Game Over: Scans of Over 50 Ron Paul Newsletters

For a certain segment of the Ron Paul fanbase, no evidence of his disseminating hateful, paranoid material will ever be enough. Citing James Kirchick’s piece in The New Republic wasn’t sufficient, because Kirchick could have just been “making everything up.” Then, when I and others posted copies of “The Ron Paul Political Report Special Issue on Race Terrorism,” that too wasn’t convincing.

“Proof that he said/endorsed racist things? Hardly. Doing it repeatedly in one document isn’t enough to prove that he did it. Now, if there were many documents…”

Well, now there are many documents. Over fifty. Right here.

As I said in my rundown on the Paul platform over at Vice, reasonable fans of Dr. Paul now must accept that there’s no way Paul could have been ignorant of the content [of] 8-12 page newsletters published under his name for over ten years. Paul supporters face three losing propositions:

• He lacks the competency to control content published under his own name for over a decade, and is thus unfit to lead a country.
• He doesn’t believe these things but considers them a useful political tool to motivate racist whites, which makes him fit to be a GOP candidate, but too obvious about it to win.
• He’s actually a racist, which makes him unfit to be a human being.

Further, you can’t dismiss this in the name of higher political or socioeconomic aspirations. Since Paul has no chance of winning — seriously, no chance at all — his only value is as a voice, a conduit for principles. And if your only hope is to change the discourse by amplifying ideas, you can do that via many voices and avenues. As I said in my Vice follow-up, acknowledging some of Paul’s good ideas,

when you opt to support anti-imperialist and civil liberties ideals by supporting Paul the Candidate, you end up supporting everything else about him. That includes those newsletters and the unambiguous message to those who enjoy them: You can write these things and succeed; this works. The other good ideas to which he’s signatory can’t erase the fact that he put his name to those words printed above. The moral weight of those newsletters drags down even the most high-minded aspirations he has about civil liberties, and everything crashes down on all of us.

It’s fine to have convictions about things he believes in. But when you voluntarily whitewash his record or choose to ignore it and champion him anyway, you are complicit in supporting the idea that racism and homophobia are morally inconsequential to the process of running for President of the United States. And, while many Paul supporters consider racism a social injury subordinate to extra-legal military conflict, there are just as many who disgustingly handwave at racism because it’s an inconsequential burp on the way to more tax cuts, Free Markets, Free Money, Free Black Peop — stuff for me!

And still, for the faithful, this will not be enough.

Below, I’ve tried to give helpful general (bold) titles to each excerpt of the various Ron Paul newsletters available. These come courtesy of a zipfile of scans sent to me by reader Heresiarch, who, along with others, compiled it from various sources — although the lion’s share, if not all, come from James Kirchick, who wrote the original, big Ron Paul story in The New Republic, in 2008. (You can see many of his highlights on the scans.) I have omitted the over 65 pages of scanned federal earmarks Ron Paul requested for his district, in a fit of States’ Wants pique. I have also omitted the scans of Von Mises Institute brochures about a Secession Conference at which Paul spoke.

No attempt has been made to organize these via topic, since pages of each newsletter are apt to feature mini-articles on multiple topics, making organization futile. (My summaries don’t indicate all that go on in the scans, so please click away.) Finally, below some of the scans, I’ve offered some comments in plain text. Those within quotation marks are direct quotes from the text appearing in the newsletter scans. Those without quotation marks are my own observations.

Ron Paul Newsletter—April, 1993: The New York Bombing

“Whether it was a setup by the Israeli Mossad, as a Jewish friend of mine suspects, or was truly a retaliation by the Islamic fundamentalists, matters little. The cities have become centers of violence, whether through the daily and routine terrorism of crime, political bomb terrorism, or the terrorism of mob behavior as in Los Angeles.”

Ron Paul Newsletter—August, 1990: Those Lucky Minorities and the Straight-Seducing Gay Bush Junta

“And Stanford, Michigan, and many other universities have banned speech that offends privileged groups. Anti-white, anti-male, anti-heterosexual or anti-Christian remarks are perfectly OK, of course.” You can imagine, then, what a relief it must be to minorities, homosexuals, women and non-Christians to find themselves the privileged people of America. The rest of this page and part of the second details a cabal of homosexuals in the Bush administration who like to lead “the young” astray.

Dr. Ron Paul’s Freedom Report—April, 1978:

This is instructive because, if someone else was writing Ron Paul’s newsletters for him, they’ve been doing it for 33 years, with a remarkable tonal consistency. Even in 1978, the patterns of paranoia about American government capture by international secret interests are apparent. To wit, “I can believe that a non-conspiratorial President, if we had one….”

“The Trilateral Commission is no longer known only by those who are knowledgeable about international conspiracies, but is routinely mentioned in the daily news…. Jimmy Carter’s membership in the Trilateral Commission is hardly a coincidence.”

“I believe, in reality, the [Panama] Canal is now “owned” by facist-oriented [sic], international banking and business interests and is merely managed by the Marxist-oriented Torrijos dictatorship, with the bills being paid by the American taxpayers….”

Ron Paul Investment Letter—May 1988: Say No to the New World Order

The first of many existentially terrifying revelations about a coming global disaster that Ron Paul will gladly share with you, for the good of all true Americans, assuming they will pay. This theme appears again and again: in the greatest fight you can imagine for the lifeblood of liberty and American history, there is no time to waste in making sure that you send Ron Paul money. That’s how much Ron Paul loves America—for $1, if you buy 25 copies and $6.95 for a single copy.

