of the revolution and of communism, with demagogical slogans and clothe it with all kinds of justifications. Their anti-Marxist action of fusing with social-democracy too, they try to justify with the pretext that the social-democratic parties too are allegedly workers' parties and that the unity of the working class is essential in the struggle against capitalism. Let us dwell in brief on this matter.

PFLP strongly condemns the submission of the UN Security Council to U.S. domination; plus Video

2009-01-03T23:44:00.005-06:00

Both the video and the statement are from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine website, a commendable revolutionary and communist organization that has resisted Israeli oppression against the Palestinian people for decades. The video is that of a little angel, an innocent child describing the effects of occupation and the terror she feels from gun shots on the streets.

PFLP strongly condemns the submission of the UN Security Council to U.S. domination

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine condemns and denounces in the strongest terms the actions of the United States to once again veto any effort to cease the brutal Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people in Gaza in the United Nations on January 3, 2009.

The United States, acting fully in its expected capacity, as a brutal, criminal, colonialist empire governed by war criminals, from U.S. President George W. Bush to UN Ambassador Zalmay Khalilizad, as the head of the imperialist camp and the enemy aiming its weaponry at the Palestinian people.

The United States provides - and funds - the amounts of weaponry being used against the Palestinian people in Gaza, including supporting the Zionist colonial-settler state with F-16 airplanes, Apache helicopters, and their most advanced weaponry, in addition to the vast amounts of political and economic support that it provides for its strategic partner, Israel.

Throughout history, the United States veto in the Security Council of the United Nations has been used time and time again to prevent international action to stop Zionist occupation atrocities against our people, implement Palestinian rights, or protect our people under attack. As the entire world has time and again condemned Israel, from the masses in the streets of cities around the world, to the floor of the United Nations, the United States has repeatedly used its veto power as a club on behalf of Zionism and imperialism.

On January 3, 2009, once again, the U.S. used its veto power to block a Security Council resolution that would demand the aggression against our people cease. In the face of the killing of hundreds of Palestinians with U.S. made-and-paid-for weaponry at the hands of a murderous and brutal occupier that has bombed schools, universities, mosques, municipal buildings and homes by the hundreds, the U.S. stood to block international action to stop the crimes.

We have no illusions about the United States and its role. The United States is the leading imperialist power, the leading strategic partner of Israel, and a criminal regime engaged in a brutal occupation of its own in Iraq, even as it attempts to prop up the very regimes that suppress our people throughout the Arab homeland.

The people of the world, and indeed, of the United States, have made it clear, in demonstrations, mobilizations and actions, that they are with the besieged and resisting people of Gaza, and with the Palestinian people. The resistance in Iraq and Afghanistan, as does the resistance in Lebanon, prove to the United States and Israel daily that they cannot and will not be successful in their attempts to conquer and occupy. The masses of the Arab homeland are shaking the streets and demanding that the U.S. proxies like the Egyptian regime cease their subservience to their imperial master and support the people of Gaza.

And the Palestinian resistance in Gaza is now, and will continue, to make clear to the United States and Israel that our people and our cause will not be suppressed and will not be killed and will be victorious despite their brutality and criminality, and in the face of the official inaction of the so-called international community.

Towards victory!

Hoxha on Social Democracy and Democratic-Socialism p.1

2009-01-01T15:45:00.006-06:00

Special thanks for my comrade Ismail Badiou of the Hoxhaist Union on compiling this Essay from the book The Party of Labor of Albania in Battle with Modern Revisionism. This work is testament to the Albanian Communist, Enver Hoxha, who defended Communist theory not only from Eurocommunists, Maoists, Khrushchevites and Titoites; but as one shall read in this 8 part series, the fight against the agents of the bourgeoisie in the workers movement themselves, the Social-Democrats and “Democratic Socialists”. This is the first time this has been posted on a public forum of the internet and until it has been posted in its entirety on http://marxists.org this will be a place where one may find this work. This work is essential for Marxist-Leninists in understanding the history and the positions of the Social Democrats and "Democratic Socialists".

