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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On the deaths in Stalin’s USSR

In the West, when Stalin’s name is mentioned, the first thing that comes to mind is the “millions of deaths” under his “ruthless regime”. For decades, fascist and capitalist propagandists alike perpetuated this vision of Stalin as a monster, employing the best World War 2 and Cold War propagandists to slander Stalin’s role as a statesman. What is the truth behind this claims? I hope to shed some light on the matter.

As has been now resolved, the varying numbers of deaths under the Stalin administration are a product of propaganda, and have hence been wildly exaggerated. The evidence found in Russian archives, opened up by the capitalist roader Yeltsin, put the total number of death sentences from 1923 to 1953, the post-Lenin Soviet Union, between 775,866 and 786,098^a. To this we must add up the 40,000 who may have been executed without trial and unofficially^b. If we add up the numbers, what we get achieve is 800,000 executions in a period of 36 years, less than the lives claimed by the dictatorship of the CIA-backed anti-communist Suharto in Indonesia in a time span of 2 years. This is not to say the deaths are to be condoned, but it raises an important question: if less lives have been claimed by the Soviet Union under Stalin than Suharto’s Indonesia, why is Stalin demonized to that extent when Suharto is rarely even known among pro-capitalists?

We shall answer this question in a future post about cultural hegemony, let’s now continue with our examination of Soviet deaths. Because the figure of 800,000 executions includes those persons sentenced to death but had, for instance, their sentences reduced^a, this too may be an overestimation. In fact, in a research by Vinton, evidence has been provided indicating that the number of executions was significantly below the number of civilian prisoners sentenced to death in the USSR, with only 7,305 executions in a sample of 11,000 prisoners authorized to be executed in 1940 (or around 60%)^c. In addition, 681,692 of the 780,000 or so death sentences were issued during the Great Purge (1937-1938 period)^a.

Initially, the NKVD, under Yezhov’s orders, set a cap of 186,500 imprisonments and 72,950 death penalties for a 1937 special operation to combat the threat of foreign and internal subversion. The operation was decided upon after the discovery of Bonapartist plots against the government, led by Tukhacevsky, whose links with opportunist factions within the Party caused total panic. The NKVD’s orders had to be carried out by troikas, 3-men tribunals^a. As the troikas passed sentences before the accused had even been arrested, local authorities requested increases in their own quotas, and there was an official request in 1938 for a doubling of the amount of prisoner transport that had been initially requisitioned to carry out the original campaign quotas of the tribunals^d.

However, even if there had been twice as many actual executions as originally planned, which I would doubt, the number would still be less than 150,000. Many, in fact, may have had their death sentence refused or revoked by authorities before arrest or execution could take place, especially since Stalin, Molotov and Beria later realized that excesses had been committed in the 1937-38 period (the Great Purge), had a number of convictions overturned, and had many of the responsible local leaders punished^e. Soviet records indicate only about 300,000 actual arrests for anti-Soviet activities or political crimes during this 1937-1938 interval. With a ratio of 1 execution for every 3 arrests as originally specified by the NKVD, that would imply about 100,000 executions. Since some of the people sentenced to death may have already been in confinement, and since there is some evidence of a 50,000 increase in the total number of deaths in labor camps over the 1937-38 interval that was probably caused by such executions, the total number executed by the troika campaign would probably be around 150,000^a. There were also 30,514 death sentences passed by military courts and 4,387 by regular courts during the 1937-38 period, but, even if all these death sentences were carried out, the total number remains under 200,000. Such a low number seems especially likely given the fact that aggregate death rates from all causes throughout the Soviet Union were actually lower in 1937-38 than in prior years^f, possibly a result of universal health care, vaccination and an improvement in living standards.

Assuming the remaining 100,000 or so death sentences passed in the other years of Stalin’s administration (1923-1936 and 1939-53) resulted in a 60% execution rate, as per the Vinton sample, the total number executed by the Soviet Union during the period would be about 250,000. Even with the thousands executed between 1917 and 1921, it is plausible that the number of unarmed civilians killed between 1917-1953 amounted to considerably less than a quarter million given that thousands of these victims may have been Soviet soldiers, given that many may have been armed bandits and guerrillas, and given that at least 14,000 of the actual executions were of foreign prisoners of war^c.

A USA former attache to the Soviet Union, George Kennan, has stated that the number executed was really only in the tens of thousands^g, and so it is very likely that the true number of people killed by the Soviet Union over its entire history (including the thousands killed in Afghanistan) is too small for the country to make it even in the top ten in mass murders (unlike the United States of America, but that’s for another day). There were no doubt many innocent victims during the 1937-38 Stalin purge, but it should also be mentioned that there is substantial evidence from the Soviet archives of Soviet citizens advocating treasonable offenses such as the violent overthrow of the Soviet government or foreign invasion of the Soviet Unionⁱ. In addition, the Soviet Union felt itself so threatened by subversion and imminent military invasions by Japan and Germany (which occurred in full force in 1938 and 1941, respectively) that it perceived a need to undertake a nationwide campaign to eliminate potential internal enemies. Moreover, these external threats were further fueled by the fact that the Russian nobility and czarists (over a million of whom had emigrated after the communist revolution in 1917) had given financial aid to the German Nazis in the 1930s for the purpose of using them (once they had successfully taken power in Germany) to help them overthrow the Soviet government^j. Forged documents and misinformation spread by Nazi Germany to incriminate innocent and patriotic Soviets also contributed to Soviet paranoia^k. It must also be remembered that Soviet fear of foreign-sponsored subversion in the 1930s existed within the context of guerrilla warfare fought against the Soviet Union by some of the same groups of people who had fought with the foreign invaders against the Soviet Union in the 1918-22 Foreign Interventionist Civil War. While the 1937-38 purges were very repressive and tragic by almost any measure, they may have helped prevent the fascists from inciting a successful rebellion or coup in the Soviet Union. Such a threat was a very real one given that the German Nazis did succeed in using political intrigues, threats, economic pressure, and offers of territorial gains to bring other Eastern European countries into their orbit, including Bulgaria, Romania, and Hungary, as well as Yugoslavia for a short period of time^h, given that the Soviet Union had been subjected to a brutal 1918-22 civil war which was launched by rebels who were supported by over a million foreign invading troops from over a dozen capitalist countries, given that there was a large amount of sabotage committed by Soviet citizens in the 1930s, and given that there were a significant number of Soviet dissidents who were in favor of overthrowing the Soviet government even if it required an invasion by Germany or some other foreign powerⁱ. In addition, many people may have worked independently to sabotage the Soviet Union in the hope that they would thereby contribute to a foreign overthrow of the Soviet Union, especially since Nazi Germany did make extensive efforts to incite uprisings, cause subversive actions, and create ethnic conflicts in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Despite the Soviet Union’s success in defeating the subsequent invasions by fascist Japan (in 1938) and Germany (1941-44), the danger posed by the Nazi spies and saboteurs in Eastern Europe is illustrated by the fact that the CIA considered them so effective that it adopted virtually the entire Nazi network into its own system of terrorism in Eastern Europe after World War II^l.

Evidence from the Soviet archives indicates that the officials responsible for the political repression of the 1930s sincerely felt the victims were guilty of some crime such as sabotage, spying, or treason, and many of the executions of the Great Purge were reported in the local Soviet press at the time. Even when there was proven to be no direct connection between the accused and the fascist foreign powers, there was often a strong belief that the suspects were foreign sympathizers who were working on their own (without formal direction) to contribute to the overthrow of the Soviet Union. It should also be noted that much of the 1937-38 repression, often called the Great Purge, was actually directed against the widespread banditry and criminal activity (such as theft, smuggling, misuse of public office for personal gain, and swindles) that was occurring in the Soviet Union at the time^m. In addition to the executions, there were also many imprisoned, and hundreds of thousands of people were expelled from the Communist Party during the Great Purge for being incompetent, corrupt, and/or excessively bureaucratic, with such targeting of inept or dishonest Soviet bureaucrats being fairly popular among the average Soviet citizensⁱ. Like the myths of millions of executions, the fairy tales that Stalin had tens of millions of people arrested and permanently thrown into prison or labor camps to die in the 1930-53 interval are untrue. In particular, the Soviet archives indicate that the number of people in Soviet prisons, gulags, and labor camps in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s averaged about 2 million, of whom 20-40% were released each year^a. This average, which includes desperate World War II years, is similar to the number imprisoned in the USA in the 1990s and is only slightly higher as a percentage of the population. It should also be noted that the annual death rate for the Soviet interned population was about 4%, which incorporates the effect of prisoner executions^a. Excluding the desperate World War II years, the death rate in the Soviet prisons, gulags, and labor camps was only 2.5%^a, which is below that of the average citizen in Russia under the tsar in peacetime in 1913^f. This finding is not very surprising, given that about 1/3 of the confined people were not even required to workⁿ, and given that the maximum work week was 84 hours in even the harshest Soviet labor camps during the most desperate wartime years^o. The latter maximum (and unusual) work week actually compares favorably to the 100-hour work weeks that existed even for “free” 6-year old children during peacetime in the Gilded era and industrial revolution^p(shoutout to libertarians), although it may seem high compared to the 7-hour day worked by the typical Soviet citizen under Stalinⁱ.

In addition, it should also be mentioned that most of the arrests under Stalin were motivated by an attempt to stamp out crimes such as banditry, theft, misuse of public office for personal gain, smuggling, and swindles, with less than 10% of the arrests during Stalin’s rule being for political reasons or secret police matters^a. The Soviet archives reveal a great deal more political dissent permitted in Stalin’s Soviet Union (including a widespread amount of criticism of individual government policies and local leaders) than is normally perceived in the Westⁱ. Given that the regular police, the political or secret police, prison guards, some national guard troops, and fire fighters (who were in the same ministry as the police) comprised scarcely 0.2% of the Soviet population under Stalin^e, severe repression would have been impossible even if the Soviet Union had wanted to exercise it. In comparison, the USA today has many times more police as a percentage of the population (about 1%), not to mention prison guards, national guard troops, and fire fighters included in the numbers used to compute the far smaller 0.2% ratio for the Soviet Union. In any event, it is possible that the communist countries of Eastern Europe would have become politically less repressive and more democratic (especially over time), if there hadn’t been overt and covert efforts by capitalist powers to overthrow their governments, including subversion conducted in the USSR as late as the 1980s that the USA government admitted to in the 1990s. These efforts at violent subversion were initially carried out mostly by the British (before World War II) and then later more so by the USA through the CIA, which did succeed violently overthrowing a very democratic communist government in Chile in 1973. If the communists had truly been as evil and dictatorial as they are portrayed to be in the capitalist press, the peaceful revolution of 1989 in Eastern Europe (with virtually no related deaths except in Romania) could never have occurred.

Sources:

a: Getty, Ritterspom, and Zemskov, “Victims of the Soviet Penal System in the Pre-War Years: A First Approach on the Basis of Archival Evidence”

http://sovietinfo.tripod.com/GTY-Penal_System.pdf

b: Hellmut Andics, “Rule of Terror”

c: Louisa Vinton, “The Katyn Documents: Politics and History.”

d: Amy Knight, “Beria, Stalin’s First Lieutenant”

http://www.ucis.pitt.edu/nceeer/1993-804-08-Knight.pdf

e: Robert Thurston, “Life and Terror in Stalin s Russia”

f: Stephen Wheatcroft, “More Light on the Scale of Repression and Excess Mortality in the Soviet Union in the 1930s”

http://ebooks.cambridge.org/chapter.jsf?bid=CBO9780511626012&cid=CBO9780511626012A025

g: J. W. Smith, “Economic Democracy: The Political Struggle of the 21st Century”

http://www.abebooks.co.uk/9780765604682/Economic-Democracy-Political-Struggle-21st-076560468X/plp

h: Marshall Miller, “Bulgaria during the Second World War”

i: Sarah Davies, “Popular Opinion in Stalin’s Russia”

http://books.google.com/books/about/Popular_Opinion_in_Stalin_s_Russia.html?id=yTGgOwH_mwgC&redir_esc=y

j: Leslie Feinberg, “The Class Character of German Fascism”

<a href=”http://www.workers.org/ww/1999/fascism0304.php

k: Christopher Andrew and Oleg Gordievsky “KGB: The Inside Story”

l: Von Schnitzler, “Der Rote Kana”

m: John Arch Getty, “Origins of the Great Purges”

http://books.google.com/books/about/Origins_of_the_Great_Purges.html?id=R5zx54LB-A4C&redir_esc=y

n: Edwin Bacon, “The Gulag at War: Stalin’s Forced Labour System in the Light of the Archives”

o: R. J. Rummel, “Lethal Politics”

p: Marx and Engels, “Das Kapital”

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/index.htm

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1885-c2/index.htm

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/index.htm

q: Numbers taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_the_Soviet_Union, which in turn cites Andreev et al, “Naselenie Sovetskogo Soiuza, 1922-1991″

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V.I. Lenin on Religion

“Religion is the opium of the people—this dictum by Marx is the corner-stone of the whole Marxist outlook on religion. Marxism has always regarded all modern religions and churches, and each and every religious organisation, as instruments of bourgeois reaction that serve to defend exploitation and to befuddle the working class.”

– V.I. Lenin, “The Attitude of the Workers’ Party Towards Religion”

“[…] under no circumstances ought we to fall into the error of posing the religious question in an abstract, idealistic fashion, as an “intellectual” question unconnected with the class struggle, as is not infrequently done by the radical-democrats from among the bourgeoisie. It would be stupid to think that, in a society based on the endless oppression and coarsening of the worker masses, religious prejudices could be dispelled by purely propaganda methods. It would be bourgeois narrow-mindedness to forget that the yoke of religion that weighs upon mankind is merely a product and reflection of the economic yoke within society. No number of pamphlets and no amount of preaching can enlighten the proletariat, if it is not enlightened by its own struggle against the dark forces of capitalism. Unity in this really revolutionary struggle of the oppressed class for the creation of a paradise on earth is more important to us than unity of proletarian opinion on paradise in heaven.”

– V.I. Lenin, “Socialism and Religion”

“That is the reason why we do not and should not set forth our atheism in our Programme; that is why we do not and should not prohibit proletarians who still retain vestiges of their old prejudices from associating themselves with our Party. We shall always preach the scientific world-outlook, and it is essential for us to combat the inconsistency of various “Christians”. But that does not mean in the least that the religious question ought to be advanced to first place, where it does not belong at all; nor does it mean that we should allow the forces of the really revolutionary economic and political struggle to be split up on account of third-rate opinions or senseless ideas, rapidly losing all political importance, rapidly being swept out as rubbish by the very course of economic development.”

– V.I. Lenin, “Socialism and Religion”

“[Engels polemicized against those who] gave prominence to religious divisions rather than political divisions, and diverted the attention of some sections of the working class and of the other democratic elements away from the urgent tasks of the class and revolutionary struggle to the most superficial and false bourgeois anti-clericalism. Accusing the would-be ultra-revolutionary Dühring of wanting to repeat Bismarck’s folly in another form, Engels insisted that the workers’ party should have the ability to work patiently at the task of organising and educating the proletariat, which would lead to the dying out of religion, and not throw itself into the gamble of a political war on religion.”

– V.I. Lenin, “The Attitude of the Workers’ Party Towards Religion”

“[…] Engels frequently condemned the efforts of people who desired to be “more left” or “more revolutionary” than the Social-Democrats, to introduce into the programme of the workers’ party an explicit proclamation of atheism, in the sense of declaring war on religion. Commenting in 1874 on the famous manifesto of the Blanquist fugitive Communards who were living in exile in London, Engels called their vociferous proclamation of war on religion a piece of stupidity, and stated that such a declaration of war was the best way to revive interest in religion and to prevent it from really dying out. Engels blamed the Blanquists for being unable to understand that only the class struggle of the working masses could, by comprehensively drawing the widest strata of the proletariat into conscious and revolutionary social practice, really free the oppressed masses from the yoke of religion, whereas to proclaim that war on religion was a political task of the workers’ party was just anarchistic phrase-mongering.

Religion must be declared a private affair. In these words socialists usually express their attitude towards religion. But the meaning of these words should be accurately defined to prevent any misunderstanding. We demand that religion be held a private affair so far as the state is concerned. But by no means can we consider religion a private affair so far as our Party is concerned. Religion must be of no concern to the state, and religious societies must have no connection with governmental authority. Everyone must be absolutely free to profess any religion he pleases, or no religion whatever, i.e., to be an atheist, which every socialist is, as a rule. Discrimination among citizens on account of their religious convictions is wholly intolerable. Even the bare mention of a citizen’s religion in official documents should unquestionably be eliminated. No subsidies should be granted to the established church nor state allowances made to ecclesiastical and religious societies. These should become absolutely free associations of like-minded citizens, associations independent of the state. Only the complete fulfilment of these demands can put an end to the shameful and accursed past when the church lived in feudal dependence on the state, and Russian citizens lived in feudal dependence on the established church, when medieval, inquisitorial laws (to this day remaining in our criminal codes and on our statute-books) were in existence and were applied, persecuting men for their belief or disbelief, violating men’s consciences, and linking cosy government   jobs and government-derived incomes with the dispensation of this or that dope by the established church. Complete separation of Church and State is what the socialist proletariat demands of the modern state and the modern church.

The Russian revolution must put this demand into effect as a necessary component of political freedom. In this respect, the Russian revolution is in a particularly favourable position, since the revolting officialism of the police-ridden feudal autocracy has called forth discontent, unrest and indignation even among the clergy. However abject, however ignorant Russian Orthodox clergymen may have been, even they have now been awakened by the thunder of the downfall of the old, medieval order in Russia. Even they are joining in the demand for freedom, are protesting against bureaucratic practices and officialism, against the spying for the police imposed on the “servants of God”. We socialists must lend this movement our support, carrying the demands of honest and sincere members of the clergy to their conclusion, making them stick to their words about freedom, demanding that they should resolutely break all ties between religion and the police. Either you are sincere, in which case you must stand for the complete separation of Church and State and of School and Church, for religion to be declared wholly and absolutely a private affair. Or you do not accept these consistent demands for freedom, in which case you evidently are still held captive by the traditions of the inquisition, in which case you evidently still cling to your cosy government jobs and government-derived incomes, in which case you evidently do not believe in the spiritual power of your weapon and continue to take bribes from the state. And in that case the class-conscious workers of all Russia declare merciless war on you.”

– V.I. Lenin, “The Attitude of the Workers’ Party Towards Religion”

Left Anticommunism: the Unkindest Cut

BY MICHAEL PARENTI

Despite a lifetime of “shaming” the system, NOAM CHOMSKY, America’s foremost “engagé” intellectual, remains an unrepentant left anticommunist.

In the United States, for over a hundred years, the ruling interests tirelessly propagated anticommunism among the populace, until it became more like a religious orthodoxy than a political analysis. During the Cold War, the anticommunist ideological framework could transform any data about existing communist societies into hostile evidence. If the Soviets refused to negotiate a point, they were intransigent and belligerent; if they appeared willing to make concessions, this was but a skillful ploy to put us off our guard. By opposing arms limitations, they would have demonstrated their aggressive intent; but when in fact they supported most armament treaties, it was because they were mendacious and manipulative. If the churches in the USSR were empty, this demonstrated that religion was suppressed; but if the churches were full, this meant the people were rejecting the regime’s atheistic ideology. If the workers went on strike (as happened on infrequent occasions), this was evidence of their alienation from the collectivist system; if they didn’t go on strike, this was because they were intimidated and lacked freedom. A scarcity of consumer goods demonstrated the failure of the economic system; an improvement in consumer supplies meant only that the leaders were attempting to placate a restive population and so maintain a firmer hold over them. If communists in the United States played an important role struggling for the rights of workers, the poor, African-Americans, women, and others, this was only their guileful way of gathering support among disfranchised groups and gaining power for themselves. How one gained power by fighting for the rights of powerless groups was never explained. What we are dealing with is a nonfalsifiable orthodoxy, so assiduously marketed by the ruling interests that it affected people across the entire political spectrum.

Genuflection to Orthodoxy

Many on the U.S. Left have exhibited a Soviet bashing and Red baiting that matches anything on the Right in its enmity and crudity. Listen to Noam Chomsky holding forth about “left intellectuals” who try to “rise to power on the backs of mass popular movements” and “then beat the people into submission. . . . You start off as basically a Leninist who is going to be part of the Red bureaucracy. You see later that power doesn’t lie that way, and you very quickly become an ideologist of the right. . . . We’re seeing it right now in the [former] Soviet Union. The same guys who were communist thugs two years back, are now running banks and [are] enthusiastic free marketeers and praising Americans” (Z Magazine, 10/95).

Chomsky’s imagery is heavily indebted to the same U.S. corporate political culture he so frequently criticizes on other issues. In his mind, the revolution was betrayed by a coterie of “communist thugs” who merely hunger for power rather than wanting the power to end hunger. In fact, the communists did not “very quickly” switch to the Right but struggled in the face of a momentous onslaught to keep Soviet socialism alive for more than seventy years. To be sure, in the Soviet Union’s waning days some, like Boris Yeltsin, crossed over to capitalist ranks, but others continued to resist free-market incursions at great cost to themselves, many meeting their deaths during Yeltsin’s violent repression of the Russian parliament in 1993.

Some leftists and others fall back on the old stereotype of power-hungry Reds who pursue power for power’s sake without regard for actual social goals. If true, one wonders why, in country after country, these Reds side with the poor and powerless often at great risk and sacrifice to themselves, rather than reaping the rewards that come with serving the well-placed.

For decades, many left-leaning writers and speakers in the United States have felt obliged to establish their credibility by indulging in anticommunist and anti-Soviet genuflection, seemingly unable to give a talk or write an article or book review on whatever political subject without injecting some anti-Red sideswipe. The intent was, and still is, to distance themselves from the Marxist-Leninist Left.

Adam Hochschild: Keeping his distance from the “Stalinist Left” and recommending same posture to fellow progressives.

Adam Hochschild, a liberal writer and publisher, warned those on the Left who might be lackadaisical about condemning existing communist societies that they “weaken their credibility” (Guardian, 5/23/84). In other words, to be credible opponents of the cold war, we first had to join in the Cold-War condemnations of communist societies. Ronald Radosh urged that the peace movement purge itself of communists so that it not be accused of being communist (Guardian, 3/16/83). If I understand Radosh: To save ourselves from anticommunist witchhunts, we should ourselves become witchhunters. Purging the Left of communists became a longstanding practice, having injurious effects on various progressive causes. For instance, in 1949 some twelve unions were ousted from the CIO because they had Reds in their leadership. The purge reduced CIO membership by some 1.7 million and seriously weakened its recruitment drives and political clout. In the late 1940s, to avoid being “smeared” as Reds, Americans for Democratic Action (ADA), a supposedly progressive group, became one of the most vocally anticommunist organizations.

The strategy did not work. ADA and others on the Left were still attacked for being communist or soft on communism by those on the Right. Then and now, many on the Left have failed to realize that those who fight for social change on behalf of the less privileged elements of society will be Red-baited by conservative elites whether they are communists or not. For ruling interests, it makes little difference whether their wealth and power is challenged by “communist subversives” or “loyal American liberals.” All are lumped together as more or less equally abhorrent.

Even when attacking the Right, the left critics cannot pass up an opportunity to flash their anticommunist credentials. So Mark Green writes in a criticism of President Ronald Reagan that “when presented with a situation that challenges his conservative catechism, like an unyielding Marxist-Leninist, [Reagan] will change not his mind but the facts.” While professing a dedication to fighting dogmatism “both of the Right and Left,” individuals who perform such de rigueur genuflections reinforce the anticommunist dogma. Red-baiting leftists contributed their share to the climate of hostility that has given U.S. leaders such a free hand in waging hot and cold wars against communist countries and which even today makes a progressive or even liberal agenda difficult to promote.

A prototypic Red-basher who pretended to be on the Left was George Orwell. In the middle of World War II, as the Soviet Union was fighting for its life against the Nazi invaders at Stalingrad, Orwell announced that a “willingness to criticize Russia and Stalin is the test of intellectual honesty. It is the only thing that from a literary intellectual’s point of view is really dangerous” (Monthly Review, 5/83). Safely ensconced within a virulently anticommunist society, Orwell (with Orwellian doublethink) characterized the condemnation of communism as a lonely courageous act of defiance. Today, his ideological progeny are still at it, offering themselves as intrepid left critics of the Left, waging a valiant struggle against imaginary Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist hordes.
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Sorely lacking within the U.S. Left is any rational evaluation of the Soviet Union, a nation that endured a protracted civil war and a multinational foreign invasion in the very first years of its existence, and that two decades later threw back and destroyed the Nazi beast at enormous cost to itself. In the three decades after the Bolshevik revolution, the Soviets made industrial advances equal to what capitalism took a century to accomplish–while feeding and schooling their children rather than working them fourteen hours a day as capitalist industrialists did and still do in many parts of the world. And the Soviet Union, along with Bulgaria, the German Democratic Republic, and Cuba provided vital assistance to national liberation movements in countries around the world, including Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress in South Africa.

Left anticommunists remained studiously unimpressed by the dramatic gains won by masses of previously impoverished people under communism. Some were even scornful of such accomplishments. I recall how in Burlington Vermont, in 1971, the noted anticommunist anarchist, Murray Bookchin, derisively referred to my concern for “the poor little children who got fed under communism” (his words).

Slinging Labels

Those of us who refused to join in the Soviet bashing were branded by left anticommunists as “Soviet apologists” and “Stalinists,” even if we disliked Stalin and his autocratic system of rule and believed there were things seriously wrong with existing Soviet society. Our real sin was that unlike many on the Left we refused to uncritically swallow U.S. media propaganda about communist societies. Instead, we maintained that, aside from the well-publicized deficiencies and injustices, there were positive features about existing communist systems that were worth preserving, that improved the lives of hundreds of millions of people in meaningful and humanizing ways. This claim had a decidedly unsettling effect on left anticommunists who themselves could not utter a positive word about any communist society (except possibly Cuba) and could not lend a tolerant or even courteous ear to anyone who did.

Saturated by anticommunist orthodoxy, most U.S. leftists have practiced a left McCarthyism against people who did have something positive to say about existing communism, excluding them from participation in conferences, advisory boards, political endorsements, and left publications. Like conservatives, left anticommunists tolerated nothing less than a blanket condemnation of the Soviet Union as a Stalinist monstrosity and a Leninist moral aberration.

That many U.S. leftists have scant familiarity with Lenin’s writings and political work does not prevent them from slinging the “Leninist” label. Noam Chomsky, who is an inexhaustible fount of anticommunist caricatures, offers this comment about Leninism: “Western and also Third World intellectuals were attracted to the Bolshevik counterrevolution [sic] because Leninism is, after all, a doctrine that says that the radical intelligentsia have a right to take state power and to run their countries by force, and that is an idea which is rather appealing to intellectuals.” Here Chomsky fashions an image of power-hungry intellectuals to go along with his cartoon image of power-hungry Leninists, villains seeking not the revolutionary means to fight injustice but power for power’s sake. When it comes to Red-bashing, some of the best and brightest on the Left sound not much better than the worst on the Right.

At the time of the 1996 terror bombing in Oklahoma City, I heard a radio commentator announce: “Lenin said that the purpose of terror is to terrorize.” U.S. media commentators have repeatedly quoted Lenin in that misleading manner. In fact, his statement was disapproving of terrorism. He polemicized against isolated terrorist acts which do nothing but create terror among the populace, invite repression, and isolate the revolutionary movement from the masses. Far from being the totalitarian, tight-circled conspirator, Lenin urged the building of broad coalitions and mass organizations, encompassing people who were at different levels of political development. He advocated whatever diverse means were needed to advance the class struggle, including participation in parliamentary elections and existing trade unions. To be sure, the working class, like any mass group, needed organization and leadership to wage a successful revolutionary struggle, which was the role of a vanguard party, but that did not mean the proletarian revolution could be fought and won by putschists or terrorists.

Lenin constantly dealt with the problem of avoiding the two extremes of liberal bourgeois opportunism and ultra-left adventurism. Yet he himself is repeatedly identified as an ultra-left putschist by mainstream journalists and some on the Left. Whether Lenin’s approach to revolution is desirable or even relevant today is a question that warrants critical examination. But a useful evaluation is not likely to come from people who misrepresent his theory and practice.

Left anticommunists find any association with communist organizations to be morally unacceptable because of the “crimes of communism.” Yet many of them are themselves associated with the Democratic Party in this country, either as voters or members, seemingly unconcerned about the morally unacceptable political crimes committed by leaders of that organization. Under one or another Democratic administration, 120,000 Japanese Americans were torn from their homes and livelihoods and thrown into detention camps; atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki with an enormous loss of innocent life; the FBI was given authority to infiltrate political groups; the Smith Act was used to imprison leaders of the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party and later on leaders of the Communist Party for their political beliefs; detention camps were established to round up political dissidents in the event of a “national emergency”; during the late 1940s and 1950s, eight thousand federal workers were purged from government because of their political associations and views, with thousands more in all walks of life witchhunted out of their careers; the Neutrality Act was used to impose an embargo on the Spanish Republic that worked in favor of Franco’s fascist legions; homicidal counterinsurgency programs were initiated in various Third World countries; and the Vietnam War was pursued and escalated. And for the better part of a century, the Congressional leadership of the Democratic Party protected racial segregation and stymied all anti-lynching and fair employment bills. Yet all these crimes, bringing ruination and death to many, have not moved the liberals, the social democrats, and the “democratic socialist” anticommunists to insist repeatedly that we issue blanket condemnations of either the Democratic Party or the political system that produced it, certainly not with the intolerant fervor that has been directed against existing communism.

Pure Socialism vs. Siege Socialism

The upheavals in Eastern Europe did not constitute a defeat for socialism because socialism never existed in those countries, according to some U.S. leftists. They say that the communist states offered nothing more than bureaucratic, one-party “state capitalism” or some such thing. Whether we call the former communist countries “socialist” is a matter of definition. Suffice it to say, they constituted something different from what existed in the profit-driven capitalist world–as the capitalists themselves were not slow to recognize.

First, in communist countries there was less economic inequality than under capitalism. The perks enjoyed by party and government elites were modest by corporate CEO standards in the West [even more so when compared with today's grotesque compensation packages to the executive and financial elites.—Eds], as were their personal incomes and life styles. Soviet leaders like Yuri Andropov and Leonid Brezhnev lived not in lavishly appointed mansions like the White House, but in relatively large apartments in a housing project near the Kremlin set aside for government leaders. They had limousines at their disposal (like most other heads of state) and access to large dachas where they entertained visiting dignitaries. But they had none of the immense personal wealth that most U.S. leaders possess.

The “lavish life” enjoyed by East Germany’s party leaders, as widely publicized in the U.S. press, included a $725 yearly allowance in hard currency, and housing in an exclusive settlement on the outskirts of Berlin that sported a sauna, an indoor pool, and a fitness center shared by all the residents. They also could shop in stores that carried Western goods such as bananas, jeans, and Japanese electronics. The U.S. press never pointed out that ordinary East Germans had access to public pools and gyms and could buy jeans and electronics (though usually not of the imported variety). Nor was the “lavish” consumption enjoyed by East German leaders contrasted to the truly opulent life style enjoyed by the Western plutocracy.

Second, in communist countries, productive forces were not organized for capital gain and private enrichment; public ownership of the means of production supplanted private ownership. Individuals could not hire other people and accumulate great personal wealth from their labor. Again, compared to Western standards, differences in earnings and savings among the populace were generally modest. The income spread between highest and lowest earners in the Soviet Union was about five to one. In the United States, the spread in yearly income between the top multibillionaires and the working poor is more like 10,000 to 1.

Third, priority was placed on human services. Though life under communism left a lot to be desired and the services themselves were rarely the best, communist countries did guarantee their citizens some minimal standard of economic survival and security, including guaranteed education, employment, housing, and medical assistance.

Fourth, communist countries did not pursue the capital penetration of other countries. Lacking a profit motive as their motor force and therefore having no need to constantly find new investment opportunities, they did not expropriate the lands, labor, markets, and natural resources of weaker nations, that is, they did not practice economic imperialism. The Soviet Union conducted trade and aid relations on terms that generally were favorable to the Eastern European nations and Mongolia, Cuba, and India.

All of the above were organizing principles for every communist system to one degree or another. None of the above apply to free market countries like Honduras, Guatemala, Thailand, South Korea, Chile, Indonesia, Zaire, Germany, or the United States.

But a real socialism, it is argued, would be controlled by the workers themselves through direct participation instead of being run by Leninists, Stalinists, Castroites, or other ill-willed, power-hungry, bureaucratic, cabals of evil men who betray revolutions. Unfortunately, this “pure socialism” view is ahistorical and nonfalsifiable; it cannot be tested against the actualities of history. It compares an ideal against an imperfect reality, and the reality comes off a poor second. It imagines what socialism would be like in a world far better than this one, where no strong state structure or security force is required, where none of the value produced by workers needs to be expropriated to rebuild society and defend it from invasion and internal sabotage.

The pure socialists’ ideological anticipations remain untainted by existing practice. They do not explain how the manifold functions of a revolutionary society would be organized, how external attack and internal sabotage would be thwarted, how bureaucracy would be avoided, scarce resources allocated, policy differences settled, priorities set, and production and distribution conducted. Instead, they offer vague statements about how the workers themselves will directly own and control the means of production and will arrive at their own solutions through creative struggle. No surprise then that the pure socialists support every revolution except the ones that succeed.

The pure socialists had a vision of a new society that would create and be created by new people, a society so transformed in its fundamentals as to leave little room for wrongful acts, corruption, and criminal abuses of state power. There would be no bureaucracy or self-interested coteries, no ruthless conflicts or hurtful decisions. When the reality proves different and more difficult, some on the Left proceed to condemn the real thing and announce that they “feel betrayed” by this or that revolution.

The pure socialists see socialism as an ideal that was tarnished by communist venality, duplicity, and power cravings. The pure socialists oppose the Soviet model but offer little evidence to demonstrate that other paths could have been taken, that other models of socialism–not created from one’s imagination but developed through actual historical experience–could have taken hold and worked better. Was an open, pluralistic, democratic socialism actually possible at this historic juncture? The historical evidence would suggest it was not. As the political philosopher Carl Shames argued:

How do [the left critics] know that the fundamental problem was the “nature” of the ruling [revolutionary] parties rather than, say, the global concentration of capital that is destroying all independent economies and putting an end to national sovereignty everywhere? And to the extent that it was, where did this “nature” come from? Was this “nature” disembodied, disconnected from the fabric of the society itself, from the social relations impacting on it? . . . Thousands of examples could be found in which the centralization of power was a necessary choice in securing and protecting socialist relations. In my observation [of existing communist societies], the positive of “socialism” and the negative of “bureaucracy, authoritarianism and tyranny” interpenetrated in virtually every sphere of life. (Carl Shames, correspondence to me, 1/15/92.)

The pure socialists regularly blame the Left itself for every defeat it suffers. Their second-guessing is endless. So we hear that revolutionary struggles fail because their leaders wait too long or act too soon, are too timid or too impulsive, too stubborn or too easily swayed. We hear that revolutionary leaders are compromising or adventuristic, bureaucratic or opportunistic, rigidly organized or insufficiently organized, undemocratic or failing to provide strong leadership. But always the leaders fail because they do not put their trust in the “direct actions” of the workers, who apparently would withstand and overcome every adversity if only given the kind of leadership available from the left critic’s own groupuscule. Unfortunately, the critics seem unable to apply their own leadership genius to producing a successful revolutionary movement in their own country.

Tony Febbo questioned this blame-the-leadership syndrome of the pure socialists:

It occurs to me that when people as smart, different, dedicated and heroic as Lenin, Mao, Fidel Castro, Daniel Ortega, Ho Chi Minh and Robert Mugabe–and the millions of heroic people who followed and fought with them–all end up more or less in the same place, then something bigger is at work than who made what decision at what meeting. Or even what size houses they went home to after the meeting. . . .

