Anasintaxi on the Restoration of Capitalism in the Soviet Union (Part 3): The commodity economy of the Soviet Union in the Khrushchev-Brezhnev period: a complete and permanent capitalist economy

The commodity economy of the Soviet Union in the Khrushchev-Brezhnev period: a complete and permanent capitalist economy

The reactionary process of capitalist restoration in the Soviet Union that commenced, right after the death-murder of Joseph Stalin, with the overthrow of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat from the renegade social-democratic clique of Khrushchev-Brezhnev, was a very complicated development based on the capitalist economic reforms and a series of inter-connected measures which had as a central and only goal: the total elimination of socialism-communism and the complete re-establishment of the exploitive capitalist system.

The analysis of these reforms in the soviet economy, implemented by the counter-revolutionary Khrushchev-Brezhnev leadership of Communist Party of Soviet Union [CPSU] – and after taking into account Lenin’s extremely important teaching according to which “it is necessary to consider the fundamental economic features of the existing relations and not their legal forms” in order to determine the nature of an economy – proves that these capitalist economic reforms led to the total elimination of socialist-communist relations and the gradual restoration of capitalism that was completed at the end of the 1960’s.

In particular, the preceding analysis of the economy during the Khrushchev-Brezhnev period demonstrates:

The economy of the Soviet Union was dominated by commodity production that took full and comprehensive form at the end of 1960’s after the extension of the commodity-money relations. However, when, in a given period, the economy of a country is dominated by commodity production, then its economic system cannot be any other than the capitalist mode of production – resulted from the gradual but complete restoration of capitalism that replaced socialism-communism. This is the case because capitalism is “commodity production at its highest stage of development, when human labour power itself becomes a commodity” (Lenin: “Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism”, chapter IV)

1) Moreover, there were two additional features of commodity production that emerged in the fully developed commodity economy of the Soviet Union: i) The conversion of all means of production into commodities and ii) the conversion of the working power into commodity. These were the two of the fundamental characteristics of the capitalist mode of production and precisely for this reason the economy of the Soviet Union at that time was capitalist as “according to Marx’s teaching the two essential attributes of capitalism are: 1) the commodity production as the universal form of production. The social product takes the form of commodity in the most diverse productive units but, in the capitalist production, this form of the labour product is not isolated, incidental but universal and 2) the commodity form is taken not only by the labour product but by labour itself, that is, by the human working power. The degree to which the working power has become a commodity characterises the degree of capitalist development” (Lenin)

2) In the commodity economy of the Soviet Union, the sphere of operation of the law of Value – a law that characterizes commodity production – was extended to include all of the economy and, thus, regulated the production as in capitalism

3) In the commodity economy of the Soviet Union, the goal of the production – at the level of individual enterprises and at the level of the economy as a whole – was the maximum profit. This is one of the three (the other two are mentioned by Lenin in the above extract) essential attributes of capitalism according to Marx: “the second attribute that sets apart capitalism is the production of surplus value that becomes the immediate aim and the decisive motive of the production” (Marx).

4) In the commodity economy of the Soviet Union, all the laws of capitalism re-emerged and acted: the law of Value as the regulator of the production, the law of surplus value, the law of the exploitation of wage labour from capital, the law of competition and anarchy in the production, the law of the mean rate of profit etc.

5) In the commodity economy of the Soviet Union, all the capitalist economic categories were re-introduced: Profit, Interest, capitalist Price of Production and others.

All the above features that dominated the commodity economy of the Soviet Union during the Khrushchev-Brezhnev period constitute the clearest expression of the capitalist character of the production relations of the country’s economy and the capitalist character of the state-cooperative property that was collectively owned and controlled by the new bourgeoisie through the new bourgeois state, that is, “the state of all people”. At the same time, they prove scientifically the complete capitalist restoration in the Soviet Union of Khrushchev-Brezhnev that was concluded by the end of the 1960’s despite the chatter of the Khrushchevian social-democracy (both international and local: “C”PG-SYN) about the alleged presence of socialism until 1990; a totally baseless claim that is disapproved by the capitalist reality of the Soviet Union during that period, that is, the existence of commodity economy with all the essential features of capitalism, the fundamental laws of capitalism and the capitalist economic categories.

The capitalism that was restored in the Soviet Union during the Khrushchev-Brezhnev period was state-monopoly capitalism of a peculiar type – as far as the content is concerned it was the same with the capitalism in Western countries – and this peculiarity had to do with: first, the dominance of the state and the cooperative capitalist property in economy during of the Soviet Union and the very limited presence of the private capitalist property, initially in agriculture and then in all sectors of the economy and second the emergence-development of a state-monopoly capitalism that originated from the elimination of socialism-communism whereas in the economy of the Western capitalist countries the private capitalist property dominates along with a limited state-capitalist property.

In the capitalist economy of the Soviet Union, the private capitalist sector wasn’t limited to agriculture with the emergence of the new kulaks but expanded in services, commerce, workshops and even industry. As mentioned above, private capitalist property was officially instituted in the bourgeois Constitution of 1977.

In 1978, “in the Soviet Union, the private holders own about 3.6 million hectares of arable land. They supply the market with the 28% of the total agricultural production and with 32% of animal products. The private sector in the Soviet Union and the other revisionist countries has significantly expanded in the sphere of industry where it has infiltrated services as well as the production of industrial commodities complementing to a large extent the activity of the state-capitalist enterprises. Thus, it is not about only small private artisans engaged in small-scale services and repair works that have little profit but a whole network of capitalists whose activities compete with the state-capitalist enterprises. The private capitalists have the gained the right to establish their own workshops, factories that are protected by the state. They are supplied with the necessary resources and the owners can today hire waged workers, that is to say, exploit cheap working Power. The emergence and the development of the private capitalist sector in the capitalist Soviet Union and the other revisionist countries is a reflection of the capitalist degeneration of their economy in which the laws of the capitalist mode of production hold full sway. This sector enjoys the many-sided support – legal as well as material – of the revisionist state and it has become, next to the state-capitalist sector, dominant sector of the economic life” (Tirana Radio Station, 5/4/1978). In 1977, the private capitalist sector supplied the market with the “18% of total number of sheep, 18% of pigs and 32% of beef. The private capitalists sold 31% of the meat and milk in prices that were favourable to them. Moreover, they supply the market with the 34% of vegetables, 30% of eggs, 58% of potatoes and other foodstuff in increased prices” (Tirana Radio Station, 2/8/1977). “In the Soviet Union the private producer controls 65% of vegetable trade, about 40% of meat and milk trade and up to 80% of the fruit trade” (Tirana Radio Station, 7/4/1976).

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Anasintaxi on the Restoration of Capitalism in the Soviet Union (Part 2): In the commodity economy of the Soviet Union, labor power had been anew converted to commodity

In the commodity economy of the Soviet Union, labor power had been anew converted to commodity.

The economic category “labor power” is the fundamental and most central for understanding scientifically the nature of the two diametrically opposite social-economic systems of the 20^thcentury: capitalism-imperialism and socialism-communism. It is this historical-economic category that is related to both systems, with the existence of exploitation in capitalism and with its abolition in socialism-communism, while its different character determines their essence respectively.

As capitalism emerged, developed and dominated society as a full-fledged mode of production, the conversion of labor power to commodity was of decisive importance in the transformation of commodity production to a capitalist form, and it was one of the two fundamental features of the capitalist mode of production. On the contrary, in the case of socialism labor power loses its commodity character; it is not anymore a commodity.

The production relations in the economy of the Soviet Union during the 1917-1953 period, i.e. the period of socialism-communism, and later during the Krushchevian-Brezhnevite period, i.e. the period when commodity production dominated, were determined, in both cases, by the relation of the producers to the means of production or as Marx pointed out: “it is always the direct relation between the owners of the conditions of production to the direct producers in which the innermost secret, the hidden basis of the entire social structure and, consequently, of the political form of the sovereignty and dependence relationship and, hence, of every special state form is found” (K. Marx, “The Capital”, vol. 3)

While in the first period (1917-1953), i.e. the period of socialism-communism, this ultimate secret was found in the workers’ collective ownership of the means of production. i.e. in the ownership of the direct producers, the second period was characterized by the total separation of the direct producers, the workers, from the means of Production – the result from the overthrow of the dictatorship of the proletariat and its replacement by the dictatorship of the new bourgeoisie and the associated loss of political power – and the establishment of a completely new reality in the economy of the Soviet Union; new dominant relations of production. It was this economic reality that Marx named as “specific economic form in which unpaid surplus-labor (our italics) is pumped out of the direct producers”. (K. Marx, “The Capital”, vol. 3)

Upon the loss of the political power and the control of the means of production from the working class, the new state of things in the economy of the Soviet Union was characterized by: a) the transformation of the working class to proletariat b) the conversion of the labor power to commodity c) the reappearance of exploitation.

Deprived of the means of production, the working class of the Soviet Union was just a productive force just like the proletariat in the western capitalist countries.

The means of production passed to the hands of the now dominant new bourgeoisie that owned and managed them according to its interests and, as an exploiting class, was appropriating “the unpaid surplus-labor extracted from the direct producers”. To survive and make ends meet, the proletariat of the Soviet Union was compelled to sell its labor power to the new exploiting class and more precisely: to the collective capitalist, the bourgeois “all people’s state”, the representative and defender of the interests of the new bourgeoisie.

Thus, in the commodity economy of the Soviet Union during the Krushchevian-Brezhnevite period, labor power became once more a commodity and the phenomenon of capitalist exploitation, characteristic in the western capitalist countries, appeared again.

Since then and in the coming decades, the same thing that happened in the western capitalist countries, took place in the economy of the Soviet Union; namely what Marx had seen in the capitalist system: “through its own function, the capitalist production process reproduces the separation of the labor power from the labor conditions. In this way, it reproduces and perpetuates the worker’s exploitation conditions. It constantly forces the worker to sell his labor power in order to survive and it constantly offers the capitalist the possibility to purchase it and enrich himself” (K. Marx): “the capitalist production process seen in its structure or as a reproduction process, produces and reproduces the very capital; on one side, the capitalist, on the other the waged worker”. In the case of the Soviet Union, it is not about the private capitalist but the collective capitalist: the bourgeois “all people’s state”.

Now, the claim of the Krushchevian-Brezhnevite revisionists that the labor power in the historical period, following 1953, was not a commodity (I.I.Kusminow 1971, I.N.Shittow 1974, W.Batyrew 1974, et al.) because the working people, allegedly, continued to be the owners of the conditions and the result of the production doesn’t have any basis whatsoever. It turns out to be a conscious political fraud since this claim presupposes the presence ofProletarian Dictatorship through which the working people control both the conditions and the result of the production. However, the Dictatorship of the Proletariat did not exist then because it had already been overthrown two decades earlier, from the beginning of the 1950’s (after the death-assassination of Joseph Stalin).

Of course, there were revisionist economists who openlyadmitted that the labor Power had been converted to commodity in the soviet economy after 1953 like W.Kornienko-I.Pachomow (1966), Ch.M.Miftachow (1968), P.N.Orechowitsch (1968), I.N.Βusdalow (1966) while others were discussing about the “Value of the labor Power”: “the objective basis to determine a minimum real income of the working people in the socialist production is the Value of the labor Power”(Ch.M.Miftachow, 1968), i.e. as, in capitalism where the worker is paid according to the Value of his labor Power, or that “ in socialism…the worker has the right to freely dispose his labor Power…” (A.Sukhow, 1972) like in capitalism of the western countries.

Moreover, other economists pointed out the resemblance of the wages in the Krushchevian-Brezhnevite “socialism” to the wages in capitalism: “in socialist society labor is paid in a form that is identical to the form of labor’s price when we consider wages in capitalism” (A.Aganbegjan / W.Mayer, 1966). This resemblance necessarily leads to the admission that the labor Power in the Soviet Union’s commodity economy was itself a commodity. Others like E.L.Manewitsch, M.W.Kolganow, S.P.Figurow, observed in the sphere of circulation the presence of laws such as “the remuneration of the time of labor power”, and the “value equivalence” or “equivalence of circulation”. They referred even to an «Existenzminimum», i.e., the survival minimum. In conclusion, both groups of economists recognized and accepted the comercial character of the labor power in the Soviet Union’s commodity economy during the period following 1953.

The above-mentioned facts – including the revisionist economists’ open admission – show that the labor Power had been anew converted to commodity, in the soviet economy of the Krushchevian-Brezhnevite period, and as a result capitalist exploitation had been restored. Analyzing the question of capitalist exploitation capitalist appropriation in a commodity economy, such as the capitalist, Marx pointed out: “to the degree that the commodity production evolves, according to its own inherent laws, to capitalist production, to the same degree the property laws of the commodity production are transformed to laws of capitalist appropriation” (K. Marx)

The replacement of the socialist-communist property relations to capitalist ones was accompanied by the same inevitable change in the socialist-communist distribution relations – “the Distribution relations are essentially identical to the Production relations, their inverted side, so that both together have the same, historically transient character” (K. Marx): “the defined distribution is only an expression of the historically definite Production relations” (K. Marx). This means that the proletariat was paid on the basis of the Value of the labor Power while the exploiting new bourgeoisie was appropriating the surplus value, generated by the workers in the sphere of production. Collectively as class, the new bourgeoisie made sure that a part of this surplus value was converted to Capital and the rest was shared among its members in the form of very high salaries premiums.

The restoration of capitalism in the Soviet Union, was also evident in the sphere of Circulation relations, which are determined by the property relations, especially in the relation between enormously high salaries of the members of the new bourgeoisie and the salaries of the workers, and in their diametrically opposite interests. The latter formed the basis of the antagonistic contradictions of the soviet society at that time. Engels had previously pointed out their importance: “the economic relations of each given society are manifested primarily as interests”(F. Engels). At the end of 1970’s, the salaries and the premiums that the business and other executives received were 15-20 times higher than the workers’ salaries. The situation was the same in the collective farms where the difference in salaries was as high as 1 to 30. According to the revisionist press, the largest part of the premiums, and in particular 82%, went to the pockets of the firms’ directors whereas the remaining 18% went to the workers despite the fact that they constituted the overwhelming majority, 80-90% of the working people in the firms (Tirana radio station, 4/2/1978); and this gap was constantly growing at the expense of the workers.

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Anasintaxi on the Restoration of Capitalism in the Soviet Union (Part 1): The working class in the Khrushchev-Brezhnev period was no longer the owner of the means of production

The working class in the Khrushchev-Brezhnev period was no longer the owner of the means of production

a. Socialist production relations were replaced with capitalist production relations

It is known that “no matter what the economic forms of production are, the workers and the means of production remain always its factors” and that “for production to take place they must unite” (K. Marx). The essence of this relation in the production process, that is, the essence of the production relations is determined by the ownership relations – the form of ownership is the essential and the main feature of the production relations – which social class has the ownership of the means of production and how the union of the producers with the means of production is realized and this is precisely what distinguishes the different epochs of social organization: “the particular way that this union is realized distinguishes the different economic epochs of social structure” (K. Marx): slave-owning, feudal, capitalist and socialist-communist system (ownership is here a historical-economic, not a legal, category).

After the victorious October armed uprising, and the complete smashing of the bourgeois state machinery, the working class of Russia took the political power, established the Dictatorship of the Proletariat and, over the next years, proceeded gradually to all the necessary revolutionary changes in the sphere of economy, the socialization of all means of production abolishing the capitalist relations of production and thus making the new socialist-communist relations of production.

Upon the establishment of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, the working class became the dominant class in the socialist Soviet Union not only politically but also economically: it became the owner of the means of production. As a social class, it possessed and controlled the means of production through the Dictatorship of the Proletariat guided by the communist party:“the Dictatorship of the Proletariat is complete only if it is led by one party, the Communist Party, which does not and cannot share power with other parties” (Stalin).

In this way, the separation of the direct producers, i.e. of the working class, from the means of production was terminated – a characteristic feature of the capitalist mode of production and the proletariat – and the historically last form of exploitation, the capitalist, was eliminated.

The abolition of the capitalist ownership (private-state) in the means of production eliminated the antagonistic contradiction between production forces and production relations.

In contrast, the overthrow of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat after the death-assassination of Joseph Stalin (March 1953) and its replacement with the dictatorship of the emerging bourgeois class not only resulted in the loss of power from the working class – it was not any more the dominant class in the Khrushchev-Brezhnev period – but also in the loss of control over the means of production; the working class was not any more the owner of the means of production which hitherto controlled and possessed as a class through the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.

A few years later, in the 22^nd Congress of CPSU (1961), even the soviet revisionists themselves admitted that there was neither a state of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat in the Soviet Union after 1953 nor a communist party and that these had been replaced by, respectively, the “all people’s state”, that is, the dictatorship of the new bourgeoisie, and the “all people’s party”, that is, a bourgeois social democratic type of party.

The fact that the working class in the Soviet Union of the Khrushchev-Brezhnev period had lost its historical mission as a leading social force and that, moreover, had been permanently removed from the management of the economy, and, therefore,was not any more the owner of the means of production is reflected in the following:

First, in the overthrow of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat – through which the working class owned the means of production – and its replacement with the dictatorship of the new bourgeoisie, that is, from the change of the state’s class character: transformed from a state of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat to “all people’s state”, i.e. the dictatorship of the new bourgeoisie.

Second, in the change of its party’s class character: from a revolutionary communist party – that expressed, defended its interests and led the Dictatorship of the Proletariat – it became an “all people’s party”, that is, a bourgeois social democratic type of party, which no longer was guided by the worldview of the proletariat, the revolutionary Marxism, i.e. Leninism-Stalinism but by the bourgeois ideological-political current of the Khrushchevian revisionism. This party was on the forefront of the capitalist reforms that eliminated socialism-communism and brought about the restoration of the capitalist production relations.

Third, in the loss of control over the means of production that obviously deprived the working class of the capacity to “have a say” in the state and in the economy, that is, in the control and management of the production

Fourth, in the industrial units where, according to the 1965 reforms, only the manager decided what would be produced, determined the wages and, in addition, how many workers would be hired and how many would be fired, leaving the working class as simple production force, like in the traditional capitalism of the western countries

Fifth, in the appropriation and distribution of the social product which the working class also did not influence in the least.

In the process of capitalist restoration, the overthrow of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat and its replacement with the “all people’s state” was unavoidably accompanied with the elimination of the socialist-communist production relations and their replacement with capitalist ones. The change in the class character of the state was the cause of the complete change in the content of the property relations – the most important element of the production relations – that is to say, the transformation of socialist to capitalist ownership that preceded the change of the other elements of the production relations like the distribution, the exchange relations etc. which were also converted from socialist-communist to capitalist relations. It could not happen otherwise since the character and the content of ownership is dependent on and determined by the state’s character (in this case by the “all people’s state”).

Of course, the state property in the economy of the Soviet Union for a number of reasons that are beyond the scope of the article was not divided in smaller parts but it retained its form. However, the content of this property had radically changed: it had lost the socialist-communist character and it was transformed to state-capitalist property.

1. The capitalist character of the state enterprises and cooperatives

1.1 State enterprises

During the Leninist-Stalinist period (1917-1953), especially after the construction of the economic foundation of the socialist-communist society, the state property constituted of the two forms of socialist-communist property (state and collective/cooperative). It was the dominant and the most advanced form of property in the socialist economy of the Soviet Union to the level of which the collective/cooperative property was developing so that they will be finally merged in the unified communist property through the tractor stations. The latter were abolished by the bourgeois-socialdemocratic CPSU in 1958 and as a consequence not only the merging of these two forms of property was cancelled but their content was radically altered.

The state enterprises were socialist because they constituted collective social property of the working class that controlled and managed through the Dictatorship of the Proletariat under the guidance of the communist party. It was the presence of the state of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat which determined the socialist character of the state enterprises because, as it is known, state property is not by itself socialist (due to belonging to the state) but because it is in the hands of the state of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, thus, in the hands of the working class.

Precisely for this reason, the state property in socialism-communism has a completely opposite social content and orientation than state property in the capitalist and revisionist countries being in the hands of the exploiting bourgeoisie. It is obvious that the bourgeois nationalization has nothing in common with the socialist nationalization of the means of production carried out by the state of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat and results in the abolition of capitalist exploitation.

For as long as the capitalists remain the ruling class, state property is a form of capitalist property, a state monopoly property, in which exploitation of workers prevails: “as long as the proprietor classes stay in power, nationalization does not amount to elimination of exploitation but only to the change of its form” (Fr. Engels), because the bourgeois state is still the state of the capitalists, the defender of capitalist exploitative system.

The course of Soviet Union in the path of socialism-communism was halted when the Dictatorship of the Proletariat was overthrown and replaced by the bourgeois “all people’s state” resulting in the loss of the control-property of the state enterprises from the working class.

The change of the state’s class character radically altered the content of the enterprises in the economy of the Soviet Union: from socialist they were transformed to capitalist enterprises since it is the state’s character that determines the character of state enterprises, in this case the bourgeois “all people’s state” , that is, the dictatorship of the new bourgeoisie.

The anti-Marxist claim made by the Khrushchevian revisionists, that socialism was allegedly preserved in the Soviet Union after 1953 due to presence of state enterprises, does not have any basis because it was precisely the new state, i.e. the bourgeois “all people’s state” that determined the capitalist character of the state enterprises during that period. If one accepts this false and totally baseless claim, then one is obliged to regard as “socialist” state enterprises of the western capitalist countries or to regard as “socialist” even the “Bismarckian kindnationalizations” or to call socialist “the institutions like the Royal Maritime Company or the Royal Porcelain Manufacture”(Fr. Engels: “Anti-Dühring”, 1877).