Ron Paul Newsletter—December 1990: MLK

After beginning with an objection to the “statism” of the Smithsonian Institution including a civil rights exhibit about homosexuals (without objections to the “statism” of having, say, historic American flags on display), the piece includes a bit about Martin Luther King’s plagiarism problems with his doctorate. That poor scholarship on Dr. King’s part is actually true, but the newsbite here is merely a peg on which to hang more (and repeated) King-hate. For instance, on the following page:

“[King] was also a Comsymp, if not an actual party member, and the man who replaced the evil of forced segregation with the evil of forced integration. King, the FBI files show, was not only a world-class adulterer, he also seduced underage girls and boys…. And we are supposed to honor this ‘Christian minister’ and lying socialist satyr…?”

Ron Paul Newsletter—February, 1990: The Coming Race War and Shame of MLK Day

“Boy, it sure burns me to have a national holiday for that pro-communist philanderer, Martin Luther King. I voted against this outrage time and time again as a Congressman. What an infamy that Ronald Reagan approved it! We can thank him for our annual Hate Whitey Day. Listen to a black radio talk show in any major city. The racial hatred makes a KKK rally look tame.”

Ron Paul Newsletter—February, 1991: The X-Rated Martin Luther King

As if everything else about the communist pedophile Martin Luther King weren’t bad enough, apparently he couldn’t stop fucking Ralph Abernathy.

Ron Paul Newsletter—January, 1988: AIDS and Great Crabcakes, Two Things Made in Maryland

“Dr. Douglass believes that AIDS is a deliberately engineered hybrid of these two animal viruses cultured in human tissue, and he blames World Health Organization experimentation at Ft. Detrick, Maryland…. Could the government have experimented with it in the civilian population, as it did in the 1950s with LSD, and had things get out of control? I don’t know, but these sure are interesting questions.” See? He’s just asking questions.

Ron Paul Newsletter—January, 1990: SODOMY EQUALS DEATH

“A well-known libertarian editor just back from New York told me: ‘The ACT-UP slogan, on stickers plastered all over Manhattan, is “Silence = Death.” But shouldn’t it be “Sodomy = Death”?’”

Ron Paul Newsletter—January, 1991: MLK, World-Class Philanderer

“St. Martin was a world-class philanderer who beat up his paramours (‘non-violence’ didn’t apply in all spheres, I guess).”

This second page soft-sells the idea that MLK wished he could be like Castro but was prevented because a violent revolution wouldn’t work in the U.S. So, rather than this being an indication of his own good judgment about the best course of seeking equality, it’s proof that he was basically a murdering revolutionary thwarted by indifference. It also describes the civil rights movement as “bad from the beginning,” because overturning Jim Crow and then refusing to accept that glorious market happiness would elevate blacks to equal status in the United States represents a social injustice.

Ron Paul Newsletter—June, 1990: The Pink House?

“What an outrage that, for the first time in our nation’s history, the organized forces of perversion were feted in the White House.” Here, “organized forces of perversion” means “gay people hoping to be spared dehumanizing violence.”

“President Bush invited the heads of homosexual lobbying groups to the White House for the ceremony. As Congressman Bill Dannemeyer (R-CA) noted, ‘It’s a tragic message that is being sent,’ that normality and deviance are equal. I miss the closet. Homosexuals, not to speak of the rest of society, were far better off when social pressure forced them to hide their activities. They could also not be as promiscuous. Is it any coincidence that the AIDS epidemic developed after they came ‘out of the closet’ and started hyper-promiscuous sodomy? I don’t believe so, medically or morally.”

Ron Paul Newsletter—May, 1990: When Blacks Kill Whites

“When blacks kill whites, however, it’s not defined as news.”

Ron Paul Newsletter—November, 1990: David Duke

“To many voters, this seemed just like plain good sense. Duke carried baggage from his past, but the voters were willing to overlook that.” Fun words, fun ideas: “baggage” that some voters “overlooked.”

Ron Paul Newsletter—October, 1990: AIDS, Gays, Blacks and Rapetown

A sales pitch for None Dare Call It Conspiracy, one of the finest modern history books you can find at your local Army surplus store, next to the “$3 Bills (Clinton)” and the IMPEACH BILLARY stickers, as well as something about Obama Muslim Hussein NOT RACIST.

“A mob of black protestors, led by the ‘Rev.’ Al Sharpton, occupied and closed the Statue of Liberty recently, demanding that New York be renamed Martin Luther King City ‘to reclaim it for our people.’ Hmmm. I hate to agree with the Rev. Al, but maybe a name change is in order. Welfaria? Zooville? Rapetown? Dirtburg? Lazyopolis? But Al, the Statue of Liberty? Next time, hold that demonstration at a food stamp bureau or a crack house.”

This page includes a bunch of frankly nutty ideas about how everyone should deal with people with AIDS, followed by, “No kissing, since AIDS can be transmitted by saliva.”

This page offers a mixed vote of support for jury nullification (almost always invoked in these pages as a right for a jury to exonerate anyone who refuses to pay federal taxes), while also implying that a jury and city were influenced by black demonstrators for Marion Barry. “There were constant anti-white demonstrations outside the courthouse.”

Ron Paul Political Report—March, 1990: Homophobes for Andy Rooney

“CBS forced him into an apologotic [sic] interview with The Advocate, a homosexual magazine filled with classified ads for pervert prostitutes. The reporter–who certainly had an axe to grind, and that’s not easy with a limp wrist….” It goes on to claim that the reporter for The Advocate made things up about Rooney, as part of the devious homosexual agenda.

“The liberals promised us relief from guilt, points out Murray N. Rothbard, of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, and they did abolish sexual guilt (and gave use widespread sodomy, AIDS, promiscuity, illegitimacy, and abortion in the bargain). But they imposed a thousand new guilts over racism, sexism, speciesism, ageism, and homophobia (the dread belief that normal sexual conduct is superior to abnormal).”