Enver Hoxha
First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Party of Labor of Albania
"The Modern Revisionists on the Way to Degenerating Into Social-Democrats and to Fusing with Social-Democracy"
Reproduced from “Zëri i Popullit” dated April 7, 1964

Every day that passes by brings new facts to light testifying that the modern revisionists, N. Khrushchev's group and their followers, have completely deviated and have turned into enemies of Marxism-Leninism and of proletarian internationalism, of socialism and of the revolutionary and liberation movement of the working class and the peoples under bondage, enemies of the unity of the socialist camp and the international communist movement. They have joined in a “holy alliance” with the American imperialists and the reactionaries of different countries, with all the anti-communist forces against peoples and socialism. They have turned the blade of all their daggers against Marxism-Leninism, against all fraternal parties and revolutionary communists loyal to it, against the anti-imperialist, liberation and revolutionary movement of the peoples. All their utterances about “loyalty” to Marxism-Leninism, to the cause of socialism, to the revolution and proletarian internationalism are sheer bluff and demagogy from head to foot.

In order to carry through their anti-Marxist, anti-socialist and counter-revolutionary line, they stand in need of allies. And where could they find better allies than among the revisionist elements in the various parties and among the Titoite clique in Jugoslavia? Therefore, N. Khrushchev and his group succeeded, through 'putsch-es' and plots, deceiving some and compromising others, under the guise of fighting “the cult of the individual” in bringing to power and placing at the head of certain communist and workers' parties revisionist elements of their choice while, on the other hand, they rehabilitated Tito's renegade clique and joined up with them completely. Thus, the united revisionist front came into being. This was the first step.

In addition to this, the modern revisionists have never given up efforts to find other allies too. And who could these be? It is very natural for them to turn to—and they could not help turn to—their “brothers”, fellow traitors—the right-wing social-democrat leaders. For revisionism and social-democracy of today are two manifestations of the same ideology—bourgeois ideology. Social-democracy is the manifestation of bourgeois ideology in the workers movement, while revisionism is the manifestation of bourgeois ideology in the communist movement.

This is the common ideological basis that draws the revisionists closer to and united with the social-democrats and creates the premises for their complete fusion not only ideologically and politically but also organizationally. Therefore it is altogether natural and logical that the attempts of the revisionists to cause the degeneration of the communist parties they direct, into social democratic parties, that their tendency to fuse in with the social-democracy, is being made so very clear nowadays.

The trend to get closer and to join with social-democrats, the whole treacherous line of action of the modern revisionists, have their beginnings at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. This trend was re-emphasized at the 21st and 22nd Congresses and was sanctioned in the new program of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Speaking of this line of approach to and union with social-democracy at the 22nd Congress, N. Khrushchev said: “This is not a tactical temporary slogan but the general line of the communist movement dictated by the basic interests of the working class”. N. Khrushchev has also said: “If we are to speak of the role and position of the non-communist parties, we should stress, above all, that in the present situation, in order to achieve the socialist transformation of society, collaboration of the communist party with the other parties is not only possible but indispensable”. (N. Khrushchev's reply to the editor of the Australian newspaper “Herald”, John Waters, published in “Pravda” June 25, 1958).

The line of approach to and union with social-democrats began to be put into effect immediately after the 20th Congress. The Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union addressed letters to the social-democratic parties of Western Europe calling for unity. Beginning with 1956 the Soviet Union was visited by a number of social-democratic leaders and by whole delegations of social-democratic parties who came into contact and carried on talks with N. Khrushchev's group.

The campaign for unity with social-democrats has become more intensive especially in recent times. A proof of this lies in the last year's visits to Moscow of such leaders of social-democracy as P.H. Spaak, secretary-general of the Belgian Socialist Party, Harold Wilson, the present chairman of the English Labour Party and Guy Mollet, secretary-general of the French Socialist Party, who conducted talks with N. Khrushchev and other Soviet leaders. In connection with these talks, in an interview with foreign journalists in Moscow Guy Mollet said that he had discussed with Khrushchev “a number of questions comprising all theoretical and doctrinarian problems of a general nature and which characterize the relations between social-democratic and communist parties”. While in an interview granted to the newspaper “Unita” (February 22, 1964) Guy Mollet stated that “The talks which the delegation of SFIO conducted with the leaders of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and in particular with Nikita Khrushchev, gave us sure satisfaction in many points.”

