A kleptocracy is defined in the Merriam-Webster dictionary as "government by those who seek chiefly status and personal gain at the expense of the governed." Many anti-Russian commentators today have no problem with classifying Vladamir Putin's government as kleptocratic but Richard Sakwa, a Russian expert at the University of Kent, is not one of them. He gives his reasons in "Grey - area Gold," an analysis of Putin's Kleptocracy: Who Owns Russia a book by Karen Dawisha, published in the TLS of February 6, 2015. What follows are some comments and observations on Sakwa's article. I have italicized my own views to avoid confusion.

Dawisha obviously thinks Russia is a kleptocracy. She paints a picture of rampant corruption and abuse of power by those involved in the overthrow of soviet power and the transfer of the collective wealth and property of the soviet people into the hands of private individuals. The security forces of the soviet state played a major role in this betrayal. Sakwa says her arguments are so "incendiary" that Cambridge University Press backed off from publishing the book and it cannot be bought in the UK. It is available in the US from Simon and Schuster.

"The fundamental picture that emerges," Sakwa writes, "is of a Russia that has been hijacked by an elite that quite consciously set out from the beginning of its rule to increase its wealth, and needed to take over full political control to safeguard this process." In Marxist terms this would have been a counter-revolution led by elements of the leadership in collusion with the state security apparatus. However, it does not account for the acquiescence of the Red Army nor the passivity of the soviet people.

Dawisha's picture shows that Putin and his circle have certainly taken advantage of the end of soviet power and have enriched themselves at the expense of the general population (''behaviour typical of nouveaux riches throughout the ages") and have supported acts of corruption but her analysis also results "in obscuring complexity and counter trends."

That is to say, Sakwa contends, there is more to Putin's Russia than just the kleptocratic features Dawisha highlights. When the bigger picture is taken into consideration Russia turns out to be, while having some of the kleptocratic features found in many other countries [including the United States ] "not a kleptocracy tout court."

This is because the Putin government plays a much bigger role than just the enrichment of its elite supporters. It maintains social peace at home and is active on the world stage supporting Russian interests and "meets the basic needs of the Russian people" by furthering a "dirigiste" model of capitalism.* Instead of hiding its revenues overseas the Russian government invests its tax money and oil revenues in public works projects and investments "for a rainy day." *[Dirigiste: characterized by state control of economic and social policy]

That day is here, Sakwa says. Since Russia is being run in the interests of the Russians rather than the Germans or Americans this has caused the "west" to over react and initiate policies against Russia with which the Russians cannot possibly  comply. One of these is the "sanctions" regime imposed on "Putin's cronies" (and now the threat of direct involvement in the Ukrainian civil war by arming the Kiev regime). These will have no effect on the Putin leadership but are now "affecting the whole population in a form of collective punishment". As could have been expected (If Obama and the American leadership knew anything about the real history and sentiments of the Russians) these ham-fisted reactions have only increased Putin's popularity at home and "the people have rallied around the flag." The US is on a collision course of its own choosing with Russia. [Now in 2022 we are seeing the disastrous results of Western policy.]

Sakwa lists four reasons why Dawsha’s book as well as the so-called liberal domestic opposition to Putin (and the Western supporters of anti-Putinism allied with them) should not be taken at face value. They are:

1.) The portrait of Putin presented “is often circumstantial, conjectural,
      and partial.” Do we really want to base our foreign policy on this
      kind of evidence?


2.) There is evidence of a “deep state” at work in Russia [we have one 
    too] made up of sections of the military and security operatives (the siloviki or (‘force-men’)” and “former Party resources” but the 
     evidence given does not prove that it functions simply as a force 
     for “kleptocracy.” It has been used against the Russian “mafia” and
     for the creation of state owned enterprises which “struggle to 
     achieve at least a modicum of good corporate governance.” 
     Western sanctions actually thwart the forces that are trying to
     integrate Russia into the international system.


3.) Unlike what is to be expected from kleptomaniacs, the Putin 
     government has “delivered significant public goods” and supported
     “neoclassical liberal nostrums.” Russia followed policies that allowed
      it to get through the  2008-09 world economic downturn and has 
      since it began “to invest in some major infrastructural projects". All
      in all we see “a developmental dynamic” which “does not look like 
      the policies of a kleptocracy” but, Sakwa says, the country might 
      have been in even better shape without the elite skimming off  
      social wealth for itself (this includes Putin) and “the misguided 
      dirigisme.” [Since the alternative to “dirigisme” is unregulated
      privatization I can’t agree with this last suggestion.]


4.) Russian foreign policy is not conducted on the basis of what is good 
      for kleptocrats but rather on the vision that Russia is a “great  
      “power and should be “an equal partner of the West.” Needless to   
       say “the West” [ i.e., basically the  US ] doesn’t want to accord  to
       Russia “equality.” Russia is treated as a second rate power that
       must comply with US dictates. The Ukraine is a test case and the
       Russians must be seen to give in to American demands. This 
       fully accords with the dynamic of inter-imperialist rivalry  which has   
       come to the fore since the collapse of the Soviet Union and has 
       been so well described by Lenin in his work on “Imperialism the
       Highest Stage of Capitalism.” American “over-reach” here could 
       result in Obama’s policies leading to an unprecedented flare up of
     violence and destruction on a continental scale, or worse. [Well, we see that in spades now— the sanctions, NATO advances to the Russian border, the Western subversion of the elected government in Ukraine and its replacement with anti-Russian elements (2014). The anti Russian Cold War hostility carried out by Obama, Trump, and now Biden has goaded Putin into a massive tragic over reaction with unforeseen consequences.]

In concluding his review, Sakwa says Dawisha’s book “is one of many books that contribute to a misleading paradigm of how Russia actually works.” The reality is more complex. Dawisha’s book will give you a good insight into the elite and how their wealth was acquired but there is much more going on in Putin’s Russia than you will find in this book, so “when it comes to shaping policy towards Russia, it is a deeply deceptive guide.” ​

There is a war in Ukraine. Outwardly, it looks like an armed conflict between Russia and Ukraine. All political forces, including Left, have spoken out about these events. The range of assessments: from humanistic-emotional (“people are dying, stop the war”) to purely class (“The West is pushing two oligarchic regimes”). In fact, this conflict has deep roots. When analyzing the situation, we must take into account both the national content of the class struggle and the class content of the national struggle.

What is Ukraine? The territory of present-day Ukraine until the middle of the XVII century was a sparsely populated space, contested by neighboring countries. By the beginning of the XX century the lands of present-day Ukraine were divided between Poland, Austria-Hungary and Russia. After 1917 revolution some of these lands temporarily declared independence. However in 1922 they joined the USSR as the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. So Ukraine gained statehood, although limited.

Ukraine was an agricultural country. To ensure its development in 1918 at the suggestion of Vladimir Lenin six Russian industrial regions including Donetsk and Lugansk which had never been part of Ukraine were transferred to Ukraine. In 1939 Galicia (Western Ukraine) was annexed to Ukraine, previously part of Poland. The current territory of Ukraine is the result of its entry into the USSR. It consists of disparate pieces: from Galicia (Lviv) with a strong influence of Catholicism to Eastern Ukraine, which strongly gravitates towards Russia.

Socialist Ukraine developed powerfully. Aircraft and rocket building, petrochemistry, electric power industry (4 nuclear power plants) and defense industries were added to the extraction of metal and coal. As part of the USSR Ukraine received not only the bulk of its current territory, but economic potential making it 10th largest economy in Europe. Ukrainian politicians were dominant in the Soviet leadership. N.Khrushev, L.Brezhnev, K.Tchernenko run the USSR from 1953 to 1983/

After the collapse of the USSR in December 1991, Ukraine became an independent state for the first time in its history. But this destroyed centuries-old economic integration with Russia. The “market” model led to the de-industrialization of Ukraine, to sharp drop in the standard of living of the population. On the basis of predatory privatization, an oligarchic class arose.

Now it is the poorest country in Europe. The level of corruption and social differentiation is of the world highest. The manufacturing industry except metallurgy, is practically destroyed. The economy rests on Western loans and money transfers from migrant labour who left for Europe and Russia in search of work. (about 10 million out of 45 million people), basically qualified specialists. The degradation of human capital has reached its limit. The country is on the verge of a national catastrophe.

The population of Ukraine is strongly dissatisfied. However this dissatisfaction with pro-Western authorities is manipulated in such a way that each time even more pro-Western forces win the elections. In February 2014, a US and NATO-backed state coup was carried out in Ukraine. The US State Department has publicly stated that it has invested $5 billion in its preparation.

Neo-Nazis came to power. These are, first of all, people from Western Ukraine (Galicia), which for centuries was under the rule of Poland and Austria-Hungary. Extremely nationalistic, anti-Semitic, anti-Polish, Russophobic and anti-Communist sentiments are historically strong there. After Hitler’s invasion of the USSR, German troops were greeted in Western Ukraine with flowers. SS divisions were formed there fought against the Red Army. Local nationalists, led by Hitler’s admirer Stephan Bandera, set about exterminating the Jewish population. In Ukraine about 1.5 million Jews were killed – one fourth of all Holocaust victims. During the “Volyn massacre” in 1944 about 100,000 Poles were brutally murdered in Western Ukraine. Banderas destroyed Soviet guerillas and burned alive the men, women and children in hundreds of villages in Belarus. Ukrainian nationalists who served as guards in German concentration camps became notorious for monstrous cruelty.

After the war from 1945 to 1953, US and UK-supported anti-Communist and anti-Soviet rebels in Western Ukraine unleashed terror against civilian population. During these years Banderas killed about 50 thousand civilians. This is the nature of forces – descendants and followers of fascists – which came to power after the 2014 coup. The traditions of anti-Polish, anti-Semitic and anti-Russian terror are very strong among the neo-Nazis who now really govern Ukraine. 42 opponents of  Nazi were burnt alive in the Trade Unions building in Odessa on May, 2, 2014 /

It is an alliance of neo-Nazis with oligarchic capital. Banderas (like the SS stormtroopers in Germany) serve as a shock detachment of big business. The only difference is that Banderas refrain from outright anti-Semitism, having established a class unity with the local oligarchy. Banderas tightly control every move of state power, constantly blackmailing it with the threat of a coup. On the other hand, the policy of Ukraine is determined by the US Embassy in Kyiv.

The nature of the current Ukrainian state is an alliance of big capital and the state bureaucracy, relying on criminal and fascist elements under the full political and financial control of the United States.