There it is in a nut, kids. It was liberalism that foisted on human beings the idea that you should feel ashamed by unwarranted “superiority,” malicious exclusion, self-satisfied exploitation, dehumanization, disregard and violence. The nemesis that liberalism visits on libertarianism — and, thus, libertarianism’s proof of liberalism’s great authoritarian imposition — is that the human race is not your basement rec room array of toys; you are not the sole arbiter of value, and you don’t get to have all the coolest things because you are you and because others have failed in terms of that singularly pointless achievement.

Ron Paul Political Report—July 1992: Blacks, Riots, ACORN

“Perot cannot fix the welfare state any more than Gorbachev could fix Soviet socialism. To achieve even a semblance of success, Perot may resort to authoritarian means. Maintaining order may be the number one priority, especially as the race riots grow…. Just after a basketball game ended on June 14, blacks poured into the streets of Chicago in celebration. How to celebrate? How else? They broke the windows of stores to loot, even breaking through protective steel shutters with crowbars to steal everything in sight…. (Is this why Hollywood tells us White Men Can’t Jump?).”

“Of all the stores that were looted, only one had its goods simply thrown on the sidewalk rather than stolen: a bookstore.” Ahahaha, I get it. It’s because black people don’t read! “Jury verdicts, basketball games, and even music are enough to set off black rage, it seems.”

“What does it say about a party when its candidate can’t criticize those who advocate killing white people without upsetting its core voters? What does it say about blacks that they would find it upsetting to hear this criticized? My guess is that Jesse Jackson and friends talk like this in private.”

“Another good example is a study just released by ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) called ‘Take the Money and Run: The Siphoning of Deposits from Minority Neighborhoods.’ It alleges that banks take deposits from blacks and then don’t grant them loans. They say that for every dollar on deposit, only 4 cents goes [sic] back to blacks. Ever vigilant against economic differences that express themselves in racial terms, the American elite are busy instituting race quotas in lending. ACORN called for a summit meeting with bankers to ‘work out the differences’–meaning that banks fork over the cash…. They all agreed to fork over more money–so long as the regulators don’t notice that they are not paid back.”

This last page emphasizes the sinister nature of equal lending by describing Jack Kemp’s support for the idea of having a black person see if he can get a loan, then report back. It’s just like the Thought Police, but with numbers and other objective measures employed against thoughts. Tremble, tremble, tremble, Middle America.

Ron Paul Political Report—November 1992: Bobby Fischer, Jew Victim

“It turns out that the brilliant Fischer, who has all the makings of an American hero, is very politically incorrect on Jewish questions, for which he will never be forgiven, even though he is a Jew. Thus we are not supposed to herald him as the world’s greatest chess player.”

Note two things here. One, even at the time, nobody disputed that Fischer was one of the greatest in chess history; nor does anyone dispute that today. Two, even at the time, Fischer disavowed his own Jewish ancestry, openly admired Hitler, blamed the Jews for ruining his reputation and chess ranking in the world and considered the State of Israel to be a spider manipulating the press and intelligentsia of the English-speaking world. To consider Fischer anything other than a raving loon and, further, to consider him persecuted only opens very reasonable lines of inquiry as to why anybody would sympathize with him at all, unless his lunacy was coeval with one’s own.

Ron Paul Political Report—November, 1989: Bohemian Grove

“The annual Grove encampment began with the pagan ‘Cremation of Care’ ceremony, with Druid priests dressed in tight, multicolored robes. Even stranger, says Weiss, ‘vaguely homosexual undertones suffused this spectacle, as they do much of the ritualized life in the Grove.’ Indeed, there’s sex at the Grove: female prostitutes outside the camp (and inside, in past years, we’re told) and–says Weiss–a young man on his own gets ‘frequent invitations from gay Bohemians.’” Once again, the real horror of international conspiracy and political capture is vivified not by policy decisions but because dudes might kiss each other or have sex after marriage or engage in some mindless, meaningless ritual that is non-Christian.

“In his speech to fellow Bohemians, Reagan advocated the old Trilateralist agenda item of four-year terms for Congressmen… and more government regulation of the media, to keep articles like Weiss’ out of print…. When a Time reporter and photographer tried to do the same sort of story in 1982, it was spiked by Time’s Trilateral publisher.” In classic conspiracist narrative, any dislike of the media is explicit dislike of conspiracists’ contribution to media, and their failures to appear in mass media indicate a systemic muzzling, rather than a — to take a free-market example — bottom-line-minded publisher passing on something that nobody with a brain, checkbook or an absence of heavy-metal poisoning will read or care about.

This last page could have been a good point about the USS Liberty and American newspapers’ paralytic fear of offending the State of Israel with accurate reportage of Israeli military overreaction, but the end of the page sabotages that with even more DREAD HOMO CONSPIRACY. As is the case with everything else Ron Paul, a decent idea is ineluctably subsumed by totally crazy nonsense.

For instance: “Congressman Barney Frank (D-MA) said that if he were drummed out of the House, he would take many others with him, including five Republicans he says are closet homosexuals. This threat apparently led the House ethics committee to try to call off further inquiries into the sex lives of Congressmen, and in early October, the Washington Post said that there would be no more talk of sex in Congress. By the end of the month, however, the Washington Times was reporting that ‘senior Democratic officials’ say the Congressional gym has become a hotbed of homosexual activity, presumably by Republicans.”

