Our relationship to the Soviet Union is simple. The USSR was the first country to build socialism, and we believe that we should analyze the Soviet experience in order to prevent the restoration of capitalism in the future, as it happened in the Soviet Union. Therefore, there is no reason to idealize or, on the contrary, try to abandon the Soviet legacy, as many “leftists” like to do. This is a wrong approach and has no practical utility.
Really deeply well-told interview with members of the Worker's Front of Ukraine, an explicitly Marxist-Leninist organization within Ukraine that is working against the current war. I very much appreciated the RFU representatives clear-eyed analysis of the current war as an imperialist conflict between NATO and the (imperialist, post-Soviet) Russian State.
I cannot imagine how hard and brave it is to be an avowed Marxist-Leninist in Ukraine these days. It's scary enough in the United States, but we are not quite yet at the stage where the state is killing you in the streets for it. The notes about international solidarity with underground and aboveground groups in Russia was also fascinating -- I think this is a great blueprint for how to organize in imperialist nations. Build the party, educate the people, refuse to participate in nationalist-chauvinist activity.
In fact, fascism is an open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic, and most imperialist elements of financial capital. Different fascists may think differently about women, gender, and LGBTQ+, but that doesn’t change the essence of fascism. As for us, we consider all those issues as parts of the issue of the proletariat. No more no less. You cannot free women without freeing the working class. Period.
The Ukrainian delegations in the early Soviet union were some of its most ardent supporters. I wish one day that we will see that again.
Therefore, to truly defeat imperialism, we must carry out a socialist revolution and defend our military-industrial complex, which has been destroyed by the capitalist regime in 30 years of “independence.” Precisely when private ownership of the means of production is abolished and the dictatorship of the proletariat is established, only then will we be able to truly defeat imperialism, both Russian and Western.
The US, then as now, remains committed to undermining and destroying Chinese socialism, and has relied heavily upon thinly veiled, CIA-sponsored bodies like Radio Free Asia, National Endowment for Democracy, and the fanatical anti-communist and fantasist Adrian Zenz, with the sole objective of bringing about the fall and disintegration of China, much as happened to the former USSR and Yugoslavia.
I find the propaganda project of the United States around the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989 to be a really useful example of truth-twisting. Yes, there were legitimate grievances with the protests -- often centered around the dangerous repercussions of the 1980s Reform and Opening Up period and the lessened rules around capitalist development in China. Also, mass chaos in the streets is not like, good. The nature of the PRC and the CPC in general is one of holding onto power as the ruling class and party of Chinese society, thus it is in their interest to quell uprisings. I don't see this as contradictory to the mission of any proletariat-ruled society, because part of ruling a society involves making hard decisions about how to handle internal unrest.
The fact that China managed to fend off -- then and now -- attempts to replace the CPC with a more capitalist government should be seen as a massive achievement.
The Soviet Union carried the overwhelming weight of the war against fascism.The Eastern Front dwarfed the Western one in every measure that mattered. The Red Army faced and destroyed roughly 80% of the Wehrmacht's combat power. The Soviet people lost over 27 million lives — military and civilian alike. That is more than 60 times the combined military deaths of the United States and Britain. The Red Army stopped the Nazis at Moscow and Stalingrad, broke their back at Kursk, liberated Auschwitz, and planted the Victory Banner over the Reichstag in Berlin.Without the Eastern Front, there would have been no D-Day. Without the Soviet sacrifice, there would have been no victory in the West at all.
The right-wing push to “shrink the government” meant displacing the costs of social reproduction onto private households and privatizing many of the state’s administrative capacity. What came of that was a new practice of citizenship where the ideal of public deliberation over the organization of society gives way to what Berlant calls the privatization of citizenship where “acts that are not civic acts, like sex, are having to bear the burden of defining proper citizenship,” and issues regarding personal morality are central to public discourse.
A bit academic-brained and makes the mistake of assuming that communism died with the USSR, but other than that has some interesting insights.
Anyone who’s ever been to hear a paper or a talk given has seen the person who takes the mic with the pretense of asking a question, but who instead goes on at length about their own interests, or research, or supposed insights. This type of groan-inducing off-topic interruption may be bearable (may be!) in an academic conference, but where there’s real work to be done, it’s an unforgivable waste of time.
Inarguably provocative title of course, but that's the Red Clarion for you. I find a lot of their writing to come off as somewhat juvenile, even though I have (and will continue to!) praise many pieces that they've published, such as this and this and this. They embody a definite communist angle that I can quite respect, overall.
This is a good example -- yes, as mentioned, provocative title, but the overall point is much more moderate I think. The problems with the stack are embedded in its horizontalism, and horizontalism is something I am more and more finding a thorn in the side of any activist or organizational space (honestly, doesn't even have to be activist! this is as much true in corporate meetings as it is in radical spaces). I fundamentally agree with the concerns expressed in this piece: Complete horizontal free speech opens the door to actual harm as much as it opens the door to, frankly, just obstructionist behavior.