The leaders of communist and workers parties in certain other countries are also following the line of fusing with present-day social-democracy under the dictates of “the conductor's baton”. This is evident n many of their acts, in various articles and statements, in the columns of the Khrushchevian review “Problems of Peace and Socialism”, in “the document of the Central Committee of the Italian Communist Party for the national conference of organization” appearing in the newspaper “Unita” dt. 9-1-164, in the draft-resolution for the 17th Congress of the French Communist Party which will be held in May this year, and so on.

In all these attempts, documents and materials of the modern revisionists regardless of the phrases they use to camouflage their designs the prevailing idea is unity and fusion with the social-democrats “on whatever basis” and “at all costs”, renouncing every thing that might prejudice this union, be it in the field of ideology or in that of organization.

The attempts of the modern revisionists to get close to and join up with the social-democrats are a logical consequence of their betrayal of Marxism-Leninism, are a component part of their grand strategic plan of “world integration” clearly formulated by Tito in his well-known interview granted to Drew Pearson on August 7, 1962. To realize this objective the revisionists make extensive use of demagogical slogans. They try to justify their approach to and union with the imperialists and reactionaries, their approach to and union with Tito's clique in the name of “socialism”, with the Roman Pontiff in the name of “humanity”, with the social-democrats, in the name of “unity of the working class”, in the name of “peaceful coexistence and of saving the world from a nuclear war of extermination”.

Modern Revisionists Proceed Along the Treacherous Tracks of Social Democracy

The modern revisionists try to justify the approach to and union with the social-democrats under the pretext that “positive trends” are allegedly being observed especially in recent times, among the ranks of social democracy; that they have allegedly expressed themselves in favor of peace, peaceful coexistence, disarmament, that they have positively modified their attitude toward the USSR, that they have expressed themselves in favor of some kind of approach to the communists, that they have expressed some sort of willingness to meet the demands of the working class, to preserve and strengthen democratic institutions, they have stated that they are in favor of socialist transformation of society and so forth. Thus, in order to justify their line of approach to the rightwing leaders of social-democracy, the revisionists try to create the illusion that it is not the revisionist train which is speeding its way to the social-democratic station, but the social-democratic station is coming up to meet the revisionist train!

This is no new tactic for revisionists. N. Khrushchev's traitorous group and those who follow them have used exactly this maneuver to justify their approach to and complete union with the Titoite clique, pretending that the Jugoslav leaders have allegedly corrected many of their errors and have adopted the line of “Marxism-Leninism”. In the same way, in order to justify their treacherous line of reconciliation with and approach to the imperialists, to the American imperialists in particular, they have spread and continue to spread illusions pretending that the leaders of imperialism have now become “wise”, “realistic”, “peace-loving”, “reasonable” and what not.

But facts go to prove that the present social-democrat leaders have changed as little in their nature and in their attitude as the Titoite clique and the imperialists. If we may speak of any kind of change of views and stands of the social-democratic leaders, the only obvious change of theirs is their ever growing inclination to the right.

What Does Present-Day Social-Democracy Represent?

Present-day social-democracy is a direct follower of the traitorous 2nd International. It has inherited all the ideological luggage, organization and tactics of the parties of the 2nd International. The social-democrats began their betrayal by getting away from the basic teachings of Marxism-Leninism, which they proclaim as out-dated and inexpedient, by renouncing the class struggle and replacing it with the “theory” of harmony and reconciliation of classes, by negating the revolution and replacing it with reforms within the capitalist order, by giving up the revolutionary way and replacing it with “peaceful”, “democratic” and parliamentary method, by denying the indispensability of breaking up the old bourgeois state machinery and accepting the capitalist state as a means to cross over to socialism, by withholding their assent to the dictatorship of the proletariat and replacing it with “pure and general democracy”, by departing from proletarian internationalism and going so far the other way as to plunge into positions of the national-chauvinists, to open union with the imperialist bourgeoisie.

Unmasking the betrayal of the old social-democrats Lenin wrote as far back as in his book “What is to be done”: “Social-democracy should be changed from a party of social revolution to a democratic party of social reforms. Bernstein has bolstered up this political demand with a whole battery of 'new' arguments and considerations harmoniously connected with one another. He denies the possibility of endorsing socialism scientifically and of proving, from the point of view of the materialist conception of history, that it is indispensable and inevitable; he denies the fact that poverty and proletarianization are on the increase and that capitalist contradictions are getting worse; he proclaims the very notion of 'the final goal' as groundless and unconditionally rejects the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat; he denies the divergences of principle existing between liberalism and socialism and the theory of class struggle which, he pretends, cannot be carried out in a wholly democratic society governed by the will of the majority”. (V.I. Lenin: Selected Works in 2 vol. Albanian edition, vol. 1, page 110).