Ron Paul Political Report—November, 1992: Buy My Book! Buy My Book! Buy My Book on Abortion! Abortion and Property Rights Are Essentially the Same. They’re a Matter of Privacy, Unlike Abortion, Which is Not Privacy but Property. We Cannot Legislate Property at the Federal Level, However… (Votes for Every Federal Abortion Ban Available) Property and the Person Theoretically If Von Mises and Things, Cogito, Then…

“Make no mistake: if our culture is not willing to recognize the value of life, it can never be persuaded to recognize the derivative obligations to respect private property, limited government, sound money, etc. That’s why the opinions of the medical elite are a threat to our entire civilization. (Want a copy of my latest book on abortion? It’s available for $10 from our office.)”

Ron Paul Political Report—October, 1992: Carjacking: A Hip-Hop Thing to Do

“If you live in a major city, you’ve probably already heard about the newest threat to your life and limb, and your family: carjacking. It is the hip-hop thing to do among the urban youth who play unsuspecting whites like pianos. The youth simply walk up to a car they like, pull a gun, tell the family to get out, steal their jewelry and wallets, and take the car to wreck. Such actions have ballooned in the recent months. In the old days, average people could avoid such youth by staying out of bad neighborhoods. Empowered by media, police, and political complicity, however, the youth now roam everywhere looking for cars to steal and people to rob. What can you do? More and more Americans are carrying a gun in the car. An ex-cop I know advises that if you have to use a gun on a youth, you should leave the scene immediately, disposing of the wiped off gun as soon as possible. Such a gun cannot, of course, be registered to you, but one bought privately (through the classifieds, for example).”

Now try reading that quote again, but replace the word “youth” with “nigger.” Let’s not pretend it’s meant to be anything else.

Ron Paul Survival Report—January 1993: A Youth Culture of Ghetto Values

“Nearly every other group but whites are allowed a certain degree of cultural autonomy. Blacks have black schools, clubs, and neighborhoods. The same is true of Hispanics. It is human nature that like attracts likes. But whites are not allowed to express this same human impulse. Except in a de facto sense, there can be no white schools, white clubs, or white neighbor hoods [sic]. The political system demands white integration, while allowing black segregation. The youth culture is already driven by ghetto music and ghetto values…. And the sexual ethics of our youth are also degenerating to the level of the ghetto.”

Ron Paul Survival Report—January, 1994: Gay People Enjoy Getting AIDS

“They enjoy the attention and pity that comes with being sick. Put it all together, and you’ve got another wave of AIDS infections, that you, dear taxpayer, will be asked to pay for.”

Ron Paul Survival Report—January, 1995: Ten Militia Commandments

“You can’t kill a Hydra by cutting off it’s head.” “Keep the group size down.” “Keep quiet and you’re harder to find.”

“Don’t keep all your eggs in one basket. If you have more than one rifle, store it in a hideaway spot.” “Hide your best eggs from prying eyes. Destroy any documents or discs that become unnecessary.” “Bojangles Robinson ain’t the only one who can tap. Avoid the phone as much as possible.” “Remember you’re not alone.”

Ron Paul Survival Report—July, 1994: America Has Less Crime Than Europe When You Take out All the Black People

The analysis from “Criminologist Jared Taylor” comes from a man who believes in white supremacy and eugenics laws and is featured as an interviewee on websites like this.

Ron Paul Survival Report—March, 1993: Clinton’s Illegitimate Children

“During the presidential campaign, black activist Robert ‘Say’ McIntosh of Arkansas distributed a list of Clinton’s illegitimate children, black and white: ‘woods colts’ in the backwoods slang…. Why? ‘Bill Clinton told me he would get my son out of prison,’ McIntosh said in an interview, according to a front page story in the Washington Times.”

You, too, should be stunned to see a Ron Paul newsletter alleging that Bill Clinton fucks black people, according to a black person connected to a black person in jail, printed in the ridiculously far-right Moonie Times. The only thing this story lacks is the idea that Clinton himself is secretly black. Not that insinuating that would have any resonance with people who like Ron Paul solely for freedom’s sake and who cannot be racist because “racism is a form of collectivism.” No, of course not.

This first page hysterically predicts the worst tax rises in history, ignoring actual history. That’s par for the course. The second page keeps elaborating on fantasies that wouldn’t even be nightmarish to any American in 1955. But, just for good measure, it includes, “You Can’t Fire a Freak,” in which being a transsexual is not only deviant but also the first sign of runaway lawsuits!

Ron Paul Survival Report—November, 1994: Militia Movements, A Magnificent Sign!

“This radical new movement is a magnificent sign of the times, one of many indications that the central state faces massive resistance from average people and is losing its grip on political power…. It’s the domination of the country by Washington that is driving the militia and other heroic movements around the country.”

“If you belong to one of these groups, be careful not to let down your guard too easily if at all…. Big government is forever, says the Beltway elite. But don’t believe it. If people form their own communities of internal protection, the central state becomes an even more obvious parasite. It is an encouraging sign that the end of government as we know it may be near.”

Ron Paul Survival Report—September, 1994: Those Who Don’t Commit Sodomy, Who Don’t Get a Blood Transfusion and Who Don’t Swap Needles Are Virtually Assured of Not Getting AIDS Unless They Are Deliberately Infected by a Malicious Gay

The above title is the money quote from this piece. Coming in second: “On sharing needles: this is one of the customs among dopers. They use the same needle out of addict solidarity. Sterile syringes would be just as available on the black market as illegal drugs if the demand were there. Addicts want to share needles. Too bad they have to die so expensively at taxpayers’ expense.”

Ron Paul Political Report—December, 1989: Needlin, Jesse Jackson, Homos, Reverse Racism and Washington FOR BLACKS ONLY

Paul writes, “My old colleague, Congressman Bill Dannemeyer (R-CA), speaks out despite the organized power of the gay lobby…. Here are some excerpts from one of his recent speeches:

“AIDS was ‘originally known as GRIDS–gay related immune deficiency syndrome.’ For political reasons, it was changed to AIDS. “A whole political movement has been created and sustained on a single notion: homosexual sodomy.”