These leaders weren’t in a vacuum. They were in a whirlwind. And the suction, the force, the power that was twirling them around has spun and left this globe mangled for more than 900 years. And to blame this or that theory or this or that leader is a simple-minded substitute for the kind of analysis that Marxists [should make]. (Guardian, 11/13/91)

To be sure, the pure socialists are not entirely without specific agendas for building the revolution. After the Sandinistas overthrew the Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua, an ultra-left group in that country called for direct worker ownership of the factories. The armed workers would take control of production without benefit of managers, state planners, bureaucrats, or a formal military. While undeniably appealing, this worker syndicalism denies the necessities of state power. Under such an arrangement, the Nicaraguan revolution would not have lasted two months against the U.S.-sponsored counterrevolution that savaged the country. It would have been unable to mobilize enough resources to field an army, take security measures, or build and coordinate economic programs and human services on a national scale.

Decentralization vs. Survival

For a people’s revolution to survive, it must seize state power and use it to (a) break the stranglehold exercised by the owning class over the society’s institutions and resources, and (b) withstand the reactionary counterattack that is sure to come. The internal and external dangers a revolution faces necessitate a centralized state power that is not particularly to anyone’s liking, not in Soviet Russia in 1917, nor in Sandinista Nicaragua in 1980.

Engels offers an apposite account of an uprising in Spain in 1872-73 in which anarchists seized power in municipalities across the country. At first, the situation looked promising. The king had abdicated and the bourgeois government could muster but a few thousand ill-trained troops. Yet this ragtag force prevailed because it faced a thoroughly parochialized rebellion. “Each town proclaimed itself as a sovereign canton and set up a revolutionary committee (junta),” Engels writes. “[E]ach town acted on its own, declaring that the important thing was not cooperation with other towns but separation from them, thus precluding any possibility of a combined attack [against bourgeois forces].” It was “the fragmentation and isolation of the revolutionary forces which enabled the government troops to smash one revolt after the other.”

Decentralized parochial autonomy is the graveyard of insurgency–which may be one reason why there has never been a successful anarcho-syndicalist revolution. Ideally, it would be a fine thing to have only local, self-directed, worker participation, with minimal bureaucracy, police, and military. This probably would be the development of socialism, were socialism ever allowed to develop unhindered by counterrevolutionary subversion and attack. One might recall how, in 1918-20, fourteen capitalist nations, including the United States, invaded Soviet Russia in a bloody but unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the revolutionary Bolshevik government. The years of foreign invasion and civil war did much to intensify the Bolsheviks’ siege psychology with its commitment to lockstep party unity and a repressive security apparatus. Thus, in May 1921, the same Lenin who had encouraged the practice of internal party democracy and struggled against Trotsky in order to give the trade unions a greater measure of autonomy, now called for an end to the Workers’ Opposition and other factional groups within the party. “The time has come,” he told an enthusiastically concurring Tenth Party Congress, “to put an end to opposition, to put a lid on it: we have had enough opposition.” Open disputes and conflicting tendencies within and without the party, the communists concluded, created an appearance of division and weakness that invited attack by formidable foes.

Only a month earlier, in April 1921, Lenin had called for more worker representation on the party’s Central Committee. In short, he had become not anti-worker but anti-opposition. Here was a social revolution–like every other–that was not allowed to develop its political and material life in an unhindered way.

By the late 1920s, the Soviets faced the choice of (a) moving in a still more centralized direction with a command economy and forced agrarian collectivization and full-speed industrialization under a commandist, autocratic party leadership, the road taken by Stalin, or (b) moving in a liberalized direction, allowing more political diversity, more autonomy for labor unions and other organizations, more open debate and criticism, greater autonomy among the various Soviet republics, a sector of privately owned small businesses, independent agricultural development by the peasantry, greater emphasis on consumer goods, and less effort given to the kind of capital accumulation needed to build a strong military-industrial base.

The latter course, I believe, would have produced a more comfortable, more humane and serviceable society. Siege socialism would have given way to worker-consumer socialism. The only problem is that the country would have risked being incapable of withstanding the Nazi onslaught. Instead, the Soviet Union embarked upon a rigorous, forced industrialization. This policy has often been mentioned as one of the wrongs perpetrated by Stalin upon his people. It consisted mostly of building, within a decade, an entirely new, huge industrial base east of the Urals in the middle of the barren steppes, the biggest steel complex in Europe, in anticipation of an invasion from the West. “Money was spent like water, men froze, hungered and suffered but the construction went on with a disregard for individuals and a mass heroism seldom paralleled in history.”

Stalin’s prophecy that the Soviet Union had only ten years to do what the British had done in a century proved correct. When the Nazis invaded in 1941, that same industrial base, safely ensconced thousands of miles from the front, produced the weapons of war that eventually turned the tide. The cost of this survival included 22 million Soviets who perished in the war and immeasurable devastation and suffering, the effects of which would distort Soviet society for decades afterward.

All this is not to say that everything Stalin did was of historical necessity. The exigencies of revolutionary survival did not “make inevitable” the heartless execution of hundreds of Old Bolshevik leaders, the personality cult of a supreme leader who claimed every revolutionary gain as his own achievement, the suppression of party political life through terror, the eventual silencing of debate regarding the pace of industrialization and collectivization, the ideological regulation of all intellectual and cultural life, and the mass deportations of “suspect” nationalities.

The transforming effects of counterrevolutionary attack have been felt in other countries. A Sandinista military officer I met in Vienna in 1986 noted that Nicaraguans were “not a warrior people” but they had to learn to fight because they faced a destructive, U.S.-sponsored mercenary war. She bemoaned the fact that war and embargo forced her country to postpone much of its socio-economic agenda. As with Nicaragua, so with Mozambique, Angola and numerous other countries in which U.S.-financed mercenary forces destroyed farmlands, villages, health centers, and power stations, while killing or starving hundreds of thousands–the revolutionary baby was strangled in its crib or mercilessly bled beyond recognition. This reality ought to earn at least as much recognition as the suppression of dissidents in this or that revolutionary society.

The overthrow of Eastern European and Soviet communist governments was cheered by many left intellectuals. Now democracy would have its day. The people would be free from the yoke of communism and the U.S. Left would be free from the albatross of existing communism, or as left theorist Richard Lichtman put it, “liberated from the incubus of the Soviet Union and the succubus of Communist China.”

In fact, the capitalist restoration in Eastern Europe seriously weakened the numerous Third World liberation struggles that had received aid from the Soviet Union and brought a whole new crop of right-wing governments into existence, ones that now worked hand-in-glove with U.S. global counterrevolutionaries around the globe.

In addition, the overthrow of communism gave the green light to the unbridled exploitative impulses of Western corporate interests. No longer needing to convince workers that they live better than their counterparts in Russia, no longer restrained by a competing system, the corporate class is rolling back the many gains that working people have won over the years. Now that the free market, in its meanest form, is emerging triumphant in the East, so will it prevail in the West. “Capitalism with a human face” is being replaced by “capitalism in your face.” As Richard Levins put it, “So in the new exuberant aggressiveness of world capitalism we see what communists and their allies had held at bay” (Monthly Review, 9/96).

Having never understood the role that existing communist powers played in tempering the worst impulses of Western capitalism, and having perceived communism as nothing but an unmitigated evil, the left anticommunists did not anticipate the losses that were to come. Some of them still don’t get it.

International Conference of Marxist-Leninist Parties and Organizations (ICMLPO): On the International Situation

The most significant development in the world capitalist economy, since the last meeting of our Conference is undoubtedly the intensification of the symptoms that prove the trend toward a new recession in all fields, after a certain rise in the second quarter of 2009, followed by a period of stagnation. Despite the trend towards a rise in the second quarter, world industrial production shrank 6.6% in 2009 and rose 10% in 2010. The industrial production of June 2010 exceeded its previous level before the crisis of 2008. But starting from the first quarter of 2011, the growth lost momentum and fell to 0.4% in the last quarter of that year. In 2011, world industrial production declined by half (5.4%) compared to the previous year. In the first quarter of 2012, after a weak rise, the growth declined. The growth was 1.8% in the first quarter, 0% in the second and 4% in the last quarter of 20l2. All the data show that, despite fluctuations, a decline persists that began in the first quarter of 2011, which led to zero level in the middle of this year [2012] and is heading for a new period of decline.

Industrial production in the European Union, which is a larger economic power than the U.S.; in Japan, which is third largest world economic power; in India, one of the largest economies in Asia, have had consecutive declines in the third quarter of 2011 and in the first two quarters of 2012 compared to the same period last year. Industrial production in Brazil, the largest economy in Latin America, has also entered into decline in the last two quarters. North African countries like Tunisia and Egypt, and other countries such as Argentina, Colombia and Peru, are in similar situations.

The rate of growth of industrial production in China, in the first and second quarters of 2012, was 11.6% and 9.5%, while it was 14.4% in 2010 and 13.8% in 2011. The downward trend continued in July, 9.2% and in August, 8.9%. China, which grew by 12.9% and 12.3% in the crisis years (2008 and 2009), was, along with India, one of the factors that prevented a further sharpening of the crisis and that allowed the world economy to enter into a new period of growth. The situation in that country has changed considerably. Now it is a country that is accumulating stockpiles in the steel industry, which is facing a slowdown in the construction sector, which has important holes in the financial sector. Those countries that saw lower growth rates despite the stimulus measures to revive the domestic market, are now unable to play the same role as before. The industrial production of Mexico and the Confederation of Independent States (CIS), including Russia, continues to grow. However, while the industrial production in the major countries and the volume of international trade are falling, for these countries also, a decrease is expected.

Unlike simple commodity production, a more rapid growth in the production of the means of production, compared to consumer goods, is a condition for expanded reproduction. But with the capitalist mode of production producing for an unknown market, with the sole purpose of obtaining profits, a consistent development of the two sectors is impossible and this is one of the factors that makes crises inevitable. In the last three years, as well as before, these two sectors have not developed consistently. In the first sector, demand has fallen, the volume of growth has fallen, stockpiles are accumulating and capacity utilization has fallen. In 2010 and 2011 the steel industry, an important component of the production of means of production, grew faster than the consumer goods sector. According to data from the World Steel Union, the growth rate in production was 15% in 2010 compared to the previous year, but in 2011 the figure fell to 6.2%. In January raw steel production saw a sharp drop to 8%, and it has stayed at 0.8% in the period from January to May of 2012. In August of 2012 raw steel production fell 1% in relation to 2011. In the same period, raw steel production rose 3.3% in Japan (a significant increase if one takes into account the major fall due to the tsunami) and 2.6% in India. It has fallen by 1.7% in China, 3.8% in the U.S., 4.4% in the EU, 7.1% in Germany, 15.5% in Italy and 3.8% in the Confederation of Independent States (CIS). The iron stockpiles in Chinese ports reached 98.15 million tons (an increase of 2.9%) belonging to the steel complexes. And stockpiles of Chinese coal are at their highest level in the last three years.

In manufacturing, a very important element of the production of the means of production, production and demand have declined in many countries. This decline has been one of the reasons for the cooling of industrial production in Germany, for example. In the capitalist mode of production, the agricultural sector, by its level of development and its technical basis, is always behind industry. Agricultural production is largely affected by the natural conditions, climate changes, droughts, storms and other natural catastrophes. Agricultural production is increasingly under the control of the monopolies and the speculative maneuvers of finance capital. In 2010 world agricultural production, including the production of cereals, has shrunk due to various factors such as bad weather or the expansion of plots reserved for bio-fuel production. On the other hand, in 2011, agricultural production has progressed thanks to better weather conditions, and also to increased demand and higher prices due to speculation. For example, wheat production increased by about 6%.

In 2009 the volume of world trade has declined 12.7%. According to data from the World Trade Organization (WTO), that volume registered a growth of 13.8% in 2010, and only 5% in 2011 (according to figures from the CPL, the growth was 15.2% in 2010, and 5.8% in 2011). The volume of world trade has grown by 0.5% in the final quarter of last year, and by 0.9% and 0.5% in the first and second quarter of 2012 respectively. During the first two months of the third quarter (June and July), the volume of world trade recorded a negative growth of -1.5% and -0.2% compared to the previous months.

World industrial production reached and surpassed the pre-crisis level of 2008, in June 2010, while the volume of international trade did not surpass this until November 2011. If we compare the data of July 2012 with the level reached before the crisis of 2008 (that is, April 2008), we see an increase of 9.5% in world industrial production and an increase of 5% in the total volume of growth in world trade.

The data on the increase of the volume of world trade is one of the most important that shows an evolutionary trend, although it does not exactly reflect the volume of growth of world trade. These data show that for the last three years, the world capitalist production has increased rapidly and that the capitalist world is once again facing the problem of overproduction, which is the source of all its crises. Decreased production, closing or reduction in work capacity of enterprises, rising unemployment and poverty; needs in abundance and the restriction of markets are the inevitable consequences of overproduction. The sharp slowdown in world industrial production has been shown above. The events in North Africa and the austerity measures taken in countries like Greece, Spain, Italy, Portugal, etc., are factors that are aggravating this process and its consequences.

Towards a New Financial Crisis

The crisis of 2008 broke out as a financial crisis, at the same time as the crisis deepened in other sectors, such as industry and trade, it developed with contacts in the finance sector with serious consequences for the following period. The most destructive consequences for the monopolies and the eventual collapse of the financial sector were avoided by transferring of billions of dollars into the coffers of the monopolies by the capitalist States. This rescue operation was only possible by accepting a debt to financial markets with very high interest rates, and the issuance of money into the markets. The end result is an extreme State debt, an increase in the debt and interest burden, a rise in the price of gold and the loss of value (devaluation) of almost all currencies.

Countries at different levels have entered a vicious circle that has elements of new currency and financial crises, in which they can finance their budget deficit, their debts and interests, having to borrow again. The capitalist world began a period of growth starting in the second quarter of 2009, with the weight inherited from the 2008 crisis. However, this period of growth has enabled recipient countries to breathe a little, turn the wheel that was on the verge of suffocating them. The growth of the world economy stopped and even lowered the price of gold for a moment. In some countries, such as China that had a significant growth rate, the ratio of the public debt to GDP decreased. But in other countries, such as Japan and the U.S., a substantial debt has continued, even during the period of growth of the capitalist world economy. The U.S. public debt represents the sum of $16 billion (the debt of Germany, which grew until the second half of this year, is 8 billion). Other capitalist countries are in a similar situation. The increasing debt is almost the condition of financial sustainability and economic growth. And this is the path that is leading directly to a new financial crisis that may profoundly affect all sectors of the economy.

The highly indebted countries have not been able to achieve a period of growth after the financial crisis and the fall in world industrial production that took place between the second quarter of 2008 and the second quarter of 2009; this period has led to a financial crisis that has affected the other sectors of the economy that has led them to bankruptcy. The first example of this process was in Greece, where the weakness was such that the industry, very weak, was largely liquidated when it joined the EU. After the 2008 crisis, in 2009, the economy of this country did not grow, and by the end of the year it was on the verge of bankruptcy. This country, followed by others such as Portugal, Spain, Hungary, etc., has not been able to get out of the crisis and stagnation. However, important differences should be noted in its debt in relation to the GDP.

Austerity measures never seen before, except in times of war or crisis as deep as 1929, have been imposed on the indebted countries. The result of these measures has been to impoverish the people, destroy the economy and reduce the internal market and foreign trade. These austerity plans have been applied (despite the opposition and struggle of the working class and peoples) under the control of the creditor imperialist powers, the international institutions such as the IMF, World Bank and European Union, and above all with the support of the collaborator monopoly bourgeoisie and its representatives, these enemies of the people. They have transferred billions of dollars to foreign banks, completely betraying the national interests. The national pride of the people, their right to sovereignty and independence have been trampled upon. A country like Britain that had a strong financial sector, but since mid-2011 has seen its industrial production and its economy reduced, has been forced to march along with the countries implementing austerity measures.

The significant decrease in the volume of growth of world industrial production, which began in the second quarter of 2011, is developing the elements of a new international financial crisis and is contributing to the degradation of the situation of the highly indebted countries. They failed to enter a period of growth parallel to the process of growth of the world capitalist economy following the crisis of 2008-2009. While the debate over the future of the Euro and the European Union is sharpening, the communiqués on the economic trends of the advanced capitalist countries and the indebted countries have sown confusion in the stock markets, barometers of the capitalist economy. Although world industrial and agricultural production and the volume of international -trade have exceeded the highest level before the crisis of 2008, the indices of the most influential stock markets remain below that level.

Although we are not yet experiencing the outbreak of a financial crisis of major proportions, everything makes it appear that the process is advancing towards such an eventuality. The U.S. Federal Reserve Bank (FED) has announced that it will not raise interest rates and that it will start a process of purchasing bonds for an amount of $2,000 billion dollars, at the rate of $40 billion per month. Japan has announced a similar measure and has begun a program of buying bonds to the tune of $695 billion.

Germany has had to relax its rigid policy towards the indebted countries and the European fund for the intervention in countries facing difficulties has increased. China, along with measures of revival that it has already applied, announced a new investment package to renovate its infrastructure. The price of gold is rising again. In 2008, the intense intervention of the capitalist States began after the outbreak of the crisis. Now, however, the capitalist States have gone into action before the shocks and bankruptcies at the same level as in 2008 start in the major capitalist countries and worldwide. However, these interventions, which can have some influence on the process of development, cannot change the orientation and the inevitable outcome.

The Sharpening of the Inter-Imperialist Contradictions and the Growing Danger of Conflicts

Uneven, unbalanced development is the absolute law of capitalist development. This process after the crisis of 2008 was not balanced, it deepened the antagonistic contradictions in the evolution and development of the relations between sectors, countries, regions, production and markets, etc. The industrial production of the advanced capitalist countries, including the U.S. and Japan, except Germany (ignoring the high level of 2008), did not reach the level of 2005. Germany, which has exceeded the pre-crisis level and has had a growth in industrial production of 11.5% in 2010 and 9% in 2011, has consolidated its position within the European Union and the Euro zone. Without separating itself from the bloc led by the United States, it has penetrated into new markets, new fields of investment, sources of raw materials, basing itself on its economic and financial strength, and above all, on its technical superiority in the industry of machine construction.

As in previous years, China, both because of its industrial production and its economy in general, was the country that had the most significant growth among major economies. It has modernized and increased the technical basis of its industry, and it continues to reduce the difference in its level of development with the other imperialist powers. Russia is going through a similar process. For the United States and its allies, these two countries, one considered as a vast market and production area with a trained and cheap work force, and the other a solid country, appear today as their main rivals to fight against.

The inevitable result of the change in the balance of power is the great demand for a piece of the pie by the emerging forces, using all means to get it and a new redivision of the world according the new balance of power. The recent development of the world economy is another factor that exacerbates the contradictions and the struggles among the major imperialist powers. Last year in the Middle East, in Africa and the whole world, the rivalry and struggle to expand their sphere of influence has accelerated. The production of weapons, the arms race is intensifying. China and Russia have renewed the technical basis of their arms industry. According to a report by the Congress of the United States, arms sales by these countries have tripled in 2011.

China, which increasingly needs more raw materials, energy and fields of investment for its growing economy, and Russia, which is slowly recovering, are intensifying their expansionist desires and their efforts to get their piece of the pie. Therefore, it is a top priority for the U.S. and its allies to prevent China, a young imperialist power in full development, and Russia, from achieving new markets in the field of energy and raw materials. When the Obama administration states that beginning next year the priority strategic objective for the United States will be Asia, and that the deployment of the U.S. military will be renewed according to the new situation, this is merely affirming that reality. The crisis of the archipelagos shows the level of tension between Japan and China; Japan has declared its intention to improve its military capability. The military maneuvers in the region have intensified.

The consequences of the change in the balance of power in the world have been clearly visible since last year. Russia and China were forced to accept Western imperialist intervention in Libya, even though that intervention was contrary to their interests. The intervention ended with the overthrow of the Gaddafi regime, the near collapse of the country, the destruction of its economy, the degradation of working and living conditions, the transfer of the country’s wealth into the hands of the Western imperialist States, etc. Russia and China lost a good part of their positions, including their oil agreements. After the fall of the Gaddafi regime, Mali has been dragged into war and divided. But the main objective is Syria. The attempts by the Western imperialist powers to topple the Syrian regime and put in a puppet government to fully control the country are intensifying. The United States and its allies have mobilized all their forces within Syria and outside of it in Turkey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. They are stirring up the religious contradictions, they use and manipulate the popular discontent towards the regime and they try to prepare the ground for a military intervention as in Libya. Meanwhile Russia is arming Syria, strengthening its military base located in that country and sending more warships to the Mediterranean.

To bring down the Syrian regime, put in place a puppet government, dominate the oil-rich Middle East, control the eastern Mediterranean, block the expansion of China and Russia in the region and expel them as they did in Libya, to encircle Iran, weaken its influence and liquidate its closest allies, are very important objectives. Syria is the only country in the Middle East and the eastern Mediterranean where Russia has a military base. This small country has become a place of intense struggle between Russia and China on the one hand, and the United States and its allies on the other. The Middle East is a powder keg on the verge of religious conflicts.

Contrary to what they did in Libya, Russia and China are opposing a military intervention that would alter the balance in the Middle East and result in the domination of the United States and its allies over Syria. But they have left the door open for a possible compromise that would guarantee their interests and renew the Syrian regime which is having more and more difficulties to survive.

As the case of Afghanistan, former Yugoslavia, Iraq, Ivory Coast and Libya show, the imperialist interventions that have had the support of the liberal “defenders” of freedom and democracy, of the pseudo-socialist parties that emerged from the former revisionist parties, have resulted in increased military budgets at the expense of the workers, in the destruction of the productive forces of those countries, in many disasters, the impoverishment and decline in all social aspects. The aspiration of the peoples for the right to sovereignty and national independence, democracy and freedom has never been the concern of the occupiers. Their objective was to further prolong their system maintained by the defeat inflicted on the working class in the middle of the last century, a defeat that guaranteed their super-profits, the expansion of their spheres of influence and the weakening of their rivals. The imperialist powers, which are using all means to achieve this goal, do not lack in demagoguery and low maneuvers to disorient the people’s anger.

Now a period of sharpening of inter-imperialist contradictions is beginning, which economic-financial and political-military interventions will multiply. It is increasingly important to fight against such intervention, to develop the united fight of the workers and peoples, in both the advanced and backward countries,.

Organize the Resistance of the Workers in the New Stormy Period

The army of unemployed is growing on the world level, especially in countries in total-debt crisis, in the countries in which the economy is declining, stagnating or is in crisis. In Greece and Spain, unemployment has reached 25%. In these countries, unemployment among the youths, including college graduates, reached 50%. In the Euro zone in the second quarter of 2012, the level of unemployment reached 11.2%, according to official figures. In countries such as Egypt and Tunisia, where manufacturing has fallen from 9.6% to 7.5% in the first quarter of this year (2012), the number of unemployed continues to grow. In South Africa, the most developed country on the continent, the unemployment rate exceeds 25%.

In the current period, in almost all fields, from education to health care, drastic measures have been taken, the retirement age has been delayed and pensions have fallen. The gains of the working class worldwide are targeted for cuts or elimination. While direct taxes on the workers are increasing, no measures are taken to disturb the local and international monopolies, when even within the framework of this system one could increase taxes on the banks and the local and foreign monopolies. Wages continue to fall, etc. Many countries are suffering from a process of absolute impoverishment.

In recent years practices have been imposed worldwide such as sub-contracting labor, precarious and part-time work, an increase in the age for retirement, etc. In Germany, for example, one of the most developed countries in the world that has had significant growth rates in industrial production, according to the Federal Administration of Statistics, 15.6% of the population lives below the poverty line, a figure that rises to 26% among the immigrant population.

Last year, on a world scale and in each country, the workers and peoples movement has developed with various demands, in different forms and also at different levels. The struggles carried out in those countries with a “debt crisis” have been outstanding for their broad social base, for their responses and the experiences gained. The miners’ strike in South Africa, the youth movement and the strikes in Chile, the popular movements in Tunisia and Egypt, etc. are powerful examples of the workers and peoples struggles.

Starting with Greece, Spain and Italy, in various countries with a “debt crisis,” strikes, general strikes and huge demonstrations have taken place. In Greece and Spain, hundreds of thousands of people have expressed their anger in front of the parliaments on the days when these were voting for austerity measures. But the workers and peoples movement, despite some more advanced attempts, has remained within the framework of peaceful demonstrations, general strikes of one or two days and limited resistance. The strikes of long duration, the resistance or occupation of factories, have been limited to one enterprise or one sector.

The austerity measures have affected not only the proletariat and semi-proletarian masses of the cities and countryside; they have also affected the petty bourgeoisie and non-monopoly bourgeois strata. Even the less dynamic strata, the traditional base of the bourgeois parties, have been mobilized given the current situation. The social base of the struggle against the bourgeoisie in Power and against imperialism has expanded, to the point where in some dependent countries the mobilization has taken the character of a movement of the whole nation, except for a handful of monopolists. The conditions are maturing for the working class and its revolutionary parties, as representatives and the vanguard of the nation, to decide to organize and advance the movement and the united front of the people.

But despite the great movement, the groups of international finance capital and the local monopoly bourgeoisies have not given in (except in the recent delay of the austerity measures in Portugal). They have decided to implement these measures even at the cost of demeaning the image of the parliaments and weakening their social base. However, the masses are realizing through their own experience the impossibility of repelling the attacks with one or two day strikes or through peaceful demonstrations. Sharper forms of struggle and unlimited general strike are beginning to be considered by the more advanced strata.

It is clear that the bourgeoisie in Power, with their hostile character towards the people, is assuming a position of national betrayal. The traditional parties of the bourgeoisie and parliaments have lost credibility and the mass support for those parties is weakening (especially toward those in government that are implementing austerity measures). The social basis of monopoly capital is weakening. Among the masses who have felt their national pride hurt by the imperialists, the discontent, anger and will to struggle against the major imperialist powers, beginning with the United States and Germany, against institutions like the IMF or the EU, and against the local monopoly bourgeoisie that is collaborating with them, is developing.

The trade union bureaucracy and reformist parties and social trends are following a backward line of “least resistance,” not only in their forms of organization and struggle, but also at the level of political demands and platform. Clearly, this attitude is contributing to weakening their influence among the workers. The attacks and harshness of the social conditions are also affecting the lower strata of the labor bureaucracy and aristocracy and are sharpening the contradictions within their ranks.

The struggles in the countries with “debt crisis” are being developed on a program of protest against the bourgeois governments and parties, against institutions such as the IMF and the EU that are imposing draconian measures and they are demanding their withdrawal. At first this was natural and understandable in the context of a spontaneous movement. But the inability to go beyond those narrow limits is one of the major weaknesses of the movement. This weakness can be overcome with the work of agitation that shows the masses the way out of this difficult situation in which the people and the country find themselves, denouncing the social forces that are an obstacle to that way out. This work of agitation is reinforced by putting forward appropriate demands, slogans and forms of struggle among the masses.

Especially in Greece, certain small groups (that also have weaknesses) have proposed relatively advanced demands and platforms. But the forces capable of influencing the movement are not even concerned with organizing the work necessary to promote the fight on all fronts. The absence or great weakness of a revolutionary class party, has been felt strongly, as it cannot influence the movement.

Linked to the evolution of the world economy, the period that is beginning will be one of further degradation of the living and working conditions for the workers and peoples, a period of intense economic and political attacks, of discontent, anger and militancy among workers, as well as sharpening of inter-imperialist contradictions and conflicts. We must draw lessons and conclusions from the recent developments and the historical experience of the working class and peoples; we must advance, renewing our work and reorganizing our parties.

Tunisia, November 2012

Source

Privatization in Ex-Communist Countries Killed Over One Million People

As many as one million working-age men died due to the economic shock of mass privatisation policies followed by post-communist countries in the 1990s, according to a new study published in The Lancet.

The Oxford-led study measured the relationship between death rates and the pace and scale of privatisation in 25 countries in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, dating back to the early 1990s. They found that mass privatisation came at a human cost: with an average surge in the number of deaths of 13 per cent or the equivalent of about one million lives.

The rapid privatisation programme, part of a plan known by economists as ‘shock therapy’, led to a 56 per cent increase in unemployment, which the study says played an important role in explaining why privatisation claimed so many lives. Many employers provided extensive health and social care for their employees, so through privatisation workers experienced the ‘double whammy’ of losing not only their livelihood but also their means of surviving the crisis.

David Stuckler from Oxford, and colleagues Dr Lawrence King from Cambridge University and Professor Martin McKee, from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, took death rates reported by the World Heath Organisation for men of working age (15-59 years) in 25 post-communist countries and compared them to the timing and extent of participation in mass privatisation and other transition policies.

The team took into account other factors that might affect rising death rates (such as economic depression, initial conditions and health infrastructure). They also examined other measures of privatisation from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, a bank which gave loans in support of radical mass privatisation.

During the 1990s, former communist countries underwent the world’s worst peacetime mortality crisis in the past 50 years – with over three million avoidable deaths and 10 million ‘missing’ men, according to the United Nations.

However, while life expectancy plummeted in some countries, like Russia and Kazakhstan; the populations’ health steadily improved in other countries, such as Slovenia. Previous research shows that unemployment and levels of alcohol consumption are major factors behind these differences, but this study is thought to be the first to isolate aspects of the reforms process that might cause these variations. It finds that death rates are linked to the speed and type of privatisation and resulting unemployment – and also to the level of social support available. If at least 45 per cent of the country’s population were members of at least one social organisation, such as a church or trade union, they were better protected from the economic shocks, the authors found.

David Stuckler, from Oxford’s Department of Sociology, said: ‘Our study helps explain the striking differences in mortality in the post-communist world.  Countries which pursued rapid privatisation, or ‘shock therapy’, had much greater rises in deaths than countries which followed a more gradual path. Not only did rapid privatisation lead to mass unemployment but also wiped out the social safety nets, which were critical for helping people survive during this turbulent period.’

Professor Martin McKee said: ‘As variants of rapid reform policies are being debated in China, India, Egypt and other developing and middle-income countries, including Iraq, our study reminds us that radical economic reforms affect ordinary people and, in some cases, cost them their lives.’

Source

Leave the Vladimir Lenin’s Monuments where they are! Hands off Lenin!

Petition by
ILYA BORTNIKOV
Sosnovoborsk, Russian Federation

Reputable mister President! Vladimir Vladimirovich! 

Russian lawmakers believe it’s time to remove monuments to the leader of the Great October Socialist Revolution, Vladimir Lenin, from town and city squares across the country. 

We, who has signed that petition, are not agreed with the arguments of the anti-Lenin campaign which has place to be in the Lower House of Parlament. 

Vladimir Lenin is not a hooligan or a criminal as some people try to present his personality. He is a great and well educated son of the Russian Fatherland who had an aristocratic background but scorned it totally for the sake of justice. Vladimir Lenin is the founder of Soviet Russia on which behalf the Russian government nowadays has place and sits in the United Nations! 

By the same logic of the lawmakers, should be removed the monuments of Nikolay Chernyshevsky whoes works had a huge influence on the future ideas of Vladimir Lenin? Should the Russians forget the true and own history? 

Vladimir Lenin developed the Karl Marx’s economical and social ideas to leninism! Thanks to Lenin such countries as Poland, Finland and Latvia got their own independence and sovereignty. Thanks to Vladimir Lenin and the Revolution (the policy of secularism) the Russian Orthodox Church got back the institute of patriarchate after the Synodal period. 

Vladimir Lenin is a glory, honor and a treasure of the Russian nation! Its past and present! We believe Vladimir Lenin is a bright example for the future generations of Russian people and for people all around the world! 

Don’t ruin a big part of Russian historical glory!

To: 
Ilyinka Street, building 23 porch 11, Moscow, Russia, 103132 (Vladimir Putin, the President of Russia) 

Leave the Vladimir Lenin’s Monuments where they are! Hands off Lenin!

Sincerely, 
[Your name]

Source

Marxism & Bourgeois Nationalism

As always, a re-posting of articles does not necessarily imply an absolute endorsement of the entirety of its content. However, this well-written article does make a good point about the duality of the bourgeois class, particularly in the Third World and oppressed countries.

– Espresso Stalinist.

Tripoli is burning. Thousands of black Libyans and African immigrants are rounded up by the NATO-backed rebels and thrown into prisons. Supporters of the ousted nationalist government wait with baited breath for the inevitable and bloody purge by the new rebel government. Libyan oil gushes out of Benghazi into the pipelines of Western energy companies. And militia groups, deputized by Interpol and the now-victorious National Transitional Council (NTC) government, hunt for Colonel Muammar Qaddafi and his family across the Libyan desert.

Now that NATO has won this asymmetrical imperialist war, at least in the short term, no one can reasonably say that the Libyan people are better off with the rebel government in power. For all of the flaws of Qaddafi’s government – and other nationalist governments like his – the Libyan people enjoyed the highest standard of living on the African continent, rising from the lowest standard of living in the world as of 1951. (1) The national and tribal governments had an amicable working relationship that allowed for decentralized planning and local decision-making. Moreover, Libya’s natural resources were controlled by a national government at-odds with Western energy corporations, and the wealth they generated was publicly owned and shared. (1) In other words, the Libyan nation exercised its inherent right to self-determination.

Qaddafi’s government wasn’t socialist; it was nationalist. The relations of production in Libya were capitalist in nature, but to deny that Qaddafi’s government was more progressive and objectively anti-imperialist ignores the brutal material reality that millions of Libyans are facing because of the NTC government.

As the West begins to re-calibrate its war machine and set its crosshairs on President Bashar al-Assad’s government in Syria, Marxist-Leninists need to understand their relationship with nationalist bourgeois states, like Qaddafi’s Libya. History has objectively proven those “leftists” who were cheerleaders for the fall of Qaddafi’s government in Libya or Saddam Hussein’s government in Iraq wrong.

At the same time, every bourgeois state operates fundamentally in the interest of some sector of the capitalist ruling class, whether national or international, and in time the proletariat will replace that old machinery with socialism through revolution.

I posit these theses:

Because of their relation to imperialism after the fall of the socialist bloc, the objective historical position of nationalist states in the Third World is progressive.

Marxist-Leninists must uphold the right of nations to self-determination, which in the present is principally characterized by freedom from imperialist subjugation.

Where it arises, Marxist-Leninists must support genuine revolutionary proletarian struggles for socialism against bourgeois nationalist governments.

Josef Stalin, author of Marxism & the National Question

What is nationalism?

To understand when and why Marxist-Leninists should support nationalism, it’s important to examine the material conditions from which nationalism arises.

As a starting point, it’s important to distinguish a nation from other units of social or geographical organization, like a tribe or country. Historically speaking, national identity is a relatively recent development in class society. In his seminal 1913 work, Marxism and the National Question, Josef Stalin outlines the characteristics of a nation as “a historically evolved, stable community of people, formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life and psychological make-up manifested in a common culture.” (2)

Two important characteristics to note about Stalin’s definition. First, while territory and geography is a defining feature of a nation, it is not its sole determining characteristic, meaning that within the existential boundaries of a country–itself a recent social development–many nations may exist. Second, while a common economic life is also a defining characteristic, nations are not formed on the basis of class unity. In other words, there is no proletarian nation or bourgeois nation, but rather these two classes are both part and parcel of their respective nations.