I am more and more finding myself aligned with models that allow for targeted suppression of behavior that does not align with the group's stated aims. The key is, of course, having a robust debate about the group's stated aims and a regular series of check-ins about the current status of the group's stated aims. One might call it a sort of democratic centralism, perhaps.
Many Marxists now agree that the revolutionary left’s protracted crisis is rooted in its failure to escape the “sect” form. As Hal Draper has explained, revolutionary sects are defined less by size than by their mode of organisation: a top-down culture, a haughty and exclusivist attitude towards others on the left, and a puritanical fixation on a “perfect” programme enforced by an intransigent leadership. Such groups prioritise their own growth over the needs of the wider movement and, because their unity rests on rigid doctrinal agreement, have a tendency to repeatedly split over relatively minor theoretical differences. This sect form has become the norm among Marxist organisations, leaving revolutionaries scattered across many small, largely irrelevant groups.
Ali Kadri is an esteemed Professor at various institutions around the world, as well as the author of many important books including Arab Development Denied: Dynamics of Accumulation by Wars of Encroachment, The Accumulation of Waste: A Political Economy of Systemic Destruction, and The Unmaking of Arab Socialism.
Okay, I'll admit that I haven't finished listening to this episode yet. But what I've heard so far is excellent. A great breakdown of the role of the CPC in constraining and managing capital excesses from the Mao to Deng era and beyond.
With reactionary forces bearing down upon us, we, the children of these struggles, must take on this banner and win the war once and for all. To do so, we must develop the means to secure our survival outside of the support from the state or any liberal institution. We must develop cadres that can bring the masses into our joint struggle for liberation, underground communication networks through digital encryption and physical dropbox networks, resource depots (which will form the backbone of a logistical network) to secure the supply of necessities to the people and our revolutionary fighters, basic physical and medical educational programs so cadre are fit to engage struggle they are met with, and we must develop cells within every pore of this country from which we can mount our organized counter-attack. [...] Most of the work of a revolutionary army is logistics, followed by aiding in the work of the people by acting as a pool of concentrated labor, then engaging in direct confrontation with the enemies of the people. The People’s Liberation Army undoubtedly harvested more pounds of rice and millet than can be counted in spent bullet casings. A Communist party is nothing more than the rationalized organization of the people’s collective will, for every gain of the people is a gain for the party, for every loss of the people is a loss for the party.
I always find it enlightening that Mao's theories around guerrilla warfare mesh so well with those of Lawrence of Arabia's, as I think there's a lot to learn from both sources. Putting the organization of trans & queer liberation into these lenses aligns a lot with my feelings.
In Commemoration of the Twenty-eighth Anniversary of the Communist Party of China
classic piece, also notable in comparison to the piece right before this -- i feel like you can see the presaging of modern China in a bunch of this.
State and Capital I: Understanding How the Chinese Communist Party Has Redefined the Function, Boundaries, and Political Position of Capital
fantastic piece on the role of capital in China.
Extracted from an essay published in April 1917 (in Hsin ching-nein). Mao Zedong.
A spectre is haunting China—Mao Zedong. This is not the ossified image of the national founder found in official party histories, but a living, breathing idea rediscovered by the country’s youth. The evidence for this resurgence is both unexpected and unmistakable, and its most dramatic stage is China’s elite universities, where the country’s political, academic, and business leadership is cultivated.
Why hasn’t the so-called u.s. left, despite all of the efforts made over the last two years, been able to meaningfully intervene in a live-streamed genocide?
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…
All revolutionary and anti-imperialist organizations must struggle between one another for unity on this line, and where such organizations do not yet exist, they must be built.
I have seen this argument for at least half a decade now, its probably existed past that, but I want to add my bit to it, because, well, fuck this “bigtent” bullshit Idea. I have worked very hard and studied intensely for a very long time now and I refuse
The committee's own data shows that DSA's growth derives not from its sect-like internal processes but from its moments of class-like political action. The organization grows when it acts as a political force in the world, and withers when it retreats into self-administration.
I consider myself electorally-critical at best and thus I would argue with many of the points brought forth in this story, but I do think there's value in it overall. The nature of the DSA is that it tends to spike in population when it has something to rally around, and it withers when it does not. In this, at least, myself and the author are aligned. You must be a shark, always moving, never staying still. Grow the tendency, guide the tendency, shape it into a party, take control.
A major theme in Bolshevik literature was the transmutation of flesh to metal. In the communist imagination, the fires of revolution could forge a metallized man. No one better personified this than Stalin, the “man of steel.” In my latest article, I explore the power of a name.
The CPUSA, FRSO, PSL, and DSA are not identical, but all suffer from a palpable stagnancy.
The Party will form the vanguard of the revolution only when the masses of the most oppressed internationally recognize it as their representative and their weapon in the class struggle, wielded by and in the interests of the international proletariat.