By embarking on this road, social-democracy turned itself into a loyal supporter of the capitalist order of things, into a servant of the bourgeoisie into a most important ideological and political abettor of the bourgeois policy in the workers movement. It has aided the bourgeoisie to oppress and exploit the workers of their country and the peoples of other countries, to suppress their revolutionary and liberation movement. “It has been verified by practice” Lenin says, “that the militant group in the ranks of the workers movement who adhere to opportunist trends, are better defenders of the bourgeoisie than the bourgeoisie themselves. If workers were not under the guidance of such people, the bourgeoisie would not be able to stand their ground” (Works, vol. 31, page 259, Albanian edition).

But social-democracy today has gone a step further in its betrayal when compared with the time of the 2nd International. At present it is characterized by a growing tendency towards the right.

Beginning from 1955 the social-democratic parties in Western Europe like the English Labour Party, the social-democratic parties in France, Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Western Germany and in the Scandinavian countries, have changed their programs or have been engaged in elaborating new programmatic procedures. What characterizes these programs and new programmatic procedures? They are characterized by the eclectic blending of the old opportunist theories with the “modern” bourgeois theories, by their permanent renunciation of the principles and ideals of socialism, by their open support for the capitalist order of exploitation and by their frenzied opposition to communism.

If the former reformists avowed, even in words alone, that the establishment of socialism was their ultimate goal, present-day social-democrats have openly rejected this end. They preach that they are in favor of the socalled “democratic socialism”, which has nothing in common with true scientific socialism. It is its negation, its replacement with certain bourgeois liberal reforms which do not tamper in any way with the basis of capitalist society. What kind of socialism is that when most of the social-democratic programs have discarded an elementary demand of socialism to abolish private property of the means of production?

Following the well-known statements of the socialist International “Aims and Tasks of Democratic Socialism” (1951), the new programs direct the working class not against capitalism as such but against “unsupervised” capitalism. Nationalization of a part of the enterprises by the bourgeois state, the establishment of state monopolist capitalism in the economic life of the country, the adoption of certain bourgeois-democratic reforms—all of these figure in the new programs and statements of the social-democrats as facts that go to prove that the basis of socialism has allegedly been laid in certain capitalist countries. At the same time, they deny the socialist character of transformations in the socialist countries. They repeat in this manner, openly or in a roundabout way, the bourgeois theories in vogue on “people's capitalism”, “capitalism under control”, “organized”, “democratic” and so on.

The bourgeois reactionary press has more than once hailed this departure of socialism and in defense of capitalism. In a leading article under the title “Burial of Marxism” the “Washington Post and Times Herald” newspaper wrote: “84 years after its establishment at the historic Congress at Gotha, the German Social-Democratic Party in its Congress at Bad-Gotsberg, renounced Marxist ideology and, in fact, ceased being socialist in the true sense of that word. It reconciled itself to the principle of 'free individual initiative, wherever that is possible in economic life'”

The new programs of the social-democratic parties have canceled out all mention of contradictions, antagonism and class struggle, have leveled down all boundaries between the oppressed and oppressors, between the exploited and exploiters. In place of the class struggle they preach “the sense of responsibility” of man “in general”. Thus the program of the German Social-Democratic Party has it: “Freedom and democracy in industrial society are possible of attainment only if as many individuals as possible raise their social conscience and express themselves as willing to share responsibility. The social-democrats uphold the solidarity and 'harmony of all people' the attaining of their 'above classes' objective—democratic socialism”.

Since “democratic socialism” does not encroach upon the basis of the capitalist order in any way, but it is a kind of “reformed capitalism”, it naturally follows that there is no need whatsoever for a socialist revolution. “Democratic socialism”, according to them, will come about through “spontaneous economic evolution”, through limitation of the prerogatives and power of the monopolist unions and through the aid of the capitalist state itself. Nevertheless, in order to attain this ideal, it is necessary that the social-democrats come into power and the only way to achieve this is through electoral campaigns to obtain the majority of votes in the bourgeois parliament. Speaking highly of the declaration of the socialist International on “The aims and tasks of democratic socialism”, one of its leaders, Brauntal, has said that this declaration “puts an end to the discussions on the dictatorship of the proletariat”, “does away with the revolutionary class war method to achieve socialism”, and “rejects adherence to any socialist theory.”