In its inception, nationalism arises as an ideology of the bourgeoisie. From Marxism and the National Question:

The chief problem for the young bourgeoisie is the problem of the market. Its aim is to sell its goods and to emerge victorious from competition with the bourgeoisie of another nationality. Hence its desire to secure its “own,” its “home” market. The market is the first school in which the bourgeoisie learns its nationalism. (2)

Though all classes in a given nation are capable of embracing nationalism, Stalin argues that its historical basis lies in the bourgeoisie and its need for capital accumulation as a class. While other classes can appropriate and have transformed this concept, the demand for national self-determination begins as a bourgeois demand for exclusive access and control of its own national markets and resources.

European and American nationalism, for instance, arose from the break-up of feudal empires and the fledgling bourgeoisie’s struggle to establish itself as a class via primitive accumulation. American merchants, traders, shopkeepers, and speculators, denied full access to the readily available land and resources in North America by British mercantilism, led revolution of 1776 on the basis of American national unity. Though the American revolution of 1776 was waged in the interests of the fledgling bourgeoisie, the working masses rallied to the banner of American nationalism and led a successful struggle against British colonialism. Stalin notes that the “strength of the national movement is determined by the degree to which the wide strata of the nation, the proletariat and peasantry, participate in it.” (2)

Though the role of American nationalism in 1776 was historically progressive, the triumph of the American national movement was fueled by and resulted in the further subjugation of the African masses kidnapped and violently lashed into slave labor, along with the indigenous tribes ruthlessly slaughtered in the expansion of the American empire. Dialectically, American nationalism’s progressive features became the basis for the rise of the most oppressive imperialist power in the history of the world.

Without the subjugation of the African masses as a slave labor force, the Western bourgeoisie could never have established itself as an independent ruling class. Indeed, the same American nationalism that united the colonists against British mercantilism would unite the country in waging genocidal wars for land against indigenous people and Mexicans. After the series of successful European bourgeois revolutions, all ideologically fueled through nationalism, colonialism in Africa, Asia, South America, and the Pacific Islands became central to acquiring the cheap labor and resources necessary to generating extreme national wealth.

Because of the cheap labor and resources acquired through ruthless expansion, American capitalism transformed into imperialism, in which developed countries use force and comparative advantages in trade to violently extract resources and exploit the labor force of other colonies. Central to maintaining the colonial apparatus was the denial of equal rights and the cultivation of racist myths about colonized people, which materially manifested itself in slave labor, apartheid, and denial of access to the liberal democratic institutions established by the colonial bourgeoisie in imperialist countries.

Inevitably, the placement of capital in colonial countries allowed some small fraction of the colonized population to gain access to limited amounts of their own capital, albeit usually dependent on the colonial power. In other words, this small class of propertied yet colonized people constituted a bourgeoisie. Of this bourgeoisie, Stalin writes:

The bourgeoisie of the oppressed nation, repressed on every hand, is naturally stirred into movement. It appeals to its “native folk” and begins to shout about the “fatherland,” claiming that its own cause is the cause of the nation as a whole. It recruits itself an army from among its “countrymen” in the interests of… the “fatherland.” Nor do the “folk” always remain unresponsive to its appeals, they rally around its banner: the repression from above affects them too and provokes their discontent. (2)

The bourgeoisie of oppressed nations has the same basic features as the American and European bourgeoisie, in that both classes sought greater access to their own markets, resources, and labor. However, the conditions around the oppressed national bourgeoisie are qualitatively different than those around the Western bourgeoisie; they cannot seize control of their own national resources because of the fetters of colonialism.

Unquestionably the type of colonial oppression faced by the oppressed national bourgeoisie was different than that felt by the colonized proletariat and peasantry, who faced more brutal repression from the state and worse terms of labor. However, these colonized classes all had something to gain by overthrowing colonial and imperialist rule and achieving self-determination for their nation.

Nationalism becomes vital to the colonized bourgeoisie because it unites themselves and the colonized laboring masses in the struggle for national liberation. At the point where the laboring masses embrace nationalism, “the national movement begins.” (2)

National liberation struggles are not exclusively led by the nationalist bourgeoisie, and historically the bourgeoisie in colonial or semi-colonial nations is often too weak or too connected to the colonizing nation to exert itself independently as a class. Numerous examples of successful revolutionary proletarian national liberation movements exist, including the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA). These successful communist movements, like the MPLA, also made use of nationalism to unite the country around the central task of expelling the colonizers. In essence, although nationalism is originally a bourgeois ideology, other revolutionary classes can appropriate it during the national liberation struggle phase.

Saddam Hussein, with an AK-47

Bourgeois nationalist states in the Third World

Because the nationalist bourgeoisie finds itself opposed to imperialism in the Third World, they can function as a tactical ally for the proletariat and peasantry in these same oppressed nations. Marxist-Leninists should never accept this alliance as permanent, however, and must carefully evaluate the place of the national bourgeoisie in relation to imperialism and the vast laboring masses.

Iraq provides one of the most potent examples of the fickle and unreliable nature of the nationalist bourgeoisie. The Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party, for instance, was primarily bourgeois in its orientation and leadership, but it also attracted a mass following in the wake of the Iraq’s independence from British colonialism in 1958. (3)

Ba’ath was not committed to socialist revolution in Iraq, but they did preside over an aggressive nationalization program in 1972, which seized oil refineries from British and American companies and allowed them to diversify Iraq’s economy. Though these nationalizations were motivated by the access considerations of the national bourgeoisie, they also allowed the Ba’ath state to redirect revenues into public works projects that lifted nearly half the country out of poverty. In a 2006 profile piece on Saddam, PBS News writes of Ba’ath’s accomplishments:

As vice chairman, he oversaw the nationalization of the oil industry and advocated a national infrastructure campaign that built roads, schools and hospitals. The once illiterate Saddam, ordered a mandatory literacy program. Those who did not participate risked three years in jail, but hundreds of thousands learned to read. Iraq, at this time, created one of the best public-health systems in the Middle East — a feat that earned Saddam an award from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. (4)

True to form, Saddam and Ba’ath rose to power in direct response to British colonialism. Acting in the interests of the Iraqi national bourgeoisie, they ‘took back’ the resources monopolized by the West’s colonial subjugation and used the revenues to rapidly construct a modern Iraq, which required an educated populace, secular government, a functional road system, and social infrastructure like hospitals. One can question the sincerity of Ba’ath’s actions towards the masses, but one cannot dispute the profoundly positive effect these nationalist policies had on the lives of ordinary Iraqis.

However, the social accomplishments of bourgeois nationalist regimes should never obscure their reactionary character. With both Ba’ath and the Communist Party of Iraq (ICP) vying for supremacy after the 1958 revolution, hostile confrontations between the parties continued until 1963, when Ba’ath launched a coup d’etat against Prime Minister Abdul Karim Qasim. (5) During the coup, communists organized massive militant resistance to Ba’ath, and over the course of the three days in Baghdad, “5,000 Iraqi citizens were apparently killed, including 80 Ba’th Party activists and 340 Iraqi communist activists.” (6)

Following the consolidation of Ba’ath rule in Iraq, the ICP experienced two separate waves of repression: one in 1963 following the coup and the subsequent unrest, and the other in 1977, led by Saddam. (5) Historian Bob Feldman writes in a February 2006 piece on Iraq that “By March 1963, an estimated 10,000 Communist Party of Iraq members had been arrested by the Ba’th regime and many imprisoned Iraqi leftist activists were not treated gently.” (6) Quoting Said Aburish’s book, “A Brutal Friendship: The West and the Arab Elite”, Feldman continues:

The number of people eliminated remains confused and estimates range from 700 to 30,000. Putting various statements by Iraqi exiles together, in all likelihood the figure was nearer five thousand…. There were many ordinary people who were eliminated because they continued to resist after the coup became an accomplished fact, but there were also senior army officers, lawyers, professors, teachers, doctors and others. (6)

The CPI was correct to resist the 1963 Ba’ath coup and oppose the consolidation of a bourgeois nationalist regime. Iraq’s independence in 1958 had shifted their primary adversary from British colonialism to the Iraqi bourgeoisie, seeing as no colonial entity to struggle against still existed. Saddam’s case reminds Marxist-Leninists that it’s strategic to enter into a popular front with bourgeois nationalists against imperialism, but after the national liberation struggle is complete, they constitute a vicious and dangerous foe.

Palestinian women wave PFLP flags

Nationalist governments support revolutionary people’s struggles in the Third World.

Failure to conform to imperialist foreign policy is the most common wedge issue between bourgeois nationalists and the West. Often driven by pan-national ideological unity, bourgeois nationalist countries objectively support revolutionary people’s struggles and national liberation movements abroad, placing them at odds with imperialism.

Finding common ground with the Shi’a-led Iraqi resistance to US occupation, Iran has provided weapons to Iraqi insurgents, as well as training for assembling their own weapons. (7) While many allegations about Iranian aid to the Iraqi resistance are exaggerated by Western capitalist media to ratchet up tensions, journalist Michael Perry describes Iran’s rationale in a February 2007 article:

But let’s go even further and say, for the sake of argument, that the Iraqi insurgents are receiving officially authorized aid from the Iranian state. It is true that having a neighboring nation in chaos does not generally benefit any country, but the Iranians have been under the gun from the U.S. for a very long time –decades in fact. The recent threats and provocations from the Bush administration make it clear that Iran is an imminent target. I’m quite sure the Iranians realize that the quagmire in Iraq is the primary impediment to an American invasion of Iran. Troubles for U.S. forces in Iraq may buy the Iranians more time. Could the Iranians be so blind to their own self-interests? (8)

At odds with Saddam’s secular Sunni government for decades, the Iranian bourgeoisie would relish the opportunity to have an oil-rich Shi’a-dominated Iraq to its west. More pressing, however, is the collective national fear of having another US-client state in the region. There’s a reason that Tehran, and not Qatar, the UAE, or Saudi Arabia, is actively subverting US occupation by materially supporting the Iraqi resistance. That reason, of course, is because the Iran’s ruling nationalist bourgeoisie has a material class interest in anti-imperialism.

The best evidence for the progressive quality of the Iranian nationalist bourgeoisie, embodied in President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is the attempted color revolution in 2009 by the US-backed Mir-Hossein Mousavi. This so-called ‘Green revolution’ was financially supported by both the West and the wealthy neo-liberal bourgeoisie, represented by multi-millionaire former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. (9) In the 2005 Presidential elections, Ahmadinejad defeated Rafsanjani largely on the basis of the latter’s gaudy neo-liberal orientation. A 2005 article in GreenLeft by Doug Lorimer highlights the divergent class interests represented by Ahmadinejad and Rafsanjani. While both accept the fundamental tenents of the Iranian capitalist state:

In the same TV interview [Ahmadinejad] claimed the country’s vast oil wealth was controlled by one powerful family — a reference to Rafsanjani, who is alleged to have enriched himself through his son’s management of the country’s nationalised oil industry. The Rafsanjanis also have investments worth US1 billion in pistachio farming, real estate, automobile manufacture and a private airline.

“The whole Iranian economy is set up to benefit the privileged few”, Ray Takeyh, a professor and director of studies at the US National Defense University’s Near East and South Asia Center in Washington, told the Bloomberg news agency last December. “Rafsanjani is the most adept, the most notorious and the most privileged.” (10)

Rafsanjani, and his running dog Mousavi, hoped to rise to power via a US-supported color revolution and open Iran to Western markets; in other words, they represent the comprador Iranian bourgeoisie. Despite the best efforts of the imperialist powers to oust Ahmadinejad–who by every objective measure legitimately won the 2009 election–the Iranian people resisted these attacks on their national sovereignty. (11) Even as he nears the end of his two terms as President, Ahmadinejad remains popular with the Iranian masses because of his consistent anti-imperialism on the world stage, along with the social programs he has championed at home despite Western sanctions.

Pivoting to another nationalist state, Syria has consistently functioned as the most progressive of the multitude of Middle Eastern countries by substantially supporting the major national liberation movements in the region. Trinity University professor of history David Lesch writes in his fantastic book, The New Lion of Damascus: Bashar al-Asad and Modern Syria that:

Syria does not deny claims of support for Hizbollah, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad, viewing that such operations constitute legitimate resistance and not terrorism; indeed, Damascus often views Israeli activities vis-a-vis the Palestinians and its actions in Lebanon as terrorism. (12)

Since the Syrian Ba’ath party took power in 1963, the state has always supported the Palestinian and Lebanese liberation struggles and sought to keep Israeli imperialism in-check. (13) Sharing the common trait of secularism, Syria allows the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), the largest Marxist-Leninist revolutionary movement in Palestine, to operate comfortably out of Damascus and materially supports their struggle with supplies and resources. (14) Because of the Syrian bourgeoisie’s desire for regional secular pan-Arab unity–rooted in the Alawi faith of President Bashar al-Assad and others–and the Israeli occupation of the Golan Heights, Assad’s government is objectively anti-imperialist.

Similarly, Saddam’s Ba’ath state in Iraq financially supported and championed the cause of Palestinian national liberation, which was played up by the West in the months leading up to the 2003 invasion. On March 13, 2003–just six days before the invasion–the BBC reported, “Saddam Hussein has paid out thousands of dollars to families of Palestinians killed in fighting with Israel. Relatives of at least one suicide attacker as well as other militants and civilians gathered in a hall in Gaza City to receive cheques.” (15) Later, the same article estimates that the Iraqi government had paid out nearly $35 million to Palestinian families since 2000.

In hindsight, the timing and purpose of this BBC article is obvious, but that Saddam’s support for ‘terrorist groups’ was one of the reasons for the 2003 invasion demonstrates the extreme degree to which his support for the Palestinians offended and scared the West. Startlingly few people remember that Israel invaded Syrian airspace and bombed a peaceful nuclear power plant in September 2007 for many of the same reasons. When a bourgeois state in the Third World becomes nationalist in its orientation, as opposed to comprador bourgeois states, it demands a response from the West.

Emperor Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia

Never confuse your primary and secondary contradictions!

Although a multitude of contradictions exist in class societies, at any given time, one of these contradictions is principal in comparison to the others. If a person goes for a walk, decides s/he wants a cigarette, and then gets bitten by a rattlesnake, the order of the day is to call a doctor and receive medical attention immediately for the venom. As much as that person might have wanted–or even needed–a cigarette, only a great fool would tell this person that s/he should prioritize smoking over seeking medical attention.

Primary and secondary contradictions seem like common sense, but a multitude of so-called ‘leftists’ and revolutionaries confuse them when analyzing imperialism. Ultimately, the approach that Marxist-Leninists ought to take to bourgeois nationalist governments is tied up in correctly identifying and acting on primary and secondary contradictions.

Though largely ignored in Marxist-Leninist writings, the experience of the Ethiopian revolution offers valuable insight as to how communists ought to struggle against bourgeois nationalist governments. Having played an instrumental role in repelling the Italian fascist occupation of Ethiopia, Emperor Haile Selassie I began as an archetype bourgeois nationalist. He encouraged pan-African unity, promoted decolonization, and began an aggressive process of modernizing Ethiopia.

That said, Selassie’s government became firmly aligned with the West after World War II and opened the country up to an influx of foreign capital. Presiding over and encouraging severely unequal land distribution, Selassie’s government was also responsible for a series of famines and foot shortages, the worst of which claimed an estimated 40,000 to 80,000 victims. (16) Ahmed Khan of the Communist Workers and Peasants Party in Pakistan writes this of Selassie’s government:

During the monarchical period, life expectancy was a mere 38 years and 90% of the people were illiterate. Only a tiny handful of feudal landowners and royal sycophants controlled the entire wealth of the country.

…

Severe drought and famine engulfed Ethiopia which led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of peasants, and led to widespread hunger and food crises in the urban areas. (16)

Even bourgeois sources regard these famines as the product of Selassie’s destructive policies. A 1997 report by Human Rights Watch called “Rebellion and Famine in the North under Haile Selassie” indicted the nationalist government for its culpability in this famine, saying:

The Wollo famine was popularly blamed on drought, a backward and impoverishedsocial system, and the cover-up attempted by the imperial government. These factors were all-important — though it must be remembered that specific actions by the government, especiallyafter the Ras Gugsa and Weyane revolts, were instrumental in creating the absence of development. (17)

By 1974, Selassie’s bourgeois government lost all legitimacy in the eyes of the masses. Because of the widespread crises brought on by Selassie’s selective industrial development and close trade relations with the West, Ethiopian workers and peasants began to mobilize against the government. Khan writes, “The inability of the monarchy to deal with the crisis and the propensity of the feudalists to bleed the peasantry dry led to increasing hatred for the monarchy on part of the oppressed peasants, workers and a section of the emergent urban middle class.” (16)

Although no Marxist-Leninist vanguard party existed in Ethiopia at this time, a communist council of military officers known as the Derg organized alongside labor leaders in the urban centers and peasant communities in the countryside to produce the Ethiopian revolution of 1974. (18)

The revolutionary experience of the Ethiopian people in overthrowing Selassie’s government and establishing the People’s Democratic Republic of Ethiopia–firmly committed to socialist construction–has tremendous lessons for Marxist-Leninists about their relation to bourgeois nationalists. Objectively, Selassie’s government was essential to the anti-imperialist and anti-fascist struggle waged against fascist Italy in 1935. The Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA) went so far as to launch a “Hands off Ethiopia” campaign in the same year, which included substantial demonstrations supporting Ethiopia’s right to self-determination (19).

However, classes do not exist in a vacuum. While one class may play a historically progressive role at one time, a change in the material conditions–like increased trade relations with the West following World War II–may render that same class reactionary. For as important as nationalism was to Ethiopia repelling fascist Italy in 1941, the same nationalist government’s reactionary policies reached a boiling point in 1974, resulting in a popular socialist revolution.

The lesson from Ethiopia is clear: Marxist-Leninists in nationalist states must organize with a keen awareness of primary and secondary contradictions. For a moment, let’s assume that an organization like the Derg existed in Ethiopia circa-1935. Said organization would commit a grave error in throwing in with the fascists in hopes of toppling an admittedly reactionary monarchy. First, the organization would undeniably alienate the Ethiopian masses, who despite their poverty and poor military training, flocked to defend their homeland, the only African state never colonized by the West, from fascist occupation. (20) Second, although Selassie’s bourgeois government was at-odds with the interests of Ethiopian workers and peasants, that contradiction receded into the background the moment that fascist Italy began poison gassing entire villages of Ethiopians.

When Mussolini’s forces invaded Ethiopia in 1935, there was only one organized military force capable of mounting a resistance: Selassie’s nationalist government. Unsuccessful at first, Ethiopian patriots of all classes, albeit predominantly workers and peasants, struggled onward to victory and liberation in 1941. That this liberation struggle took place across class lines on a nationalist basis is no small detail. It’s paramount that Marxist-Leninists, in light of Iraq, Libya, and increasing aggression towards Syria, comfortably identify anti-imperialism as the primary contradiction facing the international proletarian revolution today.

Proletarian internationalism is superior in every way to bourgeois nationalism, but so long as neo-colonialism and imperialism exist, communists must unite all who can be united in the anti-imperialist struggle. Simultaneously, though, communists must remember the other side of the dialectic: When bourgeois nationalists become complicit partners in Western imperialism and alienate themselves from the masses, communists must never hesitate to overthrow that state with extreme prejudice and on its ruins erect revolutionary socialism.

The irrelevance and obscurity of the Iraqi Communist Party (ICP) following the toppling of Saddam’s Ba’ath regime demonstrates the devastating effects of incorrectly identifying primary and secondary contradictions.

Saddam was by no means a consistent anti-imperialist throughout his reign. Though Ba’athist Iraq established diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union and China, it still retained casual relations with the West; relations that were strengthened following Saddam’s condemnation of Soviet intervention in the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan, as well as the Iranian Revolution in 1979. (21) Between the overthrow of the US-backed Shah, the establishment of a militant Islamic republic, and the Iranian hostage crisis, Iraq began to work closely with the West to curb Tehran’s influence in the Middle East. Though the Reagan Administration would notoriously fund the Iranians also, the US comfortably placed their initial bets behind Saddam in the devastating Iran-Iraq war of 1983-1988.

Even though the imperialists used Saddam during the Iran-Iraq war to sow chaos in the Middle East, the Ba’ath state remained largely at odds with Western interests because of its nationalist orientation. Refusing to privatize its oil industry and allow Western capital to fully penetrate its national markets, the West increasingly saw Saddam as a danger to imperialist interests in the Middle East. Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait over territorial disputes, the subsequent Gulf War, and Saddam’s unabashed support for the Palestinian liberation struggle cemented Iraq’s status as a pariah state in the eyes of the West by the early 1990s.

In an effort to eliminate an unfriendly pro-Palestinian government perched atop massive oil reserves, the US and UK fabricated the now-infamous falsehood that Saddam’s government had weapons of mass destruction. While communists around the world uniformly condemned the imperialist invasion of Iraq, “the Iraqi Communist Party (ICP) welcomed Saddam Hussein’s removal and is happy that the ousted president is to be put on trial.” (22) Exhausted and furious from decades of repression by Ba’ath, the ICP’s position is understandable on a purely visceral and emotional level. However, Marxist-Leninists must remain level-headed during periods of crisis and correctly identify primary and secondary contradictions; a task at which the ICP uniformally failed.

In the coming years, the ICP would come to participate in the puppet state erected by the West–most recently in the liberalizing ‘Political Reconciliation’ movement–and integrate themselves into this comprador government imposed from without. (23) Despite comprising the strongest opposition to the Ba’ath government during the 1960s, the ICP has descended into relative obscurity, having lost any credibility with the masses for their blunder. Instead, Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army and other religious sects comprised the mass base of resistance after Saddam was captured, though their bourgeois and petty-bourgeois class character has led them to also participate in Maliki’s bogus government.

One would think that the international ‘left’ would have learned about correctly handling primary and secondary contradictions after witnessing the failure of the ICP to lead a mass revolutionary resistance to imperialist occupation. Instead, the same ‘leftists’ who witnessed the invasion of Iraq cheerled a racist, imperialist-backed ‘rebel movement’ in Libya, and many made the full leap into supporting NATO’s invasion to oust Qaddafi.

When a nation achieves self-determination, the secondary contradiction between the proletariat and the national bourgeoisie will ascend to the forefront as the new primary contradiction. Before that time, however, the primary contradiction facing the masses in oppressed nations is between imperialism and national liberation. In bourgeois nationalist states, this contradiction can and must draw in all who can be united to strike a blow against imperialism.

Countries want independence.

Nations want liberation.

People want revolution.

—-

(1) Gerald A. Perreira, “Libya Getting it Right: A Revolutionary Pan-African Perspective,” March 4, 2011, Dissent Voice, http://bit.ly/mQT4iz

(2) Josef Stalin, Marxism & the National Question, March-May 1913, http://bit.ly/cwOCSQ

(3) Said K. Aburish, “How Saddam Hussein Came to Power,” 2002, From Saddam Hussein: The Politics of Revenge, Published in The Saddam Hussein Reader, pg. 41-42

(4) Jessica Moore, “Saddam Hussein’s Rise to Power,” 2003, PBS News, http://to.pbs.org/65tro

(5) Turi Munthe (Editor), The Saddam Hussein Reader, 2002, pg. xv-xviii

(6) Bob Feldman, “A People’s History of Iraq: 1950 to November 1963,” February 2, 2006, Toward Freedom, http://bit.ly/qwCar2

(7) CNN, “Iraqi insurgents being trained in Iran, US says,” April 11, 2007, http://bit.ly/nHra0S

(8) Michael Perry, “So what if Iran is Interfering in Iraq?,” February 21, 2007, AntiWar.com, http://bit.ly/ogwqxd

(9) Paul Craig Roberts, “Are the Iranian Protests Another US Orchestrated ‘Color Revolution’?,” June 20-21, 2009, CounterPunch, http://bit.ly/pmXj7w

(10) Doug Lorimer, “IRAN: A vote against neoliberalism,” July 6, 2005, Green Left, http://bit.ly/nYcOll

(11) Terror Free America, New America Foundation, “Ahmadinejad Front Runner in Upcoming Elections,” June 12, 2009, http://bit.ly/k8x0w

(12) David W. Lesch, The New Lion of Damascus: Bashar al-Asad and Modern Syria, 2005, pg. 102

(13) Reuters, “Syrian President Vows to Keep Supporting Hezbollah, Hamas,” August 2, 2007, http://bit.ly/qex219

(14) Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, “PFLP condemns attack on Syria,” November 3, 2008, Fight Back! News, http://bit.ly/qWDlmo

(15) BBC News, “Palestinians get Saddam funds,” March 13, 2008, http://bbc.in/9BWsXr

(16) Ahmed Khan, “Defend Comrade Mengistu! On the struggle of our Ethiopian brothers,” November 19, 2008, Red Diary, http://bit.ly/jbYhks

(17) Human Rights Watch, “3. Rebellion and Famine in the North Under Haile Selassie,” 1997, http://bit.ly/pzy53w

(18) Christopher Clapham, Transformation and Continuity in Revolutionary Ethiopia, 1988, Cambridge University Press.

(19) Robin D.G. Kelley, Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression, 1990, pg. 123.

(20) A.J. Barker, The Rape of Ethiopia, 1936, 1971.

(21) Said K. Aburish, “How Saddam Hussein Came to Power,” 2002, From Saddam Hussein: The Politics of Revenge, Published in The Saddam Hussein Reader, pg. 44

(22) Shaheen Chughtai, “Iraqi communists celebrate change,” June 1, 2004, http://aje.me/qp5rVW

(23) Talal Alrubaie, “The Iraqi Communist Party and Hegel’s Owl of Minerva,” February 2, 2010, http://bit.ly/rqF6fr

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Who Killed Yasser Arafat?

Now we know he was poisoned – but by whom?

by Justin Raimondo

Yasser Arafat died on November 11, 2004, of a mysterious ailment. His enemies spread the rumor he had AIDS: David Frum, with typical classiness, claimed he had contracted AIDS as a consequence of having sex with his bodyguards. Now, however, it has been revealed Arafat was poisoned: the cause of his death was exposure to very high levels of polonium-210 [pdf], a rare radioactive substance. An investigation conducted by Al Jazeera showed Arafat’s personal items, released to the media organization by his widow, contained several times the normal level of polonium that would normally be detected on such items. The Palestinian leader’s terminal symptoms were similar to those experienced by victims of polonium poisoning: the substance targets the gastrointestinal tract and the subject wastes away.

Arafat’s Ramallah compound had been bombed several times by the Israelis, and they had the place surrounded – yet still he persisted. They couldn’t get him out. Worse, his plight was becoming a metaphor for the condition of his people, who were – and still are – prisoners in their own land. A former adviser claimed he was poisoned by the Israelis, who detained the Palestinian ambulance used to deliver Arafat’s medications to the Ramallah compound. At the time, one tended to write this off as a purely polemical exercise: in light of the new evidence, however, the question has to be asked.

Simply by continuing to exist in the face of such a sustained assault, Arafat was defeating the Israelis every day. They had to get rid of him. Did they? We’ll never know for sure, but it is worth noting that Israeli threats to kill him preceded his untimely death by less than a year. As is well-known, Israeli intelligence has carried out numerous assassinations: it is simply another tool in their international operations, one they have never hesitated to utilize. A passport-falsification scheme involving New Zealand, Britain, France, Spain, and a number of other countries was widely believed to have been meant to equip the Mossad’s crack team of assassins, who could slip into – and out of – target areas at will.

The Israelis hated Arafat with a particular passion, for two reasons:

1) His longevity – The Palestinian movement is thick [pdf] with factions, but thin when it comes to recognizable leaders. Arafat was the principal leader, and no one since his death has achieved his stature. He was a political survivor, having lived through numerous assassination attempts, and deflected the schemes of internal enemies to displace him. Simply by sticking around for so long, he became a living symbol of the Palestinian struggle for self-determination – and that is one big reason why the Israelis got rid of him.

2) His secularism – The Israelis encouraged the growth of groups such as Hamas in the beginning, in order to split away the more religious elements from the decidedly secular Palestine Liberation Organization/Fatah, which Arafat headed. It is easy to sell the Palestinians as crazed jihadists when a group like Hamas or Islamic Jihad is the most visible champion of their cause: the secular PLO presented the Israelis with a public relations problem. There’s another reason for the Israelis to have knocked him off.

One aspect of this case is extremely odd: polonium-210 is the same poison Alexander Litvinenko was dosed with. Litvinenko, a former KGB official, converted to Islam, joined the Chechen rebels, and became an associate of Boris Berezovsky, the notorious Russian oligarch wanted on charges of embezzlement in his home country. Litvinenko and Berezovsky are the Russian version of 9/11 Truthers: they believe practically every terrorist attack on Russian cities has been “staged” by Vladimir Putin in order to keep him in power. When he became ill, Litvinenko charged the Russian spy agency with poisoning him – although that seems highly unlikely.

Polonium-210 isn’t something you can buy off the shelf at your local Walmart. It isn’t even something a mad scientist might cook up in his home lab. About 100 grams are produced each year for specialized technical uses. The only entities with access to this sort of thing are state actors, or, at least, a private organization with very substantial resources at its disposal.

What’s interesting is that a diplomatic cable, dated Dec. 26, 2006 and published by WikiLeaks, details the conversation of a US diplomat with Russian spook Anatoly Safonov in which Safonov claims the Russians told the British about the importation of “nuclear materials” into London during the Litvinenko affair – and were told that the whole thing was “under control before the poisoning took place.” In the course of the same conversation, Safonov – Putin’s chief representative on terrorism-related matters – went on to describe a number of threats and their possible sources:

“Safonov noted the daunting number of countries that posed particular terrorism threats, mentioning North Korea, Pakistan, South Africa, Libya, Iran, India, and Israel (sic?). He described a range of dangers, stressing the more immediate threats posed by nuclear and biological terrorism, but also acknowledging the risks of chemical terrorism.”

While the use of “sic” is meant to indicate our diplomat’s incredulity at the inclusion of Israel in this list, what we now know about how Arafat died should tear away the blinders from several sets of eyes – yes, even at the US State Department.

Source

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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Lenin on National Oppression

“Why should we Great Russians, who have been oppressing more nations than any other people, deny the right to secession for Poland, Ukraine, or Finland? We are asked to become chauvinists, because by doing so we would make the position of Social-Democrats in Poland less difficult. We do not pretend to seek to liberate Poland, because the Polish people live between two states that are capable of fighting. Instead of telling the Polish workers that only those Social-Democrats are real democrats who maintain that the Polish people ought to be free, since there is no place for chauvinists in a socialist party, the Polish Social-Democrats argue that, just because they find the union with Russian workers advantageous, they are opposed to Poland’s secession. They have a perfect right to do so. But people don’t want to understand that to strengthen internationalism you do not have to repeat the same words. What you have to do is stress, in Russia, the freedom of secession for oppressed nations, and, in Poland, their freedom to unite. Freedom to unite implies freedom to secede.”

 – V. I. Lenin,  “Speech on the National Question April 29 (May 12)” Collected Works, London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1960, Vol. 24, p. 298

Lenin on the Revolutionary Potential of the Colonies & Neo-Colonies

“I should also like to emphasize here the importance of the movement in the colonies. In this respect we witness in all the old parties of the Second and Two-and-a-Half Internationals the survivals of old sentimental conceptions–there is much sympathy for the oppressed peoples of the colonies and semi-colonies. The movement in the colonies is still regarded as an insignificant national and completely peaceful movement. However, that is not the case. For great changes have taken place in this respect since the beginning of the twentieth century, namely, millions and hundreds of millions — actually the overwhelming majority of the world’s population — are now coming out as an independent and active revolutionary factor. And it should be perfectly clear that in the coming decisive battles of the world revolution, this movement of the majority of the world’s population, originally aimed at national liberation, will turn against capitalism and imperialism and will, perhaps, play a much more revolutionary role than we have been led to expect.”

–Lenin, “Tactics of the Russian Communist Party, Report to the Third Congress of the Communist International” (July 5 1921)

“In the last analysis, the outcome of the struggle will be determined by the fact that Russia, India, China, etc., account for the overwhelming majority of the population of the globe.”

–Lenin, “Better Fewer, But Better,” March 2, 1923

Liberal Holocaust: Imperialism and the Democratic Party

This is a good article from a website that is now down. I disagree with several parts, particularly the labeling of North Korea as a “Stalinist dictatorship,” referring to the Soviet Union as an “empire,” saying that Titoite Yugoslavia was a “Leninist revolution” and denying the genocidal actions of the Milošević government. Regardless, this article makes a very important point about the Democratic Party, and exposes their true imperialist warmongering nature.

 – Espresso Stalinist 

Many people involved in US anti-war movement(s) have this naive belief that Democrats are not imperialists, that US imperialist policies, such as those pursued by the Bush administration, are just a recent deviation or limited to Republican administrations. In fact, the Democratic Party has a long and bloody history of imperialism. Democrats are imperialists and mass murderers. Nor is this limited to the more conservative democrats; left-liberals have done the same. Liberal governments have slaughtered millions.

Starting shortly before the end of World War Two, Democrats began recruiting many Nazi war criminals and using them to help expand the American Empire. Hitler’s intelligence chief in East Europe Reinhard Gehlen was used by the US, after the war, to build an intelligence network against the Soviets in East Europe. They also dropped supplies to remnants of Hitler’s armies operating in Eastern Europe, to harass the Soviet bloc. Other Nazi war criminals employed by the US included Klaus Barbie, Otto von Bolschwing and Otto Skorzeny. Some of these Nazis later made their way to Latin America, where they advised and assisted US-backed dictatorships in the area.

Harry Truman kicked up anti-communist hysteria, which lead to McCarthyism (which occurred during his administration) and helped start the Cold War. He supported numerous dictatorships, including Saudi Arabia. US involvement in Vietnam started under Truman with the US providing support for the French invaders and the CIA carrying out covert actions. In 1950 his administration issued the ultra-hawkish NSC 68. The subversion of Italian democracy was done by his administration – fearing electoral victory in 1948 by the Italian Communist party, the CIA funded various leftover Mussolinite Brownshirt thugs and other former Nazi collaborators, successfully manipulating the results to ensure pro-US candidates won. A secret paramilitary army was formed to overthrow the government just in case the Communists managed to win anyway.

In the years after World War Two a rebellion against the British puppet government in Greece broke out. This client state was largely staffed by former Nazi collaborators who the British had put back in power. The UK was unable to defeat the left-wing insurgency (which had previously fought an insurgency against the Nazi occupation during World War Two) and asked the US for help. In 1947 Truman invaded Greece and proceeded to crush the revolutionaries, keeping the former Nazi collaborators in power. Truman attempted to justify this by portraying the guerillas as mere pawns of Moscow and therefore a form of covert aggression, but he had no real proof of this. The claim is also based on a double standard: when the USSR (allegedly) covertly supports revolutionaries in another country it constitutes “aggression” and is wrong, but when the US (or UK) send actual military forces to another country in order to prop up unpopular dictatorships this is somehow perfectly just.

At the end of World War Two Japan withdrew its forces from Korea, resulting in a brief period of self-rule. A provisional government was set up in Seoul, but it had little power. Across Korea, workers took over their factories and peasants took over their land. Self-managed collectives were organized. This did not last long, as the US and USSR quickly partitioned the country into a North and a South, under the occupation of each power. In the south Truman installed a brutal military dictatorship, run mainly by former Japanese collaborators, complete with death squads, torture chambers and suppression of all opposition. The United States and its client state suppressed an insurgency, leveled whole villages and massacred thousands of innocent Koreans. The Soviets followed a similar policy in the north, where a Stalinist dictatorship was imposed. Forces from each empire repeatedly clashed until war broke out in 1950. Truman & his propagandists tried to portray the war as an attempt to defend South Korea from Soviet/Northern aggression, but the very existence of South & North Korea was the result of aggression by the US & USSR. The Korean War was an inter-imperialist war between rival empires fighting for territory, rather like a turf war between rival mafia dons, in which lots of ordinary people (who had no real stake in the war) were sent to die for their elite.