After 2014 Nazi ideology is being implanted in Ukraine. Day of Victory over fascism on May 9 has been canceled. Ukrainian fascists – organizers and participants in the atrocities of the war – are officially recognized as national heroes. Every year torch marches are held in honor of fascist criminals. Streets and squares are named after them. The Communist Party of Ukraine operates underground. Intimidation and political assassinations of politicians and journalists became constant. Monuments to Lenin and everything related to the memory of life in the USSR are being destroyed.

At the same time an attempt began to forcibly assimilate the Russian population of Ukraine with the suppression of the Russian language. An attempt to introduce Afrikaans instead of English in South Africa led to the Soweto uprising in 1976. The same thing happened in Ukraine. An attempt to transfer school education from Russian into Ukrainian gave rise to powerful resistance in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions. People took up arms. In May 2014 a referendum was held there, in which 87% of citizens voted for independence. This is how the Donetsk (DPR) and Lugansk people’s republics (LPR) arose. After several unsuccessful attempts to invade the LPR-DPR, the Nazis from Kyiv switched over to terror. During 8 years of shelling from large-caliber guns, more than 13 thousand civilians, including children, women and  elderly people were killed in LPR-DPR. With the complete silence of the world community.

The Communists of Russia take an active part in the defense of the LPR-DPR. Hundreds of communists are fighting the Nazis as part of the troops of the people’s republics. Dozens of communists died in this struggle. In 8 years the CPRF sent 93 convoys with humanitarian aid to these republics with a total weight of 13,000 tons, received thousands of children for rest and treatment in Russia. All these years the CPRF headed by Gennady Zyuganov demanded from the leadership of Russia the recognition of the independence of Donbass.

In March 2015 at the initiative of Russia (with the participation of Germany and France) the Minsk agreements were concluded, which provided for the special status of the LPR-DPR within Ukraine. However, Ukraine evaded their implementation. With the support of the United States, Kyiv was preparing to crush the LPR-DPR by force of arms. The US, UK and other NATO members provided training for the Ukrainian army. They constructed over 30 major military installation  in Ukraine including 15 Pentagon laboratories for the development of bacteriological weapons (cholera, the plague and other deadly diseases). Ukraine with its four nuclear power stations and huge scientific-technical potential is able to construct an A-bomb. This intention was publically declared. There was a danger of deployment of US cruise missiles. The situation in Ukraine increasingly threatened Russia’s security.

In December 2021 Russia proposed to the United States to talk about non-expansion of NATO. The US and NATO ignored the proposal. In January 2022 Russia warned that it would be forced to take additional measures to protect its security. At the same time it became known that Ukraine had concentrated 150,000 servicemen and Nazi battalions in Donbass. Kyiv, backed by the USA was preparing to regain control over Donbass through war this March.

On February 22 President Putin announced the recognition of the independence of the LPR-DPR. On February 25 the Russian Armed Forces operation of began.

Russia is not going to occupy Ukraine. The purpose of the operation is the liberation of Ukraine from the Nazis and its neutrality (refusal to join NATO). The tactics of the Russian troops is, while attacking military facilities, to minimize the casualties among civilian population and Ukrainian military, to avoid destruction of civilian infrastructure. They are brotherly people. We will continue to live together. However, the Bandera Nazis use the most disgusting tactics of the German fascists, using civilians and their houses as human shields. They install artillery and tanks in residential areas, forbid citizens to leave war zones, turning hundreds of thousands of people into hostages.

This nefarious Nazi tactic is not condemned in the West. It is the United States, waging an information war through the media controlled by them (only Russia Today resists), that are interested in the war. The United States strikes not only at Russia but also at Europe. The NATO war against Yugoslavia in 1999 was a means of destabilizing the European Union. Today the US main goal is to prevent Russian gas supplies via the Nord Stream-2 pipeline to force Europe to buy more expensive liquefied gas from the United States, thereby sharply weakening Germany and other EU countries. The volume of trade between Russia and the EU is 260 billion dollars a year. With the US – 23 billion USD . 10 times less. Therefore the sanctions imposed at the request of the United States hit, first of all, Europe. The events in Ukraine are yet another American war for control of the world.

By the way, the claims about global nature of boycott of Russia are false. BRICS countries (Brazil, India, China and South Africa) constituting 43% of the world population did not support sanctions. China is the 1st and India – 3d biggest economies of the world. Sanctions were not supported by Asia (excluding Japan and South Korea with their US military bases), by the Middle East, by the largest countries of Latin America and by the majority of the

For 30 years I have been one of the most active critics of the domestic and foreign policy of the Russian elite. In its class character, the oligarchic-bureaucratic power in Russia is not much different from the power in Ukraine (except without fascism and full US control). However, in those unfortunately rare cases when the leaders of Russia pursue a line that meets the historical interests of the country and the people, the principle of “automatic” criticism is hardly appropriate.

I have long argued that sanctions will have a beneficial effect on getting rid of Russia’s imposed dependence on the West in various areas of life. The Russian government is already taking the first steps in this direction. The task of the left forces is to vigorously encourage the authorities to change not only foreign policy, but also the socio-economic course, which does not correspond to the interests of the people.

​Vyacheslav Tetekin,
​
Member of the CPRF CC

Doctor of Sciences in History,

Ex – Parliamentarian of the Russian State Duma (2011-2016)

While the US and EU isolate Moscow over Ukraine, China is strengthening its alliance with Russia, calling it its “most important strategic partner.” In response to Western sanctions, Russian banks are moving to a Chinese payment system, and the Eurasian economies are integrating closer together.

The United States and European Union have used Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that began on February 24 to try to isolate Moscow politically and strangle the country economically.

At the same time, Russia has strengthened its alliance with China, deepening the integration of their economies.

Washington and Brussels have created what is essentially a new iron curtain, imposing crushing sanctions aimed at devastating Russia’s economy and devaluing its currency, the ruble.

The US and European countries have pledged to ban Russian oil. Several Russian banks have been removed from the SWIFT system for financial transactions. And Western sanctions have even hit Russia’s central bank, freezing its foreign assets.

What this economic war has done is accelerated a process of decoupling of Russia from the West, one that began several years ago as Moscow has aimed to de-dollarize.

At the same time, the Joe Biden administration has sought China’s help in trying to enforce these new sanctions and pressure Russia to de-escalate – despite the fact that Washington has spent years waging a new cold war on Beijing, making unsubstantiated and politicized accusations of genocide while imposing sanctions on the East Asian giant.

The US strategy to use Ukraine as a wedge between Russia and China has not worked. Instead, the barrage of new sanctions on Moscow has had the impact of bolstering Eurasian integration of the Russian and Chinese economies.

Meanwhile, China has firmly stood with Russia. Its foreign minister, Wang Yi, referred to Moscow as Beijing’s “most important strategic partner.”

Wang denounced the United States for “acting irresponsibly on the international arena.”
​
China stressed that its “rock-solid” friendship with Russia is “free from interference or discord sown by third parties” – a clear rebuke of Washington’s attempt to divide them.

By making the decision to militarily intervene in Ukraine in February 2022, Russia made it clear that it is no longer concerned with trying to integrate with the West. Moscow recognizes that its future lies in Eurasian integration with China, Iran, and other Eastern powers.

Beijing has also helped Moscow weather the financial storm of Western sanctions and trade restrictions, and the two countries have strengthened their economic ties.

China lifted all restrictions on imports of Russian wheat on February 24. Russia is the world’s largest exporter of wheat, and China has gradually increased imports from its northern neighbor.

The South China Morning Post (SCMP) noted, “China could provide a lifeline to Russia’s economy after the United States and its allies imposed swift economic sanctions on Moscow.”

The newspaper added that China’s ambassador to Russia, Zhang Hanhui, said Beijing “was ‘pleased’ to see that its currency has been widely used in Russian trade, financial investments and foreign reserves, and was also looking forward to discussions about yuan settlements in bilateral energy deals.”
​
Russia’s state-owned bank VTB, the second-largest financial institution in the country, announced on March 9 that customers can open savings accounts in the Chinese currency, the yuan, with an interest rate of up to 8%.

In a separate article, the SCMP reported that bilateral trade between China and Russia has increased during the Ukraine crisis, rising to US$26.4 billion in January and February, a 38.5% increase from the previous year, and the highest growth rate for these months since 2010. It did add, however, that export growth is slowing.

In response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Visa and Mastercard announced they would be limiting operations in the country. So Russia is turning toward its own domestic payment system, while expanding use of a Chinese counterpart.

Moscow’s state news agency Tass published a report on March 6 revealing that various banks in Russia are already using China’s UnionPay system for financial transactions, including the state-owned Russian Agricultural Bank (Rosselkhozbank) and Promsvyazbank and the private Gazprombank and Sovcombank.
​
Reuters noted that more Russian banks plan to work with UnionPay, including the state-owned Sberbank, Russia’s biggest bank, as well as the private Alfa Bank and Tinkoff.

Russia has its own payment system, called Mir, which was created by the central bank in 2017, largely due to the effects of Western sanctions imposed on the country in 2014.
​
Tass said some national banks are considering combining these Russian and Chinese payment services, and “will possibly issue co-badged cards linking Russia’s Mir and China’s UnionPay systems that will provide the option of payment for purchases and cash withdrawals abroad.”

The Joe Biden administration has sought to turn Ukraine into a wedge between China and Russia, and prominent Western media pundits like the New York Times’ Paul Krugman have argued that “China can’t bail out Putin’s economy.”
​
CNN declared that “China can’t do much to help Russia’s sanction-hit economy,” while Bloomberg prognosticated that Beijing made a “fateful choice on ties with Russia” that will supposedly come back to hurt it.

At the same time, the US government has publicly threatened to hit Chinese firms with financial punishments if they refuse to comply with Western sanctions on Russia and help Moscow get around these unilateral coercive measures.

Faced with this antagonistic strategy, China has doubled down on its support for Russia.

In a press conference on March 7, Beijing’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, declared that the Chinese-Russian partnership is “free from interference or discord sown by third parties.” This was a clear rejection of attempts by the United States and European Union to create divisions between them.

Wang said China and Russia are “each other’s most important close neighbors and strategic partners,” calling their relationship “one of the most crucial bilateral relations in the world.”

“China and Russia jointly oppose attempts to revive the Cold War mindset,” Wang stressed, warning about Washington’s drive toward a new cold war.

The Chinese foreign minister said Beijing and Moscow have a “shared commitment to ever-lasting friendship and mutually beneficial cooperation,” one that “is based on non-alliance, non-confrontation and non-targeting of any third party.”
​
“The China-Russia relationship is grounded in a clear logic of history and driven by strong internal dynamics, and the friendship between the Chinese and Russian peoples is rock-solid,” Wang added.