The social-democrats have severed all connections with Marxism-Leninism, with the theory of scientific socialism and with the materialistic conception of things. The program of the Austrian Socialist Party has it: “Socialism is an international movement which does not at all demand an obligatory similarity of views. Regardless of where the socialists draw their points of view, from a Marxist or any other social analysis, from religious or humanitarian principles—they all aim at a common goal”. Speaking at the Congress of the German Social-Democratic Party at Gotsberg, its former Chairman, E. Olenhauer, said “the demand to make K. Marx's and F. Engel's political program the substance of the social-democratic program for 1959 is more anti-marxist than can be imagined” and he added; “We can not be understood if we speak in terms of the past, we cannot solve the problems of today with our old conceptions.”

Present-day social-democracy has not only slipped into positions of philosophic idealism and upholds idealism, but tries to find support in, and even fuse entirely with its extremist form—religion. Thus, for instance, the programs of German, Austrian, Swiss and other social-democratic parties maintain that “democratic socialism” has its roots in Christian ethics and doctrine, that socialism and religion, far from eliminating, are completely at one with each other. Speaking at the Congress of the Austrian Socialist Party in 1958, the author of the new program, B. Kautzky, said: “We would like to draw up a program, which would be fully endorsed by Marxists and non-Marxists alike, by atheists and socialist believers in religion alike”. A similar attempt to reconcile christianity with socialism, religious idealist conception with socialist materialist conception, is made also in an interview given to the correspondent of the Italian newspaper “Unita” by Guy Mollet and which was published in this paper on February 22 of this year.

Such, in general, are the ideological views of the present social-democrats. What should be stressed in this connection is that their programs, as a rule, are more leftist than their acts. If the right socialists still try, in words, to pose as socialists in order to deceive the workers, in deeds they have long become staunch defenders of the capitalist order. Both when they are in opposition as well as when they are at the head of bourgeois governments, or take part in them, the heads of social-democracy serve to preserve and strengthen the bourgeois order through all their views and acts. All the socialist demagogy of the social democrats has been shown up by experience. Socialists have more than once been in power, at the head of bourgeois governments both in England, France and elsewhere. They are at the head of or take part to this day In the governments of capitalist countries. And what have they done for the workers, for socialism? They have done nothing but follow Leon Blum's instructions: that being in power the socialists should be “faithful directors of capitalist society”.

Let us dwell even briefly on the activity of the French Socialist Party and its leader Guy Mollet, who has more than once taken part in and even headed the French government, and whom the revisionists consider a left-wing element and conduct hearty talks with. When at the head of the government, the French socialists set the dogs loose on workers on strike, incited the outbreak of the dirty war in Indo-China, undertook police repressions against the people of other colonies, carried on the fighting against the Algerian people with more ferocity, approved the North Atlantic Pact and the re-arming of Western Germany. Guy Mollet's government signed the agreements for “the European Common Market” and “Euratom”, it was one of the organizers of the military aggression on Egypt, Guy Mollet's betrayal paved the way for personal rule in France and so on and so forth. Speaking of Guy Mollet's activity even the labourite weekly “Tribune” wrote at the beginning of 1957 that “Mollet is a disgrace to France as well as to socialism”.

These are the true features of social-democracy today. Many representatives of the bourgeoisie have not been wrong in stressing the great role of the social-democratic parties in suppressing the revolutionary movement of workers and in defending the capitalist order, they have not been wrong in singing their praises. Thus, for instance, T. Junilla, director of a capitalist bank in Finland, has said: “In the struggle to win over industrial workers spiritually only the social-democrats can serve as a powerful force against the communists. If the social democrats lose this battle, it may very well be the end of democracy in Finland. This is why, being a bourgeois member of the conservative party, I feel obliged to state that we need a united, militant, social-democratic party which firmly upholds northern democracy”. The English bourgeois newspaper “Financial Times” wrote in the same vein on June 28, 1963: “. . . the industrialists are scared less by the Labourites, and some of them cherish the opinion that a Labour government would open up better perspectives for development than the Tories.”