Besides the fact that the character of the state enterprises is primarily determined by the character of the political power, that is, by which class has the political power and the corresponding class state, the capitalist character of the state enterprises is also reflected in how they function and the purpose of the production. The state enterprises of the Krushchevian period were fully autonomous commodity producers that worked on the basis of complete economic self-sufficiency (= «Chosrastschot» = «Wirtschaftliche Rechnungsfuehrung») guided by private-financial criteria (Profit-Efficiency) and had profit as their exclusive purpose. More accurately, the purpose of the state enterprises was the maximization of profit, like in the traditional capitalism of the western countries, and not, any more, the satisfaction of society’s ever increasing needs. The profit maximization, pursued through the price increases, was admitted by the soviet revisionists themselves: “there are enterprises the directors of which do not see only the reduction of expenses as the source of profit but also the illegal determination of prices. The directors of enterprises who set higher prices in their own orders, place their own private-business interests above those of the whole society and, in this way, they cause damage to the state” (“Soviet Science”, 8/1969).

So, after the launch of the capitalist reforms, the large enterprises of various branches in the economy of the Soviet Union and the other revisionist countries that could increase their profit not through the increase of production and the decrease of expenses but through the increase of prices “in the example of the capitalist monopolies” (O. Lange) ended up to that point correctly predicted, already from 1957, by the world famous Polish revisionist economist Oscar Lange: “in the case of the larger enterprises, it is feared that they will come to an agreement among themselves and set high prices. If this happens then the enterprise will lose its socialist character and we will have a syndicated monopoly. Every enterprise, or group of enterprises, in an agreement among themselves, would be de facto owners of the means of production and not managers of the total social product and would pursue to extract the maximum profits through the determination of prices favorable to them. In this case, production would not serve the best possible fulfillment of the whole society and the driving force of production would be the pursue of profitby these individual enterprises, of their staff or the united enterprises and this would have nothing in common with socialism” (O. Lange) (our underlining)

This development was observed, and openly confirmed and admitted after published articles in the revisionist press: “our experience shows a dangerous trend for arbitrary determination of prices” («Voprosi Ekonomikii», 6/1970) “the producer dictates the prices… and often maintains shortages of special goods to increase pressure on the consumer”(«Ekonomicheskije Nauki», 11/1971).

Besides, one of basic goals of the capitalist reform of 1965 was, among other things, the establishment in various branches of the economy of the Soviet Union of large monopolistic enterprises and complexes, monopolistic unions that took the form of combines, trusts and cartels or as it was often mentioned “one combine, one trust” in «Verordnung ueber den sozialistischen staatlichen Produktionsbetrieb» (4 October 1965) and permanently repeated later in various other publications «Organizacija Upravlenija Promishljenih Objedihjenjij», p. 16, Kiev 1980), etc

1.2 Cooperatives

The cooperative and collective farm property was the second and less advanced form of the socialist-communist economy of the Soviet Union at its socialist stage in the Leninist-Stalinist period (1917-1953).

Cooperatives in socialism is not of course a new phenomenon since they also exist in capitalism where they have, however, a completely different character: they represent a capitalist form of economy, because the means of production belong to the capitalists who control the economy and exploit the farmers while, at the same time, constitute the politically dominant class organized in the bourgeois state: “in the capitalist state, cooperatives are no doubt collective capitalist institutions”(Lenin: “On Cooperation”, 1923).

What determined the socialist character of the cooperatives in the Soviet Union of Lenin-Stalin was the working class rule, i.e. the presence of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat the state of which owned the basic means of production. In connection to this, Lenin pointed out: “the system of civilized cooperators, given social ownership of the means of production, given the class victory of the proletariat over the bourgeoisie, the system of civilized cooperators is precisely the system of socialism” (Lenin: “On Cooperation”, 1923) “under our system, cooperative enterprises differ from the private-capitalist enterprises because they are collective enterprises, but do not differ from socialist enterprises if the land on which they are situated and means of production belong to the state, i.e., the working-class” (Lenin: “On Cooperation”, 1923)

Therefore, the element that determines the character (capitalist or socialist) of the cooperative property is the class nature of the state.

Following the prevalence of the Khrushchevian revisionist counter-revolution the overthrow of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat and its replacement with the “all people’s state” in the Soviet Union, the working class and the peasants lost the power, while at the same time the character of the cooperatives changed: from a socialist form of property, cooperative property became a capitalist one, the cooperatives were converted to a capitalist form of economy and operated, too, as individual autonomous commodity producers, as the state enterprises, on the basis of complete economic self-sufficiency and guided by the private-financial criteria of Profit-Efficiency.

Besides the presence of state and cooperative capitalist property in the economy of the Soviet Union, the capitalist reforms paved the path to the development of a private capitalist sector in agriculture, small industry, services, in different professions etc. Next to the state-cooperative sector, the emerging private sector became an important part of the economy thanks to the financial support from the state (laws, credits, etc). The development of the private sector was such that the small capitalist property was formally recognized in various articles of the new Brezhnev constitution (1977). This capitalist property took much larger dimensions since: “small production engenders capitalism and the bourgeoisie continuously, daily, hourly, spontaneously, and on a mass scale” (Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. XXV, pp.173 and 189).

The private capitalist sector under the form of “auxiliary household of the collective farmers” and “workers and employees” – terms that the Krushchevian-Brezhnevites used to conceal the private capitalist businesses in agriculture, in small industry and elsewhere – was under constant expansion and development, achieving an increasingly bigger contribution in the production of agricultural goods: “according to 1970 data, 38% of all vegetables, 35% of meat and 53% of eggs were produced in the auxiliary households of the Soviet Union” (Political Economy, v. 5, p. 310, Athens 1980). According to “Liternaturnaja Gazeta” (11/5/1977), the private capitalist sector includes 3.6 million hectares of arable land which produce 31% of dairy products, 59% of potatoes etc. Towards the middle 1970’s, the arable land increased to 7.5 million hectares yielding the 64% of potatoes, 42% of meat, 40% of milk, 65% of eggs, 20% of woolen of the total production. What must be noted is the constant increase of the volume of production coming from the private capitalist sector at the expense of the production coming from the cooperatives.

In the 1977 constitution – the constitution of the capitalist restoration – despite the abundant “socialist” demagogy, it was openly formulated and, for the first time, legally established that the “soviet” state of that period was not the Dictatorship of the Proletariat but the bourgeois “all people’s state”, i.e. the dictatorship of the new bourgeoisie. In addition, all the capitalist reforms were legally ascertained including (article 16) the capitalist principles of “economic autonomy and initiative of the enterprises” (p. 47), of the “economic self-sufficiency” (p. 48), the “profit, cost and other economic levers and incentives (p.48).

Apart from the establishment of state and cooperative property as forms of capitalist property in various articles of the new bourgeois constitution, the right to forms of private capitalist property was also established (articles 13 and 17) using phrases such as “supplementary part of land”, “parts of land provided the state and the collective farms according to the law on the supplementary household for tree and vegetable growing” (p. 46), “private labor in the sphere of small industry, agriculture, services… and other forms of labor activity” (p. 48) which doesn’t include only small pieces of land but it constitutes a large private sector of the economy.

Source

Alliance Marxist-Leninist on Andrea Dworkin

Organ of Alliance Marxist-Leninist (North America);

Volume 1, Issue 5; September 2003

Feminist theorist Andrea Dworkin represents all that is wrong with the petty-bourgeois intelligentsia. Divorced from any real-world struggles, this intelligentsia degenerates into a fantasy world of boundless theoretical possibilities where even the most inane and bizarre positions are granted validation.

Dworkin’s views present an extreme petty-bourgeois metaphysics, centered on sex as the primary motive force in society. Andrea Dworkin has often been characterized as the quintessential “Femi-Nazi.” Although that ubiquitous phrase has, more often than not, been used as a term of abuse directed at any woman who strongly speaks out against male supremacism, with regard to Ms. Dworkin it does contain some truth. In place of the Nazi vision of race as the determining factor in the rise and fall of cultures and civilizations, Dworkin places sex. The conclusions she then comes to are as outlandish, freakish, reactionary, and anti-human as those of any Himmler or Rosenberg. And Dworkin outlines a vision of a sexual “New Order” as repellent as any conceived under the swastika.

The following are taken from her premier text, Woman Hating, 1974.

Androgyny the Ideal

Dworkin denies gender:

“The discovery is, of course, that “man” and “woman” are fictions, caricatures, cultural constructs. As models they are reductive totalitarian, inappropriate to human becoming. As roles they are static, demeaning to the female, dead-ended for the male and female both (p. 174).”

It should be noted that Dworkin is not attacking the idea of gender roles, but the reality of sexual distinction itself. In its place she offers a so-called `androgynous ethic’ She tries to defend this androgynous ethic by claiming that there are no biological differences between “men” and “women” which would make any sexual difference possible. Here pseudo-science, religion, and out and out fantasy are marshaled by Dworkin.

“there is no reason not to postulate that humans once were androgynous — hermaphroditic and androgynous, created precisely in the image of the constantly recurring androgynous godhead” (p.176).”

Dworkin asserts that homo sapiens was, at one time hermaphroditic. Thus placing human beings on the level of flatworms. Dworkin also believes in human parthenogenesis (pregnancy resulting from an unfertilized egg – i.e.. conception without sexual union.) Indeed, she claims parthenogenesis is a common occurrence. The world is littered with virgin births and Athena sprouting out of Zeus’ head. She concludes:

“Homo Sapiens is a multi-sexed species, which has its sexuality spread along a vast fluid continuum where the elements called male and female are not discrete” (p.183).

Therefore there is no such thing as being male or female.

Heterosexuality is Evil

Dworkin states that:

“Intercourse with men as we know them is increasingly impossible. It requires an abortion of creativity and strength, a refusal of responsibility and freedom: a bitter personal death. It means acting out the female role, incorporating the masochism, self-hatred, and passivity which are central to it. Unambiguous conventional heterosexual behavior is the worst betrayal of our common humanity (p.184).”

This is not to say that “men” and “women” can”t have sex, but that:

“androgynous [sex] … requires the destruction of all conventional role-playing … of couple formations…”

What does this mean? As Dworkin notes, homosexual sexual relationships are far closer to her version of androgyny because

“it is by definition antagonistic to two-sex polarity” (p.185).

But even this is too polarizing for Dworkin because many homosexuals have sex only with other homosexuals. Instead what Dworkin wants to see is some sort of omni-sexuality,

“An exclusive commitment to one sexual formation, whether homosexual or heterosexual, generally means an exclusive commitment to one role. An exclusive commitment to one sexual formation generally involves the denial of many profound and compelling kinds of sensuality. An exclusive commitment to one sexual formation generally means that one is, regardless of the uniform one wears, a good soldier of the culture programmed effectively to do its dirty work. It is by developing one’s pansexuality to its limits (and no one knows where or what those are) that one does the work of destroying culture to build community (p.185).”

Monogamy is one of those “cultur[ally] programmed” views that would have to be discarded to experience “many profound and compelling kinds of sensuality.”

In Favor of Bestiality

One of the “pansexual” activities which Dworkin advocates is bestiality:

“Primary bestiality (fucking between people and other animals) is found in all nonindustrial societies. Secondary bestiality (generalized erotic relationships between people and other animals) is found everywhere on the planet, on every city street, in every rural town. Bestiality is an erotic reality, one which clearly place people in nature, not above it (p.187-8).”

“Needless to say, in androgynous community, human and other-animal relationships would become more explicitly erotic, and that eroticism would not degenerate into abuse. Animals would be part of the tribe and, with us, respected, loved, and free (p.188).”

In Praise of Incest

Another universally condemned perversion which would be celebrated in Dworkin’s petty-bourgeois sexual wonderland is incest.

“The parent-child relationship is primarily erotic because all human relationships are primarily erotic. The incest taboo is a particularized form of repression, one which functions as the bulwark of all other repressions. The incest taboo ensures that however free we become, we never become genuinely free. The incest taboo, because it denies us essential fulfillment with the parents whom we love with our primary energy, forces us to internalize those parents and constantly seek them…

“The incest taboo does the worst work of the culture: it teaches us the mechanisms of repressing and internalizing erotic feeling — it forces us to develop those mechanisms in the first place; it forces us to particularize sexual feeling, so that it congeals into a need for a particular sexual “object”; it demands that we place the nuclear family above the human family. The destruction of the incest taboo is essential to the development of cooperative human community based on the free-flow of natural androgynous eroticism (p.189).

Not to Mention Pedophilia

A few paragraphs later, Dworkin makes it explicitly that she seeks nothing less than the destruction of:

“the nuclear family as the primary institution of the culture” (p.190).

Dworkin ends her discourse on androgyny before making it explicit that this applies to children as well. Dworkin argues that children too must be ‘liberated.’

“As for children, they too are erotic beings, closer to androgyny than the adults who oppress them. Children are fully capable of participating in community, and have every right to live out their own erotic impulses.” (p.191-2).

In short, Dworkin offers a petty-bourgeois radicalism divorced from material reality, covered in metaphysics and pseudo-science, and focused on sex. . . perverse sex. She is a sexual fascist.

Enver Hoxha on the Transition in Spain and the PCE

After the death of Franco, King Juan Carlos came to power in Spain. He is the representative of the Spanish big bourgeoisie, which, seeing that during its long rule the fascist regime had plunged the country into a grave crisis, came to the conclusion that Spain could no longer be governed as in Franco’s time. Therefore certain changes had to be made in the form of government and Franco’s discredited Falange could no longer be kept in power. After a series of changes of heads of government, the people most trusted by the new king, the continuers of the reformed Francoism, took power.

Demonstrations and strikes broke out in Spain as never before. Through them the people demanded changes, naturally, not this “change” that took place, but deep-going and radical changes. The strikes, demonstrations and clashes there did not cease and are still going on. The masses are demanding freedoms and rights, and the different nationalities autonomy. In this situation, in order to mislead the masses in revolt, the government of Juan Carlos also legalized the revisionist party of Ibarruri-Carrillo. The heads of this party have become obedient flunkies of the Spanish monarchic regime, have turned into scabs to hold back the great revolutionary drive which has built up in the existing situation and, in conjunction with the bourgeoisie, to suppress all the elements with revolutionary ideas from the Spanish War and admirers of the Republic.

— Enver Hoxha, “Imperialism and the Revolution”

Meeting Kim Il Sung in His Last Weeks

BY MARK BARRY, APRIL 15, 2012

The first (non-communist) Americans to meet North Korea’s president Kim Il Sung likely were journalists Harrison Salisbury of The New York Times, and Selig Harrison, then ofThe Washington Post, in 1972. Congressman Stephen Solarz was the first U.S. public official to meet him in 1980, and Rev. Billy Graham later met him in 1992 and 1994. Little did I realize when I met Kim Il Sung on April 16, 1994, weeks before his death, I would be among a very small group of Americans ever to do so. On Sunday, April 15, North Korea celebrates the 100th anniversary of the birth of the “Eternal President,” perhaps the North’s biggest celebration ever. Kim ruled North Korea for nearly half a century, far outliving Stalin and Mao, and holding power from Truman through Clinton. More importantly, Kim Il Sung embodied North Korea, a country and people he molded in his image. His legacy is now carried on by the young Kim Jong Un, who, North Koreans are constantly reminded, resembles his grandfather.

*  *  *

I was senior staff in a delegation organized by a Washington, DC-based NGO, the Summit Council for World Peace, an association of former heads of state and government, that arrived in Pyongyang at the time of Kim Il Sung’s 82nd birthday. The group was chaired by a former president of Costa Rica, Rodrigo Carazo, and included a former Governor General of Canada, former Egyptian prime minister, former chief of staff of the French armed forces, a U.S. think tank executive, and CNN’s chief news executive, among others. TV crews also came from CNN and Japan’s NHK. The Council had a prior record of successfully arranging meetings with Kim Il Sung, and Carazo himself had met Kim several times in the past.

Mid-morning on April 16, 1994 – the day after Kim’s birthday – our international delegation was brought in a fleet of black Mercedes to the Kumsusan Assembly Hall in Pyongyang, Kim Il Sung’s official residence. Our minders kept repeating how lucky we were for this opportunity. Inside, we lined up single file and were introduced individually to the waiting Kim Il Sung by a vice chairman of the Korea Asia Pacific Peace Committee. By Kim’s side was his superb English translator, and party secretary Kim Yong Sun, then the number three figure in North Korea (who later played an instrumental role in the 2000 inter-Korean summit) and chair of the Peace Committee. Kim Il Sung stood and walked on his own without assistance, but had a military aide nearby just in case. He did not seem to be wearing a hearing aid. His handshake was firm, he did not look overweight and appeared to be in good health, although his voice was rather gravelly (a Korean affairs analyst later told me this was because Kim used to smoke a lot). Very noticeable on the right side of his neck was a baseball-sized growth, which was benign, but because of its location, was said to be inoperable; official photos of Kim always were taken from a leftward angle to hide the growth.

Official Meeting Photo

After our official greetings, we were brought before a huge mural in the main lobby of the palace for our official photos. They were taken in two groups: the former heads of state and government and other senior members of the delegation, and the journalists. As with other visitors to the palace, we later each received a copy of the official photo with the date gold-stamped.

We were then escorted into the palace conference room with a long table that could accommodate two dozen. Each place setting had a pen, writing pad, and microphone, as well as coffee cup and dish of small candies. After we sat down, the window curtains and room lighting were remotely adjusted. Noticeably, neither the translator nor Kim Yong Sun sat too close to President Kim. On the DPRK side of the table were also Kim Yong Sun’s wife, and two other officials from the Asia Pacific Peace Committee.

President Carazo, who founded the United Nations Peace University in Costa Rica, spoke first, thanking Kim for receiving our group, and noting we were a goodwill delegation that had come to the DPRK for the sake of peace in the entire peninsula. President Kim responded that he regretted that we did not come through Panmunjom because we could then better understand the division of Korea (in fact, we had sought permission from the ROK to do so, but the Kim Young Sam administration denied our request; however, we later traveled to the northern end of Panmunjom, as well as a small town by the DMZ that clearly was not a Potemkin village). Kim added that earlier in the year, Congressman Gary Ackerman (D-NY) had come to see him, and had returned to South Korea by way of Panmunjom, becoming the first American to do so since the Korean War.

Kim then began to expound. He said, “We always open our doors widely. Our only secrets have to do with the military. But apart from that, we are ready to open to the outside.” The nuclear issue, which had become quite serious by that time, was not brought up in this meeting, but was left to the journalists. Later that day, Kim Il Sung would personally hand to Josette Sheeran, then managing editor of The Washington Times (now vice chair of the World Economic Forum), a booklet of his written answers to her questions, that included his candid responses about the DPRK nuclear program. The full-length interview, her second with him, was published on April 19th. I do not believe his answers were ghost-written, but were largely dictated by Kim, because the tone had the same unmistakable authority as when I heard him speak.

Kim then proceeded to boast that in North Korea “there are no beggars, no unemployed, no homeless.” He recalled asking Billy Graham if there were beggars, unemployed and homeless in America, to which Graham said “yes.” While this statement seems laughable in the context of the severe food shortages that North Korea would endure from 1996 on, it was not a ludicrous thing to hear about the North in 1994. Flying in on Air Koryo, President Carazo had peered out the cabin window and saw the expanse of freshly planted rice paddies, and said it appeared North Korea could produce enough food to feed itself. Kim Il Sung also told a story about a visiting Hong Kong businessman who had lost his wallet in a Pyongyang hotel with $10,000 in it. His wallet was returned to him within two hours, everything intact.

Kim then turned to what seemed a favorite theme of his: what made the DPRK different from the Soviet Union, China and other communist states. He said, “After 1945, I tried to find intellectuals to rebuild the country, but could only locate a handful. The partisans who fought with me against the Japanese knew how to fight, but not how to build institutions.” The Japanese in their 35-year colonial rule, he said, left no college functioning in the North. “So I had to start my own, which became Kim Il Sung University, and then other schools. Today [1994], there are 1.76 million intellectuals out of a population of 20 million, almost one out of ten citizens.” What still impresses me about his point is how North Koreans value education, are inquisitive, and possess great human capital that can easily be trained to a high-level of professional skill.

Suddenly, Kim Il Sung leaned to the side and asked Secretary Kim Yong Sun for his Korean Workers Party card. I will never forget the look on Kim Yong Sun’s face. He almost turned white, because even though President Kim wanted the card just to make a point, Kim Yong Sun did not know if the request meant something more serious, such as losing his party post. But as he handed the card to his leader, Kim Il Sung held it up and pointed to the large gold-stamped party emblem, consisting of the usual hammer and sickle, but also a calligraphy brush in the middle. “In 1946, I created this emblem for our party. The brush symbolizes our highest commitment to intellectual pursuits in every discipline. Our emblem is unique among communist parties in the world. This is an example of juche, doing things our own way. We did everything in our own way.” President Kim then handed the party card back to its relieved owner.