Bejing has also forcefully condemned Western sanctions on Russia.

Foreign Ministry Spokesman Zhao Lijian stated, “China is definitely against unilateral sanctions that are not based on international law. Brandishing a sanctions baton will not bring peace and security. It will only lead to serious issues for the economy and the quality of life in the corresponding countries.”
​
Zhao warned, “In this situation, everyone loses. Sanctions will only intensify division and confrontation.”

This article was produced by Multipolarista.

The frontrunner for Colombia’s presidential election has secured his nomination by the left-wing coalition Historic Pact for Colombia, putting the country on a track that may mark a first for the country.

Gustavo Petro, a former guerrilla in the M-19 rebel group, may become Colombia’s first leftist president.

Petro won more than 80% in the Historic Pact primary, while his main contenders for the presidency, right winger Federico Gutierrez, and centrist Sergio Fajardo, received 54% and just under 33% of the votes, respectively.

As Colombia’s congress is split among a number of parties, presidents are forced to build big-tent coalitions if they want to pass legislation.

In the 2018 elections, Petro lost to incumbent President Iván Duque, in the second round.

Colombia has always been ruled by the political right, yet polls show that Petro stands a real chance of winning.

Bogota’s distrust of the left is associated with its experience with FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), which the US removed from its list of foreign terrorist groups a few months ago, and other rebel groups that fought the government in a six-decade-long civil conflict.

Since Petro’s first run for president in 2010, two controversies took place that won him additional fans and enemies:

The first was his relationship with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and his successor Nicolás Maduro. Petro was originally captivated by Venezuela’s ideals, but later distanced himself from Chávez. However, when Petro attended Chávez’s funeral in 2013, he wondered aloud, “Why did I distance myself from him?”
​
The second controversy occurred during his time as mayor of Bogota, when Petro challenged the establishment during his administration, and stood up against the ruling class, despite facing numerous lawsuits and making powerful enemies.

​Colombia already enjoys a rocky relationship with its anti-imperialist neighbor Venezuela, due to the US using Colombia to exert pressure on Caracas. A shift in Colombia’s ruling coalition may bring about a geopolitical shift in Latin America.

On March 13, parliamentary elections also took place in Colombia. In this process, the Historical Pact coalition obtained the highest number of seats in the Senate and in the House of Representatives, although no clear majority can be foreseen for Petro should he win the presidential election, scheduled for May 29.
​
The Historical Pact won 16 seats in the Senate out of a possible 102, a figure equal to that of the traditional Conservative Party, and above the Liberal Party, also one of the country’s traditional parties, which won 15. In the House of Representatives, the Historical Pact obtained 25 seats —second only to the Liberal Party, which obtained 32— a result that even surprised Petro, who assured that the coalition “achieved the best result for progressivism in the history of Colombia.”

Because it has proved to be incapable of dealing with the causes of the Ukraine crisis, Europe is now condemned to deal with its consequences.

The US-led NATO military alliance is sending weapons to neo-Nazi extremists in Ukraine as they battle Russian soldiers.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, the US government has flooded the country with arms, authorizing sending $350 million worth of military equipment to Kiev.

In less than a week in late February and early March, the United States and other NATO member states transported more than 17,000 anti-tank weapons, including Javelin missiles, over the borders of Poland and Romania into Ukraine, the New York Times reported.

Washington has also sent Kiev 2,000 stinger anti-aircraft missiles. And the Joe Biden administration gave the “green light” to NATO countries to send fighter jets to Ukraine.

Western governments have invited hardened right-wing militants from around the world to travel to Ukraine to join the fight against Russia – just as they did in Afghanistan in the 1980s, in a strategy that gave birth to al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

Meanwhile, as NATO creates an insurgency in Ukraine, some of the fighters receiving these arms are white-supremacist fascists.

The anti-Russian activist media platform NEXTA tweeted on March 8 that NATO countries had shipped Next Generation Light Anti-tank Weapon (NLAW) guided missiles and sent instructors to the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv.

“The Azov regiment was the first to learn about new weaponry,” admitted NEXTA, a Western-backed Belarusian opposition outlet.
​
Azov is an explicitly neo-Nazi extremist group.

The Azov movement was founded as a fascist gang that served as the muscle behind a violent US-sponsored coup in Ukraine in 2014, overthrowing a democratically elected government that had maintained political neutrality, and instead installing a pro-Western and viciously anti-Russian regime.

After the 2014 putsch, the Azov Battalion was officially incorporated into Ukraine’s National Guard. It is now known as the Azov Detachment or Azov Regiment, and helps oversee special operations.
​
Azov preaches a white-supremacist ideology that portrays Russians as “Asiatic” and Ukrainians and “pure” white people. It uses numerous neo-Nazi symbols, including the German wolfsangel and black sun.

Given Azov’s links to white-supremacist fascist groups in the United States, there was actually a short-lived campaign to get the Ukrainian neo-Nazi militia listed as a terrorist organization.

In 2019, Democratic New York Representative Max Rose and 39 more congressmembers wrote a letter to the State Department asking it to label Azov as a terrorist organization.
​
That designation never came. Instead, Washington and NATO have armed Azov to wage a proxy war on Russia.

The photos tweeted by NEXTA are far from the only piece of evidence showing that Western governments have supported Nazis in Ukraine.

In 2017, US and Canadian military officers met with Azov Nazis in Ukraine and advised them on how to battle Russian-speaking Ukrainian independence fighters in the eastern Donbas region.
​
Azov published photos of the meeting on its official website.

The Canadian military officials who met with these Ukrainian Nazis later feared being exposed by the media.

The Ottawa Citizen newspaper reported that the exposure of Canadian training for Azov fascists led to an official military review.

Azov Nazis have also received weapons from Israel.
​
In 2018, mainstream news outlet Haaretz reported that a group of prominent human rights activists filed a petition with Israel’s High Court of Justice demanding that the country stop exporting weapons to Ukraine, after Azov posted a video on its official YouTube channel showing a far-right fighter using Israeli Tavor rifles.

A 2021 study published by George Washington University in Washington, DC showed how Western governments supported another neo-Nazi group in Ukraine, called Centuria.

Centuria is closely linked to Azov, and its extremist members have been photographed or filmed praising Nazi Germany and giving Hitler salutes.
​
These avowed neo-Nazis are now officers in the Ukrainian military, and were trained by the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Poland, and Canada.

The George Washington University study on this neo-Nazi gang, titled “Far-Right Group Made Its Home in Ukraine’s Major Western Military Training Hub,” stated:

In 2017, NATO published a highly produced propaganda film honoring Baltic Nazi collaborators, known as the Forest Brothers.
​
The US-led military alliance depicted the fascist extremists as brave anti-Russian heroes for fighting the former Soviet Union, while curiously overlooking their alliance with Adolf Hitler.

This article was produced by Multipolarista.

​The political and military maneuvers now going on in the Ukraine have the potential of escalating out of control. If we don't understand the actual reality that has brought about this crisis there is no hope of being able to prevent this escalation. In order to understand this reality we must refrain from a simple minded finger pointing at one side or the other and assigning complete responsibility for the crisis to one of the parties in the dispute, although one side may be disproportionately responsible.

The establishment media in the West (reflecting the position of the US and the EU) seems to have arrived at a consensus that the crisis is the result of a revanchist foreign policy initiative of the Russian Federation and its president Vladimir Putin on the one hand and the aspirations of the Kiev government to build a democratic Ukraine based on the western European model and free of undue Russian influence and domination on the other.

This has been simplified by many to a proxy war between a dictatorial undemocratic Russia out to eventually recreate the defunct USSR's boundaries and the Western democracies led by the US once again called upon to defend the Free World. The phrase "a new cold war" encapsulates this position.

That this is a warped view of the Ukrainian crisis is suggested by a reading of a new book, Frontline Ukraine: Crisis in the Borderlands (Tauris, 2014) by Richard Sakwa, an expert at the University of Kent in the UK. The "Preface" to this book presents the following historical background to the current crisis which goes back many decades to a time before there was any Vladimir Putin, Russian Federation or independent Ukraine.

When the cold war ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union and east European "socialism" there was a possibility of establishing a pan-European order that would have provided for peace and security for all European countries. However, the EU and NATO made no provision for the inclusion of Russia in a common European "defense" alliance. This resulted, according to Sakwa, in numerous "stress points" along the borders of the EU and the former USSR.

One major stress point was the fact that NATO, a military anti-Soviet (anti-Russian) alliance which had faced off against the Warsaw Pact during the cold war, now had lost its raison d'être and with the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact should have also come to an end. The US however decided not only to keep NATO in existence but to enlarge it-- clearly an aggressive and hostile act no matter how it is presented.

As a result two different visions of Europe's future developed, Sakwa says. The two are that of a "Wider Europe" and a "Greater Europe." The former represents the EU with France and Germany (basically Germany) at the core and its extension eastward incorporating former Warsaw Pact countries and parts of the old USSR. [A 21st century version of Drang nach Osten.]

The latter represents a vision of "one Europe" but is inclusive of all parts of Europe and not dominated by "Brussels, Washington or Moscow." It would be "multi-polar and pluralistic.'' Both Russia and the Ukraine (both pluralistic) would be part of it. This is the vision favored by the Russians. Sakwa says these visions are not necessarily stark alternatives: with good will some kind of synthesis could be reached.

The US and EU have decided against "Greater Europe" and seek to construct the vision of "Wider Europe" leaving the Russians as an odd man out. This decision [based on the interests of US and Western capital] and being implemented by stoking old historical grudges going back to the first world war and even earlier, is the background to the current crisis.

The different factions in the Ukraine are (unscientifically) being associated with colors-- primarily orange, blue, and gold. The Kiev government, backed by the EU and US, is the "orange" faction. Its basic desire is to form a Ukrainian national Slavic government with one official language (Ukrainian), culturally homogeneous and identified as far as possible with the EU and NATO.

There are millions of Russian speaking Slavs within the boundaries of Ukraine that do not share this orange outlook. They make up the "blue" faction which points out that different regions of the country have different linguistic, cultural and historical experiences and if the Ukraine is to work these realities have to be taken into consideration and respected. As it stands, the orange and blue factions don't seem suited for co-existence in the same political framework. To make things more complicated both factions are being supported and aided by outside players.

One last major faction is the "gold" faction. This is the faction representing the new billionaires (the oligarchs) that arose out of the collapse of the USSR and through corruption and undemocratic machinations have attained unprecedented political power in the country and can manipulate the Ukrainian "political class."