These policies of mass murder continued in both the subsequent Eisenhower administration and the next democratic administration, Kennedy. Like every other president since World War Two (and many prior to that) he supported numerous puppet dictatorships that slaughtered thousands – Mobutu, the Shah, etc. Kennedy backed a coup against the democratically elected government in the Dominican Republic because it was too independent. And lets not forget the Bay of Pigs and the many terrorist campaigns against Cuba.

Kennedy also escalated US involvement in Vietnam. During Eisenhower’s term the Vietnamese defeated US-backed French invaders and the war with France was brought to an end. The country was partitioned in two, with the Vietnamese nationalists/Communists taking over the north and the French puppet government temporarily ruling the south. Elections were to be held to reunite the two, but the US intervened to prevent this (because the Communists would have won free elections) and put in power a right-wing dictatorship headed by Ngo Dinh Diem which relied on a reign of terror in order to stay in power. In the late ’50s popular rebellions erupted against this dictatorship. By the time Kennedy came to power the survival of Diem’s dictatorship was increasingly precarious and so Kennedy escalated the situation from state terror to outright aggression. The US military, mainly the air force, was sent to crush the resistance. This failed to defeat the resistance, so Johnson fabricated a bogus attack on US destroyers by North Vietnamese forces and used this as an excuse to escalate the war, launching a full-fledged ground invasion of the south and began bombing the north. US forces set up concentration camps (called “strategic hamlets”) and committed numerous atrocities during the war. Even John Kerry testified:

“Several months ago in Detroit we had an investigation at which over 150 honorably discharged, and many very highly decorated, veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia. These were not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command. … They relived the absolute horror of what this country, in a sense, made them do. They told stories that at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Ghengis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country. … We rationalized destroying villages in order to save them. … We learned the meaning of free fire zones, shooting anything that moves, and we watched while America placed a cheapness on the lives of orientals. … We fought using weapons against those people which I do not believe this country would dream of using were we fighting in the European theater.”

Kerry has since claimed that Vietnam was an exception to the norm, but the evidence presented in this article shows otherwise. This testimony is corroborated by numerous other primary sources, including many Vietnam veterans. Colin Powell admitted these atrocities occurred and defended them, writing in his memoirs (My American Journey):

“If a helo [helicopter] spotted a peasant in black pajamas who looked remotely suspicious, a possible MAM [military-aged male], the pilot would circle and fire in front of him. If he moved, his movement was judged evidence of hostile intent, and the next burst was not in front, but at him. Brutal? Maybe so. But an able battalion commander with whom I had served at Gelnhausen, Lt. Col. Walter Pritchard, was killed by enemy sniper fire while observing MAMs from a helicopter. And Pritchard was only one of many. The kill-or-be-killed nature of combat tends to dull fine perceptions of right and wrong.”

In addition, Powell defends the torching of civilians’ huts in his memoirs. There are also many Vietnam veterans who strongly deny that the United States committed any kind of atrocities or wrongdoing in Vietnam at all, but they are not the first murderers to strongly deny murdering anyone. These are the kinds of atrocities the Democrat’s foreign policy leads to.

Democrats (and Republicans) tried to portray the war as a result of Chinese (or even Soviet) aggression that had to be stopped or else it would cause a “domino effect” leading to “Communist” conquest of the globe. This is shear fantasy.

Vietnam became independent in 1945 and for a brief period of time the whole country was united under the rule of Ho Chi Min and his fellow nationalists and Marxists. Then France invaded, with US support, leading to the creation of “South Vietnam,” which was a foreign puppet from day one. Attacks on it by Vietnamese were no more “aggression” than attacks on the Vichy government by the French resistance. Communists in China didn’t come to power until 1948, whereas Vietnam declared independence in 1945, so portraying the war as “Chinese aggression” is particularly absurd. Eventually, China did provide weapons, money and advisors to Vietnam (as did the USSR), but merely giving supplies to people fighting for independence hardly constitutes “aggression.” If China giving some weapons and supplies to a Vietnamese movement with substantial popular support constitutes “aggression” then what are we to make of the US, which went well beyond sending weapons and sent over 100,000 troops to keep in power a deeply unpopular puppet government? By this kind of logic, the American war for independence constituted French aggression because France gave the rebels support, just as China & Russia gave the Vietnamese support, except France went even further and sent warships to fight the British and help the US win the war. The Vietnam War was a brutal colonial war, started mainly by democrats, against a people struggling for national liberation.

Even if we ignore Vietnam, Johnson was still a murderous warmonger. In 1965 Johnson launched a secret war on Laos, which would eventually drop more bombs on it then were dropped during World War Two, in order to defeat the leftist Pathet Lao. When a popular rebellion erupted against the US-backed dictatorship in the Dominican Republic, LBJ invaded and defeated it, keeping a US puppet government in power. In Brazil LBJ supported and encouraged a fascist coup against the mildly reformist Goulart administration. Johnson also backed a right-wing coup in Indonesia. The previous ruler, Sukarno, committed the crime of trying to stay neutral in the cold war and desiring to build a strong Indonesia independent of foreign powers. So he was removed and general Suharto seized power. The US helped Suharto liquidate dissent and gave him lists of “subversives” to kill. Between 500,000 and a million people were massacred by Suharto in the period following the coup, with the covert help of the Johnson administration. When the Greek ambassador objected to the President’s plan for a resolving a dispute over Cyprus LBJ told him:

“Fuck your Parliament and your Constitution. America is an elephant. Cyprus is a flea. If these two fleas continue itching the elephant, they may just get whacked by the elephant’s trunk, whacked good. … We pay a lot of good American dollars to the Greeks, Mr. Ambassador. If your Prime Minister gives me talk about Democracy, Parliament and Constitutions, he, his Parliament and his Constitution may not last very long.”

In 1965 the Greek king, aided by the CIA, removed Prime Minister George Papandreou (who’s foreign policy was too independent for Washington) from power. In 1967 the Greek government was forced to finally hold elections again, but when it looked like George Papandreou was going to win again a military coup prevented him from coming to power. George Papadopoulos, leader of the coup and head of the new military dictatorship, had been on the CIA payroll for 15 years and was a Nazi collaborator during World War Two.

Carter, the so-called “human rights” president, was also an imperialist warmonger. He continued US support for brutal tyrants in Argentina, El Salvador, Guatemala, etc. Carter supported Pol Pot’s forces after they were thrown out of power due to a war with Vietnam. Under Ford Indonesia invaded East Timor and proceeded to slaughter 200,000 people. Although this invasion occurred under Ford, the worst atrocities happened under Carter’s reign. As atrocities increased, he increased the flow of weapons to the Indonesian government, insuring they wouldn’t run out and could continue massacring Timorese. Carter also backed the massacre in Kwangju by the South Korean military dictatorship. Many of the things which liberals like to blame Reagan for were actually started under Carter. Deregulation began under Carter, as did US support for the Contras in Nicaragua. Six months before the Soviets invaded he also initiated US support for the Islamic fundamentalist terrorists/”freedom fighters” in Afghanistan which would later include Bin Laden.

Bill Clinton was a mass murderer and war criminal, too. He backed numerous dictatorships, continued the proxy war against Marxist guerillas in Columbia and bombed more countries than any other peacetime president, including Iraq, Yugoslavia, Sudan, Somalia and Afghanistan.

Clinton laid siege to Iraq with sanctions, “no fly zones” and bombings, killing 1.5 to 3 million people. UN-approved sanctions on Iraq were originally imposed at the start of the Gulf War in response to the invasion of Kuwait, but continued after the end of the war at US (and UK) insistence. The United States used sanctions as a weapon against Iraq. One military intelligence document titled Iraq Water Treatment Vulnerabilities noted:

“Iraq depends on importing-specialized equipment-and some chemicals to purify its water supply … With no domestic sources of both water treatment replacement parts and some essential chemicals, Iraq will continue attempts to circumvent United Nations sanctions to import these vital commodities. … Failing to secure supplies will result in a shortage of pure drinking water for much of the population. This could lead to increased incidences, if not epidemics, of disease and to certain pure-water-dependent industries becoming incapacitated, including petrochemicals, fertilizers, petroleum refining, electronics, pharmaceuticals, food processing, textiles, concrete construction, and thermal power plants. Iraq’s overall water treatment capability will suffer a slow decline, rather than a precipitous halt … Unless water treatment supplies are exempted from the UN sanctions for humanitarian reasons, no adequate solution exists for Iraq’s water purification dilemma, since no suitable alternatives … sufficiently meet Iraqi needs. … Unless the water is purified with chlorine epidemics of such diseases as Cholera, Hepatitis, and Typhoid could occur … Iraq could try convincing the United Nations or individual countries to exempt water treatment supplies from sanctions for humanitarian reasons. It probably also is attempting to purchase supplies by using some sympathetic countries as fronts. If such attempts fail, Iraqi alternatives are not adequate for their national requirements. … Some affluent Iraqis could obtain their own minimally adequate supply of good quality water from northern Iraqi sources. If boiled, the water could be safely consumed. Poorer Iraqis and industries requiring large quantities of pure water would not be able to meet their needs. … Alternatives are not adequate for their national requirements.”

This and other documents show that the United States intentionally used sanctions to destroy Iraq’s water supply with full knowledge of the consequences. In addition to water problems, the sanctions also interfered with the importation of basic necessities like food and medicine. The UN itself, the organization that implemented the sanctions (due to US/UK insistence), reported that they resulted in mass death. UNICEF found that on average 5,000 children died every month as a result of sanctions. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reported in 1995 that 567,000 children in Iraq had died as a result of the sanctions. Those sanctions continued until the invasion in 2003, killing even more. This began under the first Bush administration, but most of it occurred under Clinton’s administration.

In 1996, faced with mounting humanitarian concerns that threatened to end the sanctions, an “oil for food” program was implemented. Officially, this was supposed to allow Iraq to import a limited amount of food and supplies in exchange for limited amounts of oil but in practice it did little to alleviate the suffering of Iraqis caused by the sanctions. Everything imported by Iraq had to be approved by a UN sanctions committee that, due to US/UK influence, frequently stopped or delayed importation of needed supplies. All money Iraq made from the sale of oil was kept by the UN in an escrow account with the bank of Paris and was not at the discretion of the Iraqi government. Some of this was used to pay for administrative costs related to the sanctions and about a third were used to pay reparations to Kuwait, the remainder was inadequate for Iraq’s needs. In 1998 Dennis Halliday, the first head of the UN’s “oil for food” program resigned because the sanctions continued to result in a humanitarian catastrophe. In 2000 Hans Von Sponeck, the new head of the “oil for food” program, resigned for the same reason. On the May 12, 1996 edition of “60 minutes” journalist Lesly Stahl asked Madeleine Albright, Clinton’s secretary of state,

“We have heard that a half million children have died [from sanctions on Iraq]. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?” Albright’s response was, “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price–we think the price is worth it.”

Clinton attacked and dismembered Yugoslavia, using a “divide and conquer” strategy to install US/NATO puppet governments ruling over its corpse. During and after World War Two Yugoslavia underwent its own Leninist revolution, independent of Soviet tanks, and eventually evolved a market socialist economy based on a limited form of worker self-management. Most of the economy was run by enterprises that were officially worker owned, with elected managers, and sold their products on the market. Yugoslavia was a federation of different nationalities in southeastern Europe, with six different republics united under a federal government.

As the Soviet empire declined and fell western financial institutions such as the IMF and World Bank began pressuring Yugoslavia to implement neoliberal capitalist reforms such as privatization, austerity measures and so on.

Yugoslavia implemented these on a limited basis. These programs lead to a declining economy that opened the door for opportunistic politicians to whip up nationalism for their own benefit, scapegoating other nationalities for economic problems. They also stressed relations between the federal government and the republics because money that would have gone to the republics instead went to servicing Yugoslavia’s debt. The United States and Western Europe took advantage of this to encourage the breakup of Yugoslavia into NATO protectorates.

In 1990 separatists won elections in Slovenia, Bosnia and Croatia. The new Croatian government began to persecute the Serb minority living in Croatia, even bringing back the flag and other symbols from when it had been a World War Two Axis puppet government (run by a fascist organization called the Ustase) that attempted to exterminate the Serbs (who were regarded as “subhuman”). Croatian President Franjo Trudjman refused to condemn the Ustase and claimed, “the establishment of Hitler’s new European order can be justified by the need to be rid of the Jews.” Croatia and Slovenia declared independence in 1991. West Europe and then the US recognized Slovenia and Croatia as independent states despite warnings from the UN that this would encourage Bosnia to declare independence and bring about a civil war, which it did.

The Yugoslav federal government fought a small ten-day war with Slovenia, after which Slovenia was allowed to leave Yugoslavia. Croatia and Bosnia fought bloody civil wars with the Yugoslav government. In Bosnia the main forces fighting against the federal government were Croat fascists, supported by Croatia, and Islamic fundamentalists, led by Alija Izetbegovic, who aimed to turn Bosnia into a theocracy similar to Iran or the Taliban. Most of Bosnia’s Serb minority sided with the Yugoslav federal government. The US covertly backed the Islamists and fascists by secretly supplying them with weapons and even flying in Muslim ‘holy warriors’ from Afghanistan so they could join the Jihad. Initially the Islamists and fascists in Bosnia worked together against the Serbs and Yugoslav government. Later they started fighting each other, but US & West European pressure eventually put a stop to that. When the Yugoslav government started winning the war NATO sent in the air force to bomb them and support the separatists. Many atrocities were committed on both sides of the war, but Western governments and media emphasized and exaggerated Yugoslav and Serb atrocities while downplaying or ignoring atrocities committed by the separatists.

In 1995 the war came to an end, in a defeat for Yugoslavia. Under a UN fig leaf, NATO “peacekeeper” troops occupied much of the former Yugoslavia while Bosnia was made into a de-facto NATO colony, occupied by NATO troops and with a “high representative” responsible to foreign powers in charge of the country. Yugoslavia was dramatically shrunk, with only two out of six Republics, Serbia and Montenegro, remaining in the union (Macedonia had been allowed to peacefully leave the union in the early ’90s but at this time was still largely outside the Western sphere of influence).

The next phase of Clinton’s conquest of Yugoslavia began in the late ’90s when the CIA began covertly supporting the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), a terrorist organization that has been linked to Osama Bin Laden. The KLA launched a guerilla war in the Kosovo province of Serbia, advocating independence for Kosovo. In 1999, under the guise of “peace negotiations,” the US/NATO issued an ultimatum demanding Yugoslavia allow NATO troops to occupy the entire country. Yugoslavia obviously refused this unreasonable demand and Clinton used this refusal as an excuse to begin a major bombing campaign against Yugoslavia. After several months of bombing pulverized the country a peace deal was reached allowing NATO “peacekeeper” troops to occupy Kosovo (but not the rest of Yugoslavia), effectively turning the province into a NATO protectorate. A year later a revolt led by US-funded groups and politicians overthrew the Yugoslav government, putting pro-US/NATO leaders in charge. The new government abolished Yugoslavia and became a Western puppet. This conquest was completed shortly after Clinton left office, when KLA forces attacked Macedonia. Macedonia saw the writing on the wall and allowed NATO troops to occupy it. Clinton succeeded in not only ripping Yugoslavia apart, but in achieving US/NATO domination over the Balkans and in forcing an economic system favorable to Western investors on the region. A wave of privatization has swept over the former Yugoslavia, transforming it into a corporate capitalist economy colonized by Western capital.

The standard excuse Clinton used to justify the military interventions in Yugoslavia was that it was supposed to stop “ethnic cleansing”/”genocide” allegedly being perpetrated by the Serbs/Yugoslav government. This is obviously bogus because the US helped instigate the conflicts that lead to the various massacres in the war and also because Clinton largely turned a blind eye towards atrocities committed by separatist forces (like the massacres in Gospic and Krajina). It is also not credible because Clinton ignored other genocides (such as Rwanda) and even funded Turkey’s genocide against the Kurds, which occurred at roughly the same time and resulted in the slaughter of tens of thousands of Kurds.

The death toll of the democrats is quite large:

Greek Civil War: 160,000 (Truman)
Korean War: 3 million (Truman)
Assault on Indochina: 5 million (started under Truman, accelerated under Kennedy & LBJ)
Coup in Indonesia: 1 million (LBJ)
East Timor: 100,000 (Carter)
Kwangju Massacre: 2000 (Carter)
Argentine Dirty War: 30,000 (mostly Carter)
Iraq sanctions: 1.5 million (mostly Clinton)
Turkish Kurdistan: 40,000 (mostly Clinton)

That’s at least 10,8022,000 killed by democrats, 9,292,000 if one only counts the liberal governments (Clinton wasn’t really a liberal). For comparison, the Nazi holocaust killed roughly 6,000,000 Jews. And this is just the tip of the iceberg; these are only the most famous incidents over the last couple of decades. If you add up the total from periods preceding this and the less famous incidents the number get much, much higher. If you add in starvation (a direct result of capitalism) it gets even higher.

Democrats could have stopped the congressional authorization for the Iraq war (via filibustering) but instead lots of them defected to the warmongers’ side. They could have stopped many of the nasty things the Republicans are doing by filibuster but choose not to. Many democrats actively supported the war. Most of those who did oppose it offered little opposition, chickening out when the shooting started and either abstained or voted in favor of the pro-war “support our troops” resolution in March. Even Dennis Kucinich, leader of the “anti-war” opposition in the house, abstained from the vote instead of voting against it. It was only after Bush’s war started going sour that vocal criticism began to come from democrats, which is completely opportunistic. Bush’s lies and fabrications about the Niger Uranium had already been exposed prior to the war, but it wasn’t until after the invasion was completed and the democrats needed an issue to attack Bush with that they started whining about it.

The Democratic Party, the party of slavery, has a long history of mass murder and empire building. They are not an alternative to the American Empire. Especially on foreign policy, there is remarkable consistency between republican and democratic administrations. If the Nuremberg standards were applied every President since World War Two, both democrat and republican, would have to be hung. Both parties have the same basic goals; they just disagree on minor details. It would have been much harder for Bush to conquer Iraq (perhaps politically impossible) if Clinton hadn’t been waging war against it for his entire term. The policies implemented by the US government have more to do with the specific circumstances of the time period then with which particular individual happens to occupy the white house. If a democrat is elected he will inherit this Pax Americana and it is unlikely that he would dismantle it (or even be capable of dismantling it). A vote for the democrats is a vote for imperialism and war (as is a vote for the Republicans).

On the Ukrainian Famine “Genocide” Myth: The Years of Hunger

Picture claims to be from "Holodomor" in 1933.

In reality, it is a picture from the famine of 1921-1923 during the civil war.

The original photo is from 1922 and was used in the“Exhibition of American humanitarian aid to Russia during the Soviet Famine of 1921-1923″. 

The following article was written by Kaan Kangal, a Turkish Communist in response to David Myrple’s Op-ed in the Kiev post. The Ukrainian famine, a tragic event as it is, has been hijacked by the anti-communist right as a calculated act of disinformation.

Despite the lack of evidence for the “man-made” causes of the famine, anti-communist forces still hold on to the image of deliberately starved people. The author who for a long while had trumpeted the anti-communist horn on this issue has recently recanted his original claims of the famine being a man-made catastrophe, this author is Robert Conquest; R.W. Davies and Stephen G. Wheatcroft have interacted with Conquest and note that he no longer considers the famine “deliberate”. (“Debate: Stalin and the Soviet Famine of 1932-33: A Reply to Ellman”, in Europe-Asia Studies, vol. 58, No. 4, June 2006, pp.625-633. [note on conquest (p. 629]). Yet despite the fact that the author of The Harvest of Sorrow, the creator of the infamous term “terror-famine” has now recanted his original work due to the mountains of evidence portraying it otherwise; the anti-communist right cannot let up on its claims.

Lies and Confessions of David Marple about Holodomor

By Kaan Kangal

Kiev Post published an article by anticommunist Prof. David Marples about “Ukrainian genocide” in 26.12.2008. [1]

The article by Marples is full of anticommunist lies and it does NOT reflect the reality of history in Ukraine in the Stalin time period. Here is the review of this falsifying article:

Lie no.1: “Genocide or not, Stalin starved millions to death (…)”: Marple seems not to understood the question of genocide, because his statement defines Stalin´s kulak and collectivization policy as “genocide”. This is the typical anticommunist false interpretation of Ukrainian famine and falsification of the reality. There is no evidence that Stalin starved millions to death.

Lie no.2: “ (…) and Soviet regime concealed for 54 years.”: There is no evidence for genocide and there are only contra-evidences for it. If the Soviet regime covered something up in this story, then it was the famine. But we get no evidence on cover-up-story of Soviets from Marple.

Lie no.3: “Highly politicized Holodomor doesn’t hide the fact that ethnic Ukrainian dimension was present.”: The so called “holodomor” does not reflect anything in reality. There is NO single evidence for an ethnic liquidation of Ukrainian nation in any sense in Stalin time period in Ukraine.

Lie no.4: “Ukrainian president Victor Yushchenko has issued a bill that would make it a criminal offense to deny that the famine was genocide.” Pro-fascist anticommunist politicians like Yushchenko has problems with genocide deniers because they have NO evidence for genocide, they did and do NOT study the real history, but they are making political propaganda using the falsified story of Ukrainian famine. Why should denying genocide be a criminal offense? It is not real. The real criminal offense is falsifying the famine reality and using this fake for political interests.

Lie no.5: “After 75 years, we know much about this tragedy,”: you now NOTHING about the famine reality.

Lie no.6: “maintains that he targeted the Soviet peasantry as a whole.” It was not the case. Stalin leadership wanted to collectivize the agrarian economy and it did NOT took Soviet peasantry as “a whole” liquidation target. Stalin leadership did NOT killed and did NOT plan to kill any peasant as person, but they wanted to liquidate the kulak as CLASS.

Lie no. 7: “Thus they deny an ethnic dimension.” They do not deny ethnic dimension, they deny pro-fascist falsification propaganda of Ukrainian nationalists. There was NOT ethnic dimension of kulak policy, there was only a class dimension of it. You do NOT want to see another fact: Most of real Ukrainians in Ukraine were peasants. That´s why you think you can use Ukraine peasant question to slander Soviets.

Lie no. 8: “When the grain ran out, Molotov demanded that the commissions take all food from the villages, which were stripped bare as though a plague of locusts had descended on them.”: Molotov did not order to take “all” food from villages. The harvest was collected in state reserves and collective farm workers were paid for that and they got extra food from warehouses.

Lie no.9: “Whether or not this catastrophe was premeditated”: Which catastrophe? Famine was NOT premeditated and you already confessed that there is no evidence for genocide.

Lie no.10: “Stalin, Molotov and other Soviet leaders deliberately starved their own people.” The Stalin leadership was maybe the only people who really wanted to prevent and who cared about the mass starvation in Ukraine. There is a LOT of evidence that they acted against it and fought against anticommunist sabotage, but there is NO evidence, that they just ignored the famine.

Lie no.11: “concealed this atrocity from the outside world.”: You falsify the reality and conclude it wrong.

Confession no.1: “Highly politicized Holodomor doesn’t hide the fact that ethnic Ukrainian dimension was present.”: It is true that the so called “holodomor” is highly politicized, because the neoliberal, nationalist and anticommunist Ukrainian policy lies on “genocide” fakes and falsifications. Anticommunist and pro-fascist Ukrainian immigrants in Canada and USA and other anti-Soviet pro-CIA historians lied and still lie about Ukrainian famine. There is NOT any single evidence for genocide.

Confession no.2: “A majority of Western scholars — at least judging from published articles and books — denies that Stalin’s intention was to kill Ukrainians (…)”: This is truth. The target of Stalin leadership was NOT killing and liquidation of Ukrainian people (real Ukrainians in Ukraine were MOSTLY peasants in 1930s.) Robert Conquest, Douglas Tottle, Grover Furr, Arch Getty and Marc Tauger denies this falsification propaganda of genocide. Even anticommunist James Mice confessed that lots of visual materials on famine in 1930s are FAKE.

Confession no.3: “We may never know how many died of starvation in 1932-33.”, but you make the propaganda of genocide.

Confession no. 4: “Added to these volatile elements, the Soviet regime began rapidly to collectivize farms starting in 1929.”: This information let us to see that there is no connection between genocide and collectivization. There had been famines before, like at the beginning and in the middle of 1920s although there had been no collectivization in that time.

Confession no.5: “Stalin’s goal was “to liquidate the kulaks (rich peasants) as a class.” And this means liquidating NOT the Soviet peasants as a “whole”.

Confession no.6: “and we may never find a “smoking gun’’”, because there is no evidence.

Notice no.1: “Many governments, including those of Canada and the United States, have recognized the famine as an act of genocide by Stalin’s regime against Ukrainians.”: These are nationalist, neo-liberalist and anticommunist states. They slander the reality to get power in politics against socialist movement of workers. It is for us -for the critical reader- not relevant WHO recognized the famine as genocide, but WHY they recognized.

Notice no.2: “However, Yushchenko has made the Holodomor the central event in the history of modern Ukraine.”: Because he has to convince people that he is no connection to mafia and that the works for “people”. He knows nothing about communism and history and he is also not interested in it.

Notice no.3: “Many so designated destroyed their livestock rather than give it up to the new collective farms. The countryside became a war zone in which millions were dispossessed, with many deported to Siberia or the Far North.” Stalin was in error in gaining the support of peasants and he knew very well that peasants would react to forced collectivization with resistance.

Notice no.4: “Peasants could not travel to towns or cross borders to obtain food after 1932”: Because they were making anticommunist and anti-collectivization propaganda. Many of them were nationalists, fascists, and from other right-wing views. Many of them were against Bolsheviks, fundamentally. And many of them did not believe in future success of Soviet power. Stalin leadership was in error to gain the support of peasants.

Notice no.5: “Many prominent figures – including George Bernard Shaw, and Sidney and Beatrice Webb – reported that this ravaged land was in fact a Communist utopia.”: We do not need any anticommunist slander, but evidence and facts.

Notice no.6: “The link between the Ukrainian famine and external events is clear.” It is very clear for us, but not for you.

Notice no.7: “Ukrainian nationalists, Poles, Hitler and Stalin’s chief enemy, Leon Trotsky, all feature in Stalin’s correspondence and party documents as threats to Soviet security.” Which “documents” and which “correspondence” are you talking about? Maybe about this: There are a lot of evidence for connections and correspondences between German, Polish, Ukrainian fascists and Trotsky.

The Katyn Massacre

by Ella Rule
July 2002

At the end of the First World War, the boundary between Russia and Poland was settled as being along a line which became known as the Curzon line – Lord Curzon being the British statesman who had proposed it.

This demarcation line was not to the liking of the Poles, who soon went to war against the Soviet Union in order to push their borders further eastward. The Soviet Union counter-attacked and were prepared not only to defend themselves but, against Stalin’s advice, to liberate the whole of Poland. Stalin considered such an aim to be doomed to failure because, he said, Polish nationalism had not yet run its course. The Poles were determined NOT to be liberated so there was no point in trying. Hence the Poles put up fierce resistance to Soviet advances. Ultimately the Soviet Union was forced to retreat and even cede territory to the east of the Curzon line to Poland. The areas in question were Western Byelorussia and the western Ukraine – areas populated overwhelmingly by Byelorussians and Ukrainians respectively rather than by Poles. The whole incident could not but exacerbate the mutual dislike of the Poles and the Russians.

On 1 September 1939, Nazi German invaded Poland. On 17 September, the Soviet Union moved to reoccupy those parts of Poland that lay east of the Curzon line. Having taken over those areas, the Soviet Union set about distributing land to the peasants and bringing about the kind of democratic reforms so popular with the people and so unpopular with the exploiters. During the battle to retake the areas east of the Curzon line, the Soviet Union captured some 10,000 Polish officers, who became prisoners of war. These prisoners were then held in camps in the disputed area and put to work road building, etc.

Two years later, on 22 June 1941, Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union by surprise. The Red Army was forced hurriedly to retreat and the Ukraine was taken over by the Germans. During this hurried retreat it was not possible to evacuate to the Soviet interior the Polish prisoners of war. The chief of camp no. 1, Major Vetoshnikov gave evidence that he had applied to the chief of traffic of the Smolensk section of the Western Railway to be provided with railway cars for the evacuation of the Polish prisoners but was told it was unlikely to be possible. Engineer Ivanov, who had been the Chief of Traffic in the region at the time, confirmed there had been no railway cars to spare. “Besides, ” he said, “we could not send cars to the Gussino line, where the majority of the Polish prisoners were, since that line was already under fire“. The result was that, following the Soviet retreat from the area, the Polish prisoners became prisoners of the Germans.

In April 1943, the Hitlerites announced that the Germans had found several mass graves in the Katyn Forest near Smolensk, containing the bodies of thousands of Polish officers allegedly murdered by the Russians.

This announcement was designed to further undermine the co-operation efforts of Poles and Soviets to defeat the Germans. The Russo-Polish alliance was always difficult because the Polish government in exile, based in London, was obviously a government of the exploiting classes. They had to oppose the Germans because of the latter’s cynical takeover of their country for lebensraum. The Soviet Union’s position was that so long as the Soviet Union could retain the land east of the Curzon line, they had no problem with the re-establishment of a bourgeois government in Poland. But the alliance was already in difficulties because the Polish government in exile, headed by General Sikorski, based in London, would not agree to the return of that land. This is in spite of the fact that in 1941 after Hitler invaded Poland, the Soviet Union and the Polish government in exile had not only established diplomatic relations but had also agreed that the Soviet Union would finance “under the orders of a chief appointed by the Polish government-in-exile but approved by the Soviet government ” the formation of a Polish army – this chief being, in the event, the thoroughly anti-Soviet General Anders (a prisoner of the Soviets from 1939). By 25 October 1941 this Army had 41,000 men including 2,630 officers. General Anders, however, eventually refused to fight on the Soviet-German front because of the border dispute between the Soviet Union and Poland, and the Polish army had to be sent elsewhere to fight – i.e., Iran.

Nevertheless, despite the hostility of the Polish government in exile, there was a significant section of Poles resident in the Soviet Union who were not anti-Soviet and did accept the Soviet claim to the territories east of the Curzon line. Many of them were Jewish. These people formed the Union of Polish Patriots which put together the backbone of an alternative Polish government in exile.

The Nazi propaganda relating to the Katyn massacres was designed to make it impossible for the Soviets to have any dealings with the Poles at all. General Sikorski took up the Nazi propaganda with a vengeance, claiming to Churchill that he had a “wealth of evidence“. How he had obtained this “evidence” simultaneously with the German announcement of this supposed Soviet atrocity is not clear, although it speaks loudly of secret collaboration between Sikorski and the Nazis. The Germans had made public their allegations on 13 April. On 16 April the Soviet government issued an official communiqué denying “the slanderous fabrications about the alleged mass shootings by Soviet organs in the Smolensk area in the spring of 1940“. It added:

“The German statement leaves no doubt about the tragic fate of the former Polish prisoners of war who, in 1941, were engaged in building jobs in areas west of Smolensk and who, together with many Soviet people, fell into the hands of the German hangmen after the withdrawal of Soviet troops”.

The Germans had in fabricating their story decided to embellish it with an anti-Semitic twist by claiming to be able to name Soviet officials in charge of the massacre, all of whom had Jewish names. On 19 April Pravda responded:

“Feeling the indignation of the whole of progressive humanity over their massacre of peaceful citizens and particularly of Jews, the Germans are now trying to arouse the anger of gullible people against the Jews. For this reason they have invented a whole collection of ‘Jewish commissars’ who, they say, took part in the murder of the 10,000 Polish officers. For such experienced fakers it was not difficult to invent a few names of people who never existed – Lev Rybak, Avraam Brodninsky, Chaim Fineberg. No such persons ever existed either in the ‘Smolensk section of the OGPU’ or in any other department of the NLVD…”

The insistence of Sikorski in endorsing the German propaganda led to the complete breakdown in relations between the London Polish government in exile and the Soviet government – as to which Goebbels commented in his diary:

“This break represents a one-hundred-per-cent victory for German propaganda and especially for me personally … we have been able to convert the Katyn incident into a highly political question. “

At the time the British press condemned Sikorski for his intransigence:

The Times of 28 April 1943 wrote:

“Surprise as well as regret will be felt by those who have had so much cause to understand the perfidy and ingenuity of the Goebbels propaganda machine should themselves have fallen into the trap laid by it. Poles will hardly have forgotten a volume widely circulated in the first winter of the war which described with every detail of circumstantial evidence, including that of photography, alleged Polish atrocities against the peaceful German inhabitants of Poland.”

What lay at the basis of Sikorski’s insistence that the massacre had been carried out by the Soviets rather than the Germans was the dispute over the territory east of the Curzon line. Sikorski was trying to use the German propaganda to mobilise western imperialism behind Poland’s claim to that territory, to try to force them out of the position, as he saw it, of taking the Soviet Union’s side on the issue of this border dispute.

If one reads bourgeois sources today, they all assert that the Soviet Union was responsible for the Katyn massacre, and they do so with such assurance and consistency that in trying to argue the contrary one feels like a Nazi revisionist trying to deny Hitler’s slaughter of Jews. After the Soviet Union collapsed, Gorbachov was even enrolled on this disinformation campaign and produced material allegedly from the Soviet archives which ‘proved’ that the Soviets committed the atrocity and, of course, that they did so on Stalin’s orders. Well, we know the interest that the Gorbachovs of this world have in demonising Stalin. Their target is not so much Stalin as socialism. Their purpose in denigrating socialism is to restore capitalism and bring lives of luxurious parasitism to themselves and their hangers-on at the cost of mass suffering among the Soviet peoples. Their cynicism matches that of the German Nazis and it is hardly surprising to find them singing from the same hymn sheet.

Bourgeois sources blithely claim that Soviet evidence in support of blaming the Germans for the atrocity was either totally absent or based purely on hearsay evidence of terrorised inhabitants of the region. They don’t mention one piece of evidence which even Goebbels had to admit was a bit of a bummer from his point of view. He wrote in his diary on 8 May 1943, “Unfortunately, German ammunition has been found in the graves at Katyn … It is essential that this incident remains a top secret. If it were to come to the knowledge of the enemy the whole Katyn affair would have to be dropped. “

In 1971 there was correspondence in The Times suggesting the Katyn massacres could not have been done by the Germans since they went in for machine gunning and gas chambers rather than despatching prisoners in the way the Katyn victims had been killed, i.e., by a shot in the back of the head. A former German solider then living in Godalming, Surrey, intervened in this correspondence:

“As a German soldier, at that time convinced of the righteousness of our cause, I have taken part in many battles and actions during the Russian campaign. I have not been to Katyn nor to the forest nearby. But I well remember the hullabaloo when the news broke in 1943 about the discovery of the ghastly mass grave near Katyn, which area was then threatened by the Red Army.

“Josef Goebbels, as the historic records show, has fooled many people. After all, that was his job and few would dispute his almost complete mastery of it. What is surprising indeed, however, is that it still shows evidence in the pages of The Times thirty odd years later. Writing from experience I do not think that at that late time of the war Goebbels managed to fool many German soldiers in Russia on the Katyn issue … German soldiers knew about the shot in the back of the head all right … we German soldiers knew that the Polish officers were despatched by none other than our own. “

Moreover, very many witnesses came forward to attest to the presence of Polish prisoners in the region after the Germans had taken it over.

Maria Alexandrovna Sashneva, a local primary school teacher, gave evidence to a Special commission set up by the Soviet Union in September 1943, immediately after the area was liberated from the Germans, to the effect that in August 1941, two months after Soviet withdrawal, she had hidden a Polish war prisoner in her house. His name had been Juzeph Lock, and he had spoken to her of ill-treatment suffered by Polish prisoners under the Germans:

“When the Germans arrived they seized the Polish camp and instituted a strict regime in it. The Germans did not regard the Poles as human beings. They oppressed and outraged them in every way. On some occasions Poles were shot without any reason at all. He decided to escape…”

Several other witnesses gave evidence that they had seen the Poles during August and September 1941 working on the roads.