At this juncture, Bill Taylor, vice president of the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, who was meeting the North Korean leader for the second time, told Kim that he had not changed a bit from two years ago, and looked to be in good health. Kim responded, “I always live with optimism.” Eason Jordan, president of CNN International, greeted Kim on behalf of Ted Turner, founder of CNN, and expressed hope for a face-to-face interview, which did not materialize. Taylor praised Kim’s decision to allow in CNN and NHK as a very important step. In fact, CNN’s Mike Chinoy conducted the first live broadcast from Pyongyang during this trip, using state television’s satellite uplink.

The meeting ended and we adjourned across the hall for lunch. We sat at a large round table with white tablecloth, although most journalists sat at a second table. The northern Korean cuisine was extraordinary, including my first time to taste blueberry wine. Conversation became a bit more free-flowing. Kim was asked about the role of his son and successor, Kim Jong Il. He responded, “I am so proud of him. As an elderly man, I cannot read easily, and every day my son dictates reports into a cassette recorder so I can listen to them later on. But he keeps me fully informed. He is truly a filial son.” The North Korean leader also noted he likes to hunt, especially wild boar. One participant asked him if he would like to come to the United States. He responded, “I have yet to visit the United States, but I hope to do so in the future.” Someone suggested he even come to the opening session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York in September 1994. Kim smiled. Though he likely feared flying, the State Department could not have prevented him from coming to the UN with other world leaders in attendance because Kim was head of state of a member nation.

According to one Korean affairs specialist, in Kim’s 1994 discussions with Rev. Billy Graham, a large U.S. National Council of Churches delegation, and former president Jimmy Carter, he frequently returned to his youth and engaged in a discussion of religion with curiosity. In a sense, he began to mellow, as older Korean men can be  quite susceptible to this; among older overseas Korean men, there is an urge to return to one’s hometown in Korea. This seemed to me to be true based on my observation of Kim Il Sung that day.

After the banquet, we said our individual farewells to Kim Il Sung. Several participants told him they wanted to return to the DPRK with others so they could see the country for themselves. One even invited Kim to come to the U.S. to enjoy sport fishing. Kim seemed genuinely appreciative of each gesture. As we walked out of the reception room, Kim was left standing with just Kim Yong Sun, his translator and military aide. He seemed to regret seeing us leave. We were outsiders, non-Koreans, from Europe, the U.S., Canada, Japan, Egypt, and elsewhere. He appeared to enjoy nothing better than to tell us his story, one few foreigners in the non-communist world had heard. For Kim Il Sung, it was a rare opportunity, to get courtesy and respect from foreign leaders and let them know his legacy. We did not realize Kim had only weeks to live.

Kim Il Sung would see two more outside visitors in June 1994, Selig Harrison and Jimmy Carter, as the nuclear issue reached a fever pitch and both the Clinton and Kim Young Sam administrations prepared for a possible outbreak of hostilities. Carter’s historic trip as the first former U.S. president to meet Kim Il Sung*, defused the nuclear crisis, averted war and led to the 1994 Agreed Framework, which froze the DPRK nuclear program until 2003. Kim also told Carter he agreed to hold the first-ever inter-Korean summit that summer with Kim Young Sam. It was not to be.

Kim Il Sung died suddenly of a heart attack on July 8, 1994. We later learned that Kim knew he was dying and felt an urgency to initiate major policy measures while still alive to effect a strategic change; Kim Jong Il would have been unable to implement major policy change after his father’s death. Kim senior’s meeting with Carter was that pivotal moment, and U.S.-DPRK relations eventually were elevated to where, in October 2000, the top North Korean general, Vice Marshall Jo Myong Rok, greeted Bill Clinton in the White House and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright met Kim Jong Il in Pyongyang weeks later. The same pattern appeared to unfold last fall: Kim Jong Il knew he would not live long, and in his final weeks, set into motion policy initiatives, including toward the U.S., to pave the way for Kim Jong Un’s succession.

*  *  *

Kim Il Sung’s official residence became his mausoleum, renamed the Kumsusan Memorial Palace. Kim Jong Il, who died in December, soon will join his father there. In February, Kim Jong Un rechristened the mausoleum the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun, named for his father, but foremost for his grandfather, Kim Il Sung.

* Excellent sources for this trip include Marion Creekmore, Jr., A Moment of Crisis: Jimmy Carter, the Power of a Peacemaker, and North Korea’s Nuclear Ambitions, 2006, and Douglas Brinkley, The Unfinished Presidency: Jimmy Carter’s Journey to the Nobel Peace Prize (cf. Chapter 20, “Mission to North Korea”), 1998. Bill Clinton was the only former U.S. president to meet Kim Jong Il, in 2009.

Source

Book Review: “Trotskyism or Leninism?” by Harpal Brar

BOOK REVIEW

“TROTSKYISM OR LENINISM?” by Harpal Brar, London, 1993

INTRODUCTION

“Lenin’s methods lead to this: the party organisation first substitutes itself for the party as a whole; then the Central Committee substitutes itself for the organisation; and finally a single ‘dictator’ substitutes himself for the Central Committee……

“This evil-minded and morally repugnant suspicion of Lenin, this shallow caricature of the tragic intolerance of Jacobinism, … must be liquidated at the present time at all costs, otherwise the party is threatened by complete political, moral and theoretical decay’.

(L.D. Trotsky: ‘Nos Tâches Politiques’; Paris; 1970; p192)

“Trotsky behaves like a despicable careerist and factionalist….He pays lip service to the Party and behaves worse than any other of the factionalists”.

(V. I. Lenin: Letter to Grigory Zinoviev, in: ‘collected Works’, volume 34; Moscow; 1966; p399-400)

Despite these and many similar quotations, a central feature of Trotskyite historiography is that during Lenin’s leadership of the Russian Communist Party, Trotsky’s relations with Lenin were those of ‘mutual confidence’, and that Trotsky’s conflict with the Party only began following Stalin’s accession to the Party leadership.

This issue of Compass is devoted to a review of a new book which clearly shows that the theory and practice of Trotskyism stand, and have always stood, irreconcilably opposed to the precepts of Leninism.

The author opens by correctly stating that for many years (and not without a little help from the imperialist bourgeoisie), Trotskyites have successfully promoted the fallacious view that Trotskyism and Leninism are synonymous, and that only the cunning machinations of the ‘despot’ Stalin prevented Trotsky from assuming his rightful place as a worthy successor to Lenin and the true inheritor of Leninism.

The aim of this book is to expose this re-writing of history and to lay bare the truly reactionary and counter-revolutionary essence of the petty-bourgeois ideology of Trotskyism, notwithstanding its sheep’s clothing of pseudo-Marxist and pseudo-leftist phraseology. The author is to be congratulated on comprehensively and persuasively fulfilling these aims, setting the historical record straight, and providing an invaluable text for those wishing knowledge of the true nature of Trotskyism.

He quotes Stalin’s remark that:

“….systematic reiteration and patient explanation of the so-called ‘generally-known’ truths is one of the best methods of educating…. comrades in Marxism.”

(Stalin, Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR; Foreign Languages Press, Peking 1972; p.9)

Harpal Brar can be assured that he has succeeded in his desire to set out those ‘generally known’ (and many less generally known) truths about Trotskyism. This, however, is too modest an assessment of the worth of this book, which focuses on those essential features of Trotskyism bringing it into sharp contradiction with Leninism. These include the theory of permanent revolution, distrust of Leninism in matters of organisation, and its discrediting and defaming of the leaders of Bolshevism.

Separate sections deal with Lenin’s theory of revolution compared with the theory of ‘permanent revolution’; socialism in one country; the Moscow trials; the Chinese revolution; the Spanish civil war; collectivisation; and class struggle under the dictatorship of the proletariat. Helpful referenced quotations are included throughout, as is a useful bibliography.

A great deal of the text is based upon a series of pamphlets first published in the early 1970′s. Although the preface provides a good updating of the material, it is, perhaps, a pity that some of the chapters seem rooted firmly in the past, since as the author points out, many of the persons and organisations originally the target of these polemics are no longer readily identifiable. This is a very minor criticism, not least because in the face of continuous recycling of the old myths by today’s Trotskyites the author’s arguments still hold true.

The terrorist nature of Trotskyism in the Soviet Union, and its subsequent rout culminating in the Moscow Trials, is dealt with in chilling detail. The author highlights the fact that Trotskyism was only able to make something of a comeback due to the need of the Soviet revisionists to discredit the gains of socialist construction in the years before the 20th Party Congress, at the same time discrediting Stalin, the man under whose leadership these gains had been achieved.

By way of contrast, an example is given of a quote from Mao Tse-tung on the occasion of Stalin’s 60th birthday (1939):

“Stalin is the leader of the world revolution. This is of paramount importance. It is a great event that mankind is blessed with Stalin. Since we have him, things can go well. As you all know, Marx is dead and so are Engels and Lenin. Had there been no Stalin, who would there be to give directions? But having him – this is really a blessing. Now there exists in the world a Soviet Union, a Communist Party and also a Stalin. Thus the affairs of the world can go well” (p79)

There is, however, more than a hint of hyperbole in this declaration which, in its effusiveness, is redolent of the ‘praise’ lavished on Stalin by Khrushchev. It should be remembered that the ‘cult of the individual’ was built up around Stalin and against his wishes in order to disguise the fact that the Party and the Communist International were at times dominated by concealed revisionists, and, at a later date was used as a pretext for attacking Stalin under the guise of carrying out a programme of ‘democratisation’.

Is it any wonder that in September 1956, seventeen years later, in his opening address to the 8th Congress of the Communist Party of China we find Mao Tse-tung referring in glowing terms to the infamous 20th Congress of the communist Party of the soviet Union which had been held in February of that year:

‘At its 20th Congress held not long ago, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union formulated many correct policies and criticised shortcomings which were found in the Party. It can be confidently asserted that very great developments will follow this in its work”.

(Mao Tse-tung: Opening Address, in: ‘Eighth National Congress of the Communist Party of China”, Volume 1; Peking; 1956)

Furthermore, on the basis of discussions at enlarged meetings of the Political Bureau of the central Committee of the Communist Party of China, two widely publicised articles were published in “Renmin Ribao” (People’s Daily) which put forward the modern revisionist viewpoint on the 20th Congress:

“The 20th Congress of the Soviet Union.. .took a series of momentous decisions… on the criticisms of shortcomings within the Party…

The Congress very sharply exposed the prevalence of the cult of the individual which, for a long time in Soviet life, had given rise to many errors in work and had led to ill consequences.. The Communist Party of the soviet Union.. made appalling mistakes, and, what is more, it was Stalin himself, that widely renowned and honoured leader, who made them! …

“Stalin took more and more pleasure in the cult of the individual, and violated the Party’s system of democratic centralism and the principle of combining collective leadership with individual responsibility. As a result, he made some serious mistakes such as the following: he broadened the scope of the suppression of the counterrevolution; he lacked the necessary vigilance on the eve of the anti-fascist war; he failed to pay proper attention to the further development of agriculture and the material welfare of the peasantry; he gave certain wrong advice on the international communist movement, and, in particular, made a wrong decision on the question of Yugoslavia. on these issues, Stalin fell victim to subjectivism and one-sidedness, and divorced himself from objective reality and from the masses.”

(“On the Historical Experience of the Dictatorship of the proletariat”. Peking, 1956; p3,4,9-10)

Bent, as always, on sowing confusion, the Trotskyites have consistently characterised these same revisionists (whether ‘right’ Soviet or ‘left’ Chinese), dedicated to the overthrow of Marxism-Leninism, as ‘Stalinists’. It is hardly surprising that other aspects of their political analysis fails to convince, an example being the interpretation of Gorbachev’s perestroika and glasnost offered by Gerry Healy of the Socialist Labour League as:

“the political revolution for restoring Bolshevik world revolutionary perspectives”!

(‘Trotskyism or Leninism?’ Harpal Brar, London 1993)

Of course the Trotskyites were not completely wrong in discerning a progressive and popular element in the mass movements which have taken place in Eastern Europe. They were incorrect to characterise these as ‘anti-Stalin’ since revisionism had already led to the dismantling of socialism and the reintroduction of capitalist economies in these countries.

In Poland, for example, following the imposition as party leader of Wladyslaw Gomulka by the Kruschevites in 1956, the communist party became dominated by revisionists. With every step taken by the revisionist leaders of the Eastern European countries to restore capitalism, the law of antagonism between workers and management, between exploiters and exploited, operated with ever increasing intensity. Continuing claims about the ‘socialist’ nature of these states were no more than demagogic propaganda to hold back the rising tide of class struggle.

As if commenting on a self-evident error, Harpal Brar states that:

“… all the Trotskyites everywhere supported the counterrevolutionary … Solidarnosc in Poland”. (p57)

However, Solidarnosc called for the formation of independent self-administering trade unions outside and in opposition to the existing trade unions in Poland, together with the right to strike, freedom of speech and the press.

Commenting on the development of Solidarnosc, the Party of Labour of Albania correctly characterised Poland as a revisionist country in which the essentials of capitalism had been restored, and described the official trade unions as

“….transmission belts, of the policy of the revisionist party”. (‘Only the revolutionary road can take the Polish working class to victory’, in; Zeri i Popullit”, September 7th, 1980)

Under these circumstances, (even though the leaders of Solidarnosc may well have been in league with the CIA), the demands of solidarnosc oh behalf of its millions of members such as the right to strike, could hardly be considered reactionary. In fact, as far as Marxist-Leninists within Poland were concerned, the struggle to raise revolutionary consciousness of the workers could surely best be carried out in organisations not dominated by the revisionist-fascist state, and once a degree of freedom of speech for the workers could be achieved.

It is also difficult to join with the author in lamenting developments in Romania:

“.. in regard to the counter revolutionary movement in Timisoara, which resulted in the overthrow and foul murder of Ceaucescu and his wife. “(p55)

for, as Enver Hoxha pointed out:

“Regardless of what the Romanian leaders claimed, the dictatorship of the proletariat was not operating in Romania and the Romanian Worker’s Party was not in a strong position. They declared that they were in power, but it was very evident that, in fact, the bourgeoisie was in power. It had industry, agriculture and trade in its hands and continued to fleece the Romanian people and to live in luxurious villas and palaces.”

(Enver Hoxha, “The Khrushchevites. Memoirs”, Tirana 1989; p156-7)

CONCLUSIONS

Trotsky’s attacks on the Soviet Union became increasingly rabid up until his death in August 1940. His assassination and an earlier assault on his house in Nay that year, have formed the basis for the final great myth of Trotskyism.

It is now known that the raid on Trotsky’s house in May was stage managed, no doubt to raise Trotsky’s status as a persecuted exile. The investigating authorities, however, were satisfied that:

“… the raid could not have been carried out without the co-operation of someone in Trotsky’s entourage”.

(Isaac Deutscher: ‘The Prophet Outcast: Trotsky: 1929-1940′; Oxford; 1989; p491)

The Mexican authorities preferred to drop proceedings against the perpetrators of the May raid on Trotsky’s house rather than risk the exposure in court of the fact that the ‘assault’ had been a spurious one organised by, or in collusion with, Trotsky. This can be explained as a consequence of Mexico’s dependence on United states imperialism, and the certainty that Trotsky, a leading disrupter of the international communist movement, was by this time an agent of US imperialism, a fact uncovered by the American historian Professor William Chase, of Pittsburgh University:

“I can tell you we have concrete information that Leon Trotsky too (as well as Diego Rivera – Ed.) was an informant of the US government”.

(‘Independent’, 25 November 1993; p24)

Despite such evidence, and that the assassin was a Spanish anarchist who had no links to the Soviet government, supporters of Trotsky insist on continuing to present him as a victim of Stalin’s spleen! If Trotskyism were not such an important asset to the imperialist bourgeoisie, this, and the many other myths concerning Trotsky should be laid firmly to rest by Harpal Brar’s excellent book.

There is much that can be learned from this volume which should be read by all interested in history and politics, and all who wish to understand the true counter-revolutionary nature of Trotskyism.

Compass is published by:

THE COMMUNIST LEAGUE

The aim of the Communist League is to establish in Britain a Marxist-Leninist Party of the working class free of all revisionist trends.

‘Trotskyism or Leninism?’(ISBN 1-875613-02-8) is available from E. J. Rule, 14 Featherstone Road, Southall, Middx 0B2 BAA; price £10.00.

Lenin On Democracy

“It is natural for a liberal to speak of “democracy” in general; but a Marxist will never forget to ask: ‘for what class?’”

- V. I. Lenin, “The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky”

Excerpts from Mother Teresa’s Dairy

One day I met a lady who was dying of cancer in a most terrible condition. And I told her, I say, “You know, this terrible pain is only the kiss of Jesus — a sign that you have come so close to Jesus on the cross that he can kiss you.” And she joined her hands together and said, “Mother Teresa, please tell Jesus to stop kissing me.”

[....]

My smile is a great cloak that hides a multitude of pains. [People] think that my faith, my hope and my love are overflowing, and that my intimacy with God and union with His will fill my heart. If only they knew.

[....]

I feel that God does not want me, that God is not God, and that God does not exist.

[....]

I am told God loves me—and yet the reality of darkness and coldness and emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul.

[....]

Heaven means nothing.

— Mother Teresa’s dairy

A Day That Would Change Korea’s Future: The Birth Of Kim Il Sung

On the 101 anniversary of Kim Il Sung’s birth, Brandon K. Gauthier looks back to a day that would go on to change the future of the peninsula

BY BRANDON K. GAUTHIER, APRIL 15, 2013

Kim Il Sung, just six-years old, watched as thousands of protestors screamed: “Long live the independence of Korea!” Caught up in the excitement of the March 1, 1919 rally, the young boy ran barefoot after the group, straw sandals in hand—anxious to keep up. As the throngs reached Potong Gate in western Pyongyang, shots rang out.  Japanese forces charged the protestors with unforgiving bloodshed.  Innocents died.

Seventy years later, the North Korean leader remembered that moment vividly: “…the demonstrators resisted the enemy fearlessly, becoming human weapons…This was the first time I saw one man killing another.”

Kim Il Sung was born on April 15, 1912 outside Pyongyang, barely seven years before those momentous events.

Born to a lineage of low social status, Kim was “a ‘dragon from an ordinary well,’” as his preeminent biographer, Dae-Sook Suh, once noted.  His family was originally from Jeonju in the south—a fact that later saved that city from destruction during the Korean War. After his ancestors moved north in the 1800s, his great-grandfather, an impoverished farmer, found work as a grave-keeper in Mangyongdae, a hamlet outside Pyongyang.

There, Kim’s grandparents would work as agricultural laborers—“old country people who knew nothing but farming.” His father, Kim Hyong Jik, later improved upon that marginal social status, working as a schoolteacher and then as a doctor of herbal medicine.

After Kim Il Sung’s birth, his family “eked out a scanty living.” They often survived off uncleaned sorghum gruel—barely edible, as the North Korean leader remembered it.  Meat and fruit were almost nonexistent.  Moreover, the family bristled at their inability to afford such mundane luxuries as a clock.

Japan’s annexation of Korea in 1910 added insult to the injury of poverty.

The Japanese occupation permeated every element of Korean life. Foreign policemen roamed the streets; the Korean language was forbidden in schools.  Authorities meted out brutal floggings and prison terms to anyone resisting imperial rule.

“Korea in those days was a living hell…the waves of modern history that spelled the ruin of Korea swept mercilessly into our house,” the North Korean leader recalled bitterly.

According to Kim, his father resisted the Japanese occupation through helping organize the “Korea National Association.”  Those efforts, he contends, led Japanese authorities to imprison his father in the fall of 1917.  While little evidence exists to substantiate those claims, Kim’s memory of visiting his father in jail reverberates with emotion:

The visitors’ room was dim, screened from the sunshine.  The air in the room was thick and oppressive…my father was smiling as usual.  He was delighted to see me…The gaunt face of my father who wore prison clothes defied instant recognition…The sound of his voice brought tears to my eyes…His indomitable image that day left a lasting impression on me.

After leaving prison, Kim claims his father traveled to Manchuria, continuing in his efforts against the Japanese occupation. He returned with enchanting tales of Lenin’s new communist government and the Bolsheviks’ struggles in the Russian Civil War.

After watching the March 1st, 1919 movement unfold, Kim’s family moved to the Korean border with China and then into Manchuria. Finding their way to the town of Badaogou, Kim went to school, learning Chinese—a skill that aided him invaluably in the future—while his father worked as a doctor.

In China, the family found solace in Christianity, regularly attending church. The future North Korean leader sang religious hymns and even learned to play the organ in the process. Despite these facts—which Kim admits in his memoirs—he claims his parents were always atheists in disguise.  “Mother, do you go to church because you believe in God?” he once asked.  “What is the use of going to ‘Heaven’ after death?” she responded. “Frankly, I go to church to relax.”  Kim’s father, he also claims, went to church only to encourage resistance against Japan.

In early 1923, Kim’s father announced that his son would return to Korea for secondary school.  Despite earnest protests from his mother, Kim, not yet eleven years old, embarked on that 250-mile journey alone at his father’s wishes.  After enduring onerous struggles and numerous acts of kindness, he arrived at his grandparent’s house in Mangyongdae with instructions from his father that stayed with him: “share the fate of the people in your hometown and experience how miserable they are; then you will see what you should do.”

While the veracity of Kim Il Sung’s autobiography remains much debated, one point is beyond dispute: raw resentment with Japanese colonialism defined his formative years, forever affecting his path in life.