Sakwa says the country has produced "no visionary leader" who has been able to command the loyalty of all these factions and unite them around a project of successful nation building.
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These are, more or less, the major ideas in the preface to Sakwa's book. It will be impossible to understand the crisis going in Ukraine without keeping them in mind. For those who think the crisis is the result of the big bad Putin and Russian "aggression" there is no hope at all of their understanding of anything that is going on in Ukraine.

​On September 15, 2021, the National Assembly of Cuba published a new draft of the family code. The most notable amendment to the family code includes an article which would legalize gay  marriage. Thousands of grassroots meetings are currently being held to debate the amendment. The discussions are guided by judges and law students, who will process the information and submit it to the National Assembly by May. The National Assembly will then approve the changes made and submit the revised code for a referendum by the second half of 2022.
           
The amendment would reform the 1975 family code, which defines marriage as a “union between a man and a woman.” The push to amend the family code follows in the wake of the 2019 Constitutional Referendum, which strengthened anti-discrimination laws and almost resulted in the redefinition of marriage as “a union…with absolutely equal rights and obligations.” However, due to intense campaigning by conservative Evangelical and Catholic groups, the clause was scrapped. Despite the setback, Article 42 of the Constitution still prohibits discrimination based on sexual identity, “All people are equal before the law, receive the same protection and treatment from the authorities, and enjoy the same rights, liberties, and opportunities, without any discrimination for reasons of sex, gender, sexual orientation…” Although this doesn’t necessarily mean that same sex marriage is recognized, it does open the door for it to be legalized. The task of now redefining marriage is up to the new family code, and whether or not it will be ratified by the Cuban people.
           
Regardless of the setback, Cuba is still pushing forward in regards to gay rights. The early years of the revolutionary republic were marked by persecution towards sexual minorities. From 1965-1968, gay men were sent to labor camps called UMAPS (Military Units to Aid Production) as alternative to military conscription. The camps were demolished in 1969, yet in the years that followed homosexuality remained forbidden. The second half of the 1970s, however, saw improvements in attitudes towards the gay community. Workplace discrimination towards gay people was outlawed in 1975 and homosexuality was decriminalized in 1979. Attitudes slowly improved, but at the same time there were many mistakes. For example, the 1980s started off with the Mariel Boatlift, where thousands of gay Cubans, labeled as deviants, were forced out of Cuba. Despite the horrible realities of the Mariel Boatlift, progress was still made. In 1981, the Ministry of Culture declared that homosexuality was another variant of human sexuality and that discrimination towards LGBT individuals should be condemned. Nineteen ninety-eight also saw the last explicitly anti-gay law, the Public Ostenation Act of 1930, repealed.
 
Progress came at an even faster pace in the 1990s, and 1993 was a pivotal year for gay rights in Cuba, gay people were finally allowed to join the military and become members of the communist party. The age of consent for gay people was also made equal to that for heterosexuals. Finally, in 2010, Fidel Castro apologized for his persecution of gay people. By no means is Cuba a gay paradise, nor do gay people have as many freedoms as they do in America or Western European countries. Nonetheless, the situation for gay people is improving and in comparison to many of its neighbors and arguably some US states, Cuba is comparatively progressive. However, it’s always important to keep in mind that the road towards equity is not a smooth one, as shown in 1980 and in 2019, and at this point one can only wait with hope and bated breath that the amended family code passes.

​This is a continuation of a previous debate with RV, here and here.
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RV claims that I say that “the average prices of commodities are directly proportionate to the labour time socially necessary to reproduce them.”. I don’t because that is a mathematically ill defined statement. There is no such thing as an average price of different commodities since the commodities are incomensurable. You can not average the price of size 9 socks, Volkswagen Up cars, and 20cm lampshades. To form an average you need numbers of a uniform sort, which can not be done with distinct commodities. What can be measured is the correlation between the labour content of the output of industries and the money value of the output of these industries.
What I do claim is :

It is this assumption that is absolutely crucial to the arguments that Marx uses for the analysis of relative surplus value in volume I of Capital. The analysis of capitalist exploitation is the most politically controversial part of Capital.
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RV has no difficulty in finding places in Vol 1 of Capital or in Theories of Surplus Value where Marx says, without elaborating much, that average prices do not correspond to values. This, as I say above, is a mathematically ill formulated claim, but let us read it charitably as indicating that Marx believed, as a follower of Ricardo, that profit rates equalised and that in consequence capital intensive commodities would sell at a premium relative to their labour content. He promises to explain all in a volume to be published later. But none the less his entire set of theoretical demonstrations rest on what he may perhaps have believed was a mere provisional assumption that relative prices are proportional to relative values.

​RV claims that this assumption is made because Marx is deliberately setting himself a hard task. He implies that the assumption of price/value proportionality makes Marx’s task exceptionally hard:

It is true that Marx is setting up this assumption to exclude certain superficially easy but false explanations of surplus value. The simplest explains profit by monopoly power. The capitalist as a monopolist, in this version, makes a profit by selling commodities above their true value.

Well there is little reason to doubt that individual monopolists do gain profit this way, but it fails as a general explanation for profits. If some capitalists are selling above relative values, others must be selling below them, so the gains of one would be cancelled by the losses of another. Although the monopoly theory is superficially attractive, it would therefore fail as an explanation for capitalist profit in general. In modern language, such deviations are a zero sum game.

The next theory that Marx wanted to exclude was that workers were being cheated by the price of labour being below the value of labour. One of his rival socialist theorists like Rodbertus advocated this sort of account. So the insistance that commodities sell at their value was also intended to stress that labour power too, sold at its value. This was to obviate reformist projects according to which exploitation would end if all commodities, including labour power, could be made to sell at value. He argues instead, that even if labour power does sell at its value, surplus value will still exist. He does not doubt that at times the price of labour power falls below its value – falls to a level at which workers familes can not reproduce themselves. But he is guarding his argument against the simple trades unionist demand for a a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s pay. Instead he constructs his analysis of capitalist exploitation to show that even if workers are paid the value of their labour power they are still exploited. The solution must be the ‘abolition of the wages system’. This point is made explicitly in the last lines of Wages Prices and Profit. The equivalent terminating phrase in Capital is ‘expropriation of the expropriators’.

​The claims that profit arises from monopoly or under pricing of labour, whilst superficially plausible, are incapable of being integrated into a consisten overall system of social accounting – of the sort presented in Vol 2.
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In fact, I will argue, that the system of accounting in Vol 2 necessarily implies that the law of value – in the sense of a close correlation between prices and labour values must hold if capitalism is to reproduce itself. Dave Zachariah and I give a formal mathematical demonstration of this in a recent paper. I will give a demonstration by numerical example later.

But for now, lets just ignore the reproduction models in Vol 2 and concentrate on the way that the coherence of Vol 1 depends absolutely on the law of value ( understood as necessary close correlation between prices and labour values ).

I will now simple quote what I said on this in my original article and we can see if RV has been able to make an adequate response.

How does RV respond to this challenge?

Is he able to derive an analysis of relative or absolute surplus value without assuming a strong positive correlation between labour content and price ?
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No he completely flunks the challenge because it can not be done. Instead he avoids the issue :

He makes two points

• that it is necessary for analysis to assume that prices are proportional to values even if in reality they ae not

 

• that you can abstract in the analysis from price value deviations

But this is not good enough. It is not a matter of abstracting from price value deviations. A strong positive correlation between prices involves the assumption that there are deviations. But that the deviations, the noise, is small compared to to the signal, this is literally what correlation measures. For him to rebut the point that Marx’s analysis depends on this positive correlation it is not enough to say Marx was ignoring deviations. He would have to show that Marx’s argument would still hold if prices and values were uncorrelated. If prices were not correlated to labour content, then the use of labour saving weaving machinery would not have depressed the price of woven cotten and impoverished the hand loom weavers in the way Marx describes in his anlysis of machinery. The whole argument would fall down.

​On his first point. If the theory of surplus value mathematically rests on the assumption of labour value to price proportionality, and if in reality it turns out that prices are uncorrelated with values (as Kliman claims ) then Marx’s theory would be dead wrong and we should reject it outright – as the bourgeois economists have long claimed. But if Marx believed his theory of surplus value to be true, then he must have believed that the premises on which it rested were true premises.
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Again, I repeat the challenge, RV and Kliman for that matter, have to show that Marx’s theory of surplus value can be reconstructed on the assumption that price and value are uncorrelated. Of course if RV can not reconstruct the theory of surplus value without assuming that the law of value holds, then the theory of the declining rate of profit – which depends on the theory of surplus value would also be unsound.

It is easy for RV to find passages where Marx supports the Ricardian theory that profit rates equalise, and that this will induce systematic deviations between price an value. Marx was, on this point a completely uncritical Ricardian. This is why, for a long period from the 1960s the neo-Ricardian school were able to make hay with their criticisms( for example Steedman, Ian. Marx after sraffa. London: NLB, 1977).

Marx may well have thought that “differences in the average rate of profit in the various branches of industry … could not exist without abolishing the entire system of capitalist production.” But as Dodgson points out, in the youth of a theory one can believe many impossible or contradictory things. Marx both believed that Ricardo was right about the equalisation of profit rates, and that Marx’s own theory of reproduction was right. But this, was a belief in the impossible.

They can not both be right.

This is why there is a ‘transformation problem’.

Marx seems not to have been aware of the problem, but it was pointed out after his death by Samuelson, the neo-Ricardians, etc. It is unfortunate that Kliman and some other older Marxist economists have gone to inordinate lengths to try to hold onto pre-prandial fantasy, doubly unfortunate if younger comrades like RV never get to eat.

Marxist economists have a choice, they can hold fast to the law of value, the theory of surplus value and the analysis of reproduction in Vol 2, or they can decide to go along with the Ricardian assumptions of the early part of Vol 3. If you hew to the Ricardian assuption as RV, Kliman, Harvey and Steedman do, then in one way or another you end up repudiating the law of value.

Vol 2 deals with reproduction and turnover time, but it does all this on the basis of exchange at labour values. What was not apparent to Marx when writing Vol 3 was that it is actually the assumption of profit equalisation that leads to the economic collapse. One can grasp this if one starts out from the reproduction shcemes of Vol 2. Dave Zachariah show this in our lectures on the Kliman price theory here, starting from slide 99. We also have a video. In what follows I will give a simple example of why this is.

What I will show is that if you allow for varying turnover times then and equal rate of profit disrupts the reproduction of the economy.

Let us start by assuming we have a country with 100 million workers. If they are all full time workers then the annual net product in terms of labour value must be 100 million person years.