Moreover, witnesses also testified to round-ups by the Germans of escaped Polish prisoners in the autumn of 1941. Danilenko, a local peasant, was among several witnesses who testified to this.

“Special round ups were held in our place to catch Polish war prisoners who had escaped. Some searches took place in my house 2 or 3 times. After one such search I asked the headman .. whom they were looking for in our village. [He] said that an order had been received from the German Kommandatur according to which searches were to be made in all houses without exception, since Polish war prisoners who had escaped from the camp were hiding in our village. “

Obviously the Germans did not shoot the Poles in full sight of local witnesses, but there is nonetheless significant evidence from local people as to what was happening. One witness was Alexeyeva who had been detailed by the headman of her village to serve the German personnel at a country house in the section of the Katyn Forest known as Kozy Gory, which had been the rest home of the Smolensk administration of the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs. This house was situated some 700 metres from where the mass graves were found. Alexeyeva said:

“At the close of August and during most of September 1941 several trucks used to come practically every day to the Kozy Gory country house. At first I paid no attention to that, but later I noticed that each time these trucks arrived at the grounds of the country house they stopped for half an hour, and sometimes for a whole hour, somewhere on the country road connecting the country house with the highway. I drew this conclusion because some time after these trucks reached the grounds of the country house the noise they made would cease.

“Simultaneously with the noise stopping single shots would be heard. The shots followed each other at short but approximately even intervals. Then the shooting would die down and the trucks would drive right up to the country house. German soldiers and NCOs came out of the trucks. Talking noisily they went to wash in the bathhouse, after which they engaged in drunken orgies.

“On days when the trucks arrived more soldiers from some German military units used to arrive at the country house. Special beds were put up for them… Shortly before the trucks reached the country house armed soldiers went to the forest evidently to the spot where the trucks stopped because in half an hour they returned in these trucks, together with the soldiers who lived permanently in the country house.

“…On several occasions I noticed stains of fresh blood on the clothes of two Lance Corporals. From all this I inferred that the Germans brought people in the truck to the country house and shot them.”

Alexeyeva also discovered that the people being shot were Polish prisoners.

“Once I stayed at the country house somewhat later than usual… Before I finished the work which had kept me there, a soldier suddenly entered and told me I could go … He … accompanied me to the highway.

“Standing on the highway 150 or 200 metres from where the road branches off to the country house I saw a group of about 30 Polish war prisoners marching along the highway under heavy German escort… I halted near the roadside to see where they were being led, and I saw that they turned towards our country house at Kozy Gory.

“Since by that time I had begun to watch closely everything going on at the country house, I became interested. I went back some distance along the highway, hid in bushes near the roadside, and waited. In some 20 or 30 minutes I heard the familiar single shots.”

The other two requisitioned maids at the country house, Mikhailova and Konakhovskaya, gave supporting evidence. Other residents of the area gave similar evidence.

Basilevsky, director of the Smolensk observatory, was appointed deputy burgomeister to Menshagin, a Nazi collaborator. Basilevsky was trying to secure the release from German custody of a teacher, Zhiglinsky, and persuaded Menshagin to speak to the German commander of the region, Von Schwetz, about this matter. Menshagin did so but reported back it was impossible to secure this release because “instructions had been received from Berlin prescribing the strictest regime be maintained.”

Basilevsky then recounted his conversation with Menshagin:

“I involuntarily retorted ‘Can anything else be stricter than the regime existing at the camp?’ Menshagin looked at me in a strange way and bending to my ear, answered in a low voice: yes, there can be! The Russians can at least be left to die off, but as to the Polish war prisoners, the orders say they are to be simply exterminated.”

After liberation Menshagin’s notebook was found written in his own handwriting, as confirmed by expert graphologists. Page 10, dated 15 August 1941, notes:

“All fugitive war prisoners are to be detained and delivered to the commandant’s office.”

This in itself proves the Polish prisoners were still alive at that time. On page 15, which is undated, the entry appears: “Are there any rumours among the population concerning the shooting of Polish war prisoners in Kozy Gory (for Umnov)” (Umnov was the Chief of the Russian police).

A number of witnesses gave evidence that they had been pressured in 1942-43 by the Germans to give false testimony as to the shooting of the Poles by the Russians.

Parfem Gavrilovich Kisselev, a resident of the village closest to Kozy Gory, testified that he had been summonsed in autumn of 1942 to the Gestapo where he was interviewed by a German officer:

“The officer stated that, according to information at the disposal of the Gestapo, in 1940, in the area of Kozy Gory in the Katyn Forest, staff members of the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs shot Polish officers, and he asked me what testimony I could give on this score. I answered that I had never heard of the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs shooting people at Kozy Gory, and that anyhow it was impossible, I explained to the officer, since Kozy Gory is an absolutely open and much frequented place, and if shootings had gone on there the entire population of the neighbouring villages would have known …

“…The interpreter, however, would not listen to me, but took a handwritten document from the desk and read it to me. It said that I, Kisselev, resident of a hamlet in the Kozy Gory area, personally witnessed the shooting of Polish officers by staff members of the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs in 1940.

“Having read the document, the interpreter told me to sign it. I refused to do so… Finally he shouted ‘Either you sign it at once or we shall destroy you. Make your choice.’

“Frightened by these threats, I signed the document and thought that would be the end of the matter.”

But it wasn’t the end of the matter, because the Germans expected Kisselev to give parol evidence of what he had ‘witnessed’ to groups of ‘delegates’ invited by the Germans to come to the area to witness the evidence of supposed Soviet atrocities.

Soon after the German authorities had announced the existence of the mass graves to the world in April 1943, “the Gestapo interpreter came to my house and took me to the forest in the Kozy Gory area.

“When we had left the house and were alone together, the interpreter warned me that I must tell the people present in the forest everything exactly as I had written it down in the document I had signed at the Gestapo.

“When I came to the forest I saw the open graves and a group of strangers. The interpreter told me that these were Polish delegates who had arrived to inspect the graves. When we approached the graves the delegates started asking me various questions in Russian in connection with the shooting of the Poles, but as more than a month had passed since I had been summoned to the Gestapo I forgot everything that was in the document I had signed, got mixed up, and finally said I didn’t know anything about the shooting of Polish officers.

“The German officer got very angry. The interpreter roughly dragged me away from the ‘delegation’ and chased me off. Next morning a car with a Gestapo officer drove up to my house. He found me in the yard, told me that I was under arrest, put me into the car and took me to Smolensk Prison …

“After my arrest I was interrogated many times, but they beat me more than they questioned me. The first time they summoned me they beat me up heavily and abused me, complaining that I had let them down, and then sent me back to the cell. During the next summons they told me I must state publicly that I had witnessed the shooting of Polish officers by the Bolsheviks, and that until the Gestapo was satisfied I would do this in good faith, I would not be released from prison. I told the officer that I would rather sit in prison than tell people lies to their faces. After that I was badly beaten up.

“There were several such interrogations accompanied by beatings, and as a result I lost all my strength, my hearing became poor and I could not move my right arm. About one month after my arrest a German officer summoned me and said: ‘You see the consequences of your obstinacy, Kisselev. We have decided to execute you. In the morning we shall take you to Katyn Forest and hang you.’ I asked the officer not to do this, and started pleading with them that I was not fit for the part of ‘eye-witness’ of the shooting as I did not know how to tell lies and therefore I would mix everything up again.

“The officer continued to insist. Several minutes later soldiers came into the room and started beating me with rubber clubs. Being unable to stand the beatings and torture, I agreed to appear publicly with a fallacious tale about shooting of Poles by Bolsheviks. After that I was released from prison, on conditions that on the first demand of the Germans I would speak before ‘delegations’ in Katyn Forest…

“On every occasion, before leading me to the graves in the forest, the interpreter used to come to my house, call me out into the yard, take me aside to make sure that no one would hear, and for half an hour make me memorise by heart everything I would have to say about the alleged shooting of Polish officers by the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs in 1940.

“I recall that the interpreter told me something like this: ‘I live in a cottage in ‘Kozy Gory’ area not far from the country house of the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs. In spring 1940 I saw Poles taken on various nights to the forest and shot there’. And then it was imperative that I must state literally that ‘this was the doing of the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs.’ After I had memorised what the interpreter told me he would take me to the open graves in the forest and compel me to repeat all this in the presence of ‘delegations’ which came there.

“My statements were strictly supervised and directed by the Gestapo interpreter. Once when I spoke before some ‘delegation’, I was asked the question: ‘Did you see these Poles personally before they were shot by the Bolsheviks?’ I was not prepared for such a question and answered the way it was in fact, i.e., that I saw Polish war prisoners before the war, as they walked on the roads. Then the interpreter roughly dragged me aside and drove me home.

“Please believe me when I say that all the time I felt pangs of conscience, as I knew that in reality the Polish officers had been shot by the Germans in 1941. I had no other choice, as I was constantly threatened with the repetition of my arrest and torture.”

Numerous people corroborated Kisselev’s testimony, and a medical examination corroborated his story of having been tortured by the Germans.

Pressure was also brought on Ivanov, employed at the local railway station (Gnezdovo) to bear false witness:

“The officer inquired whether I knew that in spring 1940 large parties of captured Polish officers had arrived at Gnezdovo station in several trains. I said that I knew about this. The officer then asked me whether I knew that in the same spring 1940, soon after the arrival of the Polish officers, the Bolsheviks had shot them all in the Katyn Forest. I answered that I did not know anything about that, and that it could not be so, as in the course of 1940-41 up to the occupation of Smolensk by the Germans, I had met captured Polish officers who had arrived in spring 1940 at Gnezdovo station, and who were engaged in road construction work.

“The officer told me that if a German officer said the Poles had been shot by the Bolsheviks it meant that this was a fact. ‘Therefore’, the officer continued, ‘you need not fear anything, and you can sign with a clear conscience a protocol saying that the captured Polish officers were shot by the Bolsheviks and that you witnessed it’.

“I replied that I was already an old man, that I was 61 years old, and did not want to commit a sin in my old age. I could only testify that the captured Poles really arrived at Gnezdovo station in spring 1940. The German officer began to persuade me to give the required testimony promising that if I agreed he would promote me from the position of watchman on a railway crossing to that of stationmaster of Gnezdovo station, which I had held under the Soviet Government, and also to provide for my material needs.

“The interpreter emphasised that my testimony as a former railway official at Gnezdovo station, the nearest station to Katyn Forest, was extremely important for the German Command, and that I would not regret it if I gave such testimony. I understood that I had landed in an extremely difficult situation, and that a sad fate awaited me. However, I again refused to give false testimony to the German officer. He started shouting at me, threatened me with a beating and shooting, and said I did not understand what was good for me. However, I stood my ground. The interpreter then drew up a short protocol in German on one page, and gave me a free translation of its contents. This protocol recorded, as the interpreter told me, only the fact of the arrival of the Polish war prisoners at Gnezdovo station. When I asked that my testimony be recorded not only in German but also in Russian, the officer finally went beside himself with fury, beat me up with a rubber club and drove me off the premises…”.

Savvateyev was another person pressurised by the Germans to give false testimony. He told the Soviet Commission of Inquiry:

“In the Gestapo I testified that in spring 1940 Polish war prisoners arrived at the station of Gnezdovo in several trains and proceeded further in trucks, and I did not know where they went. I also added that I repeatedly met those Poles later on the Moscow-Minsk highway, where they were working on repairs in small groups. The officer told me I was mixing things up, that I could not have met the Poles on the highway, as they had been shot by the Bolsheviks, and demanded that I testify to this.

“I refused. After threatening and cajoling me for a long time, the officer consulted with the interpreter about something in German, and then the interpreter wrote a short protocol and gave it to me to sign. He explained that it was a record of my testimony. I asked the interpreter to let me read the protocol myself, but he interrupted me with abuse, ordering me to sign it immediately and get out. I hesitated a minute. The interpreter seized a rubber club hanging on the wall and made to strike me. After that I signed the protocol shoved at me. The interpreter told me to get out and go home, and not to talk to anyone or I would be shot…”

Others gave similar testimony.

Evidence was also given as to how the Germans ‘doctored’ the graves of the victims to try to eliminate evidence that the massacre took place not in the autumn of 1941 but in the spring of 1940 shortly after the Poles first arrived in the area. Alexandra Mikhailovna had worked during the German occupation in the kitchen of a German military unit. In March 1943 she found a Russian war prisoner hiding in her shed:

“From conversation with him I learned that his name was Nikolai Yegorov, a native of Leningrad. Since the end of 1941 he had been in the German camp No. 126 for war prisoners in the town of Smolensk. At the beginning of March 1943, he was sent with a column of several hundred war prisoners from the camp to Katyn Forest. There they, including Yegorov, were compelled to dig up graves containing bodies in the uniforms of Polish officers, drag these bodies out of the graves and take out of their pockets documents, letters, photographs and all other articles.

“The Germans gave the strictest orders that nothing be left in the pockets on the bodies. Two war prisoners were shot because after they had searched some of the bodies, a German officer discovered some papers on these bodies. Articles, documents and letters extracted from the clothing on the bodies were examined by the German officers, who then compelled the prisoners to put part of the papers back into the pockets on the bodies, while the rest was flung on a heap of articles and documents they had extracted, and later burned.

“Besides this, the Germans made the prisoners put in the pockets of the Polish officers some papers which they took from the cases or suitcases (I don’t remember exactly) which they had brought along. All the war prisoners lived in Katyn Forest in dreadful conditions under the open sky, and were extremely strongly guarded… At the beginning of April 1943, all the work planned by the Germans was apparently completed, as for three days not one of the war prisoners had to do any work…

“Suddenly at night all of them without exception were awakened and led somewhere. The guard was strengthened. Yegorov sensed something was wrong and began to watch very closely everything that was happening. They marched for three or four hours in an unknown direction. They stopped in the forest at a pit in a clearing. He saw how a group of war prisoners were separated from the rest and driven towards the pit and then shot. The war prisoners grew agitated, restless and noisy. Not far from Yegorov several war prisoners attacked the guards. Other guards ran towards the place. Yegorov took advantage of the confusion and ran away into the dark forest, hearing shouts and firing.

“After hearing this terrible story, which is engraved on my memory for the rest of my life, I became very sorry for Yegorov, and told him to come to my room, get warm and hide at my place until he had regained his strength. But Yegorov refused… He said no matter what happened he was going away that very night, and intended to try to get through the front line to the Red Army. In the morning, when I went to make sure whether Yegorov had gone, he was still in the shed. It appeared that in the night he had attempted to set out, but had only taken about 50 steps when he felt so weak that he was forced to return. This exhaustion was caused by the long imprisonment at the camp and the starvation of the last days. We decided he should remain at my place several days longer to regain his strength. After feeding Yegorov I went to work. When I returned home in the evening my neighbours Branova, Mariya Ivanovna, Kabanovskaya, Yekaterina Viktorovna told me that in the afternoon, during a search by the German police, the Red Army war prisoner had been found, and taken away.”

Further corroboration was given by an engineer mechanic called Sukhachev who had worked under the Germans as a mechanic in the Smolensk city mill:

“I was working at the mill in the second half of March, 1943. There I spoke to a German chauffeur who spoke a little Russian, and since he was carrying flour to Savenki village for the troops, and was returning on the next day to Smolensk, I asked him to take me along so that I could buy some fats in the village. My idea was that making the trip in a German truck would get over the risk of being held up at the control stations. The German agreed to take me, at a price.

“On the same day at 10 p.m. we drove on to the Somolensk-Vitebsk highway, just myself and the German driver in the machine. The night was light, and only a low mist over the road reduced the visibility. Approximately 22 or 23 kilometres from Smolensk at a demolished bridge on the highway there is a rather deep descent at the by-pass. We began to go down from the highway, when suddenly a truck appeared out of the fog coming towards us. Either because our brakes were out of order, or because the driver was inexperienced, we were unable to bring our truck to a halt, and since the passage was quite narrow we collided with the truck coming towards us. The impact was not very violent, as the driver of the other truck swerved to the side, as a result of which the trucks bumped and slid alongside each other.

“The right wheel of the other truck, however, landed in the ditch, and the truck fell over on the slope. Our truck remained upright. The driver and I immediately jumped out of the cabin and ran up to the truck which had fallen down. We were met by a heavy stench of putrefying flesh coming evidently from the truck.

“On coming nearer, I saw that the truck was carrying a load covered with a tarpaulin and tied up with ropes. The ropes had snapped with the impact, and part of the load had fallen out on the slope. This was a horrible load – human bodies dressed in military uniforms. As far as I can remember there were some six or seven men near the truck: one German driver, two Germans armed with tommy-guns – the rest were Russian war prisoners, as they spoke Russian and were dressed accordingly.

“The Germans began to abuse my driver and then made some attempts to right the truck. In about two minutes time two more trucks drove up to the place of the accident and pulled up. A group of Germans and Russian war prisoners, about ten men in all, came up to us from these trucks. … By joint efforts we began to raise the truck. Taking advantage of an opportune moment I asked one of the Russian war prisoners in a low voice: ‘What is it?’ He answered very quietly: ‘For many nights already we have been carrying bodies to Katyn Forest’.

“Before the overturned truck had been raised a German NCO came up to me and my driver and ordered us to proceed immediately. As no serious damage had been done to our truck the driver steered it a little to one side and got on to the highway, and we went on. When we were passing the two covered trucks which had come up later I again smelled the horrible stench of dead bodies”.

Various other people also gave testimony of having seen the trucks loaded with dead bodies.

One Zhukhov, a pathologist who actually visited graves in April 1943 at the invitation of the Germans, also gave evidence:

“The clothing of the bodies, particularly the greatcoats, boots and belts, were in a good state of preservation. The metal parts of the clothing – belt buckles, button hooks and spikes on shoe soles, etc. – were not heavily rusted, and in some cases the metal still retained its polish. Sections of the skin of the bodies which could be seen – faces, necks, arms – were chiefly a dirty green colour, and in some cases dirty brown, but there was no complete disintegration of the tissues, no putrefaction. In some cases bared tendons of whitish colour and parts of muscles could be seen.

“While I was at the excavations people were at work sorting and extracting bodies at the bottom of a big pit. For this purpose they used spades and other tools, and also took hold of bodies with their hands and dragged them from place to place by the arms, the legs or the clothing. I did not see a single case of bodies falling apart or any member being torn off.

“Considering all the above, I arrived at the conclusion that the bodies had remained in the earth not three years, as the Germans affirmed, but much less. Knowing that in mass graves, and especially without coffins, putrefaction of bodies progresses more quickly than in single graves, I concluded that the mass shooting of the Poles had taken place about a year and a half ago, and could have occurred in autumn 1941 or in spring 1942. As a result of my visit to the excavation site I became firmly convinced that a monstrous crime had been committed by the Germans.”

Several other people who visited the graves at the time gave like testimony.

Moreover, pathologists who examined the bodies in 1943 concluded that they could not have been dead longer than two years. Furthermore, documents were found on some of the bodies which had obviously been missed by the Germans when they doctored the evidence. These included a letter dated September 1940, a postcard dated 12 November 1940, a pawn ticket receipted 14 March 1941 and another receipted 25 March 1941. Receipts dated 6 April 1941, 5 May 1941, 15 May 1941 and an unmailed postcard in Polish dated 20 June 1941. Although all these dates pre-date Soviet withdrawal, they all postdate the time of the alleged murder of the prisoners by the Soviet authorities in the spring of 1940, the time given as the date of the supposed massacre by all those whom the Germans were able to bully into giving false testimony. If, as is claimed by bourgeois propagandists, these documents are forgeries, it would have been the easiest thing to forge documents which postdated the Soviet departure, but his was not done – and it was not done because the documents found were undoubtedly genuine.

Source

93 years since the assassination of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht

January 15th, 1919

Today the bourgeoisie and the social-traitors are jubilating in Berlin-they have succeeded in murdering Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg. Ebert and Scheidemann, who for four years led the workers to the slaughter for the sake of depredation, have now assumed the role of butchers of the proletarian leaders. The example of the German revolution proves that “democracy” is only a camouflage for bourgeois robbery and the most savage violence.

Death to the butchers!

— V.I. Lenin, Speech at a Protest Rally Following the Murder of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg

Source

The foregoing lines were written before the brutal and dastardly murder of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg by the Ebert and Scheidemann government. Those butchers, in their servility to the bourgeoisie, allowed the German whiteguards, the watchdogs of sacred capitalist property, to lynch Rosa Luxemburg, to murder Karl Liebknecht by shooting him in the back on the patently false plea that he “attempted to escape” (Russian tsarism often used that excuse to murder prisoners during its bloody suppression of the 1905 Revolution). At the same time those butchers protected the whiteguards with the authority of the government, which claims to be quite innocent and to stand above classes! No words can describe the foul and abominable character of the butchery perpetrated by alleged socialists. Evidently, history has chosen a path on which the role of “labour lieutenants of the capitalist class” must be played to the “last degree” of brutality, baseness and meanness. Let those simpletons, the Kautskyites, talk in their newspaper Freiheit about a “court” of representatives of “all” “socialist” parties (those servile souls insist that the Scheidemann executioners are socialists)! Those heroes of philistine stupidity and petty-bourgeois cowardice even fail to understand that the courts are organs of state power, and that the issue in the struggle and civil war now being waged in Germany is precisely one of who is to hold this power—the bourgeoisie, “served” by the Scheidemanns as executioners and instigators of pogroms, and by the Kautskys as glorifiers of “pure democracy”, or the proletariat, which will overthrow the capitalist exploiters and crush their resistance. The blood of the best representatives of the world proletarian International, of the unforgettable leaders of the world socialist revolution, will steel ever new masses of workers for the life-and-death struggle. And this struggle will lead to victory.

— V.I. Lenin, Letter to the Workers of Europe and America

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Arbeit Zukunft: Russian Federation – Growing protest on the streets of Russia

Sunday, 8 January 2012

Correspondence: After the parliamentary elections on 4th December took place in Russia, the largest rallies and demonstrations in 20 years. This was a reaction against the ruling party “United Russia”, which was confronted after the announcement of election results with massive allegations.

Unfair elections, rigged elections (“dirty election”) and the exclusion of opposition members have earned the Chairman and President Putin, Medvedev, who took a leading candidate, the election victory, according to the allegations. Of course no one knows about the extent of electoral fraud. A repeat of the elections has so far categorically excluded from the rulers. Officially, the official result, slipped from the ruling party a two-thirds to 49 percent. In addition, it should come in the upcoming presidential elections in April to a castling, Putin will replace Medvedev as president again. Not only is the straw man haggling over the deal but also a “new government team” from the old government team makes the whole world the impression of a sham democracy with fanciful moments, and has also fueled the protest movement. Has been since early last year with the establishment of an “All-Russian Popular Front” have tried to combat this development and to acquire new people for the party in decline.

Several times in December last year, tens of thousands of people took to the streets to protest against electoral fraud and for more democracy. The power of the state initially responded with brutal force. As at present in many other parts of the world, the government first tried to crush the protest as soon as possible to stick ends special forces and water cannons. Only when the protest movement was expected to be more stable than the government, drew this one a bit.

You can listen to the protesters wanted to respect the protests and examine the allegations, the statements by Russian officials. The ruling party, United Russia, Putin could, after the collapse of the Soviet Union and after the Yeltsin era with stability and predictability to promote themselves. But stability and predictability can not be leased. More and more people in Russia feel betrayed.

“Nobody wants a mess,” was announced, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin at the start of the protests. But most people in Russia live in a kind of chaos, because they lead a life of poverty every day that just enough times to life as has a layer of super-rich evolved very quickly and this wealth also shamelessly showing off. Here, the economy of the Russian Federation is still determined substantially by the sale of oil and natural gas. In addition to the remaining military-industrial complex, there are a number of investors, such as the automotive industry, are manufacturing in Russia. The national innovation and technological development in Russia, however, remains on track. Foreign banks and corporations are interested mainly in their own profit.

Still, there are primarily young people and students, the urban middle class and the bourgeois opposition which it floats on the streets and squares. Participating organizations such as the revisionist nationalists and Although KPRF suggest a wide range, but is the most important social force, the working class, far involved more reserved. This may have several reasons, which should be investigated. The absence of a Marxist-Leninist organization with mass effect but also shows in Russia as elsewhere, the deficits in organization, leadership and ideology of the working class.

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Clara Zetkin: a fighter for the liberation of working women

On the anniversary of 75 years, Clara Zetkin received a unique gift. A greeting of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, who was addressing “the fearless spokesman of the proletarian revolution, the friend and companion of the working masses of the USSR and a fighter for the liberation of the working woman,” saying, “Companion of Weapons of Engels, lutastes tirelessly against opportunism in the Second International and the full force of your great intelligence and your passion revolutionary ye have erected against the views of Bernstein, against revisionism. In the days that sparked a world war, when leaders of the Second International shamefully left tow the car of imperialism, you, in the company of Lenin in the company of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, raise high the banner of proletarian internationalism. Were with us in the days of October and in the days of the civil war when the world was trying to stifle counterrevolution first State of the World Proletariat. Selfless friend of the USSR, there find you always in the combat outpost when the enemy threatens the land of the Soviets. The Central Committee of Communist Party (b) of the USSR expressed their good wishes and firm conviction that lutareis for many years in the first ranks of the Communist International.”

Master of the Proletarian Revolution

The great revolutionary is touched to receive such honor. His life unfolds like a movie screen memories. She was born Clara EISSN on July 5, 1857, a period of ferment in Germany. Only nine years had passed the days of 1848.

Adhered to Marxism to finish the Magisterium, when joined to a Study Circle organized by Russian revolutionaries. She married a member of the group, Ossip Zetkin, who inherited the surname.

Prioritized in the socialist movement, the organization of international women’s movement. He advocated equal rights, but differed from the bourgeois feminism as the struggle of women connected with the fight of the proletariat in the capitalist system.

In the 80′s to escape the repression of the Socialists, lived 10 years in exile, being hosted in Switzerland and France. Actively participated in the Second International Congress in Paris in 1889, when he met Engels (Read The Truth, No). Returning to Germany after the Congress, is the Social Democratic Party (SPD) in crisis, with the formation of three trends: one on the right, led by leaders such as Edward Bernstein, George and Edward David Vollmar, a, center, with August Bebel and Karl Kaustki and third, left, who was ahead of Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebchnet and Franz Mehring, Clara joins them.

Inspiring the International Women’s Day

It was Clara Zetkin proposed that the celebration of International Women’s Day on March 8, adopted at the Second Congress of Socialist Women in 1910. The following year, one million women took to the streets in his day, in Europe and the United States.

In 1915, it triggered the First World War, held in Bern (Switzerland), an international congress of women against war, against his own party, who had betrayed the international proletarian movement, approving the war credits in parliament. In Congress, Clara proclaimed that “No one sees a mass movement for peace without the participation of women proletarian, and peace will be assured only when an overwhelming majority of working women around the world join the fight for the cause of peace, the cause of freedom and happiness of mankind, under the slogan of “War on War.”

For its militancy for peace, Clara was arrested by the end of the war. Along with Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebchnet, Franz Mehring and other comrades of the Left, broke with the SPD and founded the Spartacist League, which later became the German Communist Party.

He was elected to the German Parliament (Reichstag), the PCA and its parliamentary action has always been vibrant, with complaints of oppression, to support the international communist movement. In 1932 the opening speech of the parliamentary session and a strong statement against Nazism on the rise. With the victory of Hitler in 1933, moved to Russia, where he died shortly afterwards.

Building Socialism and spreading

Unconditionally supported the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, noting that “The example of the Great October Socialist Revolution, the victory over foreign intervention in the years of civil war and socialist construction that develops successfully, testify to the fact that the proletariat already think mature to build a new society, socialist, free from exploitation of man by man. “

Clara was repeatedly and for long periods in the Soviet Union, where he participated in numerous activities, collaborating with the construction of the Soviet state, and researching the changes in the behavior of women after the Revolution, especially within the areas of Muslim influence, partying removal of the veils, witnessing to the joy of women to practice this symbolic act of liberation.

A friend of Lenin, was with him long and fruitful conversations, which recorded the work Memories of Lenin. Nadjeda Krupskaya, a militant Bolshevik leader’s wife and most of the Soviet people, and referred to Clara: “A convinced Marxist revolutionary, active and inflamed that dedicated his entire life to fighting for the cause of working class struggle for the victory of socialism in the world.”

Clara Zetkin died in Moscow on June 20, 1933, close to completing 76 years of age. She was taken to the grave by Soviet leaders Stalin, Molotov, Voroshilov and Ordjonikdzik, which demonstrates the importance of their support for the consolidation of socialism in the USSR and its spread across the planet.

The urn with the ashes of this example of revolutionary woman was placed in the mausoleum of Lenin in the Kremlin-deserved honor and made only two foreigners: Clara Zetkin and John Reed, American Communist journalist who covered the Bolshevik Revolution to the Western press and wrote the famous book “Ten Days that Shook the World.”

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Alliance (Marxist-Leninist): Where We Stand – Beria and the Berlin Rising of 1953

Laverenti Beria

Flag GDR -Bust Lenin

Walter Ulbricht

Fifty years after, the risings and riots, of the working class in June 1953, across the German Democratic republic (GDR) – notably in Berlin, remain controversial amongst Marxist-Leninists. Some argue this was a genuine revolt of the German working class. Others, supporters of post-Stalin USSR, argue they were imperialist provocations. Alliance Marxist-Leninist will argue that:

i) They were a genuine resistance by the German working class against a revisionist bureaucracy; that the revolt was precipitated by a criminally ultra-leftist policy of Walter Ulbricht;

ii) Lavrenti Beria representing the Marxist-Leninist wing of the Politburo, urged a sectarian Ulbricht back towards a path described by J.V.Stalin;

iii) Beria agreed with Stalin that the German state was in the special circumstances of post-war Europe, a buffer against imperialism.

The Charges Against Beria

When the revisionists led by Khrushchev, took control of the USSR state, they were hampered by waverers (Malenkov and Molotov), but actively resisted by staunch Marxist-Leninists (Beria). Unless Beria was eliminated, the state would return towards its Marxist-Leninism. Charges against Beria, were laid out in secret sessions of the full Central Committee of the CPSU(B) from 2-7 July 1953, some four months after the death of Stalin, but only two weeks after the June 16-17 anti-communist uprising in East Berlin.

The leading charge concerned the establishment of a secure intelligence base for Marxist-Leninist vigilance. Another series of charges alleged traitorous relations with Tito and attempts to normalize relations with Yugoslavia (Amy Knight: Beria Stalin’s First Lieutenant; Princeton 1993; p.206). But a prominent charge regarded Beria’s advocacy of a “unified Germany”. Leading the charge against Ulbricht’s sectarian polices was Beria, who was “indignant when I (Ulbricht) opposed the policy concerning the German question in 1953”: Knight Ibid; p. 192). Several sources point to the significance of this charge:

“The Soviet leadership offers the following reasons for the charges against Beria. . . . ‘ that he advocated the creation of a unified Germany as a “bourgeois, peace-loving nation” (1:162) and the abandonment of East Germany’s status as a separate, socialist state;” [On the Crimes and Anti-Party, Anti-Government Activities of Beria.] Plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, 2-7 July 1953, from Izvestia CC – CPSU:1991, 1:140-214 & 2:141-208. New Evidence on Beria’s Downfall, by Rachel A. Connell.

“New accounts confirm that Beria did want to trade German reunification for neutralization.” ‘New Evidence on the East German Uprising of 1953; ”Paper #3: Reexamining Soviet Policy Towards Germany During the Beria Interregnum, “Cold War History Project” by James Richter.

What were Stalin’s views on East Germany and West Germany? We trace this through the famous wartime Allied Heads meetings of Tehran (November 1943); Yalta (February 1944), to the post-war Potsdam meeting (July 1945). Here, Stalin was face to face with Prime Minister Churchill and President Roosevelt, and at Potsdam, President Truman.

Churchill, Roosevelt & Stalin at Yalta Conference

The Potsdam Conference

Churchill, Truman, and Stalin at Potsdam

Stalin’s German Policy

It is alleged that Stalin held barbarous views on Germany. For example, it is said that during a dinner conversation at the Tehran Conference, the conversation turned to Germany. Stalin, concerned that the future Germany might once more attack Eastern Europe and Russia, joked that German officers be liquidated:

“To prevent this catastrophe…. from 50,000 to 100,000 German officers must be liquidated, and the Allies must retain control of strategic points around the world in order to stop German operations. Was Stalin joking about shooting 100,000 officers?… Churchill took Stalin seriously…..Roosevelt thinking that he could smooth things over with a joke of his own, proposed that instead of 50,000 officers being shot, they should shoot only 49,000. By now Eden, sensing that in his anger Churchill would make remarks he would later regret, tried to signal that it was just a joke.” Eubank K; Summit at Tehran – The Untold Story; New York, 1985; p. 314-5.

Charles Bohlen, the USA diplomat and interpreter, corroborates that Stalin’s remark was a joke. Nonetheless, this “joke” has been converted into the “fact” that Stalin demanded the heads of 100,000 soldiers. Furthermore, that he was responsible for the subsequent division of Germany into East and West. British and USA imperial inspired histories, take as a given that at the end of the Second World War, Stalin was intent upon destroying Germany:

“Stalin and Roosevelt were both strongly in favor of splitting up Germany in order to render here helplessly weak. Churchill did not think that this was an important issue”.Martin Kitchen: British Policy towards the Soviet Union During the Second World War; London 1986; p. 175.

But the reality is not quite so clear. Firstly, even shrewd enemies of the USSR, recognized the situation that Russia had found itself over the war years. As Averell Harriman, the USA Ambassador to Russia, warned:

”Our difficulties with the Russians if any, will be that their present intent towards Germany is tougher than we have in mind, particularly in regard to the magnitude of reparations. Their measure of Germany’s capacity to pay reparations in goods and services appears to be based on the concept that the Germans are not entitled to a post-war standard of living higher than that of the Russians”. W.A. Harriman, and E. Abel. Special Envoy to Churchill & Stalin 1941-1946: New York; 1975; p. 249.

Harriman had no difficulty in believing the sincerity of Stalin’s views, and from where they arose:

“Harriman felt that Stalin’s fear of a resurgent Germany was entirely genuine.. “I am satisfied that his concern was real..“
Harriman & Abel; Ibid; p. 273.

At Tehran, Stalin did not push the agenda of a division of Germany. Instead he “did not think much of either” of the leaders’ plans, preferring that of Roosevelt – over Churchill’s Danubian Confederation; if he had to choose between the two:

“Roosevelt talked of dividing Germany into five separate states . . . Churchill’s .. plan was less sweeping. He agreed that Prussia should be detached from Germany. . .. Stalin. . . did not think much of either idea, though he said that of the two he preferred Roosevelt’s. The trouble with fitting any part of Germany into a larger confederation, was that this would merely encourage…. And recreate a great national state”; Harriman & Abel Ibid; p. 280-281.

At Yalta, Roosevelt revealed that the British insisted upon a French role in Germany:

“The British were attempting to build France up into a strong power to hold the eastern frontier while the British assembled a large force.”….Stalin asked if Roosevelt thought that France should have a zone of occupation in Germany, The president dmitted that it was “not a bad idea, but he added that it was only out of kindness”; Stalin & Molotov agreed”; Eubank K; Summit at Tehran; NY 1985; p. 475.