For more information:

• Kim Il Sung. With the Century: Reminiscences, 1. Pyongyang: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1994.
• Lankov, Andrei. From Stalin to Kim Il Sung: The Formation of North Korea, 1945-1960. London: Hurst, 2002.
• Lee, Ki-baik, A New History of Korea. Translated by Edward W. Wagner and Edward J. Shultz. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984.
• Suh, Dae-sook. Kim Il Sung: The North Korean Leader. New York: Columbia University Press, 1988.

Picture Credit: Foreign Languages Publishing House, Pyongyang

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V.I. Lenin On Revolution

“Revolution is war. Of all the wars known in history it is the only lawful, rightful, just, and truly great war. This war is not waged in the selfish interests of a handful of rulers and exploiters, like any and all other wars, but in the interests of the masses of the people against the tyrants, in the interests of the toiling and exploited millions upon millions against despotism and violence.”

— V.I. Lenin, “Revolutionary Days”

The dirty dozen: Israel’s racist ringleaders

Israelis chant “Sudanese Back To Sudan” during a right-wing demonstration against African refugees in south Tel Aviv, 30 May 2012.

(Oren Ziv / ActiveStills)

David Sheen

Does Israel refuse to grant equal rights to Palestinian citizens of the state because it is based on an ideology of racism towards people who are not Jewish? Or does Israel refuse to grant equal rights to Palestinian citizens because, since some of them are opposed to the Jewish sectarian nature of the state, it prioritizes state security over racial equality?

While this debate has raged for decades, new evidence has come to light which would seem to suggest that the former is more true. Because if Jewish Israelis are only antagonistic to Palestinian citizens because they supposedly represent security risks, then why do they also despise sub-Saharan Africans, with whom they have never had any conflict?

Approximately 60,000 people from sub-Saharan African countries have migrated to Israel in recent years, fleeing persecution and requesting asylum. Instead of providing them with aid or permitting them to support themselves, the Israeli government refuses to grant them any rights, forces them into abject poverty, and seeks to deport the lot of them.

Although Israel is a regional superpower, it has the second-highest poverty rate among developed countries. After last year’s Arab uprisings, hundreds of thousands of Israelis took to the streets, demanding a higher standard of living. In response, public officials scapegoated the Africans for Israel’s economic problems and launched a racist campaign to expel them.

If there is to be justice, these leaders must be brought to trial to answer for their crimes. Maybe Israelis will come to their senses, cancel all the laws that discriminate against African asylum-seekers and call for a truth and reconciliation commission. Sadly, that is unlikely to happen in the near future, because the hatred of African asylum-seekers has become so widespread in Israel.

Perhaps the people of Eritrea and Sudan will eventually overthrow their repressive regimes, install democratic governments and charge these Israeli officials in an international court of law.

Until that day comes — if it ever does — it is important to document evidence of the wrongdoing. In fact, this is an easy task. Since these officials are not ashamed of their racism, it is all a matter of public record. Of those most responsible, these are the top twelve, Israel’s dirty dozen, its axis of racism:

12. Chaim Avitan

In July 2007, there was only a smattering of African asylum-seekers in the country. At that time, a group of approximately 20 genocide survivors from Darfur in western Sudan were legally living and working in an orchard belonging to a moshav, a small agricultural settlement, near the city limits of Hadera.

A proposal to Hadera city council to open the city’s absorption center to these migrants was defeated by the mayor Chaim Avitan. Avitan then forged an eviction order and sent a security team in the middle of the night to rough up the Darfuris, destroy their documents, shove them onto buses and kick them out of town (“Complaint filed against Hadera mayor for expelling refugees,” Ynet, 7 August 2007).

Avitan announced that the city was not “the country’s garbage can,” called upon the government not to grant refugee status to anyone who is not Jewish and stressed that “Hadera will not permit a single Sudanese to enter.”

Hadera is twinned with Big Spring, Texas (5 percent African American), Saint Paul, Minnesota (14 percent African American) and Charlotte, North Carolina (35 percent African American).

11. Benjamin Babayof

In July 2010, dozens of rabbis in Tel Aviv issued a religious edict forbidding Jews from renting apartments to African asylum-seekers. The language of the letter included warnings against inter-racial marriages and references to Biblical passages calling for ethnic cleansing of all non-Jewish people from the “land of Israel.”

This initiative was such a hit that before the year was out, hundreds of leading rabbis from throughout Israel (who also draw their salaries from the public coffers) issued a similar edict applying to the entire country.

The brainchild behind the edict, the man who went from rabbi to rabbi collecting signatures, calling the African presence in Israel an “abomination,” was the Tel Aviv city councilor representing the Shas party, Benjamin Babayof (“South Tel Aviv realtors: we won’t rent to ‘infiltrators,’” The Jerusalem Post, 4 August 2010).

That same year, travel guide publishers Lonely Planet called Tel Aviv the third best city in the world.

Babayof continued his anti-African crusade in February 2012, calling upon the transportation ministry to run segregated bus lines for Africans, or at the very least to prevent them from riding the regular bus lines during rush hour, because “they smell bad.”

South Tel Aviv residents carrying signs reading “Return them now” during a protest calling on the government to deport African asylum-seekers back to their home countries.

(Oren Ziv / ActiveStills)

10. Yaakov Asher

Weeks after the original rabbis’ edict was issued, the holy war against African asylum-seekers expanded from Tel Aviv to its environs.

In August 2010, Rabbi Yaakov Asher, the mayor of Tel Aviv satellite city Bnei Brak, met with the minister of public security and the police regional commander to discuss the expulsion of the African population.

When they explained to Asher that there was no legal basis for physically preventing African asylum-seekers from moving to Bnei Brak, Asher’s spokesperson announced that the municipality would use building code infractions by their landlords as an excuse to run the Africans out of town.

When winter came, the municipality followed through on its promise, informing asylum-seekers that they would have to vacate their apartments immediately. When an African man took his legal rental contract down to the city hall and asked to know on what basis he was being evicted, he was told that it was because he was not Jewish.

Many African asylum-seekers did not even receive the courtesy of an eviction notice before their water and electricity were summarily cut off. Without any way to stay warm, the asylum-seekers were frozen out of their flats and sent into the streets in the middle of the winter (“Eritreans say Bnei Brak waging campaign to run them out,” The Jerusalem Post, 1 December 2010).

While he still serves as Bnei Brak mayor, Asher also holds the number seven spot on the United Torah Judaism party list for upcoming elections to Israel’s parliament, the Knesset. The party has five seats in the current Knesset.

9. Meir Yitzhak Halevy

In 2007, African asylum-seekers began to move to Eilat at the invitation of the local hospitality industry. They found work washing dishes and performing other menial tasks for low wages.

Since hoteliers expressed satisfaction with this new arrangement, and since tourism is the only significant industry in Eilat, many more African asylum-seekers have since moved to town. They now number about 10,000 residents, approximately 12 percent of the population of Eilat.

In January 2011, Meir Yitzhak Halevi, the mayor of Eilat, said that African asylum-seekers were coming to conquer Eilat and announced that the city was at war with them. The municipality paid for anti-African posters to be plastered across the city and for red flags to be hung throughout the town (“Eilat demands gov’t action against migrant workers,” The Jerusalem Post,” 13 January 2011). In April 2012, Halevi said that all the Africans will be gone within two years’ time.

For years, Halevi refused to allow the children of African asylum-seekers to attend local schools, so they languished in a makeshift activity center run by sympathetic volunteers. It was only after the Israeli high court intervened and declared Eilat’s segregation policy illegal that children of asylum-seekers were permitted to enroll in September 2012.

Eilat is twinned with Los Angeles, California (10 percent African American).

8. Amnon Yitzhak

An immensely popular preacher, Amnon Yitzhak travels all across Israel turning secular and traditional Jews on to fundamentalist Judaism. Eilat is considered to be a secular stronghold, but Yitzhak crossed its cultural divide by infusing his religious message with rabid anti-African racism.

In February 2012 he told an Eilat audience that the dark skin of Sudanese people is a punishment from Yahweh, the god of Judaism. He further compared them to monkeys, saying that if a Jewish woman goes out with a Sudanese man, she will end up in Africa, “climbing trees and eating bananas” (“‘Cancer in our body’: On racial incitement, discrimination and hate crimes against African asylum-seekers in Israel,” Hotline for Migrant Workers, January-June 2012 [PDF]).

Over the past few weeks, Yitzhak founded a new political party, Power To Influence, that is now running for the Knesset. It is too early to estimate how many seats he might garner, but whether from within the Knesset or without, he wields tremendous clout.

7. Ben-Dror Yemini

Instead of using a neutral lexicon to describe African asylum-seekers, most of the Israeli media have uncritically adopted the pejorative language that government officials who are hostile to their presence use to describe them.

But the mainstream journalist who has spread the most lies about African asylum-seekers in order to stoke fears and incite hatred of them is the opinion page editor of the popular daily paper Maariv, Ben-Dror Yemini.

Some Western countries grant refugee status to between 80 percent and 90 percent of East African asylum-seekers. But in December 2011, just before the right-wing-dominated Knesset voted to criminalize asylum-seekers, Yemini provided them with the ideological ammunition to do so by printing the vicious lie that none of them are refugees, only work migrants.

An official Knesset report from May 2012 stated that the proportion of asylum-seekers out of the entire population of Israel is low compared to Western countries. But only days later Yemini published a column saying that Israel would soon have the largest proportion of asylum-seekers of any country in the world.

Tzipi Livni, Israel’s former foreign minister, recently offered Yemini a prominent spot on her Movement Party list for the Knesset elections. Whether he accepts her offer or not, the mere fact that he was invited is a testament to his widespread influence.

Michael Ben-Ari rallies the crowd during a protest against African refugees and asylum seekers in Tel Aviv’s Hatikva neighborhood, 23 May 2012.

(Oren Ziv / ActiveStills)

6. Michael Ben-Ari

Although he lives in an Israeli settlement in the West Bank, Michael Ben-Ari opened up a parliamentary office in south Tel Aviv, where more than half the Africans in Israel live, in order to mobilize residents opposed to their presence.

While other politicians draw complaints for only visiting the area and surrounding themselves with bodyguards when they finally arrive, the charismatic Ben-Ari confidently leads the community in anti-African street marches. He has also established an anti-African neighborhood watch posse there, earning the admiration of locals.

Ben-Ari has also called for Israeli soldiers to kill in cold blood any African person approaching the border to request political asylum. Ironically, when I interviewed him in the summer of 2010, he admitted that Israel was responsible for mass slaughter in Africa because it exported killing machines to Africa for profit.

Ben-Ari was refused admission to the United States in February 2012 because he was a member of Rabbi Meir Kahane’s now-defunct Kach organization, considered to be a Jewish terrorist group by the State Department.

In the current Knesset, he belongs to National Union, the only party that was too right-wing for the governing coalition. For the upcoming elections, he started a new party called Strength For Israel that is expected to pass the minimum threshold for Knesset representation. Ben-Ari may be an outlier, but he is pulling the entire political spectrum to the right.

5. Miri Regev

On 23 May 2012, a thousand Jewish Israelis ran rampant throughout Tel Aviv for hours, attacking any dark-skinned person — or property of dark-skinned people — they could find. They set off on their campaign of terror after being whipped into a frenzy by members of Knesset.

One of those parliamentarians whose comments were most incendiary was Miri Regev, a lawmaker with the main government party, Likud. She told the assembled crowd that African asylum-seekers were “a cancer in the body” of the nation.

After news of her racist comments and the pogrom that followed it was published the following day, she took to YouTube to make a public apology — but not to Africans for comparing them to cancer, but rather to Israeli cancer victims, for minimizing their suffering by comparing it to Africans (“Israeli MK: I didn’t mean to shame Holocaust by calling African migrants a ‘cancer,” Haaretz, 27 May 2012).

A professional survey conducted just days after the pogrom confirmed that 52 percent of Jewish Israelis identified with Regev’s contention that Africans are akin to cancer, and 33 percent of Jewish Israelis identified with the vigilante violence perpetrated against them.

Although Likud’s list for the forthcoming election must still be combined with that of its coalition partner Yisrael Beiteinu, Regev has already surged into its upper ranks, moving from number 26 to number 13 on the strength of these and other racist statements.

A section of the new detention camp for asylum seekers under construction in the Naqab/Negev Desert near the Egyptian border, 7 November 2012.

(Oren Ziv / ActiveStills)

4. Ron Huldai

The day after the pogrom, Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai initiated an anti-African “mayors’ letter,” gathering their pledges of support — just as Babayof, the city councilor, had initiated the anti-African “rabbis’ letter” and collected rabbis’ signatures.

The letter, supported by the mayors of Ashdod, Bnei Brak, Ashkelon, Petach Tikvah and Eilat, called for African asylum-seekers to be either imprisoned or deported (“Day after violent anti-African protest, Likud MK calls to ‘distance infiltrators’ immediately,” Haaretz, 24 May 2012).

If there are approximately 25,000 to 30,000 African asylum-seekers in Tel Aviv, then Huldai’s call to round up and remove African asylum-seekers amounts to ethnic cleansing between 6 percent and 8 percent of the city’s population.

Huldai is surely not the only mayor in the world that has called for the ethnic cleansing of a portion of its residents. But he is probably the only mayor to do so the same year that a corporate-sponsored gay organization crowned his town the “best gay city” in the world.

Tel Aviv is twinned with New York City (25 percent African American).

3. Yossi Edelstein

Edelstein’s official title is director of the interior ministry’s Population Administration’s Foreign Workers’ Enforcement Unit, established in 2009. Simply put, he is directly in charge of the Oz unit, the security agents who are tasked with physically harassing and arresting African asylum-seekers.

One would hope that agents of the state given a monopoly on the use of violence would exercise that power very carefully and with as little prejudice as possible. Sadly, it would seem that Oz agents are not instructed to treat African people with the respect that they deserve, but rather, exactly the opposite.

Even when the African people in question are Jewish, they can be subjected to shocking levels of physical and emotional abuse. In October 2010, the Oz unit brutally beat an entire family of African Americans who had converted to Judaism and were living in the country legally, including a seven-months-pregnant woman, her mother and her one-year-old daughter.

While beating them, the Oz officers yelled, “niggers, we don’t need you here!” (“Interior ministry’s Oz police unit accused of beating US immigrants,” Haaretz, 21 October 2010).

Edelstein made clear his true feelings for African asylum-seekers at a briefing for security officers in July 2012. When asked what to do in the event that an African woman begins to disrobe in protest — a not uncommon form of political protest in Africa — Edelstein suggested that the woman should be engaged sexually. The officers charged with carrying out his orders laughed heartily at his response (hear Edelstein and his audience’s laughter in the video embedded in Israel Channel 10’s report on the briefing).

2. Eli Yishai

The highest-ranking government official to spew the most amount of anti-African invective is without doubt Edelstein’s boss, Eli Yishai. Yishai holds the portfolio of interior minister, an immensely powerful position in Israel. Yishai uses this power to implement the Jewish supremacist ideology of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party that he leads.

This attitude was summarized best by the party’s spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef in October 2010, when he said that the sole reason non-Jewish people exist is to serve Jewish people. Yishai does his level best to ensure that the non-Jewish people who come to Israel — to do the dirty work that Israelis aren’t willing to do — leave the country before they find love and start having kids.

If he wanted to, Yishai could grant work permits to African asylum-seekers, allowing them to be self-sustaining. This would quickly dissolve the homeless African population that is a burden to south Tel Aviv and greatly reduce tensions in those run-down neighborhoods that were economically impoverished to begin with.

But instead of giving work to the non-Jewish Africans already in the country, Yishai prefers to import tens of thousands of Southeast Asians every year, which he expels and exchanges for new ones every few years. This revolving door policy ensures that the non-Jewish population is always vulnerable to abuse. It is also very lucrative for Israeli human resource agencies — a laundered term for glorified slave traders.

Yishai does not mince his words. In June 2012, he lamented that African asylum-seekers didn’t understand that “this country belongs to us, to the white man,” and in August 2012, he said, “until I can deport them I’ll lock them up to make their lives miserable.” That month, he also branded African asylum-seekers a threat as severe as nuclear missiles and fabricated a baseless blood libel against them, accusing them of turning synagogues into toilets (“Israel enacts law allowing authorities to detain illegal migrants for up to 3 years,”Haaretz, 3 June 2012).

Benjamin Netanyahu at the Likud party convention in Tel Aviv, 6 May 2012.

(Yin Dongxun /Xinhua/Zumapress)

1. Benjamin Netanyahu

Ultimately, the person primarily responsible for Israel’s racist war against non-Jewish African asylum-seekers is none other than Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Although he has issued tame condemnations of the most egregious examples of anti-African racism, he has also rubber-stamped every draconian measure taken against them.

When hundreds of Israeli rabbis issued a religious edict forbidding Jewish Israelis from renting flats to Africans, Netanyahu criticized the clerics at an insignificant photo-op — a teenage trivia contest — but took no measures against them. Just the opposite: within months, Netanyahu’s government doubled and tripled their salaries.

In December 2011, Netanyahu announced that he would seal Israel’s open border with Egypt — by which Africans cross into Israel — as soon as possible. I contacted his office then to ask if he would balance his efforts to prevent any more African asylum-seekers from reaching Israel with other measures that would improve the lives of those already in the country — like granting them work permits and health benefits, for example.

Netanyahu’s office responded in the negative. He soon followed these words with actions, demonstrating that he does not only want to reduce the amount of Africans entering Israel, but to completely reverse their migration and expel them from the country. Until such time as that is feasible, he has heartily backed all of Yishai’s plans to construct prison camps to hold the African asylum-seekers indefinitely (“Shas’ Deri eyes Arab vote,” Ynet, 6 November 2012).

Netanyahu is likely to win the upcoming national elections and remain prime minister of the country for at least a few more years. There is no hope on the horizon that any political leader capable of forming a majority in the Knesset could see African asylum-seekers as human beings and potential partners — not as existential threats.

David Sheen is an independent writer and filmmaker. Born in Toronto, Canada, Sheen now lives in Jaffa. His website is www.davidsheen.com and he can be followed on Twitter:@davidsheen.

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British have invaded nine out of ten countries – so look out Luxembourg

21 of the 22 countries that have not been invaded by Britain

By Jasper Copping

Every schoolboy used to know that at the height of the empire, almost a quarter of the atlas was coloured pink, showing the extent of British rule.

But that oft recited fact dramatically understates the remarkable global reach achieved by this country.

A new study has found that at various times the British have invaded almost 90 per cent of the countries around the globe.

The analysis of the histories of the almost 200 countries in the world found only 22 which have never experienced an invasion by the British.

Among this select group of nations are far-off destinations such as Guatemala, Tajikistan and the Marshall Islands, as well some slightly closer to home, such as Luxembourg.

The analysis is contained in a new book, All the Countries We’ve Ever Invaded: And the Few We Never Got Round To.

Stuart Laycock, the author, has worked his way around the globe, through each country alphabetically, researching its history to establish whether, at any point, they have experienced an incursion by Britain.

Only a comparatively small proportion of the total in Mr Laycock’s list of invaded states actually formed an official part of the empire.

The remainder have been included because the British were found to have achieved some sort of military presence in the territory – however transitory – either through force, the threat of force, negotiation or payment.

Incursions by British pirates, privateers or armed explorers have also been included, provided they were operating with the approval of their government.

So, many countries which once formed part of the Spanish empire and seem to have little historical connection with the UK, such as Costa Rica, Ecuador and El Salvador, make the list because of the repeated raids they suffered from state-sanctioned British sailors.

Among some of the perhaps surprising entries on the list are:

* Cuba, where in 1741, a force under Admiral Edward Vernon stormed ashore at Guantánamo Bay. He renamed it Cumberland Bay, before being forced to withdraw in the face of hostile locals and an outbreak of disease among his men. Twenty one years later, Havana and a large part of the island fell to the British after a bloody siege, only to be handed back to the Spanish in 1763, along with another unlikely British possession, the Philippines, in exchange for Florida and Minorca.

*Iceland, invaded in 1940 by the British after the neutral nation refused to enter the war on the Allies side. The invasion force, of 745 marines, met with strong protest from the Iceland government, but no resistance.

* Vietnam, which has experienced repeated incursions by the British since the seventeenth century. The most recent – from 1945 to 1946 – saw the British fight a campaign for control of the country against communists, in a war that has been overshadowed by later conflicts involving first the French and then Americans.

It is thought to be the first time such a list has been compiled.

Mr Laycock, who has previously published books on Roman history, began the unusual quest after being asked by his 11-year-old son, Frederick, how many countries the British had invaded.

After almost two years of research he said he was shocked by the answer. “I was absolutely staggered when I reached the total. I like to think I have a relatively good general knowledge. But there are places where it hadn’t occurred to me that these things had ever happened. It shocked me.

“Other countries could write similar books – but they would be much shorter. I don’t think anyone could match this, although the Americans had a later start and have been working hard on it in the twentieth century.”

The only other nation which has achieved anything approaching the British total, Mr Laycock said, is France – which also holds the unfortunate record for having endured the most British invasions. “I realise people may argue with some of my reasons, but it is intended to prompt debate,” he added.

He believes the actual figure may well be higher and is inviting the public to get in touch to provide evidence of other invasions.

In the case of Mongolia, for instance – one of the 22 nations “not invaded”, according to the book – he believes it possible that there could have been a British invasion, but could find no direct proof.