It is precisely because the social-democrats are agents of the bourgeoisie in the workers movement that the Marxist-Leninists have always had it clear that without a determined struggle to unmask and smash the social-democrats ideologically and politically, the working class cannot wage its struggle and carry it on to victory, “. . . Bourgeois parties of workers” as a political phenomenon, V.I. Lenin has written, “have already been set up in all advanced capitalist countries. . . . Without a resolute, relentless war on all fronts against these parties—or, what amounts to the same thing, against groups, trends and so on—it is futile to speak of the struggle against imperialism, or of Marxism, or of the workers socialist movement” (V.I. Lenin: “Against Revisionists”, Albanian edition, page 368). J.V. Stalin too, as a revolutionary and consistent marxist, has stressed: “Present-day social-democratism is the ideological support of capitalism. Lenin was a thousand times right when he said that the present social-democratic politicians are 'true agents of the bourgeoisie in the workers movement, lackeys of the capitalist class from the workers ranks' and that 'in the civil war of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie' they will undoubtedly take sides with the 'Versailles' against the 'Communards'. 'No end can be put to capitalism without putting an end to social-democracy in the workers movement. Therefore, the epoch of the death of capitalism is at the same time the epoch of the death of social-democracy in the workers movement” (J.V. Stalin: Workers, Albanian edition, vol. 10, p, 242).

The 1960 Moscow Declaration too, stressing the fact that the right-wing leaders of social-democracy have aligned themselves openly with the imperialists, uphold the capitalist system, split the workers movement and that they are “enemies of communism”, called upon the communists to continue to expose them.

But the modern revisionists, with N. Khrushchev's group in the lead, as renegades and foes to Marxism, act entirely at variance with the teachings of Lenin and Stalin, with the instructions of the Moscow Declaration; they pursue the line of joining in and fusing with the right-wing leaders of social-democracy. And this is not accidental: social-democrats of today and modern revisionists have common things together, they proceed in the same direction and towards a common counter-revolutionary objective.

A Victory For the American Working Class: Article from the Communist Party of Mexico (M-L)

2009-01-01T02:45:00.005-06:00

From Number 309 of Vanguardia Proletaria Weekly. Central Organ of the Communist Party of Mexico (Marxist-Leninist) December 29-January 4, 2009

A Victory For the American Working Class

The profound crisis of the U.S. capitalist economy is worsening day by day. What at first was characterized as a crisis in real estate market has led to a crisis in major economic sectors .

Debts, bankruptcies, closures and government bailouts in key sectors of the U.S. economy, as well as those in the automotive industry, financial institutions, media, airlines and other service sectors or drivers of the economy is deepening the crisis.

Thousands of workers have lost their jobs in recent months. In many cases, in addition to losing their jobs overnight, workers had to fight hard battles against companies, with their voracious bourgeoisie, so that they could receive the pay that they have worked under the current laws and combat capitalist violation of those laws.

An emblematic example of both the severity of the crisis and the surge in workers' struggle occurred in early December at the Republic Windows & Doors factory in Chicago; which was charged with the manufacturing of doors and windows, Bank of America, one of the largest banks in the U.S., cancelled the credit line of Republic Windows and Doors.

The company immediately declared insolvent and suspended the pay of nearly 300 workers. The workers, with the clear knowledge that the company would remove the machinery and vanish without addressing its financial obligations at work, decided to occupy the plant to prevent the output of machinery, demanding payment of their wages and an appropriate settlement.

The occupations of factories is not a common practice in the U.S., but the fact that workers and union leaders in this company were mostly Mexican immigrants undoubtedly played a decisive role in determining the occupation.

Workers with the support of their union, organized quickly to ensure the occupation disseminated and show-cased their struggle. For workers from around the country that suffered in the last period of the devastating economic crisis, the struggle became an example of how workers should deal with the crisis and defend their rights.

Solidarity came from everywhere and in all forms. Marches, strikes, demonstrations, symbolic occupation of financial institutions and other acts of protest showed manifested throughout the nation.

The workers received food, blankets, utensils and more importantly the solidarity from other workers and the community. The People came to the factory to give them encouragement, to offer their support, and chatted to pass the time.