Roosevelt’s dismemberment of Germany became accepted. Again, the “given version” that Stalin pushed for dismemberment of Germany, is false:

“The myth that Europe was divided up in the Crimea (Yalta). Is totally inaccurate… The Soviet side expressed its doubts that dismemberment was realistic. As a result it was decided in Yalta to refer that question to the European Consultative Commission.” Berezhkov, V.M., At Stalin’s Side. His Interpreters Memoirs; New York; 1994; p.275

The crux of the Yalta discussions was on reparations. Both the USA and the UK imperialists tried to deny significant reparations to the USSR. The USSR was devastated by the fascist invasion, contrary to either of the other two allies. The imperialists wanted the post-war poverty of the USSR. Therefore, Stalin explicitly linked the division of Germany to the question of war reparation.

The Famous Raising of the Hammer and Sickle over the Reichstag photographed by Yevgeny Khaldei ; May 2 1945

Race to the Elbe –Anglo-American Attempts at a Separate Peace

Between the Yalta and Potsdam meetings, with the end of the European war, only two major things had changed in the relationship of the Three Big Powers to each other.

The first was the territorial control of the European theater.

Russian insistence on a Second Front had long been resisted, but when the imperial Allies saw that the Russians were sweeping across Europe towards Germany, they agreed to set up a Second Front, which radically changed the situation. Initially:

“The European Advisory Commission (EAC) had negotiated the zonal agreements anticipating that the Red Army might control much of Germany”; Eisenberg, Carolyn; The American Decision to Divide Germany 1944-1949; Cambridge 1997; p.72.

However after the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944 (In Ardennes against the USA and British) – the German High Command started to move forces away from confronting the USA:

“The Nazi leadership unexpectedly shifted strategy. In a dramatic attempt to check the Russian advance, they began moving their armies from the Western Front and reducing their resistance to SHAEF (the Allies). By the end of March less than 30 German divisions were facing the Americans, and British, while more than 150 divisions were battling the Soviets in the East”;
Eisenberg Ibid; p.72.

Moreover, the Germans began making overtures of a separate peace with the Americans & British. Although this was quite against the protocols of Yalta, the Americans and British responded positively:

“Ambassador Harriman has communicated to me a letter … from Mr. Molotov regarding an investigation being made by Field Marshall Alexander into a reported possibility of obtaining the surrender of part or all of the German army in Italy. In this letter Mr. Molotov demands that, because of the non-participation therein of Soviet officers that this investigation to be undertaken in Switzerland should be stopped”;
March 25 1945; President Roosevelt to Marshall Stalin; In Correspondence Between the Chairman of the Council of Ministries of the USSR, and the Presidents of the USA, and the Prime Ministers of Great Britain During the Great Patriotic War of 1941-45; Moscow; 1957; Volume 2: p. 188.

Against American protestation, Stalin was explicit about violations to the Yalta Agreement, and danger to the Russian troops. He charged this “engendered distrust”:“

”I must tell you … that the Germans have already taken advantage of the talks with the Allied Commanders to move three divisions from Northern Italy to the Soviet front. The task of coordinated operations involving a blow at the Germans from the West, South and East, proclaimed at the Crimean Conference (Yalta –Ed) is to hold the enemy on the spot and prevent him from maneuvering, from moving his forces to the points where he needs them most. The Soviet Command is doing this. However, Field Marshall Alexander is not. This circumstance irritates the High Command and engenders distrust”; Premier J.V.Stalin to President Mr. F. Roosevelt; p. 190.

As President Roosevelt prevaricated, Stalin became ever more explicit:

“You are quite right … that “the matter now stands in an atmosphere of regrettable apprehension and mistrust”. I realize that there are certain advantages resulting to the Anglo-American troops from these separate negotiations in Berne .., seeing that the Anglo-Americans troops are enabled to advance into the heart of Germany almost without resistance, but why conceal this from the Russians, and why have the Russians, their allies not been forewarned? And so what we have at the moment is that the Germans on the Western Front have in fact ceased the war against Britain and America. At the same time they continue the war against Russia, the Ally of Britain and the USA”; Marshall Stalin to the President Mr. Roosevelt; April 3 1945.

Stalin understood that the game was about control of key industrial parts of Germany:

“It is hard to agree that the absence of German resistance on the Western Front is due solely to the fact that they have been beaten. The Germans have 147 divisions on the Eastern Front. … They are fighting desperately against the Russians for Zemlenice, an obscure station in Czechoslovakia, which they need just as much as a dead man needs a poultice, but they surrender without any resistance such important towns in the heart of Germany as Osnabruck, Mannheim and Kassel”; Premier Stalin to President Roosevelt April 7 1945; p. 198.

Churchill, Truman and Stalin at Potsdam 1945

The Atomic Bomb Changes the Geopolitical Reality

The second major change, between Yalta and Potsdam, was the atomic bomb.
Prior to this, the USA and the British relied upon the USSR to destroy fascism. Will Thorp, Deputy Assistant Sec. State Econmics had said:

“It is by now a commonplace, that Germany cannot commit another aggression so long as the Big Three remain united”;
The essence of the US pre-atomic security policy for Europe was just that – an agreement sealed at Yalta for joint control of Germany by the US, and the USSR (together of course with the lesser great powers retain, and with the still lesser power France).”
Alperowtiz, Gar; The Decision to Use the Atomic bomb and the Architecture of an American Myth; New York; 1995; p. 278.

By the time of Potsdam, the maneuvering of the imperialists changed. The USA and the British were aware of what had happened, and why the USSR needed help in re-building. As President H. Truman said:

“What you have to remember about Russia and its fear of another war is that the Germans slaughtered 25,000,000 people not connected in any way with the military. They ruthlessly wiped out everybody from the Polish border to Leningrad and Moscow”; President Truman April 1946; cited; Alperowtiz; G; Ibid; p.289.

Now, with the Russians forced to fight arduously into Berlin, the USSR was no longer indispensable for the ruthless Allies. Having made commitments at Yalta, for reparations to the USSR, the USA tried to renege on their promises:

“The fundamental question in dispute at Potsdam was … whether to fulfill Roosevelt’s Yalta understandings whereby the Soviet Union was to receive reparations of roughly ten billion dollars from Germany. . . . The position the US delegation now took was “No”. The basic Roosevelt position was simply abandoned… Indeed, although Red Army help to control Germany had once seemed essential, the US now became quite cavalier in its negotiations… Nor is there any doubt about what produced this revolution. At Potsdam, US leaders explicitly stated their private judgment that the atomic bomb had given them power to control all security problems – including the once central German threat”; Alperowtiz, G; Ibid; p. 281.

In fact, at Potsdam, despite the pressures put on by the imperialists, Marshall Zhukov notes that Stalin had resisted pressures to divide Germany:

“The question of the Germany into three states: Southern Germany, Northern Germany, Western Germany raised for the second time by the US and British delegations came in for serious debate. The first time they brought this up at the Yalta Conference it was rejected by the Soviet delegation.. . . At Potsdam, Stalin again rejected this: “We reject this proposal, it is contrary to nature: Germany should not be dismembered, it should be made into a democratic, peace loving state. . . I must say that Stalin was extremely scrupulous with regard to the slightest attempt by the US and British delegation to take decisions to the detriment of the Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and the German people. He had particularly sharp controversy with Churchill…”
Zhukov G: Marshall of the Soviet Union; Reminiscences and Reflections” Moscow 1984; vol. II, pp. 447; 449-50.

By the end of the Potsdam Conference, it was clear that the Americans were determined to place an imperialist presence in West Germany. This meant that the German state was inevitably to be divided. One aim of the imperialist was to limit the amount of reparations to the USSR, so they insisted that all reparations were to be made from the Zones of occupation. Thus, the USSR was excluded from the Saar and the Ruhr industrial belts. Molotov pointed out that the bulk of the wealth of Germany was in the zones to be occupied by the imperialists, but to no avail. The implication of ‘separate’ reparations was the division of Germany:

“In view of the American aims, the gravest flaw in the reparations scheme was its threat to German unity. …. both Molotov and Ernest Bevin (British Foreign Secretary -Ed) had pointed out the incompatibility of Byrnes’ (James Byrnes, US Secretary State -Ed) proposal with the plans for economic integration”;
Eisenberg, C Ibid; p. 114.

Despite the devious tactics of the imperialists, the Russians led by Stalin and Molotov were determined to try to achieve a unified Germany. To this end, they “gave ground”. So much so that the Americans found themselves in a difficult diplomatic position:

“In a personal letter to General Eisenhower, Ambassador Walter Bedell-Smith described the US delegation’s discomfort. Observing that Molotov had begun to make concessions, Smith reflected that “the difficulty under which we labour is that in spite of our announced positions, we really do not want nor intend to accept German unification in any terms that the Russians might agree to, even though they seemed to meet most of our requirements”. The real problem was the Soviets would interfere with the German contribution to the Marshall Plan. However the US was in an exposed position, and it would “require careful maneuvering to avoid the appearance of inconsistency if not hypocrisy”;
Eisenberg ibid; p. 359.

Molotov pointed out that that the US and Britain were retarding the recovery of the Western controlled Germany. He openly stated that:

“The question of the creation of a Government for the Western zones has already been decided by the USA”;
Eisenberg Ibid; p. 357.

By 1948, the:

“Americans and British were resolved: There would be two Germanys. For the foreseeable future eastern zone would be left to the Russians, while the western zones would become a separate state. Together the two powers devised concrete plans for making West Germany a reality”; Eisenberg; Ibid; p. 363.

The imperialists began to further sabotage the plans made together with the Russians for a peaceful and united Germany. They attacked the joint quadripartite currency reform plans. In this tense climate, the Russian representatives in the city of Berlin and the Russian zone, created an opening for the Americans. Marshall Sokolovsky for the Russians on the Allied Control Commissions adjourned the Commission, in effect walking out. This gave the USA General Clay a reason not to submit to Russian approval for currency reforms.

The tension rose still further when USSR General Dratvin imposed on April 1 1948, a traffic blockade from the western zones to the eastern zones. Again, provoking this rupture played into Americans hands. Therefore, the Americans refused to call the Allied Control Commission to discuss matters. This bluff became the propaganda coup of the Berlin airlift. Meanwhile, Clay charged that the Russian were creating a separate East German Government, a false charge that Assistant Sec. State Lovett relished to:

“Clearly shift responsibility to Soviets for splitting Germany”; Eisenberg Ibid; p. 396.

Yet, even now, Stalin continued to work for unification, as witnessed by his famous letter to Senator Henry Wallace, who had argued for unification of Germany. Stalin:

“Despite the differences in economic systems and ideologies the coexistence of these systems and the peaceful settlement of differences between the USSR and the USA are not only possible but absolutely necessary”; Eisenberg Ibid; p. 405-6.

On July 14, 1948, a Russian governmental note asking for restoration of unity discussion while easing travel restrictions to and from Berlin was dismissed. Even then, Stalin met with the three Western ambassadors Walter Bedell Smith (USA) Frank Roberts (Britain); and M.Yves Chataigneau (France). He offered them an immediate removal of the blockade, with currency agreements, if immediate discussions re-started on German unity (Eisenberg Ibid; p. 429-30). All to no avail, because again rather conveniently, the Russian representative in Berlin, General Sokolovsky:

“Assumed the initial role of saboteur by reversing concessions that had been offered in Moscow…. The Russians performance disappointed General Robertson who though it so “fantastic” that he had so altered Stalin’s commitment”. Eisenberg Ibid; p. 437.

The division into two German states achieved the imperialist aim of forming a buffer zone for Cold War propaganda. This emphasized the “divisiveness of communist intent”. Stalin had sought to frustrate this goal. The German Democratic Republic (GDR) was formally established. However, we argue that until his death, Stalin was anxious to re-establish a unified German state. We move to the situation in 1952.

Stalin’s Meeting With the Politburo of the SED

German communists of the former KPD, returned to Germany as the Soviet troops battled in. Under Soviet advice, the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the KPD merged to form one party – the German Socialist Unity Party (SED), in April 1946. Stalin had several meetings with its’ leaders. By 1951‑52, thousands of inhabitants of the GDR were leaving across the open inner‑German borderlines in Berlin. The East Berlin government turned the freely passable East‑West German border into a guarded border in May 1952. During 1952, more than 232,000 GDR residents went West.

Stalin clearly disapproved of the policies of the GDR leaders. He warned them that they were undergoing a rapid rate of collectivization, and alienating all the layers of society from peasants, to workers to intellectuals. He also advised them that it was incorrect not to continue to work for a unified German state. Finally, he specifically advised that the GDR was not to be considered a socialist state. He used the formulation “beginning of socialism”. [All these references are cited in full at the Alliance web site http://www.allianceml.com/STALIN-TXT/STALINTOULBRICHT.htm%5D

“Comrade Stalin says that you should say to your workers:

“We have just entered socialism. This is not full socialism yet, because you have many private capitalists. However, this is the beginning of socialism, a little piece of socialism, and a road to socialism. You should show that you are closer to the workers than Adenauer’s government“.

http://www.allianceml.com/STALIN-TXT/STALINTOULBRICHT.htm

Stalin fought for differentials to reflect that there was a ‘lot of private capitalism’:

“Comrade Stalin …Last time it was found that in the GDR, the ratio of workers’ salary to the salary of engineering and technical personnel was 1: 1.7. That is absolutely incorrect. It will doom your entire industry. . . The engineer is engaged in intellectual work. He must have an apartment, decent furniture; he should not be chasing a piece of bread. He should enjoy a standard of living appropriate for a person who is engaged in intellectual work. “Ibid.

Stalin insisted on voluntary collectivization:

“Comrade Stalin …The kulaks should be encircled, and you should create collective farms around them. In our country, organization of collective farms was going on simultaneously with expropriation of the kulaks. You will not need to do it this way. Let your kulaks sit tight, leave them alone. In addition to the kulaks, you have poor peasants in your villages that live right next to the kulaks. They should be pulled into production cooperatives. … You will see for yourself that peasants will visit those collective farms and watch how life will unfold in a new way. I noticed, said Comrade Stalin, that you do not value peasants in your policy…… Do not force anybody to join; if they want to, good. If they do not, do not force them.” Ibid.

Stalin staunchly advocated German unity:

“You should continue propaganda for German unity in the future. It has a great importance for the education of the people in Western Germany. Now it is a weapon in your hands, and you should always hold it in your hands. We should also continue to make proposals regarding German unity in order to expose the Americans.” Ibid.

These stipulations are pretty concrete and clear. Yet within 3 months of Stalin’s death, Ulbricht turned ultra-left-wards, as noted by US Diplomat N. Spencer Barnes to the State Department on 30 April 1953 (Uprising in East Germany 1953; Compiled by C.Ostermann; Budapest; 2001; p.75)

And criminally so.

Ulbricht launched what has been called the “socialization“ of East Germany. In the way this was carried out, it resulted in the total alienation of all sectors of the population- including the working class and peasantry. There was a clear reversal away from Stalin’s advice, in the polices being adopted in the GDR under the SED:

“In a 2 May 1953 memorandum, Semyonov, …within the Soviet establishment, advised Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov that because “The Socialist Unity Party of Germany and the democratic forces in the GDR have already strengthened and matured enough to manage independently the leadership of the country,” the maintenance of overt political control by the Soviets could be sharply reduced. . . . Thus, in Semyonov’s opinion, there was no need to do anything but “to create more favorable conditions for socialist construction in the GDR.”;
Working Paper #11: The United States, the East German Uprising of 1953, and the Limits of Rollback, by Christian Ostermann http://wwics.si.edu/index.cfm?topic_id=1409&fuseaction=library.document&id=441

Ulbricht ensured that a Central Committee resolution on higher quotas for workers was passed, instructing that:

“All necessary steps to remedy the abuse in the sphere of work quotas … and to raise those of importance… by an average of at least 10% by June 1, 1953”;
A. Baring Uprising in East Germany June 17 1953; Cornell 1972; p.21-22

This overall leftist strategy was resisted by Beria. The ground was laid for a revolt, which would play into the hands of the imperialists. Since the death of Stalin, Khrushchev was determined to move the state of the USSR into a position subordinate to USA imperialism. Ulbricht’s policies played into this overall strategy.

The “Beria Plan” to reverse Ulbricht’s Ultra-leftist Policies

Beria tried to reassert Marxist-Leninist control after the death of Stalin. He was aware of the dangerous situation in Germany. On May 27 1953, the Presidium of the Soviet Council of Ministers met to discuss the situation in East Germany. The Council of Ministers, warned of an imminent crisis, and blamed the incorrect polices of the SED. The document is known as the “Beria Document”. It was dated prior to the June 11 rising. [See Council of Ministers of the USSR Order; “On Measures to Improve the Health of the Political Situation in the GDR”; 2 June 1953. No. 7576-rs; Moscow, signed by Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR G. Malenkov. Hereafter: USSR Order 7576-rs. http://wwics.si.edu/index.cfm?topic_id=1409&fuseaction=library.document&id=26760

The “Beria Document”, as Ulbricht and the SED called it, was a retreat from ultra-leftist “socialization”, and was forced upon the SED. However, it did not go as far as Beria had wanted. Mainly this was in regards to Beria’s fight to unify Germany:

“Divisions in the Presidium prevented the leaders from making a decision … Molotov reports that Beria tried once more to get him to accept reunification, but when this failed withdrew the proposal…. “Malenkov favored reunification as a neutral country because he considered the division of Germany artificial and contrary to the historical development of that country. . .. Molotov, by contrast, focused on the traitorous character of Beria's proposal ….” Richter, Ibid.

Albeit that USSR Order 7576-rs was not, in its final form, exactly as Beria had hoped, the document was scathing about the SED policies. It bluntly stated that the situation had been created by the serious alienation of the German workers, peasants and intelligentsia, by the “incorrect political line”. This had resulted in a “very unsatisfactory political and economic situation”:

“As a result of the incorrect political line. . . There is serious dissatisfaction with the political and economic measures carried out by the GDR among the broad mass of the population, including the workers, peasants, and the intelligentsia. This finds its clearest expression in the mass flight of the residents of the GDR to West Germany. ..over the course of four months in 1953 alone over 120,000. Many refugees are workers. .. It is remarkable that among those who have fled to West Germany in the course of [the first] four months of 1953, there are 2,718 members and candidates of the SED and 2,610 members of the Free German Youth League. “USSR Order 7576-rs.

It was emphasized that the SED was following ultra-leftist decisions following the Second Conference. The polices flagged as incorrect, included a forcing of the pace of industrialization, and the forced collectivization, as well as simple abuses of restriction of ration cards to “person in the free professions”:

“The social-economic measures which have been carried out … include: the forcible development of heavy industry, which also lacked raw materials; the sharp restriction of private initiative, which harmed the interests of a broad circle of small proprietors both in the city and in the country; and the revocation of food ration cards from all private entrepreneurs and persons in the free professions. In particular, the hasty creation of agricultural cooperatives in the absence of the foundations [necessary] for them in the countryside led to: serious difficulties in the area of supplying the population with manufactured goods and foodstuffs; a sharp fall in the mark’s exchange rate; the ruin of a large number of small entrepreneurs-artisans, workers in domestic industries, and others. It also set a significant stratum of the populace against the existing authorities. The matter has gone so far that at present more than 500,000 hectares of land have been abandoned and neglected, and the thrifty German peasants, usually strongly tied to their plots, have begun to abandon their land and move to West Germany en masse.”
USSR Order 7576-rs.

In addition, serious errors were made in ideological work, especially in regards to the clergy and to the intelligentsia:

“Serious errors have been committed with regard to the clergy, evident in the underestimation of the influence of the church amongst the broad masses of the population and in their crude administrative methods and repression. The underestimation of political work amongst the intelligentsia should also be admitted as a serious mistake…”
USSR Order 7576-rs.

The Order bluntly insists that the SED must acknowledge error, and prescribes remedies:

“All of this creates a serious threat to the political stability of the German Democratic Republic. In order to correct the situation that has been created, it is necessary:
To recognize the course of forced construction of socialism in the GDR, which was decided upon by the SED. as mistaken under current conditions.“
USSR Order 7576-rs.

Largely, the proposed remedies fell into two main categories – either they reversed the ultra-left attacks on the peasantry; or they condemned repressive measures aimed at either the clergy or intelligentsia:“

2. .. to halt the artificial establishment of agricultural production cooperatives, which have proven not to be justified on a practical basis and which have caused discontent among the peasantry; To check carefully all existing agricultural production cooperatives and to dissolve both those which were created on an involuntary basis as well as those which show themselves to be non-viable. . . c) to renounce the policy of limiting and squeezing middle and small private capitalas a premature measure. . . . . To restore food ration cards to private entrepreneurs and. . persons of the free professions.
d) to re-examine the five-year plan for the development of the national economy ofthe GDR with a view to curtailing the extraordinarily intense pace of development of heavy industry and sharply increasing the production of mass consumption goods, as well as fully guaranteeing food for the population in order to liquidate the ration card system of providing foodstuffs in the near future;
f) to take measures to strengthen legality and guarantee the rights of democratic citizens; to abstain from the use of severe punitive measures which are not strictly necessary. To re-examine the files of repressed citizens with the intent of freeing persons who were put on trial on insufficient grounds. To introduce, from this point of view, the appropriate changes in the existing criminal code;
g) . . . To assign special attention to political work among the intelligentsia in order to secure a turnabout by the core mass of the intelligentsia in the direction of active participation in the implementation of measures to strengthen the existing order. At the present and in the near future it is necessary to put the tasks of the political struggle to reestablish the national unity of Germany and to conclude a peace treaty at the center of attention of the broad mass of the German people both in the GDR and in West Germany. At the same time, it is crucial to correct and strengthen the political and economic situation in the GDR and to strengthen significantly the influence of the SED in the broad masses of workers and in other democratic strata of the city and the country. To consider the propaganda carried out lately about the necessity of the GDR’s transition to socialism, which is pushing the party organizations of the SED to unacceptably simplified and hasty steps both in the political and in the economic arenas, to be incorrect. …
h) To put a decisive end to [the use of] naked administrative methods in relation to the clergy…To end the oppression of rank-and-file participants in the religious youth organization “Junge Gemeinde,” moving the emphasis of gravity to political work among them..”
USSR Order 7576-rs.

Finally, there remained lip-service towards German unification:

6. Taking into account the fact that at present the main task is the struggle for the unification of Germany on a democratic and peace-loving basis, the SED and KPD, as the standard-bearers of the struggle for the aspirations and interests of the entire German nation, should ensure the use of flexible tactics directed at the maximum division of their opponents’ forces and the use of any opposition tendencies against Adenauer’s venal clique. For this reason, inasmuch as the Social Democratic Party [SPD] of West Germany, which a significant mass of workers continues to follow, speaks out, albeit with insufficient consistency, against the Bonn agreements, a wholly adversarial position in relation to this party should be rejected in the present period. Instead, it should be attempted, where possible, to organize joint statements against Adenauer’s policy of the division and imperialist enslavement of Germany. “
USSR Order 7576-rs.

The Rising

Although the Ulbricht leadership of the SED resisted, it had to make some retreat. However, it refused to make any retreat on the 10% work increase in norms for the working class. In fact, they were confirmed on June 13. Yet it did make massive improvements in the conditions of the intelligentsia and middle classes – that of itself icreated suspicions. It was called the “New Course”.

“To make matters worse, the only segment of the population which seemed to have been excluded from the concessions of the “New Course” were the workers: the arbitrarily-imposed higher work norms remained in force.“
[Study of the Instigation, Outbreak and Crushing of the Fascist Adventure of 16-22 June 1953], 20 July 1953, Ostermann, Paper 11; Ibid.

Signs were evident from even the 2 June of worker unrest (Report of Sokolovskii, Semyonov & Yudin: In “Uprising in East Germany 1953”; Ostermann ibid; p.258].

The confused sudden retreat, yet with no amelioration of the workers work norms soon triggered worse. On 16 June 1953, hundreds of East Berlin construction workers staged a demonstration, calling for a general strike the next day. Only now did the SED retreat question of work norms. Too late. On 17 June 1953, huge riots (up to 300,000 strong) and protests broke out. Soviet military force was required, to suppress them.

American aims at undermining German unity were enhanced. The Americans carefully refrained from military steps. The provocative Ulbricht strategy, both anti-working class and peasantry – ensured the failure of any attempts at a united German state for the foreseeable period.

“The Eisenhower Administration came to devise a psychological warfare strategy which effectively capitalized on the instability in the GDR. … while undermining any potential Soviet initiative for German unity as well as the new leadership’s “peace offensive,” …, the American response to the East German uprising could best be characterized as a superb exercise in “double-containment.” . . . It undermined Soviet exploitation of German nationalism by squarely keeping Moscow and East Berlin on the defensive while, at the same time, containing German nationalism by boosting the election success of Chancellor Konrad Adenauer and his policy of “Westintegration.””

http://wwics.si.edu/index.cfm?topic_id=1409&fuseaction=library.document&id=441

In the process some 40 were killed (Report of Sokolovskii, Semyonov & Yudin: In Uprising in East Germany 1953; Ed Ostermann ibid; p.284].

The Arrest of Beria

As Andrei Gromyko expressed it:

“Beria’s dismissive judgment of the GDR was enough to get him kicked out of the leadership.”
Gromyko, Memories; p. 317; Cited Amy Knight: Beria Stalin’s First Lieutenant; Princeton; 1993; p. 274.

Molotov later denied the most serious charges against Beria:

“As far as the accusations that Beria was an agent of a foreign country are concerned, they are untrue. He was loyal to the Soviet Union to a fault”. “
An Interview with Molotov “ Literaturuloi Sakartvelo, 27 October 1989; Cited in Knight, Ibid; p. 274.

From 2-7 July the full Central Committee endorsed the arrests of Beria and his supporters.

The fall of Beria, naturally had repercussions in East Germany:
“In East Germany, according to the communist official Heinz Brandt, the news of Beria’s arrest was hailed with satisfaction: ‘With Beria’s fall the scales had been tipped against Hernstadt and Jendretzky and the New Course, and for Walter Ulbricht. .. Beria along with Malenkov, had been the principal initiator of the new course as a policy… the German reformers were now doomed along”: A..Knight, Ibid; p. 216.

Zaisser and Hernstasdt were expelled from the Politburo and the Central Committee, leaving Ulbricht with essentially no rivals. The victory of the revisionist in the East German party was assured.

CONCLUSIONS

The German rising of 1953 was precipitated by the criminal ultra-left policies of the East German SED party. It played right into the hands of the USA imperialists. It achieved the ends of ensuring a divided Germany, and a militarized Western Germany under Adenauer – on behalf of the USA imperialists. Beria tried to stem the tide, but was unable to turn the policies back sufficiently towards the path outlined by Stalin, in his discussion with the SED party leadership. It is difficult not to see Ulbricht as a conscious enemy of the working class of Germany. We will pursue this analysis in further detail in the next issue of Alliance theoretical journal.

Source

PC (AP): Letter to the Russian Embassy in Santiago, Chile

Thursday, December 1, 2011

Under the 94th Anniversary of the October Revolution, leaders and members of the Chilean Communist Party (Proletarian Action), PC (AP), 11:00 hours, delivered a letter to the Russian embassy, ​​were chanted slogans against the semi-fascist dictatorship of the Medvedev-Putin mafia, alive at 94 years of working and popular epic, the leaders of Communism: Lenin and Stalin.

The letter delivered by Comrade Eduardo Alejandro Aravena Artés and was greeted by a Russian delegation member, who announced his nervousness by the need to stop persecuting Communist fighters, who fought fascism and socialism for the restoration work .

Chile’s Communists from the Party, the PC (AP), thus fulfilling their internationalist duty of solidarity with the comrades of the former Soviet Union, while proudly commemorate the anniversary of the dawn of 1917 workers, the great Bolshevik Revolution.

National Communications Commission
Chilean Communist Party (Proletarian Action)
PC (AP)

www.accionproletaria.com

Thousands of demonstrators in Moscow celebrated the anniversary of the 1917 October revolution

In a new anniversary of the triumph of the Bolshevik Revolution, freedom for political prisoners who struggle to restore socialism.

Today, November 7 (October 25 in the old Russian calendar Gregorian), the workers and peoples of the world, commemorating the most important event in human history, from the emergence of social classes, and hence of class struggle, WIN of the working class, the oppressed and exploited, when the story took a turn through 180 degrees, that the hitherto oppressed and exploited, not only overthrew and destroyed the old power of the exploiters, but also initiated the construction of a new society, socialism, transitional society between capitalist society based on exploitation and oppression of workers and the masses, and the communist society free from exploitation and oppression of man by man.

Socialism Today, as a society and an expression of workers’ power does not exist in the former Soviet Union, the Soviet Union itself does not exist, but socialism is not dead in the land of Lenin and Stalin, on the contrary, he lives not only in the longing of the people and workers, but is present in the open struggle and concrete that they carry out. Everywhere, and as a result of popular pressure, are replaced monuments to Lenin and Stalin, the writings of them are increasingly read, the polls are saying that its inhabitants mainly want to return to live under socialism, the Russian authorities have expressed great concern that within the youth is living a true “STALIMANÍA”, young people have T-shirts with portraits of Stalin and get tattoos on their bodies with their image, demonstrations, labor strikes and student and multiply red flags with portraits of the leading Bolshevik leaders. Reactionary anti-working class government, anti national anti popular and Boris Yeltsin, Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev today, acting according to its reactionary nature, have been based and management based on repression, imprisonment of anti-fascist fighters and for socialism. Today there are hundreds of political prisoners in various jails in the countries of the former Soviet Union accused of various crimes invented by fascist police themselves, such is the case, among many others in Russia, fascism Solopov Maxin, arrested and imprisoned by the Alexy Gaskárov communist fighter, just for participating in demonstrations in July 2010 anti-fascist, and Nadezhda Raks, Larisa Romanova, Olga Nevskaya, Tatiana Nejorosheva, communist comrades on which the Russian police had fabricated evidence to hold them accountable for blowing up a police building; NO comrade, despite the constraints and torture, has acknowledged involvement in the incident.

Today, Russia is the most prominent of what was once the Soviet Union’s heroic and dignified lives in the paradise of the mafia, the evils of capitalism, where scandal has increased infant mortality and poor quality of life, reached in both the social decline that, according to the UN (an organization that no one, not a fool, could be accused of being a communist), argues that “Russia is experiencing a demographic crisis,” arguing that “143 million people in the 2005, and considering current demographic trends, by 2030 the country will have only 128 million people “. Today in capitalist Russia, life expectancy has dropped to just 60 for men and 65 for women.

In 1990-1991, 25 December last year, ended the Soviet Union, took the red flag of the Kremlin, giving an end to a long period of capitalist restoration, started from the XXII Congress of the Communist Party Soviet Union (1956), degeneration process led by the traitor and revisionist successor Nikita Khrushchev and Brezhnev, Andropov and Gorbachev, the latter being openly capitalist policies and summarized in the so-called “Perestroika” and “glasnost”, which gave to the grand final stab Proletarian Revolution of November 7, 1917.

In these moments when the various imperialist powers, led by Yankee imperialism, including Putin-Medvedev’s Russia, with blood and fire devastate the sovereignty and independence of countries, nations and peoples, and when they claim that the effects and consequences of the general crisis of capitalism, ie the imperialist crisis itself, as we live the highest and final stage of capitalism, imperialism, pay the workers and peoples, AS IT TAKES THE SOVIET UNION LENIN AND STALIN! .

Chile’s Communists, from the Chilean Communist Party (Proletarian Action), PC (AP), faithful to the principles of Soviet Socialist Revolution, embodied in the Communist Party (Bolshevik) and its leaders, Lenin and Stalin, in this November 7, 2011, first express our tribute to the heroic deeds and proletarian socialism in the exURSS if existed and showed its superiority in relation to capitalism, while we demand that all reactionary regimes of the former Soviet Republics and in particular, the Putin-Medvedev government in Russia, to end the repression of the antifascist fighters for socialism, to release political prisoners.

The repression and prison have never been, and may not be in the land of Lenin and Stalin, to prevent the triumph of socialism, which no doubt once again restored in Russia and other republics of the former USSR, will again be based support and inspiration to the workers and oppressed peoples on a global level.

Experience a new anniversary of the immortal Soviet Revolution!

Socialism is more valid than ever, and will sooner or later be restored in the countries of what was once the Soviet Union!

Central Committee
Chilean Communist Party (Proletarian Action)
PC (AP)

International Council for Friendship and Solidarity with the Soviet people.
Santiago, November 7, 2011

Source

Chavez brings first shipment of gold to Venezuela from foreign vaults as global economy slides

Madison Ruppert, Contributing Writer
Activist Post

In August Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez announced that he would be repatriating the foreign-held gold reservesin American and European banks and they received the first shipment of gold from European countries on Friday.

The Venezuelan central bank reports that about $300 million in gold was brought in to Caracas by plane and they plan to bring 160 tons held abroad back to Venezuela. The president of the central bank, Nelson Merentes said that the first shipment came from “various European countries” by way of France and called the arrival of the gold bullion a “historic” moment for his country, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Hugo Chavez said, “Now [the gold] will go to a place from which it should have never left: the central bank vaults [in Caracas]; not those in London or in Europe, but our own land.” This is likely quite a good move as Western banks are becoming increasingly exposed to massive amounts of derivatives and sovereign debt crises that are wracking several economies.

These crises very well might be engineered by central banks and their “too big to fail” cronies just as the crash in 2008 was, and Chavez might preempting a possible gold run by demanding physical delivery of his gold now before there is no gold to deliver.

While Merentes would not give the specific number of tons of gold brought shipped to Venezuela on Friday, he said that the shipment was worth roughly $300 million.

This comes as U.S. stocks see the worst Thanksgiving drop since 1932 and all indicators show the European sovereign debt crisis continuing to worsen.

Chavez’s repatriation of gold reserves is part of his initiative to nationalize the Venezuelan gold sector, something which the Wall Street Journal says “puzzled economists.”

The Wall Street Journal published speculation that it could have to do with internal arbitration cases involving nationalizations and Venezuela seeking to prevent having their assets seized abroad.

They claim that it reduces transparency and would “raise more questions over the central bank’s declining reserves.”

How exactly they know the status of the reserves is not said, and Venezuelan figures posit a much more logical explanation for the move.eking to minimize exposure to the overly indebted Western economies of the United States and Europe, while leveraging the high price of gold that only seems to be rising.

They also said that they were seeking to invest in developing allies like Russia and China which have also been investing in the Venezuelan economy and continue to grow at rates not seen in the West.

There has also been a steady attack on Chavez coming from the United States and the West in general so his choice to demand his gold now prevents Western nations from seizing his assets held abroad as they did to Gaddafi.

The Wall Street Journal does seem to be able to pin down a number of how much gold Venezuela actually has.

First they say that before Friday, Venezuela held nearly $11 billion worth of gold, or 211 tons, out of 365 tons of reserves stored in banks in the United States, Canada and Europe.

According to the World Gold Council, Venezuela holds the 15th largest gold reserves and Chavez said, “It’s the economic reserve for our kids. It’s growing, and it’s going to keep growing, both gold and economic reserves.”

Unfortunately you’ll never hear Bernanke or one of the countless criminal Western banksters saying such things, all they care about is robbing us blind and making sure we are enslaved by debt for generations to come.

That is not to say that Chavez is a saint, but the fact that a leader would even talk about working for the well-being of his people is something wholly foreign to someone like myself in the United States.

“Venezuela is going to become an economic power, not for the bourgeois or capitalism, but for the Venezuelan people,” Chavez added.

Later, they say that the Central Bank of Venezuela holds 154 tons of gold bullion domestically, a number considerably different from the 211 tons cited earlier in the article.

Regardless, the Venezuelans seem to see the writing on the wall, with American stocks seeing the worst loss during the Thanksgiving week since 1932, Belgium getting its credit rating slashed and reports saying Greece is telling bondholders they will have to accept larger losses.

This fueled the pervasive concern that the European debt crisis is worsening and treasuries fell in response.