The country was caught up in the turmoil following the Russian Revolution, in which the British and other powers intervened. Mr Laycock found evidence of a British military mission in Russia approximately 50 miles from the Mongolian border, but could not establish whether it got any closer.

The research lists countries based on their current national boundaries and names. Many of the invasions took place when these did not apply.

The research covered the 192 other UN member states as well as the Vatican City and Kosovo, which are not member states, but are recognised by the UK government as independent states.

The earliest invasion launched from these islands was an incursion into Gaul – now France – at the end of the second century. Clodius Albinus led an army, thought to include many Britons, across the Channel in an attempt to seize the imperial throne. The force was defeated in 197 at Lyon.

Mr Laycock added: “On one level, for the British, it is quite amazing and quite humbling, that this is all part of our history, but clearly there are parts of our history that we are less proud of. The book is not intended as any kind of moral judgement on our history or our empire. It is meant as a light-hearted bit of fun.”

 

The countries never invaded by the British:

Andorra

Belarus

Bolivia

Burundi

Central African Republic

Chad

Congo, Republic of

Guatemala

Ivory Coast

Kyrgyzstan

Liechtenstein

Luxembourg

Mali

Marshall Islands

Monaco

Mongolia

Paraguay

Sao Tome and Principe

Sweden

Tajikistan

Uzbekistan

Vatican City

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‘New race for colonies begins in Africa’

Western ‘neo-colonial’ powers – particularly France – have started to reach back to West Africa, masking their colonial ambitions as ‘humanitarian intervention to protect human rights,’ Ken Stone from Hamilton Coalition to Stop the War stated to RT.

Earlier this week, France sent its special forces to Cameroon in search of seven French tourists who were kidnapped in the north of the country on Tuesday. Paris accused the Nigerian terrorist group Boko Haram of being behind the abduction. On Thursday, the kidnapped tourists were reportedly found alive in an abandoned house in Nigeria.

France – whose presence in Africa used to be rather strong – still has several military bases and hundreds of troops on the continent. In the past several years, Paris’ has intensified its activity in former colonies.

First, there was its mission in the Ivory Coast. And in January this year, France launched a military operation in Mali to help the local government fight Islamist rebels. Finally, this week its troops entered northern Cameroon. 

RT asked Ken Stone from Hamilton Coalition to Stop the War if French involvement in West Africa has become a trend.

Ken Stone: Yes, I’m afraid so. And the trend is called ‘neo-colonialism.’ It’s a part of the old colonial powers reaching back to Africa for its resources where they used to operate a century ago.

France was the colonial power in West Africa and during its many decades there it literally enslaved the people of West Africa to work in their mines, in their factories and on their plantations.  In fact, slavery wasn’t even abolished in Mali until 1905.

After WWII, the colonial powers of Africa were kicked out by national liberation movements which were somehow supported by the former Soviet Union.

However, after the Soviet Union collapsed and the US war on terror began, the former neo-colonial powers were once again flexing their muscles. And they were starting to reach back to Yugoslavia, and to Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and now into West Africa.

If the main product of Mali, for example, were mushrooms, there would be no French troops there or in Niger. But the main export is uranium. And that’s very important to the French. And that’s why the French are there, that’s why NATO is there, that’s why – unfortunately – Canada is there as well.

I think the main point is this is unfortunately a trend. Like the 19th century race for colonies, we have we have the 21st century race for colonies beginning. That’s a tragic fact.

RT: With militants being active in Algeria, Mali, Nigeria, and Cameroon – what is really happening in West Africa?

KS: It’s a complicated situation. Many of the national boundaries that were drawn by the colonial powers have no parrying at all on the location of the indigenous nations of Africa. So, people are divided on different sides of boundaries. Most people don’t even recognize many of the boundaries in the Saharan region and the sub-Saharan region.

There’s a further problem. The West has introduced Al-Qaeda-type terrorists into Africa where they want them, where they didn’t exist in any significance before. So that has created a can of worms.

The main point though is that the Western powers – the European neo-colonial powers, the US and NATO – have no right to act as the police of the world.

In the 19th century race for colonies, they said that they had the white man’s burden to carry on their shoulders to civilize the people of Africa. In the 21st century they call it the “humanitarian intervention to protect the human’s rights.” Those are both frauds and the Western countries really have absolutely no say in what goes on in West Africa. They should have no say.

RT:  What are the chances the special-forces deployment in Cameroon could escalate into a full-scale operation, like in Mali?

KS: It could. But it’s not likely. Ever since their colonial rule ended, the French’s had a policy of ‘force de frappe’ – which is striking force, an expeditionary force, a special force – where they go in and they deal with a certain immediate problem and they leave. They do not have the stomach to maintain an occupation for a long period of time.

The problem for neo-colonial powers like France is that the so-called ‘rebels’ or Jihadists or whoever it may be, merely have to melt into the bush wait and out the expeditionary force. And when the expeditionary force leaves they come right back in. And the problem is that there is no permanent fix to this.

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Book Review: Bruce Cumings’ North Korea: Another Country

BY SOPHIA SOLIVIO

Bruce Cumings is the Chairperson of the History Department and Gustavus F. and Ann M. Swift Distinguished Service Professor in History and the College at the University of Chicago. In 1975, he received his PhD from Columbia University. Cumings’ professional and academic credentials make his compilation of complaints primarily in regard to the United States’ foreign and domestic policies and his fundamental admiration for North Korea in North Korea: Another Country (2004) especially grating to read because presumably he has the professional experience and academic training to produce a more informative, engaging book about North Korea for the general reader.

Cumings has written well-received scholarly books on Korean history, especially the Korean War. With North Korea: Another Country, however, he does not intend to write for other academics. Instead, he focuses on a readership with little or no familiarity with the history of North Korea or the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), the Korean peninsula, and United States–Korea relations. By the end of Cumings’ 256-page book, that readership may have learned more about the aforementioned topics, but only tangentially and selectively. Unfortunately, Cumings has written a book sidetracked by his supercilious attitude.

In North Korea: Another Country, Cumings seeks to educate “the reader who wishes to learn about our eternal enemy” and wonders “if Americans can ever transcend their own experience and join a world of profound difference.” To help curious readers, even Americans, willingly enter his “world of profound difference,” the author divides the book into six chapters beginning with the brutality, particularly of the United States, during the Korean War and its continuous influence on North Korea; the history of North Korea’s nuclear program and the apparent intransigence of North Korea–United States negotiations over the former’s denuclearization; Kim Il Sung’s life, his fight for an independent Korea, and the appeal of anti-imperialism to North Koreans and Koreans overall; the history of daily life in the northern half of the Korean peninsula and the DPRK; Kim Jong Il’s life and dynamism as a leader; and the crises in North Korea, including floods, droughts, famine, and the collapse of its energy system, following the death of Kim Il Sung in 1994.

Throughout the six chapters, Cumings basically covers the modern history of north Korea and its relations with the United States to show that, contrary to Western narratives about the DPRK, the country is dynamic rather than static and more rational than not. Cumings’ objective, to increase public awareness of North Korea as a somewhat knowable country and to combat perceptions of North Korea as a hopelessly backward, mysterious country, is very worthwhile and admirable. His execution of that objective maybe well-intentioned, but it is also meandering and overbearing. Often, Cumings seems more interested in using North Korea as a lens through which to contemptuously mention and criticize the United States and whatever or whoever else annoys him; this habit frequently detracts from his attempts to educate others as completely as possible, about North Korea.

For example, early on Cumings notes a 1999 CIA study that according to him, “almost grudgingly acknowledged various achievements of this regime: compassionate care for children in general and war orphans in particular; ‘radical change’ in the position of women; genuinely free housing; free health care, and preventive medicine; and infant mortality and life expectancy rates comparable to the most advanced countries until the recent famine.” Rather than clarify whether the CIA study “grudgingly acknowledged various achievements” of the North Korean government in a vacuum, in comparison to other Communist states, or even South Korea, Cumings appears to reference the study mainly to underscore the hypocrisy of the United States, where the government and the press relentlessly pigeonholes North Korea as “our” evil Oriental enemy as, at one point, the CIA documents positive socioeconomic developments in North Korea.

Cumings does not bother to examine, point by point, the trajectory of North Korea’s early achievements in social welfare and gender equality. North Korea’s “compassionate care for children in general and war orphans in particular” led to the creation of Mangyondae Revolutionary School, initially chiefly for the education of the next generation’s political elite, the children whose parents died in the Korean War. In addition, in contrast to South Korea’s post-Korean War policy of “exporting” orphans, resulting in approximately 150,000 adopted ethnic Koreans in more than 20 Western countries, Kim Il Sung encouraged domestic adoption of the country’s war orphans although from 1951–52 at least, an estimated 2,500 North Korean war orphans were adopted in several Eastern European Communist countries, such as Poland, Bulgaria, and Czechoslovakia, as well as Hungary and Mongolia. However, the recent famine also contributed to the creation of 200,000 orphans, many becoming ‘kotchebis’ or “ wandering swallows,” street urchins living off black markets in North Korea and/or relying on crossing into the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in order to scavenge for food.

Also, while North Korea for instance, on July 30, 1946 announced the enactment of the “Status on Gender Equality” with Clause I stating, “In all areas of the country’s economic, cultural and social political life, women have the same rights as men,” in terms of political power, as of 2001, women represented about 20% of the Supreme People’s Assembly, all in symbolic posts. In 1990, there were only 14 women members of 328 members in the policy-making Central Committee and the Alternative Members of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party. In addition, in the mid-1980s, North Korean defectors claimed about 60–70% of women quit their jobs after marriage.

Yet at the same time, North Korean women may have earned or earn more than 70% of the male income level. Notably, in 2010, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) reported South Korean women earned 38% less than the male income level and South Korea had the largest income gender gap in the developed world. Similarly, a Beijing Broadcast Agency report on March 6, 1988 announced a gradual increase in the number of highly educated women professionals in North Korea from the 1970s-80s. In 1963, 43,000 of about 294,000 specialists in North Korea were women. In the 1970s, there were 1,310,000 specialists in North Korea and 463,000 were women with about 220 having doctorate or semi-doctorate degrees. Most recently, in 1989, approximately 37% of the 1,350,000 specialists in North Korea are women. Women in North Korea then, are not brainwashed and incapable zombies for non-North Koreans, particularly Americans, to pity or scorn.

Cumings wants to humanize not only North Korean women, but North Koreans in general. Presumably, as a Westerner fortunate enough to have already entered the previously mentioned “world of profound difference,” he thinks and behaves just as, if not more, empathetically and respectfully toward North Koreans as anyone else. His characterization of his experience at the North Korean Museum of the Revolution, however, perfectly encapsulates the contrast between Cumings’ non-stop moralizing and his condescending tone throughout North Korea: Another Country. Commenting on one exhibit of gifts given to Kim Il Sung by foreign dignitaries, Cumings writes,

“My guide, a young woman whose English was less than fluent, paused in front of a glass-encased chimpanzee, and began to instruct me in a sing-song voice that ‘the Gleat Reader’ had received this taxidermic specimen from one Canaan Banana, vice president of Zimbabwe. I dissolved into hysterics and could not stop laughing as she continued to intone her mantra without dropping a single (mangled) syllable.”

Cumings is considered a “progressive” academic. His ostensible liberalism and unique ability to “transcend” his own experience does not make him a less dogmatic, petty person as demonstrated by his paragraph-long mockery of a North Korean woman’s English accent—obviously not up to his standards. Finally, Cumings presents himself as a person and a historian of Korean history (unable or unwilling to speak Korean fluently) who considers Korea and the United States equals culturally and socially, and in an ideal world, politically as well. Following the “cultural exchange” Cumings describes at the Museum of the Revolution, though, who had the privilege of publicly ridiculing and contributing to negative public perceptions of the “Other?” The young, female North Korean tour guide? Or Cumings, an older white guy with a comfortable job at a prestigious American university? …

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Going commando: IDF ‘hitman/assassin’ posts disturbing pictures on FB, Instagram

image from http://electronicintifada.net

IDF is yet again on the defensive over its troops’ use of social media, after an elite regiment soldier posted pictures of himself half-naked, and smoking drugs on his Instagram, and boasted about killing an Arab on Twitter.

The pro-Palestinian news resource Electronic Intifada mined publicly available images and comments of Osher Maman, a 20 year-old private in the Golani Brigade, who recently moved from the US to Israel on a special military recruitment program.

Maman, who calls himself a “hitman/assassin” in one of his public posts says he joined the elite unit “to beat up terrorists and sh*t”.

In one tweet from January last year, he boasts “Just took an Arab out… Whataa a feeling.”

His Instagram feed features a mock-up of a popular WWII poster that says “Keep Calm and Take Over Gaza” and a map of the territory, which the Israeli Defense Force left in 2005, with the Hebrew inscription “Soon to be a giant theme park.”

The soldier has since been reprimanded by his superiors, and all the social media accounts have been taken down.

“This is a grave incident, which does not represent the IDF,” said Capt. Eytan Buchman, a military spokesman, who noted that an investigation into the private’s behavior is ongoing.

Maman’s feed also contained pictures, apparently taken by others with access to the armory, of the soldier naked, covering his genitals with the barrel of a gun, and rifles arranged into a Star of David.

Another set shows Maman smoking what appears to be a joint in his hand (an Army offense) and showing off a clump of marijuana in his palm.

The controversy comes only days after another 20 year-old soldier was investigated for posting a picture of what appears to be an Arab boy in the crosshairs of a rifle. The soldier, Mor Ostrovski, said he found the picture on the internet.

The same explanation is unlikely to wash for Maman’s highly-personalized photo collection.

image from http://electronicintifada.net

image from http://electronicintifada.net

image from instagram by user easybaby310

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40% of Americans Now Make Less Than 1968 Minimum Wage

You may have seen charts like the one to the right from the Economic Policy Institute, showing how working people’s wages stopped going up along with productivity gains.

This means the gains went…somewhere else. See if you can guess who got them? (Hint: it’s the 1 percent; this is one driver of the terrible income and wealth inequality.) This breakoff of wages from productivity growth is partly the result of trade agreements that pit Americans against exploited workers in non-democracies. This weakened the bargaining power of unions, moved factories and industries out of the country, devastated entire regions of our country — and gave the giant multinational corporations, Wall Street and the billionaires the leverage they needed.

Economist Dean Baker describes one effect of this in Minimum Wage: Who Decided Workers Should Fall Behind?

“If the minimum wage had risen in step with productivity growth [since 1968], it would be over $16.50 an hour today. That is higher than the hourly wages earned by 40 percent of men and half of women.”

The minimum wage would be $16.50 an hour — $33,000 a year — if it had kept up with the growth of productivity since 1968. To put the effect of this a different way, 40 percent of Americans now make less than the 1968 minimum wage, had the minimum wage kept pace with productivity gains.

To put this even another way, the average American’s living standard would be much, much higher today if wages had not decoupled from productivity gains – with the gains all going to the 1 percent instead of being shared by workers. If wages had kept pace we wouldn’t feel the terrible squeeze that everyone in the middle class is feeling.

This is one more way to understand the effect of income and wealth inequality on each of us. The 1 percent versus 99 percent thing is real. When you hear that the 6 Walmart heirs have more wealth than a third of all Americans combined, it is real. When you hear that the people on the Forbes list of the 400 wealthiest Americans have more wealth than half of all Americans combined, it is real.

And the effects on the rest of us are real.

This seems like a good time to drag out the old post, Nine Pictures Of The Extreme Income/Wealth Gap, which puts pictures on what this kind of wealth means. (This post, by the way, first explained that 400 people have as much wealth as half of all Americans combined. Michael Moore picked that up and talked about it in Madison, Wisconsin, and it rippled out from there.)

Here is another relevant post: Tax Cuts Are Theft, explaining how cutting taxes on the rich siphons off public wealth.

And of course this one: Reagan Revolution Home To Roost — In Charts.

Here are some posts on the trade deficit:

Fix The Trade Deficit, Fix The Economy.,

Yet another report is out showing how the trade deficit is costing us millions of jobs and hurting our economy. This report has specific numbers: between 2.2 million and 4.7 million U.S. jobs, between 1 percent and 2.1 percent of the unemployment rate and a gross domestic product increase of between 1.4 percent and 3.1 percent.

These are real numbers that were carefully calculated. This is a real problem that is hurting people, hurting small and mid-sized companies, hurting communities, hurting our tax base and hurting our ability to make a living in the future. And there are real solutions available to fix the problem.

Does Trade Deficit Drive Inequality?:

[Graph link dead in original article]

Job Fear From Trade Deficit Is What Happened To Jobs And The Middle Class,

The middle class is disappearing. Our economy is “hollowing out” because the money goes to the top and the people fall to the bottom. This is because we allow American companies to close factories here and open them there, shipping the same goods back here to sell in the same stores, costing jobs, companies, industries and our economy. This makes us afraid for our own jobs and afraid to make waves. By helping a few at the top get fabulously rich, China has essentially recruited our own businesses leaders to fight against our own government – and us.

Trade Deficit – One Root Of Many Problems,

You buy things till your wallet is empty. So you raid the savings account to buy more stuff. Then you get a loan, and buy more stuff. Another loan, another, you keep buying stuff… Finally you’re selling off the tools you had used to make a living. That’s where the country is now because of the huge imbalance in our trade relationships. We buy more from them than they buy from us and we have let this go on and on and on. This is the deficit we should be worried about.

The Root

Pick a national problem, and the odds are that our trade imbalance is aggravating it. Our trade deficits literally suck money out of the country. When looking up the numbers I had to double check, our annual trade deficits are so huge. In the chart below that first line under the dates represents $100 billion. Look at what happened in the late 90s, when we opened the China floodgates. (Click to enlarge):

Dave Johnson is a fellow at at the Campaign for America’s future, and has more than 20 years of technology industry experience including positions as CEO and VP of marketing. His earlier career included technical positions, including video game design at Atari and Imagic. And he was a pioneer in design and development of productivity and educational applications of personal computers. More recently he helped co-found a company developing desktop systems to validate carbon trading in the U.S.

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The Minimum Wage Would Be $21.72 an Hour if it Rose with Productivity Since 1968

Activists are mobilizing around President Obama’s call to raise the minimum wage to $9.00, and polling shows that Americans across the political spectrum agree with such a policy.

But here’s an interesting fact about what the minimum wage could be instead. The Center for Economic and Policy Research’s John Dewitt looked at what the minimum wage would be if it simply rose with productivity — that is, if workers were actually paid for the increasing amount of output — since 1968, and found that it would be almost three times what it is now:

Since 1968, however, productivity growth has far outpaced the minimum wage. If the minimum wage had continued to move with average productivity after1968, it would have reached $21.72 per hour in 2012 – a rate well above the average production worker wage. If minimum-wage workers received only half of the productivity gains over the period, the federal minimum would be $15.34.

Even Obama’s modest plan to raise the minimum wage is expected to face intense opposition from Big Business and its lobbyists.

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Photoshopping away police torture in Greece

By Leonidas Oikonomakis

Greek police may vainly try to photoshop away the torture of four alleged bank robbers, but they cannot gloss over the radicalization of Greek youth.

The story is as follows.

On February 1st 2013, an attempted robbery of two banks takes place in a small village of the Western Macedonia region, called Velvento. The bounty was around 180.000 euros and the police managed to arrest the robbers after a short chase. The news would have passed unnoticed, if the heavily armed robbers were not very young middle and upper-middle class boys, whom the police associates with the armed urban-guerilla group ‘Conspiracy of the Cells of Fire’.

Twenty four hours later, the police make public the photos of the bank-robbers, and the whole country is appalled by what it sees: the faces of four badly beaten 20-25 year olds, which have also been — badly — photoshopped in a vain attempt to hide the cuts and bruises, and the hands (?) that are holding the youngsters’ heads in order for them to be photographed.

The police rush through an announcement to justify themselves, claiming that only the minimum amount of violence necessary was used due to resistance during the arrest, while the Minister of Public Order Mr Dendias (the man who threatened to sue The Guardian for having published a report on the torture of 15 anti-fascist activists by the Greek police, the same man who launched a war against Greece’s squats) said that the pictures were photoshopped in order for the faces of the arrested to be more recognisable (!), claiming that no torture had taken place.

The youngsters themselves — through their families and lawyers — claim that they did not resist their arrest and that they were badly beaten up/tortured while in detention; while there is evidence (videos and pictures from the moment of the arrest) that proves that they were not beaten during the arrest, but whatever happened, it did so afterwards. Some alternative Greek media, together with some international ones, as well as Amnesty International, strongly questioned the official explanations, while the latter also commented that “the Greek authorities cannot just photoshop their problems away”.

Under heavy public criticism, the Minister had to promise that a torture investigation would take place and the results are still expected. The bank robbers are now in detention, yet they describe their actions as political, and consider themselves anarchist ‘prisoners of war’, shouting during their transfer to the Prosecutor’s office “zito i anarhia koufales!” — “long live anarchy assholes!”. What is also worth noticing is that one of the four arrested anarchists is the friend of Alexandros Grigoropoulos — the 15-year-old boy who was assassinated by police in Exarchia in 2008 — and happened to be by his side on that very moment, which surely played a big role in shaping his view of state power and police brutality.

The story is indicative of the radicalization of a young generation of Greeks, and of Greek society as a whole, under the structural conditions imposed by austerity. But it is also indicative of the way the state has chosen to deal with the voices of opposition in the country, be they legal or illegal: with repression, human rights abuses, and public humiliation.

