Here I will detail a perspective on how to understand the Cuban reforms from a Marxist point of view and, by comparing them with other socialist experiences of reform, try to elucidate how we can think about this kind of policy change under Communist-led governments.

It is impossible to consider Cuba, and Cuba's oppression by the American state, without getting into complex, contradictory feelings. Even before the current reforms, Cuba was contentious -- not initially a communist revolution, wrenched into communism by circumstance, and then under siege for the entirety of its existence by one of the most powerful capitalist empires on the planet. It is a model of resilience and survival, and of compromise. This last bit, I think, is well-defended in this piece.

And what have been Cuba’s playing cards in the 21st century? Arguably, the worst ones out of any Communist-led state. Any complete analysis of the Cuban Revolution in general, but especially in the 21stcentury, should always start from the decades-long, bipartisan effort by the United States to subjugate Cuba once again. Until the late 1980s, Cuba had the help of the Socialist Bloc and could benefit from the echoes of early Soviet hopes of developed socialist countries reversing unequal exchange and breaking the chains of underdevelopment in other regions. The impact that the 1989-1991 collapse of socialism in Eastern Europe had on Cuba is impossible to overstate; it is tempting to see it as isolated as the early Soviet Union, but with the crucial difference that one was a transcontinental mammoth and the other an island of a similar size to Iceland, 90 miles away from a state committed to defeat it.

A small note in this piece that I think about often is that -- as the author correctly details -- Cuba was almost entirely a monocrop economy until the 90s. Much of its money to survive was provided by the Soviet Union, who, beautifully and tragically, paid exorbitant and unnecessary prices for Cuban sugar until its collapse. An internationalism that feels almost unbelievable now. Even great China makes sure to not disturb the monster of the United States overmuch, and one can hardly blame them for it. But still.

This essay will trace the main contours of his biography and examine three critical aspects of his thought: his understanding of the nature of the majority of the peasantry and their role in the revolution; his exposition of Marxist epistemology; and his analysis of the challenges of building socialism after Liberation.

Ken Hammond is one of the best english-language writers on the history of modern China and this piece is a great read if you want a 101 on Mao and why he was so important.

[L]et me express a perhaps controversial view that no single person in history has ever made a greater contribution to the liberation of humanity as that made by Mao Zedong. Further, if that is the case, then it is not unreasonable to suggest that he is the greatest person to have ever lived.

Rest in peace, big man.

It is a simple fact that the People’s Republic of China has now lasted longer than the Soviet Union. That the Soviet Union no longer exists and People’s China does. That it has developed further than any other major non-imperialist country has ever done. That China accounts for the overwhelming majority of global poverty reduction. That China leads the world in the fight against climate catastrophe. None of this would have happened, none of this would have been possible, without Mao and his leadership.

This video explores how Cartesian dualism shapes capitalism's relationship to the body, why your body often knows something is wrong before your mind admits it, and what any of this actually has to do with building a better world.

Ignoring the clickbait headline, I think this is a really good exploration of Cartesian dualism and how that relates to dialectical materialism, communism, and revolutionary thought.

In other words, she contained multitudes of things in apparent mutual tension with one another, albeit in her case the overall effect was anticommunist and pro-American, even as it was anti-sexist and beneficial, in particular, to "working women" in the imperial core.

The best piece on Steinem I've read so far, pointing out both her massive flaws as well as her respectable actions.

Beijing clearly had no desire to go further down the US laissez faire path where private capital accumulators would steadily more powerful. It presumably believes that the benefits of reigning in its tech industry clearly outweigh costs and risks.

A good and only-a-little-sinophobic analysis of the China 'tech crackdown', from within its timeframe (2021).

For those who are not familiar with the Marxist revolutionary canon, I will attempt — against all good counsel — to sum up the wildly varying traditions of revolutionary Marxism in a single, pithy sentence: Marxists believed —and believe — that the ruling capitalist class had enslaved the working class in all but name, and that the only way to truly free them of those social bonds would be through a revolutionary transformation of society that instituted equitable control of its means of production and its output.