This struggle, which employs advanced tactics of class struggle such as the occupation of factories, coupled with the solidarity at the local, national and community support, has yielded results which workers receive that correspond to the laws.

The victory of these workers, who are mostly immigrants, has been a horizontal vision of the victory of thousands of workers in the country itself, and will certainly be an incentive and example for other workers in the future who face layoffs and employer abuses amid this serious and deep crisis of capitalism.

Our Party congratulates the workers for this timely victory that is an integral part of the long struggle to eradicate the system of capitalist exploitation.

Party of Labour of Iran's Statement on the Massacre in Gaza

2008-12-31T23:18:00.007-06:00

This translation was posted on Anasintaxi's English blog. The Party of Labour of Iran (Toufan) is a Marxist-Leninist Party of the Iranian working class, along with being a revolutionary party opposed to capitalism and the reactionary theocratic government in Iran, it is an active participant of the International Conference of Marxsit-Leninist Parties and Organizations.

Condemn the Massacre of the People of Gaza by the Israeli Zionists!

On Saturday December 27, 2008, hundreds of Israeli F-16 jetfighters and helicopters invaded Gaza Strip. Hundreds of sites including police stations, residential areas, hospitals, refugee camps, Interior Ministry, higher education centers, and mosques are targeted. According to the available statistics, more than 300 people have been killed and 2000 are wounded. Children, women, elders, and civilians are among dead or injured. The heavy bombardment of Gaza by the Hitlerite army of Israel continues unabated and the number of dead or injured is increasing hourly.

The Party of Labour of Iran (Toufan) strongly condemns the barbaric Israeli aggression against the people of Gaza. The Israeli criminals claim that their aggression is a response to Hamas' rocket fire at the Israeli towns. This claim is not worth a penny. The hand-made missiles in Gaza, each with a few kilograms of primitive explosives, have neither the power to do substantial damage to Israeli towns nor the range to hit the Israeli strategic positions. The fact is that the Israeli rulers cannot live without occupation of Palestine, without the expansionist policies, or without the oppression of the people of the region. Aggression and enmity with Arabs are in the nature of Zionism.

For six decades, the Israeli rulers have used similar excuses to massacre
the people of Palestine. The recent Israeli aggression is neither the first nor will be the last aggression against the Palestinian people. As long as racism and Zionism have grip on Israel, the killing, massacre, and genocide of the people of Palestine will continue. The six-month cease-fire in Gaza was expired a week ago. The Zionist government of Israel violated the cease-fire many times. For more than three years, Gaza has been under tight blockade by air, sea and land. One and a half million Palestinian people in Gaza have been faced with shortage of food, fuel, medicine and other basic necessities. In this situation, the Israeli government "wants" cease-fire with Palestinians, a ceasefire in which one side has to be destroyed in order to satisfy the expansionist and criminal goals of the other side.

The criminal Israeli gangs have taken their barbarism to an unprecedented level; the more oppression or killing of the Palestinian people, the higher chance of winning the elections!
The Israeli governments would not have been able to carry out or sustain their aggressions without financial and military assistance from the US imperialists. The US administrations have always encouraged, instigated, and backed the Israeli wars against the people of the Middle East.
The recent Israeli aggression in Gaza has been carried out at the time when the US imperialists have been defeated in the Middle East, and are facing deep economic crisis and public dissatisfaction. In this situation, the extension of the war to other areas of the Middle East has alarmed the entire humanity, particularly the people of region. The western imperialists headed by the US, together with the Israeli Zionists, do not stop short of committing horrendous crimes against the people who fight for their freedom, independence and national sovereignty.
The barbarism of the blood thirsty rulers of Israel has not left without response. People of many countries have expressed their disgust and anger for the Israeli butchers. Activists in the US, Canada, Germany, France, Turkey, Greece, Iran, Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Israel, England, Syria, and many other countries have demonstrated in solidarity with the suffering people of Gaza. We must mobilize the people to continue, expand, and intensify the protest actions.
Once again, the Party of Labour of Iran (Toufan) condemns the brutal Israeli aggression against the people of Gaza. We call on all freedom loving people to raise their voice against the destruction and killing in Gaza. The destruction and killing in Gaza must stop immediately and the blockade must be ended.

The Party of Labour of Iran (Toufan), Foreign Office
December 29, 2008
WWW.Toufan.org