Let’s not forget that a few months ago, the same government, the same Minister of Public Order, and the same police force, tortured — as it was proven — 15 antifascist activists for having organized an AntiFa moto-parade. And it is the same state officials who launched an attack against the country’s squats, for no obvious reason other than silencing any oppositional voices around.

It is by now obvious that the Greek state, in order to defend the extremely unpopular and unsuccessful austerity measures it has been imposing for a couple of years now, has chosen the road of repression. It is not something new: we have seen such practices in the past too — in Chile, in Argentina, and elsewhere. The difference is that in those cases we were talking about military dictatorships, while in the Greek case we are talking about a democratically-elected government, which is even more scary and unacceptable. At the same time, it is also obvious that this strategy of the state is resulting in the further radicalization of the Greek youth.

And you can’t photoshop that, koufales!

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JFK secretly freed rapists, drug dealers and Mafia hitmen to kill Castro and curb threat of Communism, claims explosive new book

• Revelations made by journalist Bill Deane in new book ‘Smooth Criminal’
• It tells story of alleged CIA spy and ‘one-man crime wave’ Dave Riley
• Claims criminals allowed on ‘crime sprees’ in US when not working for CIA
• Deane: ‘Riley was typical recruit: Intelligent, ambitious and without morals’
• While JFK did not order the programme, Deane says he was ‘aware’ of it

By MATT BLAKE

President John F. Kennedy secretly endorsed the release of hardened criminals to assassinate Cuban leader Fidel Castro to curb the Communist threat, a new book has claimed.

At the height of tensions between America and neighbouring Communist Cuba in the early 1960s, JFK was implicit in the freeing of rapists, drug dealers, and Mafia hitmen through CIA in a bid to recruit ‘untraceable’ spies willing to risk their lives on dangerous missions rather than go back to jail, a new book sensationally claims.

Desperate to remove Castro from power, the president resorted to using dangerous criminals as operatives – rather than CIA agents – to ‘do America’s dirty work’ as they couldn’t be linked back to his administration, it is claimed.

In one failed plot, an ex con was smuggled into Cuba in 1962 to pose as a waiter in Castro’s favourite restaurant where he would drop poison tablets into the revolutionary leader’s soup.

Height of the Cold War: Desperate to remove Fidel Castro, right, from power, President John F. Kennedy, left, resorted to using dangerous criminals as operatives – rather than CIA agents – to ‘do America’s dirty work’

The explosive claims come in a new book by veteran American Journalist and author William Deane, who claims specially-recruited criminals became ‘untouchable’ and were allowed to embark on ‘crime sprees’ in the US without fear of prosecution.

Deane, former assignment editor at American news networks ABC and CBS, says he uncovered the programme – which he believes is still in operation today – after following the ‘trail of destruction’ left by one such operative.

Though JFK did not order the setting up of the top secret programme, Deane says that as president Kennedy would have ‘been aware’ of it.

‘For over 50 years, the CIA and American government has been systematically releasing dangerous criminals back into society to work for them on secret missions overseas,’ said Deane, whose new book Smooth Criminal details the life of alleged CIA operative and ‘one-man American crime wave’ Dave Riley.

‘The programme started during the Kennedy administration at the start of the 1960s as a clandestine means of dealing with the Communist threat of Castro, and was given the seal of approval by JFK – who was still smarting following the political embarrassment of the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion of Cuba in 1961.

‘One man American crime wave’: The details of the plot were revealed by veteran journalist and author William Deane, whose new book Smooth Criminal, right, details the life of alleged CIA operative and ‘one-man American crime wave’ Dave Riley

‘Criminals were ideal operatives as they were ruthless and willing to risk their lives during missions rather than be sent back to prison. They also couldn’t be officially connected with the CIA so it didn’t matter if they were captured – there was no risk of America’s shady policies being exposed.

‘Riley was a typical recruit. Highly intelligent, ambitious and with no morals. The CIA sent him on many missions abroad, including to Cuba to assassinate Castro,’ added Deane.

‘Between missions he was allowed to do what he liked – which generally consisted of embezzlement, fraud, gunrunning and drug dealing – without fear of being arrested or prosecuted.’

Warning: Deane claims the CIA continues to recruit hardened criminals to ‘do America’s dirty work’ with impunity

Deane claims to have first encountered Riley back in 1961 while working as a DJ at a radio station in Miami, Florida.

Riley, then in his early 20s and with ambitions of being the ‘next Frank Sinatra’, had connections with the Mafia and used his connections to ‘persuade’ the radio station to play his records.

Though they lost touch, Deane next heard of Riley in April 1962 when working as a cub reporter for a Miami TV station – after hearing he had hijacked a plane to Cuba.

According to news reports, on Friday, April 13, 1962, Riley and an accomplice had forced pilot Reginald Doan at gunpoint to fly them to the communist island, where they planned to defect, only for the Cuban authorities to imprison them before sending them back to Miami.

Deane says he was contacted by Riley prior to the Black Friday Skyjacking trial and during that meeting revealed that he was working for the CIA and had been sent to infiltrate Cuba as a spy.

‘The skyjacking was just a smokescreen conjured up by the CIA after the mission went wrong.

‘Riley confessed that he’d been recruited by the intelligence agency while in prison for extortion of a public official back in 1960, and had been sent to Cuba to carry out a number of assignments – including one to assassinate Castro.

‘He had posed as a waiter at one of Castro’s favourite restaurants and been supplied with Botulinum tablets – an untraceable poison – by the CIA to drop into his soup, but Castro must have got wind of the plan as he suddenly stopped eating there.’

Deane admits that at first he thought that Riley was a ‘fantasist’ and, after the criminal was sentenced to 20 years in prison for the skyjacking by the U.S. Supreme Court in November 1964, largely forgot about him.

JFK with military leaders in 1962: The programme started during the Kennedy administration at the start of the 1960s as a clandestine means of dealing with the Communist threat of Castro. but Deane claims the practice is still in use today

It was only after his retirement from CBS in 2005, when he started writing Smooth Criminal, that Deane discovered that Riley might have been telling the truth about the criminal operatives programme all along.

Deane traced Riley’s whereabouts from the time of the skyjacking trial onwards and found that far from serving his time in jail, he had apparently been back on the streets committing crimes within a matter of months.

The journalist uncovered over 40 newspaper reports of Riley’s various crimes in archives and gained further corroboration of his seeming invulnerability to prosecution after tracking down several of his victims.

He added: ‘Riley was a one-man crime wave who was allowed by the CIA, and indirectly the president, to consistently get away with his crimes in return for his occasional assistance.

‘In the late 1960s and early ’70s he went on undercover missions to Vietnam, Cambodia and other troubled South Asian countries, and back at home got away with embezzlement, fraud, gunrunning, drug dealing and sexual assault among other crimes.

Smoking gun: Deane says Riley had posed as a waiter at one of Castro’s (pictured) favourite restaurants and been supplied with Botulinum tablets – an untraceable poison – by the CIA to drop into his soup, but Castro must have got wind of the plan as he suddenly stopped eating there

‘He has left a string of victims across the USA over the last 40 years, but the police and FBI have been powerless to act because he is protected by the CIA. The agency maintains a policy of complete secrecy and doesn’t want to risk compromising operations by having one of their operatives involved in a public trial.

‘One unfortunate woman who came across Riley was swindled out of $20,000 – her life savings – and the deeds to several properties, but the police and Feds weren’t allowed to warn her, and weren’t allowed to stop him.’

Deane says that he has evidence of Riley living in New York in 2005, but after that the scene goes cold.

He claims requests for information from the FBI, CIA, Treasury and other government agencies were ignored and suspects Riley, now in his 70s, is either dead or has been placed into a Federal Witness Protection scheme to put him out of reach.

Deane says he doesn’t disapprove of America’s criminal operatives programme per se, but has written Smooth Criminal to warn the American public about the programme in case they become victims of ‘untouchables’ such as Riley.

He added: ‘America has lots of enemies and security has to be maintained if we are to prevent another 9/11 so I am not against a programme that helps protect the nation.

‘What I do object to is the CIA’s insistence on complete secrecy. The rationale that a few Americans have to suffer for the sake of 315 million is not acceptable.

‘It’s sad and pathetic that totally innocent Americans have lost virtually everything, including their homes and businesses, while the Feds stood by and did nothing but protect their released criminals.

‘The CIA should be capable of controlling freed criminals without exposing their clandestine operations, and if they can’t, should discretely warn potential victims to keep away from these people.’

Source

Stalin: Story of a Great Servant of Mankind who Belongs to the Ages

by ANDREW ROTHSTEIN, author of a History of the USSR

“Man’s dearest possession is life, and since it is given to him to live but once, he must so live as to feel no torturing regrets for years without purpose; so live as not to be seared with the shame of a cowardly and trivial past; so live, that dying he can say: All my life and all my strength were given to the finest cause in the world – the liberation of mankind”.

JOSEPH VISSARIONOVICH DJUGASHVILI (Stalin) was born in the little Georgian town of Gori on December 21,1879.-

His father was a shoemaker, who put him to the local church school in 1888, and to the Theological Seminary at Tbilisi (Tiflis) in 1894.

After studying in secret Marxist groups (formed by students and Russian Marxists in exile), Stalin joined the first Georgian Social Democratic organisation in 1898, and helped to set up illegal Marxist groups among railway shopmen, writing leaflets and organising strikes.

In 1899 he was expelled from the seminary, on hints from the police, and began earning his living by giving lessons and taking readings at the Tiflis Observatory, while continuing intense secret activity among the workers.

As leader of the revolutionary minority in the Georgian Social Democratic organisation, Stalin came into conflict with the majority who wished to confine its activities to propaganda; and in December 1900, directly Lenin’s Russian paper Iskra began to appear (illegally), Stalin became its ardent supporter.

After March 1901, however, he had to go “underground,” organising a May Day demonstration at Tbilisi in defiance of the police, starting the first Marxist illegal paper in Georgian (Brdzola) and being elected to the Tbilisi Committee of the Social Democratic Party.

Loyal to Marxist principles

In 1902, at the Black Sea port of Batum, he organised a secret printing press, wrote leaflets, led strikes, and marched at the head of a workers’ political demonstration – the most dangerous action possible in Tsarist Russia. On April 5, 1902, came his first arrest.

By this time Stalin was already widely known for his irreconcilable loyalty to Marxist principle, his powers of theoretical analysis, his blunt, close-grained logic, his energy and tirelessness.

At the very dawn of his activity, in an article, The Russian Social Democratic Party and its Immediate Tasks (November-December 1901) the 22-year-old Stalin wrote (of the years 1895-96): “The struggle began to reduce the working day, abolish fines, raise wages, etc. The Social Democrats knew well that the development of the working-class movement was not confined to these petty demands, that the aim of the movement was not these demands, that they were but a means to the end.

“These demands may be petty, the workers themselves in various towns and districts may be fighting disunited today: this struggle itself will teach the workers that final victory will be achieved only when the entire working class goes forward to storm its enemy as a single, strong, organised force.

“The same struggle will show the workers that, in addition to their direct enemy the capitalist, they have another, still more vigilant, enemy – the organised strength of the entire bourgeois class, the present capitalist State with its troops, courts, police, prisons, gendarmes.”

Stalin’s next 15 years were rarely paralleled, even in Russian revolutionary annals. Prison in Georgian jails for 18 months was followed by exile in eastern Siberia until January 1904. He escaped. A year of publication of illegal newspapers, writing pamphlets, propaganda among workers, culminated in leadership of the great three weeks strike of Baku oil workers (December 1904). It ended in the first collective agreement in Russian industrial history.

Ending national barriers

Stalin enjoyed three more years of “freedom” – underground – in which he took a full part, by Lenin’s side, in the great 1905 Revolution, in fighting anarchism in Georgia (1906) and in winning over the entire Baku working class from the Mensheviks (1907-8). Stalin’s, remarkable theoretical writings of these years – on the national question (1904) on dialectical materialism and the State (1906-7) – were in Georgian, and only became generally available 40 years later.

On the national question, he wrote in 1904: “ The proletariat of Russia has long begun to talk of struggle. As you know, the aim of every struggle is victory. But for the victory of the proletariat the uniting of all the workers without distinction of nationality is necessary. Clearly, the breaking down of national barriers and the close gathering together of the Russian, Georgian, Armenian, Polish, Jewish, and other proletarians is a necessary condition for the victory of the proletariat of Russia. Such are the interests of the proletariat of Russia.

“ But the Russian autocracy … persecutes the ‘alien’ nationalities of Russia. The autocracy deprives them of essential civil rights, oppresses them on all sides, sows distrust and hostility between them in Pharisee fashion, incites them to bloody conflicts, showing thereby that the sole aim of the Russian autocracy is to promote quarrels among the nations inhabiting Russia, sharpen national dissensions among them … and thus dig a grave for the class-consciousness of the workers, their class unity… It is clear that the interests of the Russian proletariat, sooner or later, inevitably had to clash with the reactionary policy of the Tsarist autocracy .”

In Anarchism and Socialism, after a brilliant exposition of dialectical and historical materialism developed by him 30 years later (in chapter IV of the History of the CPSU), Stalin went on to show how the class struggle of the workers cannot, if it is victorious, but lead to the establishment of the political supremacy of the proletariat over the capitalist class. He continued: “ The Socialist dictatorship of the proletariat is needed so that with its help the proletariat could expropriate the bourgeoisie, confiscate the land, forests, factories and works, machines, railways, etc. from all the bourgeoisie. The expropriation of the bourgeoisie – that is what the Socialist revolution must lead to .”

And what of the Socialist society for which such a revolution would be the foundation? Stalin wrote that: “ there will be neither capitalists nor proletarians: consequently there will be no exploitation. There will be only collectively working people…There will be no place for buyers and sellers of labour-power, hirers and hired…All private property in the implements and means of production will be abolished, there will be neither poor proletarians nor rich capitalists but only working people, collectively possessing all the land and its resources, all the forests, all the factories and works, all the railways, etc.”.

Thus he gave a picture of the Soviet Union 30 years ahead.

Organised first issue of Pravda

Then followed a long series of arrests and escapes:

- March 1908 – arrest and exile to the Vologda province, in Northern Russia;

- escape in June 1909, re-arrest in Baku (March 1910) and exile to Vologda again;

- escape (September 1911) and re-arrest the same month in St. Petersburg, to be sent a third time to Vologda ;

- escape once more (February 1912).

He made a tour through Russia on behalf of the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party (to which he had been elected in absence at the famous Prague Conference of the Party in January).

Then he organised the first issue of Pravda (May 5). He was re-arrested that same day and exiled to Narym, in a remote district of Siberia.

He escaped once more (September 1912) and directed the Bolshevik Party’s election campaign for the Fourth Duma (including several lightning appearances to speak at meetings in the factories).

He made two visits to Lenin at Cracow, but once again was re-arrested (February 1913). This was followed by four years exile in uttermost Siberia, near the Arctic Circle. This final political test ended only when Tsardom fell in March 1917.

But these 15 years meant far more in Stalin’s life than his terrific battle with the .Tsarist authorities. They were the years of his struggle, as Lenin’s disciple and supporter, for the Bolshevik Party.

After the second Congress of the Social Democratic Party in 1903 he sided irrevocably with Lenin against the opportunist Mensheviks.

Revolutionary use of Parliament

In the 1905 Revolution he tirelessly advocated armed insurrection, and fought for Lenin’s conception of the working class taking the lead in this essentially democratic, non-Socialist Revolution, in order to ensure that it would be carried through to the bitter end and clear the way to the struggle for Socialism.

In December that year, at the first all-Russian conference held by the Bolsheviks at Tammerfors, in Finland, Stalin had his first meeting with Lenin.

He combated the Mensheviks at the subsequent fourth Social Democratic Congress (Stockholm) in 1906, up and down Georgia In 1906-7, at the fifth congress (London) in 1907, and thereafter at Baku, as already mentioned, “my second revolutionary baptism,” Stalin called this period later on.

Throughout these and succeeding years, in jail or out of it, Stalin stood for Bolshevism against the Mensheviks and their off-shoot, Trotsky.

He was against the tendencies to “liquidate” the illegal Party during the years of reaction (1908-10), or to drown it in an unprincipled all-in bloc of everyone calling themselves Social-Democrats, as Trotsky proposed in 1912.

He stood for revolutionary use of Parliament by the workers, and for Socialist principles in the question of subject nationalities during the years of working-class revival (1911-14).

He stood for revolutionary opposition to imperialist war (1914-17).

After the overthrow of Tsardom he was the first to back Lenin in the fight for Soviet power and the Socialist Revolution.

Stalin’s outstanding writings in these years – his Instructions to a Social-Democrat MP (adopted at workers’ meetings in the election campaigns of 1907 and 1912), his Notes of a Delegate (1907) andLetters from the Caucasus (1909) directed against the Mensheviks, and his Marxism and the National Question (1913) – take their place among the finest Socialist writing of all time.

In the 1907 election campaign, the Instructions adopted by the Baku assembly of worker electoral delegates (the workers were not allowed to vote directly for their candidate, like the landowners and rich merchants) declared, on Stalin’s suggestion:

“ The main task of the Social Democratic group in the State Duma is to promote the class education and class struggle of the proletariat, both for the liberation of the working people from capitalist exploitation, and to play their part as political leaders .”

The Instructions of 1912 – adopted at mass meetings of the workers in the largest factories of St. Petersburg – proclaimed:

“ We send our deputy to the Duma, instructing him and the whole Social Democratic group of the fourth Duma to spread our demands far and wide from the Duma tribune, and not to engage in empty play at legislation in the bosses’ Duma.

“ We would like the Social Democratic group of the fourth Duma, and our deputy in particular, to bear high the banner of the working class in the hostile camp of the black Duma.

“We would like the voices of the members of the Social Democratic group to resound from the Duma tribune on the ultimate aims of the proletariat, on the full and undiminished demands of 1905, on the Russian working class as the leader of the people’s movement, on the peasantry as the most reliable ally of the working class, on the liberal bourgeoisie as the betrayer of national liberty “.

Stalin’s work, Marxism and the National Question, which was highly praised by Lenin, contains many passages of the highest importance for Socialists.

Voice of brotherhood and unity

On the duty of the working-class movement in a period of reaction (at that time the Marxists called themselves Social Democrats), he wrote: “ At this difficult time a high mission fell to the Social Democrats – to give a rebuff to nationalism, protect the masses from the general ‘trend.’ For only Social Democracy could do this, opposing nationalism with the tried weapon of internationalism, the unity and indivisibility of the class struggle: and the more strongly the wave of nationalism advances, the more loudly should be heard the voice of the Social Democrats for the brotherhood and unity of the proletarians of all the nationalities of Russia .”

On the definition of a nation:

“ A nation is a historically evolved stable community of people which has arisen on the basis of community of language, territory, economic life and psychological make-up, manifesting itself in community of culture… Only the presence of all the features, taken together, gives us a nation.”

On the attitude of Marxists to the rights of nations:

“ Social Democratic parties in all countries proclaim the right of nations to self-determination. The right of self-determination means that only the nation itself has the right to determine its destiny, that no one has the right forcibly to interfere in the life of the nation, to destroy its schools and other institutions, to violate its habits and customs, to repress its language or curtail its rights.

“ This is what essentially distinguishes the policy of the class-conscious proletariat from the policy of the bourgeoisie, which attempts to aggravate and fan the national struggle .”

In August 1917 came his historic declaration at the Sixth Party Congress:

“ The possibility is not excluded that Russia will be the very country that will pave the way to Socialism. No country has hitherto enjoyed such freedom as there has been in Russia, no country has tried to adopt workers’ control of production .

“ Moreover, the base of our revolution is broader than in Western Europe, where the proletariat stands utterly alone, face to face with the bourgeoisie. Here the workers are supported by the poorer strata of the peasantry .

“ Lastly, in Germany the machinery of State power works incomparably better than the imperfect machinery of our bourgeoisie, which itself is a tributary of capitalist Europe. We must abandon the antiquated idea that only Europe can show us the way. There is dogmatic Marxism and creative Marxism. I stand by the latter.”

Won victories in every field

Directly he returned to Petrograd on the overthrow of the Tsar, in March, Stalin had been put in charge of the reborn Pravda. In May he was elected by the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party to its newly formed Political Bureau.

In October he was leader of the “Party Centre,” appointed to organise the workers’, sailors’ and soldiers’ insurrection of November 6-7, which overthrew the power of capitalism in Russia and transferred power to the Councils of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies (Soviets).

After November 1917, Stalin’s history was the history of the Communist Party and of the Soviet State. His official posts can soon be listed:

- People’s Commissar for Nationalities (1917-23);

- People’s Commissar for State Control – later called Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspection (1919-22);

- Member of the Political Bureau of the Party from May 1917, and General Secretary from 1922;

- Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars (Prime Minister) from 1941 onwards;

- Chairman of the State Committee for Defence (War Cabinet), and Supreme Commander-in-chief during the Second World War;

- Leader of the Presidium of the Central Committee elected at the 19th Party Congress last October [1952].

But even more significant is the record of, political, economic and military leadership which brought Stalin to the front rank of history.

In the Civil War (1918-20) the Communist Party again and again sent him to reorganise and gain victories, where treason or incompetence had brought catastrophe.