An interesting piece that I appreciated reading. If I have any major critiques, they are that I think that Lenin's more liberal affectations (not ungenuine affectations by any stretch) were more pronounced in his earlier writings, especially when he was more fond of Karl Kautsky.

I don't mean this as a denigration of Lenin. I think that the political function of a strive toward "liberty", while correct in moral weighting, is insufficient for a revolutionary drive -- and I believe Lenin himself recognized this, after attempts at compromise with the bourgeoisie led to frustration and stagnation (see: the Provisional Government era).

It is, of course, also useful to note the role of Menshevik propaganda against the Bolsheviks, which this piece covers quite well.

Broadly, they argued that Lenin was unscrupulously power-hungry, inclined toward reckless revolutionary adventurism, impatient with the project of democratic revolution, and predisposed toward conspiratorial machinations that belied his conniving and deceitful nature.[25] These Menshevik descriptions of Lenin became the foundational bedrock of how he and his works would be evaluated by Western academics. Without access to — let alone awareness of — any alternative narrative, early Western scholarship on Lenin had little choice but to work with the only information they had available to them.

The beginnings, one might say, of the creation of a compatible "anti-revolutionary" Western Left.

The other major critique I would have of the piece is the disappointing and stereotypical arguments around Stalin's leadership, which ironically enough is such a trademark of the Western Left's understanding of the USSR as much as it is an echo of the Mensheviks. The ghost lives on.

I do have criticisms of the USSR -- honestly, who doesn't -- but I think it is misrepresenting the issue to blithely state that "censorship" is the crucial flaw in Stalin's era of leadership (I will cede some ground to the notion that "over-centralization" was a flaw, however -- but on the side of "Stalin overestimated the convictions of those closest to him, because he, like so many others of his cohort, was too much of a dreamer who believed wholeheartedly in the goodness of the communist effort")

I think the USSR (ironically, like the USA but for opposite reasons) overestimated the power of individual writings and popular culture. For the USA, the goal was to use popular culture as a bludgeon against the Evil Soviet Union. For the USSR, the fear was that too much critical writing or art or whatever would topple the Union. In both cases I believe they were wrong, but that is a bit of a tangent.

Regardless, there is a difference between speech and organizing, and in both the USA and the USSR, there were crackdowns on dissident organizing. This is often brought up as an example of the USSR's intolerance, even as the intolerance was against anti-communist actions, which of course... should probably be intolerated in a socialist state. Whatever! I am tangenting. Again.

I appreciated this section:

Overall, surprisingly little serious effort has been made to compare the repressions under Lenin to myriad similar measures taken by Western liberal governments under the extreme pressures of a domestic war during roughly the same period. In calling for energetic repression of their political and ideological opponents during wartime, Lenin and the Bolsheviks have no shortage of otherwise admired historical company.

For stating basically what I am saying above. If the actions are similar (or, at least, comparable), then we should judge by the goals and intent of the actions. The goals and intent of the United States in its myriad war crimes was to further American extraction, colonialism, racial hegemonies, et cetera. The goal of Bolshevik violence was to build a more just world. Yes, I judge those differently.

A revolutionary vanguard cannot afford theoretical ambiguity on the colonial question or electoral strategy. The American working class requires a party grounded in scientific socialism, and rhetorical compromises will do nothing but dilute revolutionary potential. Now, the burden falls squarely on the ACP leadership to provide the necessary ideological clarity.

New York Congressperson Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, who is pretty clearly running for president in 2028, made a disappointing statement recently. She was asked about the idea of defunding and/or abolishing the police, and she responded that “woke 1.0 was crazy.”[...] I found that disappointing.