The S&P 500 continued to slump for the seventh straight day in a row, marking a weekly drop of 4.7% and a daily loss of 0.3%.

The euro declined as well, losing 0.9% along with the S&P GSCI commodity index dropping 0.3% with Bloomberg reporting, “The Markit iTraxx SovX Western Europe Index of credit- default swaps on 15 governments lingered near a record, up 6 basis points at 386.”

The signs are not looking good and Chavez demanding physical delivery of his gold just reflects the global awareness that something is seriously wrong with the world economy and it is not getting better any time soon.

Madison Ruppert is the Editor and Owner-Operator of the alternative news and analysis database End The Lie and has no affiliation with any NGO, political party, economic school, or other organization/cause. He is available for podcast and radio interviews. If you have questions, comments, or corrections feel free to contact him at admin@EndtheLie.com

PCMLE: The Russian Revolution of October 1917

In the revolution carried out by the Bolsheviks in October 1917, it was shown that the construction of socialism is possible only provided that the principles of Marxism are maintained and remain firmly.

On October 25, 1917, according to the old Russian calendar, or November 7, the current schedule, the Bolsheviks led and organized armed insurrection, seized power and established the dictatorship of the proletariat.

This was the result of a process of accumulation of forces, in which the masses played an important role. In February 1917 the Russian workers and the people rose up against the power of the czars and gave way to the emergence of a provisional government headed by Kerensky reactionary character, but at the same time came the Soviets.

At the stage of the Soviet seizure of power were early forms of proletarian power, according to Joseph Stalin they “… were fundamental levers of organization that could facilitate the isolation of the Mensheviks and Socialist.” That is why the Bolshevik Party raised the slogan “All Power to the Soviets.”

The provisional government of counterrevolutionary activity against Bolshevik workers’ movement and accentuated. In July, workers’ demonstrations were gunned down, the wording of Pravda was destroyed and gave the order to arrest Lenin, who had to hide.

The Bolsheviks were prepared in March 1917, a political army of workers and peasants which was created in the course of the struggle, as the fighting in class and the masses were convinced, from experience, the correctness of the policy of the proletarian party.

The Party Central Committee (CC) meeting on October 10, decided to build a Politburo responsible for leading the insurrection. On the 16th, the outreach session of the CC of the party decides to place Stalin in front of the Centre Party in charge of directing the insurgency, which would be leading the fight all the days of October.

The Bolsheviks understood the insurgency “… in the broadest sense of the word, is not naturally a purely military in the background, and above all, is a powerful revolutionary movement, a powerful impulse to the proletarian masses against ruling classes, or at least of the active fraction of these masses, even though numerically constitute only a minority of the proletariat. It is an active and resolute struggle of the most active in the turning point in the decisive point. The military operations of the organization of combat must match the height of the movement of the proletariat. Only in these conditions can be successful insurrection. The most favorable revolutionary situation can not, by itself, ensure the victory of the revolution. The insurrection must be organized by a party. The power does not come alone, you have to take it. “

Understanding these elements on the morning of November 7 Moscow dawned with most of the places occupied, Petrograd was in the hands of the proletariat. Only the Winter Palace and some other point of the city were still in the hands of the Provisional Government during the early hours of the morning.

At night the workers took the Winter Palace. From the cruiser “Aurora” was announced: “A new era for Russia and a new dawn for humanity.” While pointing guns at the Winter Palace. Kerensky fled in disguise and in a car. The U.S. Embassy gave him asylum. The power passed into the hands of the workers and poor peasants. On 9 November, the first organized workers and peasants government.

With the triumph of the great socialist revolution opened a new era in humanity, the era of proletarian revolution and socialism, by which the proletariat must travel around the world.

The Russian Revolution is the most important event of the twentieth century, which led for the first time, the rise of workers, peasants and soldiers to power and the establishment of the first proletarian state in history.

The successful outcome of the proletarian revolution in Russia marked the beginning of a new era and was the validation and confirmation of the biggest historical scientific theory of Marx.

The October Revolution pointed to the possibility of the practical use of socialism, was tested for the first time that this is not just a scientific theory but a social system that can be set and demonstrate its superiority over capitalism.

With what has been done by the Bolsheviks in October 1917, it was shown that the construction of socialism is possible only provided that the principles of Marxism and continue to remain tight.

PCMLV: The Bolshevik Revolution: 94 years, Present & Necessary

At 94 years of the October revolution, the proletarians of all countries should follow the glorious example of those days where workers “took heaven by assault.”

Introduction

This article is a chronological description of the events of the October Revolution, as we believe that there is already enough material in publications such fraternal parties. What we propose is to mark the importance, relevance of the Bolshevik Revolution and the term with Marxist-Leninist ideas in our time. Our days are marked by the intensification of the contradictions between capital and labor, for the inter-imperialist contradictions and contradictions between imperialist countries and dependent countries.

Such a situation is posed by Stalin in Foundations of Leninism, which leads us to conclude without doubt that the origin of the revolutionary processes of popular democracy that lived in Eastern Europe and other parts of the world is more relevant than ever. Imperialism is a dead end, the objective conditions for revolution are at a historic high larger because of the incredible growth of productive forces in the last decades of last century and early today.

The media (mass media) as ideological agents of the ruling classes, made desperate efforts to attack and pronounced dead the ideas of Marxism as fascist governments Putin-Medvedev duo in the current Russian imperialist struggle so cross a murderer desperate to Comrade Stalin, even falsifying historical documents, capturing with Stalin’s signature stamp on alleged murder warrants that never existed. This, without doubt, do not try to attack the personality of Joseph Stalin alone, but also goes far beyond the ideology of Marxism and Leninism flags raised with such dignity that Comrade Joseph Vissarionovich.

We know all the importance that the work of Stalin in Russia’s industrial development in the construction of socialism, under his leadership and the party and Soviet power in general, laid the groundwork for what is industrially today’s Russia ( considering that the industrial level of Russia today, is nowhere close to that of the 80′s). Along with all the development that was achieved in these important decades of socialism, are the immense social achievements. The claim for these benefits won in the Stalin era and today limited abrogated and violated by capitalist-state agencies, is what causes terror to the bourgeois democrats who rule Russia. They know that not to attack the Soviet social gesture would be in serious trouble with the Russian workers. This working class maintained an extraordinary potential, therefore, the Russian working class is a time bomb that has the capitalists running from one place to another alarm, knowing the history more militant workers who established the first socialist state, the the Soviet state and were (obviously still are) a great example for humanity.

But the revolutionary situation not only lived in Russia but in many countries hit by the effects of bourgeois crisis. The weakest links in the imperialist chain are in a really agitated political situation, especially the most vulnerable economies in Europe.

…

Past events, often as a reminder chronological study, at best, as general knowledge, the certainty of not relive similar situations is a daily occurrence in the history as we know it. Who could think of a new Napoleon or a Robertspierre restoring greatness to the bourgeoisie, along with a new and enriched edition of “social contract” of Rousseau, I thought it would be unreasonable and backward due to the fact that the bourgeoisie is exhausted as a class. However, something very different happens when we look at the Russian Revolution, its context and its relevance to modern times and most importantly, with the scientific method of historical materialism, where there are individuals who make history but the masses.

That said, we can analyze the existing bourgeois mode of production, which at the time of the Russian Revolution (and long before), had entered a new stage called imperialism that Lenin aptly called “highest and final stage of capitalism.” The nature of imperialism in our time is the same as in 1917, rests on the exploitation of the working class and represents the world dictatorship of the monopolies. For this reason, the workers’ revolutionary struggle against capitalism is not a dream but a necessity than a continuation of the epic scale of the Russian workers, and this is due to the evils of the past century Russia are same as those of any country today. Imperialism is a worldwide chain of oppression and how to kill it is by way of revolutionary violence by the method of Marxism-Leninism.

Little more than 20 years since the Soviet Union collapsed, the bourgeoisie angry celebrated with joy. In the north, Francis Fukuyama proclaimed the end of ideology and history. Communism was declared dead and from now on only be determined by the progress of the world were the technologies, the free market. A “new world order” decreed that communism was an evil overcome and not repeat such a phenomenon.

The overflowing of the bourgeois idealism, soon dropped from the clouds and stepped ashore. In East Germany, social enterprises were absorbed and carried into bankruptcy by private monopolies West Germany, while health, education and all services during the Soviet era were for the benefit of the people were now privatized, in Russia was the same. This short period gave a sense of relative rise of capitalism since the great Russian market was opening up to capital investment, but the wave of immigration began to be felt, the former Soviet republics were broken up, the economic and industrial as tenth world power of the mighty East Germany (GDR) is rapidly transformed into that of an underdeveloped country.

Unemployment, poverty, hunger and other phenomena previously unknown in Eastern Europe begin to intertwine with the heinous vices, moral and social ills deviations of the West (drugs, alcohol, prostitution, organized mafias, speculation, Christianity, etc). The result is we live in today. The severe economic recession in Europe, Asia, North America, Latin America and Africa, which threatens to become depressed and that is an expression of the general crisis of capitalism, is part of a time bomb about to explode, the rivalries between the imperialist powers are sharpened and powerful new imperialist economies like China are profiled. The winds of war are rising worldwide.

The general crisis of capitalism that afflicts different countries in all continents tends to flare up, in a framework of imperialist aggression against sovereign peoples. The workers seem to have come from the lethargy experienced after the fall of the USSR and now, with the inability of the capitalist system to improve the living conditions of the masses, they seek alternatives. Social movements currently rising in many countries of Europe and even in the United States, (angry) despite fight poverty and poor living conditions they are forced to endure capitalism, have no political compass tells them how to get out of the bourgeois system operator. Rather, show spontaneity and disorganization, however, is this a sign of the decay of the system.

One can only ask: Is this coincidence? No similar situation was experienced between 1910 and 1914 which brought the world to the slaughter of the First World War. The same situation was experienced in the 1930s before the second world imperialist war with the “Great Depression” of 1928. It is here where we can find a scientific way today and the need for a proletarian revolution dialectically, repeat the events of Russia 94 years ago, but on a larger scale, on a planetary scale starting with the weakest links capitalism are in Latin America and Europe.

A little history

On November 7 (October 25 on the Julian calendar), 1917, decreed “all power to the Soviets,” the Bolshevik Party led by the great Lenin led the Russian working class to seize political power, began the first socialist revolution in the history of mankind. Nationalization of the banks and industry, expropriation of the bourgeoisie, rights as never before seen in human history: legalization of abortion, free education, equality between legitimate and illegitimate children, separation of church and state, etc. ., Russia’s economic base was removed and destroyed, so sweeping, radical social superstructure hitherto known.

The imperialist powers, stunned and exhausted they could not stand idly by and, despite having left a devastating war between them (World War), were not willing to tolerate a revolution that threatened the foundations of the capitalist system. Cease fighting between the great powers, and now all joined their guns silhouetted against Soviet Russia. The First World War changed contenders, now all against the state of the workers.

The direct foreign military intervention (armies of 14 countries including the U.S. Britain and France), assaulted the young workers’ republic in order to overthrow the Soviet power. The ultra-reactionary White armies plunged the country into a bloody civil war led by fascist Aleksandr Kolchak, Anatoly Pepelyayev, Anton Denikin, Nikolai Nikolaevich Yudenich, among others. But the Red Army overcame the difficulties one by one internal and external armies were defeated by Soviet forces. The death toll caused by the imperialist intervention in the USSR is unknown, it is estimated that the figures exceeded ten million. Despite the victory of the Red Army that remained was a country in ruins, with no means of production and without wheat, a famine caused by the fascists threatened to undo the Soviet state coupled with icy winters in the history of that country. All this, together with the early death of the great Lenin did not prevent the continuation of the great advance of the proletariat.

After Lenin’s death, began squabbling factions that had formed within the party. Bukharin, Trotsky, Zinoviev, Radek and traitors among other reformers fought the lead, tried by all means to divide the Party of Lenin and maintain the old relations of production and obsolete military-feudal, but the party decided overwhelmingly address Joseph Stalin on October 27, 1926. Since that time, the Soviet Union played, or industrializing or be destroyed by imperialism, Russia was half a century of lagging behind other developed countries, they needed a plan, and the plan was carried out magnificently.

Commissioned to continue the work of Comrade Stalin was Lenin, who in an incredibly short, managed to build together the party and workers, scientific socialism. Was developed heavy and light industry, became industrialized, collectivized Tecnifar and the field, the former exploiting classes (bourgeoisie and landlords) were exterminated by the working people. This enabled the country to achieve development by leaps and bounds without the obstacle that represents the parasitism and obsolete bourgeois private property in land and the means of production.

On the social side, the workers won important victories, now all the people had the right to own private property that had been denied individual, abused and raped by capitalism, the right to have houses, cars, and all the amenities that allow to be develop human creative potential to the fullest. The workers were struggling in their job tasks and work voluntary overtime (Saturday communists) with the greatest enthusiasm, knowing that now was for the development of their homeland and not to the pocket of a handful of bourgeois parasites.

The first step was to purge the party of reform and right-wing elements in order to have a solid foundation for future action. Thus was fought as Trotskyism, an arm of the intelligence services Germano-Japanese to finally defeat him in the clearance of so-called Moscow Trials in 1936. With the certainty of keeping the enemy at bay internal anti (Trotskyism), and after having destroyed the organized workers at the forefront with the powerful Communist and Soviet apparatus executed five-year plans, put them into practice.

…

Russia in the early twentieth century, was a semi-feudal country, backward, and with 94% of the population in a state of illiteracy. The tools used in the field were the most rudimentary of Europe, agriculture techniques were the same as the seventeenth century, only some cities and towns had electricity, not for nothing, said Lenin, “Socialism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country. ” To this we add the ravages of war and the blockade imposed on them by the imperialists.

The country lost in time, contrasts, and in 1950 had a solid industry, with a surprising development in the sciences (genetics, chemistry, biology, etc..), Science (the first country to put a satellite into orbit and the first man in space), in the military area, reached almost invincible defeat the German Wermarch (Hitler’s army), the industry of a medieval level went on to become one of the largest in the world, the field is Tecnifar and collectivized the land, the improvements in living standards were amazing. (Read “Balance of the first Five Year Plan” of Joseph Stalin).

The capitalists were stunned, what they had taken 300 or 400 years to build, the USSR succeeded in less than 30 and more surprisingly, no need to exploit and plunder other nations as did the Western powers. They spoke of “a miracle”, the Soviet miracle.

We should not be a miracle or anything like that, but a successful socialist plan. Capitalism can never match that task, but a strong party supported the working class and in the extermination of the bourgeoisie and the landlords as a class, the centralization of credit and the absolute monopoly of industry, commerce and banking may well achieve that development. Only under scientific socialism is possible in improving the living conditions of mankind, no middle class in power has been able to carry out such a feat, only the working class in power, only under the dictatorship of the proletariat can . The working class has been so outraged and have been labeled as uneducated, we show that in a few decades we can do more than any bourgeois democratic government “cult.”

In that sense, not the bourgeoisie and imperialists were able to deny such a degree of development of the proletariat organized bourgeois newspaper Le Temps de France published in summer 1932 in an article “Communism huge rate peaks at the stage of restructuring, in the capitalist system must go slowly … In France, where land ownership is divided into infinity between private owners, it is impossible to mechanize agriculture, the soviets (workers councils), the industrialization of agriculture, have been able to solve this problem … The Bolsheviks won the game we have. ” (Quoted by Stalin in “Balance of the first Five Year Plan”)

At that time, the bourgeoisie had no choice but to accept the superiority of socialism over capitalism. The expropriation and collectivization of land, the mechanization and industrialization of the countryside and thereby phasing out the differences between this and the city, are the most successful actions if we leave the technical backwardness and get the much needed food sovereignty. Under the bourgeois framework, all these hopes will be only a fiction for the simple fact that they do not see private agricultural production as a way of contributing to the community, but as a means for profit.

It is shown that the industrialization of the USSR, the development of the country in every sense is that since the state was not the same, the economic base and not controlling them, all that was achieved because those who were ruled workers and the bourgeoisie, otherwise would have been objectively impossible.

The collapse of the USSR

In 1953, the leader dies conducted by the party and the working people to build socialism, Joseph Stalin, who only months before his death, spoke of a deviation within the Communist Party of the USSR, and that such diversion His plan would consolidate the Soviet Union by way of the restoration of capitalism. Stalin could not carry out its plan to purge the party again deviant elements, since his death prevented it.

That was how the theories of Leninism nourished by the valuable contributions of Comrade Stalin, the class struggle, expropriation without compensation to the landowners and the bourgeoisie, industrialization, the single line in the match squad for the traitors to the proletarian cause, planning of the economy, were declared by Nikita Jhrushov as an aberration. The current pro-capitalist opportunist and to which Stalin wanted to eliminate, triumphed and established himself in power. It was the beginning of the end of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

Jhruschov developed its coup plan stating that criticized Stalin’s mistakes in order to “restore Leninism.” Gorbachev made the same demagogic promises to mislead the leftist forces, the result has been that we have today, under the pretext of restoring Leninism, has come to tsarism, under the pretext of “improving the community” has risen to capitalism.

In 1956, Jhrushov, leader of the anti-presented to the XX Congress of the Communist Party of the U.S. His infamous “secret report”, which would lay the foundations of capitalist restoration in the country in which organized workers exercised power in times of Lenin and Stalin.

Thus, in the late 1980′s and early 1990, revisionism Jhrushov planted in 1956 and other traitors, had germinated in all spheres of political life of the organ of the Soviet state. The representative of this opportunism was Mikhail Gorbachev, who, during the 70th anniversary of the October Revolution gave a speech rejecting the anti-imperialist struggle and asserted that imperialism had renounced his violent character in a globalized world in which the Soviet Union, the USA and other countries could cooperate for the common interest of the survival of humanity. XXVIII Congress of the Communist Party of the USSR broke with all the basic principles of Marxism and Leninism, the way was cleared for the final blow.

Yeltsin Yananiev and representatives of capitalism in the Soviet Union, showing the most rancid proclaimed a Russian chauvinism and capitalism only detached from the other Soviet republics, quickly, after this, the attack was general, Latvia, Georgia, Lithuania, Ukraine and proclamations made other separatist republics. In 1989 the retaining wall fell in Berlin anti-fascist and next to him, all hope of the proletariat in these countries.

Indeed, despite the deviant nature and totally reform of these regimes, much of the working class and people in general still believed in them. There is a myth spread among the bourgeois liberals, neo-revolutionaries, and other species sigloventiuneros anti-Marxist, that the Soviet government was not defended by anyone, that the workers did not come to defend their conquests and reaction and fascism obstacles had to retake power in the end “as Peter came by his house.”

This argument does not correspond at all with reality and does nothing but flirt with the anti-bourgeois propaganda. It is one thing not to leave the working people to defend their conquests and quite another is that the means of the bourgeoisie in the midst of his ecstasy reactionary not transmit any of it, or did we forget the events of 2002 in Venezuela and role of the media?, the difference is that our country could not move right and it came out to defend the government by the masses, otherwise, have won the right in our country, in many countries around the world think about Venezuela as well as you think the role of the masses in the fall of the USSR.

In eastern Germany, the masses took to the streets and were crushed by the reactionaries with unprecedented brutality, massacres that went unpunished and forgetting the complacency of the UN and love the look of the bourgeois media. In Russia, we remember the episode known as the “black October”, where workers were defending the last bastion of workers’ power, the Supreme Soviet and the Council of People’s Commissars.

Boris Yeltsin tried to consolidate power, capitalism could not move as desired for the imperialist powers to the coup leaders who demanded the application of neoliberal policies, the main obstacles were the Congress of People’s Commissars and the Supreme Soviet. Yeltsin’s neoliberal decrees were illegitimate and illegal, it went against Soviet constitution in force until then, what Yeltsin proceeded to complete its coup of shamelessly, ordered the dissolution of the Supreme Soviet and the Board of Commissioners People and illegally proclaimed a new constitution.

The conference as stipulated in the Soviet laws were not repealed, rejected the presidential decree and ordered the immediate dismissal of Yeltsin as president, who refused and ignored the Soviet and the Council. Public protests against Yeltsin’s government took to the streets in Moscow. In the repression of these there were several deaths, the blood flowed in the streets as a sign that democracy does not allow “troublemakers.”

The army, under the control of Yeltsin, determined the end of the crisis. Deputies and hundreds of workers locked themselves in the building of the Supreme Soviet, and prepared to resist the siege of the forces under control of the deposed president. The week after popular protests against Yeltsin and Soviet support was growing. Peaked on October 2, 1993. Russia was on the verge of a civil war that threatened the capitalist restore Soviet power. At that point, the military leadership showed their support for the deposed president and he ordered the evacuation of Soviet force. Yeltsin’s order to materialize by bombardment by tanks and artillery of the headquarters building of popular sovereignty. The Supreme Soviet was destroyed and many of its occupants, workers and representatives of popular sovereignty, were killed in the attack.

For the October 5 Yeltsin resistance had been destroyed, a slaughter of unknown proportions occurred in many cities of Russia. The conflict, the conflict was the most serious happened in Moscow since the Russian Revolution of October 1917. The number of dead and missing remains a mystery.

This is to name the most emblematic cases, but they were the only ones in Romania, Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic and Slovakia) and all countries of the former USSR, the masses came out to defend the October Revolution, which they considered the Lenin’s legacy. This shatters the malicious words of some modern intellectuals about the revolutionary consciousness of the working class. Although these schemes were diverted to mid-twentieth century, the masses were convinced that capitalism would mean the destruction of working class interests.

Conclusion

The capitalists and the bourgeoisie all over the world celebrated to the utmost the fall of fascism retaining wall and the Soviet Union. The ideas of Marxism-Leninism are currently under attack in the media and in all spheres of bourgeois life as churches and university classrooms, are rated as worthless and unworkable putting in evidence the collapse of the USSR.

We must make clear that the fall of the anti-fascist resistance and the USSR is not the failure of Marxism-Leninism, but the review, a plan devised by imperialism to destroy the country of the dictatorship of the proletariat away from Leninism and Marxism to give way to capitalism. The collapse of the statues of Stalin in 1956, was justified with the excuse to return to Leninism in 1991, the collapse of the statues of Lenin was the result of this “return to Leninism.”

The dictatorship of the proletariat is a fundamental requirement for the construction of socialism. Without this power, you can not take a socialist revolution. With this power, Lenin was able to decree the nationalization of land and property of the exploiting classes, and take control of the economy. We can not conceive that we want to fool with a socialist course built at the base of the bourgeois framework.

In that sense, we must remember the attitude of Lenin and the Bolsheviks to the bourgeois framework of development. Exercising the proletarian dictatorship, the Bolsheviks dissolved in January 1918 the Constituent Assembly, who had been elected after the October Revolution but was dominated by the Social-Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks, because the assembly refused to ratify the Bill of Rights and exploited working people. Later, the Bolsheviks banned the bourgeois parties because they were parties committed to counter-violence and civil war, and because they collaborated with foreign interventionists. Examples like these should have them very much present at the time of the construction of socialism, the class enemy must be destroyed, the two antagonistic classes can not converge on a single system of government.

The class dictatorship of the proletariat is nothing more than an expression of state power necessary to destroy and replace the power of state or class dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, and thus carry out the socialist revolution and prevent recovery of control over society by the counter. The dictatorship of the proletariat, is both a democracy and proletarian democracy for the working people, the masses of workers and peasants. Without the exercise of the proletarian dictatorship against their class enemies, the proletariat and working people can not enjoy democracy for themselves. The proletarian dictatorship is the result of the highest form of democracy within a society divided into classes, is in short account, the revolutionary process that overthrew the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. It is the guarantee of genuine democracy to the oppressed and exploited class against enemies internal and external, local exploiting classes and the imperialists. These principles were abandoned by the Soviet clique from Jhrushov to Gorbachev and replaced by a cartoon called by them “state of all the people or popular”, that is the reason for the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Today more than ever, the ideas of Marxism-Leninism are being studied by workers around the world, the misery of the masses, relative overproduction crises in general, the failure of capitalism, the infeasibility of the system of imperialism bring the world down the path of progress. All this is proof today of the ideas of Leninism. The Soviet experience of the Bolsheviks should serve as an example for future battles for the construction of socialism and communism.

When the bourgeoisie speaks of the end of communism, in fact we are talking about the failure of revisionism to assert their hatred of the great work done by Lenin, the Bolsheviks and the Russian proletariat in October 1917. By doing this, they think more in the future than in the past. The bourgeoisie wants to deceive us by telling us that Marxism-Leninism is dead forever, but he does because he knows perfectly that this is a great vitality and topicality.

After 22 years since the fall of the USSR, all the contradictions of capitalism are more heightened than ever. A window dreadful hunger, poverty, unemployment, war, economic recession, it opens in the face of workers in Europe, Latin America, Africa, Asia and bows on their shoulders, only Marxism-Leninism is able to show what is the only way out. Only Marxism-Leninism can bring the working masses in the capitalist world and the oppressed and dependent weapons for their release. All the fuss about the end of communism, which is to disarm attempt (with the vision set in the great struggles to come) to the oppressed masses worldwide.

The workers and proletarians should be aware that now is the time that we must raise the banner of Marxism-Leninism, the flags of the Bolsheviks, follow the example of the October Revolution of 1917 where the proletariat organized as a communist vanguard under the direction of Lenin and Stalin conquered political power, to build socialism, establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat against the exploiters, landlords and landowners. That’s the only way to build socialism, no other.

Communist Party of Mexico Marxist-Leninist (PCM-ML): Iran& the new source of imperialist war

These days it meets the security council of the United Nations Organization (UNO), consists of China, the United States, Russia, France, Britain plus Germany, who is a permanent member of this organization. Among the topics to be discussed is that of Iran, who asked to stop uranium enrichment, arguing that this is used to produce nuclear weapons.

At that, following the threat from the United States to make a military incursion “preventive”, now they call it a military invasion against Iran is preparing, under the pretext of stopping the threat, because it is speculated that the alleged weapons produced in Iran go into the hands of terrorists.

Four years after the invasion of Iraq, which has sunk further into poverty as a result of the imperialist invasion of the Americans and their European allies, where hundreds of civilians have been killed and thousands fleeing to other countries in the Middle East for no be victims of the war, now plans to do the same with Iran, the argument, the fight against terrorism. To “protect democracy and world peace”, are used to war.

Since Bush has not quite been able to convince the Americans to make a military attack on Iran, which tries to do at all costs, he can not ignore the fact that Iranian territory are large reserves of natural gas and oil plus it is committed to its tendency to monopolize nuclear power, set representing a large booty, especially for a country like the United States, which depends on the hydrocarbon reserves of other countries.

Because of this, Yankee imperialism makes use of all tools available, why resort to the UN, who has always been subordinated to the interests of imperialism and has not played more than a puppet role in conflicts between countries, always safeguarding the interests of the financial oligarchy.

The UN, on the one hand criticizes Iran, Lebanon and Syria are making weapons, countries that certainly have not aligned to the American policy, so they are considered part of the “axis of evil” and hotbeds of terrorist groups , but at the same time, it is unable to criticize the military-industrial complex the world’s largest, and the use of weapons of mass destruction that have used the Yankees and their allies in Afghanistan and Iraq, or the fact that progress in Israel As military technology.

Another argument against Iran is supplying weapons to Iraqi insurgents, the Afghans, the Taliban and Al Qaeda, in addition to being accused of meddling in internal affairs of Iraq and Afghanistan, which threatens peace in the region, the fact is that for years, who has interfered in internal affairs of other countries and has been Yankee imperialism. One example was the assistance they provided the government and the American army to the Afghans against the Soviets, the nod to the Iraqi invasion of Iran during the Bush administration, these, just to name a few, and that Yankee imperialism has been characterized by meddling in internal affairs of several African and Latin American countries.

One way to pressure the Iranian government to stop enriching uranium, is the threat of an economic embargo already living higher than the cancellation of credit to Iranian companies. To put pressure on other countries to line up in favor of imperialism and their clearance to a higher pressure and economic sanctions prepared to countries whose companies to maintain investment with Iran.

It would be rare for U.S. imperialism and its allies use the political conflicts in Iran, which look like they did in Iraq and Afghanistan to help opponents of the current government to unleash major internal conflicts which may allow a ‘pre-emptive raid ” or “humanitarian aid” in the way of the facts would mean the presence of peacekeepers from the UN, better known as blue helmets, as already happens in other countries in the Middle East and the Middle East.

Faced with accusations of American imperialism and the members of the Security Council of the UN, arguing that Iran defends right to use uranium to make electricity, which did not use the uranium for nuclear weapons production, arguing that it are taken as valid before the judges, since Iran does not submit fully to the designs of imperialism, although it is not an anti-imperialist and democratic country.

The threat Iran becomes dormant when one considers that the geographic region in which it is, is surrounded by countries and places where troops or peacekeepers Yankees such as Afghanistan, Iraq, the Persian Gulf and Turkey . For powerful countries with nuclear weapons, as is the case of Pakistan and countries in the region are staunch allies of American imperialism, as in the case of Israel.

The Battle of Moscow

Seventy years ago, in the autumn of 1941, one of the fiercest World War II battles – the Battle of Moscow – took place. For Hitler, whose army had easily marched its way through half of Europe, it was the first serious defeat.

When in June 1941 Hitler moved his troops into the Soviet Union, he counted on winning the war within just four months. His hopes were not unfounded. The surprise factor, the manpower and technical superiority, the two-year war experience in Western Europe and the military and political mistakes of the Soviet government enabled Hitler to occupy a significant part of the Soviet territory. By October, German troops were approaching Moscow. Hitler was so confident of success he had even had a granite slab prepared for a victory monument he planned to erect after Moscow was ruined.

Moscow was Hitler’s priority, so he threw his most powerful well-equipped Army Center Group into battle. On October 2, a blitzkrieg offensive codenamed Typhoon began.

The Nazis stormed forward and partially broke through Soviet defenses in a blistering attack that did seem like a typhoon first. They came very close to Moscow. A super agent, SS Standartenfuhrer Otto Scorzeny, recalled afterwards: “We occupied a small village 15 km northwest of Moscow. In good weather we could even see Moscow from the local belfry… Western newspapers wrote: “The Russian bear is dead. It would take a miracle to save Moscow”.

War-time documentaries offer glimpses of strenuous defense preparations. Bracing for street combat, Muscovites were digging trenches and anti-tank ditches, building barricades and repulsing enemy air strikes. Unskilled volunteers, most of whom had never held a gun before, were practicing shooting. Government offices, residents and material values were being evacuated. Stalin ordered to mine important facilities and blow them up should the enemy enter in the city.

At that critical moment for the country, General Georgy Zhukov was appointed commander of the Moscow Front. A few words about him:

Zhukov seemed to be destined for the army. Symbolically, he bore the name of the Ancient Roman military leader St. George the Conqueror. Napoleon once said that a commander’s brain should be in optimal proportion to his will. That fully applied to Zhukov. He had a strong mind and the will of iron. He hated incompetence and sloppiness, falsity and lies. Being exceptionally self-disciplined and responsible himself, he demanded the same from people who worked with him. His military talents showed themselves to the fullest during the war against Nazi Germany in 1941-1945. Zhukov had the rare gift of foresight based on his intuition, analytical mind and the deepest knowledge of the situation. He credited the German army for being the world’s strongest army and looked upon German generals as the most experienced and competent commanders. That’s why, while planning an offensive, he demanded exhaustive information about the enemy, including German generals. “In order to fight a stronger enemy successfully, one needs to know more about him,” Zhukov used to say. The Germans, for their part, closely watched Zhukov’s advance, rightfully considering that his appearance in some place or other meant that something serious was up. Zhukov masterminded and directed large-scale operations that tipped the scales in favor of the Soviet Army. His final chord was the Battle of Berlin in early May of 1945. After Berlin fell, Marshal Georgy Zhukov accepted Nazi Germany’s surrender on behalf of the Soviet government.

But back in October 1941, when Moscow was under siege, the then Soviet ruler Josef Stalin phoned Zhukov and asked him: “Are you sure we will retain Moscow? I am asking you with an aching heart. Tell me honestly”.

Zhukov answered firmly: “We will retain Moscow by all means. But we will need at least two more armies and at least 200 tanks”.

He conceived a bold plan that would enable him not only to halt the enemy’s advance but to counterattack.

“We mapped out the plan and submitted it. Reconnaissance data enabled the command to determine the direction of the main blow. Now that we knew where the most dangerous sector was, we built a multi-layered defense. When the battle began, the Germans were surprised to meet such fierce resistance. The enemy sustained heavy losses,” recalled Marshal Zhukov.

The Battle of Moscow raged through October and into November when the Soviet government decided to stage the traditional November 7 military parade on Red Square to commemorate the Bolshevik Revolution and to demonstrate the high morale of the troops. That was the most unusual parade in Russia’s history.

“Slavyanka Farewell”, composed by Vasily Agapkin, a regimental trumpet-major, in 1912, is by far the most popular march in Russia. The year 1912 was the time when the peoples of the Balkans began their war of liberation against the Turkish yoke. Vasily Agapkin dedicated the march to the women who were seeing their sons, husbands and fiancés off to war. As time went on, Vasily Agapkin became a musician, conductor and composer. He served in the army for 62 years. The most memorable day of his long and eventful life was November 7, 1941, and the military parade he personally took part in.

In the fall of 1941 Nazi troops approached Moscow. The Russian capital was in a siege. This notwithstanding, the Government decreed that the traditional military parade be held in Red Square to celebrate another anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution and demonstrate to the world the high morale of the Red Army. On a very short notice, on November the 2nd, the bandmaster Vasily Agapkin was given an order to put together a consolidated military band that would participate in the parade. It was a rather challenging project considering that most musicians at the time were at the front line. The only option left was assemble the band using the field musicians from the military units stationed in Moscow. Agapkin was running out of time with just one full day and two nights before the parade. And yet, with just two rehearsals he managed to fine-tune the newly-formed band and make the players perform orderly.

The early morning of November 7, 1941, was somber, windy and cold. Before dawn military convoys had converged just outside Red Square. The parade was to begin at 8:00; it was still dark in November, and the event would not be an easy target for a possible German air raid.

Regimental bands arrived at the Historical Museum right on time. They assumed a formation of a large consolidated band and marched on to Red Square .The band took their position on Red Square forming a perfect triangle. The musicians were rubbing their hands, cleaning the snow off their hats and instruments. Someone shouted, “The keys are freezing! How are we going to play?” Agapkin was alarmed. There was no alcohol handy to moisten the keys. Nobody had anticipated the sudden drop in temperature and a blizzard within just to a couple of hours. Agapkin regained composure and gave an order, “Instruments under the coats!” Small brass were easy to cover with uniform coats, but what about the basses? They had to be covered with the coat flaps, and the keys had to be warmed up with hands.

The Kremlin clock chimed eight. Marshall Budenny galloped on horseback from the Spassky Gate. Bandmaster Agapkin swung his arms, and the band began to play…

Having accepted the parade commanding officer’s report, Marshall Budenny headed for the Government stands at the Mausoleum.

“Word to be passed,” the fanfares solemnly announced. The Commander-in-Chief, Josef Stalin addressed the people. He briefly touched on the temporary setbacks at the front line and expressed complete confidence in victory.

Stalin’s speech was followed by the parade. The band thundered out a march.

Agapkin, standing on a special podium, cheered up. The band was playing smoothly and confidently. Like clockwork they moved on from one tune to another. Foot troops were followed by cavalry. And then the tanks rolled onto Red Square.