It was to commemorate one such victory that Tsaritsyn was renamed Stalingrad. It was Stalin’s historic plan for a breakthrough to the working-class areas of the Donetz coalfield and the port of Rostov, adopted by the Party leadership in preference to Trotsky’s treacherous scheme for an advance through kulak territory, that defeated the White armies of Denikin.

In 1921, at the Tenth Party Congress, Stalin made a memorable report on the national question. His work in this sphere ever since 1904, unique in any country, made him the natural reporter, at the two Soviet Congresses in December 1922, on the formation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, which was there decided.

The speeches on this occasion, included with other works; make his well-known Marxism and the National and Colonial Question,the greatest contribution to Socialist theory and practice in this field.

Preserved Party from disruption

Stalin fought, when Lenin’s active life ended, for preservation of the Party against disruption by Trotsky and his following (1923-24), by the Zinoviev-Kamenev group (1925-26), and by the amalgamated Opposition Bloc (1926-27).

It was an integral part of the fight to build up a Socialist large-scale industry, capable of transforming the whole economy of the USSR and making it independent of the capitalist world which went on in those years.

It developed into the fight for the famous Five-Year Plans after 1927-28.

Here of no less historic significance was his fight against the Right Opposition (Bukharin, Rykov, Tomsky) from 1928 onwards – for collective farming, the liquidation of the kulaks (rich peasants) as a class, and the fulfilment of the Five-Year Plans.

Stalin inspired and organised the great wave of Socialist emulation which began in 1929 and reached a new height in the Stakhanov movement (1935). Stalin, in his address to a conference of the first Stakhanovites at once pointed out the significance of this movement as a step toward future Communist society. His speeches and writings during these years are collected in his fundamental work, Problems of Leninism.

At the 17th Congress of the Communist Party (January 1934), a year after Hitler’s advent to power, Stalin made a challenging remark on Marxism, which went straight to the roots of his own magnificent steadfastness:

“ It is said that in some countries in the West Marxism has already been destroyed. It is said that it has been destroyed by the bourgeois-nationialist trend known as fascism. That is nonsense, of course. Only people who are ignorant of history can say such things. Marxism is the scientific expression of the fundamental interests of the working class. If Marxism is to be destroyed, the working class must be destroyed. And it is impossible to destroy the working class .

“ More than 80 years have passed since Marxism came into the arena. During this time scores and hundreds of bourgeois governments have tried to destroy Marxism. But what has been the upshot? Bourgeois governments have come and gone, but Marxism still goes on. Moreover, Marxism has achieved complete victory on one-sixth of the globe. “

Socialist democracy in Constitution

The vast economic and social -transformations by now accomplished made it possible to effect the further advance to a full Socialist democracy in the Constitution associated with Stalin’s name, and written under his guidance (1936).

In the course of his speech on the new Soviet constitution, Stalin drew a brilliant contrast between capitalist and Socialist countries, of amazing importance today:

“ Bourgeois constitutions tacitly proceed from the premise that society consists of antagonistic classes, of classes which own wealth and classes which do not own wealth; that no matter what party comes into power, the guidance of society by the State (the dictatorship) must be in the hands of the bourgeoisie; that a constitution is needed for the purpose of consolidating a social order desired by and beneficial to the propertied classes. Unlike bourgeois constitutions, the draft of the new constitution of the USSR proceeds from the fact that there are no longer any antagonistic classes in society; that society consists of two friendly classes, of workers and peasants; that it is these classes, the labouring classes, that are in power; that the guidance of society by the State (the dictatorship) is in. the hands of the working class, the most advanced class in society, that a constitution is needed for the purpose of consolidating a social order desired by and beneficial to the working people.”

The History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, written under his editorship and with his own distinctive chapter onDialectical and Historical Materialism (1938), was an outstanding development of Socialist theory, already greatly enriched by the speeches and writings previously mentioned.

Combined theory with practice

Stalin was indeed, from first to last, an exponent of the Marxist art of combining theory with practice at the level of genius.

This genius displayed itself to the full when, at the eighteenth Party Congress (March 1939), Stalin put before the Party and the Soviet peoples the practical economic problems involved in going forward from Socialist society – now solidly founded and fast developing – to Communism, the form of the society in which each would contribute according to ability and would receive according to need.

Stalin said on this occasion: “ As regards technique of production and rate of growth of our industry, we have already overtaken and outstripped the principal capitalist countries. In what respect are we lagging? We are still lagging economically, that is, as regards the volume of our industrial output per head of population. … We must outstrip them economically as well. We can do it, and we must do it.

“Only if we outstrip the principal capitalist countries economically can we reckon upon our country being fully saturated with consumers’ goods, on having an abundance of products, and on being able to make the transition from the first phase of Communism to its second phase.”

But the USSR had little opportunity to put Stalin’s stirring programme immediately into effect.

During the Second World War Stalin’s military strategy on fronts of unprecedented length and depth, combined with the solution of gigantic economic and political problems, ranged his name above that of the greatest captains of all time. His wartime speeches and Orders of the Day were a prime political factor in winning the war.

His far-sighted and consistent diplomacy, displayed at the Moscow and Teheran Conferences (1943), the settlement with Poland and the Armistice Agreements with Finland, Rumania and Bulgaria (1944), and at the Crimea and Potsdam Conferences (1945), laid the real foundations of the United Nations.

Post-war plan of reconstruction

Then came the difficult years of making good the terrible destruction caused by the war – a problem made far worse by the increasingly open hostility of the rulers of Britain and the US (behind the scenes it had made itself felt long before), and by a great drought in 1946 of which they took full advantage to try political and economic blackmail against the USSR. Stalin, true to his lifelong principle, took the bold course of trusting the workers. His election speech of February 9, 1946, was a programme of reconstruction, and a call to complete it and resume the advance to Communism.

“ The main tasks of the new Five-Year Plan are to restore the afflicted districts of the country, to restore industry and agriculture to their prewar level and then to exceed this level to a more or less considerable degree. …

“ As to plans for a longer period, our Party intends to organise a new powerful upsurge of the national economy which would enable us, for instance, to raise the level of our industry threefold as compared with the prewar level…

“ Only under such conditions can we regard our country as guaranteed against any accidents. This will require perhaps three new Five-Year Plans, if not more. But this task can be accomplished, and we must accomplish it “.

It rallied the entire Soviet people as no other single statement could have done, and they responded by the triumphant over-fulfilment of the postwar Five-Year Plan of reconstruction in 1950.

In 1946, also, began the series of Stalin’s postwar statements of peace policy, addressed directly to the people of the world, which played a leading part in exposing the lying campaign of the warmongers in the US and in Britain and in rallying the peoples to the defence of peace.

In 1946 and 1947 came his replies to questions put by the Sunday Times’ Moscow correspondent, the president of the United Press of America, Elliott Roosevelt, son of the late President, and Harold Stassen, the Republican politician.

In these he underlined that he believed in the possibility of peaceful co-operation between the US, the USSR, and Great Britain.

He emphasised the necessity of prohibiting the atom bomb; putting the use of atomic energy under strict international supervision; rooting out fascism in Germany and re-establishing Germany’s unity as a democratic State; and meetings between the heads of the three Great Powers.

The latter point – first made in December 1946 – was repeated by Stalin (in answer to American correspondents) no fewer than four times.

The fact that all of them were left without a response only illustrated the stubborn optimism of ‘the man in the taxi-driver’s cap’ – as the soldiers of the British Eighth Army called him in the war years.

At the same time Stalin replied trenchantly to blatant falsehoods about the Soviet Union’s alleged war preparations. His stinging rejoinder to Attlee in this respect (February 1951) will long be remembered.

New contributions to Marxism

Stalin’s last years were also notable for their new and distinctive contributions to Marxist theory.

In July and August, 1950, came his writings on the Soviet discussions regarding the science of linguistics. They discussed a field far wider than that of the special subject which had made them necessary – the question of the economic basis of society and its superstructure, the history of nations, and other important questions which affected a number of other studies, notably history, philosophy and economics.

But undoubtedly the greatest contribution of all came on the very eve of the end, Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR, written during 1951 and the early part of 1952, was published on the eve of the 19th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, last October. At the end of a long life of unsurpassed service to the working class and to humanity as a whole, Stalin saw his youthful dreams of a Socialist society fulfilled, Socialism in the USSR going ahead with giant strides, rising at great speed in the Peoples’ Democracies of Europe and coming well within the perspectives of People’s China.

The problems involved in the advance to the higher stage of Socialism – Communism – which Stalin had already touched on in the prewar years, now required deeper treatment.

Handbook for the new generation

Summoning together all his vast experience and knowledge of the working of a Socialist society and all his wonderful gifts as a creative Marxist, Stalin brought them to bear on these problems. He produced a guide and handbook for the new generation that is determined to build and work in a Communist society.

From the many passages of importance in this work, one is the statement of the prerequisites for Communism which is likely to serve as the signpost for years to come :

“ It is necessary, in the first place, to ensure a continuous expansion of all social production, with a relatively higher rate of expansion of the production of means of production. …

“ It is necessary, in the second place, by means of gradual transitions carried out to the advantage of the collective farms, and hence of all society, to raise collective-farm property to the level of public property, and – also by means of gradual transitions – to replace commodity circulation by a system of products exchange, under which the central government, or some other social-economic centre, might control the whole product of social production in the interests of society…

“ It is necessary, in the third place, to ensure such a cultural advancement of society as will secure for all members of society the all-round development of their physical and mental abilities. …

“ For this it is necessary, first of all, to shorten the working day at least to six, and subsequently to five hours. … It is necessary, further, to introduce universal compulsory polytechnical education, which is required in order that the members of society might be able freely to choose their occupations, and not be tied to some one occupation all their lives. It is likewise necessary that housing conditions should be radically improved, and that real wages of workers and employees should be at least doubled, if not more.”

This great book, analysing both the today and the tomorrow of the peoples already living in Socialist society – and, indeed, of those who will yet exchange capitalist wage-slavery and exploitation for Socialist freedom – was as it were Stalin’s bequest to the international working class.

Sixty years’ service to mankind

Thus ended a great and heroic life, seeking to the last to make its nearly 60 years of revolutionary service to the cause of mankind’s emancipation a source of practical guidance to those who came after.

In the same way Stalin himself had drawn strength and guidance from the man whom he always called his master – Lenin – and from the teachings and experience of Marx and Engels.

Of this gigantic figure in world history we may say what Engels said at Marx’s graveside in Highgate 70 years ago: “ His name and his works will live on through the centuries.”

Printed and published by the

Daily Worker Co-operative Society Ltd.,

at 15 Farringdon Road. London, EC1 -

Friday; March 6, 1953.

Video: Star Trek DS9 – Workers of the World, Unite!

Leave it to the Market?

For more than twenty years now, the “free market” has been the rallying cry of American politics. Conservatives sing its praises while occasionally betraying it when it suits their constituency, liberals won’t criticize it but claim that it needs to be fixed, and then you have the libertarians, for which the market is, for all intents and purposes, a stand-in for God. Like many other words often heard in politics such as “liberty” or “democracy,” the “free market” has been used so frequently that it is rarely ever questioned. This concept of a “free market” is accepted as something real; the only disagreements arise when people discuss what constitutes a violation of free market principles, or in other words, what actions fetter the market to the point where it can no longer be called “free?” All the loudest voices in American politics tell us that one way or another the market will solve our problems, either with prudent regulation by the state or by leaving it completely unfettered by government interference. What you will not hear, at least in the mainstream discourse, is that the market itself, or more correctly its dominance of our society and our entire way of life, is the real root of the problem facing human society.

Before tackling the market and its influence over human society, one point should be clarified. This article will deal primarily with the arguments of neo-liberals and libertarians as opposed to modern liberals. Since liberals do not openly preach the virtues and supremacy of the free market, choosing instead to insist that market excesses can be limited, fixed, or altogether prevented by wise government regulation, their arguments fall outside the scope of this article. There are plenty of arguments to explain why the regulation proposed by liberals will either not succeed or will not have a lasting, much less permanent impact, the strongest being the fact that liberals themselves often point to the regulation and government intervention of past decades to support their own arguments. It stands to reason that if past regulations could be repealed over time thanks to successful lobbying on the part of wealthy corporations and businesses, the same thing could happen again five, ten, or maybe twenty years after the passing of new regulatory laws in some hypothetical future. And of course, this also assumes that these regulations would even pass through the political system at all. In any case, the liberal solution of correcting the market via limited government intervention is a topic for another article. This article shall deal specifically with the arguments of those who exalt the market the most, namely, the libertarians.

Libertarianism has a long history in the United States and a few other privileged countries, all of which, incidentally, achieved their economic greatness by doing more or less the exact opposite of what libertarians believe in. While the Libertarian Party has existed since 1971, the ideology seems to have gained widespread mainstream attention with the presidential campaigns of Representative Ron Paul and his “Ron Paul Revolution,” which has effectively utilized the internet to bring his message to a wider audience. It is amusing to note that the internet, which has its roots in government-sponsored research, serves as the basis for the success of Ron Paul’s movement. Ironic though that may be, no objective observer can deny that Paul’s populist message has gained considerable success among many segments of the population who should otherwise be politically opposed to one another. This fact speaks to two fundamental truths about American politics. The first is that populist messages, which are specifically designed to appeal to a broad spectrum of political belief systems, are highly potent. The second is that widespread dissatisfaction with the mainstream political system and the usual politics of our two-party system has left many people wide open to such populist messages, and it would do well for many of them to dig a little deeper into the ideology espoused by Ron Paul and his ilk. While Paul sets himself up as a hero of the so-called “middle class” against the powerful elite represented by the mainstream candidates of both parties, he is in fact nothing more than an agent of the wealthiest segment of the American ruling class. While Ron Paul and his supporters claim that they oppose corporate power over the United States, the ultimate result of his libertarian rhetoric is the preservation of that very same power.

Of course stating this inevitably causes outrage among Paul’s cultist-like supporters. Many Ron Paul supporters, and in particular the disturbingly large amount of confused “leftists,” insist that they oppose large corporations. In fact they insist that our system is not “real capitalism” and hasn’t been for some time; they say it is “crony capitalism” or “corporatism.” In the past the Red Phoenix has dealt with this question of “real capitalism” vs. “crony capitalism,” and suffice to say that asking people who make this claim to clarify just when the American system was “real capitalism” can provoke some really ridiculous answers, if any answer at all. Here, however, we shall look at one aspect of libertarian ideology, namely the claim that libertarianism opposes corporate power. We shall see that the solution to this problem, like the libertarian solution to every problem, is to leave everything to the market to decide. Lastly, we will see why this non-solution, assuming it actually could be implemented, would only lead to literal corporate tyranny with no democratic accountability.

Many of Ron Paul’s supporters, particularly those lured from the left, are unaware of his ideological background. As it turns out, in the political realm what you don’t know can in fact hurt you. Paul’s economic and social theories are inspired primarily by the so-called Austrian School of economics, so named for the nationality of its original founders and adherents such as Karl Menger, Eugene Bohm-Bauwerk, Ludwig von Mises, and Friedrich Hayek. This article is no place to delve into the myriad of problems with Austrian economic theory, so we shall focus rather on the modern arguments advanced by populists such as Ron Paul when it comes to the market and our current system.

The Austrians were not the first to propose that the market reconciles the self-interest of individuals for the better of society; this idea can be traced to Adam Smith’s idea of the “invisible hand” which would promote the general welfare even though individuals in the market would be acting out of self-interest. There are a few key differences between this classical view and that of Austrian Schoolers, however. The first is that adherents to Austrian School economics, and indeed virtually all libertarians in general, express no concern over whether market activity promotes a better society; society does not matter, only individuals. Secondly, Austrian school supporters see the market as the only reliable source of information which can be used by individuals to allocate scarce resources in the most efficient way. In other words, without the market, which labels commodities with prices, it would be impossible for investors to know the best avenues for investing their capital. Hence it is necessary to leave the market alone so as not to cause any distortions which might lead bad investments. It is obvious that this theory contradicts those in favor of a planned economy, and indeed Austrian School theorists such as Bohm-Bauwerk, Hayek, and von Mises all received great praise for their attempts to “refute” Marxist theory. In fact, while the Austrian School is generally rejected even by mainstream neo-liberal economists, they just happen to more or less agree on the idea that socialist planning will always be inherently flawed. Even the most ridiculous ideas will find their proponents if they serve the status quo, and that is the main reason why people like Ron Paul still have a job.

According to libertarians like Ron Paul and his supporters, government regulation and intervention are to blame for “too-big-to-fail” banks and the consolidation of power into the hands of a small group of multi-national companies. The market, left to its own devices, would supposedly prevent the rise of such mega-corporations, which we are told received their power via government aid on their behalf, including stifling regulations which supposedly bar potential competitors from entering the market. In fact, whatever the issue, you can rest assured that to the libertarian, the culprit is always “government,” and the answer is always the free market. If one wants to try to get a handle on what libertarian society would actually look like, it is necessary to dig into these concepts a little deeper.

First, there is no disputing the claim corporations and private companies have benefitted from government largesse, and this certainly does benefit the largest multinational corporations. Businesses lobby the government, back electoral campaigns, and in return they receive deregulation legislation, subsidies, favorable trade deals and other perks. Libertarians tell us they are against this unholy marriage of the private and state sector, but there are a number of flaws with their understanding of this relationship.

According to libertarians, large corporations use their lobbying power to support stifling regulations which will bar potential competitors from entering the market. In other words, if it weren’t for mean old Monsanto and their lobbying efforts, you’d have all kinds of mom and pop chemical producers popping up all over the country to engage in healthy capitalist competition and prevent the rise of monopolies. Now some people might suggest, for example, that one reason it’s difficult to start your own airline is because airplanes are expensive to buy and operate. This would be wrong however; the market decides the price of airplanes, spare parts, and so on, ergo it is fair and just. Government regulation is the problem!

The problems with this claim are so manifold it’s difficult to decide where to begin. Perhaps the most glaring flaw is the idea that corporate lobbyists support regulatory legislation. In almost all cases the opposite is true; corporations lobby to eliminate, not implement, government regulation in their various spheres. The second most obvious error is the implication that if we could somehow roll back our current system to that non-existent form which libertarians insist is “true capitalism,” successful capitalists wouldn’t use their wealth to influence the remnants of the state to their favor. We’re supposed to believe that the new generation of capitalists, without any restriction whatsoever, will all play fair and not try to gain any unfair advantage by lobbying the government for benefits such as tax breaks or subsidies. The very idea is laughable, but it is by no means the most serious logical flaw this ideology has to offer.

We must at some point in the debate ask, “What is the market?” The market, in abstract, is an institution where exchange and distribution take place. In concrete terms, however, the market consists of people, that is to say individual buyers and sellers. This condition, where individuals confront each other in the market for the purpose of exchange, and more importantly the dominance of this institution in the case of capitalist society, forms the basis for the liberal cult of the “individual,” but this is a matter for another article. Here it is enough to say that in theory, buyers and sellers enjoy formal equality. This is where the problem lies, for while buyers and sellers are formally equal, they are unequal according to their possessions, that is to say they differ according to how much and what kind of property they own, what they have to sell, and how much money they have. Since distribution is determined by market transactions, agents must enter and participate in market exchange to get their necessities of life. To engage in exchange, agents need money, and in order to get money they must have a commodity they can sell. The worker’s commodity is labor power, the capacity to perform productive labor. Again, in theory, the worker and capitalist are allegedly on an equal footing when they confront each other in the market. Outside of the realm of economic theory, we can easily see this isn’t the case. Capitalists own capital, that is both money capital and means of production, hence in the market they hold all the cards. Since workers don’t possess necessary property, that is means of production, to produce everything they need to survive, they do not have the choice of withholding their labor power from the capitalists; starvation would be the result.

Once we step out of the realm of ruling-class economic theory and into the real world, we understand that “leaving it to the market” doesn’t mean leaving our fate to some abstract institution but rather putting it in the hands of a few real, live people, and hoping they will somehow arrive at the best, most beneficial results for all of society out of their own self-interest. In other words, it’s not that far removed from the libertarians’ inaccurate description of socialism, only replace government with private capitalists.

Worse still, libertarians exalt the individual and openly declare that they do not care about society, nor the “greater good,” indeed some have routinely and openly insisted that society doesn’t exist. That should give one pause any time a libertarian evangelist insists that their way of thinking would be best for “our nation.” Try as they might, however, libertarians cannot bend material reality. While their worldview divides human civilization into the “state” and “private sector” and holds as sacred the concept of “private property,” in the real world there can be no private property without the state and its organs of violence with which it enforces the existing property relations. If we look back into history we see that the rise of the very first state coincides with the emerging necessity to establish and enforce property rights, and as these rights and relations changed over time, so too has the state.

Ron Paul and his populist goons are selling a chimerical Utopian vision which runs contrary to the historical record. While his supporters will claim that our contemporary system isn’t “real capitalism,” they aren’t so forthcoming when asked to say when this “real capitalism” allegedly existed. When they attempt to do so, it is only a matter of pointing out the atrocious living conditions of the majority of people, crushing restrictions on civil rights, poor quality products, and of course the ever-present government intervention in the economy, if not in the form of regulation but rather protectionism, subsidies, and other handouts. Whenever they insist that we had a truly “free market” at some time in the past, ask for specifics, do a little research, and you’ll find that the market had restrictions on it then. In fact as Ha Joon Chang so eloquently pointed out in his book 23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism, there is no such thing as a free market, and never has been. More importantly, there has never been a single country in world history which has followed Austrian School economic theories to economic prosperity, if at all; anyone who tells you otherwise is either blatantly lying or simply ignorant. Support for Ron Paul is ultimately support for the ruling class, only by another route. Do not be fooled by populist hucksters who promise to explain the world in bite-sized nuggets of bumper-sticker “common sense.” If Ron Paul truly believed in his principles he wouldn’t work for the federal government, and that goes doubly if he were truly a threat to the working class. Paul may seem a world apart from Obama or Romney, but he exists to lead us to the very same destination.