You know, I think the broad point of this essay is sound -- that the oppressor forces will always find a way to denigrate their opponents, whether or not that is "logical", and thus it is worthwhile to not play that game -- but I found myself kind of annoyed by the end of it. Here, take this passage:

Even if we grant the rather large assumption that [communism] is a de facto danger, communism isn’t the remotest danger for any of us. It’s the very furthest thing from us in an empire currently in end-stage capitalist collapse. Like being in a leaking submarine and fearing a volcanic eruption.

I fully agree with the author that it is silly for Americans to be afraid of communism and that the reason why most Americans are scared of communism is due to decades of propaganda. But this passage demonstrates that the author, too, has fallen for a bit of that propaganda.

Of course, the framing within the piece that delineates a difference between socialism and communism is a tell, but this passage -- with its implication that it is the "furthest thing" from "an empire in collapse" is just. Well, it's silly. Empires in collapse are where communism has sprouted up (the collapse of the Russian empire, the chaos of the Chinese monarchy, the revolutions of Vietnam, etc)!

Furthermore, that is a good thing! In moments of rupture there are also opportunities. That is not to minimize the potential harm inherent in rupture spaces like the one we are facing, to be clear, but we have to be open-eyed about this.

"Communist" is not just a bully's label -- though it is a bully's label in the current American political discourse, and it is one used by both the Democrats and the Republicans -- it is a political stance and a goal. Yes, we should all be Communists, but not as a defensive marker, as an identification with a program greater than the one we currently live under.

The proletariat must be educated to the position of affirming what is true in scientific knowledge and seeing what it points to as being the case and why. Materialism is the best defense of the science we need. It is the best because it is true and because politically it provides the simplest defense of science.

NGL some of the philosophical talk in here is way over my head (or more accurately over my head without seriously sitting down and deep-reading the text) BUT i think this final point resonates quite deeply with me.

If scientists wish to be heard, they must organize themselves, and they must make clear that they are not enemies of the people. To make clear they are conscientious seekers after the truth, they must make clear they are responsible members of society, and even better, champions of the working class. Otherwise, do not expect trust; do not expect people to respect your authority; earn it.

The ACP presents itself as a new, ideologically pure group, the sole heir to the Leninist tradition in the United States, uncompromising in its rejection of bourgeois politics. But looking at what the ACP actually says and who it tries to reach reveals a party whose politics and messaging are nationalist, chauvinist, and reactionary.

I have my doubts about the material/populational power of the ACP -- I find them more of an online blowhard community, but if the past few years have taught me anything it is that we should not underestimate the destructive potential of weird niche online hate groups. Just because they are more correct than the modern CPUSA on issues of Russia, China, and anti-liberalism does not excuse their reactionary tendencies around race, gender, and religion. Relating them to the historical recurring scab that is "national bolshevism" is quite apt, imo.

The ACP split from the CPUSA over what it called liberal compromises, yet ended up with an ideology that is more fringe and less coherent than what it left behind. A rejection of left-wing coalitions in favor of far-right ones was intended to expand a base, but instead dramatically narrowed it. Support for far-right bourgeois figures is masked as outreach to the working class, but it is capitulation to the class interests those figures serve.
[...]
The ACP is a movement that cannot be considered communist in any meaningful sense. The closest they get is patriotic socialists, in the same vein as National Bolsheviks, reactionaries pretending to be communists to steal the name of a tradition they have effectively abandoned.

But the anti-authoritarians demand that the political state be abolished at one stroke, even before the social conditions that gave birth to it have been destroyed. They demand that the first act of the social revolution shall be the abolition of authority. Have these gentlemen ever seen a revolution? A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon — authoritarian means, if such there be at all; and if the victorious party does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionists.

Once abolition is framed as an abstract proposition that all coercion must vanish forever, it becomes easy to dismiss as unrealistic. Instead of being seen as a strategy for dismantling institutions that reproduce capitalism and racial domination it’s framed as either the fantastical idealism of anarchism or the limited purview of policy reform.

Good piece.