We can divide the economy into three big sectors:

1. The production of means of production
2. The production of wage goods and services consumed by the working class
3. The production of services and goods consumed by the capitalists. This includes not just luxuries, but a whole bunch of services like investment management, corporate law, advertising etc.

We will assume that the economy is in simple reproduction, neither growing nor shrinking, with no net capital accumulation. In that case the entire net product comes from sectors 2 and 3.

The whole of sector 2s output is consumed by workers, so the labour required to make its output is the necessary labour time of the economy. The ratio between the sizes of sectors 3 and 2 expressed in person year terms gives the rate of surplus value. We will assume the rate of surplus value is 100% – well within the bounds of plausibility.
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That implies that the value of output of each of sectors 2 and 3 must be 50 million person years.

That does not mean that 50 million work directly in each of sectors 2 and 3. Each must use up means of production supplied by sector 1. Let us suppose that wage goods use 20 million person years of means of production, and capitalist consumption 10 million. So at the next level of detail our situation is ( all figures millions of person years).

You can view this as saying that 30 million workers are employed in sector 2 and 40 million in sector 3. That leaves 30 million workers out of the population who are employed in the means of production sector, 2/3 of whose net output goes to sector 2 and the rest to sector 3.

​This description covers the deployment of labour between industries, the social division of labour. At the same time it represents flows of value, both between industries and to final consumption. It is one of the advantages of labour value andalysis that there is this one to one correspondence between value flows and deployment of people.

Production requires buildings, machines and vehicles, fixed capital that lasts several years. The flow from sector 1 to sector 2 is made up both of new machines and also of raw materials. We can go from a flow of value toa stock of capital if we know the turnover time. So if the turnover time of constant capital in sector 3 is 10 years, and the flow of new constant capital is 10 million person years, then the capital stock in sector 3 would be 100 million person years. This simply means that it will take 100 million person years at current technology to completely replace the capital stock as it wears out. This is the real meaning for the value of a capital stock – how long it would take people to rebuild it.
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It is often easier to work with the inverse of turnover time, the depreciation rate. In what follows I am assuming the following depreciation rates for sectors.

This is based on the assumption that production of means of production will use longer lived capital equipment than the capitalist consumption sector. Steel rolling mills are longer lived than the computers and office supplies used by accountants etc. set an intermediate depreciation rate for the workers consumer goods industry.

We can then set up a snapshot of the distribution of labour and constant capital in this economy. That it is capable of reproduction can be seen by checking that the total surplus labour 50 matches the output of sector 3 and that the total flow of means of production 50 in red matches the output of sector 1.

These figures are all in million person years. But if we assume that there are 2160 working hours a year, each of which creates a value of £30 we can get the equivalent monetary table. Because the table is wide, you should use the scroll bar to see it all.

Again we can verify that the system can reproduce. Colour codes show matching counsumption demands on the bottom row matching sector outputs in the gross output column.

​So if we assume prices are proportional to labour values, at £30 per hour then we would have a self reproducing capitalist economy. But if you look in the profit rate column you see that the rate of profit varies widely between industries. In fact this is just what we see if we look at a real capitalist economy – a wide dispersion of profit rates between sectors.

But Ricardo, Marx, Samuelson, Steedman, Kliman etc thought ( or still think ) that such a dispersion of profit rates is somehow wrong. Surely capitalism should be fairer to capitalists than this?

The law of value is unfair to capitalists! What a scandal!

Surely they should all be able to earn the same rate of profit?

Hence the ‘transformation problem’. How can we alter the law of value so that it is fair to all capitalists?

Let us apply the iterative procedure for solving the transformation problem advocated by Kliman. At each time step we adjust the price of the output of each sector to get an equal rate of profit, holding total wages constant. That is to say we award to each sector a uniform profit rate. We calculate the profit rate such that it is the original total surplus value divided by the latest money valuation of the capital employed. This is to be consistent with Marx’s belief that the total surplus value will be unchanged under the transformation.

Well lets see what happens after 5 iterative steps using the Google Slides iterative solver.

I have added a column to show the price adjustor arising from prices of production. It means that means of production that have a labour value expressed in money of £1 must sell at £1.20 to equalise profit rates, necessities with a labour value of £1 must sell for £1.07 etc.

As you can readily see, all sectors now have the same profit rate 5.17%. This is what the transformation procedure is intended to achieve – equal shares in surplus value for equal quantities of capital. Fairness and justice to all capitalists.

Unfortunately the result is an economy that is now incapable of reproducing since for each sector, supply and demand are now out of alignment.

Look at sector 1. Its output is priced at £4,140,739M, but the demand is only £3,883,593M. Clearly they do not match. The same applies to all the coloured figure pairs. Kliman has claimed that this kind of difference between purchased means of production and selling price does not matter; since means of production were purchased in the previous time period. There is, he claims, nothing to stop the capitalists in sector 1 selling their products at a higher price in the current period.

But this does not apply to wages. The total wages paid were £3,240,000M but the capitalists in sector 2 have to sell their output at £3,693,225M to earn the uniform profit rate. There is a shortfall of £453 billion pounds between what workers are able to spend and the price that the capitalists want to charge. Clearly they can not sell them for this elevated price.

If they sell them for £3,240,000M, which is all the workers have to spend, then their profit will be £714,562M not the £1,167,787 required by profit equalisation.

Now look at the capitalist consumption sector. It is attempting to sell its output at £710 billion less than the money that the capitalists have as profits to spend. This gives the firms in this sector the opportunity to hike their prices – which will mean that their sectoral profit will rise by £710 billion.
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At that point the profit rate in sector 3 will run above the requisite average rate.

If the law of value holds, and commodities sell at prices proportional to their labour content, then any social division of labour required by current technology and the current rate of exploitation can be reproduced. You get a set of prices at which inter sector supply and demand match. Each sector can sell its full output, pay wages and make a profit.

The rate of profit will not be equal between sectors, but this inequality does not threaten the reproduction of the capitalist economy.

If, on the other hand, some external planning body were to calculate what equal profit rates should be, and instruct all capitalists to sell at prices which would equalise profit rates, then you would get severe inequalities in inter sector supply and demand. Of course, in a capitalist economy there is no such planning body able to impose the hypothetical prices of production. But in socialist economies this has been a live issue. There was a planning body. It could impose prices. Should it impose prices of production?

Samuelson famously proposed “A New Labor Theory of Value for Rational Planning Through Use of the Bourgeois Profit Rate“. Similar proposals came from some Soviet economists in the Khrushchev period.
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Stalin had argued strongly against the idea that a socialist economy must adopt the criterion of equal profit rates:

He here shows a practical awareness that smooth reproduction requires accepting that the rate of return in sector I will be lower than in other sectors. He explicitly relies on Marx’s analysis of reproduction in Vol 2 to justify this:

Volume 2 and the analysis of reproduction is not only a sound basis for an intial theory of socialist planning. It is the fundamental explanation of why the law of value must operate in a capitalist economy it that is to reproduce itself.
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Volume 3 on the other hand, whilst it contains a lot of good stuff, has an incorrect Ricardian theory of price. Marx at times believed that he had made a breakthrough here. He was mistaken. The theory is empirically wrong, leads to inconsistent and non-reproducible social accounting. Marx wrongly believed that “differences in the average rate of profit in the various branches of industry … could not exist without abolishing the entire system of capitalist production.” whereas in reality, any attempt to impose an equal profit rate would render the capitalist economy unable to reproduce itself.

When the Soviet Union fell in 1990-91, Washington decided to deliver the final coup de grace to its two main geopolitical rivals: Russia and China. Remove them as “viable societies” and competitors of the world system, as President Eisenhower had defined the supreme objectives of U.S. foreign policy in 1961, in the Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP): a surprise nuclear attack on the urban centers and industrial targets of Russia and China.
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In military terms of the Nazis, a nuclear Blitzkrieg that planned to annihilate 71% of the Russian urban population and 53% of the urban population of China with the aim of achieving the secular dismemberment of Russia and China for the future global society.

The purpose of the SIOP, expressed with brutal clarity in the declassified documents, was “A Surprise Nuclear Attack in order to destroy the will and ability of the Sino-Soviet Bloc to wage war, remove the enemy from the category of a major industrial power, and assure a post-war balance of power favorable to the United States.”
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This imperial-totalitarian doctrine has been the unquestionable red script of the policy of all American presidents, since Henry Luce published his famous editorial “The American Century” in 1941 in “Life”, to justify Washington’s entry and its strategic interests, into World War II.

When Soviet Socialism imploded (1991), Washington decided to use two major political stratagems to “finish off” its potential global rivals Russia and China: 1. expand its Nato war organization (North Atlantic Treaty Organization, NATO) to the east, as close as possible to Moscow, to dominate Russia militarily; 2. prevent the Russia-China strategic alliance from being reborn, because it would form an invincible regional Power Bloc.

Both strategies have been nipped in the bud by the specific Russian military operation of “denazification” and “demilitarization” of that Eurasian protectorate of Washington, headed by the professional comedian Zelensky, without Washington or its political “lapdogs” in London, Paris, Berlin, Warsaw and Brussels being able to prevent it.
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Biden’s clandestine contacts with Beijing, requesting that China distance itself from Putin, as the New York Times reported, were not only rejected by the CCP, but the respective information was given to its strategic ally Putin. And, having Russia the most powerful Armed Forces on earth, which would defeat the US army both in the field of strategic weapons and in a conventional war, there is nothing that Western imperialism can do to save its puppet government in Kiev.

George Kennan, the most brilliant American strategist of the 20th century, who formulated in 1947 the “containment” strategy to defeat the USSR, observed with horror the unstoppable expansion of US imperialism and its European puppets towards the borders of Russia. In a prophetic article in the New York

Times in 1997, Kennan warned that expansion into Russia “would be the most fateful mistake of American policy in the entire post-Cold War era.”
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And he also foresaw the consequences. NATO’s expansionist program towards Russia, wrote the visionary diplomat, would force Moscow to accept it as a “military fait accompli” finding it imperative to search elsewhere for “guarantees of a secure and hopeful future for themselves.” This search for security and future generated the current strategic alliance with China, whose rules for a new multipolar world order were unveiled by Putin and Xi in their Joint Statement on February 4, 2022, in Beijing.

“NATO will not extend either formally or informally to the East,” was Washington’s commitment in the negotiations on German reunification and the withdrawal of Soviet troops, in 1991, as recorded in multiple documents signed by representatives of the United States, France, Germany and Great Britain which are in the public domain. (See, e.g., the German magazine Der Spiegel, 8/2022). But, as is often the case with the solemn words and commitments of imperialism, the obligations concurred in were not worth the paper on which they were written.