The Austrian School of economics is a complicated subject. Though it is generally rejected by all mainstream schools of economic thought, the latter more or less agree with the former on some key concepts, such as the concept of marginal utility. With this in mind, the reader is invited to look into the matter further with a number of critiques of Austrian theory from several different perspectives, including Marxist and mainstream.

Further Reading

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Austrian_School

http://world.std.com/~mhuben/austrian.html

https://critiqueofcrisistheory.wordpress.com/responses-to-readers-austrian-economics-versus-marxism/

http://kapitalism101.wordpress.com/2011/11/15/law-of-value-8-subjectobject/

http://www.marxists.org/archive/bukharin/works/1927/leisure-economics/index.htm

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China overtakes US as world’s largest trading country

AFP Photo / China out

China has passed the US as the world’s biggest trading nation as measured by the sum of exports and imports in 2012. It’s a position the US has held for over six decades.

US exports and imports of goods last year amounted to $3.82 trillion, the US Commerce Department said last week. China’s trade in goods was $3.87 trillion, according to the country’s customs administration report in January. 

While the US recorded a surplus in services of $195.3 billion last year and a goods deficit of more than $700 billion, according to Bureau Economic Analysis, China’s 2012 trade surplus, measured in goods, totalled $231.1 billion.

“The main reason for this growth is the Chinese government policy directed at stimulating domestic demand, which improves imports to growth,” Andrey Shenk, an economic expert at Investcafe, told RT. He said China increased its import volumes 5 fold in the last five years, and that allowed it become the biggest trading nation. 

“For so many countries around the world, China is rapidly becoming the most important bilateral trade partner,” Jim O’Neill, chairman of Goldman Sachs’s asset management division and the economist who bound Brazil to Russia, India and China to form the BRIC investing strategy, told Bloomberg. And that can even “disrupt regional trading blocs,” for instance, “Germany may export twice as much to China by the end of the decade as it does to France,” O’Neill added.

The figures indicate the trend that China is already outpacing the US, the world’s biggest economy, in some respects. According to various estimates, China has the world’s biggest new car market, is the biggest energy user, and holds the largest foreign currency reserves. China became the world’s biggest exporter in 2009, and its GDP growth rate has averaged 9.9% a year since the 1970s. In 2011 China’s GDP growth rate stood at 9.20%, compared to 1.80% in the US during the same year.  

In November last year China surpassed the US as the world’s leading trade partner, with 124 countries considering China their largest trading partner and only 76 having that relationship with the US. This was a major shift since 2006, when the US was the larger trading partner for 127 countries, while China dominated among 70. Some historical allies of the US now consider China their top trading partner, including Australia and South Korea. Trade with China was on average 12.4% of GDP for its foreign partners in 2012, compared to only 3% in 2002 – a rate that is higher than trade with the US has been in the past 30 years.

The US dominated as the world’s main trading power since after WWII, but as the recession hit US businesses hard, China’s growth continued, and its pace has already recovered from seven straight quarters of decline, reaching 7.9% in 4Q 2012. 

Still, the US economy is double the size of China’s, according to World Bank data. In 2011, the US GDP reached $15 trillion while China’s totalled $7.3 trillion. In 2012 China’s nominal gross domestic product was $8.3 trillion, according to China’s National Bureau of Statistics’ report. However, the US remains the biggest importer, taking in $2.28 trillion in goods last year compared with China’s $1.82 trillion of imports. The US exports innovative products in the automobile industry, aerospace, medicine, computers, finance and pharmaceuticals.  

At the same time, a significant portion of China’s trade involves importing raw materials and parts to be assembled into finished products and re-exported, an activity that provides “only modest value added,” Eswar Prasad, a former International Monetary Fund official, now a professor at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, told Bloomberg.

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Native American Shuts Down Anti-Illegal Immigrant Protest: ‘Y’all Are All Illegal!’

By Abena Agyeman-Fisher

At a Tucson, Ariz., anti-illegal immigrant rally, a group of self-righteous protesters were literally put on mute after a Native American decided to drop some knowledge on who the real “illegals” are.

Pushing a toddler in a stroller, a rightfully irritated self-identified Native American began yelling at the group, saying:

“Y’all f*cking illegal. You’re all illegal. You’re all illegal!

“We didn’t invite none of you here!

“We’re the only native Americans here.

“That’s right. We’re the only native Americans here. Y’all are all illegal. We didn’t invite none of you! We didn’t invite none of you here. Get on, get on, get on with your bogus arguments.”

Visibly shaken, an unfortunate protestor quickly found himself in the cross hairs of the unexpected lesson when the Native American turned his attention toward his diminutive flag and now-increasingly inappropriate sign:

“We should have put that sign up when you son of the b*tches came!”

“That [the flag] represents blood, that represents blood spilled by Native Americans protecting this land from the invaders. Yeah, that’s right, you don’t want to hear the G*d damn truth! Get on, b*tch! All the Native Americans you killed, you plant your houses here. That’s the truth.”

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PFLP condemns Zionist attack on Syria

Statement by Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine

Commenting on the Zionist aggression on Syria, the official spokesperson of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Comrade Abu Ahmad Fouad of the Political Bureau of the PFLP, made a statement denouncing the brutal aggression on Syria as a heinous crime and a blatant challenge of the principles of international Law and the resolutions of international legitimacy.

Fouad added that this aggression is one episode in a series of state terrorist attacks practiced by the Zionist entity against the Arab nation and the Palestinian people.

Furthermore, he called upon the international community, the Arab League and all Arab countries and civil society institutions to condemn this aggression, and for international institutions to end their double standards and silence on the crimes committed against the Arab nation and the Palestinian people.

Finally, Fouad concluded his statement that the enemy has underestimated the capabilities and commitments of the Arab nation, adding that it engages in daily attacks against the Palestinian Arab people throughout Palestine as well as the Arab people of Lebanon and Syria, and that it is important that the enemy faces an immediate response to its attacks. The crimes of the Zionist enemy should not pass with impunity.

KCNA on the Korean War

Pyongyang, March 29 (KCNA) — The Fatherland Liberation War (1950-1953) ended in a victory of the Korean people.

But, its consequences were very devastating and disastrous.

The U.S. bombing in the war left more than 8 700 factories destroyed and 90 000 hectares of farmland spoiled.

Power stations and reservoirs were severely damaged and towns and rural communities were reduced to ashes.

The U.S. imperialists said that the DPRK would not be able to get to its feet even in one hundred years.

Convinced of the victory in the war, President Kim Il Sung pressed ahead with preparations for post-war rehabilitation and construction in a far-sighted manner.

In early Juche 40 (1951), he gave an instruction to work out a blueprint for rehabilitating the capital city of Pyongyang. He had a Cabinet decision on reconstructing Pyongyang adopted in May 1952.

After the war, in August 1953 he delivered a historic report “Everything for the Postwar Rehabilitation and Development of the National Economy” at the 6th plenary meeting of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea.

He, in the report, proposed a basic line of postwar economic construction, the keynote of which was to give priority to building heavy industry while developing light industry and agriculture simultaneously.
The President channeled all efforts to liquidating the aftermath of the war.

Soon after the war, he called at the Kangnam Ceramic Factory and the Kangson Steel Plant, appealing to the workers to restart their operation at an earlier date.

When visiting the Hungnam Fertilizer Factory in South Hamgyong Province, which was heavily damaged in the war, he encouraged the workers there to restore the factory in a short time, mindful that the farmers in Hamju Plain were bitterly lamenting over the ruined factory.

He went to Jangjingang Power Station, Joyang-ri, South Hamgyong Province, Sambong-ri, South Phyongan Province, Wonsan College of Agriculture and other industrial establishments, rural communities and educational and cultural institutions to arouse them to rehabilitation.

In response to his appeal, the workers of the Kangson Steel Plant restored the ruined electric furnace by their own efforts and made the plant operational 40 days after the war.

The then Songjin Steel Plant, too, reconstructed the electric furnace to begin production.

Railway workers opened the train service in all branch lines some days after the ceasefire.

Farmers worked hard to rezone the ravaged farmland and repair the irrigation facilities.

Under his energetic leadership, rapid rehabilitation and development were witnessed in the heavy and light industries and agriculture.

Meanwhile, Pyongyang and other local cities began making their appearances again on the ruins.

Thus, the post-war rehabilitation and construction was successfully carried out in Korea under the President’s wise guidance.

Teargas as thousands protest top opposition leader assassination in Tunisia (PHOTOS)

Tunisian opposition leader Chokri Belaid has been shot dead outside his home, prompting thousands of Tunisians to protest in the capital and across the country, torching ruling party offices in several towns and chanting “the government should fall.”

(FOLLOW LIVE UPDATES)

In Tunis thousands of people flooded the central Habib Bourguiba Avenue, close to the tree-lined boulevard, where violent anti-government protests were raging two years ago, when the so-called Arab Sprig was ignited.

Flocking to the Interior Ministry office, protesters were chanting “The people want the fall of the regime!”

Security forces cordoned off the area.

As an ambulance carrying Belaid’s body was driven in front of the ministry, hundreds of mourners crowded around the vehicle.

Calls for a second revolution were heard from the crowd. The protesters were chanting “We are all Chokri,” “O Chokri, O martyr, we will follow your path,” and “Terrorism, bullets, Tunisians are fearless”.

Police responded to mass gathering in Tunis with teargas and warning shots. One officer has already lost his life in a violent clash with the people. There have also been reports that an ambulance was teargased.

Further protests have erupted in more than 12 towns and cities across Tunisia.

Rubber bullets and tear gas were also used to contain the crowds in Sidi Bouzid, central Tunisia, the birthplace of last year’s revolution.

A local man placed the number protesting at “more than 4,000” in Sidi Bouzid, according to Reuters. He said that many were “burning tires and throwing stones at the police.”

Some 200 protesters attacked the police station in the central town of Sidi Bouzid. Police had to fire teargas to force the crowd back.

Angry crowds set fire to or vandalized HQs of the ruling Ennahda party in the capital Tunis and in several cities around the country.

Amid raging mass protests, the Tunisian opposition has announced in a statement the suspension of its membership in the constituent assembly. It has also called for a general strike on Chokri Belaid’s funeral.

Four opposition parties have followed in their steps and announced the suspension of their membership in Tunisia’s constituent assembly as well. They have also joined calls for a strike to protest the assassination of the prominent leader.  

Later Tunisian prime minister said he was going to dissolve government and form a national unity cabinet consisting of non-partisan technocrats.

Two men on motorbike killed Belaid – Interior Ministry

Chokri Belaid, 47, who was leader of Tunisia’s Democratic Patriotic Party, was killed as he was leaving his house in Tunis, the country’s capital, according to the county’s Interior Ministry. Belaid reportedly took four bullets to his head and chest. Shortly after the shooting, Belaid was rushed to a nearby medical clinic, but the injuries proved fatal.

There have been reports about “three men in a black vehicle” had been present at the scene. However, the latest statement from the Interior Minister said that killer of Chokri Belaid is believed to be a middle-aged man on a motorcycle that was ridden by an accomplice, Reuters reports. The Interior Ministry said after the shooting the attacker and rider sped away.

No responsibility has been claimed so far, but protesters and supporters of Chokri Belaid, who had recently formed a coalition in opposition against the Islamist-led government, blame members of the ruling Ennahda for assassinating country’s prominent opposition leader.  

The Ennahda has said it had nothing to do with the assassination of Belaid, Reuters reported. 

Forensic inspectors examine the car of prominent Tunisian opposition politician Chokri Belaid, who was shot dead outside his home, in Tunis February 6, 2013. (Reuters / Zoubeir Souissi)

The Ennahda came to power following the 2011 revolution when Tunisia’s long-ruling leader was ousted. The Islamist party has been widely accused of seeking to monopolize power. 

“Ennahda bargains and claims to want to expand the coalition, but refuses to cede any of the key ministerial portfolios sought by opposition,” an anonymous Western diplomat told AFP. The country has been waiting on a ‘long overdue’ cabinet reshuffle.

Belaid recently spoke out against alleged attacks by the Islamists, targeting his party’s members, stating that, “a group of Ennahda mercenaries and Salafists attacked our activists.” The attacks reportedly occurred as a party meeting drew to a close last Saturday.

There have been tensions over the role of Rashid al-Ghannushi, the so-called ‘spiritual leader’ of the Ennahda Movement, which is currently the ruling party in Tunisia. In October 2012, clashes took place in the southern city of Tataouine, during which the coordinator of Nida Touns political party, Lofi Nakd, was killed. Tunisians suspect that Ghannushi might have been behind such radical actions against political opponents.

The fact that his son-in-law is the country’s foreign minister could also be fanning the flames of protest. 

“The fact that the members of the family of the spiritual leader of this Islamic ruling movement have prominent positions of power is one of other things that makes even people who supported the general tendency say “all we are seeing are revolutions to get rid of the Ben Ali family only to replace it with a new ruling family,” professor of international relations at Bilikent University in Turkey, Mark Almond told RT.

A picture taken on December 29, 2010 shows Tunisian opposition leader Chokri Belaid. (AFP Photo / Fethi Belaid)

‘Assassination of Tunisian revolution’

Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali has condemned the suspected politically-motivated assassination, labeling the death of Belaid “the assassination of the Tunisian revolution,” adding that, “by killing him they wanted to silence his voice.”

Tunisia’s President Moncef Marzouki canceled a foreign visit following the news to return home. He denounced the“the odious assassination of a political leader who I knew well and who was my friend”.

Asma Belaid, Chokri’s wife, told reporters his death is a catastrophe for Tunisia and their family.

French President Francois Hollande has expressed great concern over the escalating political violence in France’s ex-colony.

“This murder deprives Tunisia of one of its most courageous and free voices,” Hollande’s office said in a statement.

Protests have also been spotted in Paris near the Tunisian embassy, AFP reports. Some protesters even managed to get into the building.

Two years ago Tunisia was the first country to overthrow its leader, following uprisings throughout the country, in what came to be known as the Arab Spring. The country has been gripped by social and religious uncertainty following the introduction of subsequent free elections, yet has managed a smooth transition to democracy up until this point.

“There hadn’t been too much of violence, but unfortunately with these deep disappointments with the failure to make life better (life has got worse) and the sense that a trajectory that takes many people in Tunisia away from what they wanted,” said Almond.

Tunisia is fast becoming a microcosm of the Middle East, where the dichotomy between an Islamic regime and the predominantly secular opposition is magnified – especially after this recent assassination, believes political analyst Danny Makki. He claims that in the current era, the Arab world is so completely politicized that even a minute change can spark hatred and mass outrage.

And because Tunisia’s current Islamist regime is supported by Salafists, it has strong links to other Muslim Brotherhoods, further widening the country’s ideological rift. President Marzouki, for instance, is a firm supporter of the so-called Syrian Jihad. “[Belaid’s] assassination was committed by people with close links to the government, though they deny it”, Makki told RT.

He adds that the move to dissolve the coalition could be to dissuade further unrest, but whether it will work is unclear as “there is a stigma attached to the Muslim Brotherhood government, whose policies are incompatible with the liberal, outgoing nature of Tunisians – this is a problem within itself.”

Makki told RT that the latest events are testimony to the backwardness of the Arab Spring in Tunisia and the Brotherhood’s inadequate leadership, which has no tangible political policies or social and economic programs.

Screenshot from YouTube video / MegaBigpoopa (posted 6 Feb 2013)

People surround an ambulance transporting the body of Tunisian opposition leader and outspoken government critic Chokri Belaid on February 6, 2013. (AFP Photo / Feithi Belaid)

Tunisian people shout slogans during a rallye in front of Interior ministry to protest after Tunisian opposition leader and outspoken government critic Chokri Belaid was shot dead with three bullets fired from close range, on February 6, 2013. (AFP Photo / Feithi Belaid)

The body of Tunisian opposition Chokri Belaid (top R) arrives amidst tens of thousands of protesters as they demonstrate on Avenue Habib Bourguiba in Tunis February 6, 2013.(Reuters / Anis Mili)

Tunisian protesters shout slogans during a demonstration after the death of Tunisian opposition leader Chokri Belaid (pictured on flag), outside the Interior ministry in Tunis February 6, 2013.(Reuters / Anis Mili)

A police officer fires teargas to break up a protest during a demonstration in Tunis February 6, 2013.(Reuters / Zoubeir Souissi)

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Syria’s Rebels Hype Their Child Soldier Training

‘Children Are the Best Soldiers I Know,’ Military Defector Insists

It’s one of those things you’re not supposed to brag about, but Syrian rebels are praising their ability to attract child soldiers and turn them into “killing machines” to use against the Assad government.

“Children are the best soldiers I know,” declared former Syrian Sgt. Abdel Razzaq, a defector who is now training child soldiers to “not be scared of war and not to hesitate when the time comes to kill.”

Razzaq’s “academy,” a former school in a rebel-held part of the Aleppo Province, insists that they do not force anyone into joining, and that they have no shortage of children eager to join up and learn to fight.

UNICEF seemed to back this in their own statements, saying that there was “no active recruitment of children” and that it was rather parents pushing their teenaged children to join the war. International law still prohibits anyone from using child soldiers.

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UN report exposes torture of Afghan detainees

An Afghan special forces soldier (AFP Photo / Daud Yardos)

A new UN report has exposed cases of vicious torture of Afghan detainees, including beatings, hanging by the wrists and electric shocks. Many were handed over to authorities by foreign troops, despite numerous concerns about their previous treatment.

A United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) report released on Sunday underlined the abuse of ‘conflict-related detainees’ across 89 detention facilities in 30 provinces from October 2011 to October 2012, many of whom have been relocated to multiple Afghan detention camps by foreign governments.

Extensive interviews revealed that 326 – more than half – of the 635 detainees consulted had experienced ‘ill-treatment and torture’. The interviews also revealed that torture was still a systemic problem in the prisons, and that incidents of torture in Afghan National Police facilities have actually increased over the past year.

Those who suffered at the hands of authorities revealed their shocking firsthand experiences to interviewers, with 105 of the cases involving those classified as children under international law.

One detainee from Farah, western Afghanistan, reported to the UN that he was laid on the ground, as two individuals sat on his feet and head. The third took a pipe, and started beating him with it, saying “you are with Taliban and this is what you deserve.”

A 16-year-old boy gave a harrowing account to UNAMA, saying that “if I did not confess that I am a Taliban member, then the last resort would be pulling down my trousers and pushing a bottle into my anus… He asked the other interrogator to bring the bottle and then pull my trousers down…I realized that I could not do anything else except to accept what the interrogators wanted me to admit.”

Another spoke to interviewers of how he was handcuffed behind his back: “…fabric was very tightly around and under my arms and [they] suspended me from a mulberry tree. They did this for long periods of time until I would lose consciousness. This happened every night for six days or so… Around three times a foreign delegation, composed of American military, I think, came to check the Hawza, but each time they came I was hidden.”

There were further accounts of detainees being hung from the ceiling by their wrists, beaten with objects such as wooden sticks, cables and rifle butts, being shocked with electricity until they passed out, their genitals being twisted and beaten, and death threats.

Many of the accused detainees who end up in Afghan custody are captured by US and allied troops. Overall, 79 out of the 635 captives surveyed had been captured initially by international military forces or foreign government intelligence agencies, occasionally working alongside the Afghan forces. Of these, 25 had been subjected to torture.

In October 2011, NATO temporarily halted the transfer of prisoners to the facilities amid reports that detainees had been beaten with rubber hoses and hung from hooks. However, this was a temporary measure, and NATO transfers resumed in February 2012 to 12 of the 16 detention centers at which routine abuse was reported.

UNAMA Director of Human Rights Georgette Gagnon criticized the lack of investigation into the matter, saying that there were “no prosecutions for those responsible.”

Of the 635 prisoners interviewed, 552 had been convicted of offenses related to the Afghan war; 19 of those convicted had no knowledge of the specific crime for which they had been detained.

The treatment of prisoners in Afghanistan has been an ongoing source of concern. In 2002, intense controversy erupted over abuse at the US-run Parwan Detention Facility (DFIP) following the deaths of two prisoners at the hands of American soldiers. However, a footnote in the report stated that UNAMA did not visit the DFIP or the Afghan National Detention Facility at Parwan, so these facilities were not included in UNAMA’s sample and detention observations. The reasoning behind this exclusion was not given.

UN investigators were also informed of the alleged existence of numerous unofficial detention sites, hidden facilities which were not accounted for by international observers. Although these allegations were denied by Afghanistan’s intelligence agency, the UNAMA report described the accounts as “credible.” Additionally, the UNAMA received credible reports of the suspected disappearance of 81 individuals taken into Afghan National Police custody from September 2011 to October 2012.

The Afghan government’s internal monitoring committee called the allegations of torture “untrue and thus disproved.” The UNAMA conceded that some interviewees may have falsified accounts, and said it exercised discretion in its report.

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