It’s important to acknowledge that this retreat from abolition emerges from a real contradiction facing the socialist movement. The George Floyd uprising was the largest mass rebellion against policing in a generation, and yet it produced few lasting structural victories. It’s reasonable to ask whether the movement’s politics, including the rallying cry to abolish the police, contributed to that outcome. But this mistakes the primary lessons of 2020. The principal failure was not that abolition proved to be bad politics or messaging, but that the socialist movement lacked the durable organization, institutions, mass base, and independent politics necessary to adequately absorb the energy of the uprising and carry it forward once the streets emptied.

This selective application of the term “authoritarian” reveals that Western discourse on “freedom” is designed to delegitimize resistance while legitimizing empire. By treating anti-imperialist struggle as equivalent to fascist tyranny, the so-called “collective West” erases the distinction between liberation and oppression.

The great African American poet and Harlem Renaissance figure, Langston Hughes, wrote two poems about V.I. Lenin in the 1930s. They reflect the tremendous spirit of hope that the Russian Revolution breathed into the national liberation struggles of Black people in the U.S. and all oppressed peoples around the world.

Self-reform is how the CPC answers the oldest question in Chinese statecraft: how to escape the historical cycle of rise and decline. Its answer is to never stop struggling, and never let up on its fighting spirit in order to improve and to better represent the interests of the people.

Funny that I ran into this right after posting (positively!) about this piece on Ukraine from Fight For A Future, which is a publication that I do not agree with about their views on China (though I will admit they are not the rabid anti-China sort like many other worse members of the commentariat).

Carlos Martinez is one of my favorite writers on modern China not just because he is a fanboy (which I think is completely fair given the state of modern China compared to most of the US-aligned global West) but because he is a skilled writer and arguer about the ways that the CPC is specifically utilizing Marxist-Leninist thinking in their operations. Not shying away from fair criticisms, but taking the stance that adaptation is crucial to any ongoing communist project.

Where I think the PRC, and the CPC specifically, excels is the understanding that progress will take a long time, and thus it is imperative that a socialist project survive, even if that means taking some Ls along the way (and for what it's worth, I think the PRC has made a lot of mistakes, both historically and contemporarily! I just also think those mistakes do not change the progressive direction of CPC leadership). Or, to quote Martinez:

Ultimately, however, the test on these new battlefields is the same test the CPC has passed before, in a new form: Whether it can keep identifying the principal contradiction of the period and mobilizing society to resolve it, without either capitulating to external pressure or abandoning the peaceful, people-centered and win-win character that has defined Chinese modernization. On the record of the last 105 years, I would not bet against the CPC and the Chinese people surmounting these new challenges.

The opportunist is most dangerous because they appear as dedicated, loyal comrades, and it isn’t their loyalty that we call into question! It is their inconsistent, short-sighted, and unprincipled strategies that sacrifice the long-term project of proletarian revolution by getting lost in reacting to the current moment.

The strategic aim of the “democratic” imperialist states was to turn Hitler against the Soviet Union; in a few words, to use the Nazis as a weapon against the construction of Socialism in the USSR. That was the initial aim of the so-called “allies”.

The USSR saved Europe from fascism, and they never forgave the USSR for it.

The neoliberal austerity regime has left no shortage of opportunities for alternative and counter institutions to fill the gaps left by the state, and capital continues to chase exponential returns on worthless scams rather than providing for many basic human needs. Those gaps, along with the social alienation inherent to capitalism, are the lowest hanging fruit for a dual power approach.

well-reasoned materialist analysis of how dual power can work, looking at examples from social democratic Sweden and islamic nationalist Palestine. I appreciate very much how this keeps the grounding of dual power not as an endgoal but as a tactic.

The important thing (again I stress IMHO) to remember is that all revolutionary orgs started out small, and had to earn the trust of the people as Fidel Castro said "I began revolution with 82 men. If I had to do it again, I'd do it with 10 to 15 and absolute faith. It doesn't matter how small you are if you have faith and a plan of action”. The Communist Party of China just celebrated its 105th birthday and they began with 50 people. The Bolsheviks started as a book club.