“The average homosexual has 1,000 or more partners in a lifetime, and the average homosexual has only one sexual enounter per partner and never sees the person again after that encounter.”

It goes on, and it’s ridiculous, and no assertion made in it passes a laugh test or any clinical rigorousness, which you’d think would matter to someone billing himself as “Dr.” Paul.

“To be white in Washington, however, is to experience a culture that is anti-white and proud of it…. Professors teach that whites are committing genocide against blacks and invented crack and AIDS as part of the plan.”

Agreed. That’s just nutty. Everyone knows that AIDS was invented by the WHO, at an Army base in Maryland, as part of a massive federal government control plan. Look at all these blacks: they even try to steal conspiracies against whites.

“Today only a race-obsessed society will do, with State power enforcing official discrimination in favor of blacks. Of course, there are racist whites. But outside of a miniscule band of KKK members, there are few whose racism is the defining fact of their lives. Too many D.C. blacks, on the other hand, are charter members in what we might call the BBB. Washington–with its racist government, racist radio, racist ministers, racist universities, and racist attitudes–is the black New Jerusalem, so no white is supposed to question it. Or so says William Raspberry. Excuse me for not buying it.”

A Personal Letter from Ron Paul About How You Can Give Him More Money

We return to the nut of all this, Ron Paul, who allegedly made millions off these newsletters, bilking the undereducated, paranoid and racist for more “unreal” paper dollars, has one last appeal:

Dear Supporter,

As a special thank you, if you subscribe before the Presidential Convention on September 5, you may have my newsletter for an unprecedented 50% off ($49.50)!

- Ron

And we arrive at the beginning.

The is the nugget and the nugatory fact of the Ron Paul experience: everything inspirational and aspirational about the Ron Paul candidacy is as nakedly fungible as every word above. When he was not in office, for $49.95, you could buy his book about how to be scared shitless about government and invest in the same gold mines he already had shares in. Now that he’s in government and angling for a higher position, you are even more compelled to stave off categorical economic collapse by investing even more than $49.95 in his campaign. And if his campaign goes nowhere, try googling something other than “RON PAUL” and whether candidates can pocket donations.

Still, on any map of moral behavior, this is a man who merits no one’s esteem. To return to a comment above, he either believes these paranoiac, divisive, racial and sexually malicious things and wrote them himself, or he recognized the cynical political value in trading in them, or he was so stupid that not a word above was written by him, yet it carried his name anyway.

There is no win here. There is no good here. Any bargain you strike where the above doesn’t matter is a bargain you strike by saying, “I accept the above. I accept it and consider it immaterial to my wants going forward.” There are precious few and very slender platforms on which that kind of thin-sliced appreciation can stand without wobbling and falling into a ditch. For almost everybody, that bargain trades away your own goodness. That bargain shelves your credibility as a human being. It means you lose.

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Buses from 40 Russian cities remind of Stalin on the Day of Victory over Nazism

A total of 40 cities in the former Soviet Union (including Moscow, St. Petersburg-Leningrad, Stalingrad-Volgograd, Kiev, Minsk, Tallinn and Riga) decorate their buses with the image of former Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, on the occasion of the upcoming May 9, commemorating the Day of Victory over Nazism by the Red Army in the so-called “Great Patriotic War.”

The Soviet Union at that time led by Stalin, was also the country that suffered more casualties for the liberation of Europe with a total of about 10,600,000 (6,829,437 3,300,000 killed in action and prisoners of war died in captivity), the country that actually did retreat to the Nazi troops since the victory of Stalingrad, time to which the British and Americans waited to see if Hitler did the work for which the multinationals had created: destroy the workers’ state.

However, the Red Army forced the Yankees and English to run a hurry, while the Germans left them practically free step while focusing its efforts on the eastern front, to prevent the Soviet people got too far west in their release Europe. Despite the joint efforts of capitalism and fascism, the Soviets entered the first in Berlin battle that killed some 360,000 Soviet soldiers, well above the German casualties.

The organizer of the campaign “Victory Bus” Viktor Loginov, said that these buses will be operational on 6 May, although he pointed out that still need to gather about 150,000 rubles (3,805 euros) to ensure the successful launch of the campaign. So far, workers have been involved heavily with their contributions.

This initiative was first held in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) in 2010 and is intended to “deal with counterfeiting over the Soviet Union.” The organizing committee members have said they do not belong to any political or public organization, but the Russians are quite sick of the lies organized by the West and capitalism against Stalin and World War II.

The first, against Stalin, curiously are the same as Goebbels invented for their anti-Soviet propaganda campaigns, the latter, those created by Hollywood and similar industries lie to the gullible think that was the Americans who defeated Hitler (in rather than their financial backers, as actually happened).

And, if something does not bear ever endured or the capitalists, is to remember what they had been after 1917, when Soviet workers showed that the pattern and the capitalist are not essential for the construction of a state that also become the leading world power, economic, social and military and how it came to defeat in 1945 his attempt to end communism by Hitler and Nazism.

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Italy: Mass Mobilizations Against Anti-People Policies of Terror

A bomb exploded this morning at a professional institute of Brindisi. A 16 year old student has been killed and nine wounded. Only for a few minutes there was not a slaughter.

From the postwar period until today, in Italy, in times of acute economic crisis and political uncertainty and political imbalance appears terrorism, massacres, covert actions. The heinous and unprecedented attacks today is no exception to this logic which is situated in a reactionary. Is a blow against any assumption of change, by the stubborn defense of the privileges and interests of dominant groups and criminal clans linked to them, grown and consolidated many years of wrong doing, and anti-neoliberal policy.

It’s a bomb to intimidate the working masses, the people, to stop the popular and social struggle takes place around the country to roll back the mass movement that refuses to pay the debt crisis of capitalism and reject the blackmail of a corrupt political class tied to the Mafia as a phenomenon inseparable from the establishment.

It’s a bomb to terrorize the public and derechizar axis of political life, favoring authoritarian decisions, militarize the country and propel fascism.

The performers and organizers are the same that have bloodied us, Portella della Ginestra country from Piazza Fontana of Brescia to Bologna, Florence, etc.., Hitting the working class and the masses. Organized forces are present in the vital points of the bourgeois state, consisting of Masonic lodges and mafia, fascist and secret services “perverts” with paramilitary structures, criminal gangs and political cover protected, complicity in high places, and environments organic relations Atlantic.

This block anti-communist and anti-worker, has decades of impunity, now uses the abolition of bourgeois democracy fact determined by imposing the oligarchic government that favors Monti reactionary measures recently approved by the passivity of the reformist leaders and domes union to go on the attack and condition the country politically.

The prolonged economic crisis and the breakdown of the political, criminal groups makes these more aggressive, willing to participate in the capitalist offensive against the rights and freedom of workers to serve the monopoly sectors who seek to eliminate freedom democratic workers, change the way state and strengthen the policy of war.

The popular response has been immediate. In hundreds of cities has been on the streets to protest against the barbaric attack and express their sorrow and solidarity with the young hit. But not enough. We must continue and deepen the demonstrations. Students, young people are called to respond together with their struggle in school and in the street. We demand the immediate convocation of the general strike.

Reactionary and fascist plans can be prevented with the fighting spirit and unity of the working class struggle and the people. It is more necessary than ever the answer and the rebellion of class and mass designs to prevent reactionary and undemocratic government take Monti. In addition to the “social cohesion”, the defense of an apparatus of repression, are responsible for the terrorist policy!

By this battle will open the way for profound political rupture, radical, with the current system, will play a government of workers and other exploited workers and popular classes, based on councils and committees that will ensure workers’ and people driving social transformation without mercy to the exploiters, the parasites, enemies of the people.

May 19, 2012 Communist Piattaforma

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Communist Party of Benin: Press for Activists and Supporters

PRESS

Activists and supporters

At the initiative of the Union is the Nation, a consultation took place on the political situation in Benin in connection with the excesses of autocratic President Yayi Boni. This consultation took place CODIAM Cotonou on 13 June 2012 under the leadership of the Honourable IDJI Kolawolé.

The PCB was invited and participated. Most participants who spoke expressed concern about serious violations of freedoms and Yayi Boni’s Slide of the national economy.

The PCB reiterated its position on the autocratic power of Yayi Boni need to hunt here and now if we want to see the country preserve its democratic achievements and initiate development. In support of this position, the roadmap of the Government Transition Patriotic indicated by its secretary Philippe Noudjènoumè 1 since March 10, 2012.

The PCB said that each organization, whether political parties, trade unions, organizations defending human rights, civil society must be encouraged to be clear in defending the interests of the people against the excesses observed . This through public statements, various events (statements, marches, strikes, etc..). After these concrete actions in the mobilization and organization it will be possible to build alliances to fight to achieve the objective of the hour: Yayi Boni be from.

Cotonou, 13 June 2012

The Communist Party of Benin

Source

ICMLPO: On the General Elections (Spain)

Communist Party of Spain (Marxist-Leninist)

Communiqué

In yesterday’s general elections, the strong turn to the right in the institutions that began on May 22 has been consolidated. The PP [Popular Party] achieved a comfortable absolute majority that, together with its control of City Councils and Autonomous Regions, will allow it to govern with an iron hand during the hard times to come.

The PSOE [Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party] with 110 seats has achieved the worse result in its recent history: a well-deserved punishment, inasmuch as its anti-popular and reactionary policy has been the key that has opened the door to the right, just as in his day Felipe Gonzalez and his government team did. On both occasions, right-wing social democracy has imposed a neoliberal and reactionary policy, leading to the harshest attacks against the labor, social and political rights of the workers majority; the latest attack: the reform of the monarchic Constitution, agreed on with the PP.

The United Left, in spite of the euphoria of its leaders, has not added anything close to the votes lost by the PSOE (an important part of these more than four million votes has gone to the UPyD [Union, Progress and Democracy], a dangerous reactionary force, which preaches a populist discourse) and is almost a million lower than its best result.

The abstention, which has grown more than 30% in the last fifteen years until it has now surpassed 9.5 million, has become the second highest electoral choice. Due to the lack of a well-known (and recognizable) reference, the left voters have abstained massively, also on this occasion.

The only exception was Amaiur, the coalition between Bildu and Aralar, which has been reinforced as the first electoral force in the Basque Country, achieving 7 deputies, which allows them to form a parliamentary group. And thus, the Abertzale forces have always maintained their political coherence. The success of Amaiur is the result of not yielding to the continuous pressure and threats of the regime; thus one cannot rule out a scenario like one in which the forces of the Spanish chauvinism of the Jose Antonio type want to deepen their policy of systematic negation of the political rights of such an important part of Basque citizens. We must be alert.

This is nothing new. The institutional map, as we pointed out in our analysis of the elections for the municipalities and autonomous regions, does not allow for soothing stories. The electorate has clearly moved to the right, while the left mainly continues to be divided and obstinate in continuing to respect the rules of game established during the transition.

This sweeping victory of a reactionary force replete with elements nostalgic for the Franco era and corrupt politicians may seem strange, at times like the present, on which the oligarchy is fighting to increase its attack against the popular classes. But the PP has not won due to its own merits. The new treason perpetrated by a “social-democratic” government has led many citizens to seek revenge with a massive punishment vote by looking towards the only force with the possibility of winning a majority. The recourse to the useful vote that the institutional left espouses to win the support of its voters has ended up turning against it.

Of course this is not encouraging news. The masses continue to be disoriented, their rejection of politics and politicians prevails, a visceral attitude that does not augur anything good.

We are now experiencing the consequences of the treason of the docile left, its systematic rejection of the social movements, its imposition of forgetting history and apoliticism, as instruments to guarantee the acceptance of a regime with phony democratic glitter, in which its representatives in the main institutions have acted in their immense majority of allies of consensus, carrying out a pragmatic and short-sighted policy, on the back of the needs and priorities of the people. The consequences of an anti-democratic electoral law, custom made – to guarantee control of the institutions by the most docile forces that accept the political framework of the monarchy.

The oligarchy seems to be afraid to exhaust the popular expectations too quickly, that the depth of the crisis and the brutality of the measures that they are going to apply will end up completely unmasking the regime and open up a period of social conflict that will drift into a more general confrontation; fear that in the class struggle that is sharpening, the popular camp will end up uniting its forces to respond politically in a fight that will finally overcome big capital.

But, in spite of the “conciliator” tone of Rajoy [leader of the PP and Prime Minister elect – translator’s note] in his first public address, nobody should expect a lull in the attacks. The speed will be determined by what fits the markets and its lackeys. But reality is stubborn and in the next months we will see how Rajoy and his team will deepen the policy of privatization and dismantling the social and political rights begun by Zapatero.

No one should have any doubt that, if they need to, the social liberal leaders will offer to reinforce their State policy. There are no essential contradictions in the reactionary camp: just as they united their forces to impose the reform of the Constitution, they will impose the orders they receive from those who really set the political agenda: the imperialist bourgeoisie.

After learning the result, Cayo Lara [leader of the United Left – translator’s note] declared that its parliamentary group will be spokespersons in Parliament for the fights in the street. We hope and trust that it will be so. The United Left cannot try to dominate the left, it cannot continue refusing to seek unity with other forces in a common program, nor can it persist in claiming that the main problem that the left has faced in these elections is an electoral law that punishes them compared to other forces with a smaller vote.

It is true that the perverse existing electoral law harms them in an inadmissible way, but the deep causes of the indifference of the popular classes with the left must be seen beyond that, in the fact that it lacks its own approach, independent and confronting the monarchic regime, which has conditioned (and it continues doing so) its policy in the institutions.

The left must draw a single and evident conclusion: it is more necessary than ever to advance towards unity. Not any kind of unity, but one that is based on a clear and forceful position of rejection of the regime, by an genuinely democratic framework and, thus, a republican one. To continue to fight dispersed, or even worse, serving as allies of liberal social leaders who have proven time and again that, in their commitment to the oligarchy, they are prepared to sacrifice their own political expectations, as Zapatero showed in his public statement on the electoral result, would be suicidal.

To start on the road to consistent unity of the left, the Republicans have been born, a federation that our Party fully supports and that, despite all the obstacles and pitfalls, has presented candidates in eight electoral districts and developed organizational nuclei in many provinces.

Since its first Assembly, held last October 1, the Republicans have insisted that their objective went beyond elections and made clear that their expectations of it were very limited. The result, however, has been hopeful; the electoral battle has allowed it to begin to launch an organization that is prepared to call its next assembly with the participation of the newly arisen nuclei.

Very harsh months are coming. The European Union of capital and war is taking steps to put an end to any remaining sovereignty of the member States. They demand total submission of all the States to the dictates of the central oligarchy: in Italy they have imposed a government of “technocrats” committed to big capital; in Greece a “government of national unity” in which, together with the social liberals and the rightists of New Democracy, the extreme right is taking part. In Spain, where the economic crisis is very far from touching bottom, the victory of the right, the dispersion of the left and disenchantment of the social majority threatens to generate an explosive situation. We are entering a period in which days can seem like years, with constant changes. The political image arisen from the elections of November 10 will not last long.

November 21, 2011

Secretariat of the Central Committee of the PCE (ML)

Source

PCMLE: Important step in the popular movement

Three events of great importance to the organized popular movement has been made in these days in the country: the national congresses of the FESE, FEUE and UNE. Highlighted in all of these is the massive presence of delegates, the broad participation of these in their debates to define policy guidelines for action and future tasks, and the unitary character of them all. And there is a fourth element matching in these events and it is the decision to continue facing the anti-popular policy of the government of Rafael Correa that differs little from its predecessors.

By different means the government has tried to affect the action of these organizations. Efforts to divide have been more but failed, the economic boycott in the case of UNE-has not worked, nor the persistent campaign of vilification and slander launched by the President himself. After their Congress FESE, UNE and FEUE out unified and strengthened, with provision to raise new actions to fight for specific claims and general benefit of the peoples of Ecuador.

Their resolutions are agree to work for strengthening the unity of the people’s organizations, who maintain a policy of independence and opposition to the government to create a front for action to face in better way with the populist and demagogic regime of Rafael Correa. The experience of work together in the No campaign gives impulse to this line of action.

The events in question, like that of the CONAIE made weeks ago, show that the government does not have the support of organized popular movement. Of course they are not the only organizations that maintain such behavior, also it has the trade unions, peasants, youth , women, population, artists organizations, etc. This is a great weakness of the regime and a great strength of those fighting against the government from the left and progressive positions, so these days the government is working to show the existence of unions or associations that support it, for which they have the action of defectors from the popular movement, revisionists and opportunists of all kinds who bill each of its movements

No doubt the organized popular movement has gained a new political victory with these events.

Source

The Night Zhou was Drunk Under the Table

By Ian Williams

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

Although my putative memoirs would be called “I was a Teenage Maoist”, by the time I landed in Beijing I was a callow 21-year-old, a month older than the People’s Republic. In fact, Zhou Enlai, the first premier, from 1949 until his death in 1976, repeated to us his dictum that it was too early to tell whether or not the French Revolution had been a success, let alone China’s. Forty years later, I wonder what Zhou, one of the more sophisticated and cosmopolitan of the Chinese leaders, but nonetheless a devoted communist, would have made of present-day China.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Từ Làng Sen – Phạm Phương Thảo

Leader of Albanian Communist Party Hysni Milloshi Passes Away

Hysni Milloshi
1946-2012

Tirana, 25 April, NOA – In the hours of early morning, died at the age of 66 years old, the chairman of the Communist Party of Albania, Hysni Milloshi.

It reportes that Milloshi died in hospital of Sanatorium, after suffering from pulmonary fibrosis disease.

Milloshi was born in Berat, on 8 November, 1946.

In year 1991, he was the founder and first secretary of the Communist Party of Albania, following the Labour Party of Albania.

During the communist regime, Milloshi was a member of the [Party of Labor of Albania --E.S.].

Source

For Enver Hoxha There is No Death

(ADDRESS DELIVERED BY ETHEM HALILI AT THE GRAVE OF ENVER HOXHA ON THE 15th ANNIVERSARY OF HIS DEATH, 11 APRIL 2000)

Like the people as a whole, the Communists remember Comrade Enver Hoxha with deep respect and honour. It is fifteen years since the day when the heart of the greatest figure who has emerged from the Albanian nation in its entire history ceased to beat, from the day when Enver Hoxha was physically separated from the Party which he created and led for almost half a century, from the people who loved him and which he served unsparingly.

Leaders like Enver Hoxha come rarely. They are thrown up by great epochs and have as their mission the revolutionary transformation of the world. Such was Enver, whose influence was so powerful that the time in which he lived and worked may justly be called the epoch of Enver.

Enver Hoxha was a great statesman, a distinguished diplomat, an able soldier, a brilliant political analyst and organiser — qualities which made him a far-sighted, even visionary, leader.

With the deep Marxist-Leninist thought of Enver Hoxha are indissolubly linked victory in the Anti-Fascist War of National Liberation and the position of Albania on the side of the victorious United Nations. This opened the way to the period of socialist construction, to the creation of a many-sided industry and a modern agriculture which not only met the needs of the country but produced a growing surplus for export. This opened the way to the construction of a secure defence system and the development of an educational system which transformed the country from one with 90% illiteracy into one with a university and an Academy of Sciences.

Enver Hoxha was the distinguished founder and leader of the Party of Labour of Albania (PLA), which he directed with wisdom for fifty consecutive years. He was the commander of the Army of National Liberation and of our People’s Army, a tireless defender of the country’s freedom and independence. With Enver Hoxha at the head of the Party, Albania was truly an independent, sovereign country whose voice was heard in the international arena, a country which no one dared to attempt to bully and which indisputably enjoyed the respect of oppressed people and revolutionaries all over the world.

The greatness of the figure of Enver Hoxha stands out all the more when we look at what the country has suffered since his death, with the return of reaction and the restoration of capitalism. Everything the people had constructed with effort and sacrifice over fifty years under the leadership the PLA and Enver Hoxha was totally destroyed from the foundations, the country and the people faced mass unemployment, as a result of which Albanians were forced into emigration or into employment to work as the servants of others. Crime, corruption, prostitution and other evils associated with capitalist society spread. Albania lost not only its good name but also its sovereignty. For ten years a whole team of propagandists inspired and directed by the international bourgeoisie has poured out insults and demagogy with the aim of distorting the truth, denying the work of Enver Hoxha and striving to blacken his figure.

But this was in vain. The people understand very well what has happened, and long for the return of the time of Enver. The more time passes, the higher his figure towers on the horizon, the brighter the rays of his teachings shine.

By communists and by honest people Enver Hoxha has always been loved and respected. He has left to us a very precious inheritance — the theory and practice we need to guide us in the great and difficult battles which lie ahead.

His teachings call for the unity of communists into a single party, for the broadening of the links of the communists with the people, for the strengthening and tempering of that unity. Only in this way can we put ourselves in a position to fulfil these tasks successfully, to realise the historic mission to which we have dedicated ourselves.

As we commemorate today the figure of Enver Hoxha, his work and his name, we bow with deep respect and at the same time pledge ourselves to work with revolutionary dedication and without sparing ourselves, to keep alive communist ideals, to be guided at all times and at every step by the compass of the teachings of Enver, to work to realise his last wish that Albania should always march forward red, like the hearts of the communists and partisans.

Eternal glory to the immortal work and name of Enver Hoxha!

Lenin on Class Struggle Under Socialism

“Socialism means the abolition of classes. The dictatorship of the proletariat has done all it could to abolish classes. But classes cannot be abolished at one stroke.

And classes still remain and will remain in the era of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The dictatorship will become unnecessary when classes disappear. Without the dictatorship of the proletariat they will not disappear.

Classes have remained, but in the era of the dictatorship of the proletariat every class has undergone a change, and the relations between the classes have also changed. The class struggle does not disappear under the dictatorship of the proletariat; it merely assumes different forms.”

— Lenin, “Economics And Politics In The Era Of The Dictatorship Of The Proletariat,” Pravda, 1919.