Four years later, in 1995, Washington and NATO, under the command of President Bill Clinton, bombed Serbian forces in Bosnia and Herzegovina. A thousand warplanes conducted more than 38,000 airstrikes (sic) against Serbian forces, from bases in Italy and Germany and U.S. warships in the Mediterranean, without any authorization from the United Nations Security Council. That is, a clear act of war of aggression and violation of international law.

In March 1999, Bill Clinton and NATO carried out a new bombing campaign against Serbia, creating the brand-new state of “Kosovo” in 2008, which today is nothing more than a logistical center of U.S. Pentagonism and international drug trafficking.

Already in 2004, the imperialist war organization had made a qualitative leap towards the Russian borders, with the acceptance of seven countries of Central and Eastern Europe: Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. In 2008, Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic also joined. A year later Albania and Croatia followed and from 2017 to 2020 Bosnia and Herzegovina and North Macedonia joined NATO.
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In this way, the war organization, supposedly established for the defense of the North Atlantic (NATO), grew from its 12 founding members in 1949 to 30 as of today, five of whom share borders with Russia: Estonia, Latvia, Poland, Lithuania and Norway, flagrantly violating at every step the agreements contracted with Russia in 1990-91 and the elementary security interests of this world power. All of President Putin’s warnings about the dangers of NATO’s Eastern Eurasian expansionism, for example, his early warning at the Muenchen Security Conference in 2007, were ignored by Washington. Thus, unstoppably the imperialist cancer approached Russia’s national security red lines, just as Kennan had foreseen.

In October 1962, President John F. Kennedy notified the American citizens that there were Soviet nuclear-armed missiles in Cuba and that he had decided on a naval blockade around the island and military readiness to neutralize this “threat to national security.” For 13 days the world was on the brink of nuclear holocaust, until Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev offered to withdraw the missiles in exchange for Washington promising not to invade Cuba and to withdraw (secretly) U.S. missiles from Turkey.

The functional equivalent of this agreement for Ukraine is the Minsk Agreement and the declaration of Ukraine´s neutrality. But, neither the Ukrainian oligarchy nor the US military-industrial complex, which manages and oversees Washington’s international policy, had the slightest intention whatsoever of using these available mechanisms of détente, because they needed a military confrontation with Russia to kill the Nord Stream 2 energy cooperation and hopefully, manage to drive a wedge between Moscow and Beijing in their increasingly successful attempt to build a new multipolar world order.

Despite the systematic campaign of lies by the bourgeois disinformation media, it is clear that the conflict in Ukraine is part of a secular war of aggression of Western imperialism against Russia and China, which began in 1918 with the US military invasion against the Russian Revolution, which was defeated by the Red Army in Siberia.

And that continues today with the attempt to dismember Russia through bellicose war expansionism of NATO and China through the attempt to organize a coup d’état against President Xi Jinping, as publicly requested by the media of Rupert Murdoch and George Soros.

This secular imperialist war is destined to fail, as long as Russia and China continue to maintain their defensive strategic alliance against the aggressors.
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Defending this alliance is the task of every person who seeks to overcome the era of post-truth and the American Century, which block the emancipative pathways of human mankind.

The philosopher Jerry Fodor is rightfully upset with some of the nonsense coming out of Academia disguised as science and dressed up in arguments purportedly derived from Darwin’s theory of evolution. Lots of nonsense put forth under the guise of “evolutionary psychology” is a good example. Here complex behavioral patterns of humans today are explained as inherited traits from our animal past or traits that we evolved when we were hunter gathers on the African savannah.

As an example, capitalism, for instance, is often justified, or explained, as a part of “human nature” [as is war, male supremacy, and “innate” racial differences in intelligence] inherited from our remote past. These claims, among others, have led Dr. Fodor to question Darwin’s theory that the mechanism driving evolution is “natural selection”.

This article will look at arguments he presented several years ago,“Why Pigs Don’t Have Wings” (The London Review of Books 10-18-07). I will try to establish that his arguments against natural selection are not convincing and are based on a mechanical interpretation of Darwin that is a characteristic of contemporary Western thought. That when Darwin is read dialectically, as he was by Marx and Engels (Cf. Engels’ Dialectics of Nature) the objections to natural selection as the main motor of evolutionary change evaporate.

Fodor tells us that natural selection “purports to characterize the mechanism not just of the formation of species, but of all evolutionary changes in the innate properties of organisms.” An organism’s phenotype [“the inventory of its heritable traits, including, notably, its heritable mental traits “ is an adaptation to its environment. 

The rub here is “mental traits.” Physical traits can be mapped on the genome and have some basis in material reality. This is much harder to do with so called mental traits. Most all of the current nonsense about evolutionary explanations of human behavior based on inherited mental traits is the result of idle speculation concerning hypothetical genes that could, maybe, be responsible for the behaviors in question. At most, however, we can only discuss the capacities that humans have inherited. The vast majority of specific behaviors are better explained by external causes, mostly of cultural and historical origin, which have nothing to do with an organism's phenotype. Nor did Darwin, I think, suggest otherwise.

Adaptation works this way. Organisms are living in an environment and competing for food and reproductive success. Some type of genetic mutation comes along [a cosmic ray zaps one of its genes say] that gives the organism a slight edge in finding a mate and reproducing. More babies carrying the new gene show up in the next generation, etc (providing the gene is inheritable). Eventually all the organisms have the new characteristic: a new species. This is very simple, but you get the idea. It doesn’t have to be a new species. It could be a gene for eye color and so you just have variation within a species, for example.

Now Fodor says that Darwin’s theory has two components. The sequence of changing phenotypes, we can see the connection phenotypically, genetically, that puts baboons in our family tree. No doubt about that. But how did that happen? It is the answer “by natural selection” that he wants to question. No, he is not a creationist. He is looking for a purely scientific answer, not mysticism, to replace natural selection because he sees flaws in that explanation. Flaws that I will attempt to show do not exist.

Fodor reports that there is something that “ails” us a species living in the contemporary world. Marxists agree and attribute it to our economic arrangements-- i.e., capitalism and its logical consequence of human exploitation for profit which leads to imperialism and war. Fodor says the Darwinists explain the problem by saying we inherited a mind adapted for life 30,000 years ago and is unequipped to live in the complex world of today. He will attack natural selection because he thinks this Darwinist answer is wrong. 

But this is not Darwin’s answer at all. It is modern misinterpretation of Darwin that has arisen as a reflection on the modern world in societies which, due to the class nature of science and education, do not fundamentally challenge the prevailing order [TINA]* and thus reject ab initio a Marxist reading of evolution. *[There Is No Alternative— British PM Margaret Thatcher’s view on capitalism]

What ails humanity is for Darwinists, according to Fodor, "that the kind of mind we have is an anachronism; it was selected for by an ecology that no longer exists." This being the case, Fodor says, "if the theory of natural selection turned out not to be true, that would cut the ground from under the Darwinist diagnosis of our malaise."

Fodor is right about that. But it is wrong to think that natural selection has provided us with an anachronistic "mind". The so-called “Darwinists” who argue that way are very far from Darwin or any scientific understanding of the human brain.

What natural selection has provided us with is a brain with the capacity to adapt the organism to many different social and cultural climates. It is no more the product of events 30,000 years ago on savannas then it is of modern industrial societies. As far as anyone can say it also has the capacities to adapt to future social and cultural conditions as yet unimaginable. There is no need to reject natural selection "to cut the ground from under the Darwinist diagnosis" because the characterization given by Fodor, while maintained by many social "scientists" and some shallow schools of "evolutionary psychology", is a totally unscientific version of Darwinism. 

But suppose as a matter of fact natural selection is still incorrect. Fodor says it has two problems that might undermine it: one is conceptual, the other is empirical ("more or less.") Let's look at these two.

I must admit, I don't really see the conceptual problem. Here is what Fodor says it is. Natural selection can be seen as holding that "environments select creatures for their fitness; or you can say that environments select traits for their fitness." But I wouldn't say that environments "select" anything. Organisms ("creatures") are born into environments and their ability to survive and reproduce depends on the traits they have. If a frog has a mutation giving it three legs it may not live to reproduce. If it has a mutation making it resistant to a virus that infects and kills frogs, that trait may allow it to reproduce better than other frogs.

Is it not confusing to talk of "forces of selection," as does Fodor? "These forces must select individual creatures on the one hand, but on the other they must select traits" since it is phenotypes ("bundles of heritable traits") "whose evolution selection theory purports to explain."

This whole discussion of a "conceptual problem", of a mechanical contradiction invalidating natural selection, is itself a conceptual problem [a category mistake], or better a terminological one. Let's get rid of needless metaphysical entities such as "environments making selections". and "forces." Next, consider that "phenotypes" are not real existing separate entities. They are intellectual abstractions that we as scientists or philosophers use to describe the workings of our theoretical explanations for what we find in nature. Only the organisms exist. 

I think, therefore, that the conceptual problem is bogus. I will therefore skip over the rest of the conceptual discussion, which concerns itself with Venetian architecture, Darwin's analogy between selective breeding techniques and natural selection (and Adam Gopnik's New Yorker article about the same), and associated problems with metaphors such as God and Mother Nature.

Let us now turn to the empirical problem. It is not so much a problem as an "issue" for Fodor. He starts by saying that as a matter of fact some new empirical explanations for evolution are being proposed that do not base the mechanism of change on natural selection. He says he can't discuss all of these new ideas but will give us a "feel" for two of them.

First, Fodor points out that "phenotypes don't occur at random"-- i.e., for me that means we don't group organisms together arbitrarily. We group them together because of the similarity we see, or think we see, between organisms. Because, for example, all the animals we see in what we call the cat family are more similar to each other in ways than they are to organisms we classify as members of the dog family. We conclude they have an evolutionary connection and their membership in the same family is non-random.

Fodor says the non-randomness of the phenotypes is due to the non-randomness of the environment. He tells us the "theory of natural selection in a nutshell" is if the non-randomness we see between phenotypes [i.e., organisms] and their environments isn't due to God, "Perhaps [my emphasis] it is a reflection of the orderliness of the environment in which the phenotypes [i.e., the organisms-- tr] evolved." In other words a fossil fish may indicate that there was a watery environment, and a fossil bird would suggest an environment conducive to flight.

But, Fodor says, "this is not the only possibility." "External environments are structured in all sorts of ways, but so too, are the insides of the creatures that inhabit them" [natural selection may have something to do with this-- tr]." There is another possibility, an alternative to the view that phenotypes [our mental constructions based on knowledge of real organisms-- tr] reflect the environments they evolve in, "namely that they carry implicit information about the endogenous structure of the creatures whose phenotypes they are."

"Whose" is a possessive and we should remember that it is organisms that "possess" phenotypes not the other way around. But let us grant "phenotypes" the same ontological status as organisms. Fodor has not really put forward an alternative view. This view, by the way he refers to as "Evo-Devo" (evolutionary-developmental theory). 

Darwin's theory of natural selection regarding an organism's response to the environment, and Evo-Devo, the organism's internal structure are two sides of the same coin. They are not alternative explanations, but, as Marxist dialectics would have it, they are a unity in difference. 

Gene theory developed after Darwin. So now we know that the mechanism by which natural selection's response to the environment takes place is by changes in the genetic makeup of the organism. How, or what, causes the genes to change is another question. Fodor has a reduction to biochemistry down to quantum mechanics ("for all I know.)”

This is pointless as far as the theory of natural selection is concerned. The organism either adapts to its environment and successfully reproduces itself or it becomes extinct. So when Fodor says, it is "an entirely empirical question to what extent exogenous variables are what shape phenotypes; and it's entirely possible that adaptationism [natural selection] is the wrong answer" he is way off base. The inner and the outer (genome and environment) are two aspects of the same thing-- the living organism. 

Now Fodor asks a very strange question. Granted that when we ask Darwin why two phenotypes (organisms) are similar this can be explained by common ancestry. But what if you ask "why is it that some phenotypes don't occur, an adaptationist explanation often sounds somewhere between implausible and preposterous." If you ask, that is, why some sort of organism did NOT evolve, natural selection can't give a satisfying answer. How would natural selection explain why there are no pigs with wings?

Fodor says they lack wings "because there is no place on pigs to put them." You would have to "redesign pigs radically" to have them have wings. Natural selection won't let you go back "and retrofit feathers" [of course mammals don't need feathers to fly]. For Fodor, this means there are constraints "on what phenotypes can evolve that aren't explained by natural selection." This is just so wrong.

Natural selection explains perfectly well why pigs don't have wings. Again it is pigs, not "phenotypes" that lack genes for wings. Let’s look at the real question. Why do bats have wings. Bats and pigs are both mammals and they at one time shared (with many other kinds of animals) a common ancestor. The common ancestor to bats and pigs, et al, was a much more generalized animal to any of its many descendants.

Natural selection says that mutations with positive adaptive (reproductive) values that happened to the common ancestor and its offspring gave rise to all of its descendants different mutations leading to different adaptations to the many possible environments which these animals could live in. Bats have wings and pig's don't because the organisms that eventually turned into bats and pigs had genetic changes that allowed them to exploit different parts of our common earthly environment. 

Fodor's question doesn't really make sense. Why don't pigs have wings is the same as asking why didn't pigs become bats. Or why are there pigs? Natural selection also answers the related question as to why horses don't have a single horn on their foreheads.

Fodor calls this kind of speculation "channeling." But all the restraints that have been placed on pigs to prevent them from flying have been channeled by the operations of natural selection. How would natural selection take place in order to result in a flying mammal? It is to the bat genome, not the pig genome that we should look. So much, I think, for the "feel" of the first alternative to natural selection. It really ends up supporting natural selection.

Let us look at Fodor's second alternative and get a "feel" for it as well. Fodor thinks that evolutionary traits that come about by natural selection are supposed to enhance fitness. So if a suite of traits shows up in the evolutionary record that doesn't enhance fitness, something must be wrong with the theory of natural selection.

He discusses a forty year experiment to breed tameness into silver foxes. The experiment was successful and after thirty generations of inbreeding a strain of very tame foxes was the result. But besides tameness the foxes had many other new traits as well-- floppy ears, short curly tails, short legs. etc.

He thinks this is evidence against adaptationism (natural selection). He says, "the ancillary phenotypic effects of selection for tameness seem to be perfectly arbitrary. In particular, they apparently aren't adaptations; there isn't any teleological explanation-- any explanation in terms of fitness-- as to why domesticated animals tend to have floppy ears." Domestication is artificial, not natural, selection.

In the first place these foxes did not come about by natural selection, but by deliberate breeding. All tame foxes were bred by human design so any "ancillary" traits were bred also (who knows if they would have survived by unaided natural selective processes).

In the second place, natural selection's main point is that positive traits that further reproductive success will tend to be propagated, negative traits that hinder reproductive traits will tend to be eliminated, and neutral traits may or may not be eliminated. A neutral trait like floppy ears, associated with a positive trait like tameness (in the experiment) will get a free ride as a neutral trait even without a positive adaptive function.

There is nothing strange or mysterious about this. It is standard operating procedure in Darwin's theory of natural selection. Although Fodor definitely would not agree, the floppy ears and other reproductively neutral traits are flukes.

I think nothing in his article poses either conceptual or empirical problems for the theory of evolution by means of natural selection as proposed by Darwin. As far as evolutionary psychologists and sociobiologists are concerned, let them come up with specific genes located in the human genome for the characteristics they claim humans exhibit as a result of living in a primitive savanna-like environment in the prehistoric origins of the species. The springs of human behavior are not frozen in the past.

Late 19th and early 20th century Hot Springs, Arkansas was a breeding ground for corruption. A police department controlled by the wealthy collected debts for the powerful families that ran the city, Al Capone visited the Arlington Hotel regularly, and firefights in the street were a common occurrence. Poverty was rampant and brutal.

Amid this chaotic backdrop, the Socialist Party of Hot Springs began publishing a socialist newspaper called Clarion.
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What follows are excerpts and clippings from the only issue available – published May 17, 1913 – in the Arkansas state archives.

Published every Saturday by the Socialist Co-Operative Publishing Company.

​Editor… T.W. Bryan
Secretary & Treasurer… D.G. Sleeper

Meets every Saturday night at 8:?? at Gower and Williams store [unintelligible] 

An effort is being made by the Information Department to collect the names of the members of the Socialist Party who belong to the professions. There is a two fold object in this effort – first, to show the proportion of educated and especially trained men in the Socialist Party, and, second, (and what is very much more important) to enlist the technically trained comrades in the constructive work which the party must do. More and more the comrades everywhere are realising their need of technical information that can be relied upon to help them in their tasks as members of city councils, school boards and state legislatures. Already a number of consulting engineers, scientists, special students and others are assisting the party thru this department. It is hoped that this list may be greatly lengthened and strengthened.

Comrades who themselves have some technical training in any particular line, or who know of comrades who have such attainments, should send the information to this department and correspondence will be opened with them. 

Under a co-operative government there would be nothing of value with which to bribe a public officer. As mining stock and railway stock would be like stock in a post office or public road. Everyone would have all they could use, but wouldn’t walk a city block for some other fellows share. Money can never be a true measure of value, for it is a product of labor and creature of law, and is no truer or nearer correct than watched or baled hay would be. There are those who are tired of measuring their own value of their happiness and the welfare of their posterity, by so changeable a standard as money. –McAlester 

Comrade May Walden was with us three days this week. She is woman’s correspondent for the state of Illinois, and is doing special work among the women. The cry now is “A 50 percent woman membership in the Socialist Party.” A very interesting meeting was held at the Unitarian church in which Comrade Walden impressed upon the ladies the importance of Socialism to the women. –Moline 
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We notice that in the Sunday issue of the Arkansas Gazette, an entire page of the magazine section was devoted to the exposure of the Krupp Gun Works in Germany, by the socialist leader, Dr. Leibnecht. He charges that the Krupps were responsible for the semi-annual German-France war scare that consumes so large an amount of space in the Capitalist dailies has been fully substantiated, the Krupps admitting that they bought French newspapers for the purpose of fanning the hatred supposed to exist between the two nations for the purpose of selling armor/plate and guns to the government. Some day when the facts are brought to light we will find the Steel Trust is behind the anti-Japanese agitation in this country, and in the light of recent developments, that anti-Jap [sic] act of the California legislature is significant. This much is certain – even though murder machine manufacturers are able to buy newspapers to fan the flame of international hatred, if the workers of the world will refuse to furnish the corpses there will be no more wars. 

For a world without a master,
a world without a slave.
Where none shall kneel and ask permit
to work, or favor crave.

Where thrones and kings and priests and snobs,
and creed and greed are past.
For human brotherhood is law,
And love’s enthroned at last.

A world where right and reason rule,
and law supreme of love,
As Jesus said when here on earth,
The Kingdom from above.

Rev. Geo. D. Coleman 

Women’s Day or Working Women’s Day is a day of international solidarity, and a day for reviewing the strength and organization of proletarian women.

But this is not a special day for women alone. The 8th of March is a historic and memorable day for the workers and peasants, for all the Russian workers and for the workers of the whole world. In 1917, on this day, the great February revolution broke out. 1 It was the working women of Petersburg who began this revolution; it was they who first decided to raise the banner of opposition to the Tsar and his associates. And so, working women’s day is a double celebration for us.
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But if this is a general holiday for all the proletariat, why do we call it “Women’s Day”? Why then do we hold special celebrations and meetings aimed above all at the women workers and the peasant women? Doesn’t this jeopardize the unity and solidarity of the working class? To answer these questions, we have to look back and see how Women’s Day came about and for what purpose it was organized.

Not very long ago, in fact about ten years ago, the question of women’s equality, and the question of whether women could take part in government alongside men was being hotly debated. The working class in all capitalist countries struggled for the rights of working women: the bourgeoisie did not want to accept these rights. It was not in the interest of the bourgeoisie to strengthen the vote of the working class in parliament; and in every country they hindered the passing of laws that gave the right to working women.

Socialists in North America insisted upon their demands for the vote with particular persistence. On the 28th of February, 1909, the women socialists of the U.S.A. organized huge demonstrations and meetings all over the country demanding political rights for working women. This was the first “Woman’s Day”. The initiative on organizing a woman’s day thus belongs to the working women of America.

In 1910, at the Second International Conference of Working Women, Clara Zetkin 2 brought forward the question of organizing an International Working Women’s Day. The conference decided that every year, in every country, they should celebrate on the same day a “Women’s Day” under the slogan “The vote for women will unite our strength in the struggle for socialism”.

During these years, the question of making parliament more democratic, i.e., of widening the franchise and extending the vote to women, was a vital issue. Even before the first world war, the workers had the right to vote in all bourgeois countries except Russia. 3 Only women, along with the insane, remained without these rights. Yet, at the same time, the harsh reality of capitalism demanded the participation of women in the country’s economy. Every year there was an increase in the number of women who had to work in the factories and workshops, or as servants and charwomen. Women worked alongside men and the wealth of the country was created by their hands. But women remained without the vote.

But in the last years before the war the rise in prices forced even the most peaceful housewife to take an interest in questions of politics and to protest loudly against the bourgeoisie’s economy of plunder. “Housewives uprisings” became increasingly frequent, flaring up at different times in Austria, England, France and Germany.

The working women understood that it wasn’t enough to break up the stalls at the market or threaten the odd merchant: They understood that such action doesn’t bring down the cost of living. You have to change the politics of the government. And to achieve this, the working class has to see that the franchise is widened.
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It was decided to have a Woman’s Day in every country as a form of struggle in getting working women to vote. This day was to be a day of international solidarity in the fight for common objectives and a day for reviewing the organized strength of working women under the banner of socialism.

The decision taken at the Second International Congress of Socialist Women was not left on paper. It was decided to hold the first International Women’s Day on the 19th of March, 1911.

This date was not chosen at random. Our German comrades picked the day because of its historic importance for the German proletariat. On the 19th of March in the year of 1848 revolution, the Prussian king recognized for the first time the strength of the armed people and gave way before the threat of a proletarian uprising. Among the many promise he made, which he later failed to keep, was the introduction of votes for women.

After January 11, efforts were made in Germany and Austria to prepare for Women’s Day. They made known the plans for a demonstration both by word of mouth and in the press. During the week before Women’s Day two journals appeared: The Vote for Women in Germany and Women’s Day in Austria. The various articles devoted to Women’s Day – “Women and Parliament,” “The Working Women and Municipal Affairs,” “What Has the Housewife got to do with Politics?”, etc. – analyzed thoroughly the question of the equality of women in the government and in society. All the articles emphasized the same point: that it was absolutely necessary to make parliament more democratic by extending the franchise to women.

The first International Women’s Day took place in 1911. Its success succeeded all expectation. Germany and Austria on Working Women’s Day was one seething, trembling sea of women. Meetings were organized everywhere – in the small towns and even in the villages halls were packed so full that they had to ask male workers to give up their places for the women.

This was certainly the first show of militancy by the working woman. Men stayed at home with their children for a change, and their wives, the captive housewives, went to meetings. During the largest street demonstrations, in which 30,000 were taking part, the police decided to remove the demonstrators’ banners: the women workers made a stand. In the scuffle that followed, bloodshed was averted only with the help of the socialist deputies in Parliament.
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In 1913 International Women’s Day was transferred to the 8th of March. This day has remained the working women’s day of militancy.

Women’s Day in America and Europe had amazing results. It’s true that not a single bourgeois parliament thought of making concessions to the workers or of responding to the women’s demands. For at that time, the bourgeoisie was not threatened by a socialist revolution.

But Women’s Day did achieve something. It turned out above all to be an excellent method of agitation among the less political of our proletarian sisters. They could not help but turn their attention to the meetings, demonstrations, posters, pamphlets and newspapers that were devoted to Women’s Day. Even the politically backward working woman thought to herself: “This is our day, the festival for working women,” and she hurried to the meetings and demonstrations. After each Working Women’s Day, more women joined the socialist parties and the trade unions grew. Organizations improved and political consciousness developed.

Women’s Day served yet another function; it strengthened the international solidarity of the workers. The parties in different countries usually exchange speakers for this occasion: German comrades go to England, English comrades go to Holland, etc. The international cohesion of the working class has become strong and firm and this means that the fighting strength of the proletariat as a whole has grown.
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These are the results of working women’s day of militancy. The day of working women’s militancy helps increase the consciousness and organization of proletarian women. And this means that its contribution is essential to the success of those fighting for a better future for the working class.

The Russia working woman first took part in “Working Women’s Day” in 1913. This was a time of reaction when Tsarism held the workers and peasants in its vise like a grip. There could be no thought of celebrating “Working Women’s Day” by open demonstrations. But the organized working women were able to mark their international day. Both the legal newspapers of the working class – the Bolshevik Pravda and the Menshevik Looch – carried articles about the International Women’s Day: 4 they carried special articles, portraits of some of those taking part in the working women’s movement and greetings from comrades such as Bebel and Zetkin. 5

In those bleak years meetings were forbidden. But in Petrograd, at the Kalashaikovsky Exchange, those women workers who belonged to the Party organized a public forum on “The Woman Question.” Entrance was five kopecks. This was an illegal meeting but the hall was absolutely packed. Members of the Party spoke. But this animated “closed” meeting had hardly finished when the police, alarmed at such proceedings, intervened and arrested many of the speakers.

It was of great significance for the workers of the world that the women of Russia, who lived under Tsarist repression, should join in and somehow manage to acknowledge with actions International Women’s Day. This was a welcome sign that Russia was waking up and the Tsarist prisons and gallows were powerless to kill the workers’ spirit of struggle and protest.
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In 1914, “Women Workers Day” in Russia was better organized. Both the workers’ newspapers concerned themselves with the celebration. Our comrades put a lot of effort into the preparation of “Women Workers Day.” Because of police intervention, they didn’t manage to organize a demonstration. Those involved in the planning of “Women Workers Day” found themselves in the Tsarist prisons, and many were later sent to the cold north. For the slogan “for the working women’s vote” had naturally become in Russia an open call for the overthrow of Tsarist autocracy.

The first world war broke out. The working class in every country was covered with the blood of war. 6 In 1915 and 1916 “Working Women’s Day” abroad was a feeble affair – left wing socialist women who shared the views of the Russian Bolshevik Party tried to turn March 8th into a demonstration of working women against the war. But those socialist party traitors in Germany and other countries would not allow the socialist women to organize gatherings; and the socialist women were refused passports to go to neutral countries where the working women wanted to hold International meetings and show that in spite of the desire of the bourgeoisie, the spirit of International solidarity lived on.

In 1915, it was only in Norway that they managed to organize an international demonstration on Women’s Day; representatives from Russia and neutral countries attended. There could be no thought of organizing a Women’s Day in Russia, for here the power of Tsarism and the military machine was unbridled.

Then came the great, great year of 1917. Hunger, cold and trials of war broke the patience of the women workers and the peasant women of Russia. In 1917, on the 8th of March (23rd of February), on Working Women’s Day, they came out boldly in the streets of Petrograd. The women – some were workers, some were wives of soldiers – demanded “Bread for our children” and “The return of our husbands from the trenches.” At this decisive time the protests of the working women posed such a threat that even the Tsarist security forces did not dare take the usual measures against the rebels but looked on in confusion at the stormy sea of the people’s anger.
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The 1917 Working Women’s Day has become memorable in history. On this day the Russian women raised the torch of proletarian revolution and set the world on fire. The February revolution marks its beginning from this day.

“Working Women’s Day” was first organized ten years ago in the campaign for the political equality of women and the struggle for socialism. This aim has been achieved by the working class women in Russia. In the soviet republic the working women and peasants don’t need to fight for the franchise and for civil rights. They have already won these rights. The Russian workers and the peasant women are equal citizens – in their hands is a powerful weapon to make the struggle for a better life easier – the right to vote, to take part in the Soviets and in all collective organizations. 7

But rights alone are not enough. We have to learn to make use of them. The right to vote is a weapon which we have to learn to master for our own benefit, and for the good of the workers’ republic. In the two years of Soviet Power, life itself has not been absolutely changed. We are only in the process of struggling for communism and we are surrounded by the world we have inherited from the dark and repressive past. The shackles of the family, of housework, of prostitution still weigh heavily on the working woman. Working women and peasant women can only rid themselves of this situation and achieve equality in life itself, and not just in law, if they put all their energies into making Russia a truly communist society.

And to quicken this coming, we have first to put right Russia’s shattered economy. We must consider the solving of our two most immediate tasks – the creation of a well organized and politically conscious labor force and the re-establishment of transport. If our army of labor works well we shall soon have steam engines once more; the railways will begin to function. This means that the working men and women will get the bread and firewood they desperately need.

Getting transport back to normal will speed up the victory of communism. And with the victory of communism will come the complete and fundamental equality of women. This is why the message of “Working Women’s Day” must this year be: “Working women, peasant women, mothers, wives and sisters, all efforts to helping the workers and comrades in overcoming the chaos of the railways and re-establishing transport. Everyone in the struggle for bread and firewood and raw materials.”
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Last year the slogan of the Day of Women Workers was: “All to the victory of the Red Front.” 8 Now we call working women to rally their strength on a new bloodless front – the labor front! The Red Army defeated the external enemy because it was organized, disciplined and ready for self sacrifice. With organization, hard work, self-discipline and self sacrifice, the workers’ republic will overcome the internal foe – the dislocation (of) transport and the economy, hunger, cold and disease. “Everyone to the victory on the bloodless labor front! Everyone to this victory!”

The October revolution gave women equality with men as far as civil rights are concerned. The women of the Russian proletariat, who were not so long ago the most unfortunate and oppressed, are now in the Soviet Republic able to show with pride to comrades in other countries the path to political equality through the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat and soviet power.

The situation is very different in the capitalist countries where women are still overworked and underprivileged. In these countries the voice of the working woman is weak and lifeless. It is true that in various countries – in Norway, Australia, Finland and in some of the States of North America – women had won civil rights even before the war. 9

In Germany, after the Kaiser had been thrown out and a bourgeois republic established, headed by the “compromisers,” 10 thirty-six women entered parliament – but not a single communist!

In 1919, in England, a woman was for the first time elected a Member of Parliament. But who was she? A “lady.” That means a landowner, an aristocrat. 11

In France, too, the question has been coming up lately of extending the franchise to women.

But what use are these rights to working women in the framework of bourgeois parliaments? While the power is in the hands of the capitalists and property owners, no political rights will save the working woman from the traditional position of slavery in the home and society. The French bourgeoisie are ready to throw another sop to the working class, in the face of growing Bolshevik ideas amongst the proletariat: they are prepared to give women the vote. 12

This call was first heard amidst the trials of a new order, in the battles of civil war it will be heard by and it will strike a chord in the hearts of working women of other countries. The working woman will listen and believe this call to be right. Until recently they thought that if they managed to send a few representatives to parliament their lives would be easier and the oppression of capitalism more bearable. Now they know otherwise.
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Only the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of soviet power will save them from the world of suffering, humiliations and inequality that makes the life of the working woman in the capitalist countries so hard. The “Working Woman’s Day” turns from a day of struggle for the franchise into an international day of struggle for the full and absolute liberation of women, which means a struggle for the victory of the soviets and for communism!