During that parade Agapkin’s masterpiece was played as well… The papers later wrote, “That was the most astounding parade in history…”

Meanwhile, trainloads of weapons and ammunitions from all over Russia were hurrying towards Moscow and additional troops were being rushed in. For weeks the enemy maintained superiority that seemed almost unshakeable when suddenly, on December 5, 1941, the Soviet troops launched a surprise counterattack and forced the enemy to retreat. That was Hitler’s first defeat and it sent the myth about his invincible army crumbling. Chief of Staff of the German Ground Forces Colonel General Franz Halder wrote in his diary: “We will never again have such military strength as we had in June 1941”. Indeed, Wehrmacht lost the bulk of its elite troops in that battle, which in Halder’s opinion was a “disaster” and the “beginning of the tragedy in the East”. The Battle of Moscow was the first major success of the Soviet army during the early stages of the war and its moral, political and patriotic significance was enormous.

Source

Fraud, Famine and Fascism: The Ukrainian Genocide Myth from Hitler to Harvard

by Douglas Tottle

Published 1987 in Canada

Unlike the rest of the books in this on-line library, I do not physically possess this book. I am including it here, however, because of its importance and its rarity. This book is currently out of print and extremely rare. A worldwide library search reveals that this book is only present in 28 libraries, only one of them a public library, the rest being academic libraries. Of the 28 library locations possessing the book 14 are in America.

This book documents how and why fraudulent stories about the Ukrainian famine of the 1930s made the presses worldwide and have become accepted as fact by almost everyone, despite the fact that they are provably false. The stories of millions of deaths caused by famine in Ukraine in 1933 and 1934, supposedly caused by the effects of the Soviet system, were fabricated by Nazi propagandists in their propaganda campaigns against Bolshevism. The spread of these stories to America took route through the presses of William Randolph Hearst, who has also since been proven, as I have documented on this website, to have been working in collaboration with the Nazis and publishing Nazi propaganda in mainstream American publications throughout the later half of the 1930s and into the 1940s.

These fabrications, which are well documented in this book, have become almost completely accepted as facts by Americans, and these fabrications have been repeatedly used, and are still used, by politicians despite the fact that they are provably false and were provably produced by a Nazi conspirator. The fact that William Randolph Hearst was conspiring with the Nazis during the 1930s is proven outside of this book, and is a part of official American government record, yet his fabricated publications about the Ukrainian famine are still referenced as fact today.

This book does not claim that no famine took place in Ukraine, or that there were not hardships related to the collectivization programs of the Soviets. The book is an examination of the stories published about the famine that did take place, and how those stories became politicized.

A pdf copy of this book is linked below.

PDF of “Fraud, Famine and Fascism: the Ukranian Genocide Myth from Hitler to Harvard” via Rational Revolution

Moni Guha: Collapse of Socialism

Introduction

The subject matter of our study is “Collapse of Socialism”. But socialism did never collapse it was usurped. This is a historical fact which is being denied. What collapsed in 1990 in Eastern Europe and in 1991 in the Soviet Union was market socialism of the revisionist regimes, not the Marxian socialism of the dictatorship of the proletariat. And everybody knows that market socialism and revisionism are bourgeois ideology and practice in Marxist garb. Of course, some self-styled Marxists, here and elsewhere, continued to consider the U.S.S.R. as a socialist state notwithstanding its revisionist leadership. They have, with aplomb declared against Khruschovite revisionism, but had kept a studied silence on the question of relation between the dictatoriship of the proletariat and revisionist leadership, identifying the revisionist ruled Soviet state and market socialism with Marxian socialism is nothing but prettifying both market socialism and revisionism or worse, playing into the hands of the bourgeoisie. When one speaks of problems of revisionist ruled Soviet Union and its market socialism as problems of Marxian socialism, he seeks to tar Marxian socialism with the same black brush by which Khruschov tarred Marxian socialism. Revisionist take over of the party and the state can mean nothing but the destruction of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Consequently, Marxian socialism is the logical casualty. The revisionist take over can only mean that bourgeios ideology and practice have gained the upperhand, proletarian leadership has been toppled. It means restructuring of the property relationships in favour of private property ownership and exploitation of man by man.

As such, the subject matter of our study should have been named “Collapse of market socialism”. It would have been scientific and in conformity with historical fact.

However, I shall discuss here the economic policy of the Soviet Union of the two periods viz. the period of Marxian socialism and the period of market socialism keeping myself confined to the Soviet Union’s relation with the world market and imperialism.

I hope the question of collapse will be clarified in the course of our study.

1. Socialism in One Country and the World market

The October Socialist Revolution put an end to the undivided rule of the world system of capitalist economy. A new economic system, the socialist economic system came into existence. When the construction of the socialist economy in the very young Soviet state was in its initial stages, Lenin said:

“We are now exercising our influence on the international revolution through our economic policy. Once we solve this problem, we shall have certainly and finally won on an international scale.” (C. W. Vol. 32, P-439)

Did Lenin’s prophetic words come true? Was the economic policy of the Soviet Union “certainly and finally won on an international scale”?

It really did win.

What was the economic policy of Lenin?

With the inception of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in 1922, Lenin formulated three basic guidelines, viz. (I) a comprehensive national economic plan, (ii) Socialist ownership of the means of production, and (iii) Independent growth with emphasis on heavy industries. After the death of Lenin, Stalin meticulously following these guidelines, concretised and implemented them. He pursued the policies of centrally planned economy which made progress depending almost exclusively on the domestic resources and the home market. Foreign trade sector, or, foreign market, it may be noted with special care, played a very subsidiary and therefore, a minor role, in the development activity, as trade was chiefly confined to importing some technology from the world imperialist market. Export was considered a sin for obvious reasons, while import was generally favoured, since it was conducive to improve the material balance and technological base of the Soviet economy. It may also be noted that there had been monopoly control of the socialist state over the foreign trade. In general, foreign trade was not at all a dynamic sector of the Soviet economy, even in the period of socialism in several countries, till the death of Stalin.

Why the foreign trade sector or foreign market was not a dynamic one?

It is well known that capitalism develops international economic relations of a capitalist character, that is of exploitative and coercive character. Such international relations of production, once they emerge, acquire a certain independence and exert enormous influence as an objective law, on the internal development of the countries drawn into their orbit, independent of man’s will. In the capitalist world this intensifies the unevenness of the development of different states, some countries outstrip others, there emerge ruling and sub-ordinate countries, and the latter become, in one way or another, dependent on the former. This essentially coercive and exploitative process has produced international division of labour under which the world is divided into industrially advanced and industrially backward and weak countries, and under which the backwardness of the latter is perpetuated. A socialist state cannot be the partner to this coercive and exploitative process of the international trade relations.

Taking cognisance of this process the Soviet Union co-operated in a very limited way, but did not integrate itself into the imperialist dominated world market in the sphere of competition through imports and exports of goods or capital. That is why the economic policy of Soviet Union was independent but not autarkic. A state which takes part in the coercive and exploitative process of capitalism and world economy and whose leitmotif is earning profit from the competitive capitalist market cannot be a socialist state.

Let me quote a policy statement of the Soviet Union, issued in 1938, on the objects of exports and imports. It said:

“…. Imports into the U.S.S.R. are planned so as to aid in quickly freeing the nation from imports….

“… In the execution of the plan for socialist industrialisation, it is necessary to import most finished equipments and newest machines for the construction of ‘giants’ for the organisation of our own production of these very machines to secure our economic technical independence from capitalist nations..

“The basic task of Soviet exports is to earn foreign exchange reserves of the country.. The U.S.S.R. exports its goods only in order to pay for comparatively small quantities of imported goods, which are necessary for the speedy execution of national economic plan, therefore the dynamics of quantity of exports is defined by the plan which is constructed with the planned volume of imports..” (D. D. Mishustin. ed. Vneshniaia Torgovlia Sovietskogo Souza, U.S.S.R., Moscow, 1938, P-9).

It logically follows from the above policy statement that the U.S.S.R. throughout the whole period of Marxian socialism and Stalin, upto his death, stressed for a balanced trade with much limited quantities of exports and imports. The trade proved to be much less commercial in nature, since it did not exploit foreign trade for “profits”. Thus, little did the question of importing or exporting capital arise in the Soviet economy.

This was the Soviet economic policy during socialism in one country in relation to the world economy. Form this you can very well judge that the superiority of the socialist economy was not the superiority in commercial and trade competition in the world market. It was a political, economic and moral superiority of the socialist economic system over the capitalist economic system on the question of exploitation of man by man.

2. Socialism in Several Countries

The emergence of Peoples’ Democracies in several countries necessitated their mutual co-operation on the economic field so that the socialist camp as a whole would be strengthened. Of course, that did not mean any change in the independent economic policy of the Soviet Union – the policy of non-integration with the coercive and exploitative process of the imperialist dominated world economy.

In order to determine Soviet economic policy towards the countries of Peoples’ Democracies, a conference of delegates from the countries of Peoples’ Democracies of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union was held on January, 1949 and a Council for Mutual Economic Assistance or CMEA was formed.

It was found in that conference that the member countries of CMEA differed greatly as to their levels of industrialisation. In a certain sense, only in a certain sense, the economic relations between the national republics of the U.S.S.R. were a prototype. The border lands and colonies of Tsarist Russia, which before the revolution were backward in comparison with the central regions, had become powerful industrial-agrarian republics under socialism. It was the policy of socialist in content and national in form which was a guarantee to overcome the backwardness, to even out their levels of economic development and to reach the most advanced level, with enormous growth of the productive forces. Only this policy did inspire the trust and confidence for voluntary and conscious co-operation on the basis of equality.

So, the principal tasks of the CMEA countries was directed towards evening out of the crying disproportions of the countries of the socialist camp.

The main achievements of CMEA during the period of 1949-1953 were:

(1) The conclusion of long term bi-lateral trade agreements, which was approved at the second session of CMEA in August, 1949.

(2) The provision of technical documents free of charge and the exchange of technical-scientific personnel between the member countries, so that experience would be exchanged, these countries would benefit from one another and the most backward ones would be helped to industrialise and develop their economics.

(3) The trade and economic exchanges between any two member countries were carried out NOT ON THE BASIS OF WORLD PRICES, but on the basis of an estimated price reached after extensive analysis.

(4) CMEA member countries refused co-operation with ‘Marshal Aid’ and agreed not to integrate into the coercive and exploitative process of the imperialist dominated world market.

As a result of this policy the volume of industrial production in 1954 as against 1938 (pre-war) increased as follows: Poland-4.6 times; Czechoslovakia-2.3 times; Rumania-4.7 times; G. D. R.- nearly 2 times (against 1939); Bulgaria-4.9 times and Hungary-3.5 times (against 1939).

Due to the blockade and non co-operation of the world economy a parallel world socialist market was then, a fact. We are not sure what would have happened had Stalin been alive. Stalin died in March, 1953.

You have seen that the superiority of the socialist economy was not the superiority in trade competition in the world market, it was a political, economic and moral superiority of the socialist economic system over the capitalist economic system. Even in the 1930s when the capitalist world was submerged in a deep crisis, the Soviet Union went ahead with its five year plan without any crisis and had already solved the problem of the reserve army of the unemployed. That in the 1930s the Soviet economic policy did demonstrate its superiority over capitalist economy was proved by several examples:

You know why and how Keynes hurried to amend and repair the bourgeois economic theory of automatic equilibrium of demand and supply, which Marx criticised in his Capital long, long ago. Keynes had to admit that state intervention in the management of economy was necessary. You know how and why the theory of ‘Mixed economy’ of the bourgeoisie became the order of the day. You know that the tremendous influence of the success of the five year plans of the Soviet Union, how the solid camp of the bourgeois-economists was disintegrated and disarrayed and various schools, viz. Keynesian, Robinsonian and Sweezy-Baran etc. emerged with some tinge of Marxian economy. Lenin said:

“In the last analysis, productivity of labour is the most important, the principal thing for the victory of the new social system. Communism is the higher productivity of labour – compared with that existing under capitalism – of voluntary, class conscious and united workers employing advanced technique”. (C. W. Vol. 29, P-427).

Even bourgeois economists could not deny the relatively high rate of growth of labour productivity in the Soviet Union during the period of Stalin and Marxian socialism. Between 1930 and 1940 the average rate of growth of the gross industrial output of the Soviet Union was 16%. Whereas, during the period of industrialisation in the U.S.A. between 1870 and 1880, the average yearly rate of growth of manufacturing industry was 7% only.

The growth rate of labour productivity was also higher in the U.S.S.R. In the U.S.A. labour productivity was 113% higher in 1949 than 1939, while, in the U.S.S.R. it was 137% higher in 1950 than in 1940 and 144% higher in 1953 than in 1950.

What then? Marxian socialism and Stalin are not to be blamed for the collapse. Marxism Socialism and Stalin left the Soviet Union together with the Peoples’ Democracies a great world power and victor over fascism. In Stalin’s time industrialisation of the country and the collectivisation of agriculture were carried out, and a true multinational family of the Soviet family of the Soviet peoples were created. Marxian socialism and Stalin awakened the Soviet Union, pulled it out of poverty and hunger and made it an advanced country in all directions and thus awakened the world. The world people, together with the Soviet people have a vivid and indelible recollection of that period when there was neither unemployment or inflation nor crisis or social differentiation.

So, the canard of collapse of socialism is a Goebblesian lie from interested quarters, who are bent on re-writing history completely erasing the period of market socialism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe from the pages of history.

Let us now, pass to economic policy of market socialism and its collapse.

3. Economic Policy of Market Socialism

What is Market Socialism and what are its differences and similarities with Marxian socialism? From the ideo-political and economic standpoint, the theory the Market Socialism and its various variants, from the times of Proudhon and Duhring, is an open negation of the dictatorship of the proletariat and its role in the management of economy, a negation of socialist ownership over the means of production and the planning of the socialist economy.

In their ‘socialism’ elements of private ownership, market freedom and competition in trade and commerce on the one hand, co-exist with elements of social ownership and planning on the other. Their ‘socialism’ is a hybrid society and economy which is regulated and functions through the co-operation, conditioning and mutual complementing of both the elements of spontaneous distribution of labour sources and material values and the elements of state regulation of reproduction process, of both the spontaneous operation of the market mechanism and direct state planning.

These are the similarities and dissimilarities. It is an admixture of elements of capitalism and elements of socialism.

The concept of Market Socialism in its fullest form was worked out and implemented in practice, with the so-called reforms in the countries where the modern revisionists came to power. This concept lies at the basis of entire retrogressive process of complete restoration of capitalism and the integration of the economy into the system of world capitalist economy, which took place in the Soviet Union immediately after the death of Stalin.

The usurpation of the dictatorship of the proletariat by the market socialists may appear “sudden” to someone, but it was a long drawn struggle inside the CPSU. In the 30 years between the death of Lenin and the death of Stalin, revisionism in the CPSU went through three definite phases of development : Trotskyism in the mid twenties; Bukharinism in the late twenties and the development that ultimate took the form of Khruchovism. The eminent representative of the latter in Stalin’s life time was N. Voznesensky.

In the struggle against Trotskyism, the issue of market socialism was not central. Trotsky, however, belonged to the ranks of the market socialists. He joined them with his pamphlet “Soviet Economy in Danger” (1933), in which he made categorical statement that “Economic accounting is unthinkable without market relations”.

Market socilism was an issue in the struggle against Bukharin. Bukharin and his cohorts were for the free development of capitalist elements both in the city and in the countryside, for the free market as a regulator of the economy and against socialist industrialisation and collectivisation.

In 1948, N. Voznesensky, the chairman of the state planning commission and member of the Politbureau of of the Central Committee of the CPSU, published his “War Economy of the USSR” where he stated that:

“The commodity in socialist society is free of conflict between the value and use-value so characteristic of commodity capitalist society where it springs from private ownership of the means of production”. (P-97)

“The law of value has been transformed in Soviet Economy”. (P-116), etc. He was for increasing the role of the law of value in the Soviet Economy whereas the problem on the agenda was progressive restriction of the sphere of the role of the law of value.

Voznesensky instituted an “economic reform” in Leningrad area designed to bring industrial production increasingly within the market.

In July 1950, the market socialists suffered a setback when Voznesensky was arrested and executed. But in 1953 after the death of Stalin, the market socialists once again raised their heads and managed to consolidate their position.

This is a history of the usurpation of Marxian socialism and the dictatorship of the proletariat. Marx pointed out in his Capital (Vol.-1) that commodity is the basic economic cell of bourgeios society. And since Khurhchovite revisionists took the course towards this society and restored capitalism in the Soviet Union, they had to work out a ‘theory’ of the category of commodity which enabled them to get rid of all limitations which prevented the free and broad operation of the market in the Soviet economy. In the first place, they had to reject the Marxist-Leninist thesis on the restricted character of commodity production in socialism and to extend commodity production to all the products of labour. So, they had to include the means of production, the whole economic circulation of the country in the category of commodity. And this was done in order to realise their aim, for as Marx has written: “The commodity form of product of labour or the value form of commodity is the form of economic cell of the bourgeois society”.

Acceptance of this ‘conclusion’ that commodity production in socialism extends both to the sphere of production of consumption goods and to the sphere of production of the means of production would eventually lead, as it really did, to the other conclusion that the law of value operated directly in the sphere of production as well. The law of value is bound to operate without limitation whenever there is unrestricted commodity production.

Acceptance of the thesis on the unlimited operation, outside any control, of the law of value, willy-nilly leads, as it really led, to acceptance of the other thesis on the role of law of value as a regulator of socialist production. The unlimited operation of the law of value in socialism, leads, in this manner, and actually led, to restriction of the sphere of operation of the law of planned, proportionately developed economy.

As a result, instead of production for the fulfilling the growing needs of the working people, production in the countries of market socialism had profit as its only motive like those of capitalist countries.

What is the fundamental difference between the planned economy of Marxian socialism and market socialism?

Industrial production takes place in a complex of factories. If production in the various factories is determined by a national plan of production, and, if the whole of complex of factories is directly allocated among various demands on it, then the production process – though it is physically broken up into various factories is NOT, from a social view point, private. But, if the various factories themselves decide what to produce, and if the total products of all factories is allocated among the various demands on it (among the various factories and its individual consumers) through the medium of market, then, from the social viewpoint, the production process is fragmented into private producers. The private character of production does not, in the least, depend on a little deed which formally vests the ownership of each factory in some individual.

If we judge from the above view point, what were the relations between the factory and factory after the New Economic Reform in the Soviet Union by the market socialists? Was it private or socialised let us see.

“Everything they produce, they sell either to other enterprises or to the population. The money thus received covers not only production costs, but ensures a certain margin of profit. The profit goes to finance the needs of enterprise itself and part of it goes to the state budget.” (V. Dayachenko: “Econometry, the Market and Planning”; Novosti Press Agency Publishing House; Moscow; 1971).

The above quotation besides stating the private character of the factory, states also that the profit is earned enterprise wise and it goes to the needs of a particular enterprise. The enterprise profit does not and cannot represent allocation of total social profit of the total socially necessary labour. Hence, it is not social profit of a socialist society but profit of the individual enterprise, like that of capitalist profit.

“Under the new economic system of economic management and planning each enterprise itself negotiates with its trading partners as the size and terms of deliveries of the goods, it manufactures and consumes”. (Ibid; P-87)

It means the production process is private.

Herein lies the difference between Marxian socialism and market socialism. And we should not present the problem of market socialism as a problem of Marxian socialism.

This mush so far as the internal economy of Market socialism of the Soviet Union was concerned. Let us pass on to its international relations.

Stalin died in 1953. in 1954 U.S.S.R. put emphasis on the foreign trade sector. The official Political Economy published in 1954 stated:

“Foreign trade under socialism is used for the fuller satisfaction of the growing needs of society. It serves as an additional resource base for the development of production and improvement of the supply of the population with the objects of consumption”.

This is an outright rejection of the policy of Marxian socialism pursued by Stalin and leads to integration of the Soviet economy into the coercive and exploitative process of the world economy.

N. N. Inozemtsev, Director of the Institute of world economy and International Relations of the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences, in his article entitled “Socialism and International Co-operation”, concluded that the U.S.S.R. would gain “from developing external economic ties in general and with the capitalist countries in particular” (Pravda, Moscow; 16 May, 1973).

The Soviet Union concluded trade and economic co-operation treaties with the U.S.A. in October, 1972 and with Federal Republic of Germany in May 1973.

All this means a free entry of the imperialist capital in the U.S.S.R. against which the brave and valiant workers of the Soviet Union had fought tooth and nail.

Have you ever thought why such stress was laid on foreign economic relations in a socialist country which had a glorious and historic development by depending on domestic resources, internal innovation, home market and which refused to avail of the Marshal Aid even after the great devastation it suffered during the second world war?

This is because the Soviet Union was no longer a socialist country, because it was a country of market socialism.

Let us now pass to U.S.S.R.’s economic relations with the COMECON countries and developing countries.

“In no way whatever does the socialist international division of labour imply autarky on the side of socialist camp.. The more developed the socialist division of labour, the greater the opportunities for exchange between two systems….

“The fact that world prices are used as the first basis for price formation on the socialist would market indicates that the socialist and capitalist market are part of a single world market”. (World Marxist Review”; The International division of labour; December, 1958). It has always been held by Marxists that socialism would abolish the accursed division of labour. Marx said:

“With the division of labour in which all these contradictions are implicit… is given simultaneously the distribution and indeed, unequal distribution, both quantitative and qualitative of labour and its product, hence property…. the division of labour implies the possibility, nay, the fact, that intellectual and material activity – enjoyment and labour, production and consumption – devolve on different individuals and that the only possibility of their not coming into contradiction lies in the negation in its turn of the division of labour”. (German Ideology)

While Marx said that in order to end the contradictions inherent in the division of labour it was necessary to negate the division of labour itself, the market socialists say “the more developed the socialist division of labour, the greater the opportunities for exchange between the two systems”. Not only that. That market socialist “theory” further says that the “socialist international division of labour” “frees the division of labour from the antagonistic from” (“World Marxist review”, ibid).

This is the difference between Marxian and market socialism.

And what are the world prices which were “used as the first basis for price formation” by the market socialists?

According to Marxist economics, world prices pattern puts only developed countries in a position of exploiting less developed ones. The totality of exchange relations between a developed country, which exchange manufactured goods and a backward country, which exchange primary products, has been organized by the imperialists in such a way as to work systematically to the disadvantage of the backward country and to the advantage of the developed country. The difference in the level of productivity between two types of countries – less productive and less skilled on the part of backward country and more skilled and more productive on the part of developed country is a fact. As a result, more labour of the backward country is exchanged with less labour of developed country. This is what is called “unequal exchange”. It is an unequal exchange between the developed and backward country by which the capitalist class (and the market socialists) of the developed country gains at the expense of the people of the backward territory, even if it is sold cheaper by one of the developed countries than an other developed country. It is capitalist exploitation, pure and simple.

Marx drew the attention to such unequal exchange:

“Capitals invested in foreign trade are in a position to yield a higher rate of profit, because, in the first place, they come in competition with commodities produced in other countries with lesser facilities of production so that an advanced country is enabled to sell its goods above their value even when it sells cheaper than the competing countries”. (Capital. Vol. 3) The market socialists of the Soviet Union, rejecting and repudiating the Marxian socialist economic policy of non-involvement and non-integration into the coercive and exploitative process of world market and following the capitalist international labour based on imperialist world market prices as the first basis for the price formation was gaining at the expense of COMECON and backward countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America capitalistically competing with the imperialist competitors.

Thus, the Soviet Union lost its socialist character.

Who, then, is to be blamed for the collapse?

The blame lies squarely with all those revisionist leaders who have led the Soviet Union over these 40 years since the death of Stalin, the blame lies with the renunciation of socialism and Marxism-Leninism, and the restoration of capitalism, which were initiated by Khruschov at the notorious 20th Congress of the C.P.S.U.

No, Socialism did not collapse, what collapsed was market socialism.

Source

Communist Ghadar Party of India: On the tenth anniversary of the invasion of Afghanistan by US imperialism

Anti-Imperialist forces resolve to throw imperialists out of Asia

Anti-imperialist forces organized a public meeting in New Delhi on October 9, 2011. The meeting was initiated by the Lok Raj Sangathan(LRS) and the Jamaat e Islami Hind(JIH). Below we give a report on this event from a correspondent of Mazdoor Ekta Lehar. It was organised to chart out a course of action for the anti-imperialist antiwar forces of our country.

All anti-imperialist forces in India must unite as one to throw the US imperialists and their allies out of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya and all over the world. We must develop a powerful anti-imperialist, antiwar movement in defense of the rights of peoples and nations, and of peace and security.

Our brothers and sisters by blood, the people of Afghanistan, are victims of the US led NATO occupation forces. Over 1.3 million people killed as a result of the NATO strikes. Over 5 million Afghans have died as a result of the invasion and occupation. Over three million people are in refugee camps in Iran, Pakistan as well as within Afghanistan.

We have ancient and positive relations with the Afghan people. They have helped us in our moment of need. We can never forget that it was the then ruler of Afghanistan who allowed the Hindostani Ghadar Party to set up in Kabul, the first free Hindostani government during the First World War. The heroic resistance struggles of Afghans to all occupiers — British, Russian, and now American, are folklore. We are proud that Indian soldiers of the British Army faced firing squads for refusing to fight the Afghani people during colonial rule.

We demand that the government of India should reverse its anti-Afghan, anti-Indian, pro-imperialist policy. We demand that it defends the rights of all peoples and nations to determine their own economic and political systems, free from foreign imperialist pressure.

We denounce the decision of the Manmohan Singh government to send the Indian Army to Afghanistan to “train” the puppet Afghan army, set up by the US imperialists, to attack the Afghan people’s anti-imperialist national liberation struggle. We consider this as an excuse to intervene in Afghanistan against our own brothers and sisters.

We believe that the fountainhead of terrorism worldwide is US imperialism.

The revolutionary struggle of the people of Afghanistan, against the occupation forces cannot be called terrorism. We support revolutionary liberation struggles.

The killing of innocent people in bomb blasts in Pakistan, India, and other countries – in trains and buses, masjids and mandirs, courts and market places – is terrorism. We condemn terrorism. We condemn the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the US.

This was the content of every speech in the meeting.

The President of LRS, Shri Raghavan spoke of how over the last ten years, the US imperialists and their allies have sought to overturn all established norms regarding the independence and sovereignty of nations and the right of each nation and its people to pursue the economic and political system of its choice. “Regime change” and installing their lackeys in power, through brutal military intervention, has become the way of advancing imperialist interests in whichever country that does not submit to the dictate of the US imperialists.

Md. Salim Engineer, Secretary, JIH, cited several facts to support his argument that the US state itself was the organiser of the terror attack on the US on September 11, 2001. This was used as justification for the aggression on Afghanistan. He highlighted the danger of allying with the US imperialists. He called on all to stand up in defence of the sovereign right of the Afghan people to decide their own future.

Prakash Rao elaborated on the main features of the present Anglo-American strategy for world domination. Aimed at establishing their imperialist control over the rich oil reserves of Central and West Asia, and check mating all potential rivals, this strategy includes wars of aggression and military intervention in the name of “regime change” for alleged “humanitarian” reasons, coupled with savage attack on the Muslim people all over the world, in the name of “war on terrorism”, and heightened state terrorism.

Tracing the development of events in the region beginning with the Iranian revolution and the occupation of Afghanistan by the Soviet social imperialists in the late seventies. He conclusively established that today US imperialism is the fountainhead of terrorism.

He pointed out that the people of the Islamic faith all over the world are specifically under attack because they have refused to submit to the Anglo-American prescriptions on what form of governance and way of life they choose for themselves.

Elaborating on why Pakistan is being targeted by the US imperialists at this time and what this means for us Indians, he pointed to the mass opposition in Pakistan to the US policy. The people of Pakistan do not want to assist the US imperialists in Afghanistan. Pakistan is also the gateway to China and India and Anglo-American strategy in this region is to block China, India, Russia and Iran.

Prakash Rao condemned the decision of the Manmohan Singh Government to send its army into Afghanistan to train the puppet afghan government’s army to fight the people of Afghanistan . He called on the people of our country to stand with Afghani and Pakistani peoples in these troubled times and to build the unity all the anti-imperialist forces to throw out the Anglo-American imperialists out of Asia.

Dr. Rakesh Rafeeq condemned the growing US imperialist interference in the affairs of India and called for a broad anti-imperialist movement against the designs of US imperialism in this region.

He pointed out that both in Afghanistan and Iraq, Indian state has been collaborating with the US imperialists from the beginning of the occupations and even earlier. India collaborated with the soviet imperialists during their occupation, he pointed out. The infrastructure being built in Afghanistan by the Indian state is to assist the occupation forces. They are not building schools and hospitals for the people.

Those who addressed the meeting included Md. Ahmed, Prof. Ananthnarayan, P.C.Hamzah, Com. Pratap Syamal, Prof. Bharat Seth, Md. Amin Bhat of the Jammu and Kashmir Peace Foundation, Prof. Sheomangal Siddhantkar, Intezar Nayeem. A moving Urdu poem was sung on the theme of the occupation of Iraq.

Manipuri student activists, Malem and Rojesh, denounced the imperialist policy of the Indian state towards the various nations and nationalities and the use of force to deny the peoples their national aspirations. They called for all anti-imperialist forces in our country to oppose the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA).

Resolutions were unanimously adopted on demanding immediate expulsion of all foreign troops from Afghanistan, condemning the US led war on terror as the biggest threat to peace and well-being of peoples, in solidarity with the people of Pakistan, against the building of close ties between the US and India and for unity with all peace loving and democratic forces to build a strong anti-imperialist movement.

Political Resolution of the XIth of the CC of the PCMLV

After evaluating several plenary sessions during the global situation, we reaffirm our view that we move in successive cyclical crises which are expressed as economic reality, which is deepened especially in the imperialist countries, such as determining component of the general crisis of capitalism, which also of economic base of political and social, creating conditions for moving to a new stage, mixed by wars and revolutions, with high conflict and total decomposition of capitalist society. It is clear that the situation remains tense in the world, continues to deepen the crisis of global capitalism. Riots, demonstrations, war characterize the current moment of world reality.

Expression of this situation is the deepening of the imperialist war against Libya are, we see daily attacks against this country are increasing, and increasingly critical support of the international bourgeois institutions becomes more evident. The bombings are constant and assumptions are civilians who after all end up paying with their lives intemperate attacks of the imperialist forces NATO , Orphans, mothers weeping for their children, this is the scenario that world imperialism has built in this North African country. Unabashedly, the imperialists stole the Libyan people’s money was deposited in European banks, in order to put to the disposal of its interest warmongers. Use the money to strengthen a government coalition made up of reactionary pro-Yankees. About 200 billion dollars of Libya’s international reserves were blocked and placed at the service of imperialism, in addition to this stolen oil, the major facilities and fresh water reserves in this country.

This initially appeared as a political agreement between the imperialist powers to attack Libya, example of this was the position of China and Russia who did not realize their power of veto to prevent the invasion, then the situation worsened, the resistance the Libyan people are maintained over time, setting a problem to be solved by the imperialist powers who doubt the military intervention by land to stop these terrible negative balances and a high political and economic costs.

We understand that this aggression, as well as others made covertly, are part of the imperialist struggle for a new division of the world and are the basis on which to structure the new relationship between world powers, which leads to more wars. The deepening U.S. economic downturn will lead to more conflicts and even wars among the imperialist powers to resolve its economic contradictions.

Another country that is suffering the ravages of imperialist interference, it is Syria, where the imperialists operate in a different format, a little more discreet, are acting from intelligence agencies, on behalf of groups opposed to President Bashar Al Assad. The characteristics of the Syrian government suggests a family relationship in the areas of power, as in the case of the brother of the president who controls one of the divisions of the army and his brother who controls the intelligence services. Some try to locate the essence of this situation on tribal or ethnic differences, trying to hide the fact that regardless of their ethnic peoples seek structural changes that allow them a chance to get a better life. But improving the brevity of life is impossible in a system where the interests of capitalism are the ones that take precedence over the interests of the people and workers in general, it is clear that the intelligence services of imperialism have been mixed in with the riots try to work the ground for possible future interventions.

The acts of sabotage that the governments of Israel and the U.S. made in this country to seek also weaken Iran, Syria partner in oil and industry, hence the conflict to pursue the control of oil reserves and energy, not only this country, if not the entire region.

Importantly, the position taken by China and Russia to Libya with a complicit silence was modified with respect to the situation in Syria, as the worsening social conflict in this country, both exercised their weight as members of the Security Council to make it clearly did not support any intervention in Syria. This is due to a very momentous, Syria offered its territory to transport fuel to other countries, including Russia, making clear that Russia is involved when the conflict is economic interests are at stake with an intervention . Just to mention some good data to say that at the beginning of 2000 the trade exchange between Syria and Russia exceeded 100 million dollars, and for 2005 exceeded $ 300 million, and has continued to increase. Although it is noteworthy that these figures, in general trade of these countries, expressing only a small part of Syria’s debt to Russia, bringing the cumulative three billion dollars. This is complemented by a major military exchange. Syria even has a Russian military base on its territory, which of course must also defend the Russian government when assessing their positions and interests. A similar situation occurs with China in turn is carving the way to deepen political relations with Syria, which promises not only an intensification of efforts to control these countries, and another part of the imperialists, if not also possible contradictions between them.

In Europe, continues to advance the tension, we see the conflict in Greece again takes place in the international news, as workers have returned to the streets to develop their protests against economic measures imposed by international agencies. In Italy, the third largest economy in the euro area is expected to increase the impact of the crisis. France, imperialist country that currently is playing important role in the aggression worn in North Africa as some of the so-called Maghreb countries were colonies of France, so this, now try to regain influence and control as before, on these countries to try to secure their resources.

DuBois on Stalin

From the National Guardian
March 16, 1953
On Stalin

By W.E.B. DuBois

Joseph Stalin was a great man; few other men of the 20th century approach his stature. He was simple, calm and courageous. He seldom lost his poise; pondered his problems slowly, made his decisions clearly and firmly; never yielded to ostentation nor coyly refrained from holding his rightful place with dignity. He was the son of a serf but stood calmly before the great without hesitation or nerves. But also – and this was the highest proof of his greatness – he knew the common man, felt his problems, followed his fate.

Stalin was not a man of conventional learning; he was much more than that: he was a man who thought deeply, read understandingly and listened to wisdom, no matter whence it came. He was attacked and slandered as few men of power have been; yet he seldom lost his courtesy and balance; nor did he let attack drive him from his convictions nor induce him to surrender positions which he knew were correct. As one of the despised minorities of man, he first set Russia on the road to conquer race prejudice and make one nation out of its 140 groups without destroying their individuality.

His judgment of men was profound. He early saw through the flamboyance and exhibitionism of Trotsky, who fooled the world, and especially America. The whole ill-bred and insulting attitude of Liberals in the U.S. today began with our naive acceptance of Trotsky’s magnificent lying propaganda, which he carried around the world. Against it, Stalin stood like a rock and moved neither right nor left, as he continued to advance toward a real socialism instead of the sham Trotsky offered.

Three great decisions faced Stalin in power and he met them magnificently: first, the problem of the peasants, then the West European attack, and last the Second World War. The poor Russian peasant was the lowest victim of tsarism, capitalism and the Orthodox Church. He surrendered the Little White Father easily; he turned less readily but perceptibly from his ikons; but his kulaks clung tenaciously to capitalism and were near wrecking the revolution when Stalin risked a second revolution and drove out the rural bloodsuckers.

Then came intervention, the continuing threat of attack by all nations, halted by the Depression, only to be re-opened by Hitlerism. It was Stalin who steered the Soviet Union between Scylla and Charybdis: Western Europe and the U.S. were willing to betray her to fascism, and then had to beg her aid in the Second World War. A lesser man than Stalin would have demanded vengeance for Munich, but he had the wisdom to ask only justice for his fatherland. This Roosevelt granted but Churchill held back. The British Empire proposed first to save itself in Africa and southern Europe, while Hitler smashed